How about this: Put the fighter mesh ITSELF in the explosion effect: having it spinning out of control and burning up...

Timing will be critical swapping out the real fighter for the burning fighter effect, but if you put a one-second burst effect, no one will notice...

Well, I don't know much about modding but....

I would assume you are better off using an autocannon weapon to shoot at strikecraft (for TEC at least). It looks better, and is more of TEC's style.

You need a weapon fire effect, a weapon projectile effect, and a weapon impact effect for a weapon to have visible FX and whatnot. I don't think the effects used for strikecraft are different from frigates/cruisers/capitals but if they are you need to add them in. A nice flak-style effect would be the one from Homeworld 2 with the explosion and the lingering black smoke. You should add AoE damage as well because flak explodes. Updating the Garda into a Homeworld 2 style flak frigate would be cool.

Oh and a mod you should consider using in your mod is the SolarFlair mod. Its even better than Lost_WLD's graphics mod in my opinion.
SolarFlair for Sins of a Solar Empire The Advent Plasma effects kick total ass. I'm trying to nag the maker to put up a version 1.0 vid. But he's dead maybe.

Anyways, ignore my mindless rambling if you have to. You should still consider using SolarFlair for your mod. And having the Garda shoot actual flak would be sweet.

So you used what mod for this? Can I use that plus your updated flak ability? Me want railguns and flak batteries.

Well, I wanted Romanmir's changed files for the stuff. Sorry for the confusion. I even confused myself TBH, which is why I didn't notice it. Sorry Haiyooo, and yes, I already use your mod, its sweet, except I don't have Excel and a nice standard .txt readme would be nice.

Romanmir, have a link for the SG-1 Mod as well as your awesome edits? Want railguns and actual flak, not stupid burst-firing AUTOcannons.

I seriously need to make a mod about that.

I uncovered a big error in my DPS calculations, I did account for the different gun reload times. So doing a major rework.

I didn't think the game had point-defense capabilities. I foresee major balancing issues with this...

What I did is not really "point defense" in the classical sense. I would attribute point defense towards something more like being able to shoot down missiles, which i have been given to understand isn't possible, yet..

It's just that instead of using the rail guns (in my case,) to shoot at a cap ship or frigate, I'm choosing instead to shoot at fighters.. it's still the same amount of damage. I simply eased the need for fighters and can instead focus all of my squadrons on bombers (as long as there is a battleship in my fleet.)

@Haiyoo: @SpardaSon21: I don't know the ins and the outs of what you have set up so far, but you should consider dropping the range for your flak cannons and using the Kol's flak burst graphics effect. I haven't the first clue what this will look like, as I just this second thought of it.. Hmm, I may need to see how/if that would work. Also: I will see if I can hook the both of you up with the code that I have.. (if you still need it, that is. Once again, sorry for the delay in responding.)