Hm... I could actually really see that with the old plasma cannon implementation - back when it was a charge-up weapon, rather than the current three-shot burst. (Hold down fire to charge; projectile gets bigger over time, fires when you release or when it reaches maximum size.)
Unfortunately, I didn't save that ancient copy of Starfarer (yes, it was Starfarer back then, too) - so I'm not sure how to implement such a thing.
Hmmm... well, damn, that probably would have been helpful, at least to figure out the visual effects.
That was me .
And I appreciate it! Anyway!
So, the weapons. There are going to be two (2) built-in special weapons in the next release. One is attached to the Shamash, and the other the Elysium, as already stated.
The special armament for the Shamash is actually fairly simple in function; it is essentially a big gun. The vessels primary armament essentially shunts energy from it's its phase core and shoots it at someone the captain is angry with. This tends to be somewhat unpleasant for whatever is on the receiving end as the phasic bolt does not interact nicely with physical matter; the bolt tends to lose cohesion after a fairly short time though.
The Elysiums main gun operates on broadly similar principles but with a far more sophisticated implementation. When fired, a waveform is produced and projected towards the target. The waveform itself is hardly damaging, however upon impact it splinters into what are generally described visually as "sparks." These are actually tiny and highly unstable phase singularities; if possible I would like to make it so that they are "sticky" in regards to shields but otherwise pass through solid matter. In any case, being unstable, the singularities collapse in fairly short order (between 3 and 6 seconds), causing catastrophic damage to any ship unfortunate enough to be under them.
The sparks should not have a predictable spread, traveling in random and randomly changing directions, and at not entirely consistent speeds; it should be dangerous to use this weapon at close ranges.
As far as animations go, for the Shamash it would be fairly simple; a golden bolt of energy, electrical arcs and such when firing and then a brief period spent kind of wavery as if partly out of phase.
For the Elysium the process would have a staged animation sequence.
Spoiler
Stage 0: The default stage. Simply a beam of energy passing through the open middle of the ship, with occasional energy pulses communicating between the conical/dome-like structures.
Stage 1: Pre-firing sequence. The energy beam grows in intensity; the forward part of the giant impractical radiator spines glows.
Stage 2: Firing sequence. Energy beam intensity spikes; the forward part of the ship produces a bright flash as the waveform is emmited.
Stage 3: Post firing: Radiator spikes vent a flux fog from the "teeth" of the radiator, ending after a second or so. Energy beam is weak an intermittent, before reestablishing itself and returning to stage 0, indicating the weapon is ready to fire again.
Decided to spoil the animation sequence because its the actual weapon effect that seems more important to be commented upon; I'm a bit worried such a fancy attack might prove a little... overpowered even in concept.