Meltdown - New burning effect for plasma weapons (updated)

Slightly adjusted burn effects to better suit plasma weapons. Free to use with any Plasma mod, or to enhance your immersion in your own game.

Original address:

April 2 update (Enchantment Version) version of the document:

This version changes the Laser Shot enchantment to apply the new effect to any weapon with the WeaponTypePlasma keyword.

Update on February 24, 2026: Fixed the folder structure.

describe

This is a visual/immersion/gameplay enhancement for plasma guns that have any form of "burn" effect on their capacitors; this includes Beta Wave Tuners, Gamma Wave Emitters, and Enhanced Gamma Wave Emitters. This replaces the normal fire effect with a green effect that quickly eats away at flesh and materials. The properties of this green fire are slightly different than those exerted by lasers, as it has twice the DPS but only lasts one-third as long.

Author's Note:

This is a really simple thing and I thought I'd post it. I built this for use in my own plasma weapons projects, both now and in the future, but in the meantime, it's been featured in two excellent plasma mods that happened to be developed at the same time: CW's Plasma Defender and the Glock Plasma Defender. Now I'm releasing it to all of you to integrate into other plasma weapons, or just to slightly enhance the visual identity of the original plasma gun. Tools used to create this mod include Creation Kit and Nifskope.

For mod authors

The shader's green fire is provided by .nif 'PlasmaFire02SmallFXSP', which is a modified version of the fire shader particle. These parameters are referenced by the effect shader 'PlasmaFireHitFXS', which is used by the magic effect 'ModPlasmaFireDamage'. Finally, the damage and duration are defined by the object effects "enchMod_PlasmaReceiver_Fire1" and "enchMod_PlasmaReceiver_Fire2", which are then applied to the weapon mod. This mod contains edits to the plasma gun's three receiver recordings.