I'm sure it's a simple fix but I'm just not sure what values to put the - next to exactly to make a weapon's muzzleflash suck particles inwards instead of shooting them out. If FF or somebody else could say, that'd be awesome.

Right so that's all sorted. NEW QUESTION. How do I make a beam or cone emitter tile a beam texture rather than stretching a single one out so that all the detail is drained?

Figured it out already, negative pressure value.

A cone emitter only emits particles into a cone, it has nothing to do with the shape of the beam. Try scaling down the beam's width over time, so it goes to zero. Since the beam appears to be instantaneous that'll most likely take some tweaking to get right.

As for the beam being terrible, that's just FL. Nothing can be done about it.

They are in a + shape at all times, it's just that when looking at different angles the + is seen from one of the angles where it looks terrible. Most modern games don't use cross-shaped beams anymore for that reason.

One ale you might refer to as a starting point might be the nomad large engine (beam section). There is a beam passing through the center of the ship which sounds like what you are looking for. You'd likely need to speed up its rate, and as suggested add a negative scaling to shrink over time, or do it through an opacity / alpha fade.

Syncing the fx length with your ini range stats should look pretty decent.

Come to think of it, most engines have a beam used similarly, they just look like smoke with a fire color applied. They section is straight line, directional, scaled, and has specific length.