Answers "can I keep targeting the dead mech?": the lock isn't cleared by
anything we've found, but the binary REFUSES to sustain energy beams on a
destroyed mech: ServiceDischarge (@004ba8d0) and ContinueDischarge (@004baa20)
check the beam's target EVERY discharge frame -- IsDerivedFrom(Mech) then
Mech::IsDestroyed (FUN_0049fb54 = movementMode 2||9) -- and kill the beam the
moment it dies. EmitterSimulation (@004baa88) applies the same check to the
OWNER (a dead mech's own weapons drop everything).
Our recon had FUN_0049fb54 as a mislabeled "cockpit/HUD query" no-op stub
called with NULL, and never set the beam's target (0x474) at fire -- all three
authentic gates were dead. Now: FireWeapon stashes the owner's target entity;
both discharge paths + the owner gate run the real check (BTMechDestroyed).
Verified: 40 beam samples before the kill, 0 after -- lasers flash-fail on the
wreck instead of cutting it like butter (heat is still spent per the binary's
FireWeapon, which fires blind; only the DISCHARGE checks the corpse).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>