I've been messing around with effects lately and I have no understanding of what anything does, if a fellow modder or an uber employee could explain the file type and some of the things in it, basically I need to create a fairly transparent hollow sphere that is tinted with the team color with an adjustable size that fluctuates a little whenever a shot is fired.
As a warning, what you want to do isn't possible exactly as you described. The transparent hollow sphere is possible, that's already done in a couple of existing effects, but the effects system doesn't know anything about events. An effect can be played from an event, or enabled and disabled based on specific states, but those effects don't know about each other. What you'll need to do is make an effect that shows as an idle effect (looping forever, enabled and disabled on unit state) and another effect that plays on the firing event.
There's this thread which was started by @SXX I, and mostly @Alpha2546 , fiddled a lot those pfx while making this PA-FX mod, we may add some content in the thread at some point. I'm pretty sure a lot of other modders also created effects, notably for server mods, and their experience will prove useful.
Extracted this from the CPlosion. Basicall its the explosion air wave you see in the original nuke but then really bright. Works like a charm for my CPlosion space explosions and I think its exactly what you want. Not sure about how to realize the fluctuation though. That should require some experimentation (with the events thingy like bgolus said). Good luck! Code: { "spec": { "shader": "meshParticle_fresnel_ramp_add", "shape": "mesh", "facing": "EmitterY", "red": 680, "green": 680, "blue": 680, "alpha": { "keys": [[0, 1], [0.3, 0.05], [0.6, 0.005], [1, 0]], "stepped": false }, "size": [[0, 0], [0.1, 0.185], [0.2, 0.344], [0.3, 0.48], [0.4, 0.597], [0.5, 0.697], [0.6, 0.782], [0.7, 0.854], [0.8, 0.914], [0.9, 0.962], [1, 1]], "papa": "/pa/effects/fbx/particles/sphere_ico16seg.papa", "materialProperties": { "Texture": "/pa/effects/textures/particles/uncompressed/fresnel_horizon.papa", "Ramp": "/pa/effects/textures/particles/uncompressed/fresnel_ramp.papa" } }, "sizeX": 60.0, "lifetime": 1.1, "emissionBursts": 1, "bLoop": false, "useArmyColor": 1, "endDistance": 3000 },