One more post about the whole glowing UA/lighting glitch stuff.
Finally came across a crashed probe on the dark side of the moon and replicated the exact same behaviour the barnacles exhibit with it. The reason I chose this is that it's the only other POI I know of where there's a persistent light source below the object (for a barnacle, it's the green glow, for a nav beacon, it's a red glow). I think it's that "light source" interfering with the light source generated by weapons fire.
Reference shot with no weapons fired. Note the U shaped rubble on the side.
Beacon attacked with beams. Note the U shaped rubble (and, most of the other debris) is now lit just the same as the beacon. Even good ol DB is lit up.
Plasma weapons. Woo, purplez. Sadly not very interesting but you can see the effect on the various things again.
And, in my opinion, the coup de grace for this stuff. I lucked out majorly on this one when firing plasma weapons and caused the artefact to occur on a massive scale, lighting up ostensibly everything the lighting model interacts with. The effect lasted about the same length as the UA "glow" when shooting it with beams.
If you still want to believe this is a thing, more power to you. But it's a red herring as far as I'm concerned now.
