Hey Jacky. Changing that does indeed start to give me the effect I am after. I do notice that I am getting pretty gross banding on the edges. I thought this might be due to the lightmap settings and set an override up to 512 to see if that helped and it does not.
The particle is now NOT emitting light (since there is no translucency to effect) and a point light has been dropped down to pick up that job.
Would you know where the banding is coming from and potentially how to resolve it?