[Colonol Dekker]

Support ships calling for cover. . .

[TrashMan]

Regarding better capship AI manouvering:

Something like that could maybe work, but it would STILL be in every case inferior to scripting capship battles in FRED. AFAIK, the only thing you *can't* do for capships via FRED is control how much they roll. But that topic's already been debated to death in this thread: your ideas are definitely worthwhile if capship AI is ever improved.

I beg to differ.

What happens if a ship get is engine damaged. With reduced speed, the whole crafted sequence is down in the toilet.
Change the ships max speed?
Ships turret destroyed?
Change the weapon loadout? Now you'll have to re-script the whole battle.

If one of the main turret is destroyeds, and the ships offensive potential drops, the AI can turn the ship around, into the secondary fire position.
If the ships speed is reduced, the ship still moves inteligently.

that's the beauty of it - it reacts and adapts.

[General Battuta]

It'd still be a FRED nightmare. Unpredictable warship positions means ships unable to jump out or colliding while jumping in.

[chief1983]

Maybe neither one is supposed to jump out, it's a fight to the death and the smarter captain wins.  But I'll admit, Freespace was never about capships having a mind of their own, they're there to tell the story to the pilot, not make it up.

[TrashMan]

It'd still be a FRED nightmare. Unpredictable warship positions means ships unable to jump out or colliding while jumping in.

Ships turn if they need to jump out. If the ship is important you make it invulnerable before it jumps out, so several extra seconds of it turning is no problem.

Colliding when warping in - now that is a problem.
I'd suggest adding a "check for collisions" checkbox in FRED for a ship, so that it adjusts is arrival location (and vector) slightly if it detects a possible collision.

[General Battuta]

This behavior may be unique to Hecates, but in at least two instances I've seen the ship generate its warpout vortex inside a blocking target, then simply sit still when it should be warping out. It vanishes after a few seconds. All in all this does not do much for immersion.

[Reprobator]

another thought but this time i may get wrong.
After importing a new capship to freespace, i saw it's turret firing on it's ship's hull, avoiding that would be cool.

[Colonol Dekker]

Support ships calling for cover. . .

Awacs is meant to... Wingmen do it... why not support?

[Dragon]

After importing a new capship to freespace, i saw it's turret firing on it's ship's hull, avoiding that would be cool.

For this you can use "Check Hull" subsystem flag: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Subsystem#.24Flags:

[Sushi]

Support ships calling for cover. . .

Awacs is meant to... Wingmen do it... why not support?

Because they're expendable and have an infinite supply of replacements, perhaps? That, and they're unpiloted drones, I thought...

[karajorma]

Nope, they're definitely piloted.

Cover messages could be added in the same way that other messages were added a while back.