[Not Derek Smart]

Anyway, I'm getting a strange error while trying to open the table editor. It says something about missing RICHTX32.OCX

You need the decent manager DLL files. You can find them the same place you found TableView. Go via my FAQ's tool page if you can't remember where. 

Thank you.

[Mongoose]

There is one user-created mission I remember playing in which you fly a Deimos-class corvette.  Granted, it was pretty unrealistic, seeing as how none of the enemy capital ships seemed to target you; you also had no control over individual turrets, meaning that your target would get broadsided by just about everything on the ship.  Still, there was something rather satisfying about capping enemy Lokis with three anti-fighter beams and two flak cannons at once.

[BS403]

There is one user-created mission I remember playing in which you fly a Deimos-class corvette.  Granted, it was pretty unrealistic, seeing as how none of the enemy capital ships seemed to target you; you also had no control over individual turrets, meaning that your target would get broadsided by just about everything on the ship.  Still, there was something rather satisfying about capping enemy Lokis with three anti-fighter beams and two flak cannons at once.

here it is.
Oh yeah if you target nothing the turrets will autoselect individual targets

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Arcanum]

In a game-world level, capital ships aren't meant to be piloted by one person.  Ignoring any command structure and internal functionality, you would have a minimum one gunner per turret plus a helmsman.

In a gameplay level, I can't imagine it would be even remotely possible for a human player to control the ship and attempt to maintain quasi-independent targeting with more than two turrets.  The human brain just isn't wired for parallel processing.  Which leaves the AI doing most of the work, and that isn't all that fun.

[Gregster2k]

NDS, I love your name. Just thought I'd say my own "Welcome to the HLPBB." =D

[aldo_14]

In a game-world level, capital ships aren't meant to be piloted by one person.  Ignoring any command structure and internal functionality, you would have a minimum one gunner per turret plus a helmsman.

In a gameplay level, I can't imagine it would be even remotely possible for a human player to control the ship and attempt to maintain quasi-independent targeting with more than two turrets.  The human brain just isn't wired for parallel processing.  Which leaves the AI doing most of the work, and that isn't all that fun.

In dedicated gameplay, you'd effectively be doing 2 things - 'tagging' targets, and maneuvering to bring your best turrets to bear whilst avoiding theirs.  Ala ship battles in Pirates, I think.  

But sadly I don't think the AI can really handle it to give you a good opponent.  Plus you'd probably want some way of firing turret groups (fire side, top, etc) manually.  And finally the UI isn't exactly ideal; it'd be pretty easy to view externally, click on targets, control with joystick, etc.  But viewing 'in the cockpit' and using buttons to find and target enemies?  not fun

[AdmiralRalwood]

Have the camera be outside the ship and automatically orient towards the currently selected target. You can "tag" the target for your gunners to engage at their discretion, or you can press a key to fire all available guns (or perhaps all available guns of a specific type) at the specified target.

Although I agree, the AI would need to be reworked for it to be interesting.

[Dark RevenantX]

NDS, your name disturbs me.  Therefore, you must die in a flurry of welcoming.

[Titan]

Is that War.rar thing for Open? Also, i think its kinda easy to do little cruisers or something; just take an Ursa, add some more hull to it, add some more turrets, and PRESTO! of course, i haven't started modding yet, so i dont really have an idea on how you would do that. But it sounds sorta like just making a big bomber with a bunch of defense turrets to me.

[Tyrian]

I fiddled with War.rar for a couple of days.  I don't think it would be that hard to make a capship pilotable, from an interface standpoint at least.  I don't know about the coding aspect though. 

The ship could handle in the same way as War.rar, but would it be possible to revamp the communications menu to give orders to turrets instead of fighters?  Instead of "Ships," you would have "Turrets," for individual guns.  "Wings" would become "Turret Groups," i.e.: dorsal, ventral, starboard, etc., for firing at targets in certain directions.  Next on the menu could be "Turret Types," so you could fire all available anti-capital turrets at a cruiser, for instance.  The same would apply for the flak guns, etc.  For these commands to work, you target a specific object, then issue the directive.  The specific guns would then fire until the target is destroyed or a new order is given.

To prevent a player from frying a Myrmidon with a BFGreen, you would need a type of class designator check.  I assume that all the ship tables define a specific entry as being that of a fighter or capital class vessel.  Would it be possible to code that type of check?

From what I saw in War.rar, the capital turret AI does a fairly good job of shooting at targets while you are moving, so you shouldn't need to really fiddle with that.

Anyway, that's just my 0.02 GTVA credits.

[Black Wolf]

Bah. This is more frustrating than I'd predicted it would be. First FS kept reverting me to a Ulysses since the ship I was in wasn't in a wing, and now my fire_beam mechanism is giving me grief. Still, I have most of the sexping worked out on paper- I'm using the Sobek since it's got the best beam configuration to be applied to full (or, mostly) player control - 2 forward and 2 rear AAAfs, and a pair of forward pointing slasdh beams - in other words, easy groups for the player to control.

The current thinking is that primary fire controls your main beams, and buttons 1-4 each control one AAAf turret. You can use the facing sexp to define whether a  target is in your forward or rear arc, thus whether the AAAf turrets have a clear Line of Fire (more or less - AFAIK, it's not possible to figure out whether a ship is above or below you, which'll present some minor problems, particvularly with the forward beams), and when-argument means you can limit the main beams to caps only. Flak and plasma turrets are going to have to be left to the AI (I considered linking all Flak turrets to secondary fire, but the inability to determine relative up/down is critical here).

[Mustang19]

If someone ever did find a way for the player to fly capital ships, that would be awesome. 

[wtf_cl0vvn]

what would be cool is a minigame where you manned a turret...and as the game progressed you went from a laser turret, to a flak turret, to antifighter beams, and then to an anticapship turret...

you know? and youd have different things to do...like as a laser turret gunner, just shoot down bombs, and get hits on as many fighters as you can, and flak turret, hit bombers and fighters, and screen for bombs, as AF more of the same, and then the last levels would just be awesome anticapship beaming...

hmm...that would be fun....

[Quest_techie]

what would be cool is a minigame where you manned a turret...and as the game progressed you went from a laser turret, to a flak turret, to antifighter beams, and then to an anticapship turret...

you know? and youd have different things to do...like as a laser turret gunner, just shoot down bombs, and get hits on as many fighters as you can, and flak turret, hit bombers and fighters, and screen for bombs, as AF more of the same, and then the last levels would just be awesome anticapship beaming...

hmm...that would be fun....

if someone wrote a mod where you manned a turret for the first few parts of the campaign
<your first few fighter wings were turret companies instead and you worked your way from a beam turret to a myrmidon company when casualties got too heavy and they just wanted someone who could shoot straight or something>
that could be quite fun, although from my vague and almost child like understanding of how difficult it would be.... yikes

[wtf_cl0vvn]

Oh yeah, difficulty definitely yikes, have you seen how quickly turrets get destroyed? I would definitely NOT want to be a gunner on a FreeSpace capship.

[Quest_techie]

which is why it would be a mod with an intensly hard curve overall most likely

[bizzybody]

In other words, this with much fancier graphics.

[Mustang19]

There are plenty of games where you pilot ships. Anyone played Enigma:Rising Tide? Usually how it works is you order a specific type of gun to attack a specific target. It would apply to Freespace like this: You order your heavy beams to kill the SD Demon, your light beams to target SD Demon's engines, your heavy flak to kill Aries 3 and your light flak to kill Virgo 1. In most games, though, AAA is handled by the AI, which makes sense when you're facing a lot of enemies. Maybe wing-specific targeting?

The only problem is that it would be a pretty boring game. In surface ship combat you have control of sonar, missiles, etc., while in FS capital ships weren't designed to have that many cool features because they weren't meant to be player-flyable. I'm guessing that a capital ship fight in space wouldn't be as interesting as it sounds, unless you got control over some fighter wings and could order around your "fighter complement".

[Bob-san]

How about linking aspect-lock to beams? That can give the player control over main beams and let AI handle the rest? At least let AI control terran turrets...

[AdmiralRalwood]

There are plenty of games where you pilot ships.

Pity we weren't talking about "many games," else your comment would've been spot on, eh?