[General Battuta]

Hey! We had a cool idea. Modders have been using the subsystem name capability of recent FSO builds to good effects - for example, a warship's big obvious forward beams can be 'Main Beam' instead of 'Beam Turret', Inferno's railguns can be 'railgun' instead of 'laser turret', a Karuna can have 'VLS Launcher', so on, so forth. Since this doesn't alter the turret's model name, it doesn't break missions or require any pof changes.

What would you guys think about implementing this in the next MVPs release? Specifying turrets as 'AAA Beam', 'Main Beam', so on? It might provide some minor convenience to players cycling rapidly through turrets looking for something specific in a retail mission.

[Black Wolf]

+1 from me. It's an additional feature that wasn't available in retail, and I guarantee you that there's not a mission made by anyone (let alone [V]) which took into account the balancing effects of having to scroll through the turrets. It's a convenience thing, and I think convenience is worth having.

[Mars]

Good idea - if someone plays AOA for the first time for example, and has not played FS2 before, it is not immediately clear which beam turrets they need to take out.

[Lorric]

Oh yes, yes, YES! Trying to find the right beams on ships can be so frustrating!

I have wanted this for so long!

[Lepanto]

I concur; let's bring the MediaVPs up to the community's modern turret-naming standards! 

[General Battuta]

Please rename the Sath's forward turrets in Bearbaiting as follows:

****

YOURSELF

AND

DIE

[Lorric]

Would you call the beams SRed and LRed and such?

[Mars]

"Heavy Beam"
"Light Beam"
"AAA Beam"
"Plasma Turret"
"Pulse Turret"
"Flak Turret"
"Laser Turret"
"ASM Launcher"
"AAM Launcher"

SRed doesn't seem like a name the player is "supposed" to see.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, those are good names, except 'plasma turret' should probably stay 'laser turret', 'pulse' is BP only, and ASM/AAM are too technical - best to stick with 'missile launcher' for the MVPs.

[Lorric]

I guess it could be Light/Medium/Heavy/Super for the anti-capship beams.

[Dragon]

Yeah, "missile launcher" would be good enough, as there aren't that many ASMs in FS universe. Just the Fusion Mortar and VFC, I think. The latter is never used anyway, and the former is restricted to Fenris/Leviathan.
Light/Medium/Heavy/Main would be my choice for beams. Light=S and below, Medium=Slash, Heavy=B/L and Main=BF/LRB. Laser Turret for blobs and AAA Beam for, well, AAA beams. Flak Turret for flaks. Now that I look at it, in the end, the rename would mostly concern beams. TBH, we could probably get away with just designating AAA beams. Besides that, the current FS system of Laser/Beam/Flak/Missile works quite well for canon ships, IMO.

[Lorric]

I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.

EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.

[Spoon]

Please rename the Sath's forward turrets in Bearbaiting as follows:

****

YOURSELF

AND

DIE

I second this!

[Dragon]

I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.

EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.

Note, though, if we were to go by defaults, in Mediavps only Sathanas and Miolnir would have "Main" beams, and I think that it sounds better in that case. LRB and BF Greens are not assigned by default and LRBGreen is only assigned to Colossus in one mission, I think. So, the turrets on Colly would be "Large/Heavy/Big/whatever-we-use-for-L and B", because it had BGreens there by default.

[Rga_Noris]

The only super duper tinsy winsy minor issue would be some confusion in regards to dialogue. Command calls beams and turrets different things throughout the campaign "Forward Beam", "Main Beam Cannon", "Anti-Fighter Beams", to the point that having obviously general names like "beam turret" could apply to any name, whereas if we get it wrong, players could be confused when command asks them to take out the "Main Beam Cannon" and they see "Large Beam Cannon", or what have you.

That being said, I think we just need to play through the game and get a true list of every silly name command has for turrets and ensure that our new names wouldn't cause too much confusion. The only remaining issue would be the same issue in the many, many mods out there.

But yeah, all that aside, I'm down.

[Lorric]

I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.

EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.

Note, though, if we were to go by defaults, in Mediavps only Sathanas and Miolnir would have "Main" beams, and I think that it sounds better in that case. LRB and BF Greens are not assigned by default and LRBGreen is only assigned to Colossus in one mission, I think. So, the turrets on Colly would be "Large/Heavy/Big/whatever-we-use-for-L and B", because it had BGreens there by default.

Main beam sounds like a ship's best beam. A Cain's little beam would be it's main beam. So I think it's a bad idea. You couldn't just call all such beams main beams because some ships have different types on them.

[Alan Bolte]

Megafunk. 

[Mars]

The only super duper tinsy winsy minor issue would be some confusion in regards to dialogue. Command calls beams and turrets different things throughout the campaign "Forward Beam", "Main Beam Cannon", "Anti-Fighter Beams", to the point that having obviously general names like "beam turret" could apply to any name, whereas if we get it wrong, players could be confused when command asks them to take out the "Main Beam Cannon" and they see "Large Beam Cannon", or what have you.

That being said, I think we just need to play through the game and get a true list of every silly name command has for turrets and ensure that our new names wouldn't cause too much confusion. The only remaining issue would be the same issue in the many, many mods out there.

But yeah, all that aside, I'm down.

I don't think "forward beam cannon" will be confusing, AAA and anti-fighter should be fairly easy to figure out. The confusing things that command says about beams for the most part are already confusing. I think any more specificity on the subsystem target-er will makes everything as confusing, if not less confusing.

[Trivial Psychic]

As I understand it, there are currently 2 ways to define custom turret names.  The first is with subsystem info in the ships.tbl file.  The second is via sexps in FRED.  Is it possible to have it also defined on a per-weapon basis in the weapons.tbl file?  Currently, on a per-subsystem basis, if I were to swap out a default heavy beam turret with a AAA, the display would still indicate that its a heavy beam cannon, unless used sexps to adjust it.  Having this defined on a per-weapon basis would automatically swap out "Heavy Beam Cannon" with "Anti-Fighter Beam Turret" or whatever you've defined.  Its not a serious thing, but it might reduce the workload for some mods.

[General Battuta]

I don't think it's possible on a per-weapon basis. Any FREDder who swaps out a main beam for a triple-A beam can trivially use SEXPs to adjust - it's super easy.

Names like 'forward beam cannon' are too long for the available space. 'Main beam' is great because it fits and is clearly distinct from AAA beams.