Simple question, complex answer: With FRED and table modding, how can I designate ships as valid targets for ONLY puncture weapons?
As an example, let's take the first Silent Threat / ST:R mission,
Silence All Voices. In the original mission, it's a battle royale with Terrans and Vasudans attacking each other, and the player (as GTI) 'sanitizes' the area by killing everyone leaving no survivors. But let's say we wanted to be more conservative; what if the GTI is assigned to arrest everyone?
The FreeSpace AI is set up to destroy, not disable. But in this scenario, your wingmen should A) engage the enemy with puncture weapons only, then B) move on after disabling the targets. The cumbersome way to handle this would be to set AI orders to disable every ship, and then protect-ship or change-IFF after they're disabled, but this requires a ton of events.
It's also difficult to give wingmen orders to protect or engage if they're armed with lethal weapons, or if they continue hammering on helpless targets in futility. This isn't even getting into capital ships and turret-mounted weapons; they need to defend themselves from bombs, but not bombers.
Is there a ship property in FRED, or something in IFF_defs.tbl, that can blanket designate certain targets (or a certain IFF) as valid for capture but not destruction?