Howdy All:
I was thinking to myself on my way home from work yesterday, that several mods out there could benefit from Gunship AI, but there seems to be a lack of motivation behind it (no offence SCP guys, I know you've got your hands full with the new features, not to mention RL). I then asked myself, what differences would Gunship AI need. Obviously, getting over the subsystem dammage display restriction would be a good start, but not directly linked to Gunship. I recall discussion in the old VolitionWatch TBP forums, regarding telling the AI how to do make attacks in passes rather than circling around above the hull, but that's not all that much of a concern. The biggest feature of Gunship would be something that is able to mount primaries like a fighter or a bomber and be player-flyable, but can also be targetted by heavier anti-cap weaponry. While the extra features are nice additions, its realy the fact that it needs to be targetted like a cap-ship by other AI. What if, as a temporary work around until fill Gunship AI is implimented, any ship we want to be a gunship, merely have a "Big_beam_target" flag added. Now, I didn't say "big_target" because I'm sure we don't want enemy ATI to use things like "Cyclops" or "Fusion Mortar" on the Gunship, as they'd be too slow. However, in mods like TBP, even most big secondaries get fired at Whitestars, so perhaps both could be implimented. If "Big_beam_target", beam turrets will treat it like a cap-ship and fire any type of beam at it, while "big_target" will cause all big weapons to target it, beams included.
Is this doable?
