[Zacam]

So, you go to fire up a mission. You page through the available ships. You want a lot of primary firepower, so you choose the Hercules which list that it has 6 Gun Mounts. It also shows 2 Missile Banks, which is good because you want to have some long range coverage too.

So, you go to the load-out screen. There are your 2 Missile Banks as promised, but there are only 2 primary banks.

Granted, on selection, you see one highlights 4 firing points and the other highlights 2. But is still only 2 primary weapons you can mount.

Would it work out better, seeing as how Primaries seem to operate on how many firing points there are vs secondaries operating on how many banks there are, to simplify things by having it display the following (via the table):

Option A: Shows what you can load out and a division of fire points
+Gun Mounts: 2 (4/2)  ;;(Alternatively, it could also show "2 (2/4)")
+Missile Banks: 2

Option B: Shows the firing points, but defines their grouping in two mounts
+Gun Mounts: 6 (4/2)
+Missile Banks: 2

Either option can also work if there are more than 2 Primary weapons:

A1: +Gun Mounts: 3 (2/2/2)
A2: +Gun Mounts: 3 (3/3/2)

B1: +Gun Mounts: 6 (2/2/2)
B2: +Gun Mounts: 8 (3/3/2)

IMO, Option A in all cases works, as firing points are not considered with missiles, so it keeps a uniform display to what you will have available under the load-out selection screen, but still provides/conveys the information that there will be multiple firing points to consider when selecting load-out.

Mind, this is not taking into account or asking for any code changes. To add in an additional line such as "+Firing Points:" could get confusing, eg:

+Gun Mounts: 2
+Firing Points: 6

Doesn't quite work because it still does not define how those firing points are grouped, they could be 5/1, 4/2 or 3/3! And the fact is that this is a minimal enough "feature", I don't see why it would have to or should require any code changes to accomplish.

Thoughts, comments, questions?

[Retsof]

This all has to do with gunpoints and gunbanks as specefied in the pof.

[Droid803]

yes, but what he's taking about is the loadout selection display.
No changes to the actual ship, just how its described to the player.

[Mars]

It was always kind of confusing because a Herc will use 2 ML-16s from the weapon pool to fill up 6 banks.

[Titan]

y'know, that's a good point. i always exploited that (oh my word, i have a wind of four hercs, and only 4 banshees? i'll just put them all in the 4gun bank!)

[chief1983]

How is the damage specified for a weapon in the weapons table related to whether it is fired from 2 or 4 firepoints?  Is that damage per firepoint, so 2 points is double that and 4 is 4 times that, or is it per pair?  Or, does the number of firepoints not matter and if you have 4 firepoints it still only does the same amount of damage?

[Vip]

I think that the damage value (obviously not damage-per-second, mind you) refers to one BLOB or one blast - AKA 4 firepoints will fire 4 blobs when you hit the trigger, so assuming that all of them hit, then the damage done is Weapon Damage x4. Anything else would be just, honestly, ridiculous.

[Wanderer]

Damage is specified per shot. So ship with four gun points firing four blobs does four times the listed damage (assuming all four hit that is).

[chief1983]

I then fully support rewording as suggested in Zacam's Option A.