[chief1983]

Or maybe something shorter like "Prioritize Target" or something.

What this would  do:

Issue a player-order priority command to a capital ship that tells its turrets (or possibly the whole ship depending on orders) to target the player's targets.  This _will_ be high enough priority to override your standard "Engage Enemy" orders at priority 50, etc, but not high enough to disengage turrets from specific goals set by the mission designer.  A turret will only disengage from its current goal if it is capable of engaging the player's target (in view, in range, equipped with proper weaponry).  If no turrets can be prioritized to the player's target, a negative response will be given to the player, otherwise the available turrets will engage the target and an affirmative response will be given.

What this will _not_ do:

I don't want this to make any changes to the ship's AI.  I don't want it to do things like roll, etc to engage more so than it already would.  Essentially, if the ship is already following a path, this should never override the mission designer's intent for the ship to follow that line.  I don't know what behavior would happen if a capital ship suddenly disengaged from that to engage an enemy and then attempted to resume that goal, probably not anything we want to see happen.  I suppose priority settings could allow that to happen, but I certainly don't want it to be easy to do.  If a capital ship is able to fully engage the target due to no overriding orders, it may as well be a full on 'attack my target' order at that point.  The point of this is to allow the player to prioritize a ship's firepower that isn't specifically being used for other purposes by the mission designer.  Implemented properly, this would have a minimal impact on the balance of the FS2 retail campaign, it would simply give you a few more ways to deal with certain threats.

Changes to AI (rolling to broadside, etc) would be unrelated to this request.

[Fury]

Hmh, interesting. I would like to extend this to passive ability that can be turned on in AI profile or AI class. The passive ability would make ship's turrets concentrate their firepower on any one target up to max allowed by $Max Turret Target Ownage AI profile flag. Separate flags for large/huge ships and small ships is probably needed.

[Sushi]

So basically, like a TAG missile but triggered via comm orders instead?

[chief1983]

Hmm.  Yeah, I suppose quite a bit like that

[Trivial Psychic]

Would you want this new command option to allow the ship the player is ordering, to use specific levels of fire, like main beams, all anti-cap weapons, all anti-fighter weapons, all weapons, etc.  Obviously, it would have to be intelligent enough to not order weapons to fire on a target, if some of the weapons have more limited ranges.  You may also want to have turrets, if they've been ordered to fire on a target outside its fire range, prioritize other targets, but then go after their ordered target if it enters its firing range later.

[chief1983]

Yeah I would think it would just add a new order to the ship, and the turrets would take that order into account every time they check to see if they should choose a new target.