[Black Wolf]

This may be simple or complex, I'm not sure. What I'd like is some way to override the species in the icon selection of the briefing editor, so that we could have a ship in game act Terran, but use another species icon for it - this might be useful if you had 2 types of Terran installation, but no vasudan installations - you could set the species in the tables as Terran, but then select Vasudan in the briefing editor, forcing the game to display a Vasudan icon. It'd also mean stuff like the Shivan Support Ship Icon, currently unused, could be used without having to set a ship to Shivan (and get the associated red engine glows).

Would this be possible?

[Zacam]

It should be. However, not only is the number of Icons available hardcoded, but the initial Icons Types are hard-coded as well.

It could possibly be expandable to being able to ADD to the existing Icons.tbl (via an -ico.tbm) but you wouldn't necessarily have the flexibility to alter the retail ones at all.

As for Species/vs Icon, you can use any briefing Icon you want already independent of the Species. I can make a Demon show the Hecate if I wanted to, based on using the Icon index (I think, not that I have actually tested this, mind)

If it turns out that you can't, then yeah, in addition to expanding the Icons.tbl, adding "Species Free" ability to it would be nice.

[karajorma]

We should just make it possible to specify icons in the table (in a separate section) and tell the game to use those instead of the retail system if it finds any.

Why are we still tying ourselves to the retarded FS2 method of doing things?

[Zacam]

O I C! Yeah, have a "$Briefing Icon:" entry for a ship that can be used during Mission Parse, and then it can use whatever is designated there...

Mind. Blown.

[Black Wolf]

As for Species/vs Icon, you can use any briefing Icon you want already independent of the Species. I can make a Demon show the Hecate if I wanted to, based on using the Icon index (I think, not that I have actually tested this, mind).

I don't think you can - you can change the ship to something of the appropriate species, but then when you click on it, it'll show that ship, and not the one you're actually using in the mission.

To put some context on this - TI has 3 different types of terran installations in EP, plus a gas refinery, cargo platforms, normal ganymedes and a special case ganymede, i.e. 7 ships that all, more or less, have to be represented by the Arcadia. I'm fine with this for a lot of them (the asteria, for example) but sometimes it's just not appropriate. I want to use the Vasudan instalation for the refinery, but in order to do that, I've had to change it to Vasudan in the tables. Not a problem in this case, I'll grant, but if it had thrusters it would be, and I can see situations in the future where it will be more of an issue.

[EDIT]A ships.tbl entry would be perfect, as long as there's some way of turning it off in FRED. A "Use predefined Icon" checkbox (on by default for those ships which have it) would be all that'd be required.

[Dragon]

If it had thrusters, it'd be easy to apply custom ones via table (look for custom thruster effects in wiki).
It wouldn't be so easy with shield impact effects and flyby sounds (if it had them, that is) though.

[ssmit132]

And also, if it's an AWACS, you've got the multiplier to deal with too.

[Zacam]

I fail to see what the last two post's have to do with being able to define a Briefing Icon for a ship. If an Icon get's set for a ship suspifically, then that is far better than the "hack" work around of defining it as a different Species to use an existing Icon, which only poses a problem in that it then changes the Thrusters that said ship will use because of it's Species Definition.

Shouldn't have to then redefine custom thrusters for the ship to correct that, if you can set it as whatever Species it actually is and have the Icon load during Mission Parse to load the ship tabled Icon for the briefing.

And AWACs what?

[ssmit132]

This. Although you could just adjust the range in the table of the ship to account for it.

[karajorma]

Neither of those things have anything to do with the icon itself though.

All the more reason to make this something set either in the ship or icon table which isn't species specific.