[Scotty]

Exactly what it says on the tin.  We've got fire-beam, and fire-turret would be oh so useful.

[General Battuta]

This please. Though given that Diaspora has no beams and yet no fire-turret SEXP has appeared, I somehow suspect there's some kind of obstacle to its implementation.

[Scourge of Ages]

That would be very useful for something I'm planning too, but it could probably be faked pretty effectively in using existing SEXPs.

[General Battuta]

That would be very useful for something I'm planning too, but it could probably be faked pretty effectively in using existing SEXPs.

How?

[Scotty]

Could you use a beam-fire SEXP and a weapon-change SEXP in the same event?

[General Battuta]

I've never tried it but my suspicion is 'hell no'.

[Scourge of Ages]

How?

Well, I certainly haven't tested it yet, but I was planning to:
Give your ship "play dead" orders, or give it an IFF that doesn't shoot at anything. When you want it to fire, give it attack or clear orders, or switch IFF to "hostile."

[Droid803]

How?

Well, I certainly haven't tested it yet, but I was planning to:
Give your ship "play dead" orders, or give it an IFF that doesn't shoot at anything. When you want it to fire, give it attack or clear orders, or switch IFF to "hostile."

I don't see how that controls precisely firing a specific turret at a specific target (while allowing other turrets to target freely).
Nor how that "forces" a turret to fire at something that may be out of range.
A hypothetical fire-turret SEXP would allow these two things that pretty much require fire-beam/fire-turret to control properly, and have a large variety of uses.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The big issue I saw when I took a very quick look at it is that while beam code is a nice single call regular turrets are doing things all over the place.  Aspect lock, heat, burst fire, salvo, you name it.  If it was easy it would have been done long ago. 

[General Battuta]

How?

Well, I certainly haven't tested it yet, but I was planning to:
Give your ship "play dead" orders, or give it an IFF that doesn't shoot at anything. When you want it to fire, give it attack or clear orders, or switch IFF to "hostile."

That won't do the trick, unfortunately. It doesn't allow you to request a given turret to fire at a specific target (including a target subsystem) at a precise time. All it does is act as a clumsy way to achieve the same results the turret-lock-all and turret-free-all SEXPs can.

You seem to be under the impression that we want a general 'hold turret fire' or 'free turret fire' SEXP; we instead want a general analogue to fire-beam.

[Scourge of Ages]

Annnnd, now I'm free of that impression.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, it's particularly frustrating when working with ships that don't have beams. Thus my earlier Diaspora comment.

[Goober5000]

The big issue I saw when I took a very quick look at it is that while beam code is a nice single call regular turrets are doing things all over the place.  Aspect lock, heat, burst fire, salvo, you name it.  If it was easy it would have been done long ago.

Yup.  It was one of the first sexps requested for FSO.