[Mongoose]

karajorma, that's a pretty cool idea about switching ship models. If this were to go through, there would be only four types of playable ship models: the Pyro-GX from D1/2, and the Phoenix, Magnum, and Pyro-GL from D3.  (The Black Pyro in D3 is basically a version of the Pyro-GX.)  Add to that any robot models that would be included, and the rest would be left for multiple ship models.

You'd also need models for each level though. Still worst comes to worst you could use an inferno build and lose multiplayer if need be.

One think I unfortunately just thought of regarding weapons changes would be the number of combinations of primary and secondary weapons (a.k.a. guns and missiles).  If you wanted to change from one primary/secondary to another, while still maintaining the other category's availability, wouldn't that set up a whole mess of combinations?  (i.e., if you had lasers selected and wanted to switch to Vulcan, but wanted to keep your Concussion missiles, would you need separate models for both lasers and Vulcan with Concussions?  If you then wanted to switch to Homing missiles, would you need two more models?)  Or am I just reading too much into things?  (I certainly hope so, since if I'm not, we'd probably just be stuck with the regular FS method of carrying only a few weapons banks at a time.)

If someone is interested in converting something, there's a 1500-poly version of the Pyro-GX available in D3's model format on PlanetDescent (I believe the version on the site is packaged in a .hog file).  The model actually looks pretty damn good for D3 (1500 polies for a model is a serious amount for the Fusion engine as it now stands).  If someone wants to take it on, I'd be more than happy to extract the necessary files from the .hog.

This is the point when I wish I had some clue how to go about a project like this, because I'd love to see this mod happen.  Realistically, though, I have absolutely no skill/experience/knowledge about modeling/converting, table files, FREDding, or the whole shebang.  Still, I love Descent so much that there's a little voice inside of me saying, "Come on! You can do it!"  That little voice is heavily outweighed by the more realistic, "You're the last person on the planet who'd be able to do this."   Still, if anyone ever does do something like this, I'd try to lend a hand in any way possible, even if it was nothing more than a consulting role or beta-tester.

[Nuke]

i think save the main lasers all other weapons would be mounted using the vwep system. that way you can carry a working gauss, vulcan, or vauss cannon (gatling guns rule) or even that revolver sniper railgun thing that they have in descent 3 for some odd reason.  in descent 2 the pyro mount ed its single or dual lasers in the main mounts, plasma cannons also fiered from one of the pairs of guns, things like flares or the omega cannon fired from a single point there was another single mount for large missiles under the ship. plus the tailfin mounts for the rest of the missiles. if i were to set it up, id have all the laser weapons in the first bank, which had firing points in all 4 gunmounts and no vewep, the second bank would be a single pair of points coming out of one of the pairs of lasers, no vwep. it would accomidate plasma cannons, fusion cannons, microwae cannons or any other dual weapon.  the 3rd would be a vewp point underneath the fuselage which could mount an actually modeled gatling/ballistic weapon and could also accomidate an omega cannon of sorts (does homing work on primaries yet?). id set up missiles in 3 banks as well, you could split the fin mounted missiles in two seporate banks with vwep enabled to give you some variety, the 3rd would be a vwep point under the ship for large missiles . of course this would vary between the ship classes. all would use as many banks as the fs2 engine can support.

alternatively the scripting system may be able to accomidate weapon switching functionality. aparantly the code can support as many banks as you want, so long as a variable in the code is set for it. it wouldnt be hard for the coders to increase, however they wont work without the proper interface code. i wonder if its feasable to replace such interfaces with scripting so that you could manage more banks than freespace offitially supports. if this were the case youd essentially set up a ship with one bank for every weapon. then youd override the weapon selection code with the scripted version. the scripts would interface with sexps to set up weapon pickups. you would need campaign persistant variables to store what weapons you have and how much ammo for each. the script would interpret those vars and allow you to select banks accordingly. then you wouldnt need the loadout screen at all, and the weapons hud gauge would only show your selected primary and secondary weapons and their ammo as applicable. you could also do tertiary weapons in this manor. the coders would just have to increase the number of used banks, and supply a scripting interface to fire control / weapon select.