[brandx0]

I brought this up a while ago.  One might also want to add that apparently the AI doesn't like to use weapons with the bomb flag against fighters.

[asyikarea51]

I think shootable missiles makes it too X2/X3ish IMO.

Oh, the frustration in unloading 100+ missiles at a transport, only to have them collide with each other upon launch and killing your own ship (this doesn't happen in FS)... And those that actually survive the launch get shot down, making the missiles pretty much useless.

But who am I to say, every modder has his/her own ideas... Maybe make it a toggled function, on/off via a weapon flag?

Just my two cents... no offense intended to Scooby_Doo...

[karajorma]

If this goes in, it will be a weapons flag.

[Scooby_Doo]

Actually I was thinking X-Wing 

Whats stopping your own missiles from colliding with you now? Besides shotting down missiles shouldn't be easy.

[Trivial Psychic]

How about setting x and y dimensions of briefing icons? Also, changing the asteroid field density and coord limit would be ok.

Um, you can already do that, not that it does much.  Select the briefing icon in the briefing screen in FRED, then select Object Editor from the drop-down menu.

[Wanderer]

Cant really remember if i have proposed this earlier but how about using more or less 'dynamic FOF' values for ai accuracy. That is so that they would be used quite like beams use their +Miss Factor:. That would be added to the basic fof value according to the difficulty level. Similar addition to the ai.tbl (one value per ai skill level) and there we have it... AI with 'real' accuracy and not with just reduced firing rates.

As the ai.tbl option 'accuracy' as well as the whole ai accuracy is handled rather oddly in freespace this might provide alternate solution for mods atleast..

[ARSPR]

I've just thought about VERY useful features specially for testing. All are additions to the F3 renderer.

+ Showing Ship Debris under each ship rendering. Ie you'd have LOD0, LOD1, LOD2, LOD3, Debris1, ...
+ Adding another Species to Ship Classes to show every "hardcoded" item: Asteroids (ships and rocks), warp, jump points, subspace backgrounds, shockwave, unknown question mark and so on.

More additions, although less important:
+ Adding an option in Render Options to show engine glows.
+ Adding an option in Render Options to show engine glows but with Afterburner.
+ Adding an option in Render Options to show afterburner trails
+ Maybe, adding renderers to show weapon effects, not only models. For example under laser weapons you'd have Weapon bitmap, weapon glow, weapon impact...

(@Taylor: as you are playing with the F3 renderer code right now, this should be no work at all ...  )

[JGZinv]

Just on a note as to destructible weapons....

Tachyon did have pretty much every weapon type destructible,
missiles - rockets - charged energy balls...

The way it was handled was basically slow rockets (you'd call it a bomb)
such as the Helios was mainly used for cap ship and base wars bombing -
so the other side could attempt to kill the incoming attack.

Fighter rockets could be killed - but really with as close range as the dogfights
are there was really no point in trying to shoot them unless you opponent fired a volley
from a distance and you were gliding. Close range you either miss or hit - and don't worry about
it either way.

Fighter missles could only be killed by someone quick with a laser or a very precise
railgun (beam) - mainly that was for when you played as a larger ship that could not
outrun the missiles. Again - using the glide and rotating around you can line em all up and
knock out a few without too much trouble. Swarm missiles there's no point in trying to shoot -
too erratic, so they were mostly outrun or they killed you. There's another type that's fairly fast,
so again there's little chance in trying to shoot it.

Charged energy, we have a ball producing weapon... which acts much like a bomb or slow rocket.
Travels in a straight line - no seeking ability. Only problem is you get hit with four of them in any combination
and it kills pretty much anything fighter size. These can be shot at with lasers or rockets - but they appear
to have a higher damage value as they can take more hits before disappearing.

Most of this lines up with the weapon types already mentioned, but this is just another example of how
the hard destructible weapons are used else ware gameplay-wise. Other than one fighter attacking another's
fired item - I've not seen where any weapon collided with another one to cause an issue. Time delay, item speed, and position when firing pretty much prevents a majority of that.

-Edit -

Is there a way that AI fighter ships could be set to use more lateral thrust when within a certain range of their taget (a player)?
The goal would be to have the two ships oribiting each other in a sense - while dogfighting. This sounds more like a AI overhual, but just asking. This was used in Tach as well, but only by human players - the engine couldn't grasp "latting" and thus made the AI easy to pick off.
I can make up a graphic to illustrate if it would help.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

How about an upgrade to the add-remove-escort sexp so it actually used the value as the escort priority?  Right now all it does is put the ships in the list in any old order.

[Scooby_Doo]

How about a debug feature that lets you manually force LOD levels?  That way you can see if  the levels are setup correctly and are useable.

[Trivial Psychic]

Old TBP requests:

1 - Disable Warp Vortex for arrival and/or departure, but retain the accel/decel of the ship.  Would require additional checkbox in arrival/departure cues, which would be grey-ed out by default, unless the pre-existing don't-show-vortex option is enabled, at which point the default would be unchecked, if the name is something like "preserve warping deceleration" for arrivals and "preserve warping acceleration" for departure.

2 - What I used to call "convergence firing", until WMC implemented non-standard gunpoint normals.  I now refer to my request as "multi-source weapon charging".  Basically, subsystem data for a turret can include a series of "secondary" (not meaning secondary weapons) firepoints.  Then, a weapon such as a beam (which is intended to be mounted to said turret) will also include a set of beam data for the secondary points.  The result... when the turret fires, the secondaries begin beamglow charge-up, then fire their "secondary" beams at the main firepoint, which begins its beamglow charge-up, then fires the main beam (which would be larger in size than the "secondary" ones) at the target.  The visual result is an attempt to simulate the charge effect of Vorlon craft from B5, or for non-B5 fans, the Death-Star beam from SW.  This may require that the turret be restricted from having multiple firepoints in the pof, unless each firepoint in the table is set up with its own set of "secondary" source firepoints.  Note, no normals would need to be set up for the "secondaries", since they'd point at the main firepoint by default.  Furthermore, the additional beam data for the secondaries in the weapons table, would include all the same beam data sections, so the size of beams, duration of the beamglow, etc. can all be specified.

[karajorma]

How about an upgrade to the add-remove-escort sexp so it actually used the value as the escort priority?  Right now all it does is put the ships in the list in any old order.

Try this. I haven't tested it but it should fix the problem for you. This is a HEAD build BTW not 3.6.9. Although I suppose this could be counted as a bug fix rather than a feature

[Unknown Target]

I was wondering if it would be possible to implement a way to rotate the external view so you can actually look at the ship from an off-angle viewpoint - basically just let you bank the camera, rather than just controlling it's raw and pitch. Any way that's possible?

[DaBrain]

If it's really easy to do, I support this request.

It would be really nice for screenshots.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Try this. I haven't tested it but it should fix the problem for you. This is a HEAD build BTW not 3.6.9. Although I suppose this could be counted as a bug fix rather than a feature

I'll give it a try later tonight when I'm on the computer with a joystick.  I almost put it in Mantis but since the docs stated 0 removes the ship any other value adds it to the list and nothing about the number meaning priority I tossed it in here.  Besides I keep tossing this stuff in Mantis they're going to need a bigger hard drive. 

[taylor]

How about a debug feature that lets you manually force LOD levels?  That way you can see if  the levels are setup correctly and are useable.

You can already do that in the Lab (F3 on the mainhall).  The only thing it doesn't show you is the debris, but that is on the todo list already.

[ARSPR]

How about a debug feature that lets you manually force LOD levels?  That way you can see if  the levels are setup correctly and are useable.

You can already do that in the Lab (F3 on the mainhall).  The only thing it doesn't show you is the debris, but that is on the todo list already.

Another suggestion about the Lab. Make it show rotating parts rotating (and if possible adding an option to disable it, ie show them fixed as it happens now).

[taylor]

+ Showing Ship Debris under each ship rendering. Ie you'd have LOD0, LOD1, LOD2, LOD3, Debris1, ...

Done.  Took about 5 minutes.  It does just show all of the debris peices at once though.  That is a little annoying, to me at least, but it's something quick to do now, and I can go back and make it better later on if that's required.

Another suggestion about the Lab. Make it show rotating parts rotating (and if possible adding an option to disable it, ie show them fixed as it happens now).

* added to the list *

[Apathy]

I'll throw in my 2 cents, how about distance/movement blur? I'm more interested in movement or focus blur, so that far away objects are blurred a little, and ships not in your center retical are blurred a bit more than those inside it.

Anyways, really looking forward to the next version no matter how little has changed, you all seem to have done already.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Try this. I haven't tested it but it should fix the problem for you. This is a HEAD build BTW not 3.6.9. Although I suppose this could be counted as a bug fix rather than a feature

Works like a charm.