[MobileForce]

Is there even a way in the FRED editor to have a player play as a cruiser? I mean, i would probably only be able to move around as the commander and manage energy, but why couldn't I command a Cruiser?
I've tried setting the player as a GTC Fenris. The thing that happens when i then try to save the file is "Invalid ship type for a player. Ship has been reset to non-player ship."
Does  Just not want us to make the player a cruisers? Then again, why? FRED was originally for the devs only, as far as I'm aware.

[Spoon]

Well for one thing, none of the capital ships have the "player_ship" flag set by default in their ships.tbl entry. So FRED will give you that error when you try to give the player a capital ship.
But just adding that flag to the ships.tbl entry doesn't really make for exciting gameplay. Because it'll just allow you to fly a brick with a speed of 30, with no afterburners, primaries or secondaries. You can only just sort of watch the turrets do their thing, and thats it.

Then second off, there have already been a few missions in Blue Planet (and one mission in Dimensional Eclipse) which allows you to fly a capital ship around, which have a script that allows for significant more control over your ship than would otherwise be possible. Like for example here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86706.0
And the single mission called 'The blade itself' which is accessible through the techroom in Blue planet. As well as the mission with the Gef asteroid (of which I forgot the name) that has you at the helm of a frigate/cruiser.

[Lepanto]

Here's a hopefully-handy tutorial on setting up a capship mission.

Be warned, capship command requires a LOT of out-of-the-box FREDding to make work, and even more to make a fun mission where the player has lots of things to do. But if you're really set on giving the player a capship to command, read on.

The missions Spoon's referring to, "The Blade Itself" in the BP techroom and "One Future" in WiH act 3, are probably the best capship missions out there. You may want to study how they set up player capships, and design a mission around them, before you try yourself.

[MobileForce]

Well for one thing, none of the capital ships have the "player_ship" flag set by default in their ships.tbl entry. So FRED will give you that error when you try to give the player a capital ship.
But just adding that flag to the ships.tbl entry doesn't really make for exciting gameplay. Because it'll just allow you to fly a brick with a speed of 30, with no afterburners, primaries or secondaries. You can only just sort of watch the turrets do their thing, and thats it.

Then second off, there have already been a few missions in Blue Planet (and one mission in Dimensional Eclipse) which allows you to fly a capital ship around, which have a script that allows for significant more control over your ship than would otherwise be possible. Like for example here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86706.0
And the single mission called 'The blade itself' which is accessible through the techroom in Blue planet. As well as the mission with the Gef asteroid (of which I forgot the name) that has you at the helm of a frigate/cruiser.

Here's a hopefully-handy tutorial on setting up a capship mission.

Be warned, capship command requires a LOT of out-of-the-box FREDding to make work, and even more to make a fun mission where the player has lots of things to do. But if you're really set on giving the player a capship to command, read on.

The missions Spoon's referring to, "The Blade Itself" in the BP techroom and "One Future" in WiH act 3, are probably the best capship missions out there. You may want to study how they set up player capships, and design a mission around them, before you try yourself.

Thanks, exactly what i was looking for. Didn't play blueplanet yet, only finished the FS1 Campaign now and starting FS2, and Just getting started on FREDing.
10/10

[procdrone]

If you want there is OTHER strategy around controlling capships which I've tried to employ.

If you set your ship to auto-targeting mode in the tables, you can have your ship weapons (non-beam weapons) lock onto your target regardless of the ship facing, but I'd recommend having frontal weapons based ships for you. If you are able in PSC2 you can swap out turrets for player controlled weapons, and fire them like in a fighter.

This method is very much different from BLUEPLANET solution, since the turrets themselves are NOT controllable (no scripts for that, though it is possible to EASLY fred up a Turret Disable-Enable button)

Here is an unfinished mod featuring this design https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgrjoc9g5vg0s6n/Aegis%20Desire.zip?dl=0
It has a testing mission with few weapons and enemies set up that gives you a control of a rather big ship (it is largely unfinished as I was setting up a table file for the Warlock, but did not finish it, but the test mission should be fine).

You may use it for your own reference to get a simple warship control scenario.

[Mongoose]

I think there was an ancient stand-alone mission where you fly a Deimos that handled beam control that way.