[jc173]

I think Marty hit the nail on the head. Easiest thing to do is to give incinerator beams, ripper beams, and WMG's different family and weapon numbers. That way the WMG won't automatically replace the ripper beam when the AI decides to upgrade/build new designs. This would leave the research queues intact, all you would have to do is swap weapon numbers in the AI's design creation files. I suppose if you wanted to you could even design ships with a primary armament of ripper beams backed up by one or two WMG's which might be kind of interesting. I'm about 85% sure it should work just fine.

[This message has been edited by jc173 (edited 10 June 2001).]