... by writing a Povray script to create pictures for all the weapons from MOO2 with every possible permutation of mounts, by creating simple parts like "laser_barrel" and applying various transformations and adding extra pieces depending on the mounts applied!
(So a heavy laser would be bigger while an autofire laser would have coolant tubes attached.)
Wonder how long those would take to render...
And would it only quadruple the size of the imagemod, or even more??? Let's see... MOO2 has 8 beam mounts and 4 missile mounts, I think... so that would be 2^8 * number of beams plus 2^4 * number of missiles... I know there are only 7 missiles (counting torpedoes) but I never bothered to count the beams... those could take a while!
(Yes, I know that some combinations are not allowed, like Heavy Point-defense Shield-piercing Ion Pulse Cannons - real MOOniacs can see four illegal combinations there - but why not have images for them? They might be used for something other than a MOO2 mod, and it makes the creation of the components entries file easier if they're all laid out neat and proper
)