Point Defence vs. Ships mod

[Deathstalker]

Awhile back someone (can't remember who) posted their thoughts on guns that would fire auto when a ship came within a certain range (ala Moo2). Now I don't know a thing about modding but would it be possible to mod the Pd gun files so that they would target ships that fly within range instead of missles/sat thereby providing that 'first strike' that I remember so well from Moo2? these guns would be seperate from pd guns and could not be fired manually.
Well just a thought anyway.

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[God Emperor]

I've got a feeling that your idea can be done actually. In the Components file, Point Defence has Ftr\Sat\Seekers as Weapons target and Point Defence as an ability.
As a test, I suggest that you modify the Weapon target to include "\Ship" and see whether your weapons activate. If it does work, it should be pretty easy to create a new weapon type which is "Ship" only - Interdiction Beam?

Sounds like an interesting idea to me and will be interested to hear your results. If your test goes well and you are not sure what to do, I could create a mod this weekend coming (long weekend for us West Australians)if you like (busy at work currently)...

[Tampa_Gamer]

It was me who posted it. I tried several tests and e-mailed Aaron regarding it. It is still one my wishlist items I include every two weeks in my bug/wish-list report I send to Aaron (see the thread). Essentially, we need the ship movement subroutine to have an additional line of code identical to what fighters and seekers now have when they move. This line of code checks to see if PD weapons are within range and have not fired yet. If so, then they interrupt the fighter/seeker movement routine and fire. Right now, the ship movement routine does not have this additional line or subroutine, so there is never a check for PD weapon fire. When this line is added, we can then add the ability "Point Defense" to any weapon and it will fire in a "reactive" manner. There is a longer thread on this back in December.

[Deathstalker]

Thank you for responding. Havn't had time to try the adding of /ship to pd wpns but it sounds like (from reading other response) that it needs more than that. Hopefully this will someday be added (along with drones and such). The other thing from Moo2 was the adding of ship 'captains', could a research area be created, say called "recruiting", and various levels of crew 'discovered' that could be added to ships as components to give certain bonuses (movement, + do attack or def, minesweeping or avoidance, auto sensor levels for detecting cloaking etc.) the only problem I could see would be making them unique for having 'name' captains and crew. (think of it, Kirk in charge of a Star Destroyer, or Sheridan in charge of DS9), could be fun.

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.