Hi Akimitsu and welcome to TLR, some of what you are asking for is possible. You could get rid of turret classes (so that guns and turrets can be mounted on to the same slot) and use reshack to rename the class to missile instead.
Other than that, you could reduce the weapon classes from 1-10 to 1-5 istead and use reshack again to change what u see in-game.
We're not able to create new classes (as far as i have heard), as all of this stuff is in resources.dll and is coded into the game.
Some people are in favour of removing the classes altogether so that any gun can be mounted on to any ship. That way players can choose their loadout to match their ship and are only limited by their power. Can't say i am a fan of that, but if you like the idea you could end up with a bunch of spare classes to use.
(edit)
.. And, for the search, there is the "search forums" above. There is also, a normal search reachable from the main news screen (on the right hand side) and Louva-Deus's google search for TLR here and from the sticky posts in the General Editing Forum.

Edited by - Mace_166 on 8/2/2006 2:50:45 PM

Hi Man, and thanks.

What I'm hoping to do is basically create it so certain ships can only mount certain weapons. I plan to have 4 types of main weapons (not counting cruise disruptors, torpedoes, etc). These types would be beam lasers, blasters lasers, railguns and missiles.

I can already differentiate between the lasers, blasters and railguns through manipulating the ini files fairly easilly. But missiles would be hard, since all gun mounts can hold a missile launcher. That's what I want to change.

So if I were to turn the guns into turrets and keep the missiles how they are, could I change the way the weapons behave? Could I make it so certain turret weapons could only fire in certain directions (like guns do in vanilla FL), and can I make certain missile weapons fire in all directions like turrets do?

And finally, can I rename the "guns/missiles" and "turret" so say "missile" and "gun" respectively?

Akimitsu,

You can deter the mounting of missiles on gun hardpoints by changing the weapon mount for every missile in game. It is a lot of work but it's the only way I can think of.

hp_gun_type = hp_gun_special_1

Change that to any other type of mount, e.g.

hp_gun_type = hp_torpedo_special_2

But again, you would have to do this for every missile in the game.

And what would this do, exactly? It looks like you're going to have missiles mounted onto the torpedo slot. If I could just change the hp_gun_type to any other gun type that the game supports, could I use this reshack to rename the mine slot to missile, and redo every missile in the game to mine? Or would that screw up the way they operate?

@Parabolix, although that solution would work, you would lose the ability to use the "Q" button to fire the missiles and you would have to press the number of the weapon instead. Its do-able, but not really ideal.

@Akimitsu, The way that the turrets behave is down to the model of the ship and not the weapon itself. Each mount has a hardpoint that can rotate a set amount.
You can rename the part that you actually see inside the game to whatever you want. The program is called reshack.exe and you open up resources.dll (its best to have a backup) and do a search for the text that you want. Modify it and click on "complie script", then save. You need to make sure that the fie is moved into the right mod directory as modifying the dll dosen't change the "last modified date/time".
Do you plan on having classes within the weapon classes or just the one each for the different types?
I think if i was doing what you are planning, i would still keep the guns and turrets separate and downsize them to be classes 1-8 each (with 2 classes for each type) and use the spare ones to do missiles with.

Edited by - Mace_166 on 8/2/2006 4:51:06 PM

Mace, if I were to do as you said, that would allow a missile ship to use all the weapons that are a lower class.

Here's what I plan to do in detail:

Either change the gun/missile mount to just gun, and move missiles to something like mines (that I don't use). Or, I'll change gun/missile to missile, and change turret to gun. And yes, I plan on completely redoing every weapon in the game. Sure, it'll take forever, but strangely enough, I enjoy the process of making this stuff.

What I intend on accomplishing is making it so you can have a ship dedicated to firing a certain type of gun. Like a ship that can only fire missiles, or one that can only fire guns. Then, through manipulation of how much energy the ships have, and the class of the mounts, control the size or type of said gun. So I can have guns that are meant for fighters, cruisers, battleships, etc. Or I can have beam weapons, blasters, railguns, missiles, whatever I want.

Example: A class 1 missile would be a very basic rocket type weapon, and can only be mounted to a missile slot.
Example 2: a beam weapon can be mounted on a gun mount. But if the ship is designed to fire blasters it won't have the necessary amount of energy to sustain the beam weapon's needs. I'll put that in the infocard of the weapon and the ship, but leave it to them to discover when they lose a fight because all their energy was expended after firing 4 beam weapons for a half second. But to give incentive to beam-capable ships, I'll do a huge balancing act to give beam weapons better damage, but have the other types still compete as long as your weapon loadout is well done.

So what's what I'm doing. I think I have the information I want. I'll just use what they already have, and move it around a little (or a lot )

Thanks again

Ok, i'm getting what your planning, but if you were to use the classes i suggested the class 8 missiles could only be that class, they wouldn't allow any other classes to be mounted.
Its in shiparch:
nickname = li_fighter
...
hp_type = hp_gun_special_3, HpWeapon01, HpWeapon02, HpWeapon03, HpWeapon04 = a class 3 gun can be mounted on those 4 hardpoints
hp_type = hp_gun_special_2, HpWeapon01, HpWeapon02, HpWeapon03, HpWeapon04 = a class 2 gun can be mounted on those 4 hardpoints
hp_type = hp_gun_special_1, HpWeapon01, HpWeapon02, HpWeapon03, HpWeapon04 = a class 1 gun can be mounted on those 4 hardpoints

if you change it to only:
hp_type = hp_gun_special_3, HpWeapon01, HpWeapon02, HpWeapon03, HpWeapon04 = a class 3 gun can be mounted on those 4 hardpoints and lower classes cannot be mounted. The only thing is that only the highest class is shown in the game weapon base screen.

Something i have done for a mod i have been working on (frontierspace) is give turrets different "turn_rate"'s. I have battleship weapons reduced to 45 or 30 and gunboat/anti fighter ones increased to 180 (from 90).
For things like heavy anti-capital weapons, i nerf the weapons to only 5.
Hope some of this has been useful, good luck.

Mace,

Missiles use Q to fire, but torps use Shift+Q to fire, there is a bind key for each, so you lose no compatibility by changing missiles to torps.

However, your solution would work too. But, instead of leaving 1-8 dedicated to guns and 9-10 for missiles, I would do it the other way around. I would set missiles to levels 1 and 2 and change the level 1 and 2 existing guns to level 3. That way you have less editing to do.