[Orders] Target Priority by Weapon Type

Gratuitous Forum Suggestions
1

In a close range battle, numerous targets will be in range , and some weapons will be more and less effective against certain targets.

It makes sense to allow more granular control of which weapon system prefers what sort of targets, so that, say, frigates do not end up fighting attacking fighters with emp missiles while cruisers pummel them apart, or cruisers do not end up splashing impotent beamfire against the shields of other cruisers while juicy frigates sit in range.

Implementation of this in code could use most existing targeting logic… but broken down by weapon system, rather than simply having one priority setup per ship. (The master priorities would need to be left in as well, so the ship would know how to maneuver.)

The only tricky bit would be finding a graceful way to dovetail this into the UI.

Two ideas:

  1. Break down all target priorities by weapon system, and simply default them to the master.
  2. Add a “target with weapon system” order, that allows selection of weapon system, then setting priority through the standard interface.

These priorities could interact in roughly the same way with cooperative, vulture, etc.

2

Perhaps you could assign weapons to a number of “Batteries,” possibly with the ability to label them (i.e. beams on the “Anti-Armor Battery” or “Beam Battery” set to Vulture and EMPs on an EMP Battery (DERP ORIGINAL NAME IS ORIGINAL) set to rescuer).

3

Yea i have seen that the ships like to bounce there beams off shielded targets when there are two others WITHOUT shields nearby that they can blow up. Seams thqat it is silly to keep fireing beam weapons at a shielded ship and have them just bounce off. I have vultrue set also not sure whats going on there.

4

Player-organized “batteries” would require lots of new UI code.

It would be much simpler just to separate by weapon system type (the presentation code is already there in the range-selection mechanic).

All your beam lasers have one set of priorities, all your ion cannons another, all your plasma a third, etc.

5

That would be great, It’s very anoying to see the anti-fighter lasers trying to destroy the enemy while a nearby ship’s beam lasers attack the fighter.

6

Word