Of course this whole discussion reminds me of the much mooted and ‘would be nice’ idea of weapons that required you to lower your shields to fire them.
That would be ultra-awesome.
In a hands off game anything that voluntarily weakens something on friendly ships is pretty much impossible to do right, just look at the cloaking module, the game keeps finding the worst moments to switch it on and disable the weapons.
Agree. That, and ammunition.
Having to lower the shields to fire big guns, or having to save your important ammo for the right time pretty much requires the player to decide when to drop the shields or when to use the limited ammunition. For a hands-off game like GSB it probably wouldn’t work very well. A computer tends not to handle those sorts of important decisions very well.
Is it worth the gamble to drop your shields to use the big guns? Will it just get your ship clobbered or will it make a difference? How is the rest of the battle going? What about using your limited ammunition super torpedoes? You can’t get anymore, and you need to have them last the entire battle. You don’t want to have them left over at the end of the battle since that would also be wasted ammunition. You need to time it so you run out of ammo when the last enemy ship explodes.
When using limited ammo the AI is usually just cannon-fodder. In games that have enemies with limited ammo you can expect to fight and defeat a very large number of enemies. Usually these are just realistic flight sim combat type games or the old Mechwarrior games, where a player only has a few missiles or bullets, and they need to count. Since the AI does not use them wisely, you just get to fight a whole bunch of them all at once to make it challenging, and you need to use your own limited ammo to take them down. In pretty much every other game the AI has unlimited ammo, often times wasting ammo firing aimlessly. Spray and pray. It might get lucky eventually.
im sure this suggestion is completely legit for GSB 2 tho,since im certain that GSB 2 will have the option of (atleast limited) direct control… right? 
Direct control is actually a lot less effort than you might think. Depending on how uber complex people would expect it to be.
Just allowing you to issue orders to your ships, without changing anything else, isn’t a whole ton of work.
never thought it is,the AI scripting is prolly a ton of hassle especially since you have to put up with us complaining half the time…
was more thinking along the lines if you`ll allow it 
GSB is awesome as it is,but i really do prefer to have some control unless i have to do a lot of micromanagement… could also give me the excuse to pester you about “standard” online multiplayer 
man i keep hijacking threads today… sowwy guys
What if in the order screen you can just blank out ship types you do not want the weapon to fire at? For example fighter torpedoes could be ordered to fire only at cruisers… Plasma cannons can be ordered not to be fired at fighters.
This could be an adjustment to the attack/priority/distance orders. If you click on each order it gives in the submenu a list of the ship’s weapons and their ranges. Make it so you could click an on/off for that weapon?
Berny
Nice to have new toys, but please take a look at the old and broken useless modules.
i think were slightly off topic here, i think that we (as in you cliffski, god among mortals), shold do something, anything to bolster the empire’s defences against fighters. i think tehre was an idea about a smart bombish module that would disable all fighters around it. If that eliminated engines and weapons, than it would be incredibly useful for the currently underpowered empire. of course, a really long recharg time (i.e. 4-5000+) would have to be implemented. also, should it effect your own fighters? is so, what about when all the enemy fighters are gone? it is entirely detrimental to your fleet (sans hp). if not, than it would demolish any and all fighters. it would also essentially nullfiy the ‘stick together’ order’s benifits since you would want as few fighters effected at a time.
I imagine it’d be a somewhat steep trade, definitely not something to have on every cruiser.
yeah really, make it expensive too
When it comes to the empire that shield boost they get on their frigates is entirely useless. Even then fighters can knock them down almost instanty or even go under frigate shields since some empire frigates are as big as cruisers. I do not think it is even worth putting shield generators on empire frigates.
This big weakness might not have been so bad if antifighter lasers where worth anything.
Also can this new module restart downed shield generators?
The system will only refresh existing shields. Once a module is down, it’s all over.
Perhaps the empire might get a shield battery module that restarts a shield (possibly only partway restored and/or with a permanent penalty and/or only kicking in a certain amount of time after it collapses) - cheaper than a full extra shield, with a smaller power/crew cost, but gives another unique shield-based module.