Also, what about treating all the capships like corvettes?
You win some, you lose some - it's possible, but brings its own problems.
Cons:
- A corvette is limited to 6 turrets altogether. This restriction may be possible to lift using a DLL patch?
- Turrets cannot be destroyed separately. In the context of WC1, that may actually be very natural.
- You lose the possibility of tracking component damage - i.e., your capship will not change visually when someone blows out its engines, and you cannot use automatic commands to launch enemy fighters using a launcher component.
- The lack of a hangar component also means no automated landings. Not a big issue (we only used scripted landings in UE), just involves a bit more scripting.
- You have problems with torpedoes - it is not possible to have a missile that only tracks corvettes. You can, of course, create fake torpedoes in the form of bigger, slower dumbfires, or equally big and equally slow missiles that can lock on any target, but due to speed and locking time are virtually useless against fighters.
- Corvettes fly just like fighters - so, their manoeuvrability would have to be significantly restricted to prevent them from doing crazy things.
- Having no components, you have more issues with poly counts. Fighters and corvettes are normally just one mesh, and one mesh cannot have more than around 1200 polys. For capships, this restriction doesn't seem to exist, and is irrelevant anyway (because each component is a separate mesh). This can be worked around - a fighter can consist of multiple parts, which are just like components except they cannot be destroyed separately. We've done this a few times in Standoff.
- Your capships leave no debris behind when they are destroyed. Nothing.
Pros:
- Your capship has fore/aft shields and four armour segments. Just the way it should be in WC1!
- You can destroy capships with guns, just the way it should be in WC1.
- Your capships actually explode and vanish, just like WC1!
- When trying to do capship battles, you can actually have Kilrathi destroyers manoeuvring relatively freely (without excessive scripting) to attack a Confed carrier and the like. Could be neat.