Master-Slave turret AI

[refirendum]

With the new system, turrets can only work smoothly and normally when there's no entities docked in between the two main turret pieces. That limits building options however, because if the turret barrel is mounted on another rail entity before that rail entity is mounted on the turret base, the turret AI can only control the vertical movement and cannot control the horizontal movement. thus i'd like to suggest a turret master-slave system (which is optional to use for most cases) which links wirelessly two AI modules together, one as the master and one as the slave.

the master AI determines what to aim at, when to shoot, when to reset position, and all of the other normal functions of a turret. the slave AIs mimic the master AI's behavior by aiming in the same direction, shooting at the same time, and position reset-ing when the master AI does.

This would allow the larger more intricate turret designs that incorporated a slide-out barrel (or any other repositioning of the barrel relative to the base by use of rails) to be useable by using a master AI in the barrel to elevate, and then a slave AI in the base to turn the base

 

[Thalanor]

This could also be used to make actual point defense grids (e.g, installments that do not have 200 turrets all misfire at the same spot). Yes pls, skooma pls

 

[lilFishy]

Aiming turrets/systems connected to PD and mid turret batteries - gib now.
Great suggestiond, deservs atention.

 

[willvette]

I like this idea, but I can see it being reversed with a master AI on a small turret spotting for a large deck mounted slave with lock-on missiles (not a turret but a stationary entity linked to a single rail). Or a master main gun directing the other main guns to fire at a single target.

But two modifications I would suggest would be;
Instead of firing at the same time the master tells the slave to fire at the target. That way you can link AIs with different fire rates (a master AI with cannon-cannon telling a slave AI with cannon-pulse what to shoot at)
Manual override, when a player enters a master AI's ship core, slaves will still target what that turret targets and shoots at what it shoots at.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Indeed a good idea. I had actually thought of a similar idea to make unimportant rail bits part of the master ship, removing them from the ship selection (arrow up/down) while giving the parent ship their various systems (allowing for cross entity master/slave weapons).

 

[NeonSturm]

Where is the [PLANED]?