How to make fixed weapons of one type fire separately in groups - possible?

[BunnyOverkill]

EXAMPLE: You have 10 fixed artillery cannons on your ship, shooting them all at once is overkill when you go through enemy hull and armor.
So you want to fire only 5 and then the other half.
How can you do that?
For starters, you can keep them in two groups and manualy switch which one will be on/off. In battle, pretty useless.
Is it possible to do with signals? Keep in mind that it should also work when you turn all weapons off/on so you don't fire by accident and don't want them to eat energy.

Another idea: If you activate a shortcut, turn weapons on. Then each second switch one half off, another one one - that can be useful for some turrets, because Empyrion turrets fire on dead targets long after they die, wasting ammo and time. This would reset them and force to find another target. This of course is useful only for some types of turrets.

So, is it possible?
I am playing with signals, read the tutorial on using them, and still don't know.
Ideally each shot from artillery should also switch from group 1 to group 2.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Not really, no. Maybe things will change once we get proper toolbar customization. Explosions combine, so there's not much reason to anyway. You can also just use lasers if you want greater fixed weapon precision. You can even quickly fit in fixed rocket launcher volleys between laser shots.

Turret AI is slow about target management, but I doubt any kind of group management to compensate for it would be worth the trouble. Ammo isn't that expensive.

[BunnyOverkill]

It's not about ammo cost, it's about survival. When your lasers and missiles all select one fighter that dies next second, completely ignoring the rest of the swarm closing on your position, that's bad. Of course it would be better if weapons immediately selected new target, but until that happens, fast group switching may be a way to compensate.
As for explosions... did you know you can improve how deep into your target your artillery digs? Put one group of artillery to the front of your ship and the other to the end. Shoot. The first group will dig a hole and the second group will fly deeper and explode there. So yes, there is a reason to stagger your fire. Also, that way you can cover bigger area.
Fixed weapon precision is useless if you don't know *exactly* where to aim and can hit the spot. That's why I was giving example with artillery. Slow rate of fire, slow reload, big explosions that will tear down armor layers. Sometimes it's better to strip bigger area of cover so you can destroy what's beneath it. Or if you are searching for the elusive core :)

[Natjur]

Using the scripting mod, you can set an interval timer and have the two groups auto turn off and on every few seconds

[BunnyOverkill]

Does this script needs support on the server side?
Also, this mean that the weapons would be always half on, eating energy, if I understand you, Natjur.

[Natjur]

Originally posted by BunnyOverkill:

Does this script needs support on the server side?
Also, this mean that the weapons would be always half on, eating energy, if I understand you, Natjur.

Yes scripting needs to be installed on the server (I really hope more servers use it, its so powerful)

You can have the script only turn the when there is a pilot (I have engines and main guns only on when a pilot so it auto saves power) Also have planet side and landing gear sensors so the up engines do not turn off when around a planet unless landing gear is down.

But then have a sub script so when a pilot, the main guns have an interval timer so only half are active at a time (and a switch if you want all)

Withing using the scripting mod, there is very little you can do to get the guns to cycle. But with scripting, you can do so much. I am going through and adding scripting to all my blueprints. (also trying to have one main blueprint with all the scripts so people can copy my examples)

[XLjedi]

What happens if the script is included in a workshop blueprint, but someone spawns the ship on a server or their own installation without the scripting mod? Does the blueprint fail to load?