I support Annatar's comment. So far, textures cannot be changed in game. But the ability already exists to take over ships.

DANMAN

I guess one possible work around would be to have the ability actually destroy the ship, and spawn the entity you want in its place. I doubt it would look good and you'd have to do something about the explosion and such.. but that's probably the only way to do it. It won't really be a true "capture", but it'll allow you to change the entity file.

Annatar,

That is an acceptable work-around. How would I code it so a new entity spawns in place of a destroyed ship?

-Draven

would it be possible that since a ship spawns debris on explosion to make a special debris on destruction with a certain weapon? debris that is the new ship?

ds

I have not personally done this, but I can point you in the right direction - AbilityIllusionSelfCopy and its corresponding BuffIllusionSelfCopyOnSelf. Basically, it's as simple as:

instantAction
buffInstantActionType "CreateFrigate"
instantActionTriggerType "OnDelay"
delayTime 0.000000
frigateType "FrigatePsiLongRange"
numFrigates
Level:0 1
Level:1 1
Level:2 1
matchOwnerDamageState TRUE
impulse 1000000.000000
expiryTime
Level:0 120.000000
Level:1 0.000000
Level:2 0.000000
spawnFrigateSoundID ""
postSpawnBuff "BuffIllusionSelfCopyOnClone"

where the frigateType is the name of the entity file you want to create. The only issue is I'm not sure if you can set it to pick an entity based on your target ship. So the ability may also be limited to spawning a specific type of ship only no matter what you "capture" in this manner You could probably randomize it a bit and have OnChance events that can randomly pick an entity to spawn.