There isn't one. Adding turrets and having the number of ships Sins does would pretty much kill any computer.

The closest there is is the Dynamic mod for Etrenchment. It gives most frigates fighter style movement.

hey lol its all good, i dont want just another hw2, as good as it is its still quite different. but all im saying is, starships without turrets...? i mean, lol maybe not 100's per ship but come on lol there is no way that turrets would drain an average computer... unless of course your playing something like X3 TC with the MARS mod running on every ship (AI to)

ok so i take back the frigate idea... they should incorporate that dynamic mod into the actuall game instead, and maybe give the cruiseres (maybe) and up turrets? ...

and how hard could it be to ring up siera (creators of hw2) and ask them about turrets lol? if thats the case.. (not being critical) just an idea maybe? has anyone tried modding it themselves?

For starters I think you mean Relic , but Ironclad are more than capable of doing it you can even find examples on the Internet of the code and calculations required.

I have spent quite a bit of time looking into this and no matter which avenue you go down it keeps coming back to the same point that the geometry calculations should be performed by the game engine or at the early stages of the graphics pipeline. Both of which are pretty much untouchable by modders unless you start going down the route of disassembly and external hooks to basically inject your code into the game much the same way hackers/cheats do.

Now I may have missed something and I would fully encourage any other modders to have a go.

The main issue is that IC do not see the value in adding proper turrets to the game, I think the best we can hope for is to meet half way where by IC make it possible, and modders explore the possibilities and share the results.

The ideal solution is to be able to effect the motion and paths of objects and sub-mesh objects externally, which you can do to some extent already.

Its been discussed a fair ammount amoungst modders and players, IC haven't really come to the table with a strong arguement yet other than commenting on specific examples where it would not be appropriate. The perfect example is the TEC Orbital Defense guass gun with its secondary messon cannon, why not have it firing in two directions at once particularly as the ranges are different.

I think the biggest challenge isn't so much updating the graphics engine, its the whole concept of animated turrets being the thin end of a wedge and opening up a shed load of development time updating existing objects to a level of detail IC are not trying to hit.

I would like to see in action before passing judgement, I think the majority of players would like it too if it can be done without bringing their game to a halt.

Impossible to synchronize across players using different settings unless turret spin time is 0 (infinite speed), as the player with animations turned off would see the ship fire quicker than the person with it on.

e: I guess you could keep the delay with the guy having them off but people would complain their guns aren't firing at the right time.