Is there anyway to open a .brushes file in GIMP, I tried the generic "open with" GIMP but it came up with the error unknown file type?

Use the brush files from the reference files DL. The ones in the game directory are bin format and you want TXT format.

EDIT: Right click the .brush and choose "Open with" and set the default program to notepad or notepad++ is much better if you plan to be a modder.

I believe it faces your ship to use specific batteries (I'm not sure what the rationale there is).  I changed it on my Yggdrasil and it started turning broadside to fire.  Changed it back and it stayed firing from front as intended.

QUESTION:

Can a siege gun be made to focus fire from the rear of a ship?

I can read this sentence, and it makes grammatical sense, but I cannot understand what it is trying to say or comprehend the problem that caused you to ask a question that way.

@ Goa/Harpo...

Stop making me laugh darn it!

I'm not going to implement it if it doesn't work but...

My "Yggdrasil mothership" is a starbased size model.  It has a rotating drill on the backend and the "backstory" is it grabs a planetoid and burrows in to extract metals.

Since the drill is a particle effect, it can pass through objects.  There are gripping claws above and around it as part of the main model so I just thought it would be e neat dynamic if when it was going to "eat" a planet it would rotate about and back into it to do so.  I'd just give the siege gun a very short range to facilitate this and if Krdax is up to it mabe he could even make a dust cloud effect for the drilling with Tim the Toolman going, "Ruuh! Ruuh!" while it drills..

I saw Zombie's "Plague Eggs" popping and thought, "I want some comic relief too".

It also as an actual play mechanic gives the opposing player time to try to stop it.

It's all good atmosphere darn it.  Maybe I'll add a "Nom-Nom!" sound effect too.

I would like to know if it's possible and I did notice how both of you cleverly avoided answering.

@MyFist0...

I don't have any guns on the mothership but if I put one on firing aft only you think that would do it?

Hmmm.  When making the weapon banks only to the rear, the ship turns sideways to focus fire. 

Now how to point an ability point? you dropped some tantalizing clues here Goa.

Can you look at the Phase siege frigate mesh and tell me what to change to make the bombing weapons shoot backwards (in theory anyway)?  I'm trying something now but its random guessing.

It's impossible. I submitted a request for info to IC a while back and they wrote back with a code snippet for auto-attack move prioritization, which was literally just "is the DPS of the side banks the highest? yes - turn sideways no - turn forwards". We have a ship with a high-caliber rear gun that basically can only fire it on repeated shift-click strafing runs. I would really suggest pushing for a fix for this or the greater fix, which would be moddable boolean control over whether ships turn to auto-attack at all. Given how poorly ships prioritize targets sometimes (stuff like prioritizing a side by adding up DPS on a weapon bank even when some of that DPS has no damage toward a certain class of ship) it would be extremely helpful.

Thanks Carbon and MyFist0....I'll give the exhaust thing a try and see what happens.

I'd love a moddable boolean.  One can hope the alleged triggers in Rebellion might touch on things like this.

Looks like Carbon is right--swapping the weapon point for exhaust has no effect--they still fire forward.  I guess the trick is to make a model that always travels backwards.

FYI--I tried changing the firingTiltAngle to 180.000000 and nothing either.

Yeah--the firing angle effects normal weapons--I got my frigates to wiggle their butts and shoot lightning out their are like William Wallace but no siege affect.  Bummer.

A giant virus drilling into a planetary crust would have been cool

Thanks for the thorough feedback guys.  Quite informative.

I don't know about the spinning part, but you could do the damage as an ability and have a constant particle effect look like 4 separate "beam blades". Actually you could probably just have the platform be part of the particle over a very small mesh.

I tried getting my cylon capitals to siege from the bottom and found it couldn't be done too. Shame cuz it would have looked cool.

I too had noticed on fast ships with multiple beam banks using fighter movement that it noticeably allows them to fire all beams one after another at the same target as it passed--rather than splitting them at different nearby targets.

Advent fighter (I think) does this.  Thanks for the follow up Lavo.

Oh I hate when he posts.

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