I tried recently to mod a ship to fire one non-launcher weapon from one side of the ship and another from the opposite side of the ship.
I was unsuccessful and feedback from modders tells me this isn't possible without using huge slabs of complex code.
I'm thinking of the ability to place weapon slots at particular spots on a ship and then being able to set different properties or attributes to each slot (not sure of the jargon).
Using one of AP's ships:
In the ship below I could make a laser cannon shoot from the left hand side of the ship with set fire arcs, but couldn't make a second laser cannon shoot from the other side of the ship (although a launcher would launch from there)
This worked for a non-launcher weapon firing left and a launcher firing from the right hand side of the ship
Code:
<DeviceSlot criteria="p" posAngle="55" posRadius="20" posZ="5" minFireArc="350" maxFireArc="190"/>
<DeviceSlot criteria="l" posAngle="305" posRadius="20" posZ="5" minFireArc="170" maxFireArc="10"/>
But every combination I tried using "p", "l"and "w" in the device slot criteria would not result in the second laser cannon firing from the other side of the ship.
It could be done by setting the properties to two installed weapons in the initial ship setup but when replaced those properties vanish.
This gave the result I wanted but the properties were lost on uninstalling the weapons
Code:
<Device deviceID="&itLaserCannon;" minFireArc="350" maxFireArc="190" posAngle="55" posRadius="20" posZ="5"/>
<Device deviceID="&itLaserCannon;" minFireArc="170" maxFireArc="10" posAngle="305" posRadius="20" posZ="5"/>
Forum post for further info: https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7571
Of particular interest is being able to set the 'pos' values differently for dual/alternating and single weapons within the same weapon slot. Again using AP's ship, firing a single weapon from a device slot at the front of the ship looks OK, but a dual weapon looks better if it shoots from the side projections further back.
The ability to link weapons in different slots would also be good.
Also, quoting gunship256 'If a ship has a swivel platform at the front, the swivel should be associated with the ship, not the installed weapon.'
I like the idea of this. Managing a bunch of slots that weren't actually slots confused me quite a bit early on.
It would also be nice to be able to override the default spacing between fire positions for dual and alternating weapons (when they're installed on autons, for instance).
It occurred to me that this is probably not that difficult to implement. <DeviceSlot>s could be given two new attributes: slotName and maxDevices. Slots with a slotName would always show an empty slot on the appropriate dock services pane as long as the number of devices installed in them is less than their maxDevices. There would need to be a way to specify in XML which slot a devices goes in when more than one is compatible. Perhaps the <Device> element(s) could go inside the <DeviceSlot> element.
Ideally, restrictions defined in <DeviceSlot>s could replace the hard-coded limits of one device in some categories, but this might require more engine changes to allow objects to function with multiple drives, launchers, shields, etc.
Fixed as NMS describes in 1.8 Alpha 5.