Alex, i`ve noticed that the game allows to equip energy weapon on any ballistic/missile (and visa-versa) slot without any problems. Also it allows for a large weapon to be placed in medium slot.
If a make a ship hull with one type of weapons and create some variants for it with weapons of different types - will it cause problems with future updates? I ask because i don`t want to clone a single hull in order to make it use another weapon type.
At the minute the weapon slots aren't checked for compatibility in the way variant files are set up, however the refit screen (upcoming) will do so. I'm guessing that's the point at which strange things will start to happen...
Right, the files won't ever be checked for "correctness" - it's the job of the refit UI to ensure that, since it has to take account character skills and such when deciding what's valid or not.
What will happen in the refit screen is you'll be able to remove the weapon, but will only be able to put back in weapons of the matching type. So that's not exactly a problem, but on the other hand, if you want to make the new ships fit in alongside existing ships in the campaign, that's a possible issue. I don't know that making all the slots "universal" would help much - it'd be harder to make sure the ships weren't overpowered, and you'd be leaving yourself less room to differentiate hulls.
Also a suggestion on weapon types - can we have a universal slot? The one that can be equipped with anything you`d like?
Hmm. That's come up before, and I think it's a good idea. I'll add it to the list, though I can't make any promises - need to take a look and see what that entails... there might be some unexpected consequences. Would also have to go back through the existing hulls and sprinkle in a universal slot here and there, too.
Edit: In the process of checking into it, I kinda accidentally added it. Ooops! So, that'll be in the next release
UI-wise it's not exactly nice - the list of weapons to pick from gets huge, but that's just in the test refit UI where *all* the weapons are available. Within the campaign it's a lot more manageable since it's restricted to what you actually have available.