So, (see posts
here and
here), I've been experimenting with mirroring asymmetric weapons; this works fine in the outfitting screen and in combat, but not outside of that - i.e. there's no sane way to mirror non-built-in weapons in the fleet screen or the little preview images when you're facing another fleet.
That's not the only reason to support something of this sort, though; another example where it'd be useful to have this kind of control is the modular cargo haulers in
Tyrador Safeguard Coalition - they've got some very nice visual changes depending on what they're loaded up with, but they all go back to default empty hold appearance on the fleet screen; it'd be nice to be able to look at an enemy fleet and tell at a glance "Oh, that one's a combat loadout with fighter bays, but those two are tankers and won't be deployed to the main battle."
And, last-but-not-least, there's one more drawing context that would be nice to have a bit more access to, and that's the ship models used for drawing the fleet when you're wandering around on the campaign map.* Obviously this is a performance-sensitive context, but it'd still be nice to be able to do a few basic things like "use this sprite on the campaign map", or "use these engine trail starting locations" (see, for example, some
Shadowyards ships that are supposed to have twin trails on the map, but currently only display one of the pair heading off at an angle), or maybe even "use this class for generating engine trails for this ship".
* Footnote: Unlike the fleet screens, I haven't personally tried to dig into accessing the campaign display yet, so it's possible that there are more options here already that I'm just not aware of? But I figure I should mention it while I'm on the topic of 'rendering ships outside of combat'.
I'm aware that Alex has already said that doing this could get "pretty complicated"; obviously, I don't know what that code looks like or why this feature would be troublesome to implement, but I figure it's worth posting an official suggestion thread to say "Hey, this would be a useful feature for modders to have."