Having Hidden missile mounts on some of my ships it's kind of disappointing how some regular missile weapons will display the missiles even if the mount is hidden, I get that this is for fighters where the weapon mount is not needed but the missile is, but a MRM Pod is Extremely unlikely to be mounted on a Fighter, so possibly some of the missile weapons could have RENDER_LOADED_MISSILES_UNLESS_HIDDEN rather than RENDER_LOADED_MISSILES, to allow for such mountings to be viable.
Hidden slots are really just meant to be used on fighters. Gameplay-wise, the player needs to be able to see what they're up against. With a fighter, you know that because their loadouts can't change. With a ship, you need to be able to see all the weapons.
I can see using hidden slots in a TC-style mod, but if you're aiming for something that works nicely with vanilla, that's not a great idea. Also, consider this: missiles would just pop into existence in this case. For a weapon that always works that way (i.e. the Swarmer), you can set up some smoke to hide the missiles showing up. For weapons that rely on the missile being visible prior to launch, making it hidden would result in a visual abnormality when you fire. Not horrible, but not good either.
All that being said, since you're making a mod, it'd be easy enough for that mod to also convert whatever vanilla weapons you like to use RENDER_LOADED_MISSILES_UNLESS_HIDDEN.
tnx Alex!
congratulations on this jewel of a game.
at my age, i have played lots of games.
Starfarer is one of the very best i have played so far.
even at this Alpha stage.
just bloody amazing!
Thank you! Really happy you're enjoying it