Note: There were a few original ships with rear-firing lasers -- pretty much the really big traders (Anaconda, Boa, Boa 2) had at least a pulse laser. But since they're never normally pirates, you'd probably never see that.
In my mod, they are very rare pirate types.
Thargoid warships also have a rear laser, but theirs acts more like a turret so it hardly counts.
i'm w/ DarkBee here, i'm racking my brains and i can honestly say i've never seen an NPC using a rear weapon. if i come up behind and fire, we start a twist dogfight, i've never had one fire at me w/ a rear gun. is there some AI condition that determines what they use and when?
I've had a few NPCs use their aft lasers on me, but I think they were all from Random Hits.
That you don't see rear lasers in use often is because none of oolites own ships has them and only very few oxp ships. They are mainly found in mission oxps like Random Hits and others. (said the pilot, who was just blown up by a q-mine that was ejected by an ups target )
seems to be a Catch-22 w/ my ships then, cos i've not put additional gunpoints in my NPC Vampires simply because i thought they didn't use them!
for clarity - and tweaking of my current OXP - do NPCs just have Fore and Aft, but no side weapons?
This Tough Guys oxp combined with Caracal’s Furball oxp certainly makes for one helluva firefight… a dozen or more bandits, the same number of Vipers, a Boa and it’s six escorts… and me. Chaos and carnage, or what!
I would advise stilts for the quagmires, and camels for the snowy hills
And any survivors, their debts I will certainly pay. There's always a way!
Like... when a player has achieved Deadly rank and/or is in gal4 and up,
have a newscast or something announce that organised crime has made off with the weapon stockpiles of Saider-krupp.
Or that gal+1 has a sale on all beam weapons. something like that.
It being dependent on players to install/deinstall just seems incomplete.
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