A camera view for accurate railgun firing

[vehementi]

Scenario: I have a lot of guns on my ship shooting forward, plus a cluster of front facing (optionally axial) railguns that I like to shoot manually in sweet Expanse-like flybys. The many guns on my ship make the railguns' aiming lines hard to see.

Problem: If I leave the railguns on turret mode, they'll randomly turn and stuff to look at my target and when I adjust my heading and my ship is looking at the target, the guns are not aiming forward. If I put the guns axial or on rotation lock blocks, then they are hard to aim because the camera is not aligned with the aiming of the ship on either axis -- vertically the guns shoot under where my camera is looking, and horizontally the camera trails behind the ship when moving at all so the crosshair is wrong.

Possible suggestions that might help to varying degrees:

• Camera mode where the camera is locked to the ship, and moving the mouse starts a turn of the ship, and you see both the true heading and where you're trying to turn the ship to (think many other space games)
• Frontal camera mode with the above
• Picture-in-picture railgun POV 😉
• Ability to turn off auto turrets' aiming lines as well as making other turret groups aiming lines significantly more prominent so I can tell very easily whether my railgun is lined up with the enemy ship or if it's going to shoot low
• Ability to tone down the effects of my guns so I can more easily see the aiming lines

[vehementi]

I have since found what appears to be the least bad solution...

1. put all the railguns aiming forward, not on rotation locks or anything

2. bind a mouse button to "select self"

3. when you are about to do a bit flip turn (not continually tracking and firing at the target), hit that mouse button to target yourself and temporarily lock the turrets aiming forward

4. once you're facing your target again, target the enemy again like normal and your railguns will already be looking at them, and gain the added benefit of perfect aiming once your mouse is on the target again.

 

Not ideal, but after getting used to it it's a good band aid for now, in case that helps anyone.