Sorry, I should have looked at older posts first. I just did, and my thoughts now are along the lines of, "Holy what???? "
This means that I have to copy the sprites from all the fighters with variants and put up to three copies of them into my plugin. What used to be a data-intensive but rather small plug now weighs about five megs! Is there any way around making new graphics for every fighter which you would like not to be eaten by a lower ID'd fighter outfit type?
What does this mean for Nova's thought process when I recall my fighters?
Alright, there's a fighter coming in. What does it look like?
It looks like rlëD #1098.
Ok, what shän is that connected with?
Well, the first one I found was shän #1049.
And what ship is that shän parallel to?
Why, the Rebel Fighter (Index #49), of course!
Good, good. Now, do we have an wëap for those?
Yeah, let me check, here. It's... "Rebel Viper Bay", ID 192.
Right, and that's connected with which oütf?
Oh, say, ID 298.
And there's an ammo outfit for that?
Yep, ID 299.
Ok, give the player one of those. Ok, there's another fighter coming in...
Oh, Jesus.
If this is true, then Nova ignores the fact that it could just ask the incoming fighter what it is, and instead derives it wrongly by doing the equivalent of looking at it!