Something makes me think that even if you do remove the graphical appearance of the cross....
It will still force-aim your guns on it if your mouse goes near it like it currently does.
Even though I've noticed the auto-tracking caused by the small rocks in an asteroid field, it's never really felt like its' effected my combat effectiveness. I might occasionally shoot a few with my guns but I've never actually hit one with a SNAC or MR. (except on purpose... but I SNAC my own mines for fun >_>)
the autoaim is not useless. - freelancer guns are practicly turrets. - in other games ... the crosshair defines the point of the maximum range of a weapons projectile. - the guns are fixed and the targetting crosshair defines where a fixed gun needs to aim ( or where the ship needs to point to ) - in order to hit the target.
but usually - those games are a lot slower than freelancer ( that doesn t mean that the shipspeeds are slower - but it means that the movement is a lot less erratic ) - in games like freespace , wing commander etc. - ships don t make such a great use of strafe. - take away strafe - and your autoaim suddenly works just fine.
what the autoaim DOES for the player is to define a target on the z-axis relative to the playership. - that means that your guns know ( once you re on the spot ) that the target is at a certain distance to you - and they adjust the angle ( which is often done via the gun-tolerance that adds to the gunmount rotation )
if guns would not adjust itself to the autoaim - their "effective" angle of attack would decrease seriously.
a good example are pebbles. - they are basicly auto-aimed at when you click on them. when you click just next to them, the shot misses by quite much, cause the gun doesn t aim for the pebble, which is maybe 1/4 of the range ( shortened by depth [z-axis] ) - but it aims at the full range of the projectile.
guns in freelancer can focus on a target - that way a large ship can hit with all its weapons when fighting a small ship. - if the guns had no auto-aim, they d aim at the furthest point possible - which means that a small ship could practicly "slip" through the projectiles, even if its right in front of the playership. ( the outer wing guns of a titan wouldn t hit a hammerhead, when the shots did not focus on the center of the hammerhead. )
example of what the autoaim does for you:
getting rid of the autoaim would need a full rebalance, cause ships with a wide wingspan or guns that are located so far from each other that a smaller ship can slip through would gain an additional disadvantage - while ships with its guns in one place would be much much more efficient.
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