That was an interesting idea, and a curious result came up. It still told me I needed to link limbs in chain sequence, but I wanted to know what the checklist was returning. Turns out that the object already has 2 limbs for some reason. I tried to start adding limbs starting from 3 up, but I got the same error. Even weirder is that this works:
shipmodel=1
load mesh "Asteroids\Ship\Ship.X",shipmodel
make object ship,shipmodel,shiptexture
scale object ship,shipsize#,shipsize#,shipsize#
set object collision to boxes ship
position object ship,0,0,0
rotate object ship,0,0,0
`Phantom Spheres
pssize=0
`Phantom Gun Spheres
make object sphere 1,pssize
make mesh from object lpgs,1
delete object 1
add limb ship,lpgs,lpgs
offset limb ship,lpgs,-pgssidedist#,pgsheight#,pgsforwarddist#
make object sphere 1,pssize
make mesh from object rpgs,1
delete object 1
add limb ship,rpgs,rpgs
offset limb ship,rpgs,pgssidedist#,pgsheight#,pgsforwarddist#
This seems to work, but I don't like using it since it screws with the ship texture. The ship was originally built and painted in 3ds max, and I'd like to keep the paint job. Any other ideas?