Building the most effective point defense

[Panpiper]

Point Defense, or 'anti-missile turrets' is a fairly simple affair on it's face. Two cannon blocks, married one each to two, linked cannon computers, mounted with a bobby AI and a rail docker. Build a base with it's own rail docker on the bottom and an appropriately oriented rail turret axis a few blocks above that, attach the cannon module to the base, then the base to your ship where the ship has it's own rail turret axis.

Voila, in a nut shell, how to build a point defense turret. Other than that though, and the question of how to make them the most aesthetic, is the question as to whether or not anything can be done to make them more effective?

I have seen tests done of things like waffle board cannons, but they seem to concentrate their fire on a point and are no more effective than a standard point defense cannon. 'Mork2' has a turret concept that is absolutely brilliant (http://starmadedock.net/content/advanced-hailstorm-ams-turret.2913/), except that I fear the way it works will lag a server to utter death with just a few of them around (multiple cores & bobby AIs forced to move together).

I have 468 blocks to devote to the building of a point defense turret. Is there any way I can enhance it's ability to shoot down missiles without creating server lag? Or should I just add 400 odd shield system blocks to a standard point defense turret, and call it a day?

 

[Edymnion]

Not really that I know of. I just design mine to look aesthetically pleasing, and make sure I have enough that all available arcs of fire are covered at least twice so that any given incoming missile should have at least two turrets firing on it at any given time. Pretty much nothing short of a complete hailstorm of heetseekers gets through that.

 

[Vilab]

thank for the link, this turret's design is very interresting, and prevent me from making useless testing ( about Bobby who focuses fire... )

a more basic design, would be using standart canon/canon AND one or two long range cannon/beam ( 1 at 100% slave, the second at 75% by ex), this way, as the previous link ( which is using missile beam, less useless to intercept ( except if i am wrong and that missile can target missiles )), the turret would rotate and engage quicker ( while the incoming missile is still at 6.000m/5.000m ) and would already aim and fire at it before it come into cannon/cannon range.

however, except if it is causing lag, the linked turret is probably one, or the best design ever. ( even if i would still personnaly prefer cannon/beam than missile/beam )


PS :
- as the previous post, i would agree that several ( smaller ) anti-missile-turret would be better than using only one big.

- i didn't download the linked turret, however it seems it is a standart turret, ( one core for longitudinal move + 1 with bobby for vertical ) which have docked FIXED core/bobby + cannon/cannon on its upper stage to increase random accuracy and Rate Of Fire . not sure if it could cause lagg, because it isn't one core ( longitudinal ) + 6 differents vertical axis.

 

[Keptick]

Spoiler: Here's mine

Aesthetically I think that it checks most of the boxes (at least for me).

Pros: - Functionality wise it has two 100% cannon/cannon outputs, 90° arc of fire (up).
Cons: It can't aim down and as such causes lag when trying to force it's way through it's joint to aim at a low target.

I'm planning on making some different sized collision free PD turrets since even small turrets colliding cause massive fps drops due to the size of my ship.

 

[Panpiper]

a more basic design, would be using standart canon/canon AND one or two long range cannon/beam ( 1 at 100% slave, the second at 75% by ex), this way, as the previous link ( which is using missile beam, less useless to intercept ( except if i am wrong and that missile can target missiles )), the turret would rotate and engage quicker ( while the incoming missile is still at 6.000m/5.000m ) and would already aim and fire at it before it come into cannon/cannon range.

I found your idea to be very interesting. It probably wouldn't be much more effective at close range than standard PD, but versus long range threats, which missiles most certainly 'could' be, it would get several shots in before a regular PD would ever have a chance. So I built your idea, just to see how it would turn out with my minimalist aesthetic.

The PD turret is in the foreground. Just shy of 1K mass, a bit too big for my purposes sadly, but I'll give another go,

 

[Drakkart]

in that turrets the OP describes what if the different ai's pick up different missiles of a swarm... that will cause big lag i assume.

These are mine 7x7x7

 

[Crusade]

I tend to jam most of my point defense turret systems under the mothership hull, for super-low profile point defense turrets.
eg.

You can see the hole that the turret canister fills (canister being the shell around the turret base)

It's fair effective. However, due to it's inability to aim down, in large amounts it causes considerable lag.

 

[Panpiper]

Well of course 'your' turrets Drakkart would be pretty.

Here's a smaller variant (foreground) of the turret idea Vilab suggested. Half the blocks of the previous and fits exactly within my block budget. Exactly the same 'firepower'; the standard cannon/cannon weapon and four 'long shots' designed to get in four extra shots that normal PD won't get, versus long range incoming missiles. Not a lot of shielding of course on a weapon of this size, ~6000 shield points total between the ball and base.

 

[Keptick]

I tend to jam most of my point defense turret systems under the mothership hull, for super-low profile point defense turrets.
eg.

You can see the hole that the turret canister fills (canister being the shell around the turret base)

It's fair effective. However, due to it's inability to aim down, in large amounts it causes considerable lag.

Couldn't you give it space underneath so that the barrel section doesn't collide when aiming down? I mean sure, it'll shoot into the ship, but it'd eliminate a good portion of the lag

 

[Crusade]

Couldn't you give it space underneath

Not really. It's pretty cramped under there.

 

[Keptick]

Not really. It's pretty cramped under there.

Fair enough. I'm going to make one, so we'll see how it works out (and space isn't an issue in my case).

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

I tend to jam most of my point defense turret systems under the mothership hull, for super-low profile point defense turrets.
eg.

You can see the hole that the turret canister fills (canister being the shell around the turret base)

It's fair effective. However, due to it's inability to aim down, in large amounts it causes considerable lag.

That's glorious. I'm with Keptic, I might have to tweak that for my own nefarious purposes

 

[Keptick]

Has 5 outputs of 100% cannon/cannon and 360 degree rotation to avoid collision lag. There's still some lag due to collision checks, but it's not nearly as bad as actual collisions.

 

[StormWing0]

So many ideas floating around here, keep it up people.

 

[TheFloorMatt]

Something to consider, is that building a point defense turret efficiently is only part of the way to building the most effective PD array. How you fly your ship, where the missiles are coming from, and where you place the turrets are incredibly important. If you're putting PD on a ship that wants to fight at 500m, they'll be useless no matter how efficient the design. If you're flying towards the enemy, your PD will be far less effective than if you're flying away from them (due to missile travel time). You can't have only one PD turret, because there will inevitably be a blind spot. For the same reason, you can't put PD on only one side of your ship. Consider what your ship will be doing and where your PD turrets will be placed before even attempting to design one.

 

[Keptick]

Something to consider, is that building a point defense turret efficiently is only part of the way to building the most effective PD array. How you fly your ship, where the missiles are coming from, and where you place the turrets are incredibly important. If you're putting PD on a ship that wants to fight at 500m, they'll be useless no matter how efficient the design. If you're flying towards the enemy, your PD will be far less effective than if you're flying away from them (due to missile travel time). You can't have only one PD turret, because there will inevitably be a blind spot. For the same reason, you can't put PD on only one side of your ship. Consider what your ship will be doing and where your PD turrets will be placed before even attempting to design one.

Yea, there used to be 105 on my ship. Now with the current docking system I can set their default orientation to have every angle covered at all times. The only thing is that I'm pretty sure 105 turrets will completely kill my computer, even if they don't collide with anything (collision checks still happen without collisions).

 

[Panpiper]

(collision checks still happen without collisions)

Hmm... Does this mean that a turret that never collides with anything at all, 360 degrees on all axes, will still cause lag because it is checking for collisions anyway? Will it at least cause less lag?

I have a gun turret that has great fields of fire and can track a 240 degree dome above it and 360 degrees around. However if it tries to track a target below that 240 degree dome, it will hit the ship and get stuck, it can no longer traverse without raising the gun (at least when I manually operate it it can't). What I am wondering is, if I build a restraint into the base of the turret to prevent it from declinating any further than it should, would this not prevent it from getting stuck on the hull, and allow it to at least continue to traverse while tracking a target below it's declination?

 

[Keptick]

Hmm... Does this mean that a turret that never collides with anything at all, 360 degrees on all axes, will still cause lag because it is checking for collisions anyway? Will it at least cause less lag?

I have a gun turret that has great fields of fire and can track a 240 degree dome above it and 360 degrees around. However if it tries to track a target below that 240 degree dome, it will hit the ship and get stuck, it can no longer traverse without raising the gun (at least when I manually operate it it can't). What I am wondering is, if I build a restraint into the base of the turret to prevent it from declinating any further than it should, would this not prevent it from getting stuck on the hull, and allow it to at least continue to traverse while tracking a target below it's declination?

Oh yea, it'll definitely cause less lag. But anything that's inside the bouding box of the ship will have collision checks since otherwise there's no way for the game to know if things are colliding. I'm currently testing it, 4 turrets don't seem to be causing much fps drop. Currently installing more to test.

As for your second paragraph, no. Because the AI is retarded and will continue to aim down, making the entire thing jitter and be unable to move.

 

[Panpiper]

I just tested it using a block to prevent declination. It does work, mostly. It will still every once in a while hang the tracking, but for the most part I can manually swivel while forcing the maximum declination that I have permitted. What is odd to me is that the declination that has to be enforced to prevent stuckage, is substantially higher than what I would have thought. It appears that the turret's traverse is not getting stuck on blocks themselves, but quite possibly by the collision checks themselves, regardless of whether they would pass. Note in the picture:

I tested a great many placements of the declination prevention block (the red light) and this was the lowest declination I could get before the turret's traverse would get stuck. I'll continue testing to see if there is not some other factor I have missed. I am at this point however intending to include a declination block.

Addendum: I cleaned up the bezeling and was able to lower the declination block by two. My concern about collision checks themselves causing stoppage was unfounded. I was causing them myself. The block is still useful however as it prevents the barrels from going so low that they 'would' get stuck.

 

[AtraUnam]

Theoretically to minimize lag you would dock an object to your main ship that consist solely of a rail docker, core and some turret dockers which are placed outside the box-dims of the main ship. Then dock you're PD to those rail dockers. They would then be outside the bounding box of the massive main ship entity thus minimizing lag.