single axis turret that does aim (handy for guided missiles)

[wanzer]

hello

I seen a few ships that use turrets that shoot guided missiles
a favored practice is to shoot the missile upward or sideward
this is a good idea to avoid getting missiles caught in crossfire
to avoid turrets from shooting into the ship, ppl made the turret so it has a limited angle

what if
we can cut down the whole second part of the moving turret and just be able to place
the AI and weapons on the swiveling part

and grant the missiles a greater tolerance for locking? << this only on turrets under a AI
and does fire when the swiveling angle matches with its target

just a taught

best regards,
wanzer.

 

[StarWars1981]

Ahhhhhh grammar and spelling mistakes!! AAGGGHH!
Used to be possible; not anymore and I don't think they'd spend the time to build in an exception for one weapon system, if not for all. Just grant both axes and give it limited freedom pointing away from the vessel. Or just build a ship to make full use of full-rotation turrets. Yes, this would have utility for some people, but I don't believe it's necessary. And if you want to do it, you probably can: if the main AI ship is pointing at the target, the missiles ought to be able to lock in as well, given that their locking is instantaneous. All they require is a momentary pass across the target vessel. So it ought to be possible to use a single-axis turret. Just assign the AI as a turret, hope and pray it stays that way, and activate it. Point ship in general direction and hope the turret goes bang. If not, add vertical motion capacity ... repeat test.
My point is this shouldn't need any coding changes, just construction techniques. Although a method of reducing bounding box collision-checks would be great...

 

[wanzer]

yes I know im horrible

and yes its to take out a unused axes
and its collision

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Ahhhhhh grammar and spelling mistakes!! AAGGGHH!
Used to be possible; not anymore

Unless my copy of the game is broken, (entirely possible) then your statement is False.

I've still got a few designs flying around, where the "vertical axis" (the gun) of the turret just doesn't exist, and the vicious little bastard AI in the "Horizontal Axis" (the base) constantly spews missiles/shotgun blasts at me.

Try building one with a swarmer. Mis/Mis/(literally any effect), and then blunder into it's rotation range. Suddenly, the Itano Circus has arrived!


I will note: These "one axis" turrets are much, much easier for a player to use, as the player can fly their ship a whole hell of a lot better than the AI can, including going so far as to not point their penis-boat directly towards the enemy.
And Strafing (flying sideways) in the event that they do face the enemy.

(The AI pilot is a half-lobotomized retard, and that's when it's trying to be smart.)

 

[DrTarDIS]

Unless my copy of the game is broken, (entirely possible) then your statement is False.

I've still got a few designs flying around, where the "vertical axis" (the gun) of the turret just doesn't exist, and the vicious little bastard AI in the "Horizontal Axis" (the base) constantly spews missiles/shotgun blasts at me.

Try building one with a swarmer. Mis/Mis/(literally any effect), and then blunder into it's rotation range. Suddenly, the Itano Circus has arrived!


I will note: These "one axis" turrets are much, much easier for a player to use, as the player can fly their ship a whole hell of a lot better than the AI can, including going so far as to not point their penis-boat directly towards the enemy.
And Strafing (flying sideways) in the event that they do face the enemy.

(The AI pilot is a half-lobotomized retard, and that's when it's trying to be smart.)

AFAIK AI can "bend" it's shots around 15 degrees off-axis of firing point, so locons have an even bigger "window" they can use(as well as having zero lock-on timer), cannons can "bend" up/down a small degree even without a second axis.

Hell, you can mount fairly large weapons systems without an axis(just a rail) and still have them fire with good piloting and "fire my target"

also: AI acts a lot smarter if you shove a push-passive on a logic clock into their blueprint, just sayin.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

AFAIK AI can "bend" it's shots around 15 degrees off-axis of firing point, so locons have an even bigger "window" they can use(as well as having zero lock-on timer), cannons can "bend" up/down a small degree even without a second axis.

Correct. the biggest thing here, is the AI allways (so long as you used a turret dock) gets the full 40~ish degree off-axis "shot cone" that a player' ship gets. And then it gets that +/- 15 degrees extra deviation. so it can, and sometimes has, fired a shot a full 65-85 degrees off-axis. (damn near sideways)

Meanwhile, the player is hard-locked to "aiming" straight down the core-camera, and does not get the shot cone. Worse, for a missile turret, the player can "lose" a lock-on, but the AI never does. (exception, the AI dies, or the target leaves)

 

[DrTarDIS]

Correct. the biggest thing here, is the AI allways (so long as you used a turret dock) gets the full 40~ish degree off-axis "shot cone" that a player' ship gets. And then it gets that +/- 15 degrees extra deviation. so it can, and sometimes has, fired a shot a full 65-85 degrees off-axis. (damn near sideways)

Meanwhile, the player is hard-locked to "aiming" straight down the core-camera, and does not get the shot cone. Worse, for a missile turret, the player can "lose" a lock-on, but the AI never does. (exception, the AI dies, or the target leaves)

Indeed. you can easily make a ship with one axis "dead-zone" that can (at long range) have GREAT 2-axis offensive power, stack of "pie plate" turrets to either side and just keep range and your front "mostly" pointed(Ie the varience of your own from ship aiming) at the target. Works just fine... if it's a large sector unmodified weapon server

Spoiler: TL DR: Long range helps firing arc

I think the "problem" with that is that most people play starmade like a WW2 plane simulator (or Apache, whatever) because "intuitively" people treat spacecraft like fighter planes or attack helicopters, while servers do NOT treat weapons systems with any coefficient balance.

Spoiler: People "need" to see "the whites of my enemy's eyes"

get a 10Km wide sector and all of a sudden ships are mere pixels wide at max range(to most people's 1080 resolutions), where at a 2 KM sector max range still lets you see a healthy chunk of ship. People "need" that extra degree of motion only because they instinctively want to see "the whites of my enemy's eyes" and want to bring the fight into "knife fight" range

 

[StarWars1981]

Recent versions of SM have eliminated the AI's cone-of-fire; the player can point weapons (only noticeable on ships with slower turning) up to 30* off-line with the bow of the ship; really noticeable with cannon, FYI. AI can no longer do that; if they cannot point at the target, they cannot fire on it. By recent I actually mean 4 months ago or more, if memory serves (it probably doesn't, but no matter, it was a while ago either way ). So if you want to build a turret like this, you can, but the hostile ship must fly into range of the turret. Lock-on missiles and heatseekers are NOT affected by this as much, because you can lock a target and have it just outside the locking circle as it shrinks; if it makes it inside the largest one, it will keep locking - oh btw, AI have an instant lockon, so if it's IN that circle to start, they WILL fire. Heatseekers don't NEED to track targets in a cone, if it passes their shot once, they fire - so do other AI weapons types.

DrTarDIS, there IS an advantage to being up close and personal: two, in fact. Hit chance (aiming better at a big target than a really little one), and critical damage. On SM, that's not quite as important, but good shots on turret mountings can bring them off the hull fairly easily, and unless they're self-powered (in which case, you have now made it WORSE for yourself, as it is now a free-floating, unrestricted, POWERED weapon system), they are now inactive and out of the fight. Also now secondary reactors or whatever it was called, I forget xD.

 

[DrTarDIS]

I'll admit I havn't "gone out of my hut" in the past 3 patches, just working on one ship in creative. So I could be wrong, but AFAIK

Recent versions of SM have eliminated the AI's cone-of-fire; the player can point weapons (only noticeable on ships with slower turning) up to 30* off-line with the bow of the ship; really noticeable with cannon, FYI. AI can no longer do that; if they cannot point at the target, they cannot fire on it. By recent I actually mean 4 months ago or more, if memory serves (it probably doesn't, but no matter, it was a while ago either way ). So if you want to build a turret like this, you can, but the hostile ship must fly into range of the turret.

that while ago docking change applied to players. In a turret or docked entity (eg ship) player's cursor became locked-to center. I've noticed AI turrets ignore that center limit by around an 1/8 turn, especially noticeable on flashy "rigid docked" systems like beams or colorful rapid cannon. beams especially can start in that 1/8 turn and travel well past it to "follow" their target for the duration of the discharge. Could also be network lag where relative positioning and rotation is, well, relative. It would give me the same "it's firing and hitting, that's how you draw it" even if the ship facing/server location is a little out of whack.
Versus truely wide targets the "i want to shoot this block" stubborness of AI can make the "start" of a beam cycle be quite outside that bit of fuzz at close range.

DrTarDIS, there IS an advantage to being up close and personal: two, in fact. Hit chance (aiming better at a big target than a really little one), and critical damage.

Yup, broadside of a barn at 20 paces is different than broadside of a barn at 2 km. I agree, and it's also why I like weapons co-effiecients balanced to 500m rapid cannons, 1km long beams, and 2km missiles. I say that because of the annoying tenancy of servers to have larger sectors = longer ranged guns = effective range is pushed out = I shoot at marbles(because ammo is infinite and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take).

On SM, that's not quite as important, but good shots on turret mountings can bring them off the hull fairly easily, and unless they're self-powered (in which case, you have now made it WORSE for yourself, as it is now a free-floating, unrestricted, POWERED weapon system), they are now inactive and out of the fight. Also now secondary reactors or whatever it was called, I forget xD.

depends on how you mount. I'm a fan of turrets that effectively "collar" the main ship, so their docks are usually rather deep in it's innards with the bulk of the systems "floating" outside the hull. I was thinking of doing it with one/more "fake ships" as the floating "barrel" /power/whatever sections to have a more intimidating looking fake-fleet formation waddayathink?


I DO agree with you though. Up close x-wing trench runs are fun. Seeing the whites of my enemy's eyes is far more viscerally gratifying, and "easier to be accurate" too.

 

[StarWars1981]

-snip- don't be lazy read it, it's right above this one

I was thinking of the usual turret mounting - right on the hull. But yeah, you can build it like that; I feel it takes up more interior volume than I'm comfortable giving up, especially on larger turrets (if you build this citadel to house a self-powering arrangement for the turret), but if you are already building large RP spaces or if you're literally docking a docker in there, then it might be worth it for the protection.
And yeah, everything is much better when you can see explosions. On LvD, sectors are huge, and weapons range out to 24 km on fast missiles; cannon are effective at nearly 8km, I think. It's so boring; fire missiles, wait, fire more, wait, blam, fire, blam, fire, wait, fire, blam, fire, etc. If you GET to cannon range, it's because you can outmaneuver the AI ships and WANT to. Also makes it hard to pick up loot from pirates and salvage player ships, given that they don't hang around the same spot for you. They tend to drift away, making the loot clouds near impossible to find. Also it's just more FUN to watch stuff burn off the hull.
And yeah, I recognize that turrets are glitchy like nothing else; however, as I recall, they were SET to have no deflection off the barrels' direction. Given that this is SM and those are weapons on turret mounts, yeah that doesn't matter much, they basically do what they want, xD. Some days, it works, most days, not quite, but nobody really notices. Or I could be wrong, it's been a while, but I'm almost certain that AI turrets no longer have the cone of fire around turret facing. Again with the glitches, they basically still have it.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

I say that because of the annoying tenancy of servers to have larger sectors = longer ranged guns = effective range is pushed out = I shoot at marbles(because ammo is infinite and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take).

Hmm, did that change in any of the last half a year's patches? because, last time I looked at it (about half a year ago), weapon ranges were hard-coded as a percentage of sector size.

Meaning servers with big sector sizes didn't have a choice about how long-ranged their weapons wound up being.
On the other hand, most of their players rejoiced, agreed not to be total dick-bags, and didn't use missiles as the end-all be-all of combat, precisely because "that shit's boring yo!"

Missile kills are boring.
Yes, even when the target has obscene amounts of PD coverage.

Missile kills allso tend to give smaller loot-clouds, when they actually give a loot cloud.
In a direct comparison of kills of the same type of enemy, 20 killed by cannon, 20 killed by missile, the missile kills were positively puny loot clouds, and about half of them didn't actually spawn a cloud. (to be fair, the overall amount of crap was roughly similar, but the variety was pitifull compared to cannon)
(EX: one of those missile kills gave 36,000 white hull tetra, the similarly sized cannon cloud? about 1k to 6k in 7 different things. most of which were non-hull, non-decorative blocks)

None of the test-dummies had thrust beyond that provided by the core, so "drift" wasn't a problem, and I even stayed in-sector, and abused Admin-teleport to "jump" to a nearby homebased station to do the examinations from. (and to drop-off all the items picked up from loot-clouds.)

 

[DrTarDIS]

Hmm, did that change in any of the last half a year's patches? because, last time I looked at it (about half a year ago), weapon ranges were hard-coded as a percentage of sector size.
Meaning servers with big sector sizes didn't have a choice about how long-ranged their weapons wound up being.

you don't say... funny..

Spoiler: starmade/customblockbehaviourconfig/customBlockBehaviorConfigTemplate.xml

<Cannon>
<BasicValues>
<Damage>10000000</Damage>
<Distance>1</Distance> <!-- 1 is equal to 100% sector radius -->
<Speed>100</Speed> <!-- In relation % to server max speed 1 = 100% -->
</BasicValues>
<Combination>
<Cannon>
<Damage style="nerf" linear="true" value="10" />
</Cannon>
<Pulse>
<Damage style="buff" value="15" linear="true" />
<Reload style="nerf" inverse="true" value="15" />
<Split style="skip" />
<PowerConsumption style="buff" linear="true" value="15" />
</Pulse>
</Combination>
</Cannon>

I think most server admins just don't read the instruction manual. Everything about weapon behavior is quite able to be altered. changed default sector size from 2km to 10km? WEapon values calculated via simple differential. Example solve off those cannon values: sector normally 2km wide, = "normal" 2km cannon range -> moved sector to 10km so to have a 2km cannon you have...<Distance>0.2</Distance> plugged into your block config. Voila, c'est fini.
Edit: FYI that ability has been there for admins since at least the old red/green docking system, and probably since shields were a single block and christ was a cowboy.

On the other hand, most of their players rejoiced, agreed not to be total dick-bags, and didn't use missiles as the end-all be-all of combat, precisely because "that shit's boring yo!"

Missile kills are boring.
Yes, even when the target has obscene amounts of PD coverage.

Missile kills allso tend to give smaller loot-clouds, when they actually give a loot cloud.
In a direct comparison of kills of the same type of enemy, 20 killed by cannon, 20 killed by missile, the missile kills were positively puny loot clouds, and about half of them didn't actually spawn a cloud. (to be fair, the overall amount of crap was roughly similar, but the variety was pitifull compared to cannon)
(EX: one of those missile kills gave 36,000 white hull tetra, the similarly sized cannon cloud? about 1k to 6k in 7 different things. most of which were non-hull, non-decorative blocks)

None of the test-dummies had thrust beyond that provided by the core, so "drift" wasn't a problem, and I even stayed in-sector, and abused Admin-teleport to "jump" to a nearby homebased station to do the examinations from. (and to drop-off all the items picked up from loot-clouds.)

FYI loot clouds, their variety and stack size are also just as tweakable if you are not a lazy "reedin' is fer nurdz" user.