Help Designing Potent Turret system for Huge 3km ship
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Gasboy
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Az14el
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whether 3km or 3k blocks, good turret design is something hard to get right I think.
Some tips;
-Aim for entirely self powered, the exception would be on ships well under the soft cap on power generation, this might make them seem bulky, but on any medium-large size ship it's going to take less blocks to fire that weapon if you put the power required in the base or barrel rather than the ship.
-one output per weapons computer, if you want more outputs then use another firing computer. Why? Because additional outputs per computer incur a power cost penalty. This doesn't have to affect AI turrets & drones since they can simply fire all their weapons computers at once with no limitations.
-Each output must be 'effective' before adding another output, there's a minimum/maximum damage required for a weapon output to be efficient for its power cost, and then all weapon types have diminishing returns on block damage as well. But this is only per hit, meaning there's sweet spots. Don't think my numbers are by any means perfect but some ideas for what I mean, that would be useful benchmarks for big turrets; Cannons - Aim for 2500 per hit (punch) or 10000 per hit (explosive), Missiles(beam support) - 140k per hit (Piercing), 480k per hit (explosive).
Haven't really played around with other combinations quite as much as these, so can't speak for them. Leaving roughly these numbers behind as block damage on large EMP & Ion weapon outputs is also pretty handy.
This is less important on punch missiles/beams (because moar punch is fucking amazing for killing armor hp, too amazing in fact), and can be thrown out the window with EMP & Ion other than for leaving a bit behind.
-Select fire is your friend. Your only friend. Because you killed all your other friends by selecting them too many times before you learned to turn them off/not select friendly shit. But holy shit select fire turrets are worth it. Use them, love them.
Some tips;
-Aim for entirely self powered, the exception would be on ships well under the soft cap on power generation, this might make them seem bulky, but on any medium-large size ship it's going to take less blocks to fire that weapon if you put the power required in the base or barrel rather than the ship.
-one output per weapons computer, if you want more outputs then use another firing computer. Why? Because additional outputs per computer incur a power cost penalty. This doesn't have to affect AI turrets & drones since they can simply fire all their weapons computers at once with no limitations.
-Each output must be 'effective' before adding another output, there's a minimum/maximum damage required for a weapon output to be efficient for its power cost, and then all weapon types have diminishing returns on block damage as well. But this is only per hit, meaning there's sweet spots. Don't think my numbers are by any means perfect but some ideas for what I mean, that would be useful benchmarks for big turrets; Cannons - Aim for 2500 per hit (punch) or 10000 per hit (explosive), Missiles(beam support) - 140k per hit (Piercing), 480k per hit (explosive).
Haven't really played around with other combinations quite as much as these, so can't speak for them. Leaving roughly these numbers behind as block damage on large EMP & Ion weapon outputs is also pretty handy.
This is less important on punch missiles/beams (because moar punch is fucking amazing for killing armor hp, too amazing in fact), and can be thrown out the window with EMP & Ion other than for leaving a bit behind.
-Select fire is your friend. Your only friend. Because you killed all your other friends by selecting them too many times before you learned to turn them off/not select friendly shit. But holy shit select fire turrets are worth it. Use them, love them.
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First of all: if you have a goal or a dream, and some dudes come around saying: thats not possible...well you did not ask why and how not to do it, didn't you? You asked how to do it, and stating then that its not possible does not really answer the question of yours. There is a difference between arguing about how something can or can not (!) be done, or telling someone his dream is bad and he should settle low. Just saying: hey 3km is going to kill any server, and the netcode is not able to support that many weapons firing at once is enough. I also see this question somewhat hypothetical, and arguing on and on that it just does not work is somewhat square imho.
Don't know what that is, but any turret combined with logic firing weapons does not work for what you want it to work.
-Has capability to completely lower shields/armor/structure without self firing (rotational will be non existent)
So you don't want to command the ship? Or do you not want to rotate/move the ship?
-Able to shoot all angles around the ship (need designs for this, maybe have them floating beside the ship?
If you want to cover all directions you allways will have only 25% of weapon damage because a 3km long ship allways has very big sides that are not able to allow turrets to cover more than one small field and no eyeball turret can help there because the sides are just too long.
-Must be able to hit targets from the other side of the sector (in case they are trying to out range me)
So only missile-beam and cannon-beam combinations are requested. Easy as cake: if you want to outrange enemies just use those 2 weapons in your turrets.
1. Opening shield drain Turrets, both long and short range.
Does work with a missile-beam-shielddrain turret, having those installed at the most exposed parts (as far as outside from the ship).
short range: haha either you ask what you need to be a fish, or you ask what you need to be a bird.
2. Turrets to keep shields from recharging quick
Just space your turrets. Second option is to enable them group by group so they dont fire all at once and the damage gets evenly distributed via this
3. Turrets to destroy armor as fast as possible+
4. Turrets to deal as much structural dmg as possible
5. Turrets that finally hit vital systems and core as efficiently as possible.
Again: if you don't want to get outranged you only use missile-beam.
The answers wont change unless you change your goals and reconsider: Do you persist on this holy ship that can't be outranged? If yes just use missile-beam. Most efficient for the purpose you said the ship has.
If you now want to think again about what you want to build: Every turret-strategy depends on the type of supporting fleet your flagship has and the type of enemy you are facing: One big ship, multiple ships, one big ship and many smaller ships.
You can either now stay on the fixed logic and requirements you have given with your starting request, and build the ship with missile-beam only, OR you try to approach the matter with answering my question: what is the ship for and how do you want to use it? Not what is the ship supposed to do, but what it faces and what it will be supported with - ofc it is supposed to damage shields, armor and bring down the core - that is the the ultimate endgoal and not specific at all because you just want it to do all at once. (You just said, to use my own words: Some big fucking ultraweapon that brings boom to everything everywhere everytime - sounds somewhat unrealistic if we are trying to play a balanced game or is it just me? :D)
-Also need a wepon system to self fire in case turrets bug out or something goes wrong. Only option here is missile/missile/X without having to aim.
Don't know what that is, but any turret combined with logic firing weapons does not work for what you want it to work.
-Has capability to completely lower shields/armor/structure without self firing (rotational will be non existent)
So you don't want to command the ship? Or do you not want to rotate/move the ship?
-Able to shoot all angles around the ship (need designs for this, maybe have them floating beside the ship?
If you want to cover all directions you allways will have only 25% of weapon damage because a 3km long ship allways has very big sides that are not able to allow turrets to cover more than one small field and no eyeball turret can help there because the sides are just too long.
-Must be able to hit targets from the other side of the sector (in case they are trying to out range me)
So only missile-beam and cannon-beam combinations are requested. Easy as cake: if you want to outrange enemies just use those 2 weapons in your turrets.
1. Opening shield drain Turrets, both long and short range.
Does work with a missile-beam-shielddrain turret, having those installed at the most exposed parts (as far as outside from the ship).
short range: haha either you ask what you need to be a fish, or you ask what you need to be a bird.
2. Turrets to keep shields from recharging quick
Just space your turrets. Second option is to enable them group by group so they dont fire all at once and the damage gets evenly distributed via this
3. Turrets to destroy armor as fast as possible+
4. Turrets to deal as much structural dmg as possible
5. Turrets that finally hit vital systems and core as efficiently as possible.
Again: if you don't want to get outranged you only use missile-beam.
The answers wont change unless you change your goals and reconsider: Do you persist on this holy ship that can't be outranged? If yes just use missile-beam. Most efficient for the purpose you said the ship has.
If you now want to think again about what you want to build: Every turret-strategy depends on the type of supporting fleet your flagship has and the type of enemy you are facing: One big ship, multiple ships, one big ship and many smaller ships.
You can either now stay on the fixed logic and requirements you have given with your starting request, and build the ship with missile-beam only, OR you try to approach the matter with answering my question: what is the ship for and how do you want to use it? Not what is the ship supposed to do, but what it faces and what it will be supported with - ofc it is supposed to damage shields, armor and bring down the core - that is the the ultimate endgoal and not specific at all because you just want it to do all at once. (You just said, to use my own words: Some big fucking ultraweapon that brings boom to everything everywhere everytime - sounds somewhat unrealistic if we are trying to play a balanced game or is it just me? :D)
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If he wants to build it, he can. Give advice for his turrets, please don't hijack the thread to say "DON"T BUILD IT".
That said, 3km is, I believe, a KILOMETER longer than what the devs have said is the biggest realistic vessel that can be built and not crash the best servers.
I'd suggest a 1km Titan, that's plenty, but hey, your call.
Turrets. Big, bad, and rail enhanced to the max. I'd suggest tons of outputs on cannons/beams capable of each destroying a few blocks. Rapid-fire is good; especially for AI of indeterminate accuracy. C-C-Punch is the one you hear about all the time; it's effective. I'd suggest Overdrive on small weapons, to keep block count down and raise damage quickly. Until you get to 100%, I BELIEVE OD blocks are more effective than more blocks of the primary system. Also, they don't affect Secondary block numbers; it's still the same percent of the main system.
Several somewhat larger turrets are better than dozens of smaller ones. To a point. If, when it swings around, it lags the server, you should split it into about 10 turrets of much MUCH smaller size. However, don't go overkill on the number of spinny cores on your ship, that's not good. For many reasons, first lag and second replacing them all after another Titan says hello.
Missiles are good. Cannons are good. Beams are good. Damage Pulse is a joke. I'd use a lot of long-range weapons (Missile-Beam, Cannon-Beam, Beam-Beam) to keep sniper vessels away; if you use missiles go for many outputs on individual computers, as turrets are AI controlled and can instant-fire all of them basically together, with no energy penalty for firing dozens off a single computer.
Suggested backups are Explosive for large weapons, punch-through on cannons, overdrive on beams, and explosive on most every missile. Micromissiles are not included for explosive; suggestion would be OD or Punch. Suggested size is 100 blocks primary for most anything; if you want to go bigger, you can, but an individual output with 100 blocks primary plus secondary/tertiary is pretty powerful on a decent scale, and can EASILY have multiple outputs added to give good punch without excessive size or cost to firepower when a single nuke is downed by AMS. Also suggested only to use Fast missiles (M/B), not Nukes unless you're running a ship capable of closing distance quickly to put one in from close range. Nuke is M/Pulse. Fast missiles get shot down by AMS less and take less time to get enemies away from you, and they still pack a crud ton of punch. My 240-block total missile setups (10-3-6 ratio of blocks, Prim/Sec/Tert) of M/B/E can cut off several thousand blocks in a couple 21-block spheres. Three are capable of creating a large hole. Six create a really freakin big hole. The same setup but with Pulse replacing Beam causes an absolutely enormous hole. Half the target ship, a not-insignificant vessel (LvD's Simeon), was blown away completely. The only limiting factor was the explosive tertiary's effect, which only allowed blast size to reach 21 blocks or so; it was like a thermal detonator off SW novels. They turn a 10m sphere (or so) into smoke and ash, but don't harm too much outside that, unless it's flammable. And they're not TOO expensive on power for a 250m, cruddy power setup, awful docked reactor (several months old) vessel. They DO sink its power significantly, but not in a crippling manner, even with insufficient regen (approx 1.6 mil on upwards of 60 mil cap).
And most of all, enjoy yourself. Giant craters are the best. Especially if you don't lag while watching them fly.
That said, 3km is, I believe, a KILOMETER longer than what the devs have said is the biggest realistic vessel that can be built and not crash the best servers.
I'd suggest a 1km Titan, that's plenty, but hey, your call.
Turrets. Big, bad, and rail enhanced to the max. I'd suggest tons of outputs on cannons/beams capable of each destroying a few blocks. Rapid-fire is good; especially for AI of indeterminate accuracy. C-C-Punch is the one you hear about all the time; it's effective. I'd suggest Overdrive on small weapons, to keep block count down and raise damage quickly. Until you get to 100%, I BELIEVE OD blocks are more effective than more blocks of the primary system. Also, they don't affect Secondary block numbers; it's still the same percent of the main system.
Several somewhat larger turrets are better than dozens of smaller ones. To a point. If, when it swings around, it lags the server, you should split it into about 10 turrets of much MUCH smaller size. However, don't go overkill on the number of spinny cores on your ship, that's not good. For many reasons, first lag and second replacing them all after another Titan says hello.
Missiles are good. Cannons are good. Beams are good. Damage Pulse is a joke. I'd use a lot of long-range weapons (Missile-Beam, Cannon-Beam, Beam-Beam) to keep sniper vessels away; if you use missiles go for many outputs on individual computers, as turrets are AI controlled and can instant-fire all of them basically together, with no energy penalty for firing dozens off a single computer.
Suggested backups are Explosive for large weapons, punch-through on cannons, overdrive on beams, and explosive on most every missile. Micromissiles are not included for explosive; suggestion would be OD or Punch. Suggested size is 100 blocks primary for most anything; if you want to go bigger, you can, but an individual output with 100 blocks primary plus secondary/tertiary is pretty powerful on a decent scale, and can EASILY have multiple outputs added to give good punch without excessive size or cost to firepower when a single nuke is downed by AMS. Also suggested only to use Fast missiles (M/B), not Nukes unless you're running a ship capable of closing distance quickly to put one in from close range. Nuke is M/Pulse. Fast missiles get shot down by AMS less and take less time to get enemies away from you, and they still pack a crud ton of punch. My 240-block total missile setups (10-3-6 ratio of blocks, Prim/Sec/Tert) of M/B/E can cut off several thousand blocks in a couple 21-block spheres. Three are capable of creating a large hole. Six create a really freakin big hole. The same setup but with Pulse replacing Beam causes an absolutely enormous hole. Half the target ship, a not-insignificant vessel (LvD's Simeon), was blown away completely. The only limiting factor was the explosive tertiary's effect, which only allowed blast size to reach 21 blocks or so; it was like a thermal detonator off SW novels. They turn a 10m sphere (or so) into smoke and ash, but don't harm too much outside that, unless it's flammable. And they're not TOO expensive on power for a 250m, cruddy power setup, awful docked reactor (several months old) vessel. They DO sink its power significantly, but not in a crippling manner, even with insufficient regen (approx 1.6 mil on upwards of 60 mil cap).
And most of all, enjoy yourself. Giant craters are the best. Especially if you don't lag while watching them fly.
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Nice reading comprehension. I was talking about anti-missile turrets, which using a few cannon/missile outputs to supplement the main cannon/cannon can make them quite effective at shooting down clumps of missiles, and using a cannon/beam will make it start targeting at longer ranges. Obviously for the main turrets only use one weapon, if for no other reason then it might end up shooting down its own missiles.
Mariux
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A 3mil. block ship took me 7 months to build back in the day when we didn't even have all that many blocks for detailing and detailing itself was quite primitive (remember how popular ship ribbing was). Expect the full build to take AT LEAST 2 years if you're going for decent level of detail AND you are willing to work 4-ish hours a day on average. If it's something you really want to to do, go ahead, nobody is stopping you, but if you lose motivation halfway through the project you will have wasted many hours that could be spent elsewhere.
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So that's the reason why I only do small projects as newbie. Even after 50 hours of gameplay I am still figuring out how to make nice details and turrets and small salvagers. But with each small object, like a walkway or a small radar bowl, I get faster in building, because I have a set catalog of copy and paste stuff and can alternate it, or a set design in my mind because I allready did something simmilar.
Mariux
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After first week, experiment with various weapon combos and basic interiors and detailing. After first month, try building your first frigate and commit to it 100%. It is amazing what a bit of patience and research can do even if you are a newbie.
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I did it the other way around. The first week I only used creative and made a 10k big ship with like 15 turrets attached to it. Then I made one 1k sized fighter, spawned 5 of it and flew that fleet to the next pirate station. :D After this I figured out how the combat mechanics worked I wanted to build smaller and detailed.But still that 5 hours I spent to understand how the stuff about turrets, energy and weapons worked were neccessary to understand the scale and that it is totally okay to build small for the start.
Gasboy
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Ring turrets ("rings on a finger" as someone else here said) on a long thin ship should pretty much allow all the ship's firepower to be directed in any direction.
(And a 3km ship that is only 100m blocks large will be pretty long and thin)
If it's a cylinder, it would be only 200 blocks wide. If it's a square, it would be about 182 per side. That's really, really, really, small. Your turrets would look way out of proportion, unless they were really small. You gotta change one of the values.
[doublepost=1476153669,1476153261][/doublepost]For reference, an unsharpenned pencil is about a quarter inch wide, and 7 and a half inches long. To get the ratio you're talking about, you would need to lay two pencils end to end to get that ratio. Just try it and see how bad that is. It's such a stick!
[doublepost=1476153708][/doublepost]Sry, I got carried away with finding a "real life example". Hope it worked
This accually reminds me of a lot of design. Turning the ship is when things start looking a bit funky. makes me wish we had a way to add axils. space truckers, doom trains
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You're a bit off
It's an aspect ratio of 15:1, which is about half of one of your pencils, not two of them.
But the ratio of a pencil is about 0.03, and the ratio of the Titan would be about 0.06.... Oh. Nvm. I got it. Yea. You're right.You're a bit off
It's an aspect ratio of 15:1, which is about half of one of your pencils, not two of them.
Edymnion
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Okay, since all warnings of "Don't build it that big" are being ignored, might as well help with the turrets.
Here's how I design my large ship turrets.
Damage:
1) Backbone - Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough and Cannon/Cannon/Stop
I call these my backbone because I consider them to be the main body of my defenses. Lots of Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough, and I mean lots of them. So that a single opposing ship never has less than 3-4 of these that can target it at any given time. The idea here is basically a DOT (Damage Over Time), a steady stream of fire that constantly whittles the opponent away. Big super damage missiles are nice, but the reload on them is generally long enough that I get more overall damage out of my cannon turrets than anything else.
I usually do a single Cannon/Cannon/Stop (with Stop at 100%) down the middle, and 4 Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough surrounding it in each turret. The AI has a lot of trouble aiming two different types of weapon, but these are identical except for the tertiary so there's no problem. Helps the cannon slow things down and pin them to the sky so that the rest of the cannons can punch a corridor sized hole into the target.
2) Decoys - Missile/Cannon/Explosive
Missile spam is the name of this game. Its not great against small fast moving fighters (unless they're getting pinned by the stop cannon above), but that isn't their goal. Their primary goal is to absolutely fill the sky with missiles. I usually have 3-4 batteries per turret to give rapid fire coverage. The idea is to initially overwhelm point defense by having more missiles flying than they can handle, in order to give the bigger missiles (covered next) a much better chance of getting through. However, the steady stream does much the same as the Cannon/Cannon once its hitting the target, just a heavy constant stream of damage melting through the hull.
3) Big Guns - Missile/Beam/Explosive
I go with /Beam instead of /Pulse. Pulse makes bigger booms, but the missiles fly slower and take forever to reload. /Beam does less damage, but the missiles are lightning fast and much harder to shoot down. The trick I use on these though is that I have one massive missile as the primary damage, and then flank it with little baby 1/1 Missile/Beam outputs half a dozen blocks or so ahead of the main output. These serve as decoys as PDT tend to go for the nearest missile first, so that gives me two decoy missiles flying in formation just a few meters in front of the real one as a last ditch attempt to save the main payload.
Ratio wise, I try to use these at 4:2:1, aka for every big gun I have two decoys, and for every decoy I have two backbones. On top of that, I also like to have a defensive PDT close to each turret. Its a holdover from when turrets were exposed at 50% shields, but I still do it out of mostly overkill. If my shields are down, I don't want any missiles targeting my turrets.
Crippling:
1) Power - Beam/Cannon/EMP
In my experience, most ships (especially larger ones) do not have sufficient power generation. Oh sure they have lots of battery power, but often times they install only enough power generation to let them run all their stuff at the same time. That means they have a razor thin margin, and a good strong EMP weapon can easily tip the scale to where their shield regen/weapons/thrusters/etc work against them, draining their batteries faster than power gen can restore them. And once you can tank their power, the fight is basically over. No power means no more shields, no more weapons, they're just a big old sitting duck
2) Shields - Beam/Cannon/Ion
These are less about actually collapsing the enemy's shields and more about making sure they stay in constant regeneration status. Regenerating shields suck power like crazy, and as stated above your ship stops working when you're out of power. Don't get me wrong, they're great at collapsing shields too, but odds are you're going to get most of that you need from your offensive turrets, this is to me mostly to ensure a steady drain that they just can't stop.
Personally I merge the power and shield aspects into a single turret to make finding space for them easier. Lot like I do with the stop cannon, just with the EMP beam being the main gun and some secondary Ions for harassment.
Defense:
1) PDTs - Cannon/Cannon
Simple 1/1 Cannon/Cannon turrets set to Aim at Missiles. Some people like to add in some cannon/beam here and there for long range sniper shots, but in my experience the low hit rate means those are unlikely to actually hit the missile before they come into range of the cannon/cannon, and its all about throwing as many shells into the sky as you can. Pure spray and pray seems to be the most effective anti-missile tactic for me.
In fact, I usually have so many PDTs that I've actually designed a low profile turret (only stands 1 block high above the hull) that looks like a giant rivet so that I can just put them EVERYWHERE without making the ship look bad. Did I make a big armor plate looking structure somewhere? PDT rivets in every corner to look like they're holding the thing in place while also giving crazy amounts of point defense.
2) Anti Boarding - Fixed Cannon/Cannon
If you're building a titan, odds are you're going to get boarded at some point. A fixed turret (a turret on a single axis that has the barrel locked in place so it can't move) still has a 30 degree field of fire, which makes it ideal for shooting down corridors/hallways. If you've got any long straight hallways, put a fixed cannon/cannon at each end powerful enough to one shot an astronaut. Don't go all RP friendly "let them figure out its there and have a fair chance to get around it", just freaking vaporize them on the spot. You could use beam/cannon for a more solid lock, but that just paints an obvious line right back to the turret. Cannons make it harder to follow them back to the source for any secondary players who are watching that first one's head explode.
Some people like to have pulse turrets hidden behind the walls for this, but especially when crews come out I don't want them hit by friendly fire (as much).
Pro Tips:
1) 1:1 Ratio Output/Computer
Never have more than one output linked to a single computer. You get a power tax of 10% for every additional output a computer controls, and the AI can fire all of it's computers at once (unlike us humans that have to fire one at a time). If your turret has 4 outputs, it needs 4 sets of computers. You save a TON of power that way.
2) One type of weapon per turret
Each turret must be only cannons, beams, or missiles. Never mix and match. And never mix/match missile types on a single turret either. Reason being that the AI is, in a word, stupid. A cannon shot takes a few seconds to reach the target, a beam is instant. If you have both on one turret, the AI won't be able to switch the aim back and forth between shots. It will either lead the target for the cannons, and make the beams miss, aim at the target directly for the beams and make the cannons miss, or more often than not shoot somewhere in between and make them both miss. Same goes for the missiles, different missile types have different missile speeds, if you have dumbfire missiles with different speeds on the same turret, the AI will miss more often than not.
3) Self Power Smaller Turrets
I mentioned above about the fight being over when your power is gone and your weapons stop firing. Thats not entirely true for turrets. If your turret generates enough power to cover it's own firing needs, it can keep running even when the main ship is dead. Power gets pulled up from the main ship to the turrets, not the other way around. If the turret can power itself, it can keep firing without pulling from the main ship, which means it can't be indirectly shut down by the main ship losing power. It makes the turret bulkier, but a good build can hide that power generation in the turret base that recesses into the hull of the mother ship if need be to hide it.
Thats going to be impractical for big guns, but the cannons and maybe the missile/cannon turrets will likely be small enough (power requirement wise) to run themselves.
Here's how I design my large ship turrets.
Damage:
1) Backbone - Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough and Cannon/Cannon/Stop
I call these my backbone because I consider them to be the main body of my defenses. Lots of Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough, and I mean lots of them. So that a single opposing ship never has less than 3-4 of these that can target it at any given time. The idea here is basically a DOT (Damage Over Time), a steady stream of fire that constantly whittles the opponent away. Big super damage missiles are nice, but the reload on them is generally long enough that I get more overall damage out of my cannon turrets than anything else.
I usually do a single Cannon/Cannon/Stop (with Stop at 100%) down the middle, and 4 Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough surrounding it in each turret. The AI has a lot of trouble aiming two different types of weapon, but these are identical except for the tertiary so there's no problem. Helps the cannon slow things down and pin them to the sky so that the rest of the cannons can punch a corridor sized hole into the target.
2) Decoys - Missile/Cannon/Explosive
Missile spam is the name of this game. Its not great against small fast moving fighters (unless they're getting pinned by the stop cannon above), but that isn't their goal. Their primary goal is to absolutely fill the sky with missiles. I usually have 3-4 batteries per turret to give rapid fire coverage. The idea is to initially overwhelm point defense by having more missiles flying than they can handle, in order to give the bigger missiles (covered next) a much better chance of getting through. However, the steady stream does much the same as the Cannon/Cannon once its hitting the target, just a heavy constant stream of damage melting through the hull.
3) Big Guns - Missile/Beam/Explosive
I go with /Beam instead of /Pulse. Pulse makes bigger booms, but the missiles fly slower and take forever to reload. /Beam does less damage, but the missiles are lightning fast and much harder to shoot down. The trick I use on these though is that I have one massive missile as the primary damage, and then flank it with little baby 1/1 Missile/Beam outputs half a dozen blocks or so ahead of the main output. These serve as decoys as PDT tend to go for the nearest missile first, so that gives me two decoy missiles flying in formation just a few meters in front of the real one as a last ditch attempt to save the main payload.
Ratio wise, I try to use these at 4:2:1, aka for every big gun I have two decoys, and for every decoy I have two backbones. On top of that, I also like to have a defensive PDT close to each turret. Its a holdover from when turrets were exposed at 50% shields, but I still do it out of mostly overkill. If my shields are down, I don't want any missiles targeting my turrets.
Crippling:
1) Power - Beam/Cannon/EMP
In my experience, most ships (especially larger ones) do not have sufficient power generation. Oh sure they have lots of battery power, but often times they install only enough power generation to let them run all their stuff at the same time. That means they have a razor thin margin, and a good strong EMP weapon can easily tip the scale to where their shield regen/weapons/thrusters/etc work against them, draining their batteries faster than power gen can restore them. And once you can tank their power, the fight is basically over. No power means no more shields, no more weapons, they're just a big old sitting duck
2) Shields - Beam/Cannon/Ion
These are less about actually collapsing the enemy's shields and more about making sure they stay in constant regeneration status. Regenerating shields suck power like crazy, and as stated above your ship stops working when you're out of power. Don't get me wrong, they're great at collapsing shields too, but odds are you're going to get most of that you need from your offensive turrets, this is to me mostly to ensure a steady drain that they just can't stop.
Personally I merge the power and shield aspects into a single turret to make finding space for them easier. Lot like I do with the stop cannon, just with the EMP beam being the main gun and some secondary Ions for harassment.
Defense:
1) PDTs - Cannon/Cannon
Simple 1/1 Cannon/Cannon turrets set to Aim at Missiles. Some people like to add in some cannon/beam here and there for long range sniper shots, but in my experience the low hit rate means those are unlikely to actually hit the missile before they come into range of the cannon/cannon, and its all about throwing as many shells into the sky as you can. Pure spray and pray seems to be the most effective anti-missile tactic for me.
In fact, I usually have so many PDTs that I've actually designed a low profile turret (only stands 1 block high above the hull) that looks like a giant rivet so that I can just put them EVERYWHERE without making the ship look bad. Did I make a big armor plate looking structure somewhere? PDT rivets in every corner to look like they're holding the thing in place while also giving crazy amounts of point defense.
2) Anti Boarding - Fixed Cannon/Cannon
If you're building a titan, odds are you're going to get boarded at some point. A fixed turret (a turret on a single axis that has the barrel locked in place so it can't move) still has a 30 degree field of fire, which makes it ideal for shooting down corridors/hallways. If you've got any long straight hallways, put a fixed cannon/cannon at each end powerful enough to one shot an astronaut. Don't go all RP friendly "let them figure out its there and have a fair chance to get around it", just freaking vaporize them on the spot. You could use beam/cannon for a more solid lock, but that just paints an obvious line right back to the turret. Cannons make it harder to follow them back to the source for any secondary players who are watching that first one's head explode.
Some people like to have pulse turrets hidden behind the walls for this, but especially when crews come out I don't want them hit by friendly fire (as much).
Pro Tips:
1) 1:1 Ratio Output/Computer
Never have more than one output linked to a single computer. You get a power tax of 10% for every additional output a computer controls, and the AI can fire all of it's computers at once (unlike us humans that have to fire one at a time). If your turret has 4 outputs, it needs 4 sets of computers. You save a TON of power that way.
2) One type of weapon per turret
Each turret must be only cannons, beams, or missiles. Never mix and match. And never mix/match missile types on a single turret either. Reason being that the AI is, in a word, stupid. A cannon shot takes a few seconds to reach the target, a beam is instant. If you have both on one turret, the AI won't be able to switch the aim back and forth between shots. It will either lead the target for the cannons, and make the beams miss, aim at the target directly for the beams and make the cannons miss, or more often than not shoot somewhere in between and make them both miss. Same goes for the missiles, different missile types have different missile speeds, if you have dumbfire missiles with different speeds on the same turret, the AI will miss more often than not.
3) Self Power Smaller Turrets
I mentioned above about the fight being over when your power is gone and your weapons stop firing. Thats not entirely true for turrets. If your turret generates enough power to cover it's own firing needs, it can keep running even when the main ship is dead. Power gets pulled up from the main ship to the turrets, not the other way around. If the turret can power itself, it can keep firing without pulling from the main ship, which means it can't be indirectly shut down by the main ship losing power. It makes the turret bulkier, but a good build can hide that power generation in the turret base that recesses into the hull of the mother ship if need be to hide it.
Thats going to be impractical for big guns, but the cannons and maybe the missile/cannon turrets will likely be small enough (power requirement wise) to run themselves.
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And with ring turrets you might as well make the base out of power gens and caps. () are round each one.
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Use power batteries inside the ship. On the docking chain it should look like that : Main ship => Battery => Turrets.
You just add something between the ship and the turrets that produce the power needed. It helps on certain cases when you can't get the size needed to produce enough power on the turret base.