How do turrets work?

[Edymnion]

I mean besides the obvious "give 'em guns, a bobby AI, and make sure you turn it on".

I'm building a large ship where I'm going to need turrets simply because my turning radius will be measured in sectors, but I don't want obviously visible turrets because they spoil the aesthetic I'm going for. So the answer I'm looking at are recessed turrets, turrets docked in holes in the main hull with as little of the actual turret sticking up past the hull line as possible.

So my initial questions are:

1) How does a turret determine line of sight? I know a turret won't fire on something it can't "see", but where is that line of sight determined from? Is it from the core (which is always at the very bottom of a turret), is it from the Bobby AI (which I could place towards the top of the turret), or is it from the business end of the gun?

2) Are there ways to restrict the movement of a turret so that it will only fire in one direction and not bother trying to track other targets? Such as, if I made a tube into the hull of the front of my ship and put a homing missile turret in the back of the tube so that the mothership blocked everything but straight ahead, would the turret only fire on things directly in front of me? If I use a docking port instead of a turret port, would that lock the turret in place but still allow it to fire?

Namely I'm making a Star Trek themed ship, and I want to build things like fore and aft torpedo launchers as turrets, and have beam turrets that don't stand out against the rest of the hull. I've seen some pictures of where people have basically build square turrets filling the docking cube and then walled them up just outside of the docking box dimensions to where it looks like they shouldn't be able to turn (though I assume they just clip through the walls).

Just trying to get a grip on not just what the turrets can do, but how they do them so I can make better designs.
[DOUBLEPOST=1429824670,1429824298][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh yeah,

3) Does rotating the Bobby AI change which way the turret considers to be "forwards"? As in if I set it down normally and build guns pointing towards the front of the ship, I can see the pointy end turn to face the target before firing. Does rotating the Bobby AI and pointing it up make it look out away from the ship as the default instead of down the length of it, or would it consider whatever direction the guns fire in (as in, rotate the weapon computer) as the "front" of the turret?

 

[CyberTao]

Rotating BobbyAI does not affect direction of firing, forwards is always decided by the core afaik.

As for question 1 and 2, AI does not give a damn currently. I've noticed it fired at the host ship before, and it has even hit other turrets on the same ship (whether or not they did any damage varied what exactly was hit). The next major update contains rails and moving parts though, including bits needed for a new turret system that does not clip through ships. Perhaps that system will allow you to do the fore/aft turrets, but I don't believe you can with the current system without derpy measures.

 

[BiGEdge]

With the new updates coming with the new rail system you can build expandable Turrets, if you need them to be hidden.
You can let them extend pushing the button, and maybe a gate opens and the turret pops out.
The old Turret docking system will be needless because of the possibilitys of the new system.
And with that comes a Change in Shield supporting your turrets.
When i understood it right, its like when the main ship drops down below 50% the shields of the turrets went out.
but the turrets have got 50% Shield support when its shields are at 100%. Punch if i understood the system wrong.
But there will be an option to change the percantages in the serverconfigs.
Everything of that is in the dev builds right now, and i smell, that there is a huge Rail and movement and Logic update officially coming.
Maybe it will be tagged as V0.20.

But when it comes all of your suggestions become pointless.

Im so exited

 

[Edymnion]

Well thats all well and good for the nebulous point in the future, but how is it working now?

Granted, it takes me an hour of mining just to get enough mats to make enough armor for one or two rows of hull on this thing, so the new turrets may be out by the time I even need to worry about them, but right now is what I'm looking to understand. I'll learn the new system when its officially out there.

So what does happen if you put a turret on a regular docking block and activate it right now?

 

[Tydeth]

1. Considering the AI always goes for that target ship core(unless set to kill missiles and is aiming at them instead), it's probable that it draws LOS from its own core. That's something that will require testing, both before and after the rails system in case the new turret mechanics changed anything.

If I use a docking port instead of a turret port, would that lock the turret in place but still allow it to fire?

Yes. Forward and backward fixed guns are the easiest to do with this method; docking ports facing up or sideways will dock the thing pointing forwards, while docking ports placed with the box down make the docked ship dock backwards.

Unfortunately, AI is stupid about not-forward-facing direct-fire weapons; I've seen an enemy point straight at me but fire its weapon backwards because the ship had backwards-facing weapons computer for aesthetics and it was made before the update that made weapons shoot based on computer facing.

The current dock mechanics mean fixed-docked turrets will have the choice of forward, backwards, or down. I don't recall if docking ports with the box-projecting side facing in front of the ship makes the docked vessel point up, or if it's also down. The new rails docking system will allow far more directional control for fixed docks, and won't have the half-block gap.

 

[Thalanor]

While asking questions is never wrong, if you really make a ship that large -- just wait for the docking/rails update for the finer parts, and do decoration/hull/systems/etc in the meantime. Once you see what the new update can do (you can already look up some things people did in devmode) you will not want to use a single outdated docking module on your ship anymore. The possiblities are amazing and endless; especially since you will be able to let the ship transform between an "aesthetics" and a "battle/turret" mode for example.

I plan to use rails to an extend that lets my ships switch between two modes: slim, elegant, good-looking for travelling warpgates and in friendly territory, and a combat mode where things are moved to make way for turrets and aesthetics become secondary.

 

[Phocian]

( LATEST DEV BUILD QUESTION)

Hi guys,

I have encountered a problem.... One that logic hasn't solved.

I have a turret that is stored in the hull, it raises up through a retangluar hole and here is the problem. After the AI engages a target I need it to return the its original position so that it can be packed away.

I have tried rotating blocks but they only rotate from the current facing, tried switching to a forward rail block via activation and nothing happens..

Stumped atm anyone else solved this ?

Best,

Pho

 

[koksvik]

As of right now you cant make your turret railed or docked, only target certain ship i na scertain line BUT, you can if you use railed turret, AKA turret made using the rail docker, put down a block on the routain path of the turret to make it impossaible for it to fire in that diractiom, toh i will still try and target those ships!

here is a video showing how to block rotation of rail turrets


Good luck with your ship!