Questions on turrets

[Shoukaku]

I'm building a main line Battleship/Dreadnought that is the main type of ship of my fleet, but I need help on choosing what setups I should use. This Ship is planned to have massive Anti fighter Suite, anti Star base/Capital ship Suites and deal massive damage via said Suites. However whenever I tried making turrets they did abysmal damage. What set ups do you recommend? I was planning to have the ship use Cannons, Beams and Missiles (Two variants: A Missile Pod variant and a Vertical type (Think of those missile launchers on Arleigh Burke Class destroyers the US has) ) but I need to make sure it deals enough damage so that I don't have to cover the entire ship in turrets that would lag the server. Sure the ship is going to be massive, but I would rather not have the entire hull clustered with too many turrets. Also What are the pros and cons for "High-Angle" Turrets? (Yes I was planning with using them for the anti fighter Suite) Hmm... I guess I should also mention the size....... Perhaps about 8-9/10 of a Super star destroyer or so?

 

[Panpiper]

I would strongly advise against using beams for anything other than an anti shield ion beam, and even that is seriously iffy for a large, slow moving titan, as it could take you a while to get in range, by which time it may be moot. If you do make such an ion beam, make it beam/beam/ion in equal measure, you want the range. Because you are slow, you will not be able to pick your range very often, except maybe versus stations. You should plan accordingly.

Stations will always be armed with maximum range missiles (missile/beam). You may think this is a good reason to go with closer ranged weaponry, but your slowness will mean it will take time to get in range, all of which time you will be under fire. I would recommend going heavy either all in with maximum range missiles yourself, or with a mix of such missiles along with cannon/beam/punch turrets, leaning more towards the missiles. Make sure you've got really good point defense so you can win a missile war. Make sure you've got a good quantity of tiny decoy missiles firing along with your heavy offensive ones, to bait your enemy's point defense.

Put maximum power on your ship, make sure you've got insane quantities of power capacitor storage (and that your surplus power is sufficient to fill it), and calculate how many modules you'll need in missiles to use up that stored power every 45 seconds. Factor in of course the power requirements and storage for your cannon/beam turrets as well.

The main reason most people's ships can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag is because they don't have enough power. Don't make that mistake. Figure out how to have insane quantities of power and then use all of it. To give you an idea, my 350K mass battleminer generates 80 million power per second. That's not capacitor storage, that's what it generates. Don't do like most people and figure that a couple of auxiliary power sections will do the trick. Your combat power is 100% dependant on how much power you can generate.

A large ship should be able to easily accommodate turrets with 4000 weapon modules or more, especially if you build ball turrets. Though if you are wanting to keep the turret numbers down, you might want to increase the weapon module count well beyond that.

Offensive missiles (not the decoys) should be built with at least 150 modules of missile/beam/explosive in equal measure. I usually make them quite a bit bigger than that (450 total), to make sure they can handle multiple layers of armor. Remember that if you are putting these in turrets, there is absolutely no reason you can't have multiple missiles firing from the same turret. Also remember to have decoy missiles mixed in with them.

Cannon/beam/punch should also be used in equal measure for the guns. Those do not need to be particularly large to break advanced armor, as little as 100 modules will do. Your turrets should break up the volume you have available for such cannon weapon modules into several smaller weapons lest you build a weapon that will punch only a single tiny hole, right through your enemy ship. That may sound great, and it is if you get lucky and hole an aux reactor, but a whole lot of your potential damage in that instance would be wasted into space, on the other side of your enemy. Best to punch multiple holes.

 

[Shoukaku]

I already had plans on having multiple (Massive) Power cores, all in "L" Shapes, Although I might add corridors and stuff Power gen, power capacity shields capacity, shield gen would take About 90% of the inside of the ship , about lets say 70% of that is Power. (Please note that the Power cores would be massive and probably be too packed to be able to be an actual room) and I was also planning to have a triple hull wall (Hull/Shield Gen/Hull)
I guess I should Have some Smaller rapid fire cannon turret dedicated to Missile defense in multiple locations on the ship? as I suppose I don't have to worry about damage for anti missiles turrets. I'm hoping to have at least 100m power regen but that might be a stretch :3 I'm putting Secondary reactors under the main battery turrets and places where I know I won't be putting any corridors, shield generation, thrust which I'm sure I will need a lot of, or Hangers.

 

[Panpiper]

Try to make your power auxiliaries groups of 9800 to 10K modules for maximum efficiency. The shape doesn't affect their power generation, but could affect how they explode if (expect 'when' if you get into a slug fest with another titan) they get damaged. Some people are sticking bulkheads of advanced armor between such aux reactors to keep explosions from migrating from one to another. Another way of doing it is to put five layers of shield capacitors or regenerators between each such auxiliary reactor.

I am a huge fan of thrust. My 35oK mass battleminer has a thrust to mass ratio of 1.7 to 1! (That is an insane amount of thrust for a ship that size.) However large ships pay a very steep price for having a high thrust. Fully half of that 80 million per second power that ship generates is used just for thrust. (!!!) For a battleminer, that was a price I was willing to pay, as being maneuverable is a necessity for a miner you'll be moving a lot. However for a titan scale warship, you are probably better off closer to a 1 to 1 thrust to mass ratio. I am sure many if not most might go for less than that. The thing to keep in mind though is that whomever has the most thrust to mass, is going to be controlling the range. That makes the thrust decision not just one of personal preference, but also strategic.

You absolutely want to have small rapid fire cannon for point defense. These can be 'really' small, as missiles only have 1 hit point. A 1/1 cannon/cannon is all most people use for such point defense turrets. Do not use anything other than cannon for anti-missile, as beams and other weapons have no effect versus missiles, only cannons can shoot them down. Have lots of them. My battleminer has 56 of them.

Spoiler

Most people do not bother protecting their AMS (Anti Missile System), point defense turrets. They expect them to die the instant shields go down, and they do. Theirs do at least, but it is a self fulfilling prophesy. They expect them to die, so they make no effort to protect them, and so therefor, they die fast. I disagree wholeheartedly with this. Most point defense turrets in fact get blown off of ships not by direct hits but by splash damage from nearby hits. An armored shell can very effectively protect a point defense turret from being blown off by such damage. In fact many people's direct fire cannons and such do insufficient damage to penetrate an advanced armor block with a single hit. They are more than capable of destroying the typical undefended PD turret, but not an armored one. Versus an armored turret, they'll usually have to hit the armor block multiple times. I build armored point defense turrets.

Another thing to include absolutely without fail is defensive passives. Have full ion effect at 60%. This is not optional if you are intending to have any sort of decent shields (and for a ship using serious turrets, shields are a must). If you are going armor heavy, also include full 25% pierce protection and strongly consider adding full 25% punch protection as well. Full defensive ion will take a fair quantity of modules and power (but is very much worth it). Full defensive pierce and punch protection takes substantially less modules and power (and is also very much worth it).

 

[Shoukaku]

Would something like this be viable? Of course the turret itself will be armored too, but you get the picture. Hypothetically for me is splash damage would get at least partially absorbed by that ring around turret reducing damage to the turret itself and making it harder to go after the rail docker itself.

 

[Panpiper]

Any cannon/cannon turret will do the job for point defense. However multiple barrels actually will not improve hit probability. The AI automatically focus fires all the barrels onto a single point, which will either hit or miss. The only thing you really need is maximum rate of fire so you have the maximum number of hit probabilities, that and plenty of turrets. On a large ship where a few extra blocks will have negligible impact on performance, there is no real reason not to have multiple (small) barrels for cosmetic reasons if you want, and it is just remotely possible that having a few extra barrels might mean one survives turret damage so the turret keeps doing it's job.

 

[kurosawa]

there are various turrets on the community portal, there might be some to your liking that you can pick apart
Community Content | StarMade Dock

It's should also be noted that 350K mass is quite big. in comparison i made a 50x120x50 solid adv armor block just to see when i hit 75K mass

 

[Calhoun]

At the size you're building, it's a rare moment when you can fire your main weapons. This basically means the majority of your damage will come from turrets.

I always recommend Ball turrets, as they're the most efficient turrets at the moment, with at least half the turret below the hull line. For the same footprint a ball turret has significantly greater internal volume (when built right).

There's at least 4 different types of turret you'll want. Point defence, Shield Killers (usually an ion Cannon or Beam), block damage, and anti fighter (smaller can-can turrets).

 

[Shoukaku]

I'm fully aware of a titan/dreadnought (whatever people call them these days) has horrible turn rate, and its main weapons are slated for being turrets Albeit being massive for anti Capital ship/Space Station Combat. Anti fighter Turrets will be "High angle" turrets to maximize Area coverage and will be Cannons/Pulse (or something) and lock on missiles (I can afford it being slightly big as it will have the space compared to a certain mother ship that had a ring shaped hull that is currently on hold atm, Point defense is a definite Cannon/Cannon Setup but it will definitely be smaller than anti fighter turrets. The Anti Capital Ship turrets probably won't be high angle unless you would recommend it? It won't have that much... like about 4-5 Main guns but they will have missile/beam setups Something like a massive armored Missile Pod turret... Something like this maybe? I might adapt it to being inside a dome.......
[doublepost=1481411632,1481411425][/doublepost]Though to be honest I doubt some Ball turrets would work with a ship that will have a similar hull design to this image
[doublepost=1481412183][/doublepost]Unless you guys have a better idea? XD

 

[Scypio]

With all respect that i got for previous answer, there is a few things that are wrong.

First beam isn't useless as most people say it. It can be used on a few specific cases, like for example tracking small and fast ship, what cannon cannot do due to its mechanics and the derp AI. However that works for small turrets and small targets only, because beams are bugged and cannot damage more than one bloc at once, that is why small targets.

Second, you need to ask yourself a few things. For what do i build this turret ? Will it aim at big ship ? Medium ? Small ? And so on. Also note that for turrets generally the more is better than strong turrets. Yeah, that's sad for servers owners but 2 turrets are way better than one turret with twice the mass.

So, for each and every roles you get one turret to build. There is no miracle and multi-purpose turrets aren't the best way to go. You can however mix different effects in one turret, ion with punch-through or piercing/ion and so on but stick with the same weapon otherwise the Ai won't know how to fire each and every different weapons and will fire accurately only one of the different weapons. Just remember that the turrets are manipulated by AI and will fire until the opponent is overheating or they got destroyed so you can't expect for the opponent shield to be down when the piercing weapons will fire or the shield to be up when ion weapons will fire.

Third, "ball" turrets are simply turrets that maximise their barrel size by building it half in it's base/hull of the ship. Like a ball floating in water, half of it is out of it and isn't wet while the other half cannot be seen under the water.

So there is nothing as "best weapon" in starmade, just several weapons combinations that are better in some scenario than others. Especially with turrets, for ship you can stay to the classics said above as players prefer easy to use weapons. It's up to your to make the right choice and stick to that idea to make it work. Put 3 beams turrets on a titan and they'll be useless almost all of the time and so on. It's up to you and your design/playstyle to make it work.

 

[Panpiper]

Though to be honest I doubt some Ball turrets would work with a ship that will have a similar hull design to this image

Ball turrets do not have to look like domes. Not even close. Mine do for one technical reason but mostly because I have little artistic talent. Download this resource from NuclearFun and look at the ball turrets he has on display there. They should give you ample inspiration.