Sexy Turret Competition

[Panpiper]

For energy efficiency shy away from missiles. Cannon/cannon/Any effect that aint overdrive
Go for a 50-80% slave, slowfiring autocannon.

Dont use pulse or beam secondaries. Dont use missiles. Beams hitscan ability is unreliable. at least the cannons lead properly

Cannon/beam can be quite effective and can put a very solid punch into a very small turret.

That said, the DPS is entirely dependent upon the number of weapon modules. 100 modules of cannon will have exactly the same DPS as 100 modules of anything else. 100 modules of cannon/cannon will have exactly the same DPS as 100 modules of cannon/beam for instance. The difference is that cannon/cannon doles it out in a great many small shots while cannon/beam put it all into a single shot once every four seconds, which is why it can hit hard when small.

To be sure, some combinations are more useful than others. Missiles need a lot of power storage and can be easily shot down by anti-missile turrets if your don't build your ship so as to be able to saturate your enemy's defenses. Cannons are great and cannon/cannon a good mix for rapid fire. However they are relatively close range weapons and if your enemy is staying at say, missile range, you could be in for a world of hurt trying to close the range.

Cannon/beam however has a very good range. It does need extra power storage, four times your power regeneration, because it effectively stores up it's damage potential for four seconds. This is why a relatively small weapon can still hit with a good punch if it is using cannon/beam. I am not saying that you could not use cannon/cannon and Guthris suggests, but make sure you are in a relatively nimble ship if you do so you can close to weapons range if need be.

I strongly advise using a tertiary effect as part of your weapon. I am personally very fond of the punch effect.

 

[KiloZulu]

Most of my ships have turrets for staggered ranges, much like a modern battleship. The largest turrets use cannon+beam to deliver long-range punch against large ships. I don't expect the Bobby AI to be able to hit anything small at maximum ranges, after all. These are supplemented with smaller turrets that use cannon+cannon to deal with fighters at closer ranges. Small point defense turrets deal with incoming missiles. I used to run missile-heavy with my ships, but I've greatly reduced my reliance on missiles due to point defense. When I do use them, they are most often meant to provide extra-fighter defense, since those are more likely to be lacking missile defenses and can still be difficult for a Bobby AI to hit.

 

[Levarith]

Decided to go with cannon/beam/overdrive 60/56/60

With 2 separate outputs so each gun is 30/28/30 and 10k damage per shot. Power cost is 447k but it's slightly slower than 1 per second so my ship seems to be keeping up alright. The turret isn't the prettiest thing but it looks better than the last design.

 

[Panpiper]

Decided to go with cannon/beam/overdrive 60/56/60

With 2 separate outputs so each gun is 30/28/30 and 10k damage per shot. Power cost is 447k but it's slightly slower than 1 per second so my ship seems to be keeping up alright. The turret isn't the prettiest thing but it looks better than the last design.

On a ship with so little power to begin with, I believe it is a huge error to go with overdrive. You should instead use punch and build to use the power that would use. You will wind up ultimately doing twice as much damage, though of course your turrets will be either bigger or more numerous. The only time when you should use overdrive is when you have power to burn, like a fighter built for maximum energy. (There are some exceptions, but they are edge cases used by highly advanced builders.)

 

[DrTarDIS]

can't be hard to wrap your turret barre in 4-6 spiral energy lines. Just barbers pole/candy cane that thing and it should be close to self-sufficient. couple lumps of energy storage around it's axis rotation area and it'll be capacity-sufficient too.
Don't forget, the main ship needs energy to maneuver as well as fire guns.

 

[Levarith]

can't be hard to wrap your turret barre in 4-6 spiral energy lines. Just barbers pole/candy cane that thing and it should be close to self-sufficient. couple lumps of energy storage around it's axis rotation area and it'll be capacity-sufficient too.
Don't forget, the main ship needs energy to maneuver as well as fire guns.

It's a small turret. Producing that much energy isn't going to happen.

 

[Edymnion]

spiral energy

Row row fight the powah!

Ahem, sorry about that.

 

[StarWars1981]

Overdrive is, as said above, only for cases where you have excess power - or you need to keep mass down, for either A. a competition limit or B. (more keeping size down) to fit a carrier design. Overdrive is, up to its maximum effect (100%), more efficient per-block-placed than adding more weapons modules. However, it is significantly less energy efficient, which means that it is mainly for ultrasmall vessels that can more easily be built with extra power supplies than with extra weapons modules. For example, power usually fits in a smaller, more efficient space than weapons mods, so OD can be used to cut down on block count for the weapon system, for the same damage. Be warned: this takes some serious work to get right, and is only really effective on approximately 60 total block systems, or slightly more. More likely, less than that.
The reason is simple: if you don't need to keep block count down, OD is inefficient as heck, because your main limiting factor is power, because it can only build so far. Second limiter is thrust, but that is usually dependent on the power limits, because it takes a lot of power to run your thrusters into inefficiency. And OD is power-inefficient, blockcount-efficient. It's a tradeoff block, rather than more weapons mods, which are block-inefficient (this is all comparative, btw), power-efficient.

I would go with Punch-Through on that weapon system. It's a good all-round effect for increasing damage for more power cost. Otherwise, Pierce for block damage only, and Ion/EMP for causing messes of the opponent's systems in ways he's not expecting. Explosive is ONLY useful on large cannons because it's effect is small. Maximum range perhaps 6 blocks at 100%, and not a reliable method of drilling big holes. You want waffle cannon for that. However, it can be used to take a massive cannon and spread the damage into a shorter hole, rather than drilling 800 blocks end-to-end on some fool's Titan.

 

[Guthris]

NDS - Prototype 547 Unguided Rocket LT-V2TAC

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

Explosive is ONLY useful on large cannons because it's effect is small. Maximum range perhaps 6 blocks at 100%, and not a reliable method of drilling big holes.

I was under the impression that the explosion effect on cannons was still limited to 1 block (10% effect)

 

[StarWars1981]

Not by my testing, both config and shot results showed a maximum of 6-block dispersion of damage. Needs more testing, I'm not absolutely certain on this. I need to retest, more carefully.

 

[Ezekial Alexander]

Not by my testing, both config and shot results showed a maximum of 6-block dispersion of damage. Needs more testing, I'm not absolutely certain on this. I need to retest, more carefully.

6 block damage radius (solid mass) or can damage blocks 6m away (through open space)?

 

[Madman198237]

He means, I suspect, 6 radius. Though I am pretty sure it does still only spread to the blocks around the hole. We should stop calling it explosive effect, by the way. Perhaps instead call it a "Monroe effect"? Named after the shaped-charge burning-through-armor phenomenon that modern explosive devices use to burn narrow, cylindrical holes in things. Because a regular HE projectile would instead just produce a crater, which our EXP cannons clearly do not create.

 

[StarWars1981]

3 radius, 6 diameter

Also, Monroe effect would be better, but they're basically multi-charge warheads - see bunkerbusting aircraft munitions for details.

And I'd LOVE to see an explosive effect cannon actually act like a faster-traveling, less damaging missile. I could make plenty of use out of it, even though it would need serious limitations to counterbalance its abilities.

 

[madman Captain]

To many letters in this thread time to bring back the turrets!

Titans and Battleships of this Galaxy brase your shields, engines and generators!
"Ion Eradicator" The ECM Warfare Turret

166 meters long and 11k mass.

 

[Panpiper]

Alright, here's another turret that doesn't stand a prayer of winning as a 'sexy' turret, the Little Big Gun. This was built in response to people complaining that small ships cannot have effective turrets. I beg to differ.

This turret measures 20x15x8. It requires no hole in a deck and no power, it is entirely self powering. Yet it will fire two fast 6000 damage rounds every four seconds at long range. That's enough to punch right through any advanced armor block even if it has full armor hit point bonus and maximum pierce hardening, and 'still' have plenty of damage left over to punch a nice deep hole into systems. Two such bullets, every four seconds. For an inexpensive turret that masses less than 100 mass, I dare say that is impressive firepower indeed.

 

[Gmodism]

I tried making the optimal AMS turret in consultation with frequent PvP folks, I like the result

GI_Turret_AMS Banisher

 

[Edymnion]

Large Heavy Turret Shell

The empty shell for a turret I've been working on, inspired by a render I found on the internet... somewhere or another.

I built it as an anti-capitol ship gun, but I emptied it out to put the shell up on CC for everybody to use as they see fit.

I call it the Nope Gun. Why? Because when your enemy sees this thing turning to point at them, they have only one response:

 

[KiloZulu]

View attachment 36864
View attachment 36865
Large Heavy Turret Shell

The empty shell for a turret I've been working on, inspired by a render I found on the internet... somewhere or another.

I built it as an anti-capitol ship gun, but I emptied it out to put the shell up on CC for everybody to use as they see fit.

I call it the Nope Gun. Why? Because when your enemy sees this thing turning to point at them, they have only one response:

I have a huge turret I named the "Number 11." You know, because 10 wasn't high enough.

 

[Edymnion]

A pair of asymmetrical turrets I designed to flank either side of my latest ship.