Dannage go ahead of course, just use your own media
Atheddall:
- this is a medium turret to be used in large quantities on a
large ship (at least 300k mass) as you have guessed (or a faction station, which is what their shieldless counterpart has been originally built for). The large square of the hub is necessary to store the moving parts, however it is also functional - it provides enough power for all weapon types (including missile/beam) as well as 500k of dedicated shield pool for the turret (even after the shared mothership shields drop, the turrets have a backup).
- Yes, there are quite some moving entities on the turret, (8 for the iris, 2 for the turret axis, two for the barrel, one for the piston (both barrels are one entity)). A ship large enough to carry
many of these retractable turrets will pretty much be a strain on the server one way or the other, though.
- Yes, the barrels are fake. However, they are barely a fraction of the weapon module volume. Each turret has about 1000 total weapon/slave/effect blocks combined, which is not bad for a turret which was specifically designed to look good on the outside (I prefer this to the old turretbricks we had).
That being said, the above retraction mechanism will only be featured on a ship of mine if I finish something
large sometime. Even when built with efficiency in mind, a smallish cruiser would be cripped when equipped with too much tech.