Star Trek / Low Profile Turrets?

[Edymnion]

Okay, I know I've seen some before, but the search engine is failing me.

I've finally given in to temptation and started building a decent sized Federation style ship, and its getting far enough along that I need to start thinking about turrets. Now, I can build an effective turret, thats easy. Making an effective turret that looks good and blends in with a design aesthetic that wasn't intended to ever have turrets, thats hard.

So, since my search-fu is failing me at the moment, does anyone know some good tricks off the tops of their head for making turrets with minimal profiles that can still pack enough punch to be worth using?

 

[Rixxan]

Well, are you thinking Canon ship from TNG/TOS or the JJ abrams reboot turret? I have a decient cross of those I can sent you but it isn't done yet.

 

[Edymnion]

JJ may fornicate himself with an inanimate iron rod after what he did to Star Trek, but the older ships were actually pretty nice. That redone Enterprise as horrible though...

But lets go for original universe, seeing as how the Abramverse just sticks guns on everything with no concern for aesthetics. Any kind of low profile turret would do though.

I've got turrets in the disk style (where most of the turret top is in a disk under the hull that then spins around so that only the very top shows) that I may have to use.

 

[jayman38]

For Star Trek stuff, I personally find GaeasSon to be the ultimate Star-Trek-in-StarMade authority. Below are some Community Content links that might be useful for this thread.

http://starmadedock.net/content/star-trek-constitution-tos.75/

http://starmadedock.net/content/turret-internal-9r5.3363/

 

[Gasboy]

For Star Trek stuff, I personally find GaeasSon to be the ultimate Star-Trek-in-StarMade authority. Below are some Community Content links that might be useful for this thread.

http://starmadedock.net/content/star-trek-constitution-tos.75/

http://starmadedock.net/content/turret-internal-9r5.3363/

Yeah, Gaeason's turret designs for his Federation ships are very workable and compact. Well, compact in that only the very tops of the guns are exposed. It's a very cool effect.

 

[alterintel]

I've also been working on this, though real life has made the project a bit slower than I'd like.
here's a link the the internal turrets I've been working on

 

[Edymnion]

I've been considering this:

Big horizontal rotational base at the bottom, the vertical rotation axis right up there at hull level, and then just one wee little piping of cannon/beam/missile/whatever poking out the top. Have the entire underside be a big quarter sphere that would just barely clear the bottom as it rotated, and would hit the underside of the hull when the business end pointed straight up.

I'm thinking if I build it right I can fight the entire above deck turret down into a 3x3 or a 4x4 square that when at rest is only 1 or 2 blocks tall.

Just seems like it would require a lot of empty space inside the hull for that big pendulum to swing in.

 

[alterintel]

I've been considering this:

Big horizontal rotational base at the bottom, the vertical rotation axis right up there at hull level, and then just one wee little piping of cannon/beam/missile/whatever poking out the top. Have the entire underside be a big quarter sphere that would just barely clear the bottom as it rotated, and would hit the underside of the hull when the business end pointed straight up.

I'm thinking if I build it right I can fight the entire above deck turret down into a 3x3 or a 4x4 square that when at rest is only 1 or 2 blocks tall.

Just seems like it would require a lot of empty space inside the hull for that big pendulum to swing in.

This is exactly the kind o f thing that I am putting on my galaxy class. I figure I can fit 10 to 12 big ones in the saucer section. While it's possible to get 90x360 movement, they do take up quite a bit of space inside the hull though (roughly 1/4 sphere plus about a block or two of empty space around the whole inside turret to allow for free movement.

I have yet to try these things out in full on combat, and I'm curious to see how your turrets turn out.
Please keep us updated

 

[Panpiper]

You might want to consider using overdrive effect so as to squeeze as much damage potential as possible out of the inevitable relatively small mass of these sorts of 'turrets'.

 

[Edymnion]

You might want to consider using overdrive effect so as to squeeze as much damage potential as possible out of the inevitable relatively small mass of these sorts of 'turrets'.

Oh yeah, Overdrive is a given.

 

[Panpiper]

Oh yeah, Overdrive is a given.

The rotational housing 'base' of the turret should easily be large enough to hit the soft cap of a million power. I would suggest planning the turret build to use that full million for each turret and then simply build the saucer size as a result of whatever that turret commands. You'll probably want to use cannon slave for rapid fire, lest the capacitor requirement kill you. You might consider actually making them cannon/cannon to gain the range, but add a two module beam/cannon to the aperture. The turret will fire both, looking like a phaser at close range, but engaging at decent distances none the less.

 

[Edymnion]

I would suggest planning the turret build to use that full million for each turret and then simply build the saucer size as a result of whatever that turret commands.

Yeah, given that this is the current state of my build, I don't think its going to be practical to resize the ship based on the turret design at this point.

You'll probably want to use cannon slave for rapid fire, lest the capacitor requirement kill you.

This thing is currently sitting on 50m power reserves, with plans to up it to 100m. With docked 1m e/sec reactors in the catamarans. I highly doubt I could build a turret design that would be able to dent it's power and still be able to fit it physically inside the ship.

You might consider actually making them cannon/cannon to gain the range, but add a two module beam/cannon to the aperture. The turret will fire both, looking like a phaser at close range, but engaging at decent distances none the less.

Now thats something I hadn't thought of. Will the turret actually fire both a cannon and a beam at the same time?

Thats pretty damned smart, actually. Mix the cannon and the beam together into one stream. Consider that stolen!

 

[Panpiper]

Now thats something I hadn't thought of. Will the turret actually fire both a cannon and a beam at the same time?

Thats pretty damned smart, actually. Mix the cannon and the beam together into one stream. Consider that stolen!

It does work. I have my point defense turrets set up that way so I can see when and where they are firing.

 

[Edymnion]

It does work. I have my point defense turrets set up that way so I can see when and where they are firing.

Excellent. I mix up my main turrets on my current gunboat for missile/beam and cannon/cannon just to give them something to do while the torps reload, but it had never occurred to me to intentionally overlay a beam and a cannon.

Which is good, because I personally greatly prefer cannons to beams at this point. Now thanks to you I can have my cannon turrets and still keep the trek phaser visuals.

 

[Winterhome]

The higher you want your turret elevation to be, the less space efficient your turret is going to be. Unlike with surface mount turrets, with low profile turrets, high gun elevation means drastically lowered firepower. Keep in mind that with these turret designs, you need to shave the very corners off in multiple directions to fit it in a neat cylinder.

I personally used a 45 degree angle when designing the hinge and shape of my current low profile turret design. The turret itself fits in a 51x51x14 embedded turret hole, or something in that neighborhood. You can pick it up at http://starmadedock.net/content/low-profile-medium-turret.3505/ if you for some reason need another example of a turret to work with.

 

[Tunk]

Think you can use this?
http://starmadedock.net/content/startrek-phaser-demo.3514/

Its a demo of a phase array style traversal around the saucer, if you use both top and bottom saucer space for a single weapon you can pack quite a few blocks in otherwise you are quite limited if the weapons can only use one half of a saucer section.

 

[EricBlank]

Other than having to worry about it getting stuck, I'm impressed. I've thought about doing that myself for my own craft, although without any restricted movement on any axis. This whole discussion is going to be very helpful when I need to design inset capital ship turrets.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

If you have a symmetrical disk on the ship then you could have the base docked at the center of the disk and then have a bunch of empty space before the outer hull. The you build the rest of the base to match the hull and have a small opening in it for the vertical component. The vertical component then has all the room between the hull and center to move in. This would allow you to build one big turret that acts like a phaser bank. I'm working on improving a star-fleet command space station where I take advantage of the radial composition of it. An advantage to this set up is that even if your turrets don't have full mass enhancer support, due to the large axis it can track faster. (The end of a lever arm moves faster then the middle when you spin it.) The problem is that the ship has to be radial or you could not match the turret base hull with the ship or station hull all around, and you only can put one turret on that vertical level as more will not allow you to cover the hole in the hull. Once I build my station up I will see if I can attempt a post so people could see what I built.

 

[Tunk]

It is possible to arrange them in a semi-elliptical pattern (like the entrepid class onwards) by offsetting them, its a giant pain in the bum though and depends heavily on if the center of rotation is even within the ships hull.

 

[Edymnion]

I'd pay real money for the ability to have modules in the base and the computer in the top.