Suggestions for making good turrets - post them here!

[KiloZulu]

I don't have any problems making a good ship, but making lasting turrets is driving me crazy. With the need to provide effective firepower, but also have reasonable defenses, I end up with turrets that are as big as the ship I want to put it on! All it takes is one isanth with missile launchers to strip my ship of turrets while they're busy randomly firing at the fleet of pirates I'm facing. I'd really like to have a ring of small AA turrets on my ship, but they just end up costing me time and money replacing them. All of my capital ships are in drydock for the time being.

 

[jayman38]

Recommendations:
1. Build two sets of cannons. The first with a full 100% compliment of Cannon blocks. The second should have between 75% and 95% of the number of Cannon blocks as the first. Link the second set as slave to the first, full set. You now have a quick-fire (not quite rapid-fire) cannon. It'll do less damage, but have an easier time finding the target. Depending on how many cannon blocks you use per cannon, it can be quite effective at dropping the enemy shields.
2. Don't forget shield rechargers!
3. Have at least twice as many shield storage blocks as you have shield regenerator blocks. I find with all the twisting and turning that both I and my AI opponent do, they are shooting at one turret for only a short time. It's more important to me that the shield have a lot of points, as opposed to recharging quickly.
4. If you make your own turrets, it may be kind of ugly, but make sure you build them up in the Y direction to fill out the available turret docking cube. Empty dock space is less space for shields.

Miscellaneous non-turret recommendations:
1. Make small, insignificant ships available for pirates to buy. Not all pirates have the means to get even a lowly Isanth. With an odd mix of weaker fighters and utility vessels, the pirates now strike me as being more like a band of rag-tag misfits and outcasts who use whatever craft they can get their grubby hands on. It adds more flavor to the pirates, and there's a certain pathos when I have to blow away my own ultralight freighter design. Plus, the friendly trader faction now gets that ultralight freighter, and that just makes sense to me that they'd use that.
2. Be careful about adjusting default configs. If you make the AI too accurate, you have to expect them to drill through to the central target quickly. Likewise, be careful about leaving the difficulty on the default "Hard" setting. I'm keeping mine on easy and medium until I make a satisfying capital ship with lots of big turrets. I'm taking my time.
3. Don't be afraid to go smaller. It may be more effective to build a smaller, lighter capital vessel, so you can twist and turn around faster, spreading the damage to different sections of your ship, and to different turrets. A damaged turret is still in play, but a destroyed turret won't do you any good. With a lighter vessel, I can bring my main weapons to bear, attacking smaller, less lucrative targets first, saving the juicier targets for last, so I have time to plunder the wreckage after the last pirate is sucking vacuum.
4. If nothing else, reduce your main-vessel weapons to lighten your mass, and allow you to turn faster.
5. Be prepared to run from significant numbers. Maybe try to keep one or two pirates in range, chasing you, to pick them off and then return to the main group to wipe them out.
6. Backpedal!
7. If your ship shields are not getting dented, maybe eliminate some shield blocks to lighten your mass, enabling faster turning.

 

[madmann135]

Personally I think that turrets should share the Parent ship shields and defensive effects.
With deadly missiles a turret's shields can be depleted in one shot. I know my train of thought is unpopular but as I stated it is my personal opinion.

Suggestion 1 - Build ratios
My suggestion for making combat survivable turrets is to calculate carefully how many shield blocks to weapon blocks you have, I originally went with a 1:1 ratio before the weapon split, 1:1 offense to defense blocks still seem to be effective.
Shield recharger to shield capacitors should be in the 1:1 to 1:2 ratio area.

Suggestion 2 - Pilot ability
Move, Move, Move and Move. Do not stop, do not give them the time to shoot the same turret twice. Roll, dodge, weave and move.


Personally I am still looking for a good Offense to defense ration for turrets. Especially medium to small turrets.

 

[KiloZulu]

Personally I think that turrets should share the Parent ship shields and defensive effects.
With deadly missiles a turret's shields can be depleted in one shot. /QUOTE]

I agree with the sentiment, and believe I may have posted it in suggestions in the past. I think the case is made even stronger when they have broken shields into two separate blocks and (really) made secondary weapon computers necessary.

 

[SilentRider_14]

If you want the turret to share shields with the main ships just design the armor system better. Turrets have an up angle of 45 or one block up one block over and a down angle of 18.5 or one block down and three over. On the Main ship place a single block one space above the turret centered over the turret dock, then build up creating a circle, extend the radius by one as you go up each level. This armor plug is the only way to protect the turret without blocking shots. You could also make something reminiscent of a WW2 pill bunker or just recess the turret into the main ships hull, this gives protection at the cost blocking shots and turret fire hitting the main ship.

 

[NeonSturm]

Do not use slaves. They do not increase your dps.
Instead, get overdrive to keep same damage with reduced turret mass (at least until you reach the power cap), and optimize your weapons to exactly (maybe +1 block round-down or passive armour buff safety) 2-shot hulls and thus also have them better time against lower-hp vital parts.

If pirates need more time to kill one, others have more time to fire.
If pirates always take on the same turrets, have a few defensive and others offensive may be a good idea. (for example: if they always take frontal, rear and very far side-mounted turrets earlier)

EDIT: reading Silent's post, why not make a inside-dock for a core-only fake-turret

If docked AI ships keep the ability to fire about 45 or 90 degree up/down, think about making a bunker for one docked facing backwards (and kill hunters) or fly backwards and use your main guns.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Do you not find the low rof of unslaved turrets problematic? Also do you find npc turrets to work well with missiles without slaves?

 

[NeonSturm]

Why is a low rof problematic? with beams you got 5 hits? at least 3 blocks each time per array. Just make more.

rof does not matter, dps does. (except you need a perma-stop beam).

 

[jayman38]

Here is why I love higher rate-of-fire (rof) on turrets:

In singleplayer on my low-RAM computer, the AI turrets can't hardly touch an AI ship with regular rate of fire (rof) because of all the stuttering, jinking, and strafing, so no damage ever gets done to the target ship, regardless of the turret's dps. With higher rof and lower dps, they at least have a chance to do the job now. It takes 'em a while to chew through, but it's fun to watch. On a faster game server, this might not be an issue, but for me, higher rof is absolutely essential.

 

[Keptick]

Do not use slaves. They do not increase your dps.
Instead, get overdrive to keep same damage with reduced turret mass (at least until you reach the power cap), and optimize your weapons to exactly (maybe +1 block round-down or passive armour buff safety) 2-shot hulls and thus also have them better time against lower-hp vital parts.

If pirates need more time to kill one, others have more time to fire.
If pirates always take on the same turrets, have a few defensive and others offensive may be a good idea. (for example: if they always take frontal, rear and very far side-mounted turrets earlier)

EDIT: reading Silent's post, why not make a inside-dock for a core-only fake-turret

If docked AI ships keep the ability to fire about 45 or 90 degree up/down, think about making a bunker for one docked facing backwards (and kill hunters) or fly backwards and use your main guns.

The damage of a slave is added to the main weapon system. So two weapon systems of 100 blocks will have the same total dps as a single 100 block weapon with a 100 block slave (200 blocks total in both cases).

The only exception to this rule is when using damage beams as slave. The additional DPS is converted into range.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Why is a low rof problematic? with beams you got 5 hits? at least 3 blocks each time per array. Just make more.

rof does not matter, dps does. (except you need a perma-stop beam).

As stated above, accuracy is kinda a thing for my turrets. I see a number of missed shots and under low ROF it means for 6 seconds I'm not doing damage from that turret.

 

[SilentRider_14]

Higher ROF forgives inaccurate shots plus it helps to regulate power consumption so you can tailor it to fit into power generation. Standard AMC reload is every 3 seconds but with a 100% AMC slave you can drop down to 0.10 seconds or AMC slave 69% at 0.999 seconds. Power consumption is reduced by the same proportion as damage and reload time(slight power inefficiency due to two weapon groups instead of one). The limiting factor in a fire-able weapon is if power storage of the turret ( starts at 50,000 so not a huge problem) is large enough to accommodate power drain of a single weapon unit (*,*,*) firing even though it can draw power from the main ship

 

[madmann135]

There are as many arguments for adding slaves and effects to turrets as their are for not adding slaves and effects.
Personally with the current AI inaccuracy I say add AMC cannon as a slave so that you can help mitigate AI inaccuracy with volume of fire. In addition adding guided missiles to the mix will help destroy smaller targets at any range range, especially long range.
With the current AI build using missile and torpedo turrets are probably one's best bet to destroying small to medium sized craft with speed.

 

[Unnamed25]

Make huuuuge turrets.
The end

 

[KiloZulu]

I made a ship that has seven turrets, one stacked above the other. They are stacked directly above one another because each turret fires lock-on missiles and this arrangement keeps them from being able to hit one another. The turrets were then completely encased within the hull of the ship since missiles alone will fire through hull. In this manner, they are protected by the ship's shields and hull.

That was the theory, anyway. After a battle against a wave of pirates, five of the turrets were gutted. I didn't see any indication that the turrets managed to hit one another, despite my attempted spacing to avoid such a possibility. They fired throughout the battle as far as I could tell. The alternative is that the pirate isanths with missiles somehow managed to still penetrate through to the turrets. It still feels like an idea with potential, but that was a disappointing result.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

I'm the type to have passive defences. EMP lasers along with energy drain means enemies simply....float away. Without destroying the inside of my ship.

I'm not sure if turrets can fire push/pull beams yet but I'd like them to if they don't. Would be fun.

EDIT: In case you don't know: They literally float away because they do not have enough power to manuver.