Turret Firing Arcs (New mechanic)

[z1967]

My idea is super complex to convey without imagery, so I will work on pictures as soon as I can get to my home computer.

My idea stems from the frequent annoyance of my own turrets shooting each other off. Normally this is not problem for ships with a few turrets that don't really get a chance to shoot each other, but they instead hit the mother ship. so my suggestion is to basically add a mechanic that limits the firing arc of the turret on the horizontal planes (can't affect up and down shooting). basically, when you dock any ship to a turret dock, a new weapon computer pops up. when selected, it will display a GUI (which will be in later mentioned pictures) that affects its firing arc, or disables the arc feature (default). Note that this only affects the AI targeting.

The idea is that when a hostile ship appears in range of the turrets, then the turrets will, by default, try to fire on it. but if an arc is established, then the turret will not target anything outside its arc. This will also be displayed in some imagery later. I know that the turret projectiles will still probably hit other turrets and the mother ship whilst in motion, but that is unavoidable.

Pictures will, as promised, come later. This idea is mentioned in http://star-made.org/content/few-ideas-1 and http://star-made.org/content/fully-programmable-computers-suggestion. The idea is also somewhat relevant to this, http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/255/f/3/russian_land_battleship_kv_vi_by_vonbrrr-d2yk6b3.jpg.

As always, criticize in a constructive manner.

 

[Dequire]

A cool idea that could be good to use, but you\'ve got to remember that turrets are often times fairly weak, and need to be installed in a large number in order to actually be able to do some damage. The firing arcs would be a bit of a pain to install for every single turret.

 

[z1967]

Is why I said that you could also disable this feature (and it would be disabled by default too).

 

[Riftmaster]

Somehow, turret firing arcs were determined by where they were placed.

For example, if you placed a turret on a platform extending from the side of the hull, it might have 180+ degrees of horizontal arc, and the normal vertical arc.

But if you placed it inside a recessed bay, it might only have 45degrees of horizontal arc and limited vertical.

The limiting factors could be something like: Turret will not fire if it\'s parent ship is in the line of fire - thus it will not fire through your ship. Also, a turret will not traverse and clip through your ship.



This would demand relatively careful turret placement, to ensure LoS and such.

 

[z1967]

The problem is, I want my turrets to have a good firing arc, without shooting each other, and be able to target a hsip anywhere within a certain amount of degrees. BTW I am working on some images to give an idea of what I mean, almost done.