This is a thread for discussing ships with turrets, since it seems to be a popular topic right now, and because I feel I could use the mental excercise.

A 'Turret' is a weapons slot much like 'Large' or 'Small' and just as current ships have some mixture of 'Large' and 'Small' weapons slots, hypothetical future ships could have a mixture of large, small, and 'turret' slots. Turrets are however a good deal more complex than large or small slots. For one thing, each turret has a 'field of fire' definded by its position on the ship model. In general 'fields of fire' are roughly hemispherical, though the ideal situation is of course to have the field of fire blocked according to whether or not the model blocks los from the turret position (thus preventing you from shooting yourself in a silly looking fashion).

On the ship configuration screen, a turret shows up as a weapons slot with four sub slots - 'weapon A', 'weapon B', capacitor, and fire control. Slots 'A' and 'B' can be filled with a small weapon, or either slot can be filled with a large weapon and the other one left empty. The capacitor slot comes prefilled with a 'Salvaged Capacitor' and 'Salvaged Firecontrol' which is equivalent to the government provided ion cannon and engine available on the free ship. However, these 'free' items can be unequiped and filled with higher quality items for a price.

The capacitor slot determines how much energy storage the turret contributes to the ship. This storage is indistinguishable from battery storage, and energy stored there can used for any purpose. However, unlike the even more misnamed 'batteries' (which I really ought to post another suggestion on), capacitors do not add to the ship's ability to generate energy.

Sample Capacitors
'Salvaged Capacitor' - 100 energy, free
Civilian Grade Capacitor - 120 energy, 600cr
Military Grade Capacitor - 240 energy, 2400cr
Advanced Capacitor - 360 energy, 5400cr

The turret's fire control determines how accurately the gun tracks, or alternatively how fast the turret 'rotates'. Although not directly relevent to this discussion, because we are discussing rather small vessels, ships could also be equipped with 'computers' which among other things would limit the total quality of the fire controls that could be mounted on a ship. Very large ships could have multiple computers and we could play with the total number of computer slots as yet another way of distinguishing capital ships (or ships of all sizes) from one another. Obviously, the small ships we have now don't have turrets and thus don't, speaking in game terms, don't absolutely need computers (or at least don't need very complex ones).

Sample Fire Control

Type 1, Salvaged Fire Control, free
Type 1, Civilian Grade, 300cr
Type 2, Military Grade, 1500cr
Type 3, Advanced Fire Control, 3000cr

Normally turrets are controlled by a client side AI that acts under some simple rules. The server basically treats a shot fired by this AI as being the same as a shot fired by the player. It is therefore no more nor no less difficult to rig up a macro or hack which increases the accuracy of the turret than it would be to rig up a macro or hack which increases the accuracy of the player. Turret AI can be configured in one of three ways - by configuring it in the docks from the ship configuration screen ('Configure Turret' button or double clicking on the other wise empty turret slot name row), by command line binds (/turret_range 1 250), or by pulling up a configuration screen from the cockpit similar to the one that can be pulled up in the docks (roughly equivalent to what happens when you press 'x' to get a list of targets).

Turret AI has the following parameters:

Permissions
0 - Don't shoot
1 - Shoot at my (hostile) target
2 - Shoot at nearest (hostile) attacker (if it damages you and is on another team turret acquires it as a target)
3 - Fire at nearest hostile

Range
A number from 0 to 12800 in increments of 50, where 0 indicates ignore range, and anything else indicates don't fire unless the target is closer than the range.

Preferred Target
0 - Only shoot at capital ships
1 - Don't shoot at fighters
2 - If a capital ship moves into range and you have currently acquired a fighter, change your target to the capital ship.
3 - If a ship moves into range and it is larger than your current target, change your target to the new ship.
4 - If a ship moves into range and it is smaller than your current target, change your target to the new ship.
5 - If a fighter moves into range and you have currently acquired a capital ship, change your target to the fighter.
6 - Don't shoot at capital ships.
7 - Only shoot at fighters

Turret AI can be set individually, but console commands will exist for common 'orders' to be relayed to all turrets, for example '/lockdown' for 'set permission on all turrets to 0' and /fireatwill for 'set permission on all turrets to 3'. Captains of vessels with large numbers of turrets are well advised to write console macros for complex changes (for instance for changing all turrets armed with anti-capital ship weapons to permission 1, and all turrets armed with anti-fighter weapons to permission 3).

If two players are in the same station, and one has a ship with a turret, he can 'invite' another player aboard. That player then sees a list of turrets and there 'occupancy', and has the option of entering any available turret slot and taking over the operation of that turret from the AI. Such player has no control over the ship, but can aim the turret and fire it how he pleases using a unique HUD. The 'Captain' of the ship can override the player's ability to fire by setting the permission on the turret to 0 (with every other permission the gunner is free to fire how he likes).

Follows are two sample medium sized ships with turrets:

Attack Gunship Hull: 13000cr
Length: 25m
Hull: 16000
Manueverability: Low
Engine Slots: 3
Battery Slots: 3
Cruising Speed: As average of engines*
Turbo Speed: As average of engines*
Weapons: 5 Small Slots, 1 Large Slot, 1 Turret Slot
Cargo: 9
*Special: 10% penalty to maximum speed & 10% penalty to turbo efficiency

Large Freighter: 16000cr
Length: 45m
Hull: 45000
Manueverability: Very Poor
Engine Slots: 4
Battery Slots: 4
Cruising Speed: As average of engines*
Turbo Speed: As average of engines*
Weapons: 2 Small Slots, 1 Large Slot, 2 Turret slots
Cargo: 57
*Special: 10% penalty to maximum speed & 20% penalty to turbo efficiency

Now this is what im talking about!
that has to be the most beautiful thing i have ever read on this forum

:P~~~~~~

Tremendous accomplishment Celebrim. Now, we need to keep bumping this until it happens!

How's about making these large ship require different docks? Larger docks or non-dockable at all: the station would have bots that move to and from the ship to supply it and (un)load the cargo.

And you should also only be allowed to buy them at home sectors.... this way you can't just get some of these über-ships in sector 9 and wreak havoc. (imagine someone with a lot of cash on hand flying around with one of these in sector 9 with the turret set to 'destroy-everything'-mode)

Even more important: will vendeta play the imperial march from star wars when you are aproaching one of these ships?

"How's about making these large ship require different docks?"

I may be entirely wrong about this, but I believe that the devs specifically stated that this would indeed be implemented, and that the introduction of the new 'medium docks' was a small first step toward introducing new medium sized ships.

sarcasm fits you ;)

anyways, i like your ideas! i have nothing to add, though. meticulously worded post, respect!

Bump for newcomers

I wanna be a gunner.

This is by far the most elagent description of how turrets could work that i have seen. i don't praticularly see a need for the capaciters on turrets. in my opinion the same thing could be acomplished by allowing multiple battaries on larger ships (and posably some battaries that are just stoorage units as opposed to generators).

haven't seen this thread yet. very nice celebrim! this would also let the devs add MUCH more difficult bots!

Lord Q: Yes, the same thing can be accomplished by allowing multiple batteries on larger ships. If in fact you look at my general threads, you'll find that any ship I consider big enough to mount a turret on _also_ has multiple batteries (in fact, at minimum three!).

The purpose of the capacitors is to partly offset the stupidity of the AI. An AI controlled turret would waste alot of shots. The capacitor is intended to give the pilot a little bit of cushion, while still making energy expenditure something that has to be paid close attention to in the long run if the pilot of a large ship is to be successful.

Bumpity Dump Bump Bump

I think the gunships needs about 10k more hit points though. I mean the Rag has more hit points than it, and it doesn't have a negative bonus for speed.

KixKizzle: I wrote the original post more than a year ago. The numbers are therefore not only placeholders, but placeholders measured against numbers from a year back.

AHHHH.......*lets one rip*

Now this is what i like! Great way to not only progress the ships but the guns as well! This will be a big relief to all the fighter hassle weve been goin through and will be a good medium between the fighters and the enormus cap ships. *applause*

Celebrim: Gotcha.