"-cannot be fired rapidly because of the delay limit"
Binding each turret to a key allows for rapid access and firing of swarm turrets, as does the turret/defend plugin which I am quite sure you use. So yes a constant stream of auto tracking missles is easily possible even without a plugin.

"Strategic maneuvering" is arguable, since it's only required if your target capship is on the move -- which isn't always the case."

Dude if your dent is parked it's going to die regardless of the loadout of the turrets, next.

"And even then it's not an argument that overcomes the unfair exclusivity of being only available to someone with a 3rd party plugin and the knowhow to utilize it."

hmmmm let's see......

Here you see to be all for turret plugins, one that has more options than the simple group fire I use.

and then
Here you seem to fully support Auto Firing turrets which is way way more OP than what I am doing.

finally this little gem here, the last line pretty much speaks for itself.

"You can simply hold down "fire" and keep issuing 40k-damage shot after 40k-damage shot, every 2.5 seconds, hoping you land it without ANY energy drain."

As opposed to never ending capswarms? If you are going to make one type of turret weapon have a "cost of use" then it has to be ALL the way around.

You act as if capship owners have no clue about plugins, which I find highly unlikely if they have built a capship. The only exclusivity here is having the funds to pay for multiple accounts and as you said it can be done with F2P as well so there really is no exclusivity other than I did it first and you didn't.

There is no cost of energy while firing regular swarms, hence none for capswarms. That doesn’t apply for rails, which should require a large amount of energy.

Seeing how OP they are even without this rapid firing thingy, they should be made ammo based. 10 something shots that need reloads, should also solve the OPs issue as you won’t be able to fire infinite shots.

Also make their requirements tighter. I haven’t killed a single Levi, yet I can get as many caprails I want from someone who has the Levi badge, something which has considerably diminished any motive to work towards any badge.

-1 To Giving them energy or ammo (If I can reload my flares an infinite amount of times, why shouldn't my turrets follow the same physics)

+1 To destructible turrets (My normal "more things to boom" logic)

As I stated in the original post, the overpowered-ness is because of the ability to target something directly in front of the ship with all four trident turrets at once.

I can see how my being in support of auto-firing turrets through 3rd party plugins seems in conflict. The difference, I think, is distilled completely in my concern about ability of a single pilot to issue insta-shield annihilating, super high velocity shots every 2.5 seconds with zero cost upon a single point directly in front of the ship.

All the other energy turret weapons have the same (or slightly higher in the case of neuts) DPS as caprails. They are all pretty OP for perpetually sustained contact, honestly -- but caprails tip the scales with their burst because it will instantly drop another player owned capship's shields. Nothing should have that capability in this game without a cost to operate it.

Currently a fleeing goliath can easily deshield a pursuing trident using only two capswarm launchers. This means, until forward firing turrets were brought about, tridents had no offensive options against a goliath that was running. In addition, goliaths are so agile, that when a rag stacks swarms and gems, that the goliath can change direction and turbo away and outrun the swarms.

Forward firing rails have finally brought a little bit of fairness to capship battles. But they are not a sure thing like swarms are. Only in a perfect situation a trident will get a cap ship kill with them. My understanding is that there have only been 3 cap ship kills using them. Whereas caps swarms are responsible for over 20.

@

Capital swarms have 25 grid. (the same as the capital cannon) That tells me they use loads of power to fire.

Real world comparison(i know, i know! Stop it with the Xirite alloy pitchforks): The rail gun the USA Navy was working on was to have a 160 km range. Rail guns on the turrets in VO only go about 4km. A Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a similar power plant output (194 MW) to Trident and Goliaths(200 MW). A real world railgun needs 25 megawatts to keep it powered. So 4 turrets in the VO world should only draw 100MW total leaving 100 MW in reserve and not even touching the power cell .

The only thing i might be ok with, would be the powercell taking double amount of time to recharge if the ship was being shot at with a PCB(25MW per turret, even though they are less powerful than real world rails=100MW=less energy to draw from for the power cell) . But for that to be ok, then we would need to say that grid usage affects powercell recharge rate across the board.

Currently a fleeing goliath can easily deshield a pursuing trident using only two capswarm launchers. This means, until forward firing turrets were brought about, tridents had no offensive options against a goliath that was running.

Easily? It can't easily do it if the trident pilot undocks. More importantly, Tridents are drastically slower than Goliaths, so in what universe should they have offensive capability against a Goliath that is running away anyway?

Also, I think you are forgetting that my suggestion doesn't remove the ability of someone to fire a 40k comboround and insta-deshield -- it simply removes the ability to continously spam those shots by introducing a recharge after two attempts. That doesn't seem in the least bit prohibitive.

you could always manually aim missiles, which iirc makes them travel faster too. or does that not work with turrets?

There is already a 2.5 second delay. That is long enough for a weapon that is manually aimed. (It is actually a life time in a space battle).



If the capship pilot undocks to break lock (which is a bug that the devs acknowledge needs to be fixed, but they don't have a solution for), then the dent pilot will not be able to catch up to the fleeing goliath.

The trident, having 4 turrets, should be the more powerful ship. Just because the trident accelerates slower than the goliath, doesn't mean it should be the weaker ship offensively. The Goliath is classed as a freighter, and the Trident is classed as a Frigate. In any universe a frigate should have the offensive power to decimate a freighter.

could you please stop copying microscopic images of forum text and instead just paste normal text? I can't read what you are responding to.

Just because the trident accelerates slower than the goliath, doesn't mean it should be the weaker ship offensively.

Again, how does my suggestion make it a weaker ship than the Goliath? My suggestion allows for two full burst shots. Limiting the amount of burst shots it can make doesn't make it suddenly weaker than the Goliath. The Goliath has half that capability.

And, for the last time, Tridents don't chase Goliaths. If you think they should, make a suggestion post that adjusts their thrust and max speed so it's possible. This thread is not about that at all.

Why do you think that Trident's don't chase Goliaths? This is capship warfare. Are you stating that Goliaths are greyhounds of the capship world, and that nothing should be able to chase them down? That they should be almost invulnerable (with a rear rail gun, they almost are) .

Currently, cap rails have a delay of 2.5 seconds. That is along time in a capship battle, but i repeat myself.

Wally,

Your suggestion is based on 100% accuracy on every volley fired. That's not reality.

Where as capswarms are pretty much 100% unless someone uses the aforementioned undock bug (which is no guarantee some still won't land on target) or is turboing away in the opposite direction.

Caprail are a huge gamble vs capswarms. You always have to face the target, the spread even with all 4 aiming forward is enough that there is no way to land all 4 without being at point blank range. If I manage to land one of them in a 10 second period I'm doing good let alone all 4. So by reality math that's 10 maybe 20 k per 10 second interval vs the 72k of cap swarm damage in the same time frame that is pretty much guaranteed.

Running 4 caprails firing forward requires piloting skills that capswarms don't.

Stop doing math and assuming you know exactly how something will play out. Want reality let's do a dent fight so you can see.