If nothing else, this debate shows how good the community is at identifying the problems with underlying simulation mechanics.
For all the (justifiable) concern about entire groups of NPCs jumping on lone ships with the advent of Wings, this discussion about turrets is invaluable, as they're the very type of weapons which have, historically, enabled large, lumbering bombers and transports a respectable veil of defence when crossing enemy territory. If turret tracking/accuracy is fixed to be the way it should, that should help out massively to even up the odds. Especially if your only friends on-line at the same time as you are in similar transport-centric craft: Neither of you are in fighters, but by mounting multiple auto-turrets over your hulls and travelling together, you're essentially acting like flights of World War Two bombers flying over Germany, able to cover one another with overlapping fields of fire, except with the necessary advantage of computer-controlled fire solutions.
If Frontier need time to enable NPC wingmen, then fixing turrets so they're legitimately deadly (and off-setting that against heightened cost, if need be) is far more paramount to help solo players.
And, quite honestly, I'd enjoy that, even if, theoretically, I was having to attack one or more transports with turrets. It would force you to employ the sort of 'saturating defences' tactics needed in real-life against naval convoys of today. Hollywood projects the idea you jsut have to fire off missiles and an aircraft carrier would go boom, but that's not how it works in reality. You have to plan out angles of attack, figure out which ships have what types of defences and so on.
Hopefully, this will soon mean we get corvette/frigate-class ships escorting transports and carriers, which have VLS tubes of dozens of missiles firing off when a threat is identified, engaging area point-defence when the ranges close.
