Eh... I'm honestly not sure why turrets
shouldn't be as accurate as possible. Artificially handicapping them for the sake of gameplay mechanics, goes against the spirit of trying to provide a realistic experience. As I pointed out earlier, real-world CIWS turrets, like the Phalanx, have been shown to be able to hit
individual mortar rounds. The weapons we have in the real world are now literally
magnitudes more capable than the supposedly futuristic ones shown in this game, when you consider even a Sidewinder is the size of a house or so.
IMO, 'gimballed' weapons and turrets
should essentially be the same weapons. The only difference would be if it's a craft meant to be capable of flying into an atmosphere, at which point, if it's a huge mechanised turret, it would present aerodynamic problems. Although, even there... A laser 'turret' could essentially be no different from today's CCTV cameras; just a hemispherical dome mounted into a hull. The USAF already had plans (so far as I know, only discarded for budget reasons) to put 12-shot laser weapons in wing-mounted pods on conventional F-18s, not too long ago: They wouldn't be forward-firing only. They would be just as capable of slewing and locking on as laser designation pods are, as they're the same principle.
It would hack away a player's ability to attack a ship? Good! That's what they're meant to do in real-world naval tactics!
This isn't the 1940s. Someone complains when they can't take on the space-going equivalent of an oil tanker, because it's got four or more turrets blazing away? Well, that's what would happen for real... People with something of that massive scale would invest in as much protection as possible. It
should be problematic to go after vessels like that. A Type 9 should be
difficult to attack - especially a small convoy of them with overlapping fields of fire. They wouldn't be as armoured as a military vessel, to save on expense (and, fuel-wise, mass), but massive transports having lots of accurate auto-aiming turrets? Sure. That
should be the realistic defence against being interdicted by grouped NPCs, who would have to use the same types of tactics against them as actual navies in the real world do. Similarly, even more powerful shields should be available to thwart grouped turret fire.
I do suspect stuff like that is actually going to be implemented, some day. It just frustrates me to see realistic abilities being handicapped purely for the sake of arcade-like gameplay, in a product which is rightly hyped on its attention to realism.
And, honestly, I feel that would make piracy
more encompassing and fun, as a profession. If you want to take on really big and capable targets for the biggest rewards, then you'd have to tool up
and group up. The game hasn't yet implemented features like auto-hacking, where you could load up with a module which allows it, which your potential target would have to have a countermeasures suite to work against. 'Hacking duels' could covertly disable
all turrets or simply force a ship to jettison its cargo from a distance. Likewise, ECM modules would really become a force to be reckoned with: You could project false sensor signatures, forcing turrets to open fire on a false target, to allow you (and potentially your ordnance) to get in close. You could jam a target's sensors
completely, preventing turrets from having any realistic use - and, just like in reality, if your target has sufficient power, they could force their active sensors to 'burn through' the jamming - giving power plant consideration even more use in the game.
There wouldn't just be spoofing with countermeasures like flares/chaff, either. You could have
drones. Not for recon or attack, but to be launched and project a much larger sensor image of itself, forcing your target to open fire on it and ignore you/your missiles/torpedoes.
And if you can't do any of that? Then 'down and dirty' groups of pirates could get together and use swarm tactics. You could time your flights to appear suddenly from multiple directions. The target's fire-control computer would have to prioritise targets and, if you launch dozens, if not hundreds, of missiles (especially if mixed with drones), the defences would be saturated (although, if they're in Sidewinders/Eagles, the
really powerful enough turrets
should be able to one-hit destroy them).
Consequence?
Much more rewarding piracy events to either be involved in or on the receiving end of! Keeping stuff at its most basic will make piracy feel mundane and painting-by-numbers. Introducing factors like these, especially with accurate turrets, will force innovation and make pirates team up. Lone wolves will, just like in reality, be forced to go after the exposed and weak - or operate a large enough armoured hulk to make massed turret fire inconsequential against it. Of course, they'd have to save up for it... But no longer needing to share the rewards of looted cargo might make that investment worth it.
I also think that turrets and missile, alike, would hugely benefit from a sub-tab 'weapons management' panel. It would allow us to do a whole lot:
* Setting ammunition firing rates.
* Designate which groups of missile should be singularly, simultaneously or 'ripple'-fired.
* Set fuses: Some might be more effective if set to proximity, others as penetration.
* Warhead type designation: Some ships could be large enough to carry torpedoes and exchange their warheads. So, you could carry around a basic torpedo type, but purchase different warheads. One target might be deserving of conventional exposives. Others, armour-penetration. Others, maybe you want to have a torpedo which, like today's cruise missiles, you could give an EMP warhead, to short out all of their electronics. Or if you want to really play the villain, maybe you want to load up on outlawed chemical/biological weapons to kill crews or lay waste to space stations and planetary surface colonies (the reward of taking hardware would be huge, but at the risk of havign a massive bounty placed upon you). And why not nuclear warheads? A real game-changer! In the real world, Russia has 'supercavitating' torpedoes which scream along at massive speed and could be coupled with a nuclear warhead to take out carrier battle groups. In space, a player could do much the same. The actual warhead should be prohibitively expensive and you'd need to take severe care to not have it simply shot down, but you could potentially eliminate an entire fleet if it's packed in close enough together, even with a Sidewinder. Most ships would have sensors which would assign any radiological signature as the very top priority to shoot down, of course, making such ventures highly unlikely to succeed, but massively satisfying.
* Laser designation: Some weapons could be laser-designated. Likewise, you could have special missions where you have to lock on a target's window and the vibration would allow the computer to interpret what might be getting spoken in the room. This is actual, real technology which is available for espionage purposes now. No reason why it wouldn't be used in the future. The game mechanics would function like they did in the old '
EF-2000' game, where you have to slew the camera viewfinder over your target, then tell the computer to lock it in, at which time, so long as the hardpoint is facing the target, it would remain slaved on where you told it to.
