Turreted beam lazers... suck?

CmdrDaymian

CmdrDaymian
Hey all. For the last week or so I've been shooting wanted ships in a resource extraction site to get money for an explorer Asp (I have the Asp, now I need a few more millions to buy all the modules). I'm flying a Viper - lovely ship, powerful too for its low price! I had two gimballed pulse lazers (about 36,000cr each) and 2 gimballed autocannons (about 17,000cr each) and coupled with my A-rated power capacitor and power distributor, with 4 pips in weapons I could fire those pulse lazers for about 45 seconds solid, chewing through shields and about 30% of the armour on even an Anaconda (NPC flown).

But today I saw the station I was in was selling turreted beam lazers for 500,000cr each, so I replaced my pulse lazers with those. The info panel said they did more damage and everything and I had plenty of money so I thought "why not?".

Well, I am horrified. I went to the RES as usual and found a wanted Cobra Mk. III, targeted it, kill warrant scan, deploy hardpoints. Beam lazers start firing automatically. "What!? Turret weapons fire automatically!?" I think. Fine, I can live with it I guess. But then I notice two more problems. First of all, these two weapons that cost me a million credits, had barely chewed through one shield ring of the Cobra after 10 seconds of firing, as opposed to my cheap old pulse lazers which would've chewed through its shields in less than 5. When I finally get through his shields I notice his armour isn't budging at all. Like maybe 1% every 20 seconds.

Second problem is... they're all over the place. I'm very close to my target, maybe 1km give or take, and they're wobbling all over the place so bad that they're not even hitting anymore. And he hasn't deployed chaff either.

So before I go and replace my 1,000,000cr weapons with my old 60,000cr weapons (which have better accuracy and damage), would anybody like to tell me if I'm doing something horribly wrong... or do beam lazers really suck this bad?
 
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Xipheas

X
laSer.. Just saying ;-)

Whilst you can choose the firing mode of turret weapons so they don't just fire willy-nilly, it's know that they are a bit.. rubbish.
 

TerrorTrooper

T
I have found them terribly inefficient also compared to fixed/gimballed, but this is intentional.

What you have failed to consider is their purpose in-game.
You have mounted them on the front of a viper and expect them to be amazing!
Their purpose is to cover areas of a ship that normally wouldn't be able to use fixed/gimballed user controlled weapons due to ship limitations, for example, a T9. They are a defensive weapon, not an offensive one.
If they could shoot as well as a skilled CMDR with fixed beams, the T9 would become a death machine covered with "I win" buttons.
I have a pair of turreted beams in the top and bottom mounts of my T7, and although for attacking anything their too unreliable, for defending myself against NPC's and the occasional un-suspecting and overly confident player, they pack quite a punch at close range.
 

CmdrDaymian

CmdrDaymian
I like lazer more, and both are accepted ways of spelling it. I know LASER is an acronym and technically the correct way of spelling it but... I don't say laSer when I pronounce it, it's laZer.

Laz0r!
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Turrets are optional on big ships. That's it, basically. Turrets have no place on a Viper.

Now fixed beam lasers...
 
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lethal_sting

L
In terms of damage I believe in most/all cases: Fixed > Gumball > Turret.

Something I learned from the forums is that sensor strength [class/rating] seem to make no difference on accuracy of gumball or turret weapons.

Also from the forums, turrets seem over time to have some dimishing accuracy "glitch". Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's a gameplay design... but those that tested said about 10 seconds of shooting the turrets are aiming all over the place and the only way to fix it is to either switch targets or get out of range of your current target.


Now as for your ending question, my personal opinion... YES!

For my analogy, you just turned your Viper from a Supermarine Spitfire into this Blackburn Roc. :eek:
 
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SoulTechnology

SoulTechnology
the only turrets that if seen that are useful on smaller ships (cost effective more like) is using small turrets on the cobras wings... my friend has 2 pulse laser turrets and there quite useful to him (he used to have gimballed multi guns and pulse lasers on his nose but he had trouble getting both to fire all the time, so now he uses pulse laser turrets and pulse laser gimbaled on his nose, since not all 4 are firing at once and he has a decent power distributer with the cobras awesome power output he seems fine).
when your equipping turrets look at the location of the hardpoint.. the viper might benefit form 2 turrets on the medium slots on the bottom depending on how you fly it.... but the nose should at most only use gimballed.
 

Loskene

L
Turrets pre-1.3 need to be repeatedly thrown off target so they can get a fresh lock whenever their aim starts to drift.
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
CmdrDaymian said:
Well, considering the game teaches you literally nothing beyond basic controls, it's not surprising.
Click to expand...

True the game doesn't tell you much but it doesn't take much to politely ask how others use them (you will get many different answers to most questions). Certainly a better way to find out than create a whine thread about how they suck shirley?

Loskene said:
Turrets pre-1.3 need to be repeatedly thrown off target so they can get a fresh lock whenever their aim starts to drift.
Click to expand...

Do they need a fresh lock or the target moves out of range of the turret so it loses lock?

Not noticed this issue with my turrets, they seem to be hitting my target most of the time, providing they can 'see' it (which also when my gimbals cannot).
 
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Loskene

L
Zplintz said:
Do they need a fresh lock or the target moves out of range of the turret so it loses lock?

Not noticed this issue with my turrets, they seem to be hitting my target most of the time, providing they can 'see' it (which also when my gimbals cannot).
Click to expand...

I just dip or raise the nose a bit so the target goes briefly out of the turrets' targeting hemisphere. They re-acquire immediately and have 100% accuracy then. Turret drift isn't a problem when facing big ships but you'll really start to notice if you're chasing down small ships. If you keep the aim on them for more than a few seconds they start to miss way more often than they hit. I don't bother with any turrets except beam lasers on ships big enough to fire them constantly, and even then it's not the firing arc that attracts me, but the immunity to chaff. Most times my ship pitches too fast for the turrets to track something passing under me anyway.
 

EUS

EUS
I, for one, have had no luck with class2 pulse turrets on my python, they just won't fire.
Tried them as part of a fire group, as not part of a fire group, fire at will, my target only, combinations of fire groups included.
Sitting in a RES with pirate wings who are very angry with me, and shoot on site at me. Those damned C2 T pulses did nothing.
 
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