Is it to discourage your players from experiencing the badly done multi crew? A 3c beam laser gimballed is only 2.3 million while a WORSE 3D turret is 19 g million, WHAT is the explanation for that crap, it's literally ONLY usable in multicrew....you lowered rebuy costs for ships yet made the weapons cost ridiculous amounts, that damn weapon is like 1/3rd of my FAS. So much for wanting to try bounty hunting with a viewer.
WHY are turrets so stupidly expensive?
- Thread starter Vahnkiljoy
- Start date
Turrets are usable without multi crew..
C3 beam turrets are very expensive, but pulse and burst are much cheaper.
I think its because they are complicated and have many moving parts and so they are expensive.
That kind of money isn't that hard to come by in this game. That's a couple of hours doing some missions..
Turrets have many uses and allow you to do two things at once (mine and kill pirates) or at least you can shoot behind you, this can be very usefull and turrets are often overlooked. If you fighting a ship thats on the lerge side you can stay in its blind spot if you arnt pointing the front of you ship at it, if you have turrets you can shoot them the whole time walst they cant shoot you (if they dont have turrets too).
I have a turreted frag on my krait and its so usefull against jousts.
A fas is practically a turret on its own, so i see why in your case you see it as only usefull for multi crew but they have a wider market for sure, often on big expensive ships owned by cmdrs with fat wallets.
C3 beam turrets are very expensive, but pulse and burst are much cheaper.
I think its because they are complicated and have many moving parts and so they are expensive.
That kind of money isn't that hard to come by in this game. That's a couple of hours doing some missions..
Turrets have many uses and allow you to do two things at once (mine and kill pirates) or at least you can shoot behind you, this can be very usefull and turrets are often overlooked. If you fighting a ship thats on the lerge side you can stay in its blind spot if you arnt pointing the front of you ship at it, if you have turrets you can shoot them the whole time walst they cant shoot you (if they dont have turrets too).
I have a turreted frag on my krait and its so usefull against jousts.
A fas is practically a turret on its own, so i see why in your case you see it as only usefull for multi crew but they have a wider market for sure, often on big expensive ships owned by cmdrs with fat wallets.
Let's think about this...
A 20mm anti-aircraft gun costs around $40,000
A 20mm Phalanx CIWS costs around $6,000,000
The CIWS costs 150x what a manually-operated anti-aircraft gun costs.
In ED, a C3 Multi Cannon costs around Cr600k while a similar turret costs Cr3.8m.
The turret costs 6x what a manually-operated Multi Cannon costs.
Seems like a bargain to me.
A 20mm anti-aircraft gun costs around $40,000
A 20mm Phalanx CIWS costs around $6,000,000
The CIWS costs 150x what a manually-operated anti-aircraft gun costs.
In ED, a C3 Multi Cannon costs around Cr600k while a similar turret costs Cr3.8m.
The turret costs 6x what a manually-operated Multi Cannon costs.
Seems like a bargain to me.
Does the CIWS also only do a fraction of the damage?
Depends how you look at it.
I mean, the DPS is pretty epic but the range and fall-off is lousy.
Also, it's going to ruin your jump-range and take up a C4 hardpoint.
Is true. Never seen a Navy ship jump ever.
The Philadelphia Experiment "Jumped" according to legends.
But as noted above Turrets have a place, My large ships use them, i tried using gimbled on a large ship, for the time i stayed on target seemed like it took longer to take down a target when compared to having turrets do the job for me.
It's a front-loaded disincentive so that players are railroaded early on towards gimballed and fixed weapons instead.
For a beginner who just wants to shoot stuff up in their space-fighter-jet turrets are notvery good on the front of offering intuitive feedback. Fixed and gimbals are obvious enough: if the target is in the targetting reticle, you shoot and immediately see the result with lasers and projectiles crossing your viewport, and they lead the player to engage in star-warsy turnfights as Frontier wanted and as the audience expects.
But with turrets you need to learn how they work, what their coverage is for each hardpoint on each ship, they may not fire or fire intermitently with no rhyme or reason until you dig a bit deeper... it's not super engaging gameplay, at least on the surface, and may leave a beginner confused and frustrated and bored.
Still they exist for more experienced players who know what they're getting into, can actually puzzle out what all the stats actually mean and for whom the credit cost isn't a factor.
For a beginner who just wants to shoot stuff up in their space-fighter-jet turrets are notvery good on the front of offering intuitive feedback. Fixed and gimbals are obvious enough: if the target is in the targetting reticle, you shoot and immediately see the result with lasers and projectiles crossing your viewport, and they lead the player to engage in star-warsy turnfights as Frontier wanted and as the audience expects.
But with turrets you need to learn how they work, what their coverage is for each hardpoint on each ship, they may not fire or fire intermitently with no rhyme or reason until you dig a bit deeper... it's not super engaging gameplay, at least on the surface, and may leave a beginner confused and frustrated and bored.
Still they exist for more experienced players who know what they're getting into, can actually puzzle out what all the stats actually mean and for whom the credit cost isn't a factor.
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An astute observation.
I wouldn't go as far as to suggest that "a newbie can't appreciate turrets" but I suspect it is more likely that a newbie will just like the idea of swanning around in combat while the turrets bring the dakka.
Well, that's how it was for me, at least.
In reality, turrets aren't well-suited for that, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.
A big ol' cargo ship fitted with a couple of frag-turrets (among other things), for example, can ruin a would-be pirate's day.
Equally, turrets modded with XFX such as Emissive, Scramble Spectrum and Thermal Vent can automatically do very useful things so you can concentrate on the dakka.
I suppose it might be nice if turrets did work in the "classical" way, so you could deliver devastating broadsides without having to stop basking in your Cutter but I guess FDev probably realised that'd be kind of OP.
Instead, turrets fill a more nuanced role.
I really wish they would buff (or rather un-nerf) turrets to make that work. It would be proper SF combat rather than Catch The Pigeon In Space.
People actually look at prices still?
I thought everyone was a billionaire 10x over by now.... (except me of course).
I reguarly use turrets on my ships, i like them.
I thought everyone was a billionaire 10x over by now.... (except me of course).
I reguarly use turrets on my ships, i like them.
I saw a PvP video (they won IIRC) of an Eagle with a turret.
I think it was.
interesting point.
my take was that it's just the inverse to the skill required: want it easier, cough up more money. you are right and turrets are actually more tricky to use but the fact that we've had anacondas getting to elite with turrets afk in cz in the early days suggest's that simply 'an unexpected consequence of turret design' is a more likely explanation ...
also, it seems they work differently in multicrew (ship orientation is irrelevant) so that doesn't spell out much planning either.
Just kidding, I don't
Also 19 million is 12 void opals...
blatant off topic:
i'm back in my ship! went to blow up some rocks two days ago in a krait in delkar, came back with a good load of opals, some diamonds and a bit of grandidierite ... 160 million cash! gasp! for blowing up 4 rocks! (well, dunno, that could have been 6, the haze in the ring is quite intoxicating and might alter perception of time and order of events!).
Turrets are in a rather precarious spot. They do significantly less damage, are bound to a tracking speed, are easily countered by chaff and suffer from jitter. On top of that come ship specific problems. Some ships can not make use of fixed weapons because of the placement of the hardpoints, for example, which makes a ship with a clustered weapon placement inherently better than a ship that has the weapons more spread out.
The lower damage is not inherently a drawback, however, as that is needed to balance the lower power draw, which is needed for a weapon that sees more sustained action. From my observations, the lower power draw is not consistent though - some turrets draw more than fixed, some seem to draw less.
What makes turrets bad is the lack of specialisation/options to improve their benefits or strengths. No experimental to reduce jitter? No tracking computer mod that allows turrets to automatically target and shoot at missiles and rockets? No option to improve tracking speed? No mod that switches from heat tracking to visual tracking, radar tracking or other tracking methods? There isn't even a tracking experimental that allows turrets to anticipate where a target will enter their field of fire - they go back to their default position instead. If a top mounted turret tracks a target going past the ship, a bottom mounted turret should swing around with a rough anticipation where that target is coming in once it leaves the field of fire of the top mounted turret, but nope.
There is a ton of options that is flat out untapped.
The worst aspect, to me, is the need for turrets/gimballs to compensate for bad weapon placement. The Type 10 is a really good example for this - as it has loads of weapon hardpoints but they are so spread out, that only 3 or maybe 4 of them can fire at a target with fixed and even with gimballs/turrets it is not guaranteed that most of the weapons point at a target up front. This means that a ship with a better weapon placement can do the same damage with 30 to 80 % of the weapons.
While there is a point to be made for play balance, there is also a point to be made for fringe cases, that require turrets/gimballs. This can create a deeply unsatisfying mode of play. There is nothing wrong with pushing players to utilize turrets and gimballs to compensate for playstyle or a ships inherent weaknesses. It does become a problem when the tools to make those compensations are lacking.
The lower damage is not inherently a drawback, however, as that is needed to balance the lower power draw, which is needed for a weapon that sees more sustained action. From my observations, the lower power draw is not consistent though - some turrets draw more than fixed, some seem to draw less.
What makes turrets bad is the lack of specialisation/options to improve their benefits or strengths. No experimental to reduce jitter? No tracking computer mod that allows turrets to automatically target and shoot at missiles and rockets? No option to improve tracking speed? No mod that switches from heat tracking to visual tracking, radar tracking or other tracking methods? There isn't even a tracking experimental that allows turrets to anticipate where a target will enter their field of fire - they go back to their default position instead. If a top mounted turret tracks a target going past the ship, a bottom mounted turret should swing around with a rough anticipation where that target is coming in once it leaves the field of fire of the top mounted turret, but nope.
There is a ton of options that is flat out untapped.
The worst aspect, to me, is the need for turrets/gimballs to compensate for bad weapon placement. The Type 10 is a really good example for this - as it has loads of weapon hardpoints but they are so spread out, that only 3 or maybe 4 of them can fire at a target with fixed and even with gimballs/turrets it is not guaranteed that most of the weapons point at a target up front. This means that a ship with a better weapon placement can do the same damage with 30 to 80 % of the weapons.
While there is a point to be made for play balance, there is also a point to be made for fringe cases, that require turrets/gimballs. This can create a deeply unsatisfying mode of play. There is nothing wrong with pushing players to utilize turrets and gimballs to compensate for playstyle or a ships inherent weaknesses. It does become a problem when the tools to make those compensations are lacking.