Fixed Gimbals! (Convergant Fixed)

[Noobilite]

How about a new class of weapons called fixed gimbals. They have the power of fixed(or close) but have the ability to only gimbal inwards so they converge. "Convergent Fixed"

Not sure what would be needed to balance them. Maybe Damage like Gimbals, but power and draw like a fixed perhaps.

 

[Steve Solo]

Fairly sure fixed weapons already converge. There is little room for error though...

 

[Caramel Clown]

Let's just be honest - you tried fixed on a Clipper and it made you want to cry

 

[metatheurgist]

I think that's called having one fixed and one gimballed.

 

[Captain Willard]

We already have it. Turn gimballed off and use as fixed.

 

[Voracity_T]

Yeah no.

The main thing here is youre asking for an auto track weapon that has all the DPS of a fixed gun.

Flat no. That differene in damage between the two weapon classes is about the only thing keeping everyone from running gimbal noob ships.

So yea. No.

 

[Noobilite]

Yeah no.

The main thing here is youre asking for an auto track weapon that has all the DPS of a fixed gun.

Flat no. That differene in damage between the two weapon classes is about the only thing keeping everyone from running gimbal noob ships.

So yea. No.

I said the damage of a gimbal with the power, PD, and maybe heat of a fixed....

Let's just be honest - you tried fixed on a Clipper and it made you want to cry

No, a cutter! 8d

We already have it. Turn gimballed off and use as fixed.

Will it aim inwards? I'm using gimbaled atm. I would love to have them not rotate up and down to go with a fixed weapon.

 

[Voracity_T]

I said the damage of a gimbal with the power, PD, and maybe heat of a fixed....

Why not just use fixed then?

Ships which have split hardpoints often have them because they are not combat dedicated. With the exception of the Memeba.

 

[Noobilite]

Why not just use fixed then?

Ships which have split hardpoints often have them because they are not combat dedicated. With the exception of the Memeba.

It's for a cutters wing hardpoints. Can you actually make the gimbal not use pitch and only aim inwards like a fixed as someone indicated or was that a joke? If I can do that I will do that. I want them to go with some rail guns for heat(later imperial hammers). They are thermal vent beam lasers. But If they aim inwards but don't move up and down like a fixed I can use them as aiming lasers. I want giant heat reducing laser pointers on my cutters wing mounts!!

It's that or I dump the lasers and use reverb mines.

 

[Voracity_T]

It's for a cutters wing hardpoints. Can you actually make the gimbal not use pitch and only aim inwards like a fixed as someone indicated or was that a joke? If I can do that I will do that. I want them to go with some rail guns for heat(later imperial hammers). They are thermal vent beam lasers. But If they aim inwards but don't move up and down like a fixed I can use them as aiming lasers. I want giant heat reducing laser pointers on my cutters wing mounts!!

It's that or I dump the lasers and use reverb mines.

But the clue is in the name. Gimbal. They will track anything in front of you in a 35* angle. Regardless of pitch or yaw, provided the nose is within that 35* space.

 

[Noobilite]

Yes, I know they can tilt up and down. I'm was hoping to get rid of that and have them only narrow center and work like fixed, but with the ability to hit the target.

 

[Voracity_T]

Yes, I know they can tilt up and down. I'm was hoping to get rid of that and have them only narrow center and work like fixed, but the ability to hit the target.

Again, ships with hardpoints on the wings or in goofy places have not been designed with combat in mind. It's a balancing thing also. If a Cutter could converge all his weaponry as fixed the ship would be broken. It's already 90% of the way there with basically infinite shields. I'm against anything that gives a large ship any advantage as they pretty mcuh have all of them outside of manuvering as it is.

The Mamba bucks the trend but then it was seemingly designed for people who want to PvP but dont have the skillset to fly the FDL. Or maybe some just don't like it, but why you would trade the FDL convergence for the Mambas utterly gimped layout is beyond me.

 

[Noobilite]

Why are you argueing about fixed vs gimbaled when gimbaled is already reduced in damage. It's a mute point. I just want to rig my gimbals to shoot center only. Or a new type of weapon that only aims in the center(With gimbals lowered damage.). You seem to be argueing about something else. I'm assuming this means that you cannot make current gimbals only shoot center then... 8\

Yeah no.

The main thing here is youre asking for an auto track weapon that has all the DPS of a fixed gun.

Flat no. That differene in damage between the two weapon classes is about the only thing keeping everyone from running gimbal noob ships.

So yea. No.

I will repeat this for you. I am not asking for fixed weapon damage. I just want to limit the gimbal!!!!!!

 

[Voracity_T]

Why are you argueing about fixed vs gimbaled when gimbaled is already reduced in damage. It's a mute point. I just want to rig my gimbals to shoot center only. Or a new type of weapon that only aims in the center(With gimbals lowered damage.). You seem to be argueing about something else.

And I'm telling you that they already do shoot centre only.

Which I have now repeated several times.

You're in a spaceship, the weapons are not going to track on a 2D plane so theres no point in requesting it. Just learn the dynamics of the existing tracking weapons and learn to leverage them accordingly rather than just asking for a new weapon type.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Wouldn't a better solution be to have a distance setting to convergence fixed weapons? So, you could set your Clipper to converge at 1Km, 2 etc.

 

[Sylow]

Why not just use fixed then?

Ships which have split hardpoints often have them because they are not combat dedicated. With the exception of the Memeba.

Actually spread out hardpoints are not as bad as many people make it sound. Sure, your all railgun/PA setup doesn't work on that ship. You have to use gimbals, at least on part of the hardpoints. But there's also a huge advantage to that. Or at least there was, till we got engineered shields, which basically never go down.

You can try it yourself: next time you go to a HAZRes, bring along a pair of missile launchers on your small hardpoints. Bring down the shields of a FAS/FGS, subtarget a weapon, then hit it with one or two missile volleys. Notice that usually they stop firing most if not all of their weapons. The oh-so-great configuration of hardpoints close to each other can be quickly disabled by very few missile hits. Now try to do the same on a clipper. You might manage to know one or two weapons offline, but fully disarming it takes much longer and you're better off just destroying the ship itself.

And then consider that NPCs fly rather soft ships. The Imperial Cutter and Clipper have plenty of internals, you can turn them into extremely durable hulltanks. (While still having insanely strong shields to boot. )

That all being said, also what others already have mentioned: micro-gimbaling already is in the game. It's easy to notice, too. Bring a pair of railguns. Aim at a target at different distances. (Do this with a friend. NPCs don't stand still to allow you to test... bad boys they are. ) See that at longer distances, the aiming markers of the railguns snap to the target. They actually also do so on shorter distance, but the very limited arc of the micro-gimballing makes it much harder to notice there, while it becomes quite obvious if the target is close to the weapons maximum range.

Of course, on a huge ship as the Cutter it's still not easy to use the micro-gimbals effectively for weapons on the outer hardpoints. Try to put your fixed weapons on one side and the gimbaled on another and things get much easier.

 

[Voracity_T]

Actually spread out hardpoints are not as bad as many people make it sound. Sure, your all railgun/PA setup doesn't work on that ship. You have to use gimbals, at least on part of the hardpoints. But there's also a huge advantage to that. Or at least there was, till we got engineered shields, which basically never go down.

You can try it yourself: next time you go to a HAZRes, bring along a pair of missile launchers on your small hardpoints. Bring down the shields of a FAS/FGS, subtarget a weapon, then hit it with one or two missile volleys. Notice that usually they stop firing most if not all of their weapons. The oh-so-great configuration of hardpoints close to each other can be quickly disabled by very few missile hits. Now try to do the same on a clipper. You might manage to know one or two weapons offline, but fully disarming it takes much longer and you're better off just destroying the ship itself.

And then consider that NPCs fly rather soft ships. The Imperial Cutter and Clipper have plenty of internals, you can turn them into extremely durable hulltanks. (While still having insanely strong shields to boot. )

That all being said, also what others already have mentioned: micro-gimbaling already is in the game. It's easy to notice, too. Bring a pair of railguns. Aim at a target at different distances. (Do this with a friend. NPCs don't stand still to allow you to test... bad boys they are. ) See that at longer distances, the aiming markers of the railguns snap to the target. They actually also do so on shorter distance, but the very limited arc of the micro-gimballing makes it much harder to notice there, while it becomes quite obvious if the target is close to the weapons maximum range.

Of course, on a huge ship as the Cutter it's still not easy to use the micro-gimbals effectively for weapons on the outer hardpoints. Try to put your fixed weapons on one side and the gimbaled on another and things get much easier.

...

PvPer.

 

[Sylow]

...

PvPer.

Hmm. You want to say that i write from the point of view of a PvP player? Or that my statement does not include a PvP players point of view?

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

Why not just ask to make fixed weapons more convergant on every ship, instead of giving it the silly name of "fixed gimbal"? Because that's the issue adressed here, ain't it?

 

[Voracity_T]

Hmm. You want to say that i write from the point of view of a PvP player? Or that my statement does not include a PvP players point of view?

My aplogies, I am having to deal wth someone invading my inbox.

No I mean I know these things, sorry for the overly blunt response aha.

Sure the split harpoints are an advantage against explosive based weaponry, but that same issue is circumvented by having harpoints positioned on different points on the ship. In the Gunships example, you throw as much of the side of the ship into the missiles as possible and odds are most of the weaponry will be fine, the FDS has it even easier in this regard given how it can simply dip its nose and most of the guns are covered. This is also where the Memeba falls flat on its face. All the guns are on one part of the ship after shield drop you literally can take out all the weapons simply by targeting one. Much harder a feat to pull offf against Fed ships and FDLs for example.

I mean sure you can turn them into viable hulltanks, especially in the case of the Clipper, which can perform admirably, but when all pilots are equal it will often lose to a FAS unless it runs away for shields. Cutters are just fairly broken in the tanking department, but its in the description of the ship; "Designed to project soft power", unlike the Vette which is a full warship. Unfortunatly the Cutter beats it out on tanking but it loses out on SCBs, Weapons, and distributor. They are certainly able to hold an instance but are often much less capable of dealing any actual damage to people in comparison to the Vette. If for no other reason than time on target.

Yeah microgimbals are an interesting one. Sometimes it can feel quite obnoxious, other times nearly non existant. Mostly depending on range. If you look at the Chieftan Vs Conda video I posted the other day you can see that at closer ranges the microgimbal is far less relevant than it would otherwise be had I been further away from the target ship. In that example it would have been a bad move to increase the distance as my opponent also had rails, just more of them. However when damage outputs are more equal range is often the best way to leverage the microgimbal.
That being said though, I still wouldnt advise using things like rails on nacelles, it's just too fiddly a thing to be reliable. I'm sure there are neiche uses for it, but given that it is so neiche, it'll generally be more of a hinderance than a benifit.