Imperial Cutter firing arcs with all Turret loadout

[GG7]

Perhaps I did something wrong, but I've used turrets a lot too. For them to deploy but then apparently fail to track the target is....odd. To be clear, I've had this just once/I] before and cycling through the firing modes did not help. However, then it just started working during my next encounter.

Didn't get interdicted this run....will try again.

Scoob.

Some builds run such a fine line in terms of power management that a single PIP difference in your WEP can make the difference between a fully powered weapon's load out, and one that stops working when your power demands in other areas of the ship prevent them from operating.

 

[Scoob]

Some builds run such a fine line in terms of power management that a single PIP difference in your WEP can make the difference between a fully powered weapon's load out, and one that stops working when your power demands in other areas of the ship prevent them from operating.

I was running 3 pips in SYS and 3 in WEP at the time, my plan being to let my turrets handle things. But yeah, I'm constantly managing my power distribution during fights. I often don't need to, strictly speaking, but it's good practise.

Scoob.

 

[GG7]

I was running 3 pips in SYS and 3 in WEP at the time, my plan being to let my turrets handle things. But yeah, I'm constantly managing my power distribution during fights. I often don't need to, strictly speaking, but it's good practise.

Scoob.

If you can video a combat session and then review it after the fact, you might be able to identify why your turrets stop firing when you think they should keep firing. (Fire at Will engaged)

I would predict that your WEP power meter will be at ZERO during all cease fire events and your recharge rate will be too slow during the engagement to provide a stable weapons power state. All these can be remedied with proper module choice and/or engineering upgades.

 

[Stealthie]

It is rare that your ship will be firing at multiple targets at the same time. Fire at Will simply gives your turrets "permission" to fire on your target (s) when they have a clear shot. 9 times out of 10, they will be firing at your primary target, since you rarely have more than a "single" primary target to deal with in any given combat encounter anyway.

Not sure about that.

I'm only ranked "Dangerous" and the vast majority, if not all, the "big fish" in RESs come in wings and my turrets happily chew on all of them at the same time.

The "trick" to smart turret use, IMO, is in fire-group allocation.

I set all my bigs ships up in a similar way:-
1) Manually-aimed laser.
2) Bunch of turreted lasers.
3) manually-aimed kinetic weapon.
4) Bunch of turreted kinetic weapons.

Then create 5 fire-groups which reflect those 4 categories and an "all weapons" fire-group as well.

That way you can always "disable" your turrets, when required, by selecting FG 1 or 3, you won't waste ammo by allowing your kinetic turrets to fire inappropriately and you'll have a "fire & brimstone" setting for those SHTF moments.

If that sounds like too much of a faff, at least ensure you put turrets in their own fire-group.
ALWAYS have a way of shutting down your turrets by switching FG.
Never, ever, ever configure a ship so there's no simple way to disable a turret. That way lies friendly-fire bounties.

 

[Das Boot]

Hi there Scoob. Many of my ships are 100% turrets.

In the presence of a single target there should be no difference between "target" and "fire at will". My turrets are set for fire at target, with the exception of when engaging multiple enemies such as a wing in a res, when I switch to fire at will in order to tag all targets in order to collect the bounties.

The only problem I have encountered is when trying to engage new (currently non-hostile) targets.

For example:
1. In a HighRES, I start shooting at a wanted NPC, his friends join the fight so I switch to fire at will (ie all hostiles).
2. The wing is dispatched and I collect 3 bounties.
3. Start searching for new target - get a wanted flag and attempt to fire.
4. As the new target is not yet hostile and the turrets set to fire at will (ie hostiles) they will not fire - I need to change back to target only before I can initiate a new round of combat and have the turrets kick in.

What you have may indeed be a bug but this may help with your troubleshooting.

 

[nosleepdemon]

Sounds like a bug. Extra lols at the guy claiming to be an expert, "set turrets to fire at will!!!!1" yeah alright, but how is that different to "fire at target" in a one on one situation? Maybe the UI got messed up and the game displayed fire at target even though internally, the turret behaviour was forward arc only?

 

[sb413197]

This isn't directly answering your question, but I suggest you equip your cutter with either 7 G5 overcharged gimballed multicannons (easy mode), or 5 fixed G5 long rangepulse lasers and put a feedback rail on one wing and a super penetrator (both G5 longrange) on the other wing - this setup takes a bit more practice to aim but is tremendously powerful. You can fit a size-5 prismatic shield generator on a cutter if you engineer it for increased mass - the prismatic shield was practically made for a cutter...!

 

[Scoob]

Thanks for the replies...I wasn't interdicted again the entire evening, despite waiting around waving my big, loot-filled around lol.

I decided to head back to Jameson to equip my Cutter a little better, so more A-Grade stuff and s Class 8 shield. I got a little engineering done - I really need to gather some more materials - so, next session, I can do some more combat tests.

Scoob.

 

[NecasekO]

Some things I can think of:

1. Cold ships may prevent any weapon tracking at distance. It is unlikely with a FDL but it could happen.
2. I have very bad experience with large (class 3) turrets. When I tried them on my Cutter they seemed to spend more time trying to track targets than actually shooting.

I currently run a pair of C2 laser turrets on the "wings" of my Cutter and they fire at any target that is above and in front or very slightly behind me. They do not fire at targets directly behind, but definitely do fire at off-screen targets.

As a side note, you should be able to test turret tracking with non-hostile stationary targets. Whenever you deploy hardpoints you should see dots on your HUD that show where weapons are aiming. If you can't see them, it means they are aiming off screen, and consequently that they are able to track your current target.

 

[Flin]

The firing arc of the C3 and C4 hardpoints aren't the best, so can see how they would stop firing if targets are behind.

Also, I encounter chaff a lot, so that throws off tracking.

What works for me are the following.
* C4 gimballed OC Multicannon with corrosive shell.
* FAOff to get front facing (improving firing arc).

Perhaps, the second suggestion is enough to mitigate the issue. FAoff facing drift won't matter as much as long as you keep the nose pointing near the target to be in the firing arc of your turrets.

 

[Scoob]

Thanks for the replies. I'll do some more testing this evening if I get the chance, sticking with the "cheap" Pulse Turrets for the moment. I do plan to add some MC's, one with Corrosive of course. From the shape of the Cutter I can see that it might have difficulty hitting something directly behind it and quite close. I'm also aware that a fast fly-by might see my larger C3 turrets struggle to track.

I did some work to tweak my Cutter a little better for combat - it was a pure trade build before of course - so I can test in Res sights with little risk

Scoob.

 

[Scoob]

Hi again all,

I just wanted to post a quick update.

Firstly, the issues I was experiencing yesterday with my Turrets not firing must have been a bug. I've come to this conclusion as I've been fighting in a HighRes this evening and my turrets - set to Target Only - have been working perfectly. I've also spent a good deal of time using the "Fire at Will" setting, and I'm not finding it quite so useful - certainly 1 vs 1.

Some observations on the two modes:

If running all turrets "Fire at Will" makes initiating combat difficult as I cannot manually fire my turrets to initiate combat. However, if I also have a main weapon - which I do now - they will auto-fire once my target(s) are Red.

With turrets set to "Target Only" I can assign different turrets to different fire groups add add extra firepower onto a target. I.e. I engage at range with my Primary Turrets, then engage the secondary turret (adding some extra power to WEP) if they're taking a while to bring down.

Turrets set to "Target Only" keep firing even after a ship is dead, and in its "death roll" animation. Simply switching target stops this of course, but in the heat of battle you might miss it. "Fire at Will" turrets stop firing instantly.

So, in my view both Turret modes have their place, but using "Target Only" allows much better prioritisation, and I can choose to bring different turret groups to bear on the target as I wish via fire groups.

"Fire at Will" is quite a nice, lazy option if you have excess power, but does seem to burn through my weapons energy quickly, especially if engaging multiple foes. Just moments ago while testing, I ran out of laser energy for my main gun, as my turrets had burnt through it on targets other than my primary one.

It's been interesting testing the modes - now my turrets actually work - and both appear to have their place. My preference remains "Target Only" as it lets me control the engagement much better. Perhaps with a more energy-efficient loadout I'd feel differently.

Scoob.

 

[Flin]

Good to hear they are working on most occasions.

The one time that I thought I encounter this bug was actually my weapon capacitors ran out.

On weapon capacitors control, I believe you can switch to another set of firegroup without turrets to turn them off.

There is also forward fire mode to work around chaff, so can be a useful mode.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

well directly behind you they cnanot fire well, because thrusters block the angle, you need to slightly up the nose to amke a firing line.

the best way to make everythign fire if they are turrets is havign them on the side of you near the horizon, then all weapons of aboce and beneath your ship can fire there.

I forgot to mention that The Cutter is a highly "overrated" combat ship. The Corvette puts it to shame in every single category of combat proficiency.

I use my Cutter as a high capacity cargo carrier, which is really what it is best suited for. I have tried pretty much every combat loadout you can name on that ship over the last 18 months and none of them compare to a properly kitted out Corvette.

These days my Cutter flies without a single weapon mounted.

The huge thrusters power consumption make it very warm and the low PD simply cannot properly fuel the pew pews, thats why the courvette outrules it so much.

 

[Itania]

You asked for advice and I gave you some. Your setting is WRONG for the Cutter. It doesn't matter if that worked on your other ships. The Cutter has a lot of blind spots in its weapon load out. Using anything other than Fire At Will for turrets on that ship is going to deliver mediocre results.

Precisely the results you were complaining about in your opening post.

If you want to blow off the advice of someone who obviously knows far more about this than anyone else in the this thread so far, be my guest!

I only wonder why you bothered posting this thread in the first place, when you are arguing with the advice provided?

Whatever.

Have fun!

Fire at Will doesn't make your turrets magically hit ennemies in their blind spots, so against a single opponent, Target Only give the exact same behavior and result as Fire at Will assuming that you keep your target locked and have pressed the trigger once. The only advantage of Fire at Will is that the turrets will keep firing if the target use a heat sink and you lose the lock.

The issue encoutered by Scoob look more like a case of no energy in wep capacitor.

 

[StiTch]

Why the rapid fire mod? I can't think of anything worse for a turret cutter; if you want close range proficiency I'd use efficient over it any day.

 

[AkimuMC]

You asked for advice and I gave you some. Your setting is WRONG for the Cutter. It doesn't matter if that worked on your other ships. The Cutter has a lot of blind spots in its weapon load out. Using anything other than Fire At Will for turrets on that ship is going to deliver mediocre results.

Precisely the results you were complaining about in your opening post.

If you want to blow off the advice of someone who obviously knows far more about this than anyone else in the this thread so far, be my guest!

I only wonder why you bothered posting this thread in the first place, when you are arguing with the advice provided?

Whatever.

Have fun!

hehehe... some things will never change will they?

The settings for turrets apply the exact same to any ship. Sidewinder through the Cutter. Fire at will: Will target any hostile ship. Target only: Only fires at your selected target. I know, weird...

I would blow off this advice. I always leave the turrets to target only and focus fire one target at a time. Though, some folks like to go in the middle of a conflict zone and start lighting everything up.

Good to see GG7 hasn't changed a bit. I can always use a chuckle.