Right now, Turrets are a very, very niche weapon choice. Low damage is only slightly compensated for by slightly better DPE and a wider firing arc, and the vast majority of ships simply aren't slow enough for them to really matter. The only place you consistently see them is on afk boats, which isn't exactly top-tier gameplay!
So here's the idea; massively - and I mean MASSIVELY - buff their damage. But at the same time, make them EXTREMELY inaccurate, to force attackers to play defensively. Furthermore, whenever the ship equipped with them changes course, the turrets aim would be disturbed.
I'm talking 75% miss rates, here. These guns should be the meaning of spray and pray. For example, consider a current C3 turreted multicannon. It does 9.5 DPS, compared to 18.8 for the fixed version. It's basically doing the same damage as a class 1 cannon.
In my proposal, its damage would be buffed to something like 40 DPS - but again, it would miss 75% of the time, especially equipped on a ship making frequent course corrections. Even in ideal circumstances, it would still have a fairly wide cone of fire, benefitting small ships and fighters.
However, as the target remains in range, slowly, ever so slowly, this very poor accuracy would sloooowly resolve, growing more and more accurate with each shot. Players attacking a ship outfitted with a full compliment of turrets would be like bombers flying in to attack a city guarded by flak; explosions raining around them, darting back and forth to avoid AA fire, before swing in to unleash carefully-timed attacks before dodging back out of range again to reset the targeting!
A key factor would be making sure they're not overpowered in attacking hands. The last thing you want is someone to ram someone else and unload 500 gigawatts of particle energy from turrets.
My tentative solution is that at extreme close ranges, the turrets would get 'confused' by the target being, apparently, everywhere. Rather than firing constantly, they'll move from one firing position to another before firing, trying to locate the center of the target. As the enemy stays close they'll slowly fire faster and faster, but it'll be enough time for a ship under attack to get out of the way, but not so long an attacker can just sit on a defending ship's side and not take any damage.
The ideal goal is that defending convoys that stick together can marshal a powerful defensive spray of fire, but these weapons couldn't be used terribly effectively by attackers.
So here's the idea; massively - and I mean MASSIVELY - buff their damage. But at the same time, make them EXTREMELY inaccurate, to force attackers to play defensively. Furthermore, whenever the ship equipped with them changes course, the turrets aim would be disturbed.
I'm talking 75% miss rates, here. These guns should be the meaning of spray and pray. For example, consider a current C3 turreted multicannon. It does 9.5 DPS, compared to 18.8 for the fixed version. It's basically doing the same damage as a class 1 cannon.
In my proposal, its damage would be buffed to something like 40 DPS - but again, it would miss 75% of the time, especially equipped on a ship making frequent course corrections. Even in ideal circumstances, it would still have a fairly wide cone of fire, benefitting small ships and fighters.
However, as the target remains in range, slowly, ever so slowly, this very poor accuracy would sloooowly resolve, growing more and more accurate with each shot. Players attacking a ship outfitted with a full compliment of turrets would be like bombers flying in to attack a city guarded by flak; explosions raining around them, darting back and forth to avoid AA fire, before swing in to unleash carefully-timed attacks before dodging back out of range again to reset the targeting!
A key factor would be making sure they're not overpowered in attacking hands. The last thing you want is someone to ram someone else and unload 500 gigawatts of particle energy from turrets.
My tentative solution is that at extreme close ranges, the turrets would get 'confused' by the target being, apparently, everywhere. Rather than firing constantly, they'll move from one firing position to another before firing, trying to locate the center of the target. As the enemy stays close they'll slowly fire faster and faster, but it'll be enough time for a ship under attack to get out of the way, but not so long an attacker can just sit on a defending ship's side and not take any damage.
The ideal goal is that defending convoys that stick together can marshal a powerful defensive spray of fire, but these weapons couldn't be used terribly effectively by attackers.
