I once did inertial impact rapid fire busts. It was hilarious. I was missing the target at 500m.
Make Turrets into Defensive weapons. Massively buff their damage, but heavily nerf their accuracy.
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
I once did inertial impact rapid fire busts. It was hilarious. I was missing the target at 500m.
Inertial Impact Bursts are actually super OP...against large ships at close range. I easily made top 10 on that CG with pirate activities about six months ago using them on my corvette.
Well, because they're doing the same thing they did before, only now with the potential to do vastly more damage if you don't turn for a little bit. I don't see the downside, myself.
Not using turrets currently is almost always a practical decision. They just don't do enough damage to justify themselves in most cases. Even on my T10, I only use them on one side of my ship, so I can take maximum advantage of keeping them firing 100% of the time, by always facing that side of my ship towards my target.
It would be nice if ships had a back-facing hardpoint exclusively for turrets, now that I think about it.
Well, because they're doing the same thing they did before, only now with the potential to do vastly more damage if you don't turn for a little bit. I don't see the downside, myself.
Not using turrets currently is almost always a practical decision. They just don't do enough damage to justify themselves in most cases. Even on my T10, I only use them on one side of my ship, so I can take maximum advantage of keeping them firing 100% of the time, by always facing that side of my ship towards my target.
It would be nice if ships had a back-facing hardpoint exclusively for turrets, now that I think about it.
So.... you're ok with the idea of adding them as an optional variant, rather than replacing what exists?
Also, you're saying they "don't do enough damage to justify themselves in most cases" but as you said, your variant would produce roughly the same damage... so, niche would remain niche.
Not sure why FD would bother in that case.
Well the point being that they do exactly what they currently do AND other stuff, too. So their niche is a lot wider than before.
I suppose you COULD add them as a new variant, but given the new ones would be basically the old ones but better in every way, there wouldn't be much reason for anyone to actually use the old ones anymore.
No. They wouldn't be doing exactly what they currently do.
They might result in the same amount of damage, but that doesn't mean they're doing the same thing they did before. Maybe you want a turret to keep hitting a ship with something so that their sheild doesn't regen while you're turning to line up with some fixed weapons. Maybe you want turrets for keeping some sort of debuff (corrosive MCs, for instance). If they're missing most of the time, you're not hitting them with the debuff. Damage isn't the only reason to shoot someone.
I mean, even 25% hit rate will still regularly apply every effect you could want.
You'd think that, but they actually do have some wobble, it's just much slower than gimbals. It's more than enough to miss at longer ranges. It does help a little bit at medium range, but I think the gradually improving accuracy would make up the difference.
They're ok up to 5km. Maybe a little bit more
A gimbal will miss more than it would hit at over 2km vs a small ship
I just see absolutely no point in what you want.
Higher damage, but higher miss rate... so no actual improvement on dps.
higher miss rate means more likelihood that turrets used for utility reasons won't actually apply what they're on your ship to do.
you're just wasting a huge percentage of your ammo, blasting it all into the void, while draining your distro and generating heat... for no reason. And the accuracy is even worse if the ship is moving? Are you just trying to build some ultimate AFK build or something?
So if you're not making things better for anyone, why would you want to annoy people who use these weapons and take away their utility?
To change the function and purpose of a type of weapon so drastically, and without even giving any additional value, seems pointless.
Higher damage, but higher miss rate... so no actual improvement on dps.
higher miss rate means more likelihood that turrets used for utility reasons won't actually apply what they're on your ship to do.
you're just wasting a huge percentage of your ammo, blasting it all into the void, while draining your distro and generating heat... for no reason. And the accuracy is even worse if the ship is moving? Are you just trying to build some ultimate AFK build or something?
So if you're not making things better for anyone, why would you want to annoy people who use these weapons and take away their utility?
To change the function and purpose of a type of weapon so drastically, and without even giving any additional value, seems pointless.
Ok, because turrets are very near and dear to my heart (specifically class 3 large beam turrets! Mmmm <3) I'm going to chime in on several things here because while I don't agree with the OP's idea (though I'm not against adding a new type of turret) I happen to also feel turrets are underwhelming. They are fine for PVE but in PVP they are pretty close to trash... which is why my opinion is that before changing anything else they should be reverted to their state at launch where they had immunity to chaff. Especially when you consider Dispersal Field & Target Lock Breaker have both been added as hard counters to turreted weapons and heat sinks/silent running also act as a way to prevent being shot by turrets. That's a total of 5 hard counters to completely prevent turret damage... Though I will admit that Target Lock Breaker does not work on turrets when in fire at will mode because they don't require a lock in that mode, however in Target Only mode they absolutely require a target lock and are IMO mostly useless in Fire At Will because you can't control what they shoot at and focus fire unless there is literally only one hostile in your proximity.
Turrets can be used in a way that do not auto fire all willy-nilly. You put them in Target Only mode in your right hand HUD and add them to a fire group. They will only start firing if you press their corresponding trigger and will continue firing until the target is lost, destroyed or you switch to a firegroup they are not present in. I keep my ships with turrets limited to exactly two fire groups at all times so that my turrets are never more than 2 clicks away from being fired and always one click from being turned off no matter the situation.
I like the idea of A-Rated sensors providing a bonus to the current tracking of turrets but to be honest they don't need a boost in accuracy as they are already extremely accurate. Not the topic/thread for it but I'd rather A-Rated sensors give us sub-slots to mount additional tools such as kill warrant and wake scanners to to encourage the use of A-rated sensor suites.
I am not OK with limiting where I can place my turrets in any way. It would be an arbitrary limitation and make no sense with how fitting currently works.
Because of this mechanic one of the niche uses I have gotten a surprisingly HUGE amount of mileage on with turrets is as a deterrent to gankers who play station camping games. Specifically they will sit out side and gank people coming and going from the station and whenever someone tries to shoot them they fly around real close to the station and pop chaff and try to avoid fire so that lawful defenders hit the station, committing a crime in the process and self-yeet themselves. Turrets in Fire At Will and Target Only mode are COMPLETELY immune to this so while they think they are going to make you self-yeet in reality what happens is they get whittled to almost losing shields before realizing that you aren't self-yeeting, panick and start trying to leave the area or dock.
IMPORTANT: Shooting turrets at a wanted target inside a station WILL result in the station killing you if you are inside its interior. Keep that in mind if you choose to use the turrets this way. I used the above tactic heavily on Distant Worlds 2 when the Distant Gankers were station camping in Open and it worked extremely well and generated a fair bit of salt on their streams.
Also, please don't get my turrets accuracy nerfed. I'd rather have them stay as-is than get a 40 DPS buff and a 50% reduction of time on target. My beams are modified with Long Range G5 and are actually useful for keeping thermal vent and regen sequence applied on targets at 6KM and I would be really miffed to lose that.
The downside is your system would impose a penalty for maneuvering. As it stands now most casual players die in pvp ganks as a direct result of not avoiding fire, giving them a super highly damaging weapon system and then making it so they can't avoid fire while using it is the equivalent of what Lucie does every time she pulls the football out from in front of Charlie Brown when he's kicking. That would be absolutely terrible game design.
As @Agony_Aunt said, most people in the wider community aren't using turrets as a result of Elitism, not because they are "useless". The ganking community for example demonizes turrets as TERRIBLE weapons but when faced with skilled pilots who can avoid their fire and keep constant time on target - you WILL hear them complain about them being annoying because that ToT not only does damage, it prevents their shields from naturally regenning which is a huge pain if they are in a bi-weave build. It's not as big of an issue for the massive buffer tank FDL's and Cutters and whatnot because they don't rely on regen, just raw hitpoints and unfortunately none of the turrets that can be used in turret mode without a multi-crew gunner deal absolute damage which means when facing those builds you are usually facing 40-50% damage reduction from their resists in pvp on top of their already abysmally low damage output.
Again, I'm completely against turret only hardpoints. Standardization and options are a staple of outfitting in Elite and I don't want that to change. It's bad enough we have "military" and "luxury" slot limitations. Volume inside a ship is volume inside a ship. Period.
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Ok so breaking away from responses I'm going to share a bit more of my anecdotal experiences with turrets and my preferences and a couple builds.
This is my current Python I'm using for combat post Odyssey: https://s.orbis.zone/g-z7
In this build, as I always do with every Python I fly into combat I use two large beam turrets on the "shoulder" mounts on the Python. Literally beam turrets on pythons are literally a near iconic staple with me. Everyone I play with who knows me knows I'm going to have them and knows I love them etc etc. They are EXTREMELY useful for keeping time on target and with thermal vent on them I never have to worry about overheating while doing their trickly damage.
This is my pre-Odyssey SUPPORT Python: https://s.orbis.zone/g-zh
This Python is very low DPS however despite that I was able to complete wing assassination missions against Elite engineered targets by taking my time and separating the target from their wingmates so pretty much all mission types were open to me. The turrets are running Regen Sequence because it is EXTREMELY valuable to be able to heal someone without looking at them. Mind you regen only heals for the damage the hardpoint can output and is further reduced/increased by resistances so healing heavily engineered ships meant I'd do ~50% less heals to a properly engineered ship while healing for up to 60% more to a ship that didn't have engineered shields. Even so that is between a bout 5 heals per second to ~22 heals per second with the large beam. This is nowhere close to overpowered when compared to the fixed huge beam with regen which does 37.2 Heals Per Second - and notably is the weapon gankers always use to claim Regen is over-powered (despite using the huge beam requires you to face the target you want to heal, preventing you from avoiding fire effectively)... but I digress.
Aside from immunity to crimes when the turrets fail to shoot the correct target and their ability to let you continue to evade incoming fire when being used to heal a wingmate and even separate from their ability to constantly apply engineer effects; by far my FAVORITE feature of turrets is combining them with fixed hitscan weapons so I can actively fire on two targets simultaneously by splitting my fire. I target who I want my turrets to shoot at and manually aim without a target lock at the other target I want to shoot at.
This "split fire" tactic has several uses. Most notably is that when flying witth inexperienced pilots I have the ability to generate threat/draw aggro on up to two enemy NPC's at a time by firing on them. With long range this gives me the ability to do essentially cover a sphere around my ship of 6KM in all directions (or 12K coverage) making me an absolutely amazing "tank" when supporting and teaching less experienced players or pulling enemies off experienced friendlies in high end pve. I've even used it in PVP pre-engineers to FORCE two enemies chasing a wingman to disengage him and re-engage me LITERALLY saving his rebuy and allowing him to escape. I've even used this tactic to keep a friendly alive while laying down fire with the fixed weapons on all the ships chasing them one-by-one pulling the NPC's off them.
If we universally changed turrets to the originally proposed system and killed their accuracy in exchannge for some up close brawling damage output not only would it make turrets useless but it would remove their ability to be used for ALL of those options so I am vehemently against the proposed change. Would I be OK with a new type of turret that gave us the Battlestar Galactica flack feel and was good at protecting heavy ships from brawlers? Absolutely YES! Just don't change the existing turrets.
And in closing, I'll say it again.. the correct course of action to address the lack of practicality of turrets as a damage dealing weapon would be to give them back their immunity to chaff. Especially when you consider you have at least four other hard counters to reduce turret time on target in the form of: silent running, heat sinks, target lockbreaker PA's and Dispersal Field PA's.
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Whew, long winded probably most will TL;DR it but I've been running turrets since my first Python in 2015 when I made my very first build using two medium rails, a large PA on the nose and two large beams on the roof and even after they nerfed turrets by making chaff affect them, I've still used them to decent effect. When engineers dropped though that effectiveness went down dramatically due to the average resists in combat bringing my typical DPS's per-turret down from 12.9 to ~6.45 since the average resist on a engineered shield is about 50%. So yes, please un-nerf turrets... but do it by giving them their chaff immunity back, please @frontier! Pretty please! With cherries on top!
For those of you who want a visual example of splitting fire between multiple targets:
So I have a few responses, first being that I think Frontier did OK balancing turrets by doing reduced damage compared to fixed/gimbaled counterparts. Do I think they made the damage too low? Back at launch? No. Now with inflated hitpoints on everything from engineering? Absolutely they do way too little damage.
Turrets can be used in a way that do not auto fire all willy-nilly. You put them in Target Only mode in your right hand HUD and add them to a fire group. They will only start firing if you press their corresponding trigger and will continue firing until the target is lost, destroyed or you switch to a firegroup they are not present in. I keep my ships with turrets limited to exactly two fire groups at all times so that my turrets are never more than 2 clicks away from being fired and always one click from being turned off no matter the situation.
I like the idea of A-Rated sensors providing a bonus to the current tracking of turrets but to be honest they don't need a boost in accuracy as they are already extremely accurate. Not the topic/thread for it but I'd rather A-Rated sensors give us sub-slots to mount additional tools such as kill warrant and wake scanners to to encourage the use of A-rated sensor suites.
I am not OK with limiting where I can place my turrets in any way. It would be an arbitrary limitation and make no sense with how fitting currently works.
@Northpin when turrets are in Fire At Will they are completely immune to crimes as they only shoot at hostile targets, even if they hit someone you don't have legal authority to hit, turrets will NEVER generate a crime in Fire At Will. When the turrets are in Target Only mode you have fire control to choose when they fire, if you choose to start shooting something with the turrets that you don't have legal authority to shoot at it WILL generate a crime; however if you are shooting at a legal target and your turrets miss and hit someone or something else that would normally generate a crime, the crime is ignored COMPLETELY.
Because of this mechanic one of the niche uses I have gotten a surprisingly HUGE amount of mileage on with turrets is as a deterrent to gankers who play station camping games. Specifically they will sit out side and gank people coming and going from the station and whenever someone tries to shoot them they fly around real close to the station and pop chaff and try to avoid fire so that lawful defenders hit the station, committing a crime in the process and self-yeet themselves. Turrets in Fire At Will and Target Only mode are COMPLETELY immune to this so while they think they are going to make you self-yeet in reality what happens is they get whittled to almost losing shields before realizing that you aren't self-yeeting, panick and start trying to leave the area or dock.
IMPORTANT: Shooting turrets at a wanted target inside a station WILL result in the station killing you if you are inside its interior. Keep that in mind if you choose to use the turrets this way. I used the above tactic heavily on Distant Worlds 2 when the Distant Gankers were station camping in Open and it worked extremely well and generated a fair bit of salt on their streams.
Turrets ABSOLUTELY require skill to use in high tier PVP. If you want to keep your turrets Time On Target high, especially large turrets, you really need to lean into flying the ship in ways that the turrets tracking speed can keep up with. I say this having been using turrets for well over 5,000 hours on my Python.
I've had the ability to switch my turrets into forward fire only mode help me win several fights (all pre-engineers) and there are some circumstances where I use forward fire mode to shoot things I can't target on the ground with my beams, so no, please don't try to take that away from me. It's useful.
Also, please don't get my turrets accuracy nerfed. I'd rather have them stay as-is than get a 40 DPS buff and a 50% reduction of time on target. My beams are modified with Long Range G5 and are actually useful for keeping thermal vent and regen sequence applied on targets at 6KM and I would be really miffed to lose that.
Almost every experienced/veteran Commander I fly with runs at least 2 turrets (usually beams) on their large ships for PVE with the rest being focused damage dealing weapons. Primarily because the beams don't just do less damage, that also have a significantly reduced distributor draw which allows a heavily engineered ship in PVE to basically keep infinite Time On Target with properly managed distributor... Which means no regen for the NPC's unless they chaff.
Inertial Impact Bursts may be OP but a weapon that is completely useless past 500m on large ships that need turrets to even keep consistent fire on a target is not even remotely practical when the majority of PVP ships go 450ms+. Literally 1-1.5 seconds and any pvp ship is completely out of range and just laugh and melt you from afar.
The downside is your system would impose a penalty for maneuvering. As it stands now most casual players die in pvp ganks as a direct result of not avoiding fire, giving them a super highly damaging weapon system and then making it so they can't avoid fire while using it is the equivalent of what Lucie does every time she pulls the football out from in front of Charlie Brown when he's kicking. That would be absolutely terrible game design.
As @Agony_Aunt said, most people in the wider community aren't using turrets as a result of Elitism, not because they are "useless". The ganking community for example demonizes turrets as TERRIBLE weapons but when faced with skilled pilots who can avoid their fire and keep constant time on target - you WILL hear them complain about them being annoying because that ToT not only does damage, it prevents their shields from naturally regenning which is a huge pain if they are in a bi-weave build. It's not as big of an issue for the massive buffer tank FDL's and Cutters and whatnot because they don't rely on regen, just raw hitpoints and unfortunately none of the turrets that can be used in turret mode without a multi-crew gunner deal absolute damage which means when facing those builds you are usually facing 40-50% damage reduction from their resists in pvp on top of their already abysmally low damage output.
Again, I'm completely against turret only hardpoints. Standardization and options are a staple of outfitting in Elite and I don't want that to change. It's bad enough we have "military" and "luxury" slot limitations. Volume inside a ship is volume inside a ship. Period.
-----------------------------------
Ok so breaking away from responses I'm going to share a bit more of my anecdotal experiences with turrets and my preferences and a couple builds.
This is my current Python I'm using for combat post Odyssey: https://s.orbis.zone/g-z7
In this build, as I always do with every Python I fly into combat I use two large beam turrets on the "shoulder" mounts on the Python. Literally beam turrets on pythons are literally a near iconic staple with me. Everyone I play with who knows me knows I'm going to have them and knows I love them etc etc. They are EXTREMELY useful for keeping time on target and with thermal vent on them I never have to worry about overheating while doing their trickly damage.
This is my pre-Odyssey SUPPORT Python: https://s.orbis.zone/g-zh
This Python is very low DPS however despite that I was able to complete wing assassination missions against Elite engineered targets by taking my time and separating the target from their wingmates so pretty much all mission types were open to me. The turrets are running Regen Sequence because it is EXTREMELY valuable to be able to heal someone without looking at them. Mind you regen only heals for the damage the hardpoint can output and is further reduced/increased by resistances so healing heavily engineered ships meant I'd do ~50% less heals to a properly engineered ship while healing for up to 60% more to a ship that didn't have engineered shields. Even so that is between a bout 5 heals per second to ~22 heals per second with the large beam. This is nowhere close to overpowered when compared to the fixed huge beam with regen which does 37.2 Heals Per Second - and notably is the weapon gankers always use to claim Regen is over-powered (despite using the huge beam requires you to face the target you want to heal, preventing you from avoiding fire effectively)... but I digress.
Aside from immunity to crimes when the turrets fail to shoot the correct target and their ability to let you continue to evade incoming fire when being used to heal a wingmate and even separate from their ability to constantly apply engineer effects; by far my FAVORITE feature of turrets is combining them with fixed hitscan weapons so I can actively fire on two targets simultaneously by splitting my fire. I target who I want my turrets to shoot at and manually aim without a target lock at the other target I want to shoot at.
This "split fire" tactic has several uses. Most notably is that when flying witth inexperienced pilots I have the ability to generate threat/draw aggro on up to two enemy NPC's at a time by firing on them. With long range this gives me the ability to do essentially cover a sphere around my ship of 6KM in all directions (or 12K coverage) making me an absolutely amazing "tank" when supporting and teaching less experienced players or pulling enemies off experienced friendlies in high end pve. I've even used it in PVP pre-engineers to FORCE two enemies chasing a wingman to disengage him and re-engage me LITERALLY saving his rebuy and allowing him to escape. I've even used this tactic to keep a friendly alive while laying down fire with the fixed weapons on all the ships chasing them one-by-one pulling the NPC's off them.
If we universally changed turrets to the originally proposed system and killed their accuracy in exchannge for some up close brawling damage output not only would it make turrets useless but it would remove their ability to be used for ALL of those options so I am vehemently against the proposed change. Would I be OK with a new type of turret that gave us the Battlestar Galactica flack feel and was good at protecting heavy ships from brawlers? Absolutely YES! Just don't change the existing turrets.
And in closing, I'll say it again.. the correct course of action to address the lack of practicality of turrets as a damage dealing weapon would be to give them back their immunity to chaff. Especially when you consider you have at least four other hard counters to reduce turret time on target in the form of: silent running, heat sinks, target lockbreaker PA's and Dispersal Field PA's.
-----------------------------------
Whew, long winded probably most will TL;DR it but I've been running turrets since my first Python in 2015 when I made my very first build using two medium rails, a large PA on the nose and two large beams on the roof and even after they nerfed turrets by making chaff affect them, I've still used them to decent effect. When engineers dropped though that effectiveness went down dramatically due to the average resists in combat bringing my typical DPS's per-turret down from 12.9 to ~6.45 since the average resist on a engineered shield is about 50%. So yes, please un-nerf turrets... but do it by giving them their chaff immunity back, please @frontier! Pretty please! With cherries on top!
For those of you who want a visual example of splitting fire between multiple targets:
I'd rather you could set Turreted weapons to a Fixed or Gimbled mode with an associated increase in damage (and adjustments to DD/PWR/Thermals). Likewise, if your target drops chaff the gimbled and turreted hardpoints should automatically revert to fixed-fire mode with attendant damage increase. Turrets become a logical choice for large ships because of their versatility.
Human multicrew can operate all your turrets, I don't see why the same benefit shouldn't apply to an NPC manning the turrets as well. Bottom line: an NPC crewman should assignable to Turrets, at which point the turrets ignore chaff and their accuracy is determined by the Crewman's rank. They get paid enough, and that'd create an incentive to hire two crewman (one for turrets and one for a fighter).
Ok so first... I LOVE the idea of turrets switching automatically to forward fire when my opponent chaffs. This idea makes my eyes well with tears at how AMAZING it would be and how much it would improve my quality of life... I spend SOOO MUCH TIME with half my weapons being literally useless due to chaff.
Also... YES PLEASE! I may not have a fighter bay on my Python but I would HAPPILY hire crew again if I could assign that NPC to man my turrets and get the chaff immunity back similar to how if a player mans my guns they are immune to chaff.
YES YES YES YES YES PLEASE!
I may be coming in late here. It would be nifty to have the different turret modes change the stats of the weapon. For instance, "Fire Forward" converts the hardpoint into gimbled, and gains the gimbled weapon stats for being locked in place; Meanwhile, under "Target Only" or "Fire At Will" retains the base turret hardpoint stats.
This may improve the valuation of turrets, where Commanders could use one hardpoint for gimbled i.e. "Fire Forward" and multi-crew; however, Elite Dangerous would need to provide a mode override under the module inspection view. This way you can designate which turret hardpoints are for multi-crew gunners.
This may improve the valuation of turrets, where Commanders could use one hardpoint for gimbled i.e. "Fire Forward" and multi-crew; however, Elite Dangerous would need to provide a mode override under the module inspection view. This way you can designate which turret hardpoints are for multi-crew gunners.
That would make gimballed weapons completely pointless.
Not entirely. Some 'balancing' factors would be the weight, PP/PD cost, and credits cost of the turreted weapon. The idea really was using the turret control modes to apply mode advantages without infringing on the Fixed or Gimbling hardpoints.
For example,
Fire Forward
- Locked and Braced (slight improvement on damage and accuracy) similar but not equal to gimbling weapons (but slightly better than current turret stats).
Target Only and Fire At Will
- As per current Turret rules.
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So... turret ships essentially become rng frustration machines for people fighting with and against them?
Not at all. The attackers need to make quick attack runs, facing meaningful risk as they do so. Defenders are encouraged to fly in convoy and maintain formation, to maximize their effectiveness.
The increases in accuracy would happen predictably, so attackers would have a skill component involved, moving in and out of range, while defenders would want to maximize their attack surfaces while minimizing their vector adjustments, also requiring skill, just of a different sort.
As opposed to right now, where functionally the only way of survival is to high wake as quickly as possible and run away.
Either it's predictable enough to be trivial, over powered to the point that it makes it far easier to high wake safely, or it's an rng nightmare.
Predictable is fine, as long as it's difficult. That just serves to make up the balance difference between an attack-rigged ship and a trade-rigged ship. Of course, it should absolutely be very difficult for a single attacker to take on 3-4 trade ships, and should require skill and coordination.
It's already no easy task to take a ship down before it high wakes. Make it more difficult and it will become near impossible to actually catch anyone.
Why do you think a ship that has minimized it's combat capability to maximize cargo should stand a chance against a ship who has. Maximize it's combat abilities?
And who in a group of 4 is having trouble getting away from a single attacker?