Make turrets useful

[Bortas]

As it stands, turrets are mostly useless in their current state, as they are hard countered by chaff and dispersal field, which can both be spammed without pause.

To fix this, I'm seeing two options:

1. Give the turrets a 50% chance to resist the effect, so that the non-affected turrets could still track their target, while the affected ones behave like they do now under the influence of chaff / dp. To prevent spamming, turrets that resisted the effect should become immune to it for the next 10 seconds.

2. The simple solution: Add a general cooldown of 20 seconds to the effect, so that all turrets are affected normally for 10 seconds followed by 10 seconds of immunity to further chaff / dp.


Turrets are already balanced by dealing only ~50% of the damage of their fixed variant and slow tracking. Implementing one of the aforementioned mechanics would allow chaff / dp users to reduce their damage output to 25% of fixed weapons, which seems a bit more reasonable than the current 0%.

 

[Captain Willard]

Turrets work fine for me.

 

[UFO Reality]

As it stands, turrets are mostly useless in their current state, as they are hard countered by chaff and dispersal field, which can both be spammed without pause.

To fix this, I'm seeing two options:

1. Give the turrets a 50% chance to resist the effect, so that the non-affected turrets could still track their target, while the affected ones behave like they do now under the influence of chaff / dp. To prevent spamming, turrets that resisted the effect should become immune to it for the next 10 seconds.

2. The simple solution: Add a general cooldown of 20 seconds to the effect, so that all turrets are affected normally for 10 seconds followed by 10 seconds of immunity to further chaff / dp.


Turrets are already balanced by dealing only ~50% of the damage of their fixed variant and slow tracking. Implementing one of the aforementioned mechanics would allow chaff / dp users to reduce their damage output to 25% of fixed weapons, which seems a bit more reasonable than the current 0%.

I agree somewhat.
The AI chaffing just keeps going for too long.
Seems to kill the joy of having grinded and paid for turret weapons as fixed weapons are rubbish for casual players.
Only die-hard ED players are any good with them.
Too many nerfs have killed the game satisfaction and I would prefer to see module decay incorporated rather than power nerfing weapons and shields.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Frontier should return turrets defaulting to fixed when they loose target instead of doing nothing.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Frontier should return turrets defaulting to fixed when they loose target instead of doing nothing.

Atleast give us this as an option. either for this happen automatically or be toggled by a button.


(the same for Gimbled weapons)

 

[Old Duck]

I often fly with a mix of turret and fixed weapons, toggling off turrets when the chaff spams. I have also noticed that turrets can still land a surprising number of hits if you close range enough (up close and personal like).

If my mechanic were clever, he'd tie turrets to the night vision system, and then they'd never miss!

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I use missiles to shoot people's chaffs off. Problem solved.

 

[Bortas]

I use missiles to shoot people's chaffs off. Problem solved.

Apart from the fact that this obviously doesn't work against opponents with shields, it won't help against dispersal field, which badly exacerbated the problem of chaff. The ability to perma-chaff at least required compromises in outfitting... more chaff -> less shield boosters. But dispersal field is a no brainer to have on at least one of the omnipresent plasma accelerators enabling the users to "perma-chaff" with no drawbacks.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

i think the easiest fix is probably just allowing turrets to be fired as fixed weapons if there is no target lock again.
its a bit of a headscratcher why frontier removed that functionality in the first place

 

[Bortas]

i think the easiest fix is probably just allowing turrets to be fired as fixed weapons if there is no target lock again.
its a bit of a headscratcher why frontier removed that functionality in the first place

I don't remember that this has ever been the case. And tbh it wouldn't help too much, since the typical ships predestined for turrets have bad hardpoint convergence and maneuverability, which is why they are using turrets instead of fixed weapons in the first place. Thinking of ships like the Imperial Cutter, T-9 Heavy and T-10 Defender here.

 

[Arkadi]

I just say AFK turret boats...

To improve useability of turrets I would love a keybinding to cycle turrtets mode: forward-fire, target-only, fire-at-will. Just pressing a button to cycle this would be good enough for me to make turrets more worthwhile.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

I don't remember that this has ever been the case. And tbh it wouldn't help too much, since the typical ships predestined for turrets have bad hardpoint convergence and maneuverability, which is why they are using turrets instead of fixed weapons in the first place. Thinking of ships like the Imperial Cutter, T-9 Heavy and T-10 Defender here.

it was a feature either during or before season 2 I belive, it hasnt been in the game in a while.
Suffice to say it was useful for skilled pilots that wanted the best of both worlds, but for whatever reason frontier decided that turrets wouldnt function as fixed if there was no target lock but instead would have to be manually changed to that mode if people wanted to use them that way.

 

[Morbad]

Turrets are already pretty useful.

The damage from them is mediocre and is easy to counter in the short to medium term with chaff, and mitigate with dispersal, but even with these things working against them, turrets excel at delivering special effects. Fire at will turrets also work completely independently of ships sensors. It's easy to rapidly deplete an opponent's chaff, or keep the pressure up enough with a few turrets to prevent rapid shield regen.

It would be nice if they could be toggled to forward fire more easily than having to dig through the right pane (which I like to leave on my modules in a fight).

 

[Sylow]

It would be nice if they could be toggled to forward fire more easily than having to dig through the right pane (which I like to leave on my modules in a fight).

While few of my ships have any turret, for those which do this would be nice convenience upgrade. I'd very much welcome it.