Sensors and Turret/Gimbal Precision [Beating the Dead Horse]

[Kiithnaras]

This concept would enable better quality sensors to affect the precision of gimballed and turreted (articulated) weapons. Before you start throwing up your hands, flipping tables, and kindly pointing out that Frontier have previously visited and subsequently tabled this, hear me out; I'm not talking about tracking speed or accuracy, I'm talking about the range of inherent motion when using gimballed and turreted weapons.

Better sensors would and should reduce the maximum random walk that gimbals and turrets experience when engaging targets, approximately to 40-60% (10-15% reduction per grade from E) of their base values. This would improve the effective range and precision of articulated weapons. It would even affect the weapons under Chaff or Dispersal Field effects; if an articulated weapon is normally sent into a 6 degree scatter arc when affected by a Chaff type effect, A-rated sensors would reduce that to only 3 degrees (in the median of the proposed ranges). It's important to realize that this would only be a soft counter to Chaff and Dispersal Fields. Pilots using these effects against ships with articulated weapons would need to stand off further in order to receive less fire from the disrupted weapons.

That's really the sum of it. Better Sensors = Stronger target signals and less disruptive interference = Less articulated weapon random walk (not mechanically the same as Jitter, that's a boresight scattering effect from certain engineering blueprints and can even affect Fixed weapons). D-rated sensors wouldn't have a huge impact on this state, and C or better sensors would really be necessary to see a significant impact. It certainly wouldn't be more effective than having a crewed ship operating the turrets manually, either.

 

[Teh Smoo]

I put long range on some lasers. I didn't bother to take it past 3, as they simply have minimal chance of hitting at anything over 4000m, and they're spotty at that distance anyway. 4800m is barely functional, and that's just level 3.

Now, if gimbals locked down over time? So if you fire constantly, the aim jitters, but the longer you go without firing, the calm down and draw a bead? That would be nice.

So there would actually be a POINT to putting long range grade 5 on things, because if you wait a few seconds, they would tighten down and you could squeeze a round of shots off. Then the aim jitters for a few seconds, until it calms down and you can squeeze another off. You're still getting few shots in way out at 6000m, but at least you can plink an NPC so they fly to you.

 

[Kiithnaras]

If you're attempting to hit something small in earnest at that range, long-range fixed bursts or beams (or railguns if you have a serious case of eagle eye) are the better way to go at this point.

I can see a case, though, for changing how the articulated weapons operate. Rather than settling between shots, it would make more sense to me if the magnitude of the aiming oscillations reduced as the need to track the target reduced; if you're holding a target steady in your crosshairs - even if that means your ship is spinning, but the target is mostly stationary relative to that spin - then the aiming oscillations should settle down and degrade in magnitude toward zero. A wildly-moving target might cause turrets and gimbals to aim more wildly around it as they adjust to the changes in tracking speed and position. In this case, better sensors would reduce the time to settle aim and reduce the severity of aiming adjustment oscillations (but not increase tracking speed at all).

In this way, articulated weapons would naturally be more precise at longer ranges (lower angular velocites) and much less precise up close without a steady hand at the helm. If this were adopted, I could see Chaff and Dispersal Fields requiring targets to keep dodging; the initial burst of chaff might give a big kick in disrupting the aim of articulated weapons, but if the targets are sitting still, the sensors should still adapt and adjust, aiming for the approximate center of the target's signal. Motion under a Chaff-like effect, though, would greatly confuse articulated weapons.