So what's the deal with large gimballed beams?

[Bane Six Echo]

I think the wobble of gimballed lasers is ridiculous, for at least a couple of reasons.

1. Gimballed kinetic weapons don't wobble, or wobble imperceptibly. I've got four gimballed multi-cannons on my Asp and they're solid as a rock. Why? My guess: if gimballed kinetics wobbled like gimballed thermals there would be riots in the forums over wasted ammunition, and no one would use them. Wobbly thermals don't waste credits.

2. You're telling me that in a thousand years they haven't developed accurate target tracking systems? (They have, buy gimballed kinetics and see yet another example of the game's inconsistent internal logic.) We've got defense systems on our warships right now in 2015 that can track and destroy incoming missiles with guns or other missiles. And we can't get a hard lock on 400 ton, 900 feet long spacecraft? Oh, but it's for balance. . They're already balanced by DPS, DPE, power draw, thermal load, the handling characteristics of the ship they're on, etc. Nothing screams "you're playing a game" like wobbly lasers. It's dumb, and needs to go.

Sorry for the slight rant, but the immersion-breaking (I hate that terminology, but it's true in this case), inconsistent internal logic of parts of this game drive me kind of nuts.

 

[Poseidal]

Who's to say passive jamming hasn't got more developed?

Remember the ECM, (at least in older games), as long as it is activated and on the shields basically renders all guided missiles useless. Just because guided weapons are effective today, doesn't necessarily mean that they are as effective thanks to technology countering it, and overtaking the countermeasures that we have today.

 

[Bane Six Echo]

Sure, there's always going to be an arms race between measures and countermeasures. The fact that not all gimballed weapons wobble, there's no mention of any passive ECM in the game that I know of, and that there is active ECM in the game (chaff launchers) makes that point not as strong as it could be perhaps.

 

[DidierDrbois]

Gimballed kinetic weapons don't wobble... <snip> Why?

I was thinking exactly the same thing!
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The funny part is, the truly ridiculous wobble is almost exclusive property of the large beams. It's either less noticeable or e.g. pulse lasers wobble far less. Same with smaller (medium) gimballed beams. I don't get it.
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The other side of the coin is if these guns were tiniest bit more accurate, those who would survive their fire (the users, presumably) would die of boredom!