Vs gimbaled that is. Say you have a gimbaled weapon on the nose of your ship. It can attack the top, the left side, the right side, or the bottom. A turreted one trades being able to attack "up" for being able to attack behind you. Same with the side. If you have a gimbaled weapon on you right side it can attack the top, bottom, right, and left sides. A turret would sacrifice the ability to hit things on the left side but be able to hit behind you. Pretty even trade off. With the nose example you need to keep the target in front of you to do damage, with a turret you need to keep it below you (since it can't hit directly behind you).
.
.
Gimbaled weapons have medium accuracy but you have to keep a lock on the target. Turret weapons have an average of medium accuracy but you have to break lock every few seconds and then reacquire it.
.
.
Thanks to the awesome CMDR StarLightBreaker and CMDR Pale Night's damage chart gimbaled weapons are about 10% more energy efficient and more than 200% the DPS than their turreted counterpart. That means you would need to sacrifice 4 weapon slots on turrets to get the DPS of 2 gimbaled ones. And that's assuming you even have enough of X class hard points to do that. So your overall DPS goes way down (since you could put kentic weapons in the free hardpoints)
.
.
Vs NPCs unless you are in a type-9 it's pretty easy to keep a target at your nose (though in slower ships you will never be on say an eagle's six). So their usefulness as a defensive v1 weapon is almost non-existent.
.
.
So I thought about vs. a pack of small, fast ships while set to "fire at will" mode, but all that does is spread out your already paltry DPS. That just keeps a large number of targets alive longer than if you bursted them down one at a time. Most ships that would use turrets are not that agile nor small so they already take a beating so a turret defense is a poor choice.
.
.
If turrets were more accurate I could see why they could be used. But they are not. If they were far more energy efficient at the cost of their less than half DPS I could see why someone would use them. But they are not. If they could cover an area that a gimbaled can and more I could see the point. But again, they do not (most of the time. They work well in a vulture for example).
.
.
Here are the only situations I could think of for them being useful:
-PvP vs chaff.
-Gaining agro from fire at will mode in SSSs with less tanky wing members.
-Flying a combat type-9 (maybe a type-7 as well, I haven't tried that one yet)
-A "third trigger" or burst DPS mode. For example your turrets eat up 1.5 PIPs of energy and your gimbaled eat up 3.5.You can fire the gimbaled in tandem with you turrets to temporarily do more DPS than your power distributer can maintain. Or you can just have two weapon groups, but its a valid alternative.
-Wanting to look like a badass.
.
.
I could very well be missing something but I genuinely want to know why you guys use them (situations, etc.) Thanks in advance!
.
.
Gimbaled weapons have medium accuracy but you have to keep a lock on the target. Turret weapons have an average of medium accuracy but you have to break lock every few seconds and then reacquire it.
.
.
Thanks to the awesome CMDR StarLightBreaker and CMDR Pale Night's damage chart gimbaled weapons are about 10% more energy efficient and more than 200% the DPS than their turreted counterpart. That means you would need to sacrifice 4 weapon slots on turrets to get the DPS of 2 gimbaled ones. And that's assuming you even have enough of X class hard points to do that. So your overall DPS goes way down (since you could put kentic weapons in the free hardpoints)
.
.
Vs NPCs unless you are in a type-9 it's pretty easy to keep a target at your nose (though in slower ships you will never be on say an eagle's six). So their usefulness as a defensive v1 weapon is almost non-existent.
.
.
So I thought about vs. a pack of small, fast ships while set to "fire at will" mode, but all that does is spread out your already paltry DPS. That just keeps a large number of targets alive longer than if you bursted them down one at a time. Most ships that would use turrets are not that agile nor small so they already take a beating so a turret defense is a poor choice.
.
.
If turrets were more accurate I could see why they could be used. But they are not. If they were far more energy efficient at the cost of their less than half DPS I could see why someone would use them. But they are not. If they could cover an area that a gimbaled can and more I could see the point. But again, they do not (most of the time. They work well in a vulture for example).
.
.
Here are the only situations I could think of for them being useful:
-PvP vs chaff.
-Gaining agro from fire at will mode in SSSs with less tanky wing members.
-Flying a combat type-9 (maybe a type-7 as well, I haven't tried that one yet)
-A "third trigger" or burst DPS mode. For example your turrets eat up 1.5 PIPs of energy and your gimbaled eat up 3.5.You can fire the gimbaled in tandem with you turrets to temporarily do more DPS than your power distributer can maintain. Or you can just have two weapon groups, but its a valid alternative.
-Wanting to look like a badass.
.
.
I could very well be missing something but I genuinely want to know why you guys use them (situations, etc.) Thanks in advance!
Last edited:
