Turret Mode - Direct Control

[Lazerus Artificial]

Just a "small" suggestion to add some more fun to Turrets.

TL;DR

Spoiler

Some weapons are useless as Turret (like Cannons)
Idea to add a Direct Control Mode
Buttonpress changes view from Cockpit to Turret (similar to the debug camera)
Inside that view you can lock on and shoot as usual, but just with that one controlled Turret
Thruster are disabled, only Turret Control is active
Pressing the Free-View (to look around inside the cockpit) changes controls back to Thruster Mode, without changing the view
Press another button to cycle between turrets

So...well...some of the larger ships, like a Type 9 or Conda, will often use Turrets to hit better. Especially beams are pretty strong there...but cannons? not so much.
The problem with cannons is, that they cant guarantee a hit, they have no brain to know when they will hit and when they wont, they will just shoot as soon as they can...and waste your ammo.

Well, this idea could change that.
We can already set our Turret Weapon Mode to Forward fire if we dont want them to shoot on their own, right?
And we have a debug camera to rotate around our ship?
So, how about a mechanic that would basically combine that camera with turret functionality?

So your are in empty space with your Type 9 Moonbase and see a pirate incoming.
Lets just assume mirrored armor would protect against lasers, so your laser-turrets start shooting at his armor - totally useless.
But you have a cannon turret.
Remember? the one you build in when you were drunk? Now is its time to shine.
What do you say? it cant hit? well, then upgrade it with a human brain!
WOAH put the saw down and let that poor slave go you idiot! Thats not what i meant. See that button on your console there?

So you press that button, and your view changes. You are not seeing space from your cockpit anymore. You are in your Turret now.
You can freely aim around (with for example your mouse), just like a turret could, you can lock targets, you can switch to the next Turret...oh and of course you can shoot.
Remember the pirat that is still shooting at you? Target him and blow him into pieces!

While you are in Turretmode, your controls are limited. You can still accelerate and decelerate without problems, but the control is now for the turret.
Pressing that Free-View button that you can use to look around inside your ship will activate ship control again - just from turretview. So that you can adjust your ship without switching back and forth between turret and cockpit.
The rest of the controls stay the same. aiming, targeting, shooting etc, it all works like it did before, just from another perspective - that of a turret.


This Turretmode could then also be used in later expansions when we can fly ships together with other players.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Just a small suggestion to add some more fun to Turrets.

This isn't a small suggestion. Not in the slightest.
.
I don't like this suggestion, not as a solution to the problem you describe at least. Also, all the fluff you've added to your suggestion makes it slightly harder to follow.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

This isn't a small suggestion. Not in the slightest.
.
I don't like this suggestion, not as a solution to the problem you describe at least. Also, all the fluff you've added to your suggestion makes it slightly harder to follow.

well, its not a whole new gamemode, a whole new profession or race, so its comparably "small", based on existing mechanics
to the fluff: i can change the color or so if you like, so you can ignore them
but since you have allready read and, and you dont like it, i wont make you read it again
edit: there, i added a tl;dr version too

 

[Calico Jack]

I enjoyed the Fluff, and thoroughly support it; I am pro-Fluff. Though thinking about it, does my stance make me a Fluffer?

Not sure I like the idea of bouncing around my ship from one console to another, even if it was in earlier Elite games. I'd very much like to be able to hire extra NPC crew (or even other players) to man my turrets, as was proposed before launch, so I guess I'll wait and see if that makes it in...

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I enjoyed the Fluff, and thoroughly support it; I am pro-Fluff. Though thinking about it, does my stance make me a Fluffer?

Not sure I like the idea of bouncing around my ship from one console to another, even if it was in earlier Elite games. I'd very much like to be able to hire extra NPC crew (or even other players) to man my turrets, as was proposed before launch, so I guess I'll wait and see if that makes it in...

the console was fluff (look at the color)^^
it would be just another button, like pressing the button for the debug camera.
pressing it changes the view to a turret, and from there you can switch between them, use them

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Now anyone who wants to read the entire post will have to take the extra step of highlighting the text, only to find that it's useless information.
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I'm not knee deep in the insides of ED, but I highly doubt that it's as simple as saying 'debug camera anchored at turret location plus flight UI overlay'. I don't feel it would be comparably small at all. I don't support the suggestion because I don't feel its worth its weight.
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I also don't think the solution addresses the problem in the slightest. I don't feel that turreted cannons are useless, there's just a right way and a wrong way to use them. It's implied based on the OP that you are using them the wrong way, expecting the same results as a different weapon.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

Now anyone who wants to read the entire post will have to take the extra step of highlighting the text, only to find that it's useless information.
.
I'm not knee deep in the insides of ED, but I highly doubt that it's as simple as saying 'debug camera anchored at turret location plus flight UI overlay'. I don't feel it would be comparably small at all. I don't support the suggestion because I don't feel its worth its weight.
.
I also don't think the solution addresses the problem in the slightest. I don't feel that turreted cannons are useless, there's just a right way and a wrong way to use them. It's implied based on the OP that you are using them the wrong way, expecting the same results as a different weapon.

View attachment 45063

Instead of saying "i dont like it" how about writing another suggestion instead? constructive criticism?

Why does he need to highlight it? its lightblue and italic. do you want an even brighter color?

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Instead of saying "i dont like it" how about writing another suggestion instead? constructive criticism?

I've been saying much more than 'I don't like it'. I've told you exactly what I dislike about it. I'll reiterate in more detail:
This suggestion does not address the problem you bring up. Cannons are not a easy to use weapon. They're a very situation-specific weapon. They don't do a lot of damage against shields and their low projectile speed makes them difficult to hit things at range with.
Being able to fire the turrets manually addresses neither of these problems. It does not make them more effective against shields and it does not increase their projectile speed.
A turret cannon is great (well, it's mediocre) on an FDL because it can hit just about anywhere in the lower hemisphere of your ship. But an FDL pilot would not start using this turret until the correct time of the fight - enemy shields gone, and short range/predicable maneuver.
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Also, this is what your light blue looks like.

 

[Magic Man]

The turrets are meant to be autonomous, not manually controlled, certainly not to the extent that you have some sort of hacked on camera view to aim them.

If they want to update the turret system to implement that then fine, but they'd need to do it properly which would mean changing the turret weapon models to show some sort of camera and then adding the ability to select a specific turret to manually control and view its tracking camera feed. That is not a simple update.

Possibly something they could add if/when we get co-pilots.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I've been saying much more than 'I don't like it'. I've told you exactly what I dislike about it. I'll reiterate in more detail:
This suggestion does not address the problem you bring up. Cannons are not a easy to use weapon. They're a very situation-specific weapon. They don't do a lot of damage against shields and their low projectile speed makes them difficult to hit things at range with.
Being able to fire the turrets manually addresses neither of these problems. It does not make them more effective against shields and it does not increase their projectile speed.
A turret cannon is great (well, it's mediocre) on an FDL because it can hit just about anywhere in the lower hemisphere of your ship. But an FDL pilot would not start using this turret until the correct time of the fight - enemy shields gone, and short range/predicable maneuver.
.
Also, this is what your light blue looks like.
View attachment 45072

Well...the first posts were:
"I don't like this suggestion, not as a solution to the problem you describe at least. Also, all the fluff you've added to your suggestion makes it slightly harder to follow."
"I also don't think the solution addresses the problem in the slightest. I don't feel that turreted cannons are useless, there's just a right way and a wrong way to use them. It's implied based on the OP that you are using them the wrong way, expecting the same results as a different weapon."

the last post though, thats what i call a good feedback

Color issue:
interesting...why do you all have the frontier skin as preset?
for me it was elite, from the early beginning since i logged in for the first time.
so this is how it looks for me:
View attachment 45083

also: its wasnt meant to "solve" the problem, thats a whole different issue with cannons, or kinetics overall.
i made several different topics about that, what i experienced with them (and seriously...i still dont get these weird missiles)
the only "issue" it would adress, would be a way to "enhance the aiming intelligence" by not just calculating the current speed of the target...use your own "skill" to aim and shoot.
and:
My first sentence is "Just a small suggestion to add some more fun to Turrets."
It was more about the simple ability to manually control them, just in case you want to, if you dont want to purely rely on the computer and wait until it finally hits before it runs out of ammo.
the Type 9 is not that agile, so you wont have many chance to hit with gimbaled or even fixed there, so you could control them or you just wait.

sorry if we got eachother wrong

 

[DocLooshkin]

I don't like to kick down, I prefer to be positive, but here I'm forced to agree with the others - it's not really offering enough benefit to justify the investment. It would be a substantial commitment, as well: if and when FD implements this (I suspect it may happen if we ever get co-pilots), I can see the forums getting a lot of complaints about difficulty, from players used to the ease of gimballed targeting - it's going to take a fair amount of work to make it playable for them, without it being too easy.

interesting...why do you all have the frontier skin as preset?

It's because of a minor bug in the forum software. If you click on 'Settings' at the top, then 'General Settings', you'll find a drop-down menu option to change the forum skin - it's near the bottom of the page. Every time we visit this page, the drop-down menu automatically defaults to 'Official Frontier Theme', instead of whatever we last selected. If we make and save any changes at all to our general settings, we also have to manually set the theme, or lose our previous setting in favour of Official Frontier.

 

[persephonius]

I have suggested a similar idea in another thread about turrets. Realistically however, we will need to wait for the update that allows us to move around inside our ships and for multi-crew ships. This turret control feature should be embedded with the multi-crew update so that you can actually do something when multi-crew is available. If we have all this stuff now, it will just be less features that we will get when the multi-crew expansion arrives, and ultimately many people will just say that such an expansion is purely fluff as it adds no new gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been saying much more than 'I don't like it'. I've told you exactly what I dislike about it. I'll reiterate in more detail:
This suggestion does not address the problem you bring up. Cannons are not a easy to use weapon. They're a very situation-specific weapon. They don't do a lot of damage against shields and their low projectile speed makes them difficult to hit things at range with.
Being able to fire the turrets manually addresses neither of these problems. It does not make them more effective against shields and it does not increase their projectile speed.
A turret cannon is great (well, it's mediocre) on an FDL because it can hit just about anywhere in the lower hemisphere of your ship. But an FDL pilot would not start using this turret until the correct time of the fight - enemy shields gone, and short range/predicable maneuver.
.
Also, this is what your light blue looks like.
View attachment 45072

I am not sure you should consider using a cannon turret on the fer-de-lance simply because you loose control of when you can actually fire it. The damage that a cannon does depends on the angle of impact, and the relative speed of your ship to your target. You need precise control of when the cannon is fired to get best results, which turrets do not provide. The OP idea will work best for turret lasers and multi-canons on large slow ships, particularly the Anaconda.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I don't like to kick down, I prefer to be positive,

Doc saves all his negativity for talking about FDev.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Doc saves all his negativity for talking about FDev.

Oh, that's a bit harsh! No, I've got a lot of respect for Frontier Developments PLC, although I may not have had enough reason to say so more often.

They're a British company, still working independently, long after almost everyone else has long since sold out to the American and Japanese giants. It's still led by the good Mr Braben, whose work provided me with thousands of hours of entertainment, all those years ago. The game we're here discussing is - for all it's curious flaws - a magnificent piece of work in it's own right. And they had the bottle to build this monster of a project with money raised by a Kickstarter - a huge gamble for them that could have gone very badly wrong.

If all of that doesn't earn them some serious kudos from all who know it, then something's badly wrong with the world - and the fact that I think they're also as mad as a box of frogs, half the time, doesn't change the fact that I've probably got more respect for FD than any other company on Earth.