EDIT: YAY HOORAY! It seems as though this has been fixed. And there was much rejoicing. Thanks, Mark Allen + co.! Never mind. The problem is still there. :/
TL; DR: Make turrets behave as if they are physical things physically attached to your ship, and scrap the whole turret confusion system.
I like turrets. I really do. They're cool, and can potentially add some interesting gameplay. Turrets getting reworked was was of the main things I was excited about, in regards to 1.3. They went from being unusable / a complete joke, to fairly capable weapons.
That said, they could still use some refining. While their overall accuracy feels fairly balanced now, the times when they hit or miss are not terribly intuitive, and look downright stupid sometimes. It can be very frustrating when you're holding a ship constantly centered under your crosshair, yet can see your turrets periodically drifting wildly off target. Thankfully they snap back into position fairly quickly now (instead of permanently aiming behind the target, like they used to), but it's very jarring and silly looking. It's as if the turrets suffer from some sort of attention deficit disorder and just zone out every now and again, only to remember what they are supposed to be doing and snap back to it.
The "snapping back on target" thing feels like a band-aid fix to the old "turret gets permanently confused" bug that was quite strong around when 1.3 launched. It's as if instead of fixing the cause of the turret misbehavior, the devs simply added a periodic reset. While this does work, it's hardly elegant. Honestly, the entire "turret confusion" mechanic feels very arbitrary, and unnecessarily complicated. Additionally, it leaves the player feeling like they have little ability to influence the efficacy of their turrets.
I propose the following alternate solution:
1) To start, scrap the whole concept of confusion.
-Turrets don't need to arbitrary wiggle / drifting added in. In addition to not making a lot of sense, the whole mechanic just feels very much out of the hands of the player.
2) Next up, make turrets actually behave as if they're attached to the ship. (Angle is stored relative to the ship, not the world)
-Currently, turrets act as if their position is tied to a fixed point on the ship, but not their orientation. If a turret is slightly off target, nudging your nose in the right direction does nothing- the turret just instantly "compensates" to continue aiming at its previous, incorrect, place. This feels bizarre- as if the turrets are just free-floating next to your ship, instead of actually being attached. It is also frustrating, since outside of making sure the enemy is inside the firing arc, the player has no ability to help or harm the turret's efficacy. A turret's current angle should be one relative to the ship, instead of an absolute one relative to the world. That is, if the turret is at "5 degrees", it should be at "5 degrees from the angle of the ship".
3) Separate the point the turret is aiming at from the actually target ship.
- The turret should not care about how fast the target ships is moving, how it’s spinning, what direction it’s moving, etc. The turret should care about 1 thing: where it is supposed to shoot. Let the ship’s computer (or however it’s represented) decide where that point is, just like it does for fixed and gimbaled weapons. For laser weapons, that point is directly on top of whatever ship / subsystem you’re targeting. For projectile weapons, it would be the little lead indicator. In any case, that point is all the turret should see. Doesn’t matter how fast you or your target is moving- if that point is stationary, then as far as the turret is concerned, it doesn’t need to change its aim.
4) The next step is to assign turrets either a maximum tracking speed, or even better, a maximum acceleration.
-Obviously we can't have turrets just nailing the target, dead on, all the time. Even with their low damage, that would be brutal. As such, they need limitations. Instead of the arbitrary confusion, they should just be limited on how quickly they can track targets. The easy way is to just give them a fixed maximum rate that they can change their angle relative to the host ship. That’s lazy though, and leads to dumb situations where the opponent can be moving extremely predictable (in a circle at a constant speed), but be completely untouchable. By giving them a maximum acceleration (but uncapped speed), you allow the turrets to deal with that kind of flying, but still be dodged be erratic evasive maneuvers / frequent changes in velocity. The bigger the turret, the lower its acceleration. This would mean bigger turrets can be more easily evaded, but will still get on target if your opponent gets too relaxed, or if you as a pilot manage to keep their relative position to you fairly constant via your own piloting skill, they could still eat up small ships.
When you combine all these together, you end up with a turret that can be evaded by skillful jinking from your opponent, but at the same time, can be aided by skillful piloting / aiming on the turret-user’s side. When using turrets, the name of the game would be to try and keep your opponent’s angle relative to you fairly constant, and make any changes happen as smoothly as possible. Jerky evasive maneuvering on the turret-user’s side could screw up the turret’s aim just as much as the opponents’ maneuvers could. Both using turrets effectively and dodging them would be affected by pilot skill, and the turrets would behave in a more intuitive / less frustrating manner. Turrets being dodged effectivly would hit less than in the current system, and turrets not being dodged effectively would hit more.
Here's a little mock-up I put together of the proposed turret algorithm. Feel free to tweak the values, and see how the turret reacts. Note that it only will work right in firefox and chrome:
http://visikcorp.com/TurretHTML5/TurretDemonstration.html
TL; DR: Make turrets behave as if they are physical things physically attached to your ship, and scrap the whole turret confusion system.
I like turrets. I really do. They're cool, and can potentially add some interesting gameplay. Turrets getting reworked was was of the main things I was excited about, in regards to 1.3. They went from being unusable / a complete joke, to fairly capable weapons.
That said, they could still use some refining. While their overall accuracy feels fairly balanced now, the times when they hit or miss are not terribly intuitive, and look downright stupid sometimes. It can be very frustrating when you're holding a ship constantly centered under your crosshair, yet can see your turrets periodically drifting wildly off target. Thankfully they snap back into position fairly quickly now (instead of permanently aiming behind the target, like they used to), but it's very jarring and silly looking. It's as if the turrets suffer from some sort of attention deficit disorder and just zone out every now and again, only to remember what they are supposed to be doing and snap back to it.
The "snapping back on target" thing feels like a band-aid fix to the old "turret gets permanently confused" bug that was quite strong around when 1.3 launched. It's as if instead of fixing the cause of the turret misbehavior, the devs simply added a periodic reset. While this does work, it's hardly elegant. Honestly, the entire "turret confusion" mechanic feels very arbitrary, and unnecessarily complicated. Additionally, it leaves the player feeling like they have little ability to influence the efficacy of their turrets.
I propose the following alternate solution:
1) To start, scrap the whole concept of confusion.
-Turrets don't need to arbitrary wiggle / drifting added in. In addition to not making a lot of sense, the whole mechanic just feels very much out of the hands of the player.
2) Next up, make turrets actually behave as if they're attached to the ship. (Angle is stored relative to the ship, not the world)
-Currently, turrets act as if their position is tied to a fixed point on the ship, but not their orientation. If a turret is slightly off target, nudging your nose in the right direction does nothing- the turret just instantly "compensates" to continue aiming at its previous, incorrect, place. This feels bizarre- as if the turrets are just free-floating next to your ship, instead of actually being attached. It is also frustrating, since outside of making sure the enemy is inside the firing arc, the player has no ability to help or harm the turret's efficacy. A turret's current angle should be one relative to the ship, instead of an absolute one relative to the world. That is, if the turret is at "5 degrees", it should be at "5 degrees from the angle of the ship".
3) Separate the point the turret is aiming at from the actually target ship.
- The turret should not care about how fast the target ships is moving, how it’s spinning, what direction it’s moving, etc. The turret should care about 1 thing: where it is supposed to shoot. Let the ship’s computer (or however it’s represented) decide where that point is, just like it does for fixed and gimbaled weapons. For laser weapons, that point is directly on top of whatever ship / subsystem you’re targeting. For projectile weapons, it would be the little lead indicator. In any case, that point is all the turret should see. Doesn’t matter how fast you or your target is moving- if that point is stationary, then as far as the turret is concerned, it doesn’t need to change its aim.
4) The next step is to assign turrets either a maximum tracking speed, or even better, a maximum acceleration.
-Obviously we can't have turrets just nailing the target, dead on, all the time. Even with their low damage, that would be brutal. As such, they need limitations. Instead of the arbitrary confusion, they should just be limited on how quickly they can track targets. The easy way is to just give them a fixed maximum rate that they can change their angle relative to the host ship. That’s lazy though, and leads to dumb situations where the opponent can be moving extremely predictable (in a circle at a constant speed), but be completely untouchable. By giving them a maximum acceleration (but uncapped speed), you allow the turrets to deal with that kind of flying, but still be dodged be erratic evasive maneuvers / frequent changes in velocity. The bigger the turret, the lower its acceleration. This would mean bigger turrets can be more easily evaded, but will still get on target if your opponent gets too relaxed, or if you as a pilot manage to keep their relative position to you fairly constant via your own piloting skill, they could still eat up small ships.
When you combine all these together, you end up with a turret that can be evaded by skillful jinking from your opponent, but at the same time, can be aided by skillful piloting / aiming on the turret-user’s side. When using turrets, the name of the game would be to try and keep your opponent’s angle relative to you fairly constant, and make any changes happen as smoothly as possible. Jerky evasive maneuvering on the turret-user’s side could screw up the turret’s aim just as much as the opponents’ maneuvers could. Both using turrets effectively and dodging them would be affected by pilot skill, and the turrets would behave in a more intuitive / less frustrating manner. Turrets being dodged effectivly would hit less than in the current system, and turrets not being dodged effectively would hit more.
Here's a little mock-up I put together of the proposed turret algorithm. Feel free to tweak the values, and see how the turret reacts. Note that it only will work right in firefox and chrome:
http://visikcorp.com/TurretHTML5/TurretDemonstration.html
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