Terran turrets have no specialisation and underperform - why?

[Targ Collective]

I'd welcome the devteam giving a few design notes here.

The Terran bolter turret should scale up damage by the same ratio as Proton Barrage scales up Community of Planets bolters, as visibly it is very clearly a Proton Barrage. Quite possibly it should also only be available to Terran ships. What's going on with that?

Terran Beam turrets should be based on and balanced around extremely low amplitude Meson Streams and overtly based on that technology. They should probably also only be Terran compatible.

I think what the problem is, is that giving Terran ships a High Energy weapon turret mount would break things? A layered approach could solve that - cosmetically we see an M mount, but the code sees an M mount that is compatible with both Community of Planets turrets and Terran designs.

I completely understand that the Terran design is a strike-first-strike-hard design, backed up by energy weapons and ammo. But Terrans are both bottlenecked and levelled with the Community of Planets on what they do have, and to be worst at everything in anything is not lore friendly with the crazy monkeys that build jumpgates and planetary ring stations and never ever drink coffee or tea because they are dangerous enough without it.

[LameFox]

I keep hoping they'll revisit this someday but it feels like they actually just don't like turrets. Not only in terms of letting them be viable parts of a ship's offensive loadout rather than purely weaker defensive weapons, but also in whether they're even worth offering in any variety. I consider it one of the weakest points of the vanilla game how little there is to distinguish them between non-Boron races, and how the vanishingly scarce racial weapons don't even *get* a turret equivalent. It's such a waste.

Terran turrets should absolutely be turretized versions of Terran weapons, as should Split turrets be turretized versions of their own unique weapons. Other races should have more to distinguish their core-weapon turrets than just hp and rotation, which are not enough to create meaningful choices unless that choice is simply "use Argon turrets because rotation speed trumps a few extra hitpoints". Special weapons like railguns and ion blasters should have turret equivalents.

It doesn't have to be this bland.

[mr.WHO]

All medium turrets (except Borons and baseline Argons) need the rebealance overhaul - not only Terrans.

[vvvvvvvv]

I'd welcome the devteam giving a few design notes here.

The issue here is that all M turrets of the same type usually have same damage output and stats. The only difference is hull value and rotation speed.

You can check it in encyclopedia. Exact same value for TEL, ARG, PAR, TER pulse. Same deal with beam and bolts. When we go to L turrets, things begin to change a little, though.

So it indeed feels like someone didn't like turrets.

[Alan Phipps]

I know the main discussion here is about TER M turrets, but I particularly like the TER L Pulse turret as an effective anti-fighter/drone defence whilst having some utility in hard-to-detect anti-capital and anti-station surface element sniping roles too. They are just so precise and accurate even at a decent range.

[jlehtone]

So it indeed feels like someone didn't like turrets.

More likely: "I ain't got time to bleed!" than real dislike.

[LameFox]

It definitely feels like there was a design decision going into this game that went along the lines of "turrets aren't fun". Compared to X3 they've been seriously de-prioritised in terms of what they contribute to a ship, in favour of putting gimballed or fixed forward mounted weapons on nearly everything. I think they meant for it to be more cinematic in a Star Wars kind of way when the heroes are in fighters and turret fire is something you're trying to avoid but aren't genuinely in a lot of danger from. And that focus is too late to turn back from at this point, it's baked into the game design, so whatever, we're stuck with really weak, really inaccurate turrets.

But I don't think that means we have to be stuck with really boring ones. And what annoys me is that it feels like they make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, assuring that turrets can never be fun by not putting nearly as much effort in when it comes time to make & balance turrets. So we have far fewer to choose from, and worse, most of those we do have are almost the same thing every time with a slightly different skin and very minimally altered stats (when they're lucky).

edit: come to think of it, you can also infer some of this fighter-focus from the way even forward weapons lose variety the bigger they get, culminating in L ships having one option each.

[Baconnaise]

I can see the odd nature of turrets in vanilla. I've had to run mods to utilize missile turrets on my turret boats. It's a huge oversight that vanilla you aren't allowed to run full tracking turrets on a jian or the like hull. Boggles the mind.

[Raptor34]

I can see the odd nature of turrets in vanilla. I've had to run mods to utilize missile turrets on my turret boats. It's a huge oversight that vanilla you aren't allowed to run full tracking turrets on a jian or the like hull. Boggles the mind.

Because that's unironically broken. I remember from early versions gunboats were called missile something. That's where the Minotaur comes from.
Adding closed loop for easy missile rearming didn't help for this either because it just made them even more powerful. Although I'll also note that part of the reason missiles are so good are because turrets are so bad.

[Kamiyoda]

I can see the odd nature of turrets in vanilla. I've had to run mods to utilize missile turrets on my turret boats. It's a huge oversight that vanilla you aren't allowed to run full tracking turrets on a jian or the like hull. Boggles the mind.

Because that's unironically broken. I remember from early versions gunboats were called missile something. That's where the Minotaur comes from.
Adding closed loop for easy missile rearming didn't help for this either because it just made them even more powerful. Although I'll also note that part of the reason missiles are so good are because turrets are so bad.

They were called Bombers

[jonny_taco]

I know the main discussion here is about TER M turrets, but I particularly like the TER L Pulse turret as an effective anti-fighter/drone defence whilst having some utility in hard-to-detect anti-capital and anti-station surface element sniping roles too. They are just so precise and accurate even at a decent range.

Agreed. Best in class per shot damage, best in class dps, second best in class projectile velocity. The rotation speed and worst in class range are unfortunate, but at roughly 3-6km target range, they are the best of the bunch imo. They can absolutely cook most M ships with their 2500m/s 1200 dmg projectiles, though those wiggly high acceleration xenon ships can be a problem beyond a couple km and hard to rotate with inside of that.

L turrets in general seem to have the most attention put into somewhat asymmetric balance between the faction's offerings. It would be really great if this was incorporated alongside a general viability adjustment for non missile M turrets.