Just for fun: here are a few ideas for some new turret weapons to be equipped on cap ships, feel free to add your own. We have six classes of weapons: rocket, missile, energy, projectile, mine, and beam... it would be cool to see a capital class version of each.

Accellerated Avalon Torpedo Launcher (AATL) (rocket)
Damage: burst fires 3 torpedos over 0.5 seconds, 12,000 damage each
Ammo: 30
Splash: 250m
Proximity: contact
Speed: 250 m/s
Refire: 20s
DPS: 1800
Duration: 30s
Max range: 7.5k

The AATL turret has the best first strike potential and excellent range, making it a good station bombardment weapon or a long range ship to ship weapon. Its high damage rating is offset by its abysmal refire, making an effective AAT salvo a matter of positioning and planning ahead. The large splash is useful for stripping an enemy cap ship of its turrets if it is unlucky enough to be caught in the barrage, however the warheads can be targeted and shot down by point defenses.

Megarail Turret (projectile)
Damage: 10,000
Ammo: 30
Refire: 5 seconds
DPS: 2000
Speed: 500 m/s
Duration: 12s
Max Range: 6k

The megarail turret is a decent ship to ship projectile weapon that trades damage per second for range and accuracy.

Neutron Disruptor Turret (energy)
Damage: 3,000
Refire: 0.5s
DPS: 6000
Spread @ 100m: 10m
Speed: 320 m/s
Duration: 10s
Max Range: 3.2k

The Neutron Disruptor turret is a good all around ship to ship cannon with high damage per second and medium range. Its spread, although small, prevents it from taking out enemy turrets at range, making the hull of the enemy cap ship the only effective target.

Hunter Missile Launcher (missile)
Damage: 6,000
Splash: 100m
Prox: contact
Ammo: 25
Refire: 3s
DPS: 2000
Speed: 150 m/s
Duration: 20s
Max Range: 3k

The hunter missile is an almost guaranteed hit on an enemy cap ship at medium range, however its limited ammo and relatively low dps prevents it from doing fatal damage. This weapon is a good choice for faster, more maneuverable frigates in a support role that can stay outside of larger cap ship's cannon ranges.

Titan-class Gauss Turret (energy)
Damage: 16,000
Refire: 2s
DPS: 8000
Speed: 200 m/s
Duration: 8s
Max Range: 1.6k

A single blast from this cannon can put massive hurt on the target. It is a slow, powerful, accurate ship to ship weapon with limited range and excellent DPS. However, the plasma bolts of this weapon are so large and unstable, they can be shot down by point defenses.

Athena-class AutoCannon (energy)
Damage: 900
Refire: 0.1s
DPS: 9000
Spread at 100m: 30m
Speed: 300 m/s
Duration: 5s
Max Range: 1.5k

Even though the athena autocannon has the best dps of any turret weapon, its limited range and erratic spread (450m at max range) is enough to cause it to be less effective against smaller, faster cap ships. The autocannon also makes a decent point defense or anti-fighter gun.

Flak Mortar (rocket)
Damage: fires salvo of 10 warheads in shotgun pattern, 1500 damage each
Ammo: 100
Refire: 8s
DPS: 1875
Splash: 70m
Prox: timed detonation: 3-5s per warhead.
Spread @ 100m: 20m
Speed: 300 m/s
Duration: 3-5s
Range: 900m-1.5k

This weapon is used to dissuade the attentions of "cherry picking" bombers that hover just outside the range of the cap ship's point defenses. Essentially, it fires 10 sunflares with timed fuses rather than prox triggers in a shotgun pattern, hoping to catch the bomber in the resulting cloud of explosions.

Particle Beam Turret (beam)
Damage: 1,000
Refire: 1s
DPS: 1000
Range: 1k

The particle beam is the ideal point defense weapon, instant hits perfect for shooting down fighters that stray too close or for targeting incoming torpedos (if that feature is ever implemented). The particle beam is also good for surgically removing turrets from an enemy cap ship at point blank range.
(yeah this is the turret weapon we currently have in game... I'm curious if I got its stats right)

I think some of those are a tad too powerful, but seeing as the current weapon is just absurd, those sound cool.

I think the avalon turret ought to be contact though, otherwise, someone is going to just hang out next to the turret, and let the cappie self-nuke.

also I think that the beam cannons should have their range or damage dropped considerably, with all of the other types of weps, I'm really not sure that such a powerful defensive wep is necessary. Either drop the range down to about 500 m (and let the long range weps cover the beam turrets) or drop the damage down to about 600, making them a steady source of damage for ships entering the sphere of influence, but nothing strictly fatal.

I'd love to see capships or frigates armed with something like weapon batteries. For certain weapons, like gattling/flechette/blaster turrets, the turret would have several weapon "ports" which fire in an alternating fashion.

Imagine a capship turret that fired higher velocity flechette rounds from 3 or 4 ports in a cross-linked or rotating pattern. The result would be a deadly storm of flak at close range, while providing a nice means to sweep large areas at longer range. Several such turrets working together could effectively "block off" areas of space around the ship, and provide a nice screen against incoming missiles (assuming that they can be shot down)

@Shape: noted, fix0red

@NerdeVerde: Perhaps we would see several different sizes of turrets, just like the different port sizes we have on fighter ships. The small turrets would be the blister turrets we have now, larger turrets might be animated and have actual, visible guns.

Turret weapons are an alternative to flying a fighter, so you are trading mobility for (hopefully) firepower. Many weapons on fighters are capable of doing over 4,000 dps (although not indefinitely), so bear that in mind when considering cap ship weapon designs.

Nerde just wants a crazy Popcorn Capship to match his cent... bah. ;)

I'd say that you should make the Mega Rail have a higher velocity... considering that you have more space to accelerate it. (really... should you be able to dodge a mega rail? not unless the gunner is bad). I'd also say it should have a smaller aiming cone... and they should be set on the Front or back of the ship... and then increase the refire dramatically.

Turret weapons... yeah... but a higher velocity rail... mmmm

600 m/s with 10000 dmg? nobody is escaping that monstrousity.

its a much faster quad adv rail hornet, In fact, the refire rate is
already higher than the quadrail.

I think that wep is probably spot on, if perhaps a bit too strong.

i'd like to see the mega-rail's range increase (reduce tracking rate to keep it from being too uber against starfighters) to 8-10 km.

i'd also like to see the neutron disrupter turret's range increases to 6km. with the 10m, spread occuring at around 3-4km.

other than that everything looks prety good. but the AI for cap ships will have to be adjusted so that they use tactics apropriat for these new weapons (no more going nose to nose at 50m). admitedly that will be less criticle once players are perating cap ships but still.

also the idea of an uber popcorn gun is prety cool.

Wait... anyone know what the stats are on the Levi Gauss weapon?

And Shape... how did you know I was thinking 600m/s? I didn't type that... anywhere...

I"m scared.

-Zoras

Hehe, read Phaser's original stats on the Megarail

i like the flak mortar idea

Mortar combat!

Hehe... thanks for the feedback. Yeah, if anyone wants to get/make an educated guess on the levi gauss weapon's stats, post 'em here and I'll put them instead of the "titan gauss turret"

Regarding the beam turrets, I think they would be fine as they are now if the autoaim was removed. That way at least you would have to take careful aim yourself.

Lord Q: yeah I think you're on the right track, the following ranges for turret weapons are more or less what I had in mind:

0-1k: Point blank/point defense
1-3k: Short range (active radar range, missile range)
3-5k: Medium range
5-8k: Long range
8-12k: Very long/bombardment range

Each of these ranges would designate a sphere belonging to a class of weaponry, with the longest range guns generally having the most powerful hits but the slowest refire and lowest dps. If armor is ever implemented, these would be most effective against heavily armored cap ships and stations. Short range cannons would have lighter hits but high refire rates and high dps, making them useful against lighter cap ships, fighters, or even incoming warheads, but ineffective in penetrating the armor of heavy cap ships.

Other things to consider are: should we have different turret sizes? Perhaps light frigates can only mount small blister turrets limiting their range, whereas destroyers and cruisers have a number of heavy turrets with long range bombardment weaponry.

What about shot velocity? Anything faster than 600 m/s is going to be a serious threat to fighters, but I'm guessing after about 10-15 seconds of flight time the hit rate on a projectile weapon will drop dramatically due to the target cap ship's maneuvering. So does that mean 6-9k is the longest range a ship to ship cannon can practically have? I guess we'll only know through testing.

I was thinking about the spread on the neutron disruptor.

That will actually make it easier, not harder to hit turrets.

Usually the relative motion of the ships makes the autoaim totally unreliable.

But with the spread, a steady stream will still hit the turrets.

I thought autoaim took relative motion into account...?

What about...

...well, instead of having the turrets as interchangeable weapons, have them as fully-integrated turret modules, with their own armor, HP, firing arc, etc.

That way you could improve the diversity by having highly-durable low-damage big turrets, or more fragile yet more devastating weaponry- it would also add more strategy into the mix. Say you have 2 up-front-and-personal battleships with 8-12 big, heavy-armored turrets and dozens of regular ones- and a considerable way back you have a couple of destroyers with 4-6 long-range high-damage fragile guns on the front.

It would mean there are more factors to take into account when equipping your oversized brick- and make it easier to specialize. Long-range high-power but easy to assault, close-range low-power but with a crapload of armor/HP on the weaponry, mid-range high-armor ships with delicate but awesome weaponry plus fighter bays... and it would make the ships more interesting to actually FIGHT. Do you go for the main ship itself and try to hit a key area of it in order to damage its engines or battery, attempt to strip off the anti-fighter turrets with high explosives, take down the more defensive large turrets to make the ship more vulnerable, quickly destroy the high-power weaponry in order to neuter the vessel against its enemy counterparts, damage the fighter bay to hinder vessels docking/undocking... huge possibilities.

How much more fun is it to be destroying something that you can see fall apart and that you can inflict critical damage on rather than just be shooting a big hulk with little guns on the side that are effectively trivial for a similar-sized ship? The way to make things more fun is, as always, more diversity and explosions. By modularizing everything above the behemoth, you can attribute each destroyable component of a ship some abilities of the ship as a whole... and by destroying the relevant sections you can not only get some clear, visual effect of your progress, but a noticable decrease in performance on part of the enemy to reward the specific targeting.

...uh, in this case turrets. See, I'm on topic.

Phaserlight,

i think that it will be posable to compensate for extreem shot velocity by reducing the tracking rate on the turrets. Also it's probably ok if the effective engagment range for Cap Ships ends up being signifigantly close than their maximum range.

in an earlier post i recomended, a 3-5km optimum engagment range, and a 8-10km makimum range for the largest weapons.

About the turret size possible:

Why not make it so that Cap ships have limitations, but in a different way?
This is a bit similar to UD's post.

e.g. 3 pd turrets ? 1 short range turret, and so on...

That way, you could trade anti-fighter defense for weight (make 1 bigger turret be generally less heavy than 3 smaller ones) and marksmanship ability. This way, you'd get relatively fast-moving, defenseless long-range gunships.

Or, you get a good in-between, with everything average.

Or a pure pd-to-medium range capship, ideal for convoys and wh defense or the like. Sluggish as hell, but no fighter gets past it.

Also, if weapons were to become transportable widgets, 'reload' runs would become viable. Imagine this:
A convoy of Behemoths laden with flak rockets has to get to the wh-defending cap ship, or else the BFG of the opposing side will be completed.

This also spawns player-created missions, counter-missions, counter-counter-missions, counter-counter-counter-... you get the idea.

The possible non-implementability of my idea is that every cap ship would need to be somehow able to actually mount a quite wide range of turrets, and if you left out some and made it possibly even an asymmetic design, you'd get pretty bizarre contraptions. Kind of like a one-eyed, partially dismembered war veteran.