I was flying around as a guildmate's gunner last night with one of the firecracker turrets and I thought of a few things that might make it more likely to be used by players.

1. Turn up the explosion force. I hit an Orne Guardian in the face with 4 of these things and it didn't even budge an inch.

2. Add more ammo capacity. Even Sunflares have 12 rockets to a tube. Considering you've got a pretty low chance of killing an attacker with the Firecracker missiles, it wouldn't really be game-breaking if the turret had double the capacity. This might not be an issue if one shot sent them flying halfway across the sector, but it doesn't. (see #1)

That's just my two credits. Anybody else want to pitch in?

you aren't ever going to kill anyone with a firecracker unless the concussion threw them into a roid or mine field or a steady stream of weapons being fired for some reason nearby.

However i agree with the ammo, and maybe with the force. The knock valks, greyhounds and vults around pretty good. if the rats wise up and chase you in a prom...good for them lol

No single ship/player should be a match for a capable multi-player ship. It should be a challenge for a single ship to take down 2+ noobs flying a multi-player ship. The entire argument over balancing these ships seems moot to me, all turret weapons should be well overpowered and I wouldn't complain one bit. Anything that encourages players to group up and want [to be] a gunner is a good thing.

That is all.

I agree with drazed.

+1 to OP, +1 to improved turrets.

Just a thought for turrets... lazers? :-)

I have been convinced

+1 times a million

Eh I'm not sure I wholly agree about that the "no match" part, but it certainly should be a -real- challenge to take down a moth with a capable pilot and turret gunner(s).

How about bringing back the hive queen agt as a turret port gun. Wasn't it taken out for being overpowered? :)

even with REALLY powerful turret weapons, aside from insta-kill shit, a behemoth would still be a fat lumbering target. there's always the pop out from behind something and start shooting, or rails.

The Behemoth IS a trading ship, not a combat rig drazed, they don't belong in nation war or border skirmish as frigates.

If you want some kind of smallish multi-player ship to act as a corvette (would also make a nice commerce raider) then ask for that. But it won't likly have an awesome hold, as all those support systems for weapons and shit take up a lot of room.

Think a little bit more about what your asking for here when you say two noobs in a behemoth should be able to take on almost any single player in ANY single player ship. What do you think would happen then when you get two behemoths with veterans in them? or 4. It quickly becomes vastly over powered for a trade ship.

The point of multi-player ships is to encourage players to find/hire gunners... Since a gunner is pretty much useless, there is not much reason to find/hire a gunner except to "try out" multi-player ships, or test bits...

Making these ships over-powered would open up an entirely new avenue of play without drastically affecting the 1v1 PvP that keeps many vets in VO. At the same time, it would encourage play in multi-player ships and add a new venue for the "newer" vo players to actually provide an adequate challenge to said vets. And a multi-player ship with 2+ vets in it should be near-unmatchable by any single ship, and a very good challenge for 2 vets flying fighters.

"It quickly becomes vastly over powered for a trade ship."
-- this is not a problem, it's what really SHOULD happen... Multi-player should make you vastly safer when you're flying trade runs. Just because 1 vet would have trouble taking down said ship doesn't mean 2+ vets wouldn't tare it to bits.

Anyways, my point is basically the following, and yes it probably does deserve it's own thread someone feel free to start it.

"A trader should be looking to fill all his turrets before he hires on additional ships to escort him. Thus a turret gunner should offer more value to said trader then an escort ship."

If you can do this, people WILL fly these ships, and hire additional fighter support only once the ships turrets full. Right now hiring an escort fighter is vastly more valuable then hiring a gunner, so no one will hire a gunner.

hiring an escort fighter is vastly more valuable then hiring a gunner

Right, because the former means you're protected by a separately-piloted combat ship that cannot be targeted by someone who is currently targeting you (and vice versa) -- while the latter just means there's an extra, separately manned weapon stuck to your hull.

It can be an insta-hit beam for all I care, having a turret simply cannot help a fat moth nearly as much as a combat fighter escort.

I like turrets, and consider them really underpowered in VO.

+1 to double the concussion force, and give it LOTS of ammo. It is a turret, so it must have enough ammo to endure a long travel...

Firecracker is not an instakill, never intended to. But if is useless against bigger bots as Guardians, it does not fulfill its role... It must make the bot miss its aim. At least make it SPIN.

Going OT to reply to other posts:

A gunner should be almost as good as an average escort. Now only NPC Gatling turrets are like that. To enable that, turrets MUST be stabilized. Within its field of view, changes in ship position is compensated by turret mount. This already exists for vehicles and ships since WWII. This would make turrets efficient to use, just like it should be.

There should be an ingame reward/payment for giring gunners. I already asked, makes sense for me! /Gunner invite Player Value

Going Offtopic now, to save ideas:
The more variation of turrets is welcome. Now we have equivalents to Posi, Neut3, Gauss2, only missing a Geminis and Flares turrets. Flares are perfect FLAKs, with proxfuse... while an AGT turret would be perfect... like NPCs fires... just make it grid 12 to limit to one per moth.

A gunner should be almost as good as an average escort. Now only NPC Gatling turrets are like that.

You and speakers of the English language have very different understandings of what the following two arrangements of characters mean: almost as good and like that.

That is all.

P.S. Flares and missiles are the wrong ammo weapons to buff turrets. ADV rails, OTOH, would be nasty in a turreted, non-ammo-limited, form.

P.P.S. Actually, this is solid: /Gunner invite Player Value If you want to make it 0 credits and your gunner is feeling generous, cool, but it would be good to have a sure way of making a deal about paying and gunnering.

NPC gunners are almost as good as NPC escorts.
But human gunners, even the best ones, are far from that.

0c is a valid amount...

And indeed, I forgot rails, but I don't believe they make a great turret. It is a sniper gun!

While the proxfuse from flares makes them perfect flaks, or high RoF from AGTs...

well i almost completly disagree with everything drazed said there. The behemoth is simply not a combat ship, it's never meant to be, nor should it be made into a combat ship that can also carry tons and tons of cargo.

"-- this is not a problem, it's what really SHOULD happen... Multi-player should make you vastly safer when you're flying trade runs. Just because 1 vet would have trouble taking down said ship doesn't mean 2+ vets wouldn't tare it to bits."

YES it is a problem. You know full well something like this would be implemented two years before any suitable option for attacking such ships would be made available. Just like the border turrets were around for over a year before anything was done (that i saw at least) to draw traders into gray.

back on topic, yea the firecracker needs a buff in concussive force and ammo, not unlimited, but atleast 50 or 100 rounds. it's a purly defensive weapon, so not having it do much damage isn't too terrible.

[[["
"-- this is not a problem, it's what really SHOULD happen... Multi-player should make you vastly safer when you're flying trade runs. Just because 1 vet would have trouble taking down said ship doesn't mean 2+ vets wouldn't tare it to bits."

YES it is a problem. You know full well something like this would be implemented two years before any suitable option for attacking such ships would be made available. Just like the border turrets were around for over a year before anything was done (that i saw at least) to draw traders into gray.
"]]]

Please elaborate on this LNH. The initial text you quoted already said 2+vets could potentially tare it to bits, what is "2 years before any suitable option for attacking" based on? I meant with current gear 2+ vets could in theory rip it up.

As for "having a turret simply cannot help a fat moth nearly as much as a combat fighter escort", you are right. At present it cannot. If the shield turrets were buffed to provide better coverage (rather then the pathetic little blobs they are now), or other weapon improvements (eg, rails? improved AGT? flamethrowers!!!) could greatly improve the effectiveness of said gunners. Especially when on the run.

And seeing as the only negative response I see is from the likes of Lecter/LNH (wanna be pirates who are more into noob pk's then actual pie ratting) I'd wager you're just not interested in having an improved fight on your hands. The fact is, if a ship has 2 players in it it should stand a decent chance against 2 fighters, and at present they stand pretty much 0 chance no matter who the pilots/gunners.

i would say the atlas could become an ok turreted fighter with turret weapon buffs but a moth even with buffs will never be a combat ship. the role of turrets on the moth is to distract your pursuers enough for escape and that is how it should be.

With a good team of gunners you can escape over 80% of the time with a solo rat. I would expect if they ever decided to become organized it would not be so easy.

I still stand behind more ammo and maybe a bit more conc on the cracker

Lecter/LNH (wanna be pirates who are more into noob pk's then actual pie ratting)

Sounds like a certain valk-jock needs to get out into Grey more. Just because someone delights in raiding Dau for S&Gs doesn't mean they don't also troll the WHs looking for taurs, mauds, and moths to pirate and VPR to pop. And that's just me - last I checked, LNH wasn't much into the noobing at all.