Oolite Bulletins

A sudden thought just hit me: Is there any real practical purpose to mounting weapons on the port and starboard mounts of your spaceship? It seems to me that they'd be pretty difficult to use unless you're for all intents and purposes standing still, or the target happens to be flying in a straight line next to you and matching your speed (which would be a one-in-a-million occurrence).

I don't make much use of mine, but some of the people here are lethal with side-lasers.. it's basically a matter of practice, according to them..

I'm not spectacular with side lasers, but I can make use of them when the occasion arises. Their main use is to give my other lasers time to cool off.

Hmm....I should install a fourth military laser into my starboard mounting. Not sure why I haven't yet. I think I was reserving it for a mining laser. I don't see the point now, so I'll go ahead and slap in a military laser in there.

Expert flyers can quick-whip their ship's side lasers. For example, say you're being chased by a fighter and your rear laser's cooling off. A trick to pull is to whip your ship (good if your ship has good yaw) to the side and bring your lasers to bear on the incoming ship, strafing all the way. This requires considerable co-ordination.

Ive often thought it would be usefull to be able to fire your side lasers without switching view, a 90 degree roll and a broadside as you pass under neath them would be really usefull but I cant be bothered to switch views to do it.

I use them to mount mining lasers.

They are much easier to use if you use a joystick as one can just turn it around...

Amusingly enough, in my explorations of the nether reaches of the forum's archives, I ran across this topic which talks about the same thing.

Funny how some things never change, no?

Davidtq wrote:

Ive often thought it would be usefull to be able to fire your side lasers without switching view, a 90 degree roll and a broadside as you pass under neath them would be really usefull but I cant be bothered to switch views to do it.

Agreed.

Thanks for the replies; lots of food for thought here. I'll probably end up using one mount for a Mining Laser, but some day I'd like to try and see if I can defeat a ship using only side-mounted vessels. (It'll make an interesting challenge--I'm on 1.65 now, which means no yaw.)

Specialist290 wrote:

Thanks for the replies; lots of food for thought here. I'll probably end up using one mount for a Mining Laser, but some day I'd like to try and see if I can defeat a ship using only side-mounted vessels. (It'll make an interesting challenge--I'm on 1.65 now, which means no yaw.)

You should update oolite! Really, not only for the yaw, but also for the oxp's and bugfixes you will get.

Sidelasers are pretty well usable if you've got a stick with yaw. It takes some training, but always buys you the time to cool down your main lasers and reduces the enemies chance to hit you. Furthermore, you will need them for certain missions with big targets - and then they are really easy to use, if you've got yaw control.

After some training, it happened to me that I do use the side lasers more often than the aft laser on my Caduceus, but that ship has nice turrets on the sides, which do aid the laser pretty well

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