Oolite Bulletins

This may have been mentioned before, and even perhaps by me, but - and re this change in the latest beta

Friendly fire between ships in the same group, and between police, military
or thargoid vessels, no longer leads to hostilities.

Could we have it that accidentally hitting the main station with a plasma bolt (while trying to hit someone else) doesn't make one instantly a fugitive? That result, which is liable to happen with the Furball OXP (but less likely to happen in other circumstances now that we have the weapons lockdown function) seems harsh. One solution would be to allow the turning off only of plasma cannons. But then we'd still have the same situation for stray laser shots.

The easiest way of turning off your Plasma Turrets is to switch to a ship which has none (or, if you don't want to switch your ship, remove them).

That a player ship can have Plasma Turrets is sort of a hack in the first place. Therefore strange and undesirable behaviour is to be expected. They weren't originally meant to be a player weapon, and they don't make a whole lot of sense as a player weapon (in my personal opinion). Plasma Turrets were introduced as point-defense weapons for capital ships, not as part of the arsenal of small player ships. For me their player ship variant doesn't really fit into the logic of the Ooniverse.

Commander McLane wrote:

That a player ship can have Plasma Turrets is sort of a hack in the first place.

Why? If NPC ships have them, then why should player ships of the same time not have them?

Therefore strange and undesirable behaviour is to be expected. They weren't originally meant to be a player weapon, and they don't make a whole lot of sense as a player weapon (in my personal opinion). Plasma Turrets were introduced as point-defense weapons for capital ships, not as part of the arsenal of small player ships. For me their player ship variant doesn't really fit into the logic of the Ooniverse.

I am the first to admit that, from the moment the turrets were enabled for player ships, they became overused and a highly contributing factor to OXPs featuring uber ships that were just full of turrets up/down/left/right, taking away from the game rather than making it better. But this is the result of not enough thought going into designing a ship, not a problem of the turrets per se. In this sense, it may have been a mistake to enable them for players. But, from an overall point of view, it did not make sense for an NPC to have turrets, use them against missiles etc, when the player ships of the same type could have them on as "dead weight" subentities only. That was wrong too. I think that turrets should be either available to all or none. This is why they were enabled and not having them enabled before for player ships was very close to the definition of a bug as far as I am concerned.

UK_Eliter: The only way to switch turrets off at this moment is to use the Weapons Lockdown switch (_). This will of course lock everything, including lasers, but at least your risk of becoming fugitive around a station is zeroed. Just lure the baddies away from station, then bring the weapons back online and enjoy the show.

another_commander wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

That a player ship can have Plasma Turrets is sort of a hack in the first place.

Why? If NPC ships have them, then why should player ships of the same time not have them?

Because not even all NPCs of the same time can have them. As I said, for me they are point-defense weapons for capital ships.

I am all for Behemoths having turrets. I am all against NPCs of smaller classes than Behemoths having turrets. I am all against players having access to capital ships. Therefore I was and am against player ship turrets.

If you want my rule of thumb: if it is too big to dock with a main station it may have turrets. If it can dock with a main station it must not have turrets. In my Ooniverse a player ship must by definition be able to dock with a main station. Therefore no turrets (and no turrets as well for the NPC version of the same ship).

In this case, I am with you. It's just that when the feature was introduced for players, there were already many small ships out there which carried turrets. It seemed like the logical step at the time. But yes, turrets would be much more appropriate for the big ships only.

(BTW, I wrote "NPCs of the same time" when I meant "NPCs of the same type", sorry for messing up the meaning there).

With current explanations it's not entirely outside the Oolite logic that some renegade salvage gang marries a smaller ship with a turret. And why wouldn't some corporate entity then continue the arms race and offer turrets to "normal" customers? Turrets are just too small to be only available to big ships.

Even from a game balance perspective I don't mind turrets on NPCs, I just have to pay attention to stay out of their 5km radius.

A logical (within the game) reason to not have turrets on small ships would be some handwavium that clearly explains that the plasma generators for the turrets have this and that minimum dimensions and weigh 150t or whatever is heavy enough and need a constant energy rate that is higher than the recharge rate of small ships and thus are impossible to fit even into a *cough*Griff*cough* Boa.

another_commander wrote:

In this case, I am with you. It's just that when the feature was introduced for players, there were already many small ships out there which carried turrets.

You're right, and they were getting too many already at the time.

maik wrote:

With current explanations it's not entirely outside the Oolite logic that some renegade salvage gang marries a smaller ship with a turret. And why wouldn't some corporate entity then continue the arms race and offer turrets to "normal" customers? Turrets are just too small to be only available to big ships.

I am just reminded that my rule of thumb indeed does not apply absolutely. For instance I don't mind some of the Renegade Pirates having turrets (which fits your description of a renegade salvage gang marrying a ship with a turret to a T ). They were specifically designed to be tough enemies, and that makes sense if you want to add a tough challenge to your Ooniverse. I have in mine. But I would mind every other NPC having turrets.

Another ship which is small enough to dock but for which turrets make some sense is the Armoured Transport. I tend to view it as a capital ship in all but size (if that makes sense), so I don't mind it as well, and have the OXP installed.

So there are a couple of exceptions to my rule of thumb. But all of those are strictly NPC-only.

In my everyday-life turrets don't play a major role anyway, because I am a long-range sniper. Usually I don't let myself get dragged into dog-fights. If a ship fires a plasma salvo at me in the first place that means that I've already missed the point of backing-off, so I am doing it immediately, and then I continue to fire from a turret-safe distance.

I don't see turrets as very effective against small, fast, yet tough ships. These ships could engage from outside the turret range or make quick "slashing" passes which makes them hard to hit. The ships with the most to gain from a turret would be the ships least able to use it: smaller+faster ships. Turrets would likely be too massive for them to carry and still retain a high speed...and they wouldn't have the energy generating resources or heat sinks to handle the turret firing rapidly. But they'd NEED the turret to fire rapidly in their fast hit-and-run slashing attacks to maximize damage-dealing potential and minimize return fire. Or if the turret were miniaturized to reduce heat, energy, and mass concerns...its damage per hit and/or range would likely be terrible. (Plasma cannons anyone?) Were these to ever appear, they'd probably be phased out in favor of more useful standardized military or beam lasers.

An NPC missile that impacts a ship it wasn't targeting in a very ugly furball could also trigger all kinds of friendly fire, even though such missile impacts do almost trivial damage since their warhead doesn't detonate. Changes in Oolite from v1.74 to v1.75.2 have reduced this problem at least by disabling friendly return fire by ships of the same group and police.

Turrets do make sense as a defensive weapon against missiles that your ECM doesn't deal with. You don't get a 100% guarantee to destroy them all but close.

As an anti-missile defense turrets may be pretty good. But then we have to question if they don't upset game balance if they're easily popping expensive ECM-resistant "hardhead" missiles. Are those turrets so "cheap" that players can afford to mount 2 of them instead of side lasers?

There is always a (relatively good) chance that turrets will not successfully intercept an incoming missile. They don't provide guarantees as an anti-missile defence, only increase the chances of survival.

Switeck wrote:

As an anti-missile defense turrets may be pretty good. But then we have to question if they don't upset game balance if they're easily popping expensive ECM-resistant "hardhead" missiles. Are those turrets so "cheap" that players can afford to mount 2 of them instead of side lasers?

Hmm, haven't seen them as buyable equipment yet. I thought you have to buy a ship that comes with turrets.

Switeck wrote:

As an anti-missile defense turrets may be pretty good. But then we have to question if they don't upset game balance if they're easily popping expensive ECM-resistant "hardhead" missiles. Are those turrets so "cheap" that players can afford to mount 2 of them instead of side lasers?

As turrets can't be bought and mounted in the game, that would be a question to the ship designers: with how much additional credits do you factor each turret in when calculating the total ship price?

Thargoid wrote:

For me the thing that turrets still lack is a drawing of energy from the banks when they fire. That's the natural check & balance for them that's missing

This is an important point I wasn't aware of. Lasers use energy. ECM uses energy. Even the railgun uses energy. If Plasma Turrets don't use energy they're sort of a cheat weapon with unlimited firepower. That's clearly unbalanced, and for me another reason to dislike turrets for player ships.