[X3R] Turret intelligence question

[joefitts63]

I am contemplating the purchase of my first M2, and I am wondering about turret weapon choices. I am thinking about a mix of long range heavy hitters and short range fast shooters (for heavy ships and fighters, of course). The question is, do the turrets have enough intelligence not to waste energy firing weapons which cannot hit the enemy?

For instance, if I had a turret with 2xCIG and 2xBPBE, would the AI be smart enough to not waste energy firing the PBEs when shooting at a target outside their range?

[rusky]

If you are playing vanilla X3R, the answer is no. At best, they'll try shooting at whatever your target is. At worst, your PPC guns will spend ages shooting at an M5 buzzing about, probably shooting a friendly station or some other ship of yours in the process.

[Snafu_X3]

In TC the answer is: fit Flak to any place that can hold it, then fit/replce it with specialised weaponry after

I can't remember how effective flak weapons were in X3:R. but I'm pretty certain the turret scripts (with bonus pack, natch) weren't as ineffective as rusky said above (although I may be wrong)

If I'm completely deluded & flak weapons don't exist in X3:R then fit fast-firing weps to rear, top & bottom (rear missile defence; top & bottom attack fighters); side & front turrets should have hard-hitting anti-cap weps (set as so)

[brownthomasw]

You shouldn't mix guns in turrets for yourself or the computer. The projectiles travel at different speeds so hit a certain distance at different times thus with two non complimentary guns in the same turret one will always miss. Pretty sure even if the computer is firing and it won't automaticallt fit the two guns and then change when it's target changes. I believe you can go into the turret and set gun controls 1 2 3 4 and I'd hope if you chose option 2 it would stay that way until you went back into that turret and changed over to option 1. That doesn't seem good to me to go in and out to adjust for fighters but it's your world and if it makes you happy go ahead.

Best to have each turret have full matching weapons to maximive it;s firepower and accuracy. Not always, ion-d's on the front of a nova don't effect the hept accuracy of your shot. if you shot ire and hept you wouldn't be able to lead the target as well I'd imagine.

Tactic some used is big guns on front and right (or left if thats your side) and anti fighter on left and top or bottom. You try to point your ship accordingly. Personally I use massive amounts of self made missiles to destroy fighters (and capitals) and generally have heavy guns on my M7 or larger. Missiles can be tedious but just as tedious as chasing around fighters.

[Vim Razz]

if you shot ire and hept you wouldn't be able to lead the target as well I'd imagine.

Turret firing works the same as boresight firing. They will, indeed, aim each weapon individually to hit regardless of differences in projectile speeds.

Of course, that only matters if you're in range with all weapons. Otherwise, the IREs in your example (or the c-PBEs in the OPs example) will just waste energy.

[joefitts63]

Thanks for the info. I was afraid that was going to be the case.

[FlaviusAetiuspt]

From my experience in Reunion, mixing long-range weapons and short-range weapons is a bad idea. I just had 80 lasers on my Titan, 40 PPC type and 40 Flak/HEPT/PBE. For IS combat having your Titan fully loaded with anti-capital lasers and getting attacked by swarms of fighters is just cringe-worthy. That slow Gamma PPC isn't going to hit a buzzing M5 no matter how hard you try.

Then again, I hated capital ship combat. I usually just sat on my M3 while the capitals fought. I'm more of a fighter person.

[jlehtone]

Vanilla X3R -- simple turret scripts. S&M has smart ones. There was some discussion occasionally how to lure your ships turrets to run the turret commands of the NPC ships.

Some NPC turrets did clearly run what was familiar from the AEGIS script for X2. By default turret installs only one gun. When target gets close, turret is fully mounted and as target gets closer, more appropriate guns get installed. You could dive toward Xenon K and meet PPC, HEPT, and finally FAA from the same turret. (Yes, X3R did introduce flak and that made the X3R Python the "Boreas" of that game.)

Mixing is generally bad. Each gun does auto-aim separately, so aiming is not the problem. Tracking targets at the speed of the most sluggish gun and opening fire with all guns if any gun is in range (mostly wasting energy) are the downsides.

Paranid Odysseus with say 6 GPPC and 2 GPSG in a turret is a story of its own though. The turret can pound at distant Destroyer and at the same time spread those deadly fumes that kill all nearby soft targets.

[Virtualaughing]

Use same projectiles in one turret. Learn to use turret commands and if you using regular keyboard then always use the Shift+c and command everything with numpad. Use fighter drones to slow down enemy progress toward you or anything else you wanna protect. If you can then assign a trader ship as homebase at your new BS. It can support you to buy energy and drones.

[Coreblimey]

I tend to mix ISR's & CIG's in the same turret, both have very similar range but differing 'bullet' speeds. My theory being that for the faster M5's the ISR's will have more chance of hitting the target in time but leaves me with the CIG's for slower targets, so negating the need to keep swapping between the two for different targets, (plus the fact that it uses less laser energy than if I had all ISR's). I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but on the whole it does seem to be effective.