How do missile turrets work?

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Raptor34
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How do missile turrets work?

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 18. May 22, 09:58

Situation 1:
A Syn with all Terran L and M tracking turrets. Loadout is a mix of Heavy Swarm, Light Interceptor and Light Smart Missiles.
All turrets set to Attack All Enemies.
Went into a Xenon sector meeting 1 K and 30+ N/M/P expecting to launch swarms of missiles at them.
What actually happened was launching a total of 3 Heavy Swarms in the 5 minutes after killing the K. The L turrets were clearly tracking targets, they just didn't fire.

Situation 2:
A Defense Station with all Terran L and M tracking turrets. Loadout is a mix of Heavy Swarm, Light Interceptor and Light Smart Missiles.
All turrets set to Attack All Enemies.
After the previous situation and retreating through the gate, afaict the defense station didn't even launch a single missile against the swarms of Xenon pursuing me. Hard to tell because I stacked too many fleets there and I was at like 10 fps but I didn't see many if at all missiles launching.

Funnily enough back then it used to work, though I couldn't remember my loadouts. I think I had L Dumbfires and M Tracking though.

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mr.WHO
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by mr.WHO » Wed, 18. May 22, 10:26

Does mixing up missile of same or different type (e.g. guided and dumbfire) even work?
I never really bothered with more than 1 missile type for AI controlled ships.

The AI and GUI are simply too dumb and convoluded to make sence with it.

Raptor34
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 18. May 22, 12:33

Well, I just ran a Oddy E with mixed L Beams, M Beams and M Tracking with 220 Light Smarts.
The good news is it works as I expect.
The bad news is I ran out of ammo in like 10-20 seconds so I guess for sustained anti-fighter it's better to just run full Beams.

So, it seems that the AI is dumb with mixed loadouts and they don't switch ammo appropriately, or at all. Or something. Maybe they are actually smart about ammo, but since they don't switch ammo the whole thing breaks. Maybe.

sh1pman
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by sh1pman » Wed, 18. May 22, 13:27

Raptor34 wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 12:33
I guess for sustained anti-fighter it's better to just run full Beams.
Beams!? These flashlights have the worst DPS. Pulse is much better IMO.

Also, I really don’t like capital anti-fighter weapons in X4. They should be like plasma jet in XR or FAA from X3. If a fighter gets into the death zone around the capital ship, it should get blown up immediately.

Raptor34
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 18. May 22, 14:10

sh1pman wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 13:27
Raptor34 wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 12:33
I guess for sustained anti-fighter it's better to just run full Beams.
Beams!? These flashlights have the worst DPS. Pulse is much better IMO.

Also, I really don’t like capital anti-fighter weapons in X4. They should be like plasma jet in XR or FAA from X3. If a fighter gets into the death zone around the capital ship, it should get blown up immediately.
Yeah, those are beams.
Also I like that unlike all previous games you can actually use fighters now. Otherwise you should as well ask for M7Ms and everything else being irrelevant.

sh1pman
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by sh1pman » Wed, 18. May 22, 14:36

Raptor34 wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 14:10
Yeah, those are beams.
Also I like that unlike all previous games you can actually use fighters now. Otherwise you should as well ask for M7Ms and everything else being irrelevant.
Somehow it worked very well in X3. It felt right! Well, I played with XRM mod that added a ton of ships, rebalanced weapons and other mechanics, etc. I still think that fighters should have no business near enemy capital ships if they want to live. Their role should be to kill bombers and enemy fighters, and try to take out corvettes too.

Raptor34
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 18. May 22, 17:50

Thinking about it I actually used L Dumbfires for magazine size back then along with M Tracking. And I think I used Heavy Dumbfires and Light Tracking.
Perhaps that's why it used to work and this mixing Heavy and Light Tracking is messing up something.
Otoh, this lack of anticapital punch would be worrying if I take all Lights, especially considering how quickly they run out and then leaving me without any antifighter capability too.

leoriq
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by leoriq » Thu, 19. May 22, 11:03

sh1pman wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 13:27
Raptor34 wrote:
Wed, 18. May 22, 12:33
I guess for sustained anti-fighter it's better to just run full Beams.
Beams!? These flashlights have the worst DPS.
I miss Tri-beam cannons from XRM. Those were good.
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Raptor34
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by Raptor34 » Thu, 19. May 22, 12:15

So at the end, for personal ships at least, I've given up on missile turrets.
They just lack the ammo capacity for any sort of sustain when engaging into a Xenon fleet. Unless you turn everything into missile turrets, which has the downside of leaving you struggling to slowboat your way back to the gate once they've emptied their load in 100 seconds instead of 10.
Could see them being useful for AI missile Syns though, you jump them in, they dump their load then you fly them to a conveniently placed EQ Dock to replenish as the rest of your fleet comes in with guns. Also Syns because they have 1k+ capacity with all Tracking turrets, more if you use Dumb turrets as magazines.

Of course the problem for a solo Xenon expedition is that you will always be facing a handful of fighters. My last exped had my turrets constantly firing and I only got a breather because the Terrans sent a recon team in. Though I've thinned them out by then. Not that it's actually dangerous or anything, the last time I was in danger was when my Odysseus E somehow started losing engines, got it's shields battered down and it's L shield gens were starting to die too. In contrast to my Osaka/Syn where I barely got dented. Not sure why actually.
My current loadout that I'm testing is SPL L Plasma and TER M Beams. Pretty nice actually, the Plasma moves well enough to take on Ps and the Ms and Ns are dealt with by the Beams. Could also use main guns against the Ps which is what you want to do when actually getting swarmed since they would otherwise tank too much damage from your M Beams. M Beams generally deal with S-sizes well enough if you have enough of them, but you want L Beams to deal with M-sizes in a timely manner.
Also I find an advantage of taking L Plasma rather than dedicating all slots to Beams is that occasionally if some K sneaks up on you, you can burn them down faster as your Plasma should have already started firing as they enter range. Though I'm starting to question Expediters (Projectile Speed) instead of Annihilators (Damage/Cooling/Reload) for L Plasma turrets and main guns since their speed is slow enough that whatever bonus you get seems kinda pointless unless you're outranging stations for sieges, while for ship to ship combat, unless you're just constantly reversing, more damage seems better and more fun imo.

leoriq
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Re: How do missile turrets work?

Post by leoriq » Thu, 19. May 22, 16:27

The design document for Capital Ship Combat

1. Fly in
2. Fire all the missiles
3. Leroy Jenkins into enemy K
4. Build new ship!
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