Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Too often, Tier III turret systems are the default, objectively best choice. The minor tracking and fitting bonuses given to Tier I and II turrets are insufficient to encourage their use, and I think that this should be addressed. I've seen one or two threads recently trying to address the imbalance of usefulness between Tier I, II and III turrets. They tend to be very complex, and hard to implement, balance or both. My idea is very simple:



For example, this:


Would become this:

These stats were generated by taking the Heavy Pulse Laser II medium turret and cutting it's tracking and signature resolution by half. The result is a significant buff to application (without rendering the smaller weapon system obsolete).

Now compare this with the top tier weapon system:


This is a much better balance between the two weapon systems. One is able to strike smaller, quicker targets more often, but the other deals 12.5% more damage at 20% greater range.

This will set up a clear benefit to using Tier I and II turrets: Application, particularly against smaller targets, increases as Range and Damage decrease. And they increase in a way that is substantial to still make them worthy of consideration, depending on your intended or anticipated foe.

What do you guys think?

I'd like to see more use of the 'smaller' varieties of some classes of turrets as well, but the statement that they're never used is inaccurate. 200mm rails, 220mm autos, Ion blasters, and gatling pulse lasers are all in widespread use. Not sure if you meant to be literal or were just making a point, but smaller sized guns are definately being used.

Good point taken, both of you. Snipping back story so the focus can be on proposed changes.

EDIT: Better?

It's going to come down to usage metrics. Control for mission runners (if possible) and then see just how much damage is being dealt by the lower tier weapons in each class.

I suspect that usage is very low, and that for every exception there are a dozen proofs of the rule.

I was like what? Turrets have Tiers? They are classified in Meta levels.
Like "Dual Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I" is Tech 1 Meta 4
Dual Heavy Pulse Laser II is T2 Meta 5
Ahremen's Modified Mega Pulse Laser is T1 Meta 14

Sure... Meta 1 to Meta 3 are useless most of the time. Thier benefits lies mostly on thier lower fitting requirements.

Or you mean the different weapon classes in a weapon size category. Like 125mm Gatling AutoCannon, 150mm Light AutoCannon and 200mm AutoCannon.
If that is the case, your proposed idea does not work very well, because several Turrets does not have 3 different classes.
Those are Medium Pulse Lasers, Large Pulse LAsers, Small Beam Lasers, Small Artillery, Medium Artillery, Large Artillery and all Capital Turrets.

But... I like the idea of lowering thier sig radius though. The Dual 425mm AutoCannons should have about double the sig radius of a 425mm AutoCannon for example. Current radius is 400, this should be around 250 and 300 instead.

I would even go as far as to make "dual" turrets to actually be dual. I.e. a medium dual turret would use ammo, damage, resolution and range/falloff of a small turret, while having medium size fitting requirement and an increased rate of fire (probably 20-30% more than a small counterpart - adjust as needed for balance). Effectively it's a turret variant of the rapid missile launcher.