[Nuke]

i was wondering if anyone was interested in having a little more control over their turrets. i dont mean being able to control them (although this idea could be used for blindfire systems). id like to be able to specify the range of motion that each part of the turret has. for the apis, id like to specify a ten degree arc on the base and a five degree arc on the guns. another idea is pivoting single part turrets. they could pivot on the x and y axes form a specified point on the subobject. this is good on narrow angle beam weapons. and blindfire turrets ( seeintegrated weapon systems )

[DTP]

Not a good idea IMO since;

If a base turret can't Turn 360 degrees, then where is the reason for the multi-part turret?

Even the turrets on battle-ships have at least FOV or FOF (field of fire) of 180 degrees.

As a ship-designer I would not be wasting space on a technically inferior turrets. But use the best turret I could use.

And why waste precious space on narrow angle weapons when you can have god like angle weapons.

If a bomber can have a 360-degree turret, then so can all other ships.

By the way, the turret on your ship (bomber) will aim for target you are targeting so no needs for an extra targeting box, as read in that other thread.

Single Part turrets, you can already do that
just use your imagination a little tiny bit .

Blind fire turrets?. Why use blind fire for turrets? Does this not count out the reason for the turret it-self?

Just my 2 cents.

[Nuke]

you fail to see my point. as a ship designer, i have found a need for things like this. if you watch b5 (i was also thinking about the mod), you see that of the turrets are not capable of covering the entire sky. there is no rule that says a turret has to spin the full 360 degrees in order to move.

my blindfire idea is more a way to take control of the turets on your fighter, without actually telling it how to turn. if you played alien vs predator, then you know who much fun the smartgun and the predator's sholder cannon is. you see a little crosshair on the screen, it keeps trying to lock on. it will turn from green to red when it is a good shot and you get to decide when to fire.

the reason i used the term "blindfire turret" is because you would specify the properties in the turret chunks of the pof file, to avoid the trouble of creating new chunk types (which would require more overhead on freespace and on the pof tools).

with all the talk of fighter beams brings the question of implementation. id rather have beams as an integrated weapon system that will be part of the fighter rather than something you can just throw into a weapon slot. its a way t make a ship have a special feature that sets it apart from the others. to give it a little personality.

[mikhael]

Consider the situation of a ship with multiple turrets, or one with a tower on the surface. You do not want turrets to track targets behind parts of the capship and then try to fire through the capship, or a neighboring turret.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by mikhael
Consider the situation of a ship with multiple turrets, or one with a tower on the surface. You do not want turrets to track targets behind parts of the capship and then try to fire through the capship, or a neighboring turret.

I think what we need to fix this, aside from good FOV settings in the POF files, is a line of sight check in the turret firing code. If there is a non-invisible face between the turret and the ship (not counting the associated turret subobjects for that turret) then it shouldn't fire. Tracking could still make sense though, they're probably firing by radar not visual.

[Nuke]

id also like to have gatling turrets (3 subobjects, base breach, barrels) and smoother turret movement. it would also be cool to have turrets that "sweep" the sky looking for things to shoot, like you see on foorage of WWII bombers.

[LAW ENFORCER]

yes, and make it stopable, in my TC for example turrets are switched off and in the up or forward possition anyother can mean hostiles and can provoke an attack (in plot terms anyway)

A sexp that targets a turret at a ship and makes it stay on it, without firing would be nice. (the turrets looking around sky would be good if you don't know where your enemy is or if its even there and all the trurrets and serching just in case... eerie...

[Nico]

Nuke, you should avoid calling that turrets, if you're talking about what I think ( primaries that aim more or less, shooting at an angle at the targetted ship if it's a bit off the center of the screen, ala starlancer or Iwar2 ), this will confuse peoples

[Nuke]

my ideas for turret enhancents are just that. turret enhancements. i want gatling gun turrets (like the ones in descent 3). my blindfire idea would, if implemented, use a defined turret as a firing point. in theory anything you can do with the turrets can be done with your integrated weapon system (be it blindfire plasma cannons, or gatling guns). however i still want to be able to customise my turrets a little more, especially the ones ive used on my ships.

[Ace]

Blindfire is a Starlancer term. In reality they're "gimbaled mounts" I've thought about them myself, it would require serious recoding. i.e. Hooking turret subsystems into primary weapons fire as opposed to their current automatic fire. However as it is you can make SEXPTs where you can toggle on and off automatic tracking and firing of turrets against a target, and with very little sourcecode editing you can have turrets drain the ship's weapon energy bank when they fire.

Overall, the code exists in pieces, what is required for proper gimbaled mounts is:
1.) Ability to connect a ship's turret to fire when the primary weapon button is fired. (a SEXPT in a mission would be best and more flexible as well as easy to do with the data we've been given)

2.) Ability to turn on and off tracking per turret (already possible with SEXPTs)

3.) Turrets draining weapon energy banks when fired. (easy to do in sourcecode)

Doing it this way is the easiest to code as well as is very flexible. Also #1 and #3 together pretty much solve the fighter beam weapon issue

[Fozzy]

I would like to see turrets fire out of all its points at once, instead of one at a time, or atleast add a sexp to enable this.

e.g.

Sexp:   Model_Fire_Type = all turrets
Sexp:   Turret_Fire_Type = individual turret
Setting:   1 = normal
Setting:   2 = all points

[LAW ENFORCER]

And wasn't blind fire first seen in Privateer and if not some other unknown space shooter?

[IceFire]

Wing Commander 3 and 4 had it, Privateer 2 had it...

[Nuke]

dont confuse the type of blindfire i want. ive encountered 2 types. the generic type, the light-up lead indicator i first encountered in privateer 2. this is not what i want. the second type, the starlancer version (the gimballed lasers) is what i really want. id like to have all the goodies to go with it (the position indicators, the aim time, the ability to command it to fire) i dont want a sexp hack.

i think the combining the blindfire with the turrets is a bad idea now that ive thought about it (though it would be cool far lage beam cannons with long barrels). a ship designer (like myself for example) would setup the pof as normal, the blindfire bank would be setup in the table under the pbank tag. instead of listing allowed and default primary weapons, you would have something like this.

$default pbanks: ( "subach hl-7" "%Blindfire%" )

blindfire is a keyword,  when freespace sees this, it bypasses the ship table reference for that bank and refers to new tags in the ship entry theese as follows

$blindfire info:
 +fov: 30 ;fire cone in degrees
 +seek speed: 1.5 ;how fast the bank tracks (degrees per second?)
 +pbanks: ("weapon") ;reference to weapon table

id think that in the code all you would need to do is constantly vary the normal of the firing point to try to line up with the target's position. this should be simple, ive done it with quake c.