[StratComm]

The gunner pod is there for looks, really.  Though having an onboard gunner would be useful if the ship's internal comms go down, I'd be under the assumption that all firing controls would be slaved to a console on the bridge.  Specifically, to quote the Psamtik's captain, Gunnery Control.

Originally posted by Kalfireth

Granted the turret must rotate on the X axis to face what it's firing at. But you could make the assumption as far as elevation goes that this is taken care of within the ship itself. Therefore a simple blob of some sort would be as effective as a large barrel.

True.  I've actually tried a comple of designs along those lines.  I felt that this turret needed something to visually track, and while I gave the flak variant the traditional big barrels I did so only because I had the UV space left on the map to fit it in.  I don't have any applications planned for the long-barrelled version at the moment.  The predominant case of these guns will be pod-barrel version.

[NGTM-1R]

Gunnery Control may well be something like Gun Plot or a director station, however. (Personally that makes the most sense to me.) The mounts could well still be individually manned, particularly the smaller defensive ones. While most often slaved to the director, they would still have a crew to monitor the gun and ensure everything works properly...or fire in local control in the event of damage to the director.

Presumably this is what happens following the destruction of a capital craft's weapons subsystem. The accuracy and ROF are slowed because the mounts are firing in local control. It's a fairly close approximation of reality.

[TrashMan]

This is the currrent vasudan turret of mine:



and this is a very big one used on a older model of mine:
 

[StratComm]

Ah, now that's getting somewhere with a concept.  It's still not Vasudan at all IMHO, but at least it looks like less of a ball-and-stick and more like a turret.  I'm still not liking the double barrels, even if they are connected, because they still translate when they elevate.

Now the older one, while not at all pertinent to this discussion, I'm assuming is being used to show me that two barrels can be stacked vertically and still rotate in a sane manner.  However, what you're really showing is a case where the entire turret (as in the thing the barrels mount on or protrude from) rotates up and down.  That's a very different construction.  And you really need a better texture job (one that doesn't use 6 textures for one turret) for that one.

[TrashMan]

actually, it's 2-3 textures I belive...

[StratComm]

I count at least three, just on the barrels.  It may only have 3 overall, but each subobject uses them all.  Not that it would have been a concern if they are as old as you say they are, as the HTL texture-priority concerns are relatively recent.