[Nico]

I think what would help him is to say that Games Workshop are the people who make Warhammer 40k

[Raptor]

^

What he said:nod:

[Nico]

Originally posted by Bobboau
"~400 polys is too high for a turret, even with HTL."

not realy, it's on the high side, yess, but not absurd, given that we have such low poly ships as of now, so long as only one texture is used it should be ok.

come on, 3 of them, and you have 1200 polys, just for turrets? 400 is way too much, even for HT&L.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nico
come on, 3 of them, and you have 1200 polys, just for turrets? 400 is way too much, even for HT&L.

Depends on what sort of turrets they are. If they are big 50m across turrets it would look rather silly to have the rest of the ship detailed and the turrets looking bland and ordinary.

[mikhael]

Agreed, Kara. But turrets like that are kind of a primary design feature, not a secondary design feature like most turrets are. Also, they tend to be pretty much ship specific.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Personally, I like THIS one the best:

It's so much more revolutionary and cool!

[Nico]

Originally posted by karajorma


Depends on what sort of turrets they are. If they are big 50m across turrets it would look rather silly to have the rest of the ship detailed and the turrets looking bland and ordinary.

of course, but 200 polys is way enough to make a turret that doesn't look bland and ordinary

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
The thing people (including Volition) forgot is that this is not Battleships in space. Sure the design of a battleship is cool, but the big turrets sticking out from ships are just easy targets and cheap ways of making ships look cool. Mikhaels design is far better, more compact and functional.

I'm nodding over here. I'd love to see those turrets on all our ships, in fact.

[mikhael]

Blah. Here's those two turrets in LWO format, lower. About 200polys each.

[boewolf]

well as it stands right now the platform isn't very high count.  but it is still in early stages.  its current cound is about 296 \ 212.  Their are more details yet to come.   I only ask for a good turret because mine don't like to be converted after they are on a modle.

anyway this is the platform.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nico
of course, but 200 polys is way enough to make a turret that doesn't look bland and ordinary

I agree with you there. Even Karma's HTL Fenris uses very simple turrets for the small unimportant ones and only spends any large amount of polys on the fusion mortar.

But if you're spending 10,000 polys on a ship (like some of the trek ships omni converted) I see no harm is spending a fair bit on the turrets. Especially since they are a part of the ship that the player will be taking notice of

[mikhael]

Actually, I never gave any consideration to turrets when playing Freespace--unless I needed to take them out as part of a mission goal. Even then, I didn't really LOOK at them.

In fact, Starlancer is the only game where I ever gave turrets more than a moment's consideration: the last mission encourages rather up close and personal examination of turrets.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
The thing people (including Volition) forgot is that this is not Battleships in space. Sure the design of a battleship is cool, but the big turrets sticking out from ships are just easy targets and cheap ways of making ships look cool. Mikhaels design is far better, more compact and functional.

LOL...You forget, the people who designed those battleship knew what they were doing... those turrets were the most heavily armoured part of the ship. You could (literary) drop a 500kg bomb on it and the crew inside would go: "Huh? did you hear something?" they had a mean punch, long range and a wide FOV...

I'll take such turrets anyday before some other i-wanna-look-cool design that has no funcionality whatsoever...

[mikhael]

Actually, Trashman, you're wrong. I know this from direct, personal experience checking out the turrets on the USS North Carolina and a Destroyer whose name I can't recall right now.

The armor is nice, but its certainly not even close to the heaviest on the ship. They were fighting several concerns there, not the least of which was the mechanical power required to turn something as massive as those turrets.

All of that, however, is of absolutely no concern as it is not relevant. You can 'take such turrets anyday', but Thunder is absolutely right: they don't make sense on warships in space. Consider the purpose of the long barrels of a battleships 11" and 13" guns: stabilisation of the projectile to achieve maximal range. On a vacuum navy ship, this is a moot point for both projectile and plasma/energy weapons: there's no atmospheric drag or (significant) gravitational force to bend projectile trajectories into a parabola. That obviates the need for the barrels. The giant overarmored blocks that you seem to like are likewise rendered silly. On a vacuum navy ship, the most sensible design for a turrets is a hemisphere, simply because it requires the least material to achieve the thickest, strongest  possible coverage at all points on the surface of the turret.

In short, whilst your blocky, long barreled turrets make sense for wet navy ships, they are ridiculous and silly on vacuum navy ships.

To be shorter, and more blunt: Thunder is right and you, sir, are wrong.

[Bobboau]

I would think that long barrels in space would be of use, they'd give you longer to stableize and accelerate your projectile, and you can never have a projectile that is too acurate/fast, even if the projectile is pure plasma and has a mass of .1 grams getting it just that much of a bigger fraction of the speed of light would give it more distructive power, although, it wouldn't be _needed_ and would likely only be on the largest of turrets, most anti-fighter turrets would be as you describe more emfisis would be on being able to rotate as quickly and precisely and effortlessly as posable, and laser weapons would need vertualy no barrel of any kind, just a mirror, or maybe some sort of optical fiber thingy.

you know I think I'm going to make some hemispherical turrets now.

[mikhael]

How does a barrel 'accelerate' anything?

Stabilisation isn't an issue in space: there's no air resistance or gravity to bend the trajectory. IE: long barrels aren't necessary.

I've got a hemispherical turret up there already, Bob. There's a link and a pic posted too.

[ChronoReverse]

A long barrel allows us to cause a solid projectile to spin.  This is useful in an atmosphere since shells tend to tumble otherwise and you'd lose accuracy and power.

In space there's no atmosphere.

Therefore the spin is useless for projectiles.

Plasmas and lasers don't need a long barrel for any conceivable reason.

Therefore unless the weapon requires a long cylinder for it to work, a long barrel is not useful.




That said, I like Mikhael's compact turret (not the hemisphere one) the best but there's a part of me that finds appeal in a hemisphere turret.

[Liberator]

Longer barrels mean longer ranges, especially with modern powder loads.  There is an upper maximum length but it's beyond the physical limitations of the construction material.

In a weapon that uses magnetic acceleration instead of explosive powder, it becomes even more true as the longer barrel allows for more acceleration coils.

[Bobboau]

a longer barrel means you can pack more accelerator magnets in, I made a bit of speculation on my own without thinking no one else would have thought about it, and stabliseation I supose wasn't the right word, a longer barrel is, to me, just a longer amount of time that your technology (housed in the barrel) has a chance to manipulate the tragectory of the projectile

[mikhael]

yeah, I mentioned "the use of circumferential electromagnetic lenses" earlier. Sure, I was talking about plasma, but it works out the same for rail guns. The problem with rail guns is that you've got to overcome inertia even with a rail gun, which means you have to have longer and longer tracks for more and more massive payloads.

The problem merely gets worse when you consider that there's only so much accelleration you can impart due to the structural integrity of the projectiles. If you try to impart too much dV too fast, You'll end up with too many magnets acting on the payload at once, and you'll rip the projectile apart, effectively "jamming" the weapon.

All in all, you're looking at rail accellerated weaponry only showing up in spinal/keel mounts or maybe broadsides, not turrets.