[Lt. Spanks]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, or if this has been discussed before, but i find it kind of weird that the laser turrets that are on capital ships shoot so... slowly...

You can DODGE the laser turrets and watch as they come at you almost as slowly as a Helios TORPEDO. I noticed this while replaying the mission where you approach the Iceni hidden in the asteroid(so stealthy).
I literally dodged the laser guns while I attacked one of the turrets.
It kind of irks me... I would expect that they would at least a have a little bit more velocity and rate of fire being such low damage weapons, they don't even touch my shields...

If they actually did shoot fast and shot more similarly to a machine gun, I don't think that cap ships would be so easily approached anymore. I mean as a fighter or bomber even playing on hard difficulties I never really feel like the cap ship I'm engaging is that much of a threat to me as a player flying around it.

Sure the flak guns are scary and so are the AAA guns too, but I just think that the laser turrets would shoot so much faster in reality.
I think an upgrade is in order for these guns. Maybe I'll make a mission testing em' out.

[KyadCK]

So kinda like the Solaris' guns at the 50s mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXF2uHPiZoo#t=50

I can see why you might not want to approach that, ya. 

[Lt. Spanks]

Thats actually exactly what I was looking for there...

I can see why you might not want to approach that, ya. 

Yes that would be like flying into a wall.

[Lt. Spanks]

Of death...

[Droid803]

Take a look at the blobs in Procyon Insurgency, maybe?
They're pretty deadly and not quite as rapid-fire/spammy as the Solaris' Gattlers.

[General Battuta]

PI did a great job with that. A lot of mods are pretty into Fast Blobs - I am (obviously) most familiar with the pulse cannons from Blue Planet, though they're too strong to use as direct replacements for blobbers.

[Darius]

Pulses and TT2s were stat-wise identical to Procyon's (iirc), the balance was already pretty good.

[jr2]

Aren't blob turrets more of a deterrent for bombing runs (peel off the shields to make the bomber choose between not being able to gain lock, being fried by the blobs, and being fried by the interceptor fighters on their tail)?

[Phantom Hoover]

They're also the most effective warhead interceptors in the FS2 arsenal. Flak is too inaccurate (only direct hits count for killing torpedoes) and AAA beams cycle too slowly.

[General Battuta]

A lot of the ineffectiveness of blobs in stock FS2 is due to bad AI. Just slapping Fury AI on them makes them much more useful in their (relatively narrow) niche, because warships are no longer restricted to firing, like, 4 turrets at a time, and they're allowed to aim more than a handful of turrets at a single target.

Stock AI was bull****.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yeah, removing targeting restrictions and random refire rate improve the stock blobs by a whole order of magnitude. Well, maybe not the Terran Huge Turret, but nevermind that thing

[Dragon]

On Insane, even THTs start being a credible threat. Especially if you disregard them. TTs fire pretty fast, so while you can dodge them, you need to focus on it, making them much more dangerous. With Fury's AI on top of that, and BP-style damage increase, you're looking at a surprisingly deadly weapon that will catch you unaware if you're not used to this.

[Lt. Spanks]

On Insane, even THTs start being a credible threat. Especially if you disregard them. TTs fire pretty fast, so while you can dodge them, you need to focus on it, making them much more dangerous. With Fury's AI on top of that, and BP-style damage increase, you're looking at a surprisingly deadly weapon that will catch you unaware if you're not used to this.

Yes dodging them while in the heat of combat does take focus away from hostile fighters or other threats... and I have never tried Fury's AI or I have without knowing it.
I just feel as if they were a bit underpowered in the vanilla game because even if you got hit it never really did enough damage.
I think the big thing in fs2 were those f***ing AAA guns.
"With an effective range of 1500 METERS!!!!!" (Some nostalgia)
and flak... they completely changed how you approached a capship. It think the laser turrets could have had the same effect.

[Phantom Hoover]

I've always thought AAA guns and flak have an interesting dynamic where the former is a weapon that's disproportionately effective against players, whereas the latter works better against AIs.

[General Battuta]

Stock flak is also interesting because it's insanely OP and yet balanced out by the awful AI.

[Mongoose]

The place where retail flak always burned me was when I'd get hit once or twice, think "Oh well, just a bit of my shields gone," not pay attention for a moment or two, and then suddenly realize HOLY **** WHERE'D MY SHIELDS GO THIS ****ING HURTS.  It's a more insidious sort of damage than an AAA beam, which you know is Bad Stuff as soon as you're whacked by it.

[Rheyah]

Differentiating and diversifying blobs was one of the things I've been working on.  Particularly differentiating between stock military, advanced military, Vasudan, Terran, Shivan and civilian approaches.