Give us a reason to build big capital ships?

[= Vikna =]

For now the only thing we have is turrets and missle launchers for big ships, but i was thinking that you don't need really big capital ships for it since its placed outside the ship on fairly small spaces. In multiplayer i only use the starter ship since it has alot of places to build some turrets on it.

I was pretty much hoping for broadside guns. You know.. those big guns on the side of the ship that turn left and right a bit. Those heavy cannons that hit hard. Ballistic guns for a big ship that are more powerfull than turrets since you need to line them up, maybe let them move left and right a little (maybe some auto targeting like turrets have). Or maybe a laser variant would look cool, but i doubt lasers would be introduced.

Broadside guns make the need of having a big battleship on your side meaningfull and instead of making it OP with loads of turrets that eventually lag the whole game, you get to place 2 or 3 or maybe one at the front or side as a heavy duty armor shredder. Ofcourse needing alot of materials to build it. The idea to incorporate it into your ship instead of spamming turrets outside of your ship that are very vulnerable is pretty usefull in itself. Would make the whole battleship/capital ship meaningfull and looks more threatening with some big barrels attached to it besides those lil turrets.

[Legion]

We need a cannon of some kind. Could be a conventional projectile weapon like the small ship gatling, or some kind of accelerator cannon (linear gauss gun or a rail gun).

You can mount rocket launchers in turrets with both horizontal and vertical traverse but it isn't the same. A cannon should have much faster projectiles.

[Skyfish606]

Agree

[Emerald Kithkin]

The topic of realism is one that seems to stamp out so many idea threads- especially those that include shields or lasers. A MAC would be perfect, even as a stationary variant. They'd have to be power hungry beasts to balance out the damage potential, but it could work. Magnetic Accelerator Cannon[img3.wikia.nocookie.net]

[The Wizard!]

rockets have fast projectiles they are practicly hit scan at anything under 250-500 meters unless your going max speed gravilty cannons are the closest thing we have to MAC guns currently GAC guns are only countered by turrets anyways so its out the window

[Deddarus]

you could make gravity cannons .... build tubes in the side of your ship with grav gens then place 'missiles' (a warhead, a massblock and a reactor) into the tubes and let gravity fling them .... no need for a special block :)

They will need a gunner crew to handle the loading but, hey, its a captiol ship... not supposed to be a one man operation

[The Wizard!]

GAC arent viable anymore turrets will just tag them from a mile away and they are dead unless your useing acm( Aiming counter messure) projectiles which cant be mass constructed in a gac launcher or used in one for that matter ( you probably could make a capital class acm in your ship its self but it would realy realy be situational as to its effectiveness

[Legion]

Gatling turrets have a hard time shooting down kinetic penetrators fired by GACs, but if there's a warhead anywhere the whole thing explodes after taking one measly round of AA fire. GACs also take forever to reload especially in survival and the damage they do is rarely worth the cost of building, arming and operating them. GACs also have a tendency to screw with ship handling because of the mass blocks in the projectiles.

GACs are horribly impractical. We need a real anti-ship cannon.

[= Vikna =]

As i said was hoping for a automatic broadside gun. that fires a big shell or something. deals more damage than a gatling and maybe more than a rocket

[Nnelg]

Honestly, there really isn't any reason to build huge ships outside of style, they're just horribly impractical.

I would definitely like to see a railgun, though; and also a (realistic!) laser/particle beam.

Originally posted by Doctor Ragnarok:

The topic of realism is one that seems to stamp out so many idea threads- especially those that include shields or lasers.

I did some basic research, and a 20~30 MW continuous laser should be more than powerful enough to cut through armor fast enough to be an effective weapon. Also, 1x3x6 large blocks would be comparable to the size of modern high-power lasers, so it isn't too big to be practical.

(The only thing really keeping us from using these things today is that we can't really generate that much power without stationary power plants, but SE reactors are more than up to the task.)

[= Vikna =]

Well all depends on the devs of what they want to put in. So far only good stuff and pretty usefull things :>

[Spc Johnson]

Ive built an X3 Terran Conflict Terran Osaka destroyer thats my mobile base for mining and "plundering" other ships it is impractical but thats the fun of a game like this, is that you can really use your imagination and then refine it to suit your play style

[= Vikna =]

If imagination is key in the game then the devs shoulda come up with something so we can build custom guns that can fire all kinda of payloads?

[rjustice2006]

In 60 years theres no reason to believe we won't have energy weapons, at least on a large ship scale. the Air Force has been toying around with large jet based lasers for years. It would be awesome to mount a large beam weapon on a capital ship. They should require tons of power, with long recharge times.

[Spc Johnson]

thats a real good idea actually, but implementing and balancing it would be difficult

[= Vikna =]

Yep but thats why i was suggesting the devs should come up with a ballistic or laser cannon like the turrets they introduced. But for broadside use pretty much. Theres lots of idea for guns on space ships really. If it will be a swivel gun version for on top of your ship, it would have less impact and less damage.