What turrets are good?

[acE ™]

Hi may i know what turrets should i aim for, doe the higher price of turret determine the better it is? What are some of the best ones?

[michaelmerlin]

My personal favorate is the partical beam lasers. They look great and hit very hard with higher DPS, even vs shields that are supposed to be their weakness, then many weapons. They never miss and have second-best range of non-missile turrets. They can wipe out even fast gunships in short order.

The bad is that they are also the most expensive turrets.

Pluse turrets are next. Fast fireing, heavy damage, best in class range. They can also benifit from bonuses to turret speed that lasers can't. Middle of the road cost, too.

The bad is that they do fire projectiles, so they have trouble hitting fast targets at longer range. They lose a lot of damage from projectiles that miss.

A dark horse is the humble mineing laser. You have to get in closer, but they hit very hard and have no real weaknesses. They cost less then PBL but have the same instant beam advantages. You can also mine with them, if that's your thing.

Splinter turrets aren't good, but I can't help but love them. Watching an Aucturs wade into it with nine of them going crazy and fillign the air with projectiles is hard to beat. They also benifit considerbly from turret augment components and suffer less from missed shots, with high projectile speed over their limited range and a high rate of fire. Modest price, too.

Flak turrets are bad. Even vs fighters, they aren't as good as lasers and are only a bit better then splinter turrets. They can do no damage at all to captial ships. Their low cost isn't offset by their very short range, slow projectiles and modest rate of fire.

Swarm turrets fill an odd space. Tremendous range, modest damage, low cost.. but they burn though their limited ammuntion storage very quickly when allowed to free fire and keeping several of them supplied gets expensive fast. Use them on Locked Target Only or only shoot them yourself to save ammo.

Antimatter probes are awesome, with best in class range, damage and a guidence system and large area of effect to make sure they hit. Why they don't call them antimatter missiles or atomic missiles or something better is a head scracher, but it's a very, very powerful weapon.

The bad is that they are totaly impratical. Huge delay between shots, tiny ammuntion storage and expensive ammo makes it hard to justify them as anything but a fun thing to do with the last turret slot on a large ship.

[Shifter]

its all about preference and playstyle really. I recommend the ones you cant actually buy. There are ones that drop from enemies and can be scavanged from cargo containers in space. They are pretty hard to come buy but are really good. My favourite so far is the "Veridian Laser". Much better than the other lasers with high damage output and good range, very versatile. The other scavanged turret I found I THINK is called the "Bear Claw", but I'll have to check and update it. Its a rocket/missile turret that has less damage output than others however it has unlimited ammo which is really usefull.

As for the ones you can buy, again its all about preference. They arent really better than one another per-se. I like the pulse turrets because of their range but they are pretty slow when fired by AI. The scatter turrets are also nice with their rapid fire but suffer from shorter range, so you can see how they sort of balance out like that. The lasers mostly vary by hull and shield penetration, one is good for shields and the other for hulls so mixing them up would be most beneficial. Except for the veridian lasers which do good damage to both. The different rocket turrets have some nice effects, leech rockets slow your enemies and prevent them from running away from you and shieldbusters obviously are good for pounding through shields.

I really recommend trying things out and seeing what fits with how you play. You can mix different kinds of turrets to take advantage of their effects, For example a couple shieldbusters to remove shields combined with lasers that do high hull damage would be a nice combo. If you want only one kind of turret that is still a completely viable option but you should opt for turrets with a more balanced shield/hull damage.

Sorry to write so much but I hope it helps :P

[michaelmerlin]

Some I forgot about there..

Ion Turrets are Merchant/Bounty guild only as far as I can tell. Just being honest here, I've never given them a chance.

Leech and Shildbuster missiles are nice, but the AI isn't always smart about how it uses them. You can't set Leech to shoot only fleeing targets, and Shieldbuster to fire only on captial ships with intact shields. The Leech debuff is nice.

If you get alien weapon drops you should really try them out like Shaggy suggest. They tend to be different and powerful.

[Candor]

Leech Turrets are pretty awesome but you need to pay for ammo. Particle Lasers seem pretty good too. Mining Lasers have been nerfed sadly.

Also if you get Pulse turrets and Particle Turrets you can pretend you're part of EarthForce from Babylon 5... :P

[TheGeordieGriller]

Pulse are hands down the best for 'Any Craft' duty (without finding exotics). Combined with the projectile speed augment (about 90-100k) it's accurate against fighters and fires out to 3800 so very nice to keep fighters and other enemies at a distance. They're decent at poking holes in shields or hull but best at acting as the constant poke against Capitals.

Scatters - Sound great, really inaccurate and I only used them as a stopgap because no weapon in a turret slot is a waste.

Flak - Use Scatter if you're that desperate.

Swarm - I tended to have 1 of these and told it to attack Fighters only. Does a fair job but really needs a deeper ammo supply.

Particle Beams - Essential to have 1 of these and with my Pulse Turrets I had these attacking Capitals only. They're fairly decent at swatting fighters and they decimate hull like it wasn't there. They're next to useless against same Mk shielding so use sparingly. These are not Freespace 2 Sathanas Beams against a shielded target.... they're pretty close once those shields are down.

[acE ™]

Wow nice list thanks guys! Gonna go for the ones you all recommended, hope i get some good cargos

[Zidders 'Rockin' Bard' Roofurry]

I was gonna say mining lasers but wait till they get denerfed a bit.

[Anelyn]

The damage penalty vs shields of beam weapons (except mining laser) IS VERY notable especially when beam weapons fire in short bursts with long cooldown (overheating cooldown - reload time description in game which is 2s if am not mistaken for most beams).

So at rank VI - max, you are doing with particle lasers 40% damage to shields. That's ~300 damage out of the 700 normal damage.

Try taking out anything from destroyer upwards without using anything else than beam weapons and tell me how it goes, if you can even punch the shields before they recharge.

[michaelmerlin]

Originally posted by Anelyn:

The damage penalty vs shields of beam weapons (except mining laser) IS VERY notable especially when beam weapons fire in short bursts with long cooldown (overheating cooldown - reload time description in game which is 2s if am not mistaken for most beams).

So at rank VI - max, you are doing with particle lasers 40% damage to shields. That's ~300 damage out of the 700 normal damage.

Try taking out anything from destroyer upwards without using anything else than beam weapons and tell me how it goes, if you can even punch the shields before they recharge.

PBL has high enough base damage that even with the penality it dose accecptable damage to shields. Paired with nutron beams for MAXIMUM LAZOR you do struggle a bit to keep down shields, but as Munithe points out, getting close and spamming broadsides hammers them down. Secondary broadsides, if you don't have them tied up with flak, can help too.

Granted, unless you love the laser then you should mix things up. Ion or pluse cannons, shieldbusters or leach weapons do well. I will say that 13 x Partical Beam Lasers on a dreadnought is a hell of a lot better loadout then 13 x Ion Cannon, but a reasonble person might instead go 8 x lasers, 3 x ion cannon, 2 x swarm missiles.

[Tactical_Zombeh]

Originally posted by Candor:

Leech Turrets are pretty awesome but you need to pay for ammo. Particle Lasers seem pretty good too. Mining Lasers have been nerfed sadly.

Also if you get Pulse turrets and Particle Turrets you can pretend you're part of EarthForce from Babylon 5... :P

Haha that's one reason I love them so much. Reminds me of B5 battles.
I use flack in my secondaries and continuously fire them off during mass torpedo/missle battles. I'm in love with my little frigate (can't remember the name but it's fast and agile as hell). It's got good rear/side angle attacks so I just angle my backside towards the enemies and blast hell out of the fighters and missiles by waggling my butt. ;p
Once I started using that tactic, swarm missions got soo much less painful.

[Mikey]

personally I use a couple antimatter probes with locked only status to take down capital shields in one fell swoop, then blast it with neutrons and PBLs

Also on the matter of pulse turrets. I am at mk4/5 gear atm and pulse turret DPS is 102 with 100/100 shield/hull penetration vs the PBLs 333 DPS at 36/100 with just 800m less range.

My math tells me PBLs have higher DPS than pulse turrets even against shields...

[brandtex]

Remember that you can set up the AI control for each turret. Press ESC and select Tactic on the top bar. If you have launchers with limited ammo, you can set them to fire only at capital ships or only at target locked ships and that way stop the AI from emptying the launcher at random targets.
Also keep an eye out for Viridian beam weapons as loot. They have great range and no penalty against shields.

[lyravega]

Mining turrets. And a fast ship. Get behind your target and be done with it.

Kidding aside, mining turrets are a beast, but won't work for a big ship. A fast ship is necessary to make the best use of them. Higher tiers have increased range, so it only gets better.

[Anelyn]

I just tried out the particle turrets & broadside setup on a dreadnought and it mops out with beams in terms of efficiency and coverage. You don't need to aim, you just spam the broadside while the turrets free fire and you have a HUGE wall of projectiles hitting stuff in a decent angle (I'd say 30 degree cone or so) dealing huge damage.

I killed any big ship much faster with this setup (when using a large ship myself) than any beam setups can, plus it hits any other nearby fighter / gunship / support ships and mops them out in 2-3 salvos.

[Candor]

lyravega, they've heavilly nerfed mining lasers.