Turret

New Turret project

A Turret is a weapon mount that houses the mechanism of a Beam weapon and allows to increases target tracking speed. Turrets may be armed with one or more Lasers, Mesons, or Gauss Cannons. Its controlled by Beam Fire Control and may be armored.

Usage

Turreted weapons use the tracking speed of the turrets, whereas non-turreted weapons have tracking speed equal to the speed of the ship. This allows turred weapons to get a faster tracking speed without needing to go fast itself. Thus allowing relatively slow ships and PDC to effectively engage fast targets such as missiles and fighters.

Design

Turrets are designed from a button in the row along the bottom of the Population and Production window F2.

When designing a turret, a beam weapon caliber and type is first selected:

• Beam Type determines what weapon is actually mounted in the turret. You must have already researched a weapon to be able to use it in a turret design, and you choose it using the Beam Type combobox, which lists all turretable, non-obsolete beam weapons you have researched. This can be installed on the turret in a Single, Twin, Triple, or Quad configuration.
• Beam Size and Cost lists the size in HS and cost in wealth (millions of Euro in our game) of each weapon in the mount. Total Size and Cost list the total size in HS and cost in wealth of all the weapons in the mount. A twin mount will have twice the amount of space devoted to weaponry as a single mount, etc, and will cost twice as much.

Next, Turret Components allow configuring the non-weapon components of the turret:

• Desired Tracking Speed allows you to specify how fast the turret can rotate to track targets. Your empire's best technology for this attribute is listed at top right box, Turret Tracking Speed (10% Gear). The speed given is the tracking speed for your turret when 10% of its assembly's weight devoted to rotation mechanism. Faster tracking speeds require more of the turret's space to be devoted to machinery. The Rotation Gear % value (in %) is determined by: Desired Tracking Speed / Turret Tracking Speed 10% Gear * 10

For example, if the empire's best Turret Tracking Speed 10% Gear is 5000 km/s, and we desire a 10,000 km/s tracking speed for the turret, the Rotation Gear % would be 10,000 / 5000 * 10 = 20%. This means 20% of the turret's non-armor size is devoted to machinery to rotate the turret. The Gear Size is then calculated as Gear Size = Total Size (Beam) * Rotation Gear %.

Using multiple mounts gives a discount on the amount of rotational machinery required. There is no discount for a single mount. A double mount reduces the rotational gear by 5%, a triple mount by 7.5%, and a quad mount by 10%. When analyzing a turret, an important aspect is the Size-per-weapon, which is the total turret size divided by the number of weapon mounts in it. This is indicated by SPW in the turret's system parameters. More mounts decreases the size per weapon due to the rotation gear discount. This becomes even more pronounced when armor is added to the turret.

Your Empire best Fire Control Speed Rating is listed at top right as well, which should guide your eventual tracking speed target for the turret. Fire controls may be modified to track at 50%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, 300% or 400% of your base speed, so those increments are desirable targets for a turret as well. There is no point in exceeding the fire control tracking speed, as the lower of the two values is used in calculations.

• Turret Armor Thickness allows turrets to be armored and works exactly like armoring ships (or magazines). It is based on the total size of the turret, the empire's best researched armor type, and the armor thickness. Armor thickness is rounded to the nearest integer, with halves rounding up for odd integers and down for even ones. The effect of turret armor is to increase the HTK of the turret. The HTK is increased by (Armor Thickness * Number of Weapons in Turret). A triple-mount turret with armor thickness of 2 would have its HTK increased by 8.