STO Weapon Turrets: Request for clarification.

[trabber Shir (OP)]

I have a long history of missing important details when trying to test something in this game, so I am going to basically lay out my current understanding (and reason for this understanding) and ask that anyone who actually understands STOs please tell me in what way I am wrong (or if I am somehow actually right). Thanks.

1. An STO weapon that does not have a turret in it's design seems to function as if it has a turret with your racial tracking speed.
I conclude this because every STO I design from an un-turreted weapon gets a tracking speed of 10,000 km/s which is my current racial tracking speed, and this tracking does not change by enabling "Point Defense Weapon".

2. Putting a weapon in a turret with your racial tracking speed or less tracking will change the size and cost of the STO built using it, but will have no impact on the performance characteristics of the STO.
I researched a handful of turrets that are smaller than default by reducing their tracking speed, and all get stats (aside from cost) that are apparently identical to the ones from their base weapon. A side effect of this is that a quad turret with 0 tracking makes a slightly cheaper STO than one with the default amount of tracking but performs the same.

3. Long range weapons (ones that do not have "Point Defense Weapon" selected) get no advantage from a turret with more tracking than the racial tracking speed.
Follows from the above, the standard size for fire control tracking speed means that the fire control tracks at the racial tracking speed and thus nothing using that fire control can take advantage of a faster tracking turret.

4. Armor on a turret makes the STO more expensive but does not affect the armor or hit points of the STO.
I fear I am missing a big detail. Do sto vs orbital bombardment armor and damage mechanics work the same as a ground force attacking an STO? All my testing is taking the STO designer text as truth, but I feel like something may be missing here.

5. To get full use of a PD weapon, it needs a turret with 4 times your racial tracking speed.
When selecting "Point Defense Weapon" the "range" goes down the same for all weapons and the tracking appears to increase to be capped by
    a: the greater of turret tracking speed or racial tracking speed
    and
    b: 4 times racial tracking speed
Which makes sense to me as any tracking beyond the default racial tracking speed needs provided by the selected weapon but is still capped by the fire control and that checkbox just switched from a 1xTracking+4xRange to a 4xTracking+1xRange fire control.

Short Summary:

• Armor on Turrets is bad for STOs
• Long range STOs should have no turret, or a turret with no tracking if multiple barrels are desired.
• Point Defense STOs should use guns turreted for 4 times the default tracking speed.

So, what did I get wrong? And what did I severely oversimplify?


And I may have found a bug. Turrets with no tracking are treated as un-turreted weapons, so you can make a 16 barrel turret by making a quad with 0 tracking and using that as the gun on another quad turret, it works as many layers deep as I was willing to test. Example:

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The KiloLaser
Transport Size (tons) 512,067     Cost 281,008.24     Armour 21     Hit Points 63
Annual Maintenance Cost 35,126     Resupply Cost 0

TEST 1024x 30cm C8 X-Ray Laser Turret Turret Turret Turret Turret
Range 600,000 km      Tracking 10,000 km/s      Damage 24 / 2     Shots 1024     Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 600,000km      Chance to Hit at Max Range 0%
Maximum Sensor Range 6,055,510km      Max Range vs Missile 544,996 km

Duranium  56,217.6    Boronide  56,217.6    Vendarite  0.24    Uridium  124.8    Corundium  168,550.4   
Development Cost  37,483

[JacenHan]

1. An STO weapon that does not have a turret in it's design seems to function as if it has a turret with your racial tracking speed.
I conclude this because every STO I design from an un-turreted weapon gets a tracking speed of 10,000 km/s which is my current racial tracking speed, and this tracking does not change by enabling "Point Defense Weapon".

You might be aware already and just re-stating this for STOs, but I'm pretty sure this is also true of all un-turreted weapons, on ships or otherwise. The tracking speed of a weapon is the higher of the ship's speed or the base racial tracking speed.

[nuclearslurpee]

The STO mechanics can be summarized as follows:

A STO consists of four components:

• Base shipborne weapon
• Power plant of whatever size is needed to fully power the capacitor of (1)
• Single-weapon (i.e., 50% size) beam fire control of EITHER 4x range, 1x speed (normal) OR 1x range, 4x speed (point defense) configuration
• RES-1 active sensor able to track a target at the maximum weapon range, which is usually 5 tons but could be more for very low tech levels.

In addition to what JacenHan has described above, many of the limitations or behaviors you are seeing can be attributed to the fixed design of the implicit BFC component.

Note that the fact that weapon tracking speed is the greater of the racial tracking tech and turret design speed is intentional, this works the same for ships and the primary reason for this is to give a useful minimum value for slow or non-moving ships, e.g., space stations, without requiring the use of turrets. This does mean that zero-speed turrets are an efficient way to mount multiple of the same weapon, albeit for an additional overhead research cost to develop said turret and with the caveat that they are limited to racial tracking speed, IIRC.

[trabber Shir (OP)]

It is good to know this about space stations, I always thought that un-tureted guns only used the speed of the ship and so always turreted the big guns that camped jump points. This not being needed definitely simplifies those designs some and opens up spinal mounts as an option. And, it also makes most of my original post here seem kind of obvious to someone who knows that mechanic.

This really just leaves the question of if turret armor is actually pointless (worse than pointless due to cost really) for STO units.

[nuclearslurpee]

This really just leaves the question of if turret armor is actually pointless (worse than pointless due to cost really) for STO units.

It does nothing because STOs do not use the ship-based HTK mechanic, which is what turret armor affects (it only gives the turret extra HTK - not more armor points to resist penetration). The only purpose for armoring STOs is if the turret you are using as a base is armored and you don't want to spend the extra RPs to develop an unarmored version. Depending on the build cost and how many STOs you plan to build, this might be an acceptable inefficiency.