Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

Well, building up cash for one of the bigger haulers and started wondering if people have experience on usefulness of turrets. Flying my Cobra I have noticed that fixed mounts are not as good for me as gimballs, my poor skills mean that faster craft just tend to get wee bit outside my killzone with fixed ones, but gimballs rip them up good. Of course killing big ships faster would be nice but sacrifices....

But since Cobra is reasonably maneuverable, I started to wonder how I could deal with minor irritants in ships which are not and came to think of turrets. But do the actually work? I tested turrets on Cobra a little and they appeared to be horrible, instead of turning my ship into disco ball it just winked here and there. But thinking back on it, I have started to wonder if it was due to placement of guns in Cobra which resulted them not often having LOS to target....

So, wiser and more experienced ones... Is my vision of clumsy ship kitted with turrets pointless due to their uselessness or can they actually present some kind of problem to lighter raiders?

I've never used turrets but is the issue maybe the hardpoint placement on the Cobra? My view on turrets is that they are really better suite to larger ships and by that I mean Python upwards. Of course as I said I've never used them so my view is completely based on, erm well nothing other than observations

i recall reading elsewhere that their ability to track well is partly determined by your sensors, so upgrading those might make them perform better (i can't confirm that myself)

but on a Cobra i always go with gimbals - they're more versatile than fixed, more accurate than turreted

When I was flying, I used turrets from T6 and up. Found them to work very well. Fly backwards and let the turrets do their job. No point trying evasive combat in T6 or above.

Remember to check your heat management. If you have 2 or more beam turrets things heat up fast, and they become useless. Upgrading core equipment is necessary (and all pips to weapons of course ).

GlobusDiablo wrote: Remember to check your heat management. If you have 2 or more beam turrets things heat up fast, and they become useless. Upgrading core equipment is necessary (and all pips to weapons of course ).

An interesting point. With the two biggest medium gimballed beam lasers I need to stop firing faster than the weapons over-heat because of the way the ship temperature increases. How is that controlled with turrets that are firing for themselves?

I was very surprised yesterday to find the Viper I was fighting was shooting backwards, odd to see turrets on a Viper...

Well, turrets appear to generate less heat, and do less damage, so I doubt it would be quite the same?

Personally I like mixing beams with kinetics to let things cool down a bit.

de Carabas wrote:...How is that controlled with turrets that are firing for themselves?...

Indeed. You can't. So make sure to have plenty of power (upgrade core components on your ship), and all pips to weapons. There is no point in pips to engine in the big freighters while in combat. So 4 pips to weapons, 2 in system/shields. Fly backwards and enjoy the fireworks.

Be ready to abort and relocate all pips to engine if things aren't going your way. Full throttle and boost straigth into/past them. It takes time for your opponent to get a bead on you again, and you should be ready to jump by then.

GlobusDiablo wrote:Full throttle and boost straigth into/past them. It takes time for your opponent to get a bead on you again, and you should be ready to jump by then.

This is excellent advice - straight from real world dogfighting. If you need to flee, extend their 6 o'clock. In real world, this would be done with afterburners. In game, this is done with boost and all power to engines. If you keep boosting, you may even be able to get out of their sensor range.

I am about to try turrets on my Python, presently using gimballed beams and missiles which make short work of most things but I tangled with an npc python which had all turrets and could'nt get near it without it managing to hit me. Killed it from range with the missiles though!

Any way I tried to attack it there was always a turret that could get a bead and fire on me.

Back to the grind for some credits though as turrets aint cheap on the python

To the OP : on a Cobra, a pair of Class 1 gimballed beam lasers with a good power plant take care of small crafts like Sideys or Eagles and fry them quite fast... You only need to keep them in the lower half of your windshield for the lasers to bear as they are under the wings.