Question on turret usage.

[de Carabas]

I've never really bothered with turrets so far but in the PP Beta I took the opportunity of going for an Anaconda and I kitted it out with an array of different laser turrets to try it. When set to 'auto-fire', they do just that - they keep shooting as long as there is a target and if you have the power available they will keep going until your ship starts to over heat and take damage. This is odd.

Anyone out there a regular turret user? How do you actually use them effectively in combat? What am I doing wrong?

[blazingmaniac]

Same as you. Tried them in pp beta as never bothered in main game and was very concerned with the heat issue. You would have thought they stopped when the heat started damaging the ship. I didn't take the chance and switch fire groups to stop them. Certainly puts me off buying them in the main game.

[Sendraks]

Do they stop firing if you de-select a target?

[de Carabas]

Do they stop firing if you de-select a target?

Nope, not in 1.3 beta. Or at least they are still firing at other targets once the one in front of me is taken down.
Also, that wouldn't be wanted if the guns you have direct control of are gimballed!

[Loriath]

Do they stop firing if you de-select a target?

From what I have read, they will only stop if you A) switch to a fire group that they are not in or B) change their fire mode in functions panel or C) retract Hardpoints.

[UnmarkedBoxcar]

I use turrets for two of the hardpoints on my Python currently. Not exactly because they're the most efficient, but because for me they're the most fun

What I end up doing at present is I don't have my turrets attached to a fire group, so that in the functions menu I can swap between "Forward Fire" and "Target Only" This is essentially my way of switching the turrets on, so that they only start firing once my target is hostile, and I've selected "Target Only." This is useful, since I don't use turrets in every engagement, don't use them when enemies shields are up, etc... It sounds like a hassle, but once you get used to the keystrokes, you can make the swap quicker than asking for docking permission (Less than a second, though I imagine this would be harder depending on your HOTAS setup, etc...)

I'm curious about the power play changes, as It would seem that I can just use two fire groups, one including the turrets, and one without, and this would effectively do my swapping for me in one button, rather than having to press two or three.

[JohnLuke]

I found this information on the FD forum today, and have validated that it works as described with turrets set to "Target Only" mode:

QUOTE=GeneralIdea 1964
I think there has been a slight change.
Because you HAVE to have your turret weapons assigned to a fire group, they don't initially fire unless you press the associated fire button at least once.
The benefit is that you don't accidently start shooting at a target while you do an initial scan.
I have 6 weapons, with 2 of them being turreted lasers.
The fire buttons are assigned to 1. - 2 gimballed lasers 2. 2 gimballed cannon and 2 turret lasers.
But the turrets do not start to fire unless I press the no.2 fire button. Once that is done they merrily fire at target with no issues.
Guess there might be issues if you switch fire groups throughout fight, but the turrets will start again if you press the relevant fire button to which they are assigned.

It was copied from this thread:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... ght=turret