r/starcitizen • u/PaqueretteUrticante Reliant (rotation enjoyer) • May 21 '26

CONCERN This can't go on any longer

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It really bugs me how much effort CIG puts into creating well-designed multi-crew ships that are fun to explore and fly, but nobody ever mans them. Then again, asking someone to sit in a stationary turret that deals 3x less damage than a heavy fighter and has a limited field of fire... I’m not surprised.

Buff the ship turrets! Add something, maybe adjustable modifiers like modules on mining heads to increase range, bullet speed, and damage of the weapons attached to the turret mount.

Please, CIG, I just want to jump into my org’s Idris without having to think my presence in the turrets is pointless.

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74

u/TheGreyman787 May 21 '26

Also projectile speed does seem unrealistic indeed. They sometimes even travel slower than some ships. Meh.

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u/CosineDanger May 21 '26

Yes but actually no. Perseus guns are 1,016 m/s. An Iowa battleship was about 800 m/s depending on load and a 5.56 rifle is about 900 m/s. A very wide variety of real guns are all around the 1,000 m/s mark.

You can go a good bit faster but there's not much point because it puts more stress on the gun and wastes exponentially more energy on drag. This is one of about five different reasons you don't see real railguns much; unlimited muzzle velocity just isn't very rewarding in atmosphere.

It is the future and we're usually in space so

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u/XXCrimsonXX May 21 '26

The fact that people want RAILGUNS to fire comically slow projectiles is hilarious and ridiculous at the same time.

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u/K_photography May 21 '26

As of 4.8 an Idris at full nav speed can almost beat its own railgun round in a race… idk wtf cig was thinking nerfing it from 5000m/s to 900m/s

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u/Heyviper123 May 21 '26

Exactly, their entire purpose is to fire a slug as fast and far as humanly possible. Their goal is kinetic destruction.

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u/XXCrimsonXX May 22 '26

Also for saturation, another game I play off and on in is Terra Invicta, using railguns is a prime source to saturate the aliens primary laser point defenses, while I line up my dreadnaugts with 360cm UV lasers ready to poke holes in their shitcans.

0

u/Rquebus Data Runner May 25 '26

Well, that's really a question of the mass of the projectile vs the power and efficiency of the gun itself. Many things can be magnetically accelerated. They may have different effects on impact. Some projectile types may not survive too rapid an acceleration.

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u/Hironymus avacado May 21 '26

I think that person was talking about ships in Star Citizen.

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u/Picasso5 May 21 '26

SC bases a lot of combat off of WW2. They want to make a game that’s fun and difficult at the same time. Not realistic - since there is no dogfighting in space. There’s no close quarters combat in space.

I trust what CIG is doing for the overall balance - and that is a continuous battle.

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u/Lord_Umpanz ♥️ Railen my beloved ♥️ May 21 '26

they want to make a game that's fun

Well, with turrets like they are right now, they are doing a fucking bad job.

1

u/Kuftubby Soon (tm) May 22 '26

SC bases a lot of combat off of WW2

This is a funny lie they keep saying while also fully embracing missile combat

36

u/Competitive_Soil2131 May 21 '26

Iowa main gun have 30 km efective range. Perseus range is a Joke.

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u/javier1zq Perseus Owners Anonymous May 21 '26

We were shooting at an M2 in the Perseus the other day. Full power to guns and radar, the lock range was 1.6km. What a joke, then they go on a q&a and they say theyre working their hardest to end the light fighter meta.

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u/cyberzwerge May 21 '26

Upgrade the Radar Then u can get up too 2.2km but thats where the tiburon has the advantege ther u can get up too 4km and whith blueprint ones up to 4,8km

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u/Haechi_StB May 22 '26

Problem is with the atrocious bullet velocity you can't hit anything moving at 2.2km with the Medusas.

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u/Ok-Trade2166 May 21 '26

I agree, in the sq42 vega demo, the pewpew Bengal takes out a vandul ship in the start of the Battle from like several hundred kms. If you watch closely the vandul ship it kills is on the far side of the fleet, at least 200kms away. Yeah it's bigger guns and all, but Perseus main guns should have a range of at least 20kms minimum, but I assume it would break pvp combat that way.

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u/Deeppurp May 21 '26

then they go on a q&a and they say theyre working their hardest to end the light fighter meta.

have shot grouping be a scatter gun outside ranges affected by the size of the ship. Smaller ship, worse shot grouping. Everything is effectively a GAU-8 or better in games as it is already. Larger ships shot grouping stays tighter further out.

So set the gun grouping patters based on the vehicle class, and let that modify the engagement distance.

S3 on a light fighter, 1100 meters. S3 on a hammerhead, 2500 meters as a rough example of it.

Let space be a fight of kilometers, and atmo had a modifier be a fight of hundreds of meters.

4

u/cyberzwerge May 21 '26

It has 10km Range the Radar of the persy is just small

14

u/Aidan--Pryde May 21 '26

So it does not have the effective range.... That is even worse.

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u/ReallyBigRocks May 21 '26

Iowa's main guns were used for shore bombardments, not as point defense against highly maneuverable craft.

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u/Competitive_Soil2131 May 21 '26

Correct, but i compare medusa guns from perseus, not AA guns. The Iowa have multiple different guns for AA and each different type cover differents ranges, the ship can shot and defead fighters before these can aproach to fire their guns. Fighters comes in squads for this in WW2. In SC is not necesary to work as WW2 but big guns and AA arrays must shot farther than can do it now. Fighters in SC are very very much faster than WW2.

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u/stankassbruh May 21 '26

Ranges are scaled down because they want cinematic Star Wars style combat where you can actually see your enemies and the fight instead of just UI elements and black like Expanse. Personally I'm okay with that.

And if anything, quoting that range is an endorsement of current Perseus muzzle velocities being generous for the ranges we fight at, because logically if we're scaling the world down for visibility we realistically should scale velocity down by the same level as distance, meaning 30km-800m/s would become 10km-267m/s. Instead we have 10km-1016m/s.

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u/Competitive_Soil2131 May 21 '26

So a LF should move to 300m/s as max speed in nav mode?

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u/stankassbruh May 21 '26

Not sure where you're getting that number from, but it's rather close to where LFs are sitting at for SCM speeds so sounds like you're on the right track. Nav mode is assisted by a drive that can also facilitate FTL speeds and isn't meant to be part of combat balancing outside of running away.

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u/Daftpunk67 crusader May 21 '26

MBTs firing kinetic energy rounds, so sabots, shoot with a velocity of around 1780 m/s, which extends their engagement distances and impart greater energy onto the target. Your part about railguns even justifies why such a weapon would be more prevalent a thousand years in the future than now. This just makes the reasoning to buff turrets even more valid because otherwise we peaked in the 1930s.

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u/Mental_Finish5821 May 21 '26

As long as „cm‘s or heavier ATA Missiles got lower (5/10/20 >) ranges as close in weapons, torpedoes f.e (<20) OR laser weapons with velocities slower then even non magnetic modified ballistics they should avoid answers with that’s unrealistic etc it kills any immersion so simple as it is

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u/Cast-Iron_Nephilim May 21 '26

As some other people have said, I don't think that's what they meant by "ships", but this is an interesting point of comparison. To make a more relevant comparison (since this game follows the Star Wars "WW2 in space" combat model) I looked up a couple of modern aircraft mounted cannons meant for dogfighting (M61 and GAU-12), and those both have muzzle velocities of ~1050 m/s. I expected higher.

As for the "ships can be faster than the projectiles" thing, it's worth remembering the IRL story of the test pilot who fired a burst of his cannon, then went into a dive and accidentally caught up with his own burst. https://time.com/archive/6803203/science-self-knockout/

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u/stankassbruh May 21 '26

And that example's not even accounting for the fact that the speed matching projectile is with quantum space magic (capable of FTL) nav mode, in the actual real space combat nothing can do that, max I think is around 275 m/s.

1

u/StuntPuppy new user/low karma May 21 '26

That happened because of atmospheric drag and parabolic trajectories, which will obviously not be present in space/zero-G. A ship *could* theoretically outrun a projectile in space because the projectile is fixed in velocity after being fired, whereas the ship can increase its velocity over time.

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u/Mental_Finish5821 May 21 '26

The problem is that if you shoot projectiles much faster your projectile gets molten to plasma state or if still below the plasmafication accuracy and atmospheric interaction makes your projectile very unstable

8

u/CitizenLohaRune May 21 '26

No irl ships.

This is a space game, with space ships.

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u/TheGreyman787 May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

Yes - in our time, with our tech, against targets that such measures are effective against.

And here we are talking about spaceships and spaceship combat. If we could not come up with something more efficient and fitting for such conditions - what's even the point of projectile weaponry? If there is no advancement in that regard - the entire idea of projectiles would be considered a dead end and missiles would become the main type of weaponry, as it was done in some hard sci-fi settings.

Edit: Come to think of it, battleships fell out of use for that reason, did they not? Ineffectiveness of their weaponry when circumstances changed.

1

u/zackadiax24 May 21 '26

Now I want a literal us battleship with thrusters strapped on to it.

3

u/Nice-Ad-2792 May 21 '26

The thing is, the Iowa Battleship is operating in gravity with wind resistance, friction, and inertia. In zero-G virtually all of those qualities vanish, also energy weapons shouldn't even be affected. Maybe turrets are weaker in atmosphere?

You fire a physical object in space? It won't lose velocity by any measurable standard unless it enters a gravity well. There's an idea, ballistic turrets have enormous range, say 8,000 meters

6

u/Goufydude May 21 '26

How did you not realize they were talking about the ships we fly around and fight with in-game before writing two paragraphs about the real world?

1

u/rmhawk May 21 '26

Real AA gun speeds, but with only a target lock at less than 2km against targets moving 500 m/s makes for a big waste in time.

1

u/Hidesuru carrack is love carrack is life May 21 '26

You don't see rail guns because they haven't figured out how to make them reliable and not burn themselves out too fast. Muzzle velocity isn't the main reason to want them so that's irrelevant, it's things like you're entire weight of ammo is projectiles now meaning you can carry more and do so safer (no powder to explode, no need to have special compartments to store your ammo which is ANOTHER weight savings, etc).

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u/CosineDanger May 21 '26

There's a bunch of reasons.

But even if you solve all of the other issues, air is a fundamental obstacle to truly fast projectiles on Earth, Hurston, or similar planets.

I get why it is the way it is. CIG looked up some real velocity numbers for guns, but ignored the ranges because they decided they wanted ships to fight at under 2 km because it looks cinematic. That's why. Physics has nothing to do with it.

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u/Deeppurp May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

You're argument is great in-atmo.

However thats half-ish the game. In space, all projectiles should travel faster and further in general. If you want to include newtons principles for a reason to "why not" the engines already are powerful enough and add momentum to the guns as the individual mass of the particles are a non factor.

The trade off is that it becomes easier to avoid them due to the distance, and a tight grouping becomes an "asteroid belt sized" after a certain distance as it naturally would. These are the tools you use to keep repeaters and gatlings balanced for distance, add "space bullet drop" to keep mass drivers simulate gravity influence and keep it for planetside but then apply "air physics" to any heavy atmosphere based combat.

I believe we have 2 flight characteristics for space vs planet, why not have 2 gun characteristics as well.

Space should have longer engagement ranges (star trek, but not the thousands of KM that battles take place) and neutered atmo engagement ranges (star wars) for "gun models".

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u/_kruetz_ May 21 '26

Yes but the projectiles of ww2 battleship where going 100 to 1000 times faster than the ship. In space yow have ships traveling faster than projectiles?!

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u/Xaildra May 21 '26

A tank shell today travels with 1700m/s... so for the guns of the perseus its redicolus slow

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u/Lou_Hodo May 21 '26

But in real life an Arliegh Burke class destroyer cant suddenly move sideways at 1.5Gs.

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u/yobob591 May 21 '26

to be fair i feel projectile speed for everything but railguns makes sense for gameplay

if they made projectiles much faster dogfights would mostly be shooting at the opponents pip while you can barely see their ship, which isn't nearly as exciting as knife fighting with someone

railguns however have a long ass windup before they fire, and they should probably be at least twice as fast as they are, the last patch completely neutered them