Why custom turrets on a ship is a bad idea, Space Engineers - applies to ball turret too

A short video explaining why custom turrets on Space Engineers, especially on ships, is generally a bad idea, as well as discussing certain narrow usecases which might justify the use of custom turrets, applies to ball turrets too

[alexandersergal]

I dont care if its practical, i will still have a large grid rail gun custom turret on my small grid semi truck trailer that my semi truck rover can barely pull because of the mass.

[thomasperkins]

One other things is a railgun custom turret is the only way to have railguns target subsystems. Railguns targeting power sources can be brutual if the target ship does not have enough batterys.
Also while still a pain to set up custom small gatlings are very effective when PCU is not an issue.

[Chaister_T._Janai]

Only time I use custom turret outside of cosmetic was in PvE world, making 9 to 12 small grid railguns bundled to one turret to shoot down NPC drones.(used some timers to have it fire in volleys)
Not the most PCU efficient way to do it but was reliable way to have (relatively cheap) accurate, long ranged, sustained fire.

[thatguy-]

Gatling custom turrets are definitely worth it they can do so much dmage

[JayJayFlip]

The only thing I can think of is I know there's a glitch exploit with small grid warfare gatlings where they can shoot through blocks because the model is longer than the block placement, in theory you could make a turret using that that won't take up as much space but still be combat effective due to it's beam like bullet spray being almost impossible to dodge, but you'd have to get close enough for that to work anyways.

[AudioDud]

Only time I've ever legitimately needed a custom turret control block is when I need a crane to lift small ships or rovers to work on them. Even then that's usually on a single player world. In reality on a pvp server I wouldn't be anywhere near a planet with gravity. So no need for a crane

[chaiboy]

We use a lot of custom turrets on NA #1. My dart fighters use 2-3 custom turrets and usually only lose 1 in a fight. Hell in one fight with 2 custom turrets most of the ship was destroyed before I lost them.

No one uses large grid guns since it will really clang and be in the way of other guns. So far a ball turret with 4-6 small railguns or 8 assault cannons or 6gats/2auto combos is the way to go. those railguns are really hard to dodge and definitely chew up ships. They have a smaller power load and fire a little quicker than the large one. Although the range is shorter it is very rare that anyone will stay over 1km in a fight. Over 1k most stuff can be dodged by a competent captain.

The biggest downsides to the custom turrets are the cost. with the amount of guns plus camera and a gyro or two if they get really clangy it can get up to 8-900PCU each. I posted a ship to the workshop (the dart) and it said 2000pcu ish in the info tab. I was like oh great. Then when I went to copy and paste it in creative it said 5000pcu... I realized it didn't account for each grid and the three turrets were really expensive.

Since the dart is a small test ship it gets trashed in most fights and I have to build it from projections. fine for the main body but the turrets I have to hand build every time. it turned out not to be that hard. after a while becomes really easy to get that floating hinge to lock into place. Even if you just go with the default 3x3 small hinge part you can easily add cannons and rails using the conveyor converter to attach the guns to. not as nice looking but is fast when I need to get a ship back into the fight.

I would say dedicate 1k pcu to playing with a custom turret on your ship. The sg railguns are surprisingly nasty. set them to target weapons or power.

[FalloutSC]

I agree. I've spent most of my time in SE focused on rotors/hinges. For custom turrets the rotor/hinge is too easily destroyed. Either by clang or enemy fire.

[AdamSchadow]

The problem is that the turrets in general are super wobbly and unstable idk why keen cant give us perfect rotors where they would just rotate the subgrid not make it swing around randomly idk where they got this idea from but I dont remember last time looking at tank where the cannon would just swing around when the turret turned.

[PhantomStrain]

Makes sense. I have a small corvette that I built a few years back with 2 custom turrets having 8 gatling guns each. Great for shredding through npcs like orks and reavers, but the server had the defense shields mod and no PCU limits. The shields helped get in close, but if your shields go down the custom turrets were cannon fodder. Unless you're an ace pilot ... which I'm not.

[CrayvenCarnage]

The one thing I want a custom turret for is for small grid railguns on a large grid. It feels like it is filling in a gap that the new Warfare 2 normal turrets didn't fill.

[Gracefulwarrior]

I agree that in game weapon turrets are best for large grid, but for small grid, a large conveyor is already 3x3 for gat turrets (if you use that kind of connection) and gatling/autocannon/assault cannon turrets are 5x5 by I believe 3 for only 1 weapon. Now assault cannons are probably okay since they're intended more for larger slower small grids or bases, but sometimes gats and autocannons can feel lacking when attacking more heavily armored craft, especially if youre not in a big vehicle with lots of space for turrets. A custom turret will allow at least 4 weapons in the same space for much more kick. Blast door blocks can protect the centerline where rotors/hinges are to negate deformation, heavy armor for maybe more important but not entirely need things ie a conveyor or simply to act as a sponge, and light armor can be ablative since its unessential to the structure. Now yes multplayer is probably not the best for custom turrets, but in single player, it doesn't suck down thousands of otherwise needed components and pcu unless you build anything unecessarily large. So cons are the pcu and material, pros are the adaptabilty to certain conditions, increased dps per same volume, and variable armor defense

[neoyarus]

Here's how i use custom turrets:
I have a large grid ship, a bit bigger than the red Corvette you just reviewed. It has a lot of forward thrust and not much in other directions. At the front, there's a deep sort of hole with a gimbal system inside that aims a block of like 10*25 small grid assault cannons (i don't remember the exact number, it was basically as the whole could fit before the guns started shooting the walls. It's got limited angles of rotation, about 15 degrees in each direction (again, i don't remember). Basically, i use the ship's good forward thrust to chase an enemy while the gimbal works like aim assist. The range is limited because it's assault turrets, but one shot can blow a hole straight through an average ship of the same size, and the dps is also amazing. Alternatively i can replace assault cannons with small railguns to get more range, but the dps becomes much lower so it's not nearly as fun, plus i can usually get close enough with my forward thrust

[mikewhitaker]

find it funny the main reason is PCU cost.... i don't run my worlds with PCU limits.... need i say more.... btw, thinking of doing custom turret with atlas laser on small grid to see if doable, mainly for power requirements....

[justinspivey]

A use I've found is for a compact breaching vehicle. Small grid, meant to be able to drive into any structure with gravity. It saves space, and allows you to safely destroy interior turrets.

[bebok]

yeah. The biggest reason is the custom turrets are subgrid and large custom turret is going to affect the ship mass. it may jerk around during combat (lot less with braking torque set on the hinge) even shoot through the ship in some case (the turret AI don't recognise the ship as the same grid). They are good for base defense and fun. The only case which may be good to use is the small grid rail gun and the autocannon (high fire rate). The only other user case is that they are the only other turret with WeaponCore that can be used by other player than the pilot. I forgot with vanilla but with WC, only the pilot can control a turret...

[theyeetles]

I design my large grid ships that are designated for combat with multibe layers of defensive and offensive turrets as well as bombs (Yes I'm using unguided bombs). So the inner layer is point defense turrets (anti personel and anti rocket). These are custom made ball turrets and normally include 6 gatling guns, because they need to throw as many projectiles as possible at the threat to inrease the chance of hitting. Next layer is flak. Also custom made ball turrets with 4 autocannons and they only target small grids. Next comes the first layer of offensive weapons, wich can include artillery turrets, ball turrets with 4 small railguns, assault cannon turrets, missile turrets or gatling turrets. Last but not least the outer layer. This layer houses the custom railgun turret with 2 RGs, the Bombs and fixed cannons/ railguns.

This said I should add, that I don't experience any lag whatsoever in Space Engineers, so there is no max PCU in my worlds. I only really play multiplayer on small servers with my friends who don't really have problems either, so as you can guess: no PCU limit.

With that in mind: Custom turrets really shine when combined with normal turrets and with a specialization. I can promise you, that my 6 gatling guns ball turret is a better choise for point defense, than interior turrets. And a ball turret with 4 autocannons is a great flak and fills the void between the large grid gatling gun (wich shoot at large grid only on my config.) and the point defense. And custom railguns are just cool af.

[uncleweirdbeard]

I hace worked on custom turrets for a while to find a good setup that actually makes them worth using, but so far the best I have been able to do us my depressed turret design. With any custom turret, the biggest weakness always seems to be the rotors and hinges. 1 single shot can completely disable the turret. This is part of the reason I stopped R&D on them and focused on TCB drones/missiles which I believe are the batter use for the TCB. With those, you can have redundancy by having 2 TCBs and 4 rotors, making it a bit harder to disable them, but sacrificing accuracy a bit due to both TCBs targeting different targets. Having somd gimer blocks to act as a FCS can fix that, but still the bust use for TCBs in my opinion is for tool arms. Also, J might ad that rail custom turrets can be extremely inaccurate due to the firing delay compiled with the inertia of the turret head causing it to sweep past the target after triggering the railgun to fire

[isaytheenay]

I mean, I think you aren't treating them fairly, for some reason. No one is building massive custom turrets half the size of their ship, at least not in any serious design.

So you have 6 gatling turrets on your recent ship build. So you approve of large gatling turrets even in warfare II, at least for use as close defense.

Your 6 gatling turrets put out 600 rounds per minute each, for a grand total of 3600 rounds per minute
(you have 3 on each side, so 1800 rounds per minute on each side)
Each turret costs 225 PCU, so your total cost is 1350 PCU. Or 675 PCU on each side.
Or 2.66 rounds per minute per PCU

You could put a single minimalistic ball turret with 4 gatling cannons on each side instead of 3 large gatling turrets on each side.
Gatling cannons fire 700 rounds per minute for each gun, for a total of 2800 rounds per minute on each side (4800 total). Small gatling cannon rounds do the same damage as large gatling turret rounds (for those who didn't know). It's only the small gatling turret rounds that have inferior damage.
There is a design on the workshop with 658 PCU for each ball turret, or 1316 PCU for both, and that's including on each turret the large rotor, large hinge base and small hinge part, the camera, the 4 gats, and the LARGE custom turret controller, and including the 1 small conveyor necessary to link the 4 gats. It's including everything needed. Plug and play.
That's 3.65 rounds per minute per PCU.

The ball turrets would be cheaper on PCU, do more damage, at the same range, on the same sides, and save space to boot.

And ball turrets are by no means limited to 4 gatlings!
An 8 gatling design puts out 5600 rounds per minute at 800 meter range.
It uses three more small conveyors than the 4 barrel design, and 4 more guns (otherwise exactly the same) and costs 1021 PCU.
Or 5.48 rounds per minute per PCU

That's not even close. At 2:45 your entire argument against stable, nimble ball turrets was that you scoffed at the idea that small turrets could do more damage. I'm sorry, and mean no offence because I love your channel. But that's something we can calculate and easily test in-game. I've tested them many times, personally. On danage, at least, you are incorrect.

[eliwilson]

It could be practical for block spacing.
A regular large gatling turret takes 3x3x3.
A custom turret with many gatling guns on it takes... kinda just 1x1x3
I had a small ship where physical space and weight were limited (because of thrust) and pcu wasn't.
Rare instance but still.