I was just building a CV which has engines on each sides and this came to my mind when i was struggling to find a good space to place turrets so yeah my suggestion is 2x2 Turrets
I agree. The addition of some compact turrets eith a smaller footprint would be quite useful. At the same time, the addition of turrets that have a default aim perpendicular to their base would be welcome, too.
2x2x2 would get us closer to the current 9 tiles that the turrets use up with 2x2x4 for the embedded versions. Basically taller and deeper.
Uhm... but surely the smaller turret should then be weaker? I mean, who would ever build the larger turret if a smaller one would be as good... We currently have the sentry gun as the "smaller size gun". Does this mean that what we are *actually* missing is an intermediate tier gun between sentry guns and full turrets? I'd say that adding such a type might be a good addition but I also think that for it to make logical sense, it should have some specific in-game purpose. For example, sentry guns are mainly anti-personnel weapons and the full turrets are your main attack weapons against other ships and bases. If we borrow reasons from the real world, how about adding point defense? That is, these mid tier smaller turrets would also shoot at your normal ship/base targets *but* they would additionally have the ability to shoot at incoming missiles and those would be their priority one targets. So, smaller size turrets that compared to the full turrets have a smaller range, do less damage, but shoot faster, and that also can target missiles. Would that make their existence justified?
Intermediate weapons? Yes! And as there are limited slots for such things (as I understand it), I suggest the minigun and pulse laser turrets be so designated. Both are rapid-fire weapons appropriate for "point defense". Rotation speed should be increased for maximum target acquisition.
I think one of the reasons why most weapons use odd numbers for size (1x1, 3x3, 5x5) regarding the "horizontal plane" on which we put them generally is that this allows the pivot around which it rotates to be in the center on a grid block. When making blocks for CV, we have to decide where the pivot axis will be, as it can't be on the corner of geometry. Well technically "it can" but that will waste space and offset the model. Whatever we use as "parent" in Unity when making the prefab, it's that parent's "origin" (center) that determines the pivot point of the whole model, so if it's a 2x2 (x/z axis = horizontal) model, when placing it down the game looks to match its pivot point with the center of a 1x1 cube on the voxel grid. So we can't make the pivot in the center of a 2x2 device, because then this will take a half-block space all around it when the game matches the object's pivot/ origin with the center of a cube's space in the game. That is also why devices like thrusters rotate so strangely when we try to place them on our builds (especially the very big ones) : we can see the "pivot" is off center most of the time, and while for small objects it's not a big deal to rotate in all directions, making big ones is much harder to make them "stick" to the grid when placing them without going all over the place, because the game is trying to match the pivot in a precise location that us, players, have no idea about. Another easy example is a constructor : it's a 2x2x2 block, but when we rotate it it does not stay on the same 2x2 "floor" position, instead it rotates around one block that matches its origin. Here, we can see a 3x3 turret rotates clockwise around its center where the pivot is : For a 2x2 constructor, this is how rotation (clockwise) works - use the green square for reference : While this may not be a big problem for regular devices, for "weapons" it can become one, because they rotate on their base, and the "aim" will not match it's "position" regarding axis : calculating an offset rotation might not be the best to have quick reaction AI targeting, because this requires conversions between "device"position /axis and "aim origin" which should be at the center of the model (different axis). So for "odd number dimensions" the game can simply and quickly refer to the turret's "anchor point" which is one simple coordinates set (x,y,z) + 2 on y axis (where the barrel is), while for "even" numbers (no central block) the game has to first get these coordinates for the anchor, then calculate its offset. This also introduces fractions in the calculation, because everything else is based on integers (1 block's position, from -128 to +128 in 3 axis), and for a 2x2 turret its "shooting position" will be origin + 1/2 block. In simple terms this means that all variables for this specific method will need to be changed from integers to float, if it was not the case (I would doubt it : it's a game). Just to make clear why it's always better to use integer over floating point in variables whenever it's possible : https://www.dummies.com/programming...e-between-integers-and-floating-point-values/ .
