180-degree "Broadside" Mounts Undervalued?

[Jorgen_CAB]

If I need to puzzle out that the 180° Angle isn't the obvious drawback it should be (and would be in any other game), then something is wrong in the design. Plain and simple.

Common... anyone with a basic understanding of geometry knows that a 180 degree facing at 90 degree either left or right can fire forward (or backward for that matter). What is there to puzzle here?!?

Please... instead, give me a good explanation what the developer should do in this instance to "help" poor people that can't do fifth grade geometry. "feel" that it works?!?

[zgrssd]

If I need to puzzle out that the 180° Angle isn't the obvious drawback it should be (and would be in any other game), then something is wrong in the design. Plain and simple.

No, it shouldn't be. Something with a 180-degree firing angle, mounted 90-degrees to the axis of the ship, should be able to point perfectly forwards, and fire on any ship that the attacking ship is pointed at.

You are right, it shouldn't need puzzling out. That is my point.

In case you have not noticed, the issue was that (in most games) only only of the 180° mounts can fire.
That the angle isn't exactly 180° (but slightly more) needs puzzling out.
That the ship is able to actually jiggle mid flight to get charged weapon into arc? That needs Puzzling out.

All those things make the mount appear weaker then they are. Welcome to the basic premise of this topic!

[Jorgen_CAB]

You are right, it shouldn't need puzzling out. That is my point.

In case you have not noticed, the issue was that (in most games) only only of the 180° mounts can fire.
That the angle isn't exactly 180° (but slightly more) needs puzzling out.
That the ship is able to actually jiggle mid flight to get charged weapon into arc? That needs Puzzling out.

All those things make the mount appear weaker then they are. Welcome to the basic premise of this topic!

In most cases though... the ship will be able to focus on one object but in practical terms there will be multiple object available to shoot at so the ship does not have to wiggle about. It is not wasting shots. And as I said before... often it can be better to split fire so the hit rate due to range is better optimised. You have to view this as a fleet effort, not a single ship.

The scenario of one on one is rare and usually not very important.

Since ships almost exclusively fight in fleets these mounts are very strong as they will almost always find targets to fire at.

There also is the option of using direct fire weapons on one side only and then put some seeking weapons in the other. This works quite well too.

[zgrssd]

You are right, it shouldn't need puzzling out. That is my point.

In case you have not noticed, the issue was that (in most games) only only of the 180° mounts can fire.
That the angle isn't exactly 180° (but slightly more) needs puzzling out.
That the ship is able to actually jiggle mid flight to get charged weapon into arc? That needs Puzzling out.

All those things make the mount appear weaker then they are. Welcome to the basic premise of this topic!

In most cases though... the ship will be able to focus on one object but in practical terms there will be multiple object available to shoot at so the ship does not have to wiggle about. It is not wasting shots. And as I said before... often it can be better to split fire so the hit rate due to range is better optimised. You have to view this as a fleet effort, not a single ship.

Even in a Fleet, focus fire is still critical.
In fact, I usually get a edge over the enemy with comparable strenghts simply by focus firing.
For focus firing, firing arcs mater.

And that also assumed the ship AI will actually fire on targets of opportunity - instead of saving the shot for the actual target to come into angle.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Even in a Fleet, focus fire is still critical.
In fact, I usually get a edge over the enemy with comparable strenghts simply by focus firing.
For focus firing, firing arcs mater.

And that also assumed the ship AI will actually fire on targets of opportunity - instead of saving the shot for the actual target to come into angle.

That is only true to a certain deagree... in fleet formations you have to focus on several targets at the same time, it also depend on what weapons you use. I might have slightly different experiences in my games as the AI don't keep their ships around until destroyed and will retreat if you start focusing on them too much. This means they start evading and draw your ships away and make them vulnerable for the rest of the ships in their fleet. Allot of weapons also have very low accuracy at longer ranges so overly focusing will be quite bad for you, especially with allot of forward facing mounts.

Vanilla AI fleets are pretty poorly implemented in my opinion.

I have modded AI designs and fleets behaviours allot. Each race also have their own fleet doctrines now and different fleet template types might act a bit different as well, including have more specialized ship designs. I have not modded all the races yet, some only have generic settings for now. But it will mean you need better fleet tactics at least. Now, some AI fleets will kite you and some might aggressively engage you depending on their ship designs and type of weapons and other modules they carry.