Turret Placement - In relation to sci-fi ship design in Space Engineers, Empyrion and Avorion.
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- Опубліковано 3 кві 2021
- A video that goes into some basic detail regarding the importance of good turret placement in games like Space Engineers, Empyrion: Galactic Survival and Avorion, as well as some of the common mistakes made by some of the more inexperienced content creators, in particular:
1. Turret Spam - In other words, getting a little carried away with the sheer amount of turrets on your ship, this is more of an issue in games like Space Engineers where there's no large turrets and no realistic munitions storage.
2. Space is an Ocean - The worrying tendency of many content creators to give their spacecraft the characteristics of old ocean going naval vessels, such as adding of bridges instead of CIC's, and putting almost all their turrets on one side.
3. Ignoring the evolution of big guns and superfiring turrets - The focus of putting too many guns on the same plane, restricting their firing arcs to only a few directions. Also includes the tendency of some content creators to ignore the larger more powerful weapons and stick to smaller ones (or to avoid building player made weapons in Space Engineers).
Remember that this video only covers turret placement. Videos covering missile weaponry, fixed weaponry (including spinal mounts and broadsides) or ship design can be found elsewhere, therefore these topics are considered beyond the scope of this video and thus will not be discussed.
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All creations shown in this video belong to their respective authors.
Links to some of the creations shown here can be found in many of my previous videos, but be advised that there are several here that are no either no longer currently available on the workshop or are still works in progress and thus not currently available to the public. - Ігри
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hey if this is a workshop CAN YOU GIVE THE LINK PLZ THIS SHIP IS SO BEAUTIFUL
Bonjour Kenzo, quel vaisseau voulez-vous? À quelle heure le voyez-vous dans la vidéo?
(Maybe this is better for you to understand?)
@@CaptainRobertson thx i want the blue ship at 1:06 plz
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=829988229
le voilà!
IMDC Titan
@@CaptainRobertson thx :)
I feel like people start getting into the bad habit of tucking their turrets away to sort of protect them instead of putting them on outside edges when in the long run its only gonna cause your battleship more damage than its really worth. 1 broken turret < 1 broken battleship
Agreed, hiding the turrets away pretty much defeats the purpose of having them in the first place. They may as well just replace them all with fixed emplacements instead and save on space if they're going to do that, but I'll be covering that topic on the next video which is about spinal mounts and broadsides.
@@CaptainRobertson Oh interesting. I'll stick around for that video as well then.
It might be reasonable to tuck them away for protection if in the scifi setting shields are not available. If space debries can damage your turrets you might want to hide then untill you need them. In this case you should have some sort of shutter though.
They should be able to fold away into the ship when not used if they're small enough, or given the bare minimum of armour against micrometeorites and debris, more so than the hull depending on the design and purpose of the turret. I don't have much time to answer the same types of questions, so hopefully this link should answer some of the questions you've had regarding turrets, broadsides, missiles, in a sci-fi space setting 'etc'.
www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunintro.php
*Edit* That should be the correct link now.
This video has a very “American WW2 soldier educational film” vibe to it. I really liked this video and hope to see more of this
i like how the anime bodacious space pirates did it, they had a bridge that retracted into hull for combat or if the area was hazardous.
Amazed that Bodacious Space Pirates is known. That ship was a good mix of Anime style and real physics.
The ships in Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans did that as well! I need to watch bodacious space pirates at some point haha
I think in Gundam UC post Zeta era begin to do the same of tucking the command bridge or moving the whole command crew to a enclosed CIC .
Legend of galactic heroes do the same too, tucking the bridge in.
Then why not just have the bridge just stay inside the hull, and remove all the retractable mechanism to free more space?
@@MrRemicas rule of cool. I built a ship in space engineers with a retractable command bridge using merge blocks and pistons. while it was extended it had a nice, almost 360 panorama window to look all around the ship, which looked incredible in first person and it was way more fun and satisfying to 'hunker down' before a fight in that ship than a regular one, where the cockpit is buried in several layers of heavy armor, as first person flying is not a neccesity due to the 3rd person camera giving you a superior view options than any camera system or windows could. same goes for movies and whatnot. it would make sense to bury the CIC imside the ship and make a camera system that shows the surroundings, but having some unique albeit unnecessary bridges and viewing decks make it look more interesting and recognisable. the ships of the expanse currently are very focused and realistic and still recognisable as not many shows use ships that look that realistic, but once more shows and films will start to do so, they will look kinda bland and samey to them, whereas a star trek ship will always be recognisable by a glance, even tho it has many poor design choices were it to be a real spaceship.
I'm fortunate enough that my first experience with sci-fi wasn't SW or ST, but Homeworld, where turret coverage and 3-dimensional movement of spaceships meant ships with limited firing arcs would get outmanuvered and chewed to pieces by faster craft.
Very good video, you summarize all the principles of good turret placements. I especially like your decision to show optimal turret placement on sub-optimal shaped vessels.
Thanks Vurux!
I've got a feeling that someone may have posted this on a gaming forum somewhere as I've suddenly had a huge influx of views - as well as a sharp increase in comments from people who are just sending me walls of text essentially just ranting about everything I've said in the video, so it's good to get some positive feedback from the more wiser members of the community. ;)
My ships tend to have 2 bridges, the Pretty bridge, aka the one lamented so much, and another burried in the center of the ship most of the time clad in heavy armor.
Interesting, as I actually do something similar with the Starcruiser and Gunstar series of vessels.
They have what appears to be a cockpit or bridge on them, but it's actually a small compartment with a camera protected by windows and a transparent LCD screen with a HUD displayed on it.
@@CaptainRobertson My larger ships have an observation deck and a bridge, the "observation deck" only being used outside of combat, since I don't armor it significantly to save resources, as for the bridge actual bridge,about the same as Dianaranda, in the middle of the ship heavily armored.
PS: nice video
PPS: I deleted my first reply, I think it was bugged...
That's actually a very good idea and I did something just like that with the Valiant off-camera at the end of season 3 of Into the Unknown. I ended up adding a CIC inside the ship, just in front of the large cargo container and converted the old bridge into an observation deck.... Hang on I'll quickly see if I kept the blueprint, so I can take a screenshot.
Here it is:-
hosting.photobucket.com/images/bb455/Baraban78/Valiant_added_CIC_observation_bridge.jpg
Having a Flight/Obervation bridge and a CIC/bunkered bridge is always a good idea for naval and space-faring craft
@@FlamingNinja Flight ops for small craft launching and recovery and a secondary helm station for fine maneuvers like docking and underway replenishment are two operations that would greatly benefit from an observation deck. An observation deck would also be a great addition to a flagship or diplomatic envoy's ship. An observation deck can be used for social functions that envoys and flag officers get involved in. Depending on conditions, an observation room would also make a nice crew amenity. Making it the equivalent of an inflatable tent on the surface of the ship would give you a lot of free volume for sports ball, zero G maneuver training, and so on.
I *dare* to say that this "Space is an ocean" doctrine actually makes sense. Placing primary guns on just one side of your ship gives you the ability to shoot them all in a broadside. In long range engagements, all you have to do is to position your ship so your "gun side" faces the target. Also, if you face your enemy from just that side, you can move your unutilized armor from all over the ship and concentrate it to that side (which will certainly get a lot of pounding when permanently facing the enemy).
I probably should note that I am talking about big guns and large ships engagements. Those large ships would still need secondaries and point-defense turrets all over the ship body to cover every angle. Also, smaller ships engagements would work differently as well.
Very interesting, the only thing about putting everything on one side would be that it's more suited to a 1 vs 1 engagement, if you're up against multiple opponents then having all your weapons and armour on a single facing would become something of a liability, plus exposing a larger cross section to the enemy means that their weapons, especially guided missiles have a bigger target to lock onto if they're using something like the RDav or Alysius' LIDAR scripts (in Space Engineers), or your enemy is using a longer ranged spinal mounted weapon - both kinetics and particle beams benefit from using the entire length of a ship, as they tend to have better range and be more deadlier as a result.
As one of the previous posters quite rightfully mentioned, at the end of the day it's ultimately up to the game designer and/or modding community, if they want to force a certain style of gameplay then I dare say they will, regardless of how things work in the real world.
ya germany tried doing something like that.
it failed the second it got into battle because rarely do nations ever do fair fights. hence why the Bismarck sunk.
@@Thekilleroftanks the bismarck, while no doubt a really cool ship, was a really flawed design. its main cannon was too large for the ship to handle, so firing it damaged other components on the ship.
on its way to meet up with its sister ship, the bismarck fired on the hms Hood, taking it out in one go, but knocking out its surveilance equipment, in turn leaving it in the dark about the british ship that had been shadowing it and relaying its information to their main fleets. once the battle had begun the bismarck took a massive pounding without sinking or becoming incapacitated, until swordfish torpedo bombers managed to take it down as the ships anti air armaments were not suited to properly take out large numbers of biplanes.
It is a good example of a flawed ship design, but i do not see how it would be a good example of what the thread was about, as it actually did really well in ship to ship combat, even when outnumbered.
Insert: A single flanking enemy fighter of any caliber.
Yeah also SE has a lot of tricks to survive against brawlers like that
Im very glad to know that turret stacking has a more official term for the principle. I'll be using superfiring to describe my warship designs now!
So in summary: quality over quantity. Turrets should be staggered to allow for the most unobstructed firing arc. Bridges should be built as close to the center of the craft as possible for the most protection possible. It shouldn't be an issue in most cases since the games allow a remote third person view as far as I know.
Or just not have an exposed bridge in the first place... any good warship must have an armored, internal combat bridge. Cause it doesn't matter how op your ship is if it can be taken out by just shooting the bridge
Glad to see Void Destroyer 2 mentioned. It is a criminally underrated game.
I love improving efficiency in my designs, as a combat veteran in space engineers, one advice I can offer, is while turret placement is important, how you fight with your ship, makes or breaks a battle. You can be the most armored, the most armed, or the fastest. But having a cunning mind is what ultimately wins the fight. Redundant systems in your ship, armor design, decoys, replaceable turrets, backup systems, jump drive warfare, orbiting mechanics, are all good strategies to explore in your designs
True, the best commanders tend to be more likely to win their battles, but again that's always been the case throughout history (with the odd exception) and is pretty much common sense.
Unfortunately that's a topic for another video on ship design and/or tactics (or the appropriate online gaming forum) because as per the description, those sorts of discussions are beyond the scope of this video which primarily focuses on turret placement only.
5:14 That's basically a Space Battleship Nelson. The Nelson is my second favorite class of battleship, because the Richelieu class exists. I love the Richelieu design, so much so that all of my designs for spaceborne-capitals are pretty much identical in turret layout to a Richelieu mirrored across the waterline. 4 main turrets in 2 superfiring arrangements on the fore ventral and dorsal sides, and secondaries on the aft ventral and dorsal sides.
Doesn't matter if she's bow-on or broadsiding, she can get all 4 turrets on target, and if the enemy is "flanking" her by coming in from above or below, she can still get half the main battery on target while she rolls/pitches to present broadside/her bow. Usually, I like to go bow-in, because that presents the lowest profile to incoming fire, and in realistic simulations, would angle the armor more, increasing effectiveness. (That's true even in realistic spaceships with whipple shields, because the plasma/debris would have a longer distance to travel, and thus spread out more, before it hit the main hull).
Edit: 13:20 Actually, almost identical to that, except without the engine nacelles or bridge, and the turrets a bit more forward. It even has 4-gun turrets, just like the Richelieu; where'd you find that art? I love it.
That's by AceDarkfire, there's more pics of it on Deviant Art:
www.deviantart.com/acedarkfire/art/W-i-P2-WarHawk-class-BB-146717015
Sadly I don't think he ever finished it and it's always been a work in progress.
This video has given me so much food for thought. I've always found it difficult to think of designs for realistic Sci-fi space-only battle ships. For planes, boats, and ground vehicles, there are strict design limitations that give you a good place to start, but spaceships are so open-ended that I find it difficult to imagine what an optimal combat layout would look like. I never thought I'd find a video that answered my questions so perfectly. This shit is genius-tier
Look at from the depths if you also want to see decent turret designs. Alot of it is seabased but many of the craft specially the airship types tend to be terrifying to face.
The problem is that we're considering specifically spacecraft, which follow completely different rules
@@Tonatsi From the Depths actually has many spacecraft and airships which benefit from the same design criteria mentioned in this video. FtD actually benefits even more as unlike most of the games mentioned in the video, you can actually design your turrets to be any size/shape you like (subject to certain constraints) which means good design becomes even more important.
I am so very glad that youtube recommend me your video
All this brings us to the ultimate distilled warship design....The Honor-verse ships. Elongated ovoids with caps on either end that house primary engines and other things (basically a oval-tapered sword handle). Recessed guns for full broadsides and near spherical engagement zones for point defense set into collars wrapped around the body. Keep in mind the ship tactics have turned back into Line warfare due to the realistic difficulty of flying, momentum and changing direction in space.
Plus with the Gravity wedges "protecting" the dorsal and ventral faces of the ship
Wrong video, this is the one you want: ua-cam.com/video/uwdUByur8vA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=CaptainRobertson
See this is why I love Halos UNSC ship design, especially the pillar of autumn class (The actual designation escapes me) in a lot of the space combat portrayed they have weapons systems covering the full 360 of the ship and can even be scene rotating in space combat dishing out fire power at will. Idk it just seemed like more grounded space combat
Halcyon class heavy cruiser 😉
Also same here I love Halo ships!
Wow... this was an extremely informative video for me, looking back on the majority of the ships I've designed I can really see the issues with things like hull shape and turret placement. Thanks for the video!
No worries, just remember that you're free to design your ships anyway you like - even mine are far from perfect and I always come back to find things that need to be fixed or improved on.
It's made worse because some of the games I mention in my videos actually encourage poor weapon/turret placement, but that's more to do with poorly implemented or overly simplified combat mechanics than anything else.
Sadly it's human nature to be lazy and take the quick and easy option, so if it can be cheesed, people are gonna cheese it.... Well... Until it gets fixed in a patch that is. ;)
In regards to the ocean comment, The Expanse did a really good job of ship design. The 'bottom' of the ships in that verse are the main engine clusters. Ergo, the decks are oriented so that the floors are toward the engines and the ceilings are toward the front of the ship. It also has the added benefit of creating 'gravity' when the engines were firing.
The Expanse series clearly pointed that Space is NOT an ocean. so the ship designs were all based on space rockets except a handful of 'space planes', none of these were designed with tower bridges.
Another interesting aspect you see in some Space Engineers ships is the splitting of the 'observation deck' areas which are exposed well windowed compartments from which the ship can be navigated, from a deeper interior control center which is used in battle. This is in fact the way real warships have been functioning for decades now. The whole notion that we have been fed by sci-fi (and the general need to have all the action on one small familiar set) of the bridge as the singular computer console filled command center of a ship is not actually the correct navel parlance.
The 'bridge' of a ship is technically just an exposed observation platform and is just one possible place from which a commander could be in battle. The conning tower, which was a tiny extremely armor box with observation slits rather then large windows was also an option and most ships in WWII had them, but Captains largely refused to use them even at the peak of battle, instead preferring the views, and perceived display of bravery provided by the bridge so they were abandoned. Modern ships simply have a the control room deep in the ship which can do everything, and any bridge generally duplicates only the basic steering/helm controls meaning it's loss is insignificant in battle.
Great video. Really enjoyed it, thanks. Many do not realize, for space based combat, whether a ship is hit or not, heat build up is an issue, merely maneuvering a ship during combat will generate a lot of heat from massive high thrust low efficient engines. Should a ship be damaged in combat, heat death of the ship is more likely than not, especially if vital systems are damaged during combat, not taking into consideration fires. In reality, 'most' space based combat is likely to take place at great distances, not up close and personal. Agreed, having a "bridge" at top where it can be targeted first thing is silly. The majority of a spacecraft is taken up by vital systems which means there is a lot that can go wrong in combat.
One idea that I had while watching was a spaceship-ring turret placement could work. (idk I'm not an engineer) Anyway, keep up the good work Captain Roberson.
If anything, sponsons with automated guns at the end work nicely.
For example the spinal gun ship could do with two mid-sized turrets placed on sponsons along the side so they can fire to the front, sides, up, down, and through the space along the middle, Even if the backwards sightline would be a little iffy.
Both of those are actually very interesting ideas, although I'm sure they'd both have their own unique engineering challenges in real life.
I'll have to check the Atomic Rockets website at some point to see if there's been any mention of something like those being mentioned before.
I guess it’s time that I comment on the huge blind zones where the engines are placed.
Suggestions: extended engine nacelles on rotors, just like how one would place a turret.
A tactic I use with my ships, if I ever use turrets in close proximity with limited firing arcs, is have staggered height turrets or dedicated directional turrets. Staggered turrets tend to be my main ones and are typically able to fire in numerous directions without restrictions, and my dedicated ones are used for things like broadsides or directional defence.
Before anyone says broadsides aren't viable, these turret groups still have decent firing arcs and can thus broadside opposing vessels without being perpendicular.
That's right, I even have a video that covers broadside and spinal mounted weapons, which was a follow up to this one.
Once I have a little more free time the next one I plan on releasing is a video that talks about missile weaponry, so stay tuned.
@@CaptainRobertson I'll give it a watch! I think every weapon and configuration has it's use, a video on missile and missile defence would be cool to see!
I found this video very informative and enjoyable to watch and I agree with your points. I play space engineers and make a lot of replicas of ships and most of them are made to look cool and not to fight well. My personal favorite would be cod infinite warfare’s sdf ships. I have a modified sdf destroyer “look up cod infinite warfare sdf destroyer if you don’t know what it is.” that’s 600 meters long and has a good number of defense and offense on the top and bottom while in addition to the obvious front top bridge it also has a armored cic bridge deep inside.
Only ship that justifies being an ocean ship is the space battleship yamato, which was the actual yamato battleship that was salvaged from the sea and friendly aliens simoly retrofitted. So it kept the same basic layout but everything was upgraded to ultra space levels.
Remember somehow finding that entire movie somewhere for free. Definitely a cool ship tho.
The biggest -complained or- flawed was the third bridge placement, its huge coffin with no defenses, the neck is very thin, so much so it's became a running gag of getting destroyed
@@alternative915 Always thought they should have placed a few of those larger turrets underneath.
I'm not sure about the original but I recall in the remake that the underside also had bank after bank of missiles to engage targets with to lessen the ship's flaws in that trope. They can be seen firing sometimes in episodes where the ship is completely surrounded. They also put missile launchers where the smoke stacks used to be. I think they were point-defence missiles. As Starburst says, the ship is more heavily armed in it's weakspots than one would expect at first glance.
@@alternative915 In the show the Third Bridge is destroyed Twice. first in the Battle of Rainbow Stars near Large Magellanic Clouds (The only practical element of space warfare in this sense is that General Lysis ordered his flagship to fly below Yamato hull and grapple itself to the Third Bridge. and this is when 'Space is an ocean' paradigm flaws manifest, throughout the entire series, Space Yamato, as well as ALMOST every warships introduced in the series since then including Gamilons, none of these have underside guns of ANY KIND AT ALL.
The Second instance is when the ship is in the Planet Gamilon cavern system (pair to Iscandar in binary planet systems, where each of the two are dancing together). When acid rain struck (Leiji Matsumoto already awares that 'Sulfuric Acid' didn't work against inorganic ship hulls, but someone else in the production team (Particularly Yoshinobu Nishizaki himself) didn't convice that so the acid itself is named 'sulfuric acid' ) the acidic erosion also claimed Third Bridge as well.
Back to the Battle of Rainbow Stars. Gamilons weren't equally smart eitehr, not even under brilliant leadership of Lysis. All space planes were deployed from carriers IN THE SAME WAY AS oceanic Aircraft Carrier operations! all planes take off in the same manner EVEN IN DEEP SPACE! and all of them attacked Yamato from above! not under! (not even Torpedo planes exploited the ship's very deadspot properly), theoretically this too is silly, instead of flying over why not flying under and launch missiles / torpedoes there? to this end Gamilon spaceplane squadrons ain't gonna take any hits from Yamato laser AA/CIWS .
I'm somewhat pleased to find my own designs in SE are well acquainted with the general principals. Personally, I enjoy having a low profile external bridge for a few reasons; as a trap for boarders loaded with turrets, and as a decoy for fixed weapons holding nothing of importance. As in IRL I tend to have my designs commanded from a heavily protected AIC deep in the bowels of the ship, and most of the weapons (and armour) concentrated on the forward arc with the idea that one huge monolithic plate with decoys in it is better weight saving than an all-or-nothing scheme, or gods help you trying to armour every angle to the same extent. Front towards enemy at all times!
Personally I also tend to extend the principals of superfiring to lateral batteries, placing them in a wedge so that they can fire both directly forwards and to the flanks unopposed. I don't like placing turrets on the sides of the ship for aesthetic reasons- real estate that tends to be given over to hangars, superstructure, and modded-in torpedo and VLS silos. As unrealistic as it is, sometimes exchanging broadsides just looks damn awesome.
I don't even play these games but this is still real interesting stuff.
Basically the word of the day is "symmetry"
Regarding the number and size of turrets, I'd say the ship's role and the expected enemy is more important than straight-up copying what we see is being done: if at a certain point in a war or whatever the enemy proves to be some very fierce opposition because of their ability to overwhelm your ships' point defense a support craft you may design to tag along will probably have a ton of small turrets and look unbalanced by your design philosophy, likewise a carrier support may only be fitted with the biggest turrets you can strap on or even just be a single oversized spinal mount with a generator and thruster.
Came here 'coz I figured with the new Warfare DLC, could get an idea for custom turret placement. Was not disappointed most of the advice is still accurate.
Thanks.
The advice covers a lot of other games out there, not just Space Engineers, but as I mention in some of the other videos, these are only meant as guidelines as a lot of the games and mods available have their own take on how the universe and laws of physics tend to work, but as long as you use common sense and look at what real-life armed forces have done over the years then you'll get a good understanding of what works.... as well as what doesn't. ;)
It's nice hearing an older voice with such an accent speaking about Sci-fi gun placement
That makes it sound like it's only kids that're going into detail about this, surely there must still be some other full grown adults left on UA-cam creating similar content out there?
I think Spacedock is about the same age, if not older than I am and he's done some excellent videos on space warfare, so if you've not done so already then I thoroughly recommend checking out his channel.
Capt Robertson validating my first impression of Space Battleship Yamato decades later. 😁 Seriously though, enjoyed the video. Now I want one of these games. Given the ridiculous ranges you mention at 1:45 I'm leaning away from Space Engineers. I've played too many games with sea-faring warships to put up with that. 😂
Not an issue anymore, Space Engineers had a recent update that allows a lock on to extend range to 2 km and we have a variety of options for that range now
Great vid I’ll keep it in mind when starting my carrier
Excellent video. Thanks for you knowledgeable contributions!
lol i was not expecting you to show a picture from the xocliw tourny, but i would argue in that case turret spam was actually used in an effective application.
Ahh, unfortunately I can't take credit for those, both that one and the pirate ship was actually sent to me by my colleague FreddyKaktuz after I asked him to send me a good example of Turret Spam and a spacecraft that looked like an ocean going vessel.
I already had some good examples but wanted more and I think he struck it lucky, as from the screenshots he sent it looks like both of those appear in the same gaming session?
@@CaptainRobertson They were both ships from Team Liver Damage from 2 different tournaments. The one where they used the Turret spam ships they came in 2nd and the one where they used the pirate ship they placed 1st. They tend to go for rather silly meme builds.
Yes, one of the guys sent me a link to one of them a few days ago and I managed to watch most of it after work, much better than vanilla space engineers but it still looks like it needs some balancing.
There were indeed a lot of 'interesting' designs but I did quite like the larger one that appeared in the middle of the video that looked not too dissimilar to the last example in this video, it even had the decent sized superfiring turrets.
I think a brilliant reflection of these principles is in the (now dead, rip) ship designs for the game Fractured Space. For example, the sniper ships (Guardian, etc)
The ship at about 13:20 is a ship I would turn the thruster cells into secondary ships that can disconnect in combat with turrets, including the large turrets on top and bottom, keeping the "bridge as a planetary observation deck and have little to moderate system controls "Linked" to that location as a secondary or non-combat bridge. More for show and information misdirection. Make people or potential enemies thinking that's the control of the ship, as part of an ambush tactic. But that's just what I came up with off the top of my head tbh. Otherwise I agree with everything you Said. Really enjoyed the video man. Great work
A planetary observation deck being used to make the enemy think it's the main CIC is a bit like the 'Trojan Horse', it'll work once but as soon as everyone else knows about the trick they'll be a lot less likely to fall for it ever again. Much better to have a small observation dome instead that can be used when you're in orbit and it's safer to do so, as it's less of an obstruction to any kind of weapon system.
Even so, any form of observation structure that exposes human beings to seeing outside when you're in space is very likely to be limited to being during very brief moments when it's relatively safe to do so, or while you're still in orbit and well within a planet's magnetosphere, in order to try and reduce the risk of your personnel being exposed to Galactic Cosmic Rays, Solar Particle Events and/or killed/blinded by surprise laser fire and nuclear explosions 'etc'.... Yep, sadly outer space is a lot more dangerous than Hollywood would have you believe. :(
Really enjoy your videos.
I remember making spaceships in space engineers. It was fun. But I was doing it in survival. As such I had to make sure there was place for an ammo storage, conveyors, etc. That made it so having a lot of turrets wasn't easy. And having a lot of turrets close can easily get them destroyed...... But it was fun trying to make something work and then testing it against something else. An advice. Don't use windows. I used some on one ship. But had a lot of metal fences covering it XD. And if you could look at the window, then you were in front of my big guns :P
The Ships in Eve online do alright as far as realistic turret placement because their combat is almost exclusively turreted when guns are involved and it is orbiting based so the designers had to do their best to make sure that the ships could engage in nearly all directions. My absolute favorite design has got to be the Gallente Talos battlecruiser. It's a hybrid T and m shaped vessel with an hourglass forward profile that suffers a little bit from the space boat mentality and has a bridge and windows, but it can engage with 15 of the 16 battleship guns if the target is is above the cruiser 11 reliably if target is below, 5 if directly ahead and 4 if the target is directly behind. I don't know the purpose of the 3 lower nacelles but they would be great places to put reverse thrusters for realistic braking. Honestly I think the artists know that the space craft of the future will likely be space bricks and cylinders but are trying to evoke certain feelings with their designs rather than focus on practicality. I also lament the lack of reality in sci-fi series too, and I appreciate well thought out designs.
Personally i like the rhombus box shape with overlapping firing arcs. Biggest turrets or in the center of that side and the point defense hang out on the stern and bow mostly.
Amazing and very informative video man, see you around ;)
I've spent a year and a half mocking my buddy and his SE ship design, he likes to do the "If a block doesn't have some kind of gun on it then I don't have enough guns"
And in combat his ships only 'work' because we have friendly grid damage off, his ships always end up shooting themselves more than me.
I'm a huge fan of the new MA turrets that sit on a ramp/slope. Besides looking awesome, putting one on each 'corner' of a vessel, rather than the flat 'top or bottom', gives you 4 180-degree fields of fire which can all point fore and aft, as well as any two having overlapping fields of fire. Starting from the presumably narrower front end of a ship, the hull can expand and repeat this arrangement to ever greater effect. Alternating flat-slope-ramp-slope-flat and repeat, it leaves plenty of real-estate in-between these main guns for smaller point defense emplacements or thrusters. It also leaves the larger flat areas for either even larger turrets or other equipment. I tend to make the top a missile platform, the sides thrusters or broadside weaponry, and the bottom a hanger.
Really interesting ! Thanks !
I like it, *Good advice!* 😃👍
This video is so much more important now with the new turrets! Aged well
True, but don't forget that this video relates to the other games that were mentioned (as well as many others that I forgot at the time) and not just Space Engineers.
In fact, GetBrocked has done an excellent video where he goes into great detail regarding his findings on the new Warfare II turrets for Space Engineers and it's definitely worth a look, as it pretty much echoes what I found during my own tests.
Excellent video
love this video!
Hehe
My magnum opus is guilty of cannons being on only one side (the top)
Given, it is modelled after the Carrack from Star Citizen, so there's only so many places I can put them.
In that sense, I did get creative. PDC's on the sides and one on the bottom for deterring hostiles from chasing. 3 railguns on top, 2 facing forward and 1 for chase purposes.
Speedmods and WeaponCore *really* change the way you play. My railguns are set up for super firing and the PDCs for taking out rockets. You never really realize how the "meta" affects your ship designs until you don't have to account for something like fighters
But the Carrack has one turret on top, bottom, left and right and they are positioned in a way that they have large field of fire only their opposing sides is blocked. So modeling your ship after the Carrack shouldn't be an issue.
@@NNextremNN I didn't clarify
The railguns are on the top of the ship. The PDCs are 1 in the back, on the bottom, to defend the entry lift, and two near the bridge, one on either side.
The ball turrets on the carrack don't exist because that entire section was replaced with A10 style thruster pods.
So yes, it does matter. Especially with WeaponCore, where overheating and jamming is a concern.
Good to see you still making excellent SE content, mate! This was a fantastic guide, and I hope it gets spread around the community to help alleviate all of these issues. I will say that when I see a gunspam ship that has gatling turrets that fire into other turrets, I tend to let the ships do my work for me by flying around and just dodging while taking occasional potshots while the gats cause the vessel to slowly self-neuter.
Hahaha - Yes! Someone actually pointed this out to me when it happened during some of the 1 vs 1 ship battles I released as bonus footage.
I had to rearrange a lot of the turrets and put heavy armour half-blocks in front of the PDC turrets on both the Starcruiser and Gunstar series of vessels to prevent them from getting shot off by the overzealous gatling turrets.
In regards to the ship in 10:00 the small front turrets are there to intercept any small fightercraft attacking the giant main gun moving them anywhere else would create giant blind spots for any small ship to exploit. Same goes for the side turrets. Moving them up would leave the side unprotected or put them in a position where they wouldn't been effective anyway. What this ship would need are large turrets on top. Medium ideally ball mounted turrets on the side and small ones in blind spots. The kind of mount is also something you left out of the video. Many of those featured turrets have little space to move up and down which severely limits their firing arch. This might not be such a big problem for long range weapons but it certainly is for small and medium range.
As mentioned, sticking them on the side would have worked just as well and they would gain better firing arcs, more likely they were originally placed like that for the 'cool factor' which is probably why the spinal mount is being exposed rather than incorporated into the hull.
If you've reached the stage where you NEED to have turrets placed inside the folds of your ship's hull in order to protect it from unmanned drones that are able to get right up to it and just sit there, then well... I'm afraid you've got bigger things than just turret placement to worry about.
As for the types of turrets available, they come in all shapes and sizes all with their own pros and cons, and it's usually up to the content creator to make sure that they have the common sense to choose the one that's most suitable for the job it's meant for, i.e. the flatter, more slanted ones are better suited as primary weapons, while the more rounder or unprotected ones are better suited to PDS/CIWS.
Yes it's true that I could have gone into turret shape and design in more detail, but I instead chose to focus more on placement in this video, but please feel free to release your own video about that if you want and I'll make sure I'll add a link to it in the description below so that everyone else can learn something a little extra.
The one ship with the super firing turret blocking the 3rd turret I think that’s a reference to the British Nelson class of battleships from the late 1920s (one of which the Rodney actually participated in the sinking of the Bismarck)
I know its got some flaws such as a bridge and looking fairly "Space is an ocean" ship. But the space ship "Arcadia" from the animated story "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" (The newest one has design elements that are slightly better than the older one) is a decent ship
It could be just an observation tower bridge sometimes
Actually the 'First' Captain Harlock ship designed by Leiji Matsumoto for 'Great Pirate Harlock' manga doesn't look anywhere close to Arcadia as we known today, it looks much more like Earth Dfense Forces space warships in the first episodes of Space Battleship Yamato / Star Blazers--it didn't have towering bridges and to be honest, these ship designs were more practical than anything invented SINCE Space Yamato itself (in the show), to be honest Leiji Matsumoto was a director of that animated series in 70s. slightly before he did Space Pirate Captain Harlock (second and the more successful iterations of Harlock as space pirate), it turned out that SBY became a big hit and this compelled him to redesign ships for Harlock with many elements loaned from Space Yamato (including superfiring main gun battery and towering bridge, even with the same hexagonal shape!), both of which he also designed. And since then every space warships share the same design doctrine, literally sea vessels in space.
I honestly agree with the points you have made. I myself honestly suffer from building turret spam ships, so I can see the merits of what you have said. As for the turrets mounted in groves along the side of ships, I think that can be attributed to the idea that the ships are able to roll along their long axis to make up for the lack of firing arcs, however that only goes so far and also depends on the traverse speeds of the turrets in question. In the end though i guess it depends on the “cool” factor at this point.
I would argue that smaller guns along the groove on the hull makes them more protected since they are most likely to be very lightly armored unlike bigger turrets, that way they would be fully covered by the ships shileds if it had them as well.
Depending on the actual firing arcs that those guns get in those kinds of locations I would say that they can even be more effective since they would not be easily destroyed by the enemy armament
First, just stumbled on your channel, good stuff!
Personally, i agree with a lot of points raised here, and as others have stated, some of it is a purely aesthetics choice.
My own designs (specifically in Space Engineers, but also somewhat true in other games) tend to swing between going from the purely practical, to more "rule of cool" depending on the environment (and game) they're expected to be used in.
This expectation has a huge impact on my design choices, as if I'm not planning on being in heavy combat regularly, I'll design a ship with more decoy and cheap sacrificial elements that I can quickly replace but protects the more expensive things like turrets (I tend to play with mods that make any T2 or higher parts a lot more costly to replace). That said, even my sacrificial elements tend to be half walls, walkways, or "cover walls" that the turret can fire over/around, but I have been known to use limited firing arcs to keep my own weapons from being distracted by enemy decoys/debris as well. Basically designing around the game's combat mechanics, and not always around RL combat designs.
In non-Space Engineer games, where the AI targeting system may be a bit more... robust, I fully agree on the maximizing your field of fire (FoF), and my own ship design goes for a MUCH more functional approach (not a lot of sweeping lines, small/compact and heavily armored, turrets on opposing faces with ability to overlap FoF, etc...) Even in Space Engineers specifically, if I'm using a smarter turret script/mod that allows me to designate target priorities, my designs change fairly drastically for the same reasons.
As to choosing between "vanilla" vs modded/player made weapons, some creators are focused on competitive builds (or strictly vanilla blocks) which have very strict rules on what weapons can be used for balance reasons. So even when they're doing non-competitive builds, it's become a habit to just stick with specific weapons/mod packs so they can reuse portions of their designs later. Modded weapons also tend toward being very unbalanced, so unless I'm going for a specific look/type of weapon, I don't tend to use them unless the AI ship spawner has been altered to also use them (i.e Lucas' various hostile AI encounters)
Again, great points you made!
Me, who builds flat bottom water going ships so guns can be placed under the hull: “I don’t have such weaknesses!”
Imma share this very nice thanks
Most of my ships in Avorion tend to be sharp or box like so I tend to place turrets on the corners to give them as muck of a fire angle as possible since not only do you tend to fight enemy's on multiple fronts but often times your camera as well.
I'm thinking about buying Space Engineers on Steam, and want to make a ship with heavy dorsal armor, maybe a forward-facing torpedo magazine, but its main weapons would be a pair of stepped cannon turrets on the sides that could fire forward or up. Deployed in squadrons, they would lance at a target, then begin circling, presenting their armored tops, hammering the target hard and fast. On the dorsal side, secondary weapons screen them from fighters and torpedoes.
You and Sacred Cow Shipyards are the lonely voices of logic in sci-fi ship design. And I wish you two were more popular.
Thanks Aethertech.
Unfortunately we live in a world (especially in the West) where more and more people are not only used to being appeased and told "what they want to hear", but they actually insist that everyone else tells them "what they want to hear", so if you don't and start to present them with things like facts, logic, common sense, research and military history that contradicts that then you'll find that it's going to upset a fair amount of them, especially if they're not used to it.
The quibbles I have for big vs small turrets is that they dependent on how damage is applied and effective range is calculated. Depending on how 'the rules' of whatever game or setting work out, being able to inflict concentrated damage may or may not be a benefit, and range is a similar issue. If there is little mechanical benefit (for whatever abstraction based reasons), big guns are in trouble. Physics, as we understand them, say that they are preferable given how we think about ship design, but that only reflects a non-interstellar view point.
Yeah, that's something that I've mentioned in the next video about spinal and broadside mounts - if game developers or modding teams have designed their gameplay experience in such a way in which there is a distinct bias towards certain types of weapons, or ship designs, then there's not much we can do about it other than try to create our spacecraft around those same restrictions.
There's been loads of comments saying that using bigger, longer ranged weapons is a bad idea, because a lot of games are made so that lots of smaller weapons have more damage per second (DPS) compared to the large ones, but that's most likely been done for gameplay reasons or the Devs just didn't have the time to simulate armour correctly. As we all know that in real life an M1A2 or Leopard 2 armed with a single 120mm cannon is going to beat any other M1A2 or Leopard 2 that's just armed with a ridiculous 10 x 12.7mm (.50 Cal) heavy machineguns every time, despite what all the armchair commandos say.
The only excuse for tucked away turrets is point defence with the goal of protecting a specific section, such as a turret near the engine recess to protect it from missiles
Agreed, that's probably the only turret type you'd likely see there (I do that myself with my own designs), primary and secondary turrets should be where they are most useful.
Good shout for mentioning missiles though, you'll be surprised how many people forget about those and concentrate on protecting their ship against the perceived threat of slow moving human piloted starfighters instead.
@@CaptainRobertson the scariest combat situation I have been against is someone who I thought had lots of hangars on his ship, so I was doubly surprised when he turned his broadside towards me, just to open the hangar doors and reveal missile launchers in a \|/ orientation, preventing my escape, and his need to aim.
I learnt my lesson and now make sure I can reduce my profile while having point defence on the remaining profile. Also don't get close to the hangar doors, they might actually be missile launchers ready to ruin your day
It could have been worse:
ua-cam.com/video/99qnxlrbVJ0/v-deo.html&ab_channel=CaptainRobertson
@@CaptainRobertson why do you hurt me so XD
Hello, I am currently thinking about building a medium sized support / defensive ship, intended to escort large (slow) battleships / stations, and/or targets that absolutely can't take a hit (eg. tankers - with no shield mod in mind)
The concept is that the ship could throw itself in harm's way in order to cover a hull breach, or a ship that was not meant for combat. (Like how the Galactica often provided physical cover for the civilian fleet in BSG.) The ship would have (possibly layered) heavy armor on its dorsal side, and light armor / a mini hangar on its ventral side. If there would be nothing to protect, the ships would be deployed in pairs, to provide cover for each other. For reference I can mention the Aegis Hammerhead from Star Citizen, with the difference of the armor being reinforced on one side.
On a ship like that, where would you place the heavy hitting guns and the PDC turrets? I am really curious about your opinion!
Hi Péter, if I was to choose a defensive escort type vessel, then it would probably look a lot like this one by Papple2:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2228349304
All those smaller turrets around the outside are ideal for intercepting any incoming drones or guided missiles that could be directed towards the larger vessels it's protecting, if you desired you could even mix around the types of PDC weapons and their layout if you wanted.
The heavy hitting guns would most likely be a spinal mounted rail gun or mass driver, or possibly even a couple of large turrets stuck on the top and bottom part where it rises above the rest of the ship, enabling it to fire over the other turrets; but as it's a defensive escort I'd prefer to just go for the single spinal mounted gun and let bigger ships worry about laying down the hurt.
@@CaptainRobertson Well said, thanks for the advice! I had something similar in mind, I intend to include a few forward facing Helios clang cannons, with which the ship's pilot can have some fun.
In regards to turrets being placed within the interior of the silhouette of the ship like at 11:00.
X4 does this alot with its ship designs, especially on those with a lot of recesses and hollows in the ship itself and seems to serve two functions
1. Protect the firing positions from disabling fire. By placing the primary weapons within recesses of the ship, they can fire on the target without being at risk of being knocked out by the targets supporting fleet
2. Anti-fighter defense. The most effective way to disable the capabilities of a warship is usually for the player to hop in a fighter with high burst damage capability, fly right up to the hull, and use its superior maneuverability to 'crawl' all over the enemy ship disabling its systems one by one. These hidden or covered turrets may have limited external arcs, but have near complete internal coverage to pick off pesky fighters when they peak out from cover to fire at the emplacements.
The problems I have with this, is that any reality where this was happening it would rapidly be addressed in redesign. The primary turrets would receive substantially more protection, on the order of a disabling shot likely causing devastating secondary damage due to the firepower involved to do so. Defensive turrets would likely increase in power and responsiveness to counter the fighters, as well as number to cover all blind spots. Finally, the designers WOULD DO EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO GET RID OF INTERNAL BLINDSPOTS SO A SINGLE FIGHTER COULDNT TEAR A CAPITAL SHIP APART AT ITS LEISURE.
Very true, I suppose a lot of the reason why they are made that way is due to fan service as having human-piloted fighters in real life space combat would be extremely impractical, it's more likely that you'll be facing unmanned drones or guided missiles than actual starfighters, but unfortunately that would be way too boring for any of us looking to relive our favourite scenes from Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars. ;)
Basically you want to take the top half of a modern day dreadnaught, remove the bridge, copy it and paste it to make the underside of the vessel.
06:15 the reason for this goes back to the ship based inspiration, specifically the fact it has the same layout as the nelson class battleships. They had their armament all on the front because they were expected to chase down enemy ships more often so having all the guns forward was reasonable. Also, the third rear turret couldn't be superfired over B turret (the middle one) without increasing the metacentric height too far. The decision to use triple turrets was based on the belief that they'd take up less displacement overall than twin turrets.
Exactly!
Very little of the design reasoning used with regards to the Nelson class or indeed any WW1/WW2 era wet-Navy ocean-going battleship (except for the obvious points raised in this video) has any bearing in space related warfare... Unless of course you want to see them obliterated by vessels designed and built by engineers and were made to operate and fight in space, similar to those you can find in settings like 'The Expanse' or 'Children of a Dead Earth'.
That was helpfull. Thank you Cap o7
Another big influence on the "space is an ocean" trope is Warhammer 40K. It's over the top and played for laughs of course.
Some Star Wars ships have actually decent turret placement.
I'm trying to think of anime with realistic ship designs. So far Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Banner/Crest of Stars came to mind.
BTW another big change with the Dreadnaught was the reduction of different ammunitions. Pre-Dreadnaughts could have something like 7 different types of guns.
After Dreadnaugh you usually had:
- main battery
- seconderay battery
- sometimes tertiary battery, usually dual purpose
- AA (often small cannons and mgs)
Ive always based my ships in SE after the Salamis and Magellan from the original gundam series that funnily enough look like ships in space
I would like to comment in support of the “boats in space” school of design, to some extent at least. Having all the big guns mounted on the same side of the ship has a potential advantage in terms of concentration of firepower, at the sacrifice of taking an all-or-nothing approach and leaving significant arcs with no coverage from the main guns.
Consider a fairly typical “wedge” shaped ship, but with a relatively flat top surface. By sticking all the main guns on that top surface, with the centre most guns raised to fire over the surrounding guns of course, you ensure that by simply pointing your ship slightly “below” your opponent, all of your main guns will be able to fire on the target. At the same time you ensure that incoming gunfire will all be striking that top surface, so you can potentially also concentrate your heaviest armour on that surface while leaving your lower surfaces more lightly armoured. The obvious limitation here is that you need to keep that top side of your ship facing the enemy, and if your opponent manages to get a ship of remotely similar size facing your lower surfaces, you are likely to be in a lot of trouble.
Conversely, a ship like one shown with main guns on both the top and the bottom could easily find itself with only half of it’s guns able to target the enemy, at least for some of the time.
It doesn’t make the “boat in space” style superior, but I think you are perhaps a bit too quick to dismiss it without considering that it might have strengths which could make it viable.
A lot of what you've said is going to be covered in the broadsides and spinal mounts video and as such is beyond the scope of this video which focuses on primarily on turret placement, as I explain how this will differ depending on the sci-fi verse.
Ultimately, in a near future sci-fi verse - yes having weapons all on one side is relatively feasible, but in a mid-future or slightly more advanced verse with jump drives 'etc', then not so much, as there's likely to be scenarios where you'll be engaging several vessels at once and they'll all be deliberately trying to outflank each other, which is where having weapons that can all fire straight ahead or to the sides is going to be advantageous.
Captain Robertson I’d actually suggest that more advanced tech like jump drives might help ships with weapons and defences focused on one side of the ship, as it could make it easier to escape attempts to outflank it and attack the weaker side. It also depends on whether being within effective combat range of other ships inhibits jumping, as that would of course prevent these escape jumps.
However, you are certainly right that the available technology would have a big influence on the viability of having weapons and armour focused on one side.
-If shields don’t exist, concentrating armour on top might be too dangerous, as even being momentarily outmanoeuvred might lead to too much damage getting through the thinner armour.
-As mentioned above, jump drives and their limitations could play a big part in how easily ships can evade flanking manoeuvres.
-If stealth technology is sufficiently advanced, stealthed opponents with a big alpha-strike capability might be able to threaten the lighter armoured side.
-If weaponry is predominantly guided, with good manoeuvrability, concentrating weaponry becomes irrelevant, while incoming fire may be able to avoid the heavy top armour and target the weaker bottom.
Ahhh, It's funny you should mention that last point there, as I did something similar to that in order to neutralise an enemy defence installation in a survival session some friends and I held just before Christmas.
It had it's weapons and armour concentrated on the front and kept turning to face me, so I changed the script on the Starcruiser's player-made guided missiles to only manoeuvre and begin heading towards the target after 30 seconds instead of just 2.
I then proceeded to fire 4 of them just past it's PDC weapon range so they'd fly behind it, as expected, after 30 seconds they reacquired the defence installation and 3 managed to get through the PDC gunfire, taking out it's reactor and batteries.
So, what i understand from this video, is that the ideal ship as far as profile and weapon placement goes, would be either an cone or an oblong ovoid
Pretty much.
Children of a Dead Earth and the Expanse have good examples of how semi-realistic ships would look, at least in the near-to-mid future. I'm trying not to go too much into ship design in this video as it's a topic for another time and place, this one focuses on just turret placement for the most part.
Honestly, i really like a nice bridge on the outside of the ship in space engineers builds, it gives me a nice view (i like to play in 1st person lol) and i can have a cic inside my ship that i can retreat into / have a copilot in incase the main bridge gets blown off. Plus i dont really need to have firing arks behind, since my style of combat is focused more on broadsides and frontal attacks than running away. Anyways, nice video, i still got some good ideas and ship desings out of it :)
Having a dorsal mounted bridge is a trope and a liability. One solid torpedo to that protruding target will at minimum kill your ship's piloting, and at most also take out any operations consoles like weapons, drones, cruise missiles, torpedoes, and jump drive control. Either create a backup bridge or permanent bridge inside the vessel and use external cameras.
What you forget about 10:00 is, that it's space, and small fighters can go insode of ship structure and stay there, destroing the ship from space where turrets can't fight it, this insides turrets are make against fighters.
And risk them blasting away at the insides of your own ship by accident, that's not a very sound engineering decision.
As I said to another poster earlier, assuming that you're in a verse that has slow flying, human piloted starfighters (in reality you're more likely to be facing unmanned drones and missiles), if it reaches the stage where they're able to come right up to your ship like that and just sit there unmolested, then you've got bigger design problems with your vessel to worry than just mere turret placement.
I was really looking forward to the "npc ships get access to the weapons in your mods list too" but then you land a round on the ship and ALL the turrets fall off. I hadgreat fun with an SSC 30 mm cannon once: i would wait for a ship to spawn and hit it with two 30 mm rounds. All the turrets fell off and i just waited for the ship to go out of range before i scavenged the salvage. . . . . . Honestly, a single large turret can damn near build a base . . . . .i had one ship spawn in and it was carrying some battle ship multi barrelled monstrosity which basically caused it to fall from the sky: i ended up building a ship AND a base from the parts.
Sadly, that's one of the cons of modded gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, as much as I love mods and the way in which many of them add some amazing features and can definitely expand upon the core aspect of the game in question, I've found that a huge amount of them, including many with positive ratings on the steam workshop, have some horrendous bugs and balancing issues.
I quite often spend ages tweaking them for personal use just to iron out a lot of the kinks... And then shake my head solemnly as they all break when the next patch arrives.
I do believe that Mistake#2 is so common due to anime like Gundam or Space Battleship Yamato and the likes. Anime loves making space vessels look like a literal WW2 battleship IN SPAAAACE.
One of the main reasons for a normal bridge in Space Engineers is the engine limitations. If you want to both see where you are going, and see other displays like damage control, radar, fire control, etc you need to look out through a window. Great info on turret placement though. SE also has turrets designed for small grid ships or point defense, not space cruisers. That's why most people seem to use weapon mods for heavier large grid weapons.
Check out some of the ships on the workshop that have a virtual cockpit for how to get a makeshift HUD to work when using a camera view. ;)
Radar should be part of your UI if you're using the correct mods, I use JTurps one which can also be found on the workshop.
Interesting that you're still using the bridge though, most younger players (i.e. younger than me) almost exclusively use the external 3D view, the main reason why I still like to use a CIC is for roleplaying/immersion reasons more than anything else..... Or at least did, I've been so busy recently that I can't remember the last time I played Space Engineers.
Agreed, being able to see everything from the CIC without going into the actual camera view would be a huge immersion boost and it's a shame the engine doesn't allow us to use actual real-time viewscreens on those LCD monitors, I know that a modder tried it a few years ago with some limited success, but at some point since then Keen changed how the LCD screens work and broke it.
Personally I find thinking of realistic spacecraft designs quite easy, beacuse I like incorporating logic into my spacecraft designs and that’s what I believe makes a spacecraft design good looking. That’s why I love drawing them in my free time as well as other vehicles.
One thing to mention is that adding ‘flak panels’ (panels placed around engines or weapons that cannot turn)
Is always a good idea as it helps stops shells or fragments from flak hitting parts such as engines which need to be exposed to function. I would also mount main guns on the side to allow for hitting bases below you, and keeping the ship narrow to allow spinning the craft if a enemy spacecraft is to the side of you.
Thanks!
Logic, common sense and looking at military history are the main things I recommend when it comes to ship design, as well as having a healthy understanding of the laws of physics - you don't need a university degree, just a reasonable grasp on what space is really like.
The good news is that the 'Space is an Ocean' wet navy tropes we've been seeing over the last 50 years or so will slowly fade away, especially as we start to actually build more substantial space craft and the inevitable move towards militarizing space becomes a reality.
As I joked with some colleagues of mine recently, our present day perception of space warfare is based heavily on what we're familiar with in popular culture. If you went back in time and asked someone from the Late 1800's (Victorian Era) UK to paint a picture of that they think the 'Battle of Britain' in 1940 would look like, explaining that in 50 years time aircraft will be fighting over London and the South of England, they'd probably create something that had hot air balloons and airships fitted with cannons that look like something out of 'Guns of Icarus' blasting away at each other, while Scientists would have painted things like really dodgy versions of the 1903 Wright Flyer.
If you'd actually shown them paintings of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitt Bf 109's, they'd have just shaken their heads and looked at you as if you were mad!
To be honest, my current perception of space battles in the modern time is simply remote fuel tanks with a machine gun turret and a rocket engine flinging past space stations and spy telescopes and taking a buzz on them, with eventually armour panels and active defences like lasers melting the surface and burning the fuel or damaging the guns. Until we have more efficient engines or too much armour will then I believe space warfare would look anything like what we see in sci-fi worlds. This is of course excluding nuclear weapons that could be used as shrapnel bombs and the Kessler effect trapping humanity on earth.
I actually had this forwarded to me some months ago, which is a very good example of what a near to mid future spacecraft may potentially look like, with the majority of it's mass dedicated to propellant and those sail-like structures sticking out of the sides are actually heat radiators used to get rid of the heat generated by both the reactor as well as the weaponry and any electronics/life support systems 'etc'.
ua-cam.com/video/QW5djcT7MAM/v-deo.html&ab_channel=SundayPunch
The PC Game 'Children of a Dead Earth' also has some very good designs in it that are based on realism, but I do understand that a lot of people are put off by them as, in their own words, they look "too rockety" or have too many bits sticking out of them, which is to be expected.
That was exactly what I was thinking!
I think I remember a game (it may be the game you mentioned)that was being developed that had things like this though I don’t know if it is actually real. Though I doubt that people would be on such craft until far-future, where significant armour or redundancy could keep the crew alive.
I actually have not made many designs for spacecraft recently so I might make some in a little while since I got my drawing book back for a modern to sci-Fi universe I made with my friends that has science central in everything.
I think one issue with these principles might be that they are very focus on a frontal/side engagement. It's probably not common, but one should never be completely defenseless from the rear. Maybe something to keep in mind if you run into this comment while designing a ship.
I guess it truly depends on the type of situation a ship expects to be in, and what the constraints of the given universe are. For a lone ship it's probably a lot more important to have comprehensive 360 degree coverage, but something that operates in a fleet can have flaws that are compensated for by other vessels...if you wanted to do it that way.
I think that depends heavily on the universe or game setting it's in, if they're all using anti-gravity bubbles and are shaped like flying saucers or sphere's then it's going to be a lot easier to cover all 360', but in a near-mid future setting then it's always going to be slightly harder to cover to the rear of the vessel compared to the front and sides due to all the main thrusters being located there, you can flatten the layout slightly to try and alleviate it somewhat, but it'll still remain an issue to some extent.
Putting all the thrusters on nacelles and extending them away from the body is a suggestion that's often mentioned by the Trekkies here but unfortunately that comes with a whole slew of additional issues, not the least of which is the structural concerns, but that unfortunately, is something that's beyond the scope of this video.
The guns inside the side of a vesses is most often seen in Star Wars Battlecruiser desings and in my personal oppinion mostly good looking
Yes, that's right. The general consensus seems to be that they are indeed mainly for aesthetic purposes.
There have been a handful of armchair commandos and neckbeards that have tried to put across the argument that it's a great idea to sink your turrets into the ships hull in order to better protect them at the expense of their firing arcs, but when I ask them to provide evidence of this being a successful combat design in real life or why it wouldn't be easier to just replace them with casemates or broadsides if that was their intended design philosophy, they almost always fall silent..... or they resort to just being argumentative and verbally abusive, which to be honest, is something I've come to expect from the crowd that have come over from certain gaming forums.
I always build a giant bridge on my ships. Nobody's in there, but the top of the bridge can open up and a bunch of point defence turret rise out of the top.
I don't like it when people attack my bridge, so I make the bridge attack them first
Some of my favorites are from Nexus The Jupiter Incident
I actually played that one back in the day and it was really good for its time, although the storyline and especially the voice acting was a little ropey. ;)
13:29 This one is heavily based on the works of Leiji Matsumoto as well.
Star trek ships have turrets below their hulls. They shoot stuff "below" them all the time. It still does behave space like sea, but it is not as bad as star wars.
Comments like that really belong on a gaming forum or fansite message board where Trekkies and Star Wars fanboys/fangirls can spend all day arguing with each other about who has the biggest warp drive and how the pills they bought actually increased the size of their Lightsaber.
Direct fire turret weapons should be the backup for when missiles fair. An axial main gun would at least have its place, but the days of a pure gunboat are over and they're not coming back.
Missiles are still considered the primary armament (see the Starcruisers from the earlier videos), but they're not covered here, neither are Spinal Mounts and Broadsides as they are topic for a later video and are outwith the scope of this one.
Thank you for the video, I was just wondering since turret mounts are heavily armored and self contained, putting them on the external hull doesn't pose any risk of compromising structural integrity. does it affect anything like shape form in terms of projecting an energy shield around a vessel?
Not that I'm aware of, when I used the Theseus Starcruiser with the Energy Shield mod in Space Engineers it appeared to cover the whole ship, including the player made turrets I used. Admittedly those are just placeholders so that it's mod free on the workshop, I usually replace them with large railgun turrets.
So many ships are mainly designed to look cool, not to be practical or effective. The most effective ship design in Star Trek, or all of Sci-Fi for that matter, is definitely the Borg Cube. It can fire in any direction, it can fly in any direction without having to turn around, and of course the cube shape makes very effective use of its volume. All the important systems are hidden deep inside so it can take a lot of damage on the outside without taking a critical hit.
With regards to the best main weaponry, I have to give that point to Rondenberry’s Andromeda though. Kinetic kill missiles are just beautifully simple and effective.
However, what I find even worse than the turret placement of ships in some franchises, is the engine placement. If you think it would be common sense to line up the main thrusters of a spaceship with its center of gravity, you will be disappointed quite often.
Agreed. Unfortunately that's what tends to happen when a spaceship is designed by an artist rather than an engineer.
Regarding kinetic missiles, interestingly enough those are actually mentioned in my other video regarding missile based weaponry, along with nuclear warheads and the dreaded soda cans of death! ;)
@@CaptainRobertson Actually I watched that video directly before reading this comment.
The space battleship’s main turrets armor stretches so far over the cannon barrels that they wouldn’t have more then 30 degrees of elevation.
I don't suppose you could be any more vague could you, which one of the examples are you talking about?
If it's the red and white one then those barrels are attached at the sides and are free to elevate to 90', the yellow one has turrets that elevate to 75', while it's 70' for both the MCRN's Foehammer used on the Donnager class and UNN's Farren pattern heavy railgun on the Truman class.
They're not perfect but they do offer a lot more flexibility at close and medium ranges than a fixed mount such as the spinal mount or broadside, which are covered in my second video, plus they're ultimately meant to compliment the missiles (or torpedoes, if you're using wet Navy terminology) that they carry for long ranged engagements.
Again, I'm not going to go into any great depth on those as missiles (including nukes) are covered in another video I made regarding missile based weaponry and as such are beyond the scope of this video.
@@CaptainRobertson 5:14 (prolly should’ve timestamped in my original comment)
Ahh yes, in that instance you're probably right, as those don't look like they'd have much in the way of elevation at all.
13:15 one functional issue I have with those turrets isnt the functionality of the turrets, but that they have a window blocked by a massive turret rendering several turrets useless
Yes, because as we all know, in space combat your weapons and fire control systems aren't automated, they're actually all manually controlled by people standing behind great big windows who clutch huge control sticks and who love to yell "AAAAAHH!" and shake violently whenever they pull the trigger... All for dramatic effect of course! :P
Seriously though, in space sci-fi games, windows are a more of a cosmetic choice, because in reality there would be little to none on a spacecraft (You can do your own research to find out why) and they certainly wouldn't be used to aim anything with.
All your weaponry would be computer controlled and the only things the gunnery personnel on board would have to do while spending the majority of their time looking at tactical displays and target data readouts is select the targets for the primary weapons and decide whether or not they fire.
@@CaptainRobertson i know, that was more of a critique of window placement than turret placement, I'm aware that any real sci fi bridge would be within the ship and use cameras and sensors rather than windows
In SE I just use creative mode to design ships and things I envision. Mostly to fit with the sci-fi universe I thought up for stories n etc. Its def not "original" as it does use ideas n such from numerous different franchises / series / games n so on. Anyway most of my designs (which all use a lot of mods) are what I would call "movie ships" types like the old sea-going ships mentioned in the video. Not really practical but eh, design choice. Though I do make several different designs for civilian style ships, mercenary ones, corporation ships (both industrial and semi-warships for defense) along with ships for other races in the universe. Many radically different from others in appearance and function. Some have underbelly turrets, some have side mounted and various other configurations. However most do have the top of deck bridge and windows for aesthetics.
There is a rather common configuration with turrets though, not many superfiring ones. Mostly all in a single file line and spaced out. They also all tend to have bow mounted static weapons like railguns and torp / missile / beam cannons. While the main turrets cannot all fire directly in front of the ship as only the one nearest bow is unobstructed, the way I figured to get around that issue is simply that unlike a sea going warship, the space ship can move in 3d space. So for an example of an how an attack would go:
1. Ship is pointed towards target
2. Ship fires its bow mounted static weapons at enemy (part 1 of the alpha strike)
3. Ship then angles bow down to allow all main turrets to obtain clearance to fire at target (alpha part 2)
4. Ship can then adjust angle to previous orientation as to present the smallest possible target as the various turrets reload.
Pretty much all the ships I make though have point defense turrets as well...mostly beam ones. Typically they are somewhat close together and have limited arcs, but they are just meant for missile / bomb / fighter/ bomber defense and to ward off infantry attempting to board vessel.
Not the most practical, but again just my preference and a way I thought of to make it work in a way I thought was suitable.
edit: Also for a work-around for warships that dont have underbelly primary turrets, a standard combat formation would have 1 of 4 possible variations.
1. Inverted parallel formation. This entails having the ships above and below each other (and staggered) so that they have main turrets of the top able to fire upon targets from their orientation and the bottom line able to fire main turrets at targets on the underside of the formation. Ie the "keels" of the 2 lines face eachother. The undersides normally have many point defense weapons so in this way it allows them to have overlapping fire.
2. Quad parallel. Essentially the same as the above but with the addition of 2 more lines on the left and right sides.
3. Inverted parallel B. Same as 1 but with the addition of 2 more lines that are between the outer 2 and inverted so their main turrets are now facing each other, in this formation the "inner" lines would be behind the outer ones so as to not interfere with the point defense weapons.
4. Quad parallel B. Same as 3 but for the Quad parallel (2)
The various formations would be of course dependent upon the number of vessels in the attack group.
So my From The Depths "Turret Spire" is somehow more viable than boats in space?
Aside from the turret spam and potentially requiring overlapping grids.
If i were to design turret layouts in games like this. I would prefer to use slanted armor designs that place triple turret set ups in am asymmetrical delta pattern. On slanted angular surfaces.
This creates a layout in which in most angles of attack, all three turrets can fire together for wider than average firing arch's. with only very small areas of approach in which only one turret wont be able to attack. This is also with larger and small turret emplacements in a hexagonal shaped hulls to that no matter which way you attack from. you're going to be attacking at most one broad side surface but almost all would be slanted with half or more of the ships firing arch's able to target you.
the one exception perhaps would be the very rear of the vessel. Even then a couple or more primary batteries should still be able to target and even more secondary. Even so it would make attacking the front hazardous much like say a star destroyer for lack of better reference.
This is in contrast to the main batteries being lined up one behind and above the other.
Hey I have a question I love space engineers but am not the best at building ships i can make them work of course but they dont look good just cubes you make great looking ships do you have any advice
I quite often spend hours just browsing spaceship concept art on Google, Pinterest 'etc' until something jumps out at me, I sometimes even mix the designs of several spacecraft together - the Theseus and Asterion Starcruisers for example are a mix of the ships from the expanse with the Warlock Destroyer from Babylon 5, with a little bit of influence from content creators like Dolan, Malmhrid, Taidyr and Aragath chucked in for good measure.
I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, so my best advice is to just take your time and experiment with different designs and see what fits, and don't be afraid to delete whole chunks or start again from scratch if it doesn't come out right, I've done that more than a few times myself.
Good Luck!
starting out as a cube isn't so bad. After you have a basic shape experiment. Start smoothing it out with the new shapes that we have. It helps if you have a concept in mind and remember that using other peoples creations that you like can help you get a grasp of how to do different shapes in the game.
I kinda want to know what you have in mind for replacing the bridge design of many ships. We can't all be followed around by a 3rd person camera, and visibility is very important to a design
Especially since these designs are limited to being controlled by a crew of maybe a doesn't people who aren't just sitting at a window.
Cameras are nice until they get blown off. They are one of the more likely components to fail in IRL space, too.
Virtual Cockpit and multiple cameras work really well, if you're a Space Engineers player then see the Dunsworth or Theseus Starcruiser as a good example.
In real life they'll not be using cockpits at all for any spacecraft likely to engage in warfare or deep space missions, if you want to know the whole reason as to why then I recommend checking out the atomic rockets website by Winchell Chung, in particular the section that reads 'Rockets Don't Got Windows' www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/misconceptions.php
As already said, cameras and/or other sensors. An exposed bridge with actual windows is a critical weakness in ship design.
Realistically, the bridge should be buried deep in the bowls of the ship with additional armour protecting it against any shots which penetrate the rest of the ship, and the bridge crew should use displays fed by the ship’s sensors to show everything around the ship. Actually looking through a window not only exposes the bridge to enemy fire, but would also be largely useless, as the distances involved in space combat would make actually seeing other ships incredibly difficult. Even a kilometre long ship becomes incredibly difficult to see at ranges as low as 40-50 km if it is closing towards you, and presenting it’s smallest profile, which puts it well within realistic weapons range (we have big guns which can fire much further even in earth’s atmosphere and gravity, in space those shots will have far greater effective range).
Regarding ship design, especially combat ships, it all depends on what you want the ship to do. Is it designed for broadsiding? Or is it designed to charge at the enemy guns blazing? There are advantages and disadvantages to both designs. Broadside designs can bring more weapons to bear, but you're also a bigger target. You're relying on sheer firepower to overwhelm your target. If you lose your guns, you're basically target practice. Going head on makes it easier to avoid incoming fire, but you need to design for superfiring turrets and maneuverability. I've seen both deisgns used in Space Engineers pvp used quite effectively. Having more turrets can help, but at the end of fight, it comes down to who could bring more guns to bear on their target. There's no point in having 6 capital class turrets on a ship if you can only use 2 in a fight.
Broadsides and spinal mounts are covered in the next video in this series (there should be a link to it near the end) and I actually discuss a lot of what you've just mentioned here. ;)
*edit fixed a typo.
I've never used exposed bridges I always found them to be impractical in space combat. However I do still need to work on my turret placement
Agreed, in reality what's most likely going to happen is that as well as several powerful telescopes, there will also be hundreds of tiny high res cameras dotted around the hull of the space craft, so that when the order is given all it would take is for someone in the CIC to press a button and suddenly all the walls (or a holographic projector) will display everything that's around you - almost as if you're standing right outside the ship itself.
With the above setup you get all the pros of having a bridge with windows, but without the cons of being exposed to deadly cosmic rays and solar radiation, or being permanently blinded by nuclear explosions, laser fire (even reflected) and accidentally looking in the direction of the sun.
Good luck with the turret placement though!
Just remember that some hull shapes will make things harder for you than others, but any attempt to avoid the mistakes mentioned in this video is always a good start.... Unless of course, the game universe it's set in just handwaves them away and lets you magically shoot through your own hull and the other turrets, in which case you can pretty much ignore this entire video. ;)
A while back I heard an argument made that having an bridge facing out may be necessary due to the potential for EMP weaponry knocking out long range sensors or ECM reducing sensor range to visual range, with the caveat that the bridge shouldn't be the main one. What is your opinion on that?
Not really within the scope of turret placement, but I'll try and quickly answer it anyway.
Visual ranges are very much dependent on the game/universe it's set in, but unfortunately the reality is that spaceships will more than likely be fighting at ranges where you're not going to be able to see them without sensors or high-res telescopic cameras.
Combine that with the fact that you'll be sitting in a very poorly protected structure, that has you exposed to potentially hazardous amounts of radiation, both the constant GCR's as well as the occasional SPE's. Also bear in mind that looking in the direction of any nuclear blasts can cause blindness, and a Multi-Megawatt laser beam (even reflected) can permanently rob you of your eyesight - even through the protective visor of a spacesuit, which means that there's a reason why more modern books and sci-fi shows (like the Expanse) now tend to have everyone flying the ship from deep inside it, similar to a present day submarine.
Regarding EMP weaponry and it's usefulness in space warfare, as well as their very limited range, the esteemed Byron Coffey mentioned this about them back in 2016:
"There are a number of natural effects encountered in spaceflight that are similar to EMPs. Solar storms in particular can produce induced currents in much the same manner, requiring spacecraft to be hardened against them. This hardening would also be effective against EMPs, requiring massive amounts of power to have any chance of working. The only really practical use for EMP weapons might be during hostile boarding missions against civilians or disabled warships. A civilian ship is likely to be somewhat less hardened then a military vessel, and the boarding ship can get very close without getting shot to pieces by the target."
Thank you for your quick reply. That does make sense, and stops that voice at the back of my head that was asking "What if they have a point?".
I believe that some ships are meant to focus on a specific tactic, such as a broadside based or foreword facing guns.
You'll want to watch my next video on those exact weapon types then, you can find the link at the end of the video - when those boxes appear on-screen.