Discovery Gaming Community

Firstly, I'm sorry to be posting (yet again) in the help section...despite how it may seem , I am indeed finding my feet out there and thoroughly enjoying the experience....Its just that I find myself invested in multiple characters ...not all under the "Jake Logan" persona....some, for me at least...rather experimental...
I decided that one of my Freelancer affiliated characters might move on from purely an armed trading vessel to a Gunship...
it seemed logical....for him...somehow....
Anyhow ...I very much wanted to use the Kusari Explorer...for RP reasons and the lore of the thing....and I did give it a fair go, I reckon....the thing of it is though, I'm fairly clueless about Gunships, generally never having used them before...years ago there were fewer, (when I was here before) and I had , I think, just the one Junker one...which is a fairly atypical one, anyway...or was it, seemed....
With the explorer then....being , as mentioned, clueless....I set the thing up, as I thought, as an anti-fighter craft...Two Gatling Solaris turrets...the rest regular Solaris turrets....Rather like an enormous unwieldy Fighter itself....It did make a lovely racket!
....It didn't excel.....Experienced Gunship people wont be surprised that even running missions, PVE, I was finding it a struggle not to get creamed by the NPCs on higher level missions...I never got into a situation with a live player...but I doubt it'd have gone my way...anyhow I have traded in that ship for a Borderlands one from a Freelancer base....I've got a Razor on it....is one enough? What about a pulse turret as well? I wonder if two razors would be better?...the pure pulse damage turret SEEMS like overkill to me...but, then....what do I know? Are missile turrets a viable alternative? The regular Solaris turrets on the basic mounts seem to be cutting down the fighters well enough...and I'm practicing with the Razor...it amusingly OBLITERATES fighters etc...when I get in a lucky shot....but then again, that's with NPCs.....The BW ship seems to be more viable, for sure though...Now that the Explorer is traded in...I miss the clunky antique looking thing....I liked the notion of it being this repurposed ship...available to a Freelancer made good...I liked its rusted out Kusari design...its absurd wings and fins...
I did find that with those wings being where your better mounts are placed made the razor loadout options etc MUCH harder to use...to aim and so on...but that's most likely a lot to do with me being inexperienced with gunboats generally too...
With 7 character slots per account, I must say that I'm tempted to make another guy just to have a 2nd go at the Explorer...why not? It amuses me...but is there any loadout that's considered standard for that craft? My understanding is that its seldom used anymore...
I suppose my wall of text boils down to ..."What would be the optimum or usual loadouts for both craft?" That way, if they are set up in a sensible way, I could practice in them and see if I get any better.....

There is only one way you will see whether your loadout fits you or not - go Connecticut

hey

i'm also a returned player that was away for long time ... in my case almost 4 years i have a gunboat now and even on the old times i had gunboats, and tested many ... but never used the Ahoudori because ... it is too big .. at least it was too big and i don't know if they changed. So when i say big i say big target and slow turning. the good thing .. well a lot of turrets and a better power core than the Condor and the Montante, the two other light civilian gunship! I have the Condor

about guns ... welll ... if you setup for snubs you will be bad againts non snubs, and if you set up for heavy ships, you will be bad against snubs!!! it is up to you what you whant and what you fell better. My advice is to try on the single player on npcs, but ... use then on lower npcs and you may think i'm crazy but no .. low level npcs usually use light fighters that are harder to hit beucase they are faster and smaller, so you can really test your aim, and then if you want yu can go to conn like Docent said and try it, the best wy to test a ship is against another player.

If you want a big gunboat ... you can also try the corvo, that now is a gunboat, but .. is slow and big and only have 5 turrets but it has a cruiser shild and a huge power core, for a gunboat, armour and cargo space.

Also i advise you, i ncase you don't know, to learn to use turret steer .. i was good more than 4 years ago, and 2 weeks ago i met another gunboat, a rat one, and even with a snub setup i managed to repeal the attack, becasue it camed to me the basics of turret steer.

So good luck

One thing I would point out that seems counter intuitive, Solaris and Gatling Solaris do not work well together.

If you want to use them, they need to be in separated fire groups because of the difference in Rate of Fire. Gatlings fire at 8.33 while "normal" Solaris fire at 6.67, which means you have a harder time in continuous fire with lining up shots after the initial burst.

Cool, lots of helpful input....to work through it all, in no particular order, then...

The Solaris/Gatling Solaris incompatibility thing surprises me....I had always thought that your main concern there, where you're mixing gun/turret types is (projectile) Speed with range as a secondary consideration...I have always worked out loadouts using this theory....like, lets say you have one pulse turret among a bunch of 5 others....(all with the same projectile speed and similar ranges) .....if it has a slower refire rate and big bright projectiles, all I can see it doing is producing a "tracer" type effect with everything firing continuously....Perhaps I'm wrong here.....

The Kusari Explorer is clearly a pig....hahaha....turns so slow and its a huge target, true....I still find though that I miss the one I had! I like it for the RP elements...and for its clapped out Kusari looks....Its like the Slave Liner in the way that it very believably looks like something that's been mothballed in some remote shipyard for decades....or longer...If the Junkers had any presence in Kusari,I think its the type of thing they might well "acquire"....

With regard to the anti-Snub or "anti-bigger ship" loadout dilemma....(with each leaving you vulnerable to the other ship type)......
well, I guess that's life (ingame, haha).....although perhaps weapons groups as suggested before, with fast firing turrets in one, and Razor type weapons in the 2nd, is a good compromise....or hybrid.....

Lots of helpful input and food for thought, thanks very much fellas, I'll see you out there....

you gan use basic turets ... or zoner is they don't nerf the power core. it is the "mix setup". you can use also missiles on the heavy slots. i use now one harppon missile. on paper looks good and npcs also ... it can remove the shild of the snub in just one shot, or take in down if there is no shield. so you choose all setups have pros and cons, like alll gunboats have pros and cons ... some have more pros than cons while others have more cons than pros, but the most important is how you use you gunboat and for what. take care m8

(01-09-2018, 07:44 AM)Jake Logan Wrote: [ -> ]The Solaris/Gatling Solaris incompatibility thing surprises me....I had always thought that your main concern there, where you're mixing gun/turret types is (projectile) Speed with range as a secondary consideration...I have always worked out loadouts using this theory....like, lets say you have one pulse turret among a bunch of 5 others....(all with the same projectile speed and similar ranges) .....if it has a slower refire rate and big bright projectiles, all I can see it doing is producing a "tracer" type effect with everything firing continuously....Perhaps I'm wrong here.....

Projectile speed and range are also factors; in your specific example, I left them out because those elements Are compatible. The refire rate will end up with the gun not shooting in a synchronized fashion. As a result, the targeting reticle becomes less useful, or useless if you are dependent on it.

It is possible to set up weapon groups that use different firing speeds and have it work so long as they all use a common multiple such as firing rates of 2 and 4, which means that the guns with the speed of 2 will fire every other shot compared to the guns with 4.