Need input from good fighter/bomber pilots

[Tenacity]

I want some honest opinions here... just how deadly is a gunboat with missile turrets, really?

I keep hearing how missile turrets are overpowered, and even a pair of them will let a gunboat waltz through fleets of VHF's and bombers and destroy all in the name of sweet, beautiful explosives... but are they really that good against you guys?

The top speed on order missile turrets is 145 m/s. Any fighter or bomber can thrust faster than that, and from my (albeit limited) knowledge of pvp... fighters/bombers are almost always using thrusters. It seems to me that the missiles would never even catch up to the target, and if they did all it would take is a single countermeasure or quick dodge to avoid them.

Now, the reason I ask, is because I've been planning on using the zoner gunboat Jinx designed once 4.85 is released. According to him, the plan for the gunboat is to have only 4 turret hardpoints - which will severely limit the ship's effectiveness in combat no matter which way you look at it. The ship will not be able to carry a 'balanced' loadout allowing it to be effective against numerous ship types, so it will be forced to specialize strictly towards anti-fighter/bomber, or anti-capship combat.

Now, being an Order pilot, I do have quite a few enemies flying capships. Moreso than fighters/bombers a majority of the time. I havent seen a single Bounty Hunter player flying a fighter or bomber in my entire time on the server - every single one of them is using caps. Most encounters with the Liberty Navy end up involving capships because of the large number of 'indy' capships that join up with liberty - everything from gunboats to dreadnaughts. Granted, most of the [SA] / =LSF= I've seen lately are using VHF's or bombers rather than capships, but there's still quite a few caps in liberty space, and Gafwmn is -always- camping alaska in his dreadnaught (no fun gaf! :angry:).

The other primary enemies I've got to deal with as an Order pilot are Das Wilde, the Keepers, and the Outcast alliance (generally in the form of smugglers trying to move through minor/100). Almost all of the wilde and keepers are in fighters/bombers, while those outcast smugglers are using transports and I'm unsure of how effective missile turrets would be against them.

Outside of players, I've also got to constantly deal with nomad and BH NPC's outside of Toledo, which include occasional gunboat/destroyer encounters.

Now... the one really appealing thing about missile turrets, at the moment, is ease of use. Due to lag and my terribad aiming skillz, I land -maybe- one in twenty shots on player fighters/bombers. The little buggers just dodge too much! :P
The Missile turrets require little to no aiming... really, I just need to have the target in front of me on my screen at the time of firing, and they'll track (at least, that's what it seems like, if anyone has input on how missile turret 'lock-on' really works please let me know).
The downside is relatively low damage, and very low damage-per-second when trying to use sustained fire against targets. In my experience... missile turrets dont even scratch an enemy gunboat's shields, so using four of the things would make my GB completely useless against anything larger than a bomber. The exception here is that, in group pvp situations, my missile turrets could potentially knock weapons and systems off of enemy capships once my group has taken down the target's shields.

I did some testing with various weapons tonight in open singleplayer as well - using a liberty gunboat (fairly manuverable and small, which is what i've heard the zoner GB will be) with four missile turrets and nothing else. Out of about 30 NPC fighters, I was only able to kill three or four - After a few volleys of missiles at each, they'd be nearly out of guns/equipment and would simply retreat. Of the few gunboat/destroyer NPC's I faced, all were fairly easy to kill... though I had significantly less sustained damage output against them with the missile turrets than I had with even four basic GB turrets.

So... ultimately, is it worth going completely anti-fighter/bomber by stacking up four missile turrets on the only four available hardpoints?

One other thing, supposedly the zoner GB will have a mine dropper as well - any ideas on how effective nuke mines from a gunboat would be in anti-fighter / anti-capship combat?

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