Suggestion: Combat gameplay rebalance.

Alright, first of all, credits, loving the new changes to the game with maybe the exception of the way progression occurs.

My suggestion regarding this rebalance is something I already have "tested" and experience, implementing it took me changing a couple of lines in a couple of files, making a mod out of it.

It follows 5 principles, which improve over the current way combat plays out, they´re simple on their own and don´t hold much weight if not combined.

1- Large grid turrets and weapons have a range advantage over small grid weapons.

2- A clean and by the book attack by small ships requires them to strafe large grids at short range (Where they are the hardest to track for turrets) or time their attack with the enemy turrets pausing to reload to damage their grid. (This is allowed by the above)

3- Weapons in general are massively more deadly while firing but turrets are much, much slower. (This allows the above and makes being the first to hit something that decides outcomes)

4- Different roles for different turrets, Missiles: long range. Gattlings: medium range. Interior turrets: Short range. (this allows specialization and different obstacles to overcome)

5- Reload times are long enough to easily take advantage and capitalize.

____________________________________

I will say the mayor drawbacks of this system, in order to work well, it needs to be REALLY fine tuned so attacking interceptors dont get hit while dodging and weaving, yet turrets are still a threat and not too cumbersome to allow the enemy to sit next to them at close range unfazed.

The way the system works as I had it tuned for a small ship attack is as follows.

Inertial dampeners off and max speed-> Large grid missile turrets start opening up at 4 km, you need to gently coast and dodge the missiles, which can most likely destroy your ship in a single hit-> after like 20 seconds, you´ll have covered half the distance, now your small ship missiles can hit the enemy grid, yet now you need to weave and corkscrew much more violently than before; you are now in range of the gat turrets-> At around 1600 meters, the missile turrets are so slow they can no longer track you, 600 meters to go-> at 1000 meters, gattlings can´t follow you either, you are free to strafe for a couple of seconds-> Inmediatley you hit max speed and start corkscrewing as new turrtes reveal and start tracking you-> you repeat the same as above but now fleeing.

This process lasts around a minute and a half from start to finish and is designed to keep you on the edge of danger though it. You need a ship that has massive acceleration and has small size to get as little grazing hits as posible (a single 20mm hit vaporizes 3 steel plates, so you´ll know when you get hit) so you´ll a ship akin to an interceptor but for offense, not any fighter will cut it.

In practice, the disadvantages translate to gattling turrets needing 3:27 seconds to make a 360 turn, another practical disadvantage is that as a "hack" I had to double the turrets max range so they have enough time to turn and engage in time, so one has to manually set the actual max range. the advantages of this are that if you pre-aim them at a target and jumpdrive in range, it´ll be a carnage, and that if you´re with a friend, you can distract the turrets while he is in an attacker and is able to freely bombard the enemy.

I will play with the reload times instead of slowing that much the turret movementes, but I just wanted to tune in with an option of how combat can be enhanced in the least resource intensive way I could come up with.

Thanks for your attention.