Auto-turrets are not actually aiming at some ships.

[Sinistrad]

Now that auto turrets have an upgrade-slot cost it's well beyond time to fix the targeting logic. Even before Beta, auto turrets would often aim at points that had no ship geometry at all, let alone aim for the bulkiest section of the ship. Even when enemy ships are not moving I watch 80% of my shots miss because the targeted point is an empty space in front of the ship dozens of meters away from any part of the ship.

There has to be some performant way to determine a good spot to target on a ship that doesn't rely on whatever the current method is. Even targeting the geometric center of the bounding box would be better than the current method (though I recognize this would be exploitable in PvP... but do PvP players use auto turrets anyway? I'll let them chime in here as I don't PvP in Avorion.)

Edited August 17, 2021 by Sinistrad

[Sinistrad]

So I was searching online about this issue in 2024. Not a good sign that my own forum post which I had totally forgotten about was one of the top results. This is still happening and it's incredibly frustrating.

It's not due to any built-in inaccuracy that's part of an intended game mechanic from what I can tell. It appears to be a bug that's making auto turrets a lot worse than they need to be. It happens consistently when fighting against factions that happen to have aberrant procedural ship designs that put their "center"--the part the turret aims at--well outside the ship itself.