looking for good ships

Sabre, Sabre, Sabre...
And Deimos. And check out some Starlancer Alliance fighter.

Yeah, this is an active community.

Anyway, welcome in the vast universe of Crossfire, and the networks of the SWAT Portal

I guess you are first doing the Singleplayer campaign, which only on this mod, it's extended with extra story and missions. But then you can come online, on the server, we often hit 30 players (even daily), at certain hours. And things are easier when you are advised and directed, online, about such things.

There is a thing at how this game works, that makes turrets on small fighters useless. There are no turret guns that fit in combination with normal guns, so using that Komodo or Sabre with it's forward turret, together with the normal guns, it will make the "weapons group" have an incorrect target. The red "+" cross on targets is made calculating the speed and range of projectiles, so guns with different speeds will mess that target location, and the guns will fail to make a full hit on a moving target, only the fastest bullet gun will hit, or the slowest one, but not both. And all turrets are slow. It works better in small range combats, if you prefer it that way.

So that is why most of the ships here have no turret mount, and it's why you shouldn't worry about having no turret, but focusing on how fast the ship moves, the armor it has, the gun slots it has, ammount of batteries and nanobots (often said as bats/bots) and such.

As it may take you a while to find out the wrecks where the top missiles are found, for which most ships have 2 Level 9 gun slots (for lvl 9 missiles) and 4 level 10 slots (for normal guns), you can pick one of the few ships that have 6 level 10 gun slots to go "all guns" for handling NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in the storyline. There are three in Custodian, Bullpup MK III and Ceptyr and another one which I'll let you discover it (it's red-ish), one in Tarsus, Redemption, and 2 more around the Sirius sector

Oh, try to put your feet back on Earth, Sol system, for a bit, to buy some Class 10 weapons Not the best in the game, but pretty great counting the better guns are outside the Sirius sector.

And well, a lot more to discover, but this should help with the guns and ships issues.

If you still prefer ships with turrets that can fire forward, then, there are about 30 ships with extra turrets, but I'm not really sure how many that can actually fire forwards with the turret.
Sabre is just a vanilla (original Freelancer) ship, that is more known to have the turret firing forwards, but thx to this mod, not the only.

Have fun,
-Mike

Angel Wing. VHF has what you are looking for

Bullpup has only lvl 7 shield.
Custodian minefield is not endless, fly around it with help of navigational map.
But... Y u need that turret? All two only VHFs in MP (Cayman and Saracen) don't have turret...

Side-effect of WR, so you can't put it on, for instance, Cayman, Lagg or Kossack (they have enough agility).
And yeah, only Lvl 7 shield. It is not a fighter to mount such a heavy defense.
Not only... As I said, try out in PvE Deimos. It has 6 class 10 guns, your beloved class 10 turret and is one of the fastest VHFs.
If I remember correctly, most of CF VHFs cost 8-10 mils. Except Redemption that costs 17-18M (because of shield)

MASSIVE SPOILERS ON 12 O CLOCK

Hi , in Crossfire which is awesome, it depends on you as to what ship you use, exploration is a good way to find everything and is fun. Starting in Manhatten you have many options but I suggest exploring before you waste money on ships and guns etc. Find the gate to Custodian behind Manhatten, but when you go through the gate beware of the minefield, go around it, explore the planets there and you will find good ships to start you off. Good luck and enjoy the game

LoL, don't you feel challenged ?

NPCs were made to be more, realistic, and less "dumb NPCs". You will see the Real threat when you fight other human players, but for now, you may only need better equipment before continueing. The NPCs you met so far are of the lowest level and easy NPCs... mainly to keep it balanced since you are also in a low level ship or low level weapons (normally).

Anyway, there's a weak point in the NPC's "perfect aiming", it's not that perfect, and since they can't predict in what direction you turn, just calculate it on a straight line, you can avoid their bullets easely if you move as good as the NPCs do. Here comes lateral strafe, fast changes in speed with thruster, radical turnings, and such. This is not the simple game where the player just has to go straight, target on the enemies, shoot, and Game Over, the player won. No, no

xrook: to get these guns your way leads to Coalition space.

Hello xrook,

CF difficulty mean that you need explore and upgrade your ship and also learn how to fight better. NPCs you had meet so far (like those in Vespus) are not the worst you can find in CF ... (they are truth to say very weak comparing with some top ones).

MP is good way how to learn fast and continue after in SP campaign.

btw.: you know you can sell escape pods in Prisons stations? (try explore Texas)

This game has a hoge universe , NPCs take practice. I know players that eat them for lunch with out any damage. You have just been replied to by some of them. But if you need to in single player you can change the Difficulty in the perf options folder in your documents to o.50 or even o.oo till you get the hang of it . And of course If you get a lot of help finding stuff you loose a bit of the fun and point of the game itself. the sabre is a good starter ship just don't mount a turret.