Oh, I thought the weapon size reduction if you use a gimbal was just an idea they had, and not an actual implemented feature... I also thought gimbal slots were for gimbals and not fixed weapons.
Well that's already better. As long as gimbals don't get the upper hand over the advantage given by fixed weapons, i'm fine (which is not the case atm if size 1 and 2 are the best).
For huge ships with gunners, what you are essentially telling me, is that added to the fact that small fighters range will be very limited, they will also get shredded to pieces by bigger ships ? What's the point of small ships then ?
It's not quite so straight forward,
What I mean is that very good solo dogfighters that are kicking ass in AC will not necessarily be deadly against larger ships. Right now in AC it is hard to imagine anything else because the fast good fighters often kill everyone.
Fighters are going to be great for a lot of things. Recon, command and control systems (some of the fighters will have dedicated tactical equipment to relay battle info to larger ships), Killing other fighters and defending larger ships from attacks, and escorting bombers especially.
The thing with the turrets is they can still be destroyed, some of them are more point defense for torpedoes, but yes a lot of them will be able to hurt fighters very badly.
If you are launching torpedo ships against a capital ship, you probably still need fighters to kill the bombers, and fighters to kill the fighters protecting the bombers.
If you are under attack by pirates, you can definitely use local fighters to come help, etc.
Ship range we don't know enough about yet, but they've been very vocal about some ship varieties being able to do long range work, compared to many other ships not being able to do so. So something small like a regular Mustang will not be flying across 3 jump points to pew pew your cargo ship, but one based out of a nearby asteroid hangar might be waiting for you when you arrive in system.
I think their sort of rule of thumb design goal was that something like a constellation (a trading/exploring ship roughly about the size of the millenium falcon) would be able to handle 3 or 4 hornet fighters by itself. I think that ship has 3 or 4 turrets.
Based on the size of those guns and how much they currently hurt things in AC that seems about right, if more than one turret got a good bead on you they could pop you pretty fast.