Does it make sense for these space ships to have turrets?

The primary armament of the space warships of a race I am building use an armament that consists of explosive shells that have a rocket engine in them. The idea is that they are fired from the ship using chemical propellants (or rail guns in more advanced ships) and then the rocket engine takes over, driving the shell to its target. The idea is to reduce the recoil on the ship itself, and provide some "smart bomb" capability to the shell itself, allowing it to maneuver around obstacles or target a part of the enemy vessel besides a direct shot from the warship.

It was going to be fired from a turret, either as a railgun or a chemical charge, but the more I think about it, I realize that it doesn't make sense to have a turret, which is a complicated machine and has a lot of breakable parts (especially in combat) when these shells can operate more like rockets. Why would you need to rotate the ship and turret to line up a shot when the shell can maneuver itself around your vessel?

Is there a good reason to continue to have turrets with this kind of armament? Would the extra speed/force from the launching of the shell provide it a big enough benefit to outweigh the issues a turret brings?

posted over 7 years ago

Marshall Tigerus‭

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