One of the things people often forget is that in Sins, you're often dealing with thousands upon thousands of ships. That's why you won't see things like moving turrets. If this were a game with only a few dozen units that sort of thing makes sense.  But the biggest appeal of Sins, IMO, is the scale of it.

http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/165996

That was back in beta.

And I'd throw in all the various bits of space debris flying around.

In regards to the question about lighting and if we changed the data maps and what not:  No, we didn't go crazy changing how the maps work. That would have been too time intensive.  What we've done is update the shader system code quite a lot in order to bring out the details more and added a shadow system. Also, whereas in Trinity the light was largely from ambient and the star, in Rebellion it's pretty much all from the star and the ship's illumination map. 

That's the layman's version; I'll leave details to the actual artists.

I wonder what would this look like if you add the graphics mod especially the particles.

Does anyone else notice the only thing that changes is the capital ship?

The new skyboxes aren't in the build in question.

No i mean that the thing in the background dosen't change and niether does that skyboxes

I'm not complaining i just found that interesting

Why are you people giving ships such omgwhatthehellhowawesomeisthat!! graphics if you focus on the scale? When there are "thousands upon thousands" of ships, nobody is going to see a single percent of the graphical oomph you're throwing into this game anyway.

Let's face it, some of us (many of us I suppose), sometimes ENJOY closing up on the damn ships and seeing how they pew-pew stuff. The full extent of the graphical awesomeness is only visible up close, so you definitely expected people to do that sometimes.
On the other hand, the game already has methods to limit the amount of graphics depending on the distance. For example, when you zoom out far enough, the ship becomes a 2d icon.

Tell me please, in full honesty: Is it REALLY IMPOSSIBLE to add moving turrets, for example if you zoom very, very close?

I really don't care if my Garda frig has moving turrets when it's just a little dot on the screen or a 2d icon, so the turret may (should) not even be rendered then. Only when I'm really up close should they become visible.
Hell, the immobile turrets that are now can even be removed completely from unit models and replaced with meshes/particle effects/whatever it's called, which are only rendered when the player is looking at the ship from a very small distance. Like rendering a piece of debris that is only visible at a very close range and that just happens to look like a turret facing in the proper direction.

TLDR: In short, I do not believe that it's not doable. I think it can be done. It's just that Ironclad CBA to do it. And you know what? It's okay. I can really believe that you do not have enough funds, time or men to do it. It's really okay.

Just please stop hiding behind "it can't be done" or "it's nonsense due to <reasons>", because many players would really REALLY enjoy seeing that their ships are not flying lego bricks. That's how they look now when you zoom in, flying bricks. Nicely detailed flying bricks.
All you have to do is say "sorry guys, moving turrets won't happen because we don't have time to remake all models for them; it would require way more work than it's worth and there are a hundred other things we should spend our time on, balance and bug-fixing among them". That's a bloody good argument right there and we will take it. Just be honest. 

Yes, I've noticed that Homeworld does a fair job of simplifying the models as you zoom out, including the appearance of the turrets snapping into place, although it is obviously a model replacement with static turrets. I do agree that it's impractical, especially with the current engine. I mean, construction isn't even a fluid process. After it goes through the animation of making the figure opaque, it deletes one component and places a new one outside the shipyard. That's all fine and good, but N3rull is right in that we get it and are fine with being told the truth. After all, we both appreciate not being patronized and have a lot of modders that can tell you exactly how much of a pain it really is.

If turrets are something that mean something (like aiming) it means that there needs to be a lot more care about how firing works, even if they're off screen.

Missiles and beams come out of ships in ways that are almost completely disconnected from the graphics.  If you added turrets and such, you'd need to take great care of the instances when the weapons could realistically fire (i.e. you can't have turrets that shoot say at a right angle).  

It's not a graphical limitation, it's a CPU one.  

Well, I accept that you do not have the time nor the manpower to address this, but the CPU power IS there. We have quad/hexa/octo-cores by now and more than enough cpu power to address this for a limited amount of turrets per (say Capital)ships I believe. Perhaps not for frigates and certainly not for fighters, but for capitalships it should suffice.

And thanks for hearing us out!