Postby mharmless » Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:52 pm
I think the piece you're missing is that the output on the science stations is based on the number of system points in the slot. Space stations have a system(40) slot and a system(20) slot, with the 40 giving +14 science and the 20 giving +7 science. So, right now it looks like 0.35 points per slot. The 4 you see on a light cruisers is probably from having 10 system points in the system slot, giving 3.5 science and then rounding up to 4.
Turret slots have a much lower point count than system slots; 10 points of turret is considerably harder to come by than 10 points of system. And, at these conversions a turret(2) and a turret(4) would both give 1 point of science due to rounding (I think, I'm assuming 1.4 would round down). Switching to turret slots from system slots would be a massive output nerf just due to the relative size and availability of the two slots.
If the yield per point were increased to 0.5 you could get 1 or 2 science points per turret on most hulls, at the expensive of weapons or point defense. I'm not sure what the best turret using ship is, but if I'm recalling numbers correctly off the top of my head the Human battleship would only end up with 6 science if it replaced every turret, putting it on par with a tier 1 lab while costing more maintenance and metal and severely hurting its combat performance. Granted, most labs don't have _any_ guns, so it would definitely win the most-well-armed-tier-1-lab contest.