there was a mean ass little game called arcimedian dynasty (circa 1998), very similar to freelancer xept in submarines etc and not quite as free playing, but it had one really nifty feature - turrets. no, not turrets that have to be manually aimed, but turrets that you purchased various levels of software for (expensive) to do various jobs at differing levels of effectiveness, eg taking out ships, attacking mines and torpedoes etc.
if someone could implement this into the game it would be soo much better to play on the turreted ships, especially the freighters... not to mention the bigger ships in some of those mods...

just an idea