Flak turrets feel weak

[keith.lamothe]

I'd think that, as it stands, the AI should target turrets first as they are doing the most damage per HP

The question's more complex than that.  Logically, if it can kill a fleet ship 3x faster than the turret that's doing 2x as much damage, it should probably kill the fleet ship.  If it can move out of range of the turret, it should probably kill the fleet ship. Etc.

The autotargeting is fairly sophisticated but doesn't worry about that stuff very much.  In general don't worry about the AI's targeting: it's pretty good

[Hearteater]

Laser Turrets out range Missile Frigates, so for the most part if your defenses hold them in place they won't even been able to hit Lasers.  My own anecdotal evidence suggets Lasers are some of the last turrets to get killed currently against most waves while Flak and Lighting die fast and hard.

[Wanderer]

I think while we're tossing around these ideas we really need to take a closer look at the turret variety available.  Bear with me a second, I'll get to the point.

We all know range is king.  If I can reach out and touch you and you can't hit back then HP doesn't matter.  Second is speed.  If you can keep range (think Raptors) then it REALLY doesn't matter.  Turrets can't move, so that's moot, but they get tractor backup.

So, even if we balance off the turrets for range to hp/armor, you've still got this wild variety available to you, compared to your fleet.  It's the equivalent of starting with around 7 hws (un-boosted caps) worth of variety fleet ships.

Now, let's do some further comparisons.  Let's equate a triangle of turrets to the original triangle.  Basics = Bombers, they crank on the artillery.  Laser = Bombers, they abuse starships.  Snipes = Fighters, they abuse the bombers.  Their range to price makes up the difference.  Who cares what smacks fighters, they're popcorn.

I know, it's a stretch, please, bear with me a littttllllleee longer.

Now, we've got our 'special' ship.  Let's say Heavy Beam Cannons.  Do these make up for Beam Frigates in cap?

What about Lightning Turrets?  Are these equivalent in survivability (by cap) to an electric frigate cap?

You could make this equivalent discussion on all the turrets to a particular ship if you stretch it a bit.  LRMs as Zenith Bombards.  MRMs as Missile Frigs.  Etc.  The bonuses change but the basic methodology is there.

We have, for starting turrets: Snipers, LRMs, MRMs, Basics, Lightnings, Flaks, Lasers.  Throw in Tractors, Gravs, and Tachyons for special abilities.  Now get yourself some nice fat caps (except on the short range stuff, which seems backwards).

So, to my point.  The Flak turrets seem to survive about as well as Laser Gatlings, something shortrange which hits a lot of things but none of them very hard.  The price is low compared to a flight of gatlings.  Gats have a little more range (6k), hit for 600, there's roughly 300 of them at mk 1, with a reload of 1.  Their DPS ~180k, raw.  It costs 60k to put up a cap.

Flaks range at 4k, are energy bomb, hit for 24k*4/7.  So, about 13.5k optimal dps.  At 49 of them that equates to 675k DPS, raw.

Survivability equivalence: 500k health each, for 25 million hp for the flak cap.  Laser gats: 40k each, 300 of them, for 12 million hp by cap.

We're 2x to 3x an equivalent unit, a sandpaper fleet ship vs. a sandpaper turret, in all categories *except* range...

... and price.  30k for a cap of your Laser Gats.  250k for a cap of Flaks.

I think what we need to do here is not look at turrets as a unique unit type, but part of the cohesive whole.  Find comparable units that work at that range/style and compare those caps, instead of comparing flaks to MRMs.  That's like comparing Electric Bombers to Autobombs.

If we do that, we may find a better balancing point to the variety that's open from the initial point of the game.  It may also come down to that, like basic turrets, we need to adjust upgrade costs in K to make the upgrade a viable alternative, simply because usage dictates that's what it'll take to make it viable.

Noone picks crappy ships for their homeworlds unless they have to.  We need to find a way to make flaks not be a 'crappy ship'.  Now we just need to find an equivalent comparison... and Laser Gatlings apparently made a really poor choice, simply on cost.

I know that rambled a bit, sorry.

[Hearteater]

I kind of look at it this way:  Let's say your turrets are going to be overrun because you can't get your fleet there.  You've got a full cap of everything, but it won't be nearly enough.  By basing health on range, you increase the lifespan of short range turrets and decrease long range turrets by a lot.  In fact, some long range turrets might last only a instant longer than the shortest ranged turrets.  Effectively the entire turret ball has roughly the same lifespan (Snipers won't just because of their range, which is why I almost did a third computation excluding them as well).  If every turret has roughly the same lifespan, you can compare DPS directly because they'll all get the same time to deliver damage.

It's a really rough measure, but I'm not done crunching the offensive numbers to make a better defensive comparison.  Just thought I'd toss out what I'd looked at so far.

[keith.lamothe]

Now, we've got our 'special' ship.  Let's say Heavy Beam Cannons.  Do these make up for Beam Frigates in cap?

It's quite possible HBCs need a rebalancing in general; They're supposed to be flimsy (in cap-hp terms) but fairly absurd power-wise.  It may be a matter of reducing the K cost so that you're getting what you pay for, etc.

What about Lightning Turrets?  Are these equivalent in survivability (by cap) to an electric frigate cap?

Survivability, probably not, but their optimal dps is waaaay up there.  Against groups of 40+ a cap does nearly as much damage to a non-bonus target as a cap of MLRS's does to its bonus targets.  And Lightnings have 8x bonuses.  Granted, it can take a full cap of lightnings a few seconds to fully "trigger", but I don't think that's much more than the "flight time" of an MLRS's shots.  And for reference, lightning's non-bonus dps is well over twice that of electric shuttle dps (which has no bonuses).

We're 2x to 3x an equivalent unit, a sandpaper fleet ship vs. a sandpaper turret, in all categories *except* range...

... and price.  30k for a cap of your Laser Gats.  250k for a cap of Flaks.

I thought gats were 54800 and flaks 235200.  But yea, gatlings are an intentionally cheaper-than-average unit, and flaks are slightly more expensive than the average turret.  And turrets are generally more expensive than fleet ships in roughly the same way they're generally more powerful than them.

I think what we need to do here is not look at turrets as a unique unit type, but part of the cohesive whole.  Find comparable units that work at that range/style and compare those caps, instead of comparing flaks to MRMs.  That's like comparing Electric Bombers to Autobombs.

Not quite Zelecs to autobombs, more like comparing Grenade Launcher to MLRS (the ship).  Very, very like that comparison, actually

My current plan for flaks and lightnings is to change their damage-multiplier-while-under-hard-forcefield from 0.25 to 0.75, as techsy730 suggested.  That way you still have some reason to find a way to use them outside an ff (or to use ff's that don't cause the penalty) but in general they'll still do a lot of damage.

As far as general turret balance, I'm listening, and generally making their health 2x-3x that of fleet ships isn't something I'm really opposed to.  Some m+c or K cost reduction maybe, too.  Don't want to go overboard all at once, of course.

[Mánagarmr]

In reply to some earlier comments to my post, it could just be the fact that I'm completely balls at this game and don't "play it right" by placing far too few turrets

[PokerChen]

In reply to some earlier comments to my post, it could just be the fact that I'm completely balls at this game and don't "play it right" by placing far too few turrets

On this point... About 5 of each type at an invasion point, and 5 in total at other wormholes - that should be enough, don't you think? ;P

[Mánagarmr]

Clearly!

[TechSY730]

In reply to some earlier comments to my post, it could just be the fact that I'm completely balls at this game and don't "play it right" by placing far too few turrets

On this point... About 5 of each type at an invasion point, and 5 in total at other wormholes - that should be enough, don't you think? ;P

What happened to my response to this? Oh well, I'll just type it again.

Yea, this will hold in the early game (assuming you have tractors), and with a bit a fleet support should also hold you into the early-mid game. However, past that, you are going to start encountering problems. You will need to start placing more of them around wormholes or the command station, or unlock higher Mk. turrets, or maybe both.

[keith.lamothe]

What happened to my response to this?

There weren't enough turrets, and the eyebots got it.

[TechSY730]

What happened to my response to this?

There weren't enough turrets, and the eyebots got it.

Eyebots?! Darn it, I know I should of gotten tachyon turrets. Guess I better now, and also keep a counter missile turret near my comments too.

(INSERT ICON FOR COUNTER MISSILE TURRET HERE, ONCE I FIND THE GRAPHICS FILE FOR IT)

[chemical_art]

For their very low caps and health, I'd expect beam cannons to have a lot more oomph.

[TechSY730]

For their very low caps and health, I'd expect beam cannons to have a lot more oomph.

Their damage seems fine, especially considering they have a multi-fire line AOE damage shot type. It could use a slight buff, but not too much.
What I'm disappointed about is their heath. They have a smaller ship cap than flak turrets, but that same HP. And flak turrets are already having survivability issues (though admittedly that is due more to their range, not their HP).

[Hearteater]

HBC are terrible.  They do NOT appear to have any AOE at all.  Their tooltip appears to be in reference to the fact that they have 3 shots and so can "kill" three fleet ships per turn.  But they can't even do that.  They are all kinds of messed up, because their cap doesn't change.  This has a large impact on how they perform when it comes to over-killing small targets at Low/Normal/High ship caps.  They need...help.  They do excellent against large stuff, but interesting so do most other turrets.

[keith.lamothe]

HBC shots aren't traditional aoe, no, but if they kill the first target hit the beam punches through and hits anything behind it, and so on.  Same deal with the HBC modules on spire capital ships.