Is Mk5 turret too powerful?

[ZaneWolfe]

I don't see anything really unbalanced with the Core Turrets right now. Sure you can go wild with them, once you have 10-12 planets worth of energy. But getting to that point costs you 180 - 220 AIP. Not exactly free. Then there is the fact you have to hold the controller, keeping it safe, or hack it. Hacking them costs from your fab hack pool. This gets really expensive, leaving you with less hacks for actual mobile ships, all of which are technically exclusive to fabricators. (Either because its Mark V or experimental) There is also a bug that causes advanced constructor hacks to also cost a fab hack as well, making it even more prohibitive to hack all 8 of the controllers. On top of that, you have to find all 8 of the things. Sure you can get lucky and get the best of them near you, but I've see games where only a few controllers were within 4 hops of me, and the rest were deep in AI space, including one right next to a core world.

Now, playing a high AIP game, or Fallen Spire, does negate some of those draw backs. You're going to have a ton of planets and exess energy, so you might as well build them. You're going to have a lot of hacking points, due to the shear amount of AIP you have, so you might as well hack the controllers. But that is the point. You're going the high AIP route, especially with FS, so you get to play around more with resources. The downside is you have a metric ton of AIP and all that comes with it. And if you're going the FS route, you also have Exos coming periodically.

All in all, Core Turrets are powerful and incredibly useful. In a low AIP game, they can stop entire waves by themselves. But you have much more limited energy to place them around. In a high AIP game, or FS, you have much more freedom to place them, but after a certain point they are not going to just solo waves. And if you have ANY source of Exos, the core turrets WILL NOT stop those entirely. Might make a really nice dent, but not coming close to actually fully stopping an Exo. And the point of the Core Turrets, as with Mini Forts, was to allow better defending on the more open maps. This is something Core Turrets do incredibly well. All in all, I see no reason to make these changes. Core Turrets seem just fine to me. You either have only enough energy to place them where they are needed most, or you have so much AIP (and possible Exos) that Core Turrets alone wont keep you safe.

[Aklyon]

That sounds like a good summary of this, I'd agree with it.

[Magron]

you have no idea how discouraging it is for a raw newb to watch the 5 year players discussing nerfing the holy grail of rear defense. LOL

[Vinraith]

you have no idea how discouraging it is for a raw newb to watch the 5 year players discussing nerfing the holy grail of rear defense. LOL

It's very new, so it's still very much up for discussion. As a new player I'm sure it's hard to see the difference, but until very recently that "holy grail of rear defense" didn't exist at all.

[Chthon]

you have no idea how discouraging it is for a raw newb to watch the 5 year players discussing nerfing the holy grail of rear defense. LOL

It's very new, so it's still very much up for discussion. As a new player I'm sure it's hard to see the difference, but until very recently that "holy grail of rear defense" didn't exist at all.

That's right, before the only way to hold the AI back in a high AIP game was simply have one door in.  Now it's possible to defend several fronts.  The turrets still get overrun if left alone though, meaning that they just buy you time to get your forces there to push back.

[Magron]

That's right, before the only way to hold the AI back in a high AIP game was simply have one door in.  Now it's possible to defend several fronts.  The turrets still get overrun if left alone though, meaning that they just buy you time to get your forces there to push back.

i've noticed that already, yeah. you need to put so much of your build at so few places to be able to ignore them .. too expensive.

[Draco18s]

i've noticed that already, yeah. you need to put so much of your build at so few places to be able to ignore them .. too expensive.

Shame I never took a screenshot of This One Game where we had....

Two super forts
All the regular forts (two caps of Mk1, full cap of Mk2 and Mk3)
Full cap of Mk1-4 Heavy Beam Cannons
Full cap of tractor turrets
Full cap of every other turret at Mk1, because there was no other place they were needed.
Full cap of Mk1 Force Fields (covering the tractor turrets + command station)
Two full caps of Flagships buffing various turret balls to the maximum boost
AND a Spirecraft Martyr standing by just in case.  It sat under a spirecraft shield bearer (which at the time was repairable) acting as a massive tractor turret, but otherwise not involved.

That wormhole was so well defended we could ignore it and loaded our entire mobile military into transports and went on the ultimate deep strike against the homeworlds (this was the game that made transports have wormhole attrition, because we jumped 7 systems out, took it, let the transports self-heal, then went another 7 jumps to set up our beachead--and oh yeah, freed a rebel colony and dumped 8 colony ships and a cloaker starship there for 16 additional hours of rebel colony cloaking (may have also contributed to the "command station dies -> colony ships explode" mechanic that was eventually revised into the current 2 minute cooldown)).

[tadrinth]

The problem isn't so much that Core Turrets are too powerful, the problem is that they make spending knowledge on the equivalent regular turret much less appealing.

What if there was a synergy between the two? IE, if you unlock Mark II and III of a turret, the per-system cap on the equivalent Core Turret goes up? 

[Kahuna]

Before the holy grail of defense were Minefields. Actually.. they kind of still are. People just don't use the line placing even though I've told people to do so numerous times

[Risa]

Core turrets are for distributed defense, while normal turrets are for keypoint defense. If we assume defending 3 systems as the balance point between the two style, core turrets provides 25% more fire power than normal (Mark 1 to 3) turrets. That is, 2.5 M1CF (Mark 1 cap firepower) vs 2 M1CF.

Without hacking, aquiring core turrets requires conquering core turret controller system and hold it. Aquiring Mark 1 to 3 normal turrets requires 2750 ~ 3250 knowledge, which equals to conquering any system and no need to hold it. Granted, in such comparison the 3000 knowledge from controller system becomes essentially "free". So the balance depends on difficulties of holding the controller. I think it's close to balanced right now, with minor favor to core turrets. Maybe the fire power of core turrets needs to lower a bit, say, 20% (to Mark 4 level), or knowledge cost of normal Mark 2+3 turrets reduces 25% (to 2250). That will close the power gap in above defend-3-system senario. Or we may make holding the controller a bit harder, by extra wave strength to that system, for example.

Now with hacking, the balance is distorted. Hacking removes the major drawback of core turrets, so it becomes pure power-per-HaP comparison. Hacking a controller costs 20 HaP, while hacking 3000 knowledge costs 30 HaP. Therefore it's strongly necessary to uppering the HaP cost of controller hacking to 30, regardless and independent from above fire power or knowledge cost tweak.

[Kahuna]

Giving waves extra strength vs planets with capturables makes holding the capturables even less viable option. Because of CPAs and Exos you have to make the planet with the capturable a whipping boy.

Fabricator hacking could be nerfed though.

[Vinraith]

Before the holy grail of defense were Minefields. Actually.. they kind of still are. People just don't use the line placing even though I've told people to do so numerous times

Some of us listened.

Area mines placed in lines are flipping amazing, frankly.

[Vacuity]

Now with hacking, the balance is distorted. Hacking removes the major drawback of core turrets, so it becomes pure power-per-HaP comparison. Hacking a controller costs 20 HaP, while hacking 3000 knowledge costs 30 HaP. Therefore it's strongly necessary to uppering the HaP cost of controller hacking to 30, regardless and independent from above fire power or knowledge cost tweak.

It's only cheap for the very first controller or fabricator you hack.  For your second hack it's 50% higher, equal in "cost" to taking a planet.  For the third hack it's 50% more expensive again.  At that point I have used 95 HaP to gain 3 turret controllers which cannot be lost, but nothing else.  That's 5 "points" more expensive than capturing three planets which will also come with energy, metal and possibly other useful goodies.  I don't think that's distorted.  Hacking all eight controllers is frankly unfeasible.  If you want all the turret controllers, you almost certainly have to capture some of them.

And to Kahuna, I didn't know about line placement before I read one of your guides.  After that I knew and used it.  Thanks! 

[Kahuna]

Good to hear the guide(s) have been useful. At one point I thought about removing it.

[keith.lamothe]

Those guides are great; if you're concerned about accuracy due to updates (I never do stop messing stuff and invalidating old info) we could figure something out, but I wouldn't want those to disappear.  At least not before I had a chance to update the in-game tip that links to them