New Turrets

[Philature]

All the expansions added a lot in term of fleet and capital ships but the defensive array remained the more or less the same. Hence, maybe we should get a few more new turrets in the next expansion. Here a few ideas:

Grenade Launcher Turret -- Similar to Grenade Launcher Ship, cause a small area of damage on impact.
Voidmaw Turret ---- A turret with a tractor beam that attract 1 ennemy ship that is then swallowed.
Vampiric Turret ---- The turret will have a short range attack that will heal/repair it, I would pair it with a tractor beam with a larger range as in the swallowing turret.
Nanite Turret ---- A turret that deal a lot of damage to a single target but in a short range, however it will be doing damage to itself in doing so.

[Orelius]

Looks like you've got some pretty interesting ideas that could probably work. Put them on mantis!
However, I feel that their purpose overlaps with those of existing turrets.
GL Turret == Lightning turret in that it does splash damage, no need for another splash damage turret
VM Turret : seems like a tractor turret, but as it can only stop one ship at a time, it could possible make sense.  Yeah, I think it might work.  A bit underpowered, but it might work.
V Turret: I don't think there's a reason to have regenerating turrets when you have engineers to repair and remains rebuilders to rebuild turrets.  Seems redundant.
Nanite turret: Again, enginners and remains rebuilders.  Also overlaps with the sniper turret and/or missile turret, I suppose.

[superking]

there is definately room for some new turrets- parasitic, super-high damage long reload, armor rotting, riot tazer... 

[Nalgas]

Grenade Launcher Turret -- Similar to Grenade Launcher Ship, cause a small area of damage on impact.

Is today your lucky day or what?  Sounds like time to build some flak turrets.

Nanite Turret ---- A turret that deal a lot of damage to a single target but in a short range, however it will be doing damage to itself in doing so.

That seems like it might be more suited to a mine than a turret to me, possibly.  Or more like it's more similar to the existing mines and could maybe be a variation on them instead.

The maw ones would be potentially both hilarious and hard to make useful.  You need to take a lot of ships out of commission to be worth your time.  Just one here and there is usually not worth it, especially at higher difficulties or in multiplayer games, particularly as you get later into the game.  We never see less than a few hundred ships at a time, even at the beginning of the game.  Taking a couple dozen out of the fight would barely be noticed in terms of who wins and how easily, but in terms of being really funny and really satisfying to watch it would be great.  I suppose the reason it's much more of a threat for the AI to swallow one of your ships than for you to swallow one of theirs is that you have a hard cap, and they don't; you're prevented from rebuilding/redeploying it until you recover it, while they are not.

[Philature]

Thanks for all the interest, this board is pretty cool.

GL Turret == Lightning turret in that it does splash damage, no need for another splash damage turret
V Turret: I don't think there's a reason to have regenerating turrets when you have engineers to repair and remains rebuilders to rebuild turrets.  Seems redundant.

I have to agree, Grenade Launcher Turret and Vampiric Turret migth be redundant.

That seems like it might be more suited to a mine than a turret to me, possibly.  Or more like it's more similar to the existing mines and could maybe be a variation on them instead.

You got it, I wanted the nanite turret to be some sort of an improved mine or alternative mine which I really love despite being just ok; it got a slight range and won't last long but will deliver a good punch but certainly will need to be rebuild. I guess to make it truly different then a mine you'll have to give it a medium range and then we'll have something interesting, maybe then it should be some sort of large single shot rocket pad that auto-destroy themselves on firing.

The maw ones would be potentially both hilarious and hard to make useful.  You need to take a lot of ships out of commission to be worth your time.  Just one here and there is usually not worth it, especially at higher difficulties or in multiplayer games, particularly as you get later into the game.  We never see less than a few hundred ships at a time, even at the beginning of the game.  Taking a couple dozen out of the fight would barely be noticed in terms of who wins and how easily, but in terms of being really funny and really satisfying to watch it would be great.  I suppose the reason it's much more of a threat for the AI to swallow one of your ships than for you to swallow one of theirs is that you have a hard cap, and they don't; you're prevented from rebuilding/redeploying it until you recover it, while they are not.

I personnally just love the Maw Turret concept, it trully hilarious. I was thinking that it would be a great last defense for your command station were usually only an handfull of ship successfully get there on very large raid or cross planet attack or from slipping by because of stealth or other tractor beam ignoring ability. If 20 or 30 ship get to your command station and your Maw Turret swallow 10 to 15 of them you'll be in a good position to avoid any significant damage.

there is definately room for some new turrets- parasitic, super-high damage long reload, armor rotting, riot tazer...

These ideas are way better than mine...

Parasitic turret would be really cool and so is armor rotting/shredding.

[Lemon]

How about some meta-turrets, that have little effect on their own but specifically boost x number of turrets nearby? Obvious things they could do is provide +% damage, +% range, or +armor, etc. Could also be some special effects like making other turrets deal reclamation damage, making them pierce armor, giving them permanent cloaking, letting them operate outside of supply, etc.

[chemical_art]

To help examine new ideas for turrets, it may first help identify the niche for the current ones.

I'll try to do so, but not in this thread. I'll post the results on that sticky strategy thread.

[Coppermantis]

I had an idea for new turrets similar to the Tesla cannon from Alien Swarm, if anyone's played it. It has a very slow reload, but it's electric beam does a fair amount of damage and jumps from ship to ship*, making it good for defense against huge swarms of smaller craft, like microfighters or Viral Shredders.

Or a similar turret that, instead of the beam jumping, if it destroys a ship it sends out a small shockwave, which in turn creates a shockwave if it destroys any ships, and so on*. The shockwave would do lowish damage, so combining it with attrition emitters would be ideal to increase the chances of the shocks destroying more ships. 

Both would have to be pretty expensive (or have a low cap) or else they would completel annihilate waves. (or, could be recycled in the form of guardians to force player attacks to divide and conquer, preventing blob of death tactics.)





*With a limit to how many times it could occur of course, otherwise it would be way too overpowered.

[Nalgas]

Or a similar turret that, instead of the beam jumping, if it destroys a ship it sends out a small shockwave, which in turn creates a shockwave if it destroys any ships, and so on*. The shockwave would do lowish damage, so combining it with attrition emitters would be ideal to increase the chances of the shocks destroying more ships.

Dr. Device, here we come!  As long as you have focus fire disabled, I'm guessing that's probably going to land its max number of hits more often than not if there are other things in the area shooting at stuff and enough available targets to hit.

There is something about attacks that jump from enemy to enemy that feels like they're more powerful sometimes even if they're not, though, which makes them fun.  Heh.

[Coppermantis]

Haha, The Little Doctor did indeed serve as inspiration for the second one.

[Orelius]

I had an idea for new turrets similar to the Tesla cannon from Alien Swarm, if anyone's played it. It has a very slow reload, but it's electric beam does a fair amount of damage and jumps from ship to ship*, making it good for defense against huge swarms of smaller craft, like microfighters or Viral Shredders.

Interesting.  It sounds exactly like the lightning turret, but with a different description!

[Coppermantis]

Really? I didn't know that was how the lightning turret functioned. I thought it just damaged all the ships in it's radius. My idea was more of a single ranged beam that hits a single ship and if another ship is nearby, it damages it shortly after.

[Orelius]

Actually, it's not like that really, it's more along the lines of: lightning turrets can deal damage to as little as x units and as many as y units.  If it goes above, oh well, if it goes below, some damage is wasted.

Technically speaking, it's somewhere up there.  The lightning technically *jumps* from unit to unit, doesn't it ?

Adding a chain-lightning type of attack would serve the same purpose, really, just making it hit fewer targets.

[Edited for spelling and grammar]

[Coppermantis]

Hmm, You're right now that I think about it. Meh, I hadn't really thought out that idea much. Maybe the Little Doctor one is a little more unique,  But both I haven't thought out very well as of now.

[FarAway Warrior]

I do think a new turret or two would be fun.  Not sure exactly which niches are missing, but here are a few:

A "Tesla Turret" could be different from a Lightning Turret, because it's not so much an Area Attack weapon as just something that does much more localized damage to one target, with other damage to a few smaller nearby targets.  In that sense, it wouldn't be much different than the Flak Cannon already in the game, but maybe it packs a heavier punch and only hits a few units--or even slows down their reload time for weapons?  No idea how hard that would be to code, but we haven't seen any weapons that introduce any kind of "stun" effect.  It'd take a little play-balancing (maybe the duration of stun is in proportion to damage done as % of a ship's total damage), but has that sort of thing been tried before?

Not the Nanite turret proposed earlier in this thread, but I love the notion of a turret that does "duration damage" where it only hits one ship at a time, but that ship will continue to take damage over the next 90 seconds (or whatever) as nanites go to work devouring the ship like termites.

Maybe a "Point Defense" turret that actually has a 50/50 chance of shooting down enemy missiles and also can do modest damage to Swarmer, Light, and Ultra-Light craft?  Again, not sure how easy or hard that would be to code the "Missile defense" ability, as it's a new dynamic in the game (I think), but it'd be cool.

I wonder if there might be a way to introduce a Turret that did modest Engine Damage on top of normal damage?  The Grav Turret is a nice different flavor than the Tractor Beam Turret or the Logistics Station's ability, but why not introduce a turret that actually damaged AI Engines a little bit?

Maybe even have some Turrets that could only be unlocked by Advanced Research Stations?

Can anybody else tell that, if I were an AI, I'd play a lot as "Entrenched Homeworlder"?