Poll: which basic human unlocks need a buff?

[Faulty Logic]

If [the Basic turret is] fine at 750K/1500K, why does that make the other turrets too cheap?

Honestly, they should be nerfed, but this is a buff poll, and that price for other turrets would be too cheap

And I know all about the weaknesses of turrets, by the way. But they certainly have their uses.

This is to make them a more viable option.

[PokerChen]

*cut*
...adding per-planet caps.

There's a can of balance-worms right there. For the 4 main turrets: raise global cap to 256 (high-caps), impose 1/4 cap per planet outside of human homeworld. Not KISS, and restrictive.

I also think 750K/1500K may honestly be too cheap as a benchmark - it's more interesting to choose between offensive and defensive unlocks, rather than "take 1 planet, unlock all mark-II turrets". So, instead of bringing down the knowledge cost, one could get more turrets.

EDIT: This topic needs more than a band-aid - I would prefer to be forced to make such choices over the course of a normal game.

[chemical_art]

For me, if you make the choice EITHER turrets OR mobile units, I'll pick mobile units every time.

[Zeyurn]

Turrets really shine in multiplayer or for people who (ab)use parasites so that unlocking fleet ships is almost pointless.

Oddball suggestion.  The HBC is the king of turrets.  If the other turrets rained hell down as much as it did, you could seriously lower their caps to be the same and it would probably work out.  At that point you could even do a per-planet cap of 2 per mark per planet except on the MK 4s where you just got 1 each.

That said I think there are a few things that would really help turrets out...

#1a:  Immunity to radar dampening.  (I prefer this one)
#1b:  Ability to move but not traverse wormholes.

#2:  Flak turrets hit a wider area and make it more obvious when they're shooting (maybe the mini-explosion like comes from siege starships).  I honestly can never tell these are doing anything and the kill stats show them as terrible compared to the best non HBC turret, Electric.  (remember: multiplayer, always dealing with huge unit hordes)

#3:  Standardized-ish DPS and K costs among turrets.  Preferably to 'above what's there now' but less than HBC unless you take the suggestion above.

#4:  More health and/or much better armor for close range turrets (anything range 11k or less).  Against any serious wave of enemies the front turrets are torn up nigh instantly, even with all 3 counter turrets protecting them.  Hardened Force Fields can protect the useless Flak turrets but then you're really destroying your electric damage.

#5:  Better bonus multipliers, better than fleet ships to make them more attractive. 

As other people have said, if you can pick the mobile response team or the turrets, the choice is almost always clear except for stuff like gravity turrets (which give you more time for your response team to do something...)  Turrets should dominate fleet ships for their purpose, even if that means making waves larger or something to compensate.

[KDR_11k]

Aren't you practically asking for forts there?

[Zeyurn]

Aren't you practically asking for forts there?

If you mean me.. I don't really think turrets should be forts  (even the HBC IV while it's damage output is obscene and probably overpowered isn't quite the same)

Forts should be (and are) big huge things that take a long time to lay down and put some serious hurt on.  I'd prefer turrets to not be that powerful or that durable (but more powerful and durable than they are now) where you have a chance to build them in response to a wave you know is coming.

That said.. if turrets are beefed up too much the game will be too easy, you would basically have to overclock the AI attacks somehow to mitigate it.

[orzelek]

A possible solution would be to change current turrets a bit to be more balanced.
And then introduce new per planet cap turrets that would be done using philosophy that Zeyurn described.
Make that turrets have per planet cap quite small but have significant stats - something like recently rebalanced starships.

[Toranth]

A possible solution would be to change current turrets a bit to be more balanced.
And then introduce new per planet cap turrets that would be done using philosophy that Zeyurn described.
Make that turrets have per planet cap quite small but have significant stats - something like recently rebalanced starships.

Aaaaaand we're back to the beginning of the "Chokepointing" debate again 
To solve that problem is an entirely different container ship of worms, so I'm in favor of tabling it for the moment.

Honestly, they should be nerfed, but this is a buff poll, and that price for other turrets would be too cheap

If 750K/2000K is too cheap, then would 1000K/2000K be better?  That's 33% more expensive for the Mk IIs, and think more than 1000K for the Mk IIs is stretching it.
2000K for the Mk IIIs is based on fleetship costs:  6000K gets the Mk III and Mk IV fleetship.  If split out, I'm assuming that'd about either 2000/4000 or 2500/3500.  Either way, Mk III turrets should be cheaper than Mk III fleetships.  Definitely not more expensive.  That means knocking at least the Mk IV fleetship portion off the 6000K fleetship price.

And finally, if the price of getting all the other turrets standardized and reduced in K costs is moving the Basic Turret to match, then that's overall not a nerf to me.

[RCIX]

Oddball suggestion.  The HBC is the king of turrets.  If the other turrets rained hell down as much as it did, you could seriously lower their caps to be the same and it would probably work out.  At that point you could even do a per-planet cap of 2 per mark per planet except on the MK 4s where you just got 1 each.

Does anyone else like this idea, with the caveat that HBCs get a bit of a nerf to go with it?

[Winge]

My thoughts on turrets:  why not have the option to choose galaxy cap or per-planet cap?  It would work something like this:  Mk 1 turrets remain the same.  At Mk 2, you have two options for turrets available:  one would have the traditional galaxy-level cap, and the other would have a per-planet cap.  The hard part would be balancing them.  Miniforts are around 1/10 the power and cost of Forts with 1/3 the K cost and 2/5 the cap per planet.  I would think that the galaxy-cap turrets would have the same costs as the current turrets, but 1/5 - 1/8 the cap per planet.  This would only apply to 'standard' turrets, btw (Basic, Laser, MLRS, Missile, Flak, and Lightning).

Thoughts?

[Radiant Phoenix]

My thoughts on turrets:  why not have the option to choose galaxy cap or per-planet cap?  It would work something like this:  Mk 1 turrets remain the same.  At Mk 2, you have two options for turrets available:  one would have the traditional galaxy-level cap, and the other would have a per-planet cap.  The hard part would be balancing them.  Miniforts are around 1/10 the power and cost of Forts with 1/3 the K cost and 2/5 the cap per planet.  I would think that the galaxy-cap turrets would have the same costs as the current turrets, but 1/5 - 1/8 the cap per planet.  This would only apply to 'standard' turrets, btw (Basic, Laser, MLRS, Missile, Flak, and Lightning).

Thoughts?

A proportional scaling like mini-forts would give you about four turrets worth of DPS per planet per turret type and mark. That's approximately not even a speed bump. I generally don't place turrets as less than 30-of (except grav and tachyon turrets).



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I, personally, don't like the micro- of placing all the turrets individually, and adore modular stuff, so even though I know it probably won't happen, I would love it if the per-planet turret thing were done by making the mini-fort a MODULAR mini-fort and letting it mount modules based on your unlocks. (e.g., turrets, drones, grav fields...)

(I think the current full-size modular fortresses should be moved from Command Station players to Champion players to reduce the number of nonlinearities in player-type selection)

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Actually, it would be pretty cool if Riot Control Starships got more types of modules too, but they don't really need a buff right now, because they fulfill a basically irreplaceable role. (Honeycombs and Etherjets can also do that job, though)

(Probably not-so-good) Idea: What if better Riot Control modules were unlocked by unlocking new turret (and/or ship?) types (e.g., unlock missile turret Mk2 -> get missile module)? Then we would have more reasons to unlock those things!

[Chthon]

I still like the idea of having modular command stations.  Can it be done in such a fashion that you can place upgrades on a command station that unlocks certain builds?  E.g.

You start out by building a regular command.  Then you can choose a specialty (Military, Economic, or Logistic).  This specialization unlocks a small system cap of items that you could build there, such as turrets, higher mark resource gatherers, or ship building and speed enhancements.  Then with the right research, you can upgrade some of them to the next mark higher, increasing the system cap of whatever their specialty is (and possibly adding a small cap of turrets to the mix), and once again a few more to one mark higher.

For example you could have military command stations unlock like this per rank:
Mk1: Railguns, limited tachyon, 5 turrets of each basic type, 1 shield of each type (Individual turrets still need unlocking and HBCs non-withstanding)
Mk2: Engine destroying Railguns, extended tachyon, 10 basic turrets and 1 shield of each type
Mk3: Paralyzing railguns, system tachyon, 20 basic turrets and 2 shields of each type, 1 non-modular non-super fortress of each type available (if researched)

Economic:
Mk1: 40 resource income + 20 per harvester at Mk3 (via research)
Mk2: 40 resource income + 40 per harvester at Mk3, resource nodes in system are upgraded to Mk2 for free (research upgrades can override this to Mk3)
Mk3: 40 resource income + 60 per harvester at Mk3, resource nodes Mk3 + Harvester Exo-shields and 5 basic turrets + 1 shield (Minor protective measures of a key resource system)

Logistic: (I personally don't use logistics stations.  I don't really see the point.  I'll add something of my own idea here.)
Mk1: 20% speed boost in system.  Engineers in system get 10% to construction/repair speed.
Mk2: 50% speed boost in system, lasts for 10 seconds after leaving.  Engineers get 25% to construction/repair speed.  5% construction cost reduction.
Mk3: 100% speed boost in system, lasts for 20 seconds after leaving.  Engineers get 50% to construction/repair speed.  10% construction cost reduction.  Enemy speed inhibited in system.  5 basic turrets + 1 shield (Minor protective measures for a key production system.)

Of course the knowledge cost of unlocking the upgraded stations would probably go up a bit, but I think this would make the game less: Oh this system is way out of the way, the AI will never attack here.  0 resources? Mk5 factory?  Who cares, derp Economic Mk3.  Instead it'd be more: Crap, there's a lot of resources in this system.  It's not on my frontlines, but it could see some action.  Let's put a Mk3 here and get some minor defenses to hold them off while I get my forces to help.  Over here with 0 resources and a Mk5 factory, lets make this a logistics system to help produce ships for my war effort.

For the record, I don't use Logistics bases at all really right now.  I just produce ships where I need them, so what's the use?

Final edit:  Home command station should possibly have some of the benefits of the military and economic stations as it is unique, but that's up for discussion about quite how much it should get.

Ok I lied, real final edit:  Anything I say specifically the station allows, gives it to you without the K unlock.  This includes harvesters, and Harvester Exo-Shields.  However this is only for that one system.  Other systems do not get this bonus.  It is up to the player at this point if they wish to unlock that research for broad usage.  Think of it as the Economic Station comes with the knowledge of how to build versions of these that only it has the capability and resources allocated to support it.  The K unlock version is a more efficient version that any station can support.

Turrets however do not get auto unlocked.  To clarify though, what I mean by basic turrets however are: Basic, Laser, MLRS, Missile, Sniper/Spider, Lightning, Flak, and Tractor.  Turrets like the HBC, or Gravity, or counter X still have a Universal cap, as they are more specialized, and not as needed in clusters.  With the proper K expenditure, you can have up to 60 of each (40 for sniper types) in up to 6 Mk3 systems, but this also requires spending the K to unlock the Mk3 combat command station.

[Radiant Phoenix]

[stuff about command stations]

I put my thoughts on the matter here.

There are a bunch of similarities.

Some key differences are:

• My idea links the functions of the various Command Stations to resource gather points. Yours makes it so that whenever you get a system with a lot of gather points, you mostly just want to put an econ command station there; with my proposal, you have reasons to want all of them. (except maybe logistic, because I'm not sure I made it juicy enough, and of course warp jammers)
• Your idea includes per-planet structures in addition to the other things, whereas mine does not. Instead, mine has the per-planet structures integrated into the kind of harvester each station builds.

I like the idea of modular command stations too, but I've heard it won't happen (or at least not soon).

[TIE Viper]

For the record, I don't use Logistics bases at all really right now.  I just produce ships where I need them, so what's the use?

If you ever play games that have the front lines for your empire in more than 1 area, the logistic command stations can do wonders for the time it takes your fleet to get from one side to the other in order to stop whatever is incoming.

[Chthon]

@Tie Viper

Or you could just unlock Zenith Space Time Accelerators.  They can easily replace them while leaving you with the benefits of the other command stations.