Power Requirements on Turrets

[Hearteater]

I couple of threads mentioned turret energy costs and that reminded me:

I really don't like the entire powering down mechanic because it lends itself to pointless micro.  Heck, it's basically the reason the keybinds for automatically powering reactors up and down were created.  But especially problematic are the power requirements on turrets.  Because turrets are limited to the system you place them in, the optimal way to manage them would be for them to always be powered down until an enemy ship enters their system.  But that's extremely annoying.  I'd really like to see if there might be a change there so it doesn't feel so advantageous to power down turrets expect during waves or major incursions.  Some thoughts are:

A) You can't power down turrets at all.  The micro is eliminated.  Some turrets (Sniper for example) might need energy costs reduced.

B) Turrets automatically power down when they believe no enemy is in the system.  Really the only down side to this is the spike in power usage from an entire systems turrets coming online.  Especially if they all come online for one Fighter.  It could be handled with Turrets only coming online when a target comes in range.  Or the entire system comes online at a pace dependent on the size of the enemy force.  This does make setting the proper number of active reactors tough, because if you go for minimum excess power while all your turrets are off, you'll brown-out the moment an attack hits your defenses.  There could be an indicator in the top information bar showing the energy your most expensively defended system would use so you know how much excess you should plan to have available.

Some turrets might do better with one option over another.  For example, Gravity Turrets would probably be option A.  They can affect things they can't see (cloaked ships in a system with no scouts) and if they are right on a hostile warp point it seems likely incoming ships could make some ground at full speed before they switch on.  Same for Tachyon Turrets.  Tractor Turrets seem ready-made for option B.  Actually, they might have a per-tractor energy cost that only applies for each ship they actually grab.  Offensive Turrets could easily be either.  B is probably more interesting, but A is much simpler.

[x4000]

My view is basically that there is a price for security.  If you want to put up defenses, you have to pay the upkeep on those defenses.  However, being able to power down those defenses when you absolutely need the power, without having to scrap them to get your economy functioning again, is also important.

That leaves a "remainder case," which is basically the one that bugs you: that you can power it down when there's no enemy but yet when you want the energy back.  Doing that in an automated fashion would be unbelievably complex for the player, because they wouldn't ever be able to energy budget.

And more to the point, it's not really intended that you be able to save that energy while still having the turrets for normal defensive purposes; that's kind of skewing the balance a bit.  And making these specific units mysteriously not pauseable would be annoying for other reasons, particularly due to their higher energy costs.

Which leads us back to the remainder.  Which I believe is the least of all the available evils.  I've been around and around on that remainder for the last two and a half years, and I haven't ever found anything that didn't have worse problems.  There might be a solution out there, but my hope for that is wearing thin, so to speak.

[Hearteater]

My view is basically that there is a price for security.  If you want to put up defenses, you have to pay the upkeep on those defenses.  However, being able to power down those defenses when you absolutely need the power, without having to scrap them to get your economy functioning again, is also important.

I'm actually not sure how important powering down turrets for extra energy really is.  A full cap of Tier 1 turrets is 283,900 energy which is 3.5 Reactor IIIs, so effectively -140 metal/crystal.  In my current game with 8 planets I'm pulling in 960 metal and 1006 crystal (Eco CS II capped).  So that's a little less than 15% of my resources income in turret maintenance.

Honestly, I think the only real reason to power down turrets is so you can power down reactors to get extra resources.  That to me is like having my cake and eating it too.  It seems I should need to make a choice, either use a lot of turrets and deal with the energy/resource cost, or use fewer turrets in exchange for more mobile units and make my defense a more active affair.  If I'm really that desperate for energy then I should have to scrap turrets.

[TechSY730]

I think most of this issue can be dealt with by just re-evaluating how effective turrets are being and balancing their energy costs accordingly. For example, the sniper turret could probably do with a little less energy usage. (Though their infinite range is VERY useful, so they aren't that under-performing for their energy cost)

[Mánagarmr]

Personally, I've never powered down my turret balls. I don't want to be caught with my pants down by a wave or border aggression and not have enough power to get it back up again.

[Orelius]

The only issue I've ever had with energy would be my extensive use of fortresses.  90k a pop per mark 1 fortress is ugly.