So, turret balance

[TechSY730]

Yea, not sure if I like the human guardian idea. One of the reasons I like turrets is because they are cap-wise strong (or at least, supposed to be balanced as such, before their balance reference points shifted), despite their stationary nature. If I position them well (a "psuedo-game" within the game all on its own), then their stationary nature and shorter range don't matter as much.

On the other hand, I have been complaining about AI and human splits in other threads, and the human turret/AI guardian split is a pretty darn huge one. As giving AI turrets tends to lead to grind (as way earlier versions of AI war show), to unify the two, humans would have to get guardians instead.


So while I am somewhat against it at the moment, I will have to think it through some.

[Cinth]

Considering nothing is stopping you from building them if you have supply in enemy territory, and that beacheads aren't used anyway (seriously, when was the last time they were used) I don't think they aren't major obstacles.

I use beachheads all the time.  Every choke I set up is a beachhead. 

The suggestion was set as an (or) and I responded to the latter (I should have been clearer). 

[chemical_art]

Considering nothing is stopping you from building them if you have supply in enemy territory, and that beacheads aren't used anyway (seriously, when was the last time they were used) I don't think they aren't major obstacles.

I use beachheads all the time.  Every choke I set up is a beachhead. 

The suggestion was set as an (or) and I responded to the latter (I should have been clearer).

I still don't understand why the human guardians couldn't be disabled just the same as turrets are by guardians.

[Cinth]

Considering nothing is stopping you from building them if you have supply in enemy territory, and that beacheads aren't used anyway (seriously, when was the last time they were used) I don't think they aren't major obstacles.

I use beachheads all the time.  Every choke I set up is a beachhead. 

The suggestion was set as an (or) and I responded to the latter (I should have been clearer).

I still don't understand why the human guardians couldn't be disabled just the same as turrets are by guardians.

I wasn't talking about the AI plot for beachheads

[Radiant Phoenix]

I was thinking that you'd be able to move them around between your systems in your defensive blob, and single-planet defense would normally be left to forts and cities.

---

On another note, making AI guardians depend on supply seems like it opens design space for supply-denial ships on the human side.

[Toranth]

On another note, making AI guardians depend on supply seems like it opens design space for supply-denial ships on the human side.

It would also make the guardians basically unable to attack the Humans, which would kinda nerf Exo-waves a little bit.

Other than that, making fixed defenses with global caps (Turrets, Fortresses, etc) have wormhole movement but require supply (100% HP loss on jump w/o supply?) would certainly change the game.  I'm not even sure how it would change...

[chemical_art]

Still a fan of movable defenses sans forts and their ilk.

Starship level craft that can only be used for defense still causes my mouth to water.

[Radiant Phoenix]

On another note, making AI guardians depend on supply seems like it opens design space for supply-denial ships on the human side.

It would also make the guardians basically unable to attack the Humans, which would kinda nerf Exo-waves a little bit.

Other than that, making fixed defenses with global caps (Turrets, Fortresses, etc) have wormhole movement but require supply (100% HP loss on jump w/o supply?) would certainly change the game.  I'm not even sure how it would change...

Well, first, they could still attack, just only adjacent planets.

Second, they'd probably want to come out of exo-waves with the change, and just defend planets.

[chemical_art]

*broken record here*

if a starship, with 1/4th of the cap stats of a normal starship, were unlocked alongside a turret with its weapon being based on said turret, I would view turrets a lot better. Said starship could not move outside supply without suffering 100% damage on attrition.

In part, because they would help brake wormhole blobs / sieges in addition to helping non chokepoint games.

[Diazo]

Keith, why do you do this to me?

I can't check the forum for a while and you start all these "So...." threads! 

Anyways, turrets.

First, turrets are immobile, that is simply one of their limitations. As I play lattice maps, I would love mobile turrets because in most of my systems I have 3 or more hostile wormholes.

I could see adding guardians as a per-system cap with the inability to use wormholes filling the mobile defensive gap though, but that is really another discussion.

On the attack multipliers, I don't want to see these go any higher. Because the turret is immobile you can't take advantage of the multipliers.

Okay, my anti-polycrystal turrets on the left, my anti-UltraLight turrets on the right.

But the Raid Starships came in on the left and the bombers came in on the right, No!

If there was some way beyond attack multipliers to differentiate turrets, I'd be okay with increasing their base DPS in exchange for them having no attack modifiers.

Turrets are immobile, they have to be effective against anything that comes into their range.

On their actual stats and stuff, it sounds like you have a decent idea of what you want to implement Keith and I don't have time to pull a calculator out at the moment to post my own opinion on where the numbers should end up so I'm going to say you are looking good there.

I suppose I really just posted to voice my opposition to the mobile turrets or the guardian-replacing-turrets ideas. We are trying to tweak the balance of the game here, not change the entire defensive part of the game.

D.

[Hearteater]

EDIT: This is at NORMAL ship caps, not high caps as shown in Keith's original post.  Double these caps to compare against the original post.

Took a swing at turret combat stats and came up with the following:



Basic
Went much beefier on this turret, and the armor is key.  You get about 25% damage reduction against the average triangle ship, which makes the Basic unusually hardy.  At the same time, anti-armor units will be more dangerous to the basic turret.  The reload reduction reflects the fact that 8 seconds is just too long for a front-line turret to expect to live to get a second shot off.  With a lower reload it now delivers more damage while it lives.  Armor boosting should help this turret nicely.

Laser
This picked up the longer reload time from the Basic, giving it a much heavier attack.  It also got a touch more Armor Piercing.  It is reasonable durable and has some armor to fend off lighter attacks.

MLRS
This turret got a decent boost to its damage and it actually has among the highest Cap Bonus DPS values relative to the triangle ships.

Missile
This took a slight hit.  A touch lower damage and a smaller cap.  The increases in other turrets should easily make up for these changes.  It also has higher health so it should survive against longer-ranged enemies much better.  So a trade of DPS for consistency against various bonus ships.

Flak
Huge health increase here, and I considered going higher.  The damage came down, but so did the reload by a second.  I really want these turrets to mount a single Shield Module that auto-builds and you can't control.  Then 80% of their health could be put in the Shield Module, and 20% on the turret itself.  This way their health could be pushed up even more but they'd be vulnerable to ships that ignore Force Fields.  Auto-building a single module that you have no control over might hopefulyl be acceptable for the base game.  But I set the stats above without that in mind.  I should note that I used roughly 2/3rds the actual AOE targets for calculating DPS, which is why this lists 4 instead of the actual 6 targets it can hit.

Lightning
Armored like the Basic, but with 250% the health, this turret should be able to survive much longer.  I tweaked down the reload from 18 to 15 seconds, which should increase the reliability of a second shot.  The damage came down, but since it ignores armor, that's completely countered by the reduced reload time.  Again, I've used 2/3rds the expected targets which is why it is 5 shots AOE 25 instead of 5 shots AOE 40.

Sniper
Went with a much lower cap here, and the damage went up.  Then I bumped up the reload from 6 to 8, which seems more respectable for a sniper, which caused the damage to go up even more.  This turret now murders lone Raid Starships.  You just have less of them to spread around, so you can't just carpet every system with 15-20.  It might even be possible to let the AI have human Raids.

Spider
These got completely reworked from "Sniper+" turrets to something closer to the bonus ship.  They've lost their sniper range, but gained 3 shots and a lower reload, letting them really play to their engine damage role.  Their bonuses were changed to x3 versions of the Spider bonus ship.

HBC
Just a slight tweak to its damage and a big buff to its health.

Gravity/Tractor
Just cap tweaks to put them on multiples of 8.

PS: Completely against mobile turrets.  It is silly and will be annoying.  Fortresses moving is already a bit annoying when they accidentally move for some reason, or when I select them along with other random things.  We already get mobile defenses with turret unlocks.  They are called drones.  If they aren't good enough, fix that.  Leave turrets stationary.

[KDR_11k]

On another note, making AI guardians depend on supply seems like it opens design space for supply-denial ships on the human side.

It would also make the guardians basically unable to attack the Humans, which would kinda nerf Exo-waves a little bit.

Other than that, making fixed defenses with global caps (Turrets, Fortresses, etc) have wormhole movement but require supply (100% HP loss on jump w/o supply?) would certainly change the game.  I'm not even sure how it would change...

Well, first, they could still attack, just only adjacent planets.

Second, they'd probably want to come out of exo-waves with the change, and just defend planets.

Guardians are specifically designed to be nasty counterattackers that you have to deal with if you preemptively kill the command station.

[keith.lamothe]

Took a swing at turret combat stats and came up with the following:

Interesting.  I wasn't looking to do that much change but there may be something to that.  Though I'm not sure about the rework of the spider turret; the infinite range on those is a pretty distinctive reason for unlocking them.  Excellent for dealing with rogue ships.

By the way, there's no reason for the grav turret to have a cap divisible by 8 as it does not scale with unit caps.  Otherwise low caps would be a huge nerf to them since it's all about coverage (cap*range, roughly speaking) and speed-limit, not the stuff that scales.

Anyway, two questions on that:
1) What K costs would go with this?
2) For everyone, what do you think of going with those new numbers?



@chemical_art and others: On the mobile-turrets/human-guardians/etc stuff, I do appreciate the thinking-outside-the-box stuff, but I really don't think making turrets mobile, or replacing them with a different class of stuff, is a good idea.  If folks want more fort/minifort-like defensive units (i.e., mobile and leave remains but no wormhole traversal) then that's something we can look into.  If folks want some kind of can-only-move-in-supply "human guardian" stuff, that's... I think we're better off with just "can traverse wormholes" and "cannot traverse wormholes", honestly, without complicating things further, but I'd consider it.  But human turrets as a general concept are fine and don't need a complete transformation   Some players like them and actually spend K to get more (at least in some scenarios), and some players don't like them and don't spend K to get more, and that's all fine.

[Hearteater]

On the Spider Turret, I really feel unlimited ranged turrets should be in short supply.  They just negate everything about being a turret.  Also, the Spider Turret at present just does too much:  It is just a Sniper+.  If we want me sniper turrets, make a Mark II sniper.  I'm fine with that.  I don't think we need it, but I'd be fine with that.  The new Spiders have a pretty decent range at 15k (same as MLRS) and they will deal quite a bit more ED/second thanks to the extra shots and lower reload.  With the changes to Gravity Turret effectiveness, I feel they've got a competitive role in slowing down incoming waves.

When it comes to K-cost, I tried to make all the turrets equally useful.  So I'm fine with across-the-board costs.  I'd probably go with 1k/2k for Mark II/III for everything except the Basic.  I'd leave the Basic as 750/1500, mainly because its really slightly more of a damage-soak.  I might go as high as 1250/2500 for everything besides the Basic.  Past that point I'd probably never even look at them.  The Spider Turret I'd probably price at 500 or 750 since it actually does only have Mark I stats.  Optionally double its damage and health, and price it at 1k or 1250.

*Heh, forgot Gravs don't scale with cap.

[Kahuna]

Moving turrets? Big no no.. that would remove all the strategy in defense. Since they're immobile you actually have to think how and where you place them so you get the most out of them.