Turret Controllers

[Tridus]

... are kind of silly overpowered right now.

For the standard turrets, they largely obsolete the existing turrets. When I can build 96 mk V missile turrets for the same cost as mk I (and building them prevents building mk I), why would I ever build mk I? For that matter, except in very specific circumstances why would I ever spend the knowledge to unlock higher marks? A mk V cap is better than a mk I and II cap combined. Spending more knowledge to get mk III and stacking all three caps on one planets comes out ahead in raw firepower, but not so much that it's worth the k.

Snipers are totally obsoleted if you get the controller, and AFAIK so are Spiders (making that unlock a total waste if there's a Spider controller anywhere within reasonable reach).

I'm really not a fan of how this particular mechanic is working out. Getting a mk V ship fab doesn't make the other marks useless to the point of feeling foolish for paying to unlock them. But that's exactly how I felt when I got the missile turret controller in my current game: "Damn, wish I could get a refund on mk II." In the future I'll probably avoid unlocking those kind of turrets entirely until I know that I can't or won't get to their controller at any point during the game, because it's not fun to take what should be a good moment (capturing a desirable thing) and instead feeling foolish for having unlocked something earlier.

In that vein, here's a few alternate ideas, just to get a discussion going. Feel free to hate them.

• Halve the caps on the controllers. For the more standard turrets, that would make using caps of the mk II and III's stronger and at least give some justification for the knowledge cost.
• Put the controllers back to where they were originally in terms of 1/4 the current caps and letting them be built anywhere, but keep the lower m+c costs.
• Change it so that building normal turrets on a planet lowers the available cap of controller turrets. Say building a mk III counts for 0.333 of a mk V, so building three of them lowers your available controller cap by 1.
• Change the turret controllers so that each one unlocks 1/8th of a cap of every mk V turret. In this case you can't use one of them to replace standard turrets at a chokepoint because there just isn't enough of the given type (thus solving my issue of feeling foolish for paying for mk II missile turrets, or spider turrets at all), but it's actively helpful everywhere. It also makes more of them useful all the time, because capturing another one would raise the cap. The distributed defense side of it is actually improved IMO, because instead of getting a lot of one kind of firepower you're getting some of every kind of firepower at once, on every world you want to defend.

I'm partial to the last one, myself. It's something of a departure from how capturables currently work, but so are the current controllers.

[Faulty Logic]

Yeah, their current form was basically to prove a point.

I'd say halve the caps, while keeping the restriction active.

[Kahuna]

Is there any logical reason why Mark I II and III turrets can't be built on same planet with Mark Vs?

It's like not being able to store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room. Is there any logical reason you couldn't store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room?

Oh.. let me guess: the room is too small herp a derp

This sounds as logical and artificial as losing the valor buff in Diablo 3 after changing skills.

Extend the Mini-Fortress tech if you want stronger distributed defenses.. also buff the mini fort. To me it seems like garbage.

[Faulty Logic]

Is there any logical reason why Mark I II and III turrets can't be built on same planet with Mark Vs?

Logic is secondary to balance. You can say the signals of local turrets interfere with the controller's signal to the core turrets.

Extend the Mini-Fortress tech if you want stronger distributed defenses.. also buff the mini fort. To me it seems like garbage.

It's a great deal for 1000 k, in a lot of situations (though not all).

Extending the mini-fortress line is a good idea, regardless of what happens to the controllers.

Mini-fort mkII does engine damage (about 1.5-2 riot Is worth).
Mini-fort III does a significant fraction of an actual fort's damage (maybe 1/2?).

[Tridus]

Is there any logical reason why Mark I II and III turrets can't be built on same planet with Mark Vs?

It's like not being able to store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room. Is there any logical reason you couldn't store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room?

Keith's goal was to encourage distributed defense, and the original controllers didn't really do that. The new ones can do that, but with how they work right now they also totally negate standard turrets as something you'd pay knowledge for.

The goal is good, but I agree that the current method of trying to reach it isn't ideal. That's the part I want to try and change.

This sounds as logical and artificial as losing the valor buff in Diablo 3 after changing skills.

That was a really artificial way of trying to get a specific player behavior, yeah.

Extend the Mini-Fortress tech if you want stronger distributed defenses.. also buff the mini fort. To me it seems like garbage.

The mini fort is a really cheap repair base and way of preventing one or two lone ships from flying around destroying stuff. It does that job well. It's not meant to stand up to real attack. Adding higher marks seems like an interesting idea, provided it doesn't get into the same trap the turret controllers are now in of obsoleting normal forts.

[Kahuna]

Is there any logical reason why Mark I II and III turrets can't be built on same planet with Mark Vs?

It's like not being able to store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room. Is there any logical reason you couldn't store bicycle and motorcycle in the same room?

Keith's goal was to encourage distributed defense, and the original controllers didn't really do that. The new ones can do that, but with how they work right now they also totally negate standard turrets as something you'd pay knowledge for.

The goal is good, but I agree that the current method of trying to reach it isn't ideal. That's the part I want to try and change.

In my current game I have 2 whipping boys with 66% of all turrets. The rest are used as distributed defenses and for beachheading.
Mark V turrets could work the same way lower Mark turrets do.. but all turret caps could be increased by 20%.

EDIT: The problem is.. this would buff chokepointing.
EDIT 2: BTW.. why should the player have distributed defenses for free? Per planet cap turrets = "free" defenses. You build turrets on a non whipping boy planet without "taking turrets away" from the whipping boy. It's like making ships from Mark V Fabricators cost as much as Mark Is.

[keith.lamothe]

The nerf I've been planning is to extend the "can't build core (X) turret on same planet as non-core (X) turret" (where X is needler, laser, etc) to "can't build any core turret on same planet as any non-core turret (that has a core variant, so leaving grav/tractor/etc out of this)".  Then you'd only actually prefer a core-turret chokepoint to a non-core-turret chokepoint if you had enough different controllers that their total per-planet power exceeding your overall non-core-turret power... though on reflection I guess the number of controllers that would require would be "2" given mkIs of everything.

So perhaps just halving the core turret caps would work, as it would make mkI+mkII of a turret better than the core variant.  Except for sniper and spider, of course, which is where I was thinking the extension of the mutual exclusivity came in.

@Kahuna: the core turret controller description does actually take a stab at the logic: "the controller's signals interfere with normal human technology that is too similar, so a Core turret cannot be built on a planet with a lower-mark version of that same type of turret, and vice versa.  This includes remains of said turrets."

Sure it's just BS, but I tried

[TechSY730]

Yea, I don't get the restriction either. What's wrong with something that helps both chokepoint and distributed defense? I mean, miniforts do this.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I don't get the restriction either. What's wrong with something that helps both chokepoint and distributed defense? I mean, miniforts do this.

Ask chemical_art.

Edit: and fwiw I think the contribution of two miniforts to any kind of remotely serious chokepoint is rather small.

[Tridus]

The nerf I've been planning is to extend the "can't build core (X) turret on same planet as non-core (X) turret" (where X is needler, laser, etc) to "can't build any core turret on same planet as any non-core turret (that has a core variant, so leaving grav/tractor/etc out of this)".  Then you'd only actually prefer a core-turret chokepoint to a non-core-turret chokepoint if you had enough different controllers that their total per-planet power exceeding your overall non-core-turret power... though on reflection I guess the number of controllers that would require would be "2" given mkIs of everything.

So perhaps just halving the core turret caps would work, as it would make mkI+mkII of a turret better than the core variant.  Except for sniper and spider, of course, which is where I was thinking the extension of the mutual exclusivity came in.

I guess in the end it's the restriction that I'm not happy with. I mean, would people be excited to capture a mk V Bomber fab if the side effect was not being allowed to use mk I-IV at the same time? Not being allowed to use the turrets you just captured in the place you want them most takes away from the enjoyment of having them around at all.

If none of my previous ideas work, maybe the radical answer is to change all the turrets to be per planet caps. Lower the caps on them and just let people build everything everywhere. A chokepoint then is special because it's where you use your bigger command stations, fortresses, mines, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

I guess in the end it's the restriction that I'm not happy with. I mean, would people be excited to capture a mk V Bomber fab if the side effect was not being allowed to use mk I-IV at the same time? Not being allowed to use the turrets you just captured in the place you want them most takes away from the enjoyment of having them around at all.

Then put them on the planets in front of the chokepoint, or the planets behind it.  Or both!  And don't forget the sattelite planets you can't get behind your chokepoints (which probably includes some/all of your turret controllers).

If you don't need them for any of those uses, then you (in that scenario) don't need distributed defense   And thus can simply ignore the core turret controllers in favor of more offense-oriented capturables.  Not all capturables need be equally useful in all scenarios.  In fact, it's better for the offensive ones to be preferable in some scenarios, and the defensive ones to be preferable in others.

The point is to buff distributed defense without being a massive buff to chokepoints.  As it is (and would be to some extent even with the core ones having half the cap), the turret controllers are still a buff to most chokepoints because you probably aren't unlocking mkIII of all needler, laser, mlrs, missile, flak, AND lightning.  And the sniper/spider ones, as you've pointed out, have no competition in the non-core area.

If none of my previous ideas work, maybe the radical answer is to change all the turrets to be per planet caps. Lower the caps on them and just let people build everything everywhere.

The idea of lowering turret caps and making them per-planet has certainly come up before, but the "lowering caps" part is simply intolerable to too many people here.

[relmz32]

I think the core turret controllers are great, but i think they could make people like the OP happier if they only interfered with mk1's of their type, and had their per planet cap halved.

[orzelek]

The idea of lowering turret caps and making them per-planet has certainly come up before, but the "lowering caps" part is simply intolerable to too many people here.

Thats why there was a twist to this idea presented that would allow you to build 1-2 turret controllers that would expand turrets cap on planet they are or directly buff turrets attack damage. It was kind of... missed tho.

[MaxAstro]

Orzelek's idea here would certainly suit my playstyle perfectly.  I tend towards distributed defenses in the first place - I usually do 10-20 turrets of each type per planet, depending on wormholes, then I drop heavier defenses on the planets taking waves.

If turrets in general were designed as distributed defense, but you had a limited cap of "chokepoint creation devices", however those worked, that would be awesome in my book.

[Tridus]

I could go for that, yeah. Then the mk V controllers can work exactly the same as normal turrets do, and they're a straight up bonus. It's an elegant solution IMO.