Automated/eased placement (in some fashion) of turrets and minefields.

[x4000]

This is something that I thought was worth discussing, and I've put it on mantis: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=21333

It was brought up in a response to one of the recent blog posts, so I just copy/pasted there.

The tedium of placing turrets and minefields has come up a number of times, so I totally get that's a thing, but I'm positive that there's no way that complicated build patterns are going to fit into my dev schedule prior to 1.0 even if I were to cut multiplayer until 2.0 or something.  There's just no time for that, and that sort of thing is super time-consuming.  So it comes down to potentially having fewer but more effective turrets and minefields, and that's something that needs discussion before I just make a change like that.

Cheers!

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

We could make it so that you get 1/5th as many minefields, for instance, and make each minefield 5x larger and so that it lasts 5x more times. That probably wouldn't be the end of the world, since those are contact style fields. In fact it might actually make them more useful.

There were a few little problems that made me make mines into single-use. First that damage boosts such as the Military Command Stations affect them, so it was causing weird things like a Paralysis Mine set up to hit 5 times to only hit in 3 or 4, because it's killing itself faster. Second was they had a tendency to start being repaired all the time, so Engineers were rushing to their deaths.

I believe I could make those changes work fine. Just those two issues would return, though they're not the end of the world either. I do like how making them lower in number would allow for reasonable translocation based minefields, without the funny chain reaction madness.

But for turrets, making it so that there are 1/5th or 1/10th as many of those, and they do 5x or 10x more damage and have the same amount more health... we'd easily run into cases where reload times are the big limiting factor, and/or they all start needing multi-shot of some sort.

Agreed...Concussion Turrets would meet that point very quickly. Though maybe even 1/2 would be a big improvement without going too far into those cases?

I can think of one big improvement as a side effect of this: Fewer Grenade and Tesla visual effects. Those can be a bit unpleasant.

I want to note one oddity I spotted - these lines:

"Ok, now there are at least a 60 minefields in the beginning of AI War 2."

"(Visually there could actually be more turrets-> as there are 5 currently visually on a single count)"

These are Pre-Fleets things. Turrets don't show up in groups in a single unit anymore, and you don't start with Minefields on every planet either, though you do have more real Turrets and Minefields when you start capturing Battlestations.

Maybe some of these thoughts could be applied to Strikecraft? Fewer but better? Not to the degree of 1/5 or 1/10 though I would think. That'd help with a space problem maybe (the sheer number of units all running decollision logic) and the feedback that they're very chafty.

[AnnoyingOrange]

A way to place more than 5 at a time might very well be enough: something like CTRL + ALT placing 50 at a time would remove the issue with turrets as they don't really need precise placement or a shape more complicated than a big cluster.
Being able to place things in a line a la AIWC could make minefields more appealing: but that's a lot more work and the AI fleetballs can get so ridiculously wide that placing mines in a line might be worse than simply clustering them near the wormhole, so that idea can wait.

[ptarth]

Two options come to mind
1. Place Turrets and minefield in groups instead of singular units. The unit cap for Turrets and minefield are measured in units of 5 (or 10). When you place 1 on the map, it actually places 5 (or 10) distinct units on the map. That way you get the advantages of having several entities without the micromanagement. Possible rough edge - self-destructing singular turrets.
2. Players get GuardPosts. You no longer place (or build) individual turrets (or minefields). Instead you place defense centers (aka guard posts). These defense centers then automatically construct X turrets (or minefields) of type Z around themselves. You still have the same number of entities in defense (and the center could be a slightly beefier turret or something special or nothing). Possible rough edges - New code for the centers.

[StarKeep]

I have no idea about the complexity of this request, so feel free to shoot it down if its too terribly painful.

Something akin to a 'paint' tool, where you simply click and drag to place your defenses down. Draw neat little lines around wormholes, or straight lines from wormhole to spawn, without having to click multiple times or use a line placement sorta thing.

[Diazo]

Even just bringing the "Place 10" back would be enough for me.

That way even the 60 minefields is only 6 clicks, that's low enough to be acceptable to me.

D.