Turrets suck. There's no denying it. MG turrets are essentially lasers without the cool beams and shit which lock onto you within a fraction of a second and unerringly track you as they sap away your health like a vampire. Upgrading them merely worsens the problem, progressive levels sapping your health faster and at ridiculously long ranges. ML turrets are on the other hand are rather ineffectual, annoyances that do more damage to an enemy tank driver's psyche with their irritating lockon sounds than they do to the tank itself. Progressive levels merely increase the frequency and range at which you hear the annoying lockon sounds. The second level of a turret may as well not exist, as you'll only be seeing it for as long as it takes to upgrade to level three. I think most people will agree with me when I say this needs to change. In general, MG turrets need to fire faster but have considerably less accuracy. There should also be a short (a few seconds) lockon period before they open fire on infantry. When they open fire, they should generate unique tracers which leave highly visible smoke trails, and a distinctive firing sound that can be heard at long distances (like vehicle weapons). This allows for infantry to easily pin point their location and make stealth turrets hidden in bushes a thing of the past. ML turrets need to be more effective, doing more damage, tracking better and flying and firing faster. A damage bonus versus plain armour would go a long way to making APC rushes less viable, and making the engineer ML useful. Upgraded turrets simply increase the lame levels of turrets, so I propose that they are scrapped entirely, replaced with two sidegrades, the Ranged Turret and the Heavy Turret. - The Basic Turret is a mediocre, jack of all trades emplacement comparable to a level 1 turret that can become either a Ranged turret or Heavy turret. It would use the level 1 models. - The Ranged Turret would a long range emplacement that sacrifices damage per second and rate of fire for the ability to target enemies at a range similar to that of a level 2 or 3 in Empires currently. The ML would fire missiles with superior speed and tracking, and the MG would be a slow firing, reasonably powerful and accurate machinegun. The Ranged Turret would use the level 2 models. - The Heavy Turret would sacrifice range for destructive power, dealing considerable amounts of damage to those foolish enough to get close. The ML variety would fire missile salvos, and the MG would lay down a withering but very innacurate rain of bullets. The Heavy Turret would use the level 3 models. Upgraded Turret research would be removed, instead commander placed turrets would be upgraded individually via the commander GUI, with the upgrade buttons in the same panel as the recycle button. Upgrading a turret would cost a small amount of resources and take about a minute (between 30 and 60 seconds would be reasonable), during which the turret is inoperative and wreathed in fancy particle effects like smoke and electricity and sparks. The Turret Upgrade skill would remain, the only difference being engineers can choose between the Ranged and Heavy turrets, and they would take considerably longer (about the same time as it takes to upgrade a turret to level 3 now) to construct. tl;dr Turrets made generally less lame. Turret research goes; turrets will be individually upgradeable to make it more of a choice. Basic turret will use the lvl1 model and be somewhat similar to current lvl2s for MLs and lvl1s for MGs. Upgrades will be either longer range (lvl2 model) or more damage (lvl3 model)
/support i think this will be a good change to the use of turrets. it also should be helpful for the loosing team since you dont have to research turrets for a couple of minutes (and it costs less money)
"personally" i would like to see mg turrets fire slower, but do more damage per round and be more inaccurate (instead of a laser accuracy) i hate the "over 500 meters away turret that can pinpoint accurately bleed your health and you better get in cover because its too far to start anything against it" and on your idea being specialising turrets instead of direct upgrades yea, im for
Me supports this. If you think about it, it would work a lot better than our current system, and will add more diversity to base defenses. In effect, the ranged turret will have more emphasis on supporting long range assaults or plateau base defense, while the heavy turret will be mostly defensive and bolster your base significantly. Plus, there's no more turret farms that do ridiculous things...rather it'd be a mix of turrets, and not all crazy accurate turrets too. Removing turrets from research should be a good thing too, imo. It removes any balancing issues from having in-game items in a specific tree, but also means the commander has more tools at her disposal, the better to adapt to the situation.
I would enable Engineers and Commanders to change a turret's sidegrade from one to the other, just to put in some extra strategy in there.
Turrets are weak in this game compared to the tf2 turrets, but basically any sort of an AI aimbot program that kills you in a multiplayer game is annoying as fuck. So I support this idea.
These are the current values. ML turret: Damage: 50 LVL1 Range: 3000 ROF: 7 sec Speed: 1000 LVL2 Range: 4000 ROF: 5 sec Speed: 1400 LVL3 Range: 5000 ROF: 3 sec Speed: 1800 MG turret: Damage: 3 (damage gets weaker by distance) LVL1 Range: 2000 ROF: 0.14 sec LVL2 Range: 3000 ROF: 0.07 sec LVL3 Range: 4000 ROF: 0.035 sec Which values do you suggest for the Basic Turret , Ranged Turret and Heavy Turret?
See SIP, this is why everyone thinks you should never touch empires scripts. Stop trying to do EVERYTHING based of values without any testing. You can't just go: SUGGEST REPLACEMENT VALUES KTHX when none of this has even been tested. It's impossible, and it's why some of your suggested changes for things...Well SIP to put it nicely, they're retarded. The principle is there, but your insistence on demanding values for something PURELY theoretical is ridiculous. Seriously, get out.
It was nice to be reminded, but considering we've said things like ML heavy turret will be more like a dumbfire missile pod (no, I said that), it's not quite doable. It gives a good baseline though. Oh and MG level 1 will probably be the same as a basic level 1.
Trickster: I like the general idea but concrete values will make the difference if it will work or not. How will you test something without values? Also most people don't know the current values. When you change something it doesn't hurt when you know the current behavior. And in general who says that I want to change something without testing? And who says that I want to be a scripter?
The best thing you could do is make the MGs inaccurate, so that rather than having them mulch you at long range and be really weak up close, you could actually scale the damage by assuming players will get hit less further away. Getting hit a lot means you die, rather than meaning you simply fountain blood all over the place, offset by the fact that you don't get hit much at range. Combine that with turning speed limitations to allow players to deal with lone turrets if they get close enough, and ideally a new set of models and balances to make it so you use fewer turrets (each one is more powerful and bigger but you can't place as many) and it makes them rather more fun than the current swarm of annoying instant hit papercut dispensers.
turning speed limitation and inaccuracy are suggestions that the devs denied like 10123124124 times so I guess it will never happen.
yeah less accurate mg's would be great imo, sometimes it gets you right in the head, other times you make it through, this is much more fun than the lasers
Not quite what I was after, and headshots shouldn't be enabled for it because that introduces an annoying amount of randomness. I was more thinking that you would take a reliably scaling amount of damage, at max range you should be getting hit reliably a third of the time, let's say, whereas up close you should be getting hit constantly, and the damage should match the hits. It's essentially damage falloff but more visible, while you can't see a bullet getting less powerful, you can see it not hitting you as much.
