My proposal for the turret problem.

[Foul]

I agree with the idea that an A.I should be set up for tower-defense style gaming, turrets & endless raiders etc. This would leave more interesting gameplay scenarios to other A.I's outside of increasing waves.

The turrets should stay, if a colony chooses to rely on them and supply the power and metal to maintain them it should be a viable option. I like the idea of manning the turret for precise aiming and lower cool-down. There should always be more options, balancing out on a rock, paper, scissor platform. Not every colony needs to be death by inevitable overwhelming odds.

Maybe introduce a variety of turrets skins in an update, perhaps one with constant fire but low dmg, one that fires the rocket resource, or one that uses the heavy ammo to blaze up a radius ammo permitting. All I'm saying is its and idea to explore why people chose to play the game as tower-defence instead of cutting that game-play option entirely.

[Galileus]

"Turrets should stay as it is" is out of the question - as Tynan expressed himself. The problem being, it kills the narrative as it was planned - it makes the whole tactical combat system void and keeps your people safe while you fight off riders with mechanical means. I believe Tynan had in mind a type of gameplay that forces the player to make hard choices and be aware of possible loses all the time, not a "loose none or all". And I couldn't agree more, this game can only benefit from that.

But there were some points mentioned here, that I've covered in my initial post:

Step 1: Keep turrets, de-automate them (man-operated). Make them threat-specific (MG's were always fine to lay covering fire, but needed support to address either armoured or flanking threats) and in need of support.
Step 2: Firepower at a cost of mobility is now pretty much non-existent case. If a settler would be in one of turrets that not only limits their number, but makes you think twice about relying on them alone. Balance with that in mind, add specific counter-turret measures for Raiders.
Step 3: As soon as someone flanks you outside of the cone of fire (that would need 8-way rotation, but would be so worth it!) or - even worse - brings a suppression-immune squad (rush, assault, kamikaze): good bye turret and turret operator! Refine turrets to bring out their pros even more while sneakily loading them with more and more worst-case scenarios that need on-foot support teams to negate.
Step 4: Teach Cassandra how to respond to turrets saturation (squad formation, artillery support?, power sabotage) and formulate tactics working well against it. Make sure she don't deploy them as much or at all when turret saturation is low, make her bring hell on heavily-armoured colonies - as they will be seen as a threat by not only random raider parties, but every minor and major power in the quadrant, wanting to say "Hello, did we meet? We're the though guys".
Step 5: Make sure the underlying mechanic of rising military presence tied in directly to raiders interest and hate is well stated and presented in some kind in game. It may be a slider buried deep in stats or random thoughts of colonists (negative "our militarization scares me" or positive "our strength is surely a sight to behold!" depending on perks and class).
Step 6: Teach Cassandra to laugh maniacally like any good sadistic girl should.

My approach. Was supposed to be simple and tiny, but got... bigger. I wonder how would you feel about such twist?

PS. Approach of balancing through stats is a good one on low scale and in short terms. Risks of power creep and mathematical problems (direct link between cost and efficiency) is huge, and over all this is a balancing best done AFTER the proper balancing in terms of mechanics and rulesets. My approach tries to address that problem and create a perfect imbalance - a situation, when build-in fail-safes prevent players from abusing mechanics, while still keeping them as powerful and usable as they are intended to be. It addresses the problem of turrets abuse without actually nerfing the turrets.

To sum up: there needs to be a double-sided involvement in dealing with turrets - both turrets themselves and anti-turrets measures need to be added. There needs to be a reason to keep on-foot support teams in fight, too.

And Kender - please think twice before you argue. By your comparison (colonist = walking turret) EVERY GAME EVER is a tower defence. Commander Shepard? Walking turret. Dante? Walking turret. Mario? Walking turret.

@mumblemumble - I couldn't agree more BUT - at this time and with this state of the game everyone is metagaming. There is only one viable solution, and it is killing the game.

[Produno]

"Turrets should stay as it is" is out of the question - as Tynan expressed himself.

Exactly. I dont think some people understand the point of this discussion. Saying the turrets should stay, or blame the meta gamers, or leave the problem as is, is NOT a solution.

Tynan may still decide to remove them, its his game, his visions, his designs. But hes more likely to take note of people trying to offer a solution to a problem without having to remove assets and different gameplay scenarios whilst still being able to have the game play as he intended.

Put it this way. If you spent 15 years building upto a point where you could release your own game with certain aspirations and standards, would you listen to the people telling you to go against what you want, or would you be more likely to listen to the people offering a solution?

Your point about the constant raids is invalid now as Tynan has offered another AI narrative choice.

If you want turrets to stay then please try and offer a solution. If you want them to go and think they offer nothing to the game then just simply put 'i agree they should be removed' or something along them lines.

[cidjikai]

I also think the turret problem is deeply related with the raider spamming problem. So far, there are very few threat in the pre-alpha and the most recurrent is raiders. Hopefully in the next stages the game will include a lot of threats and raids will happen less often (but also, I hope, more unpredicticble and right on time to cause tons of drama) so the defense system may not be the main concern (for the player : should I invest that much ressources in building another turret while my medical system is in poor shape and any epidemic could wipe out the colony without any shot fired ?)

[shokwave]

I've been playing entirely without turrets for the last few days, and exploring less cheesy ways of setting my defenses up.

Pros:
Without turrets, Cass scales the raiders really nicely. Each new raid adds one or two raiders and slowly introduces new weapons (first few attacks are pistols, then maybe a molotov or shotgun, snipers/m16s don't come until you have a motley collection of different low-level weapons.)

Actual tactics come into play against frag grenade bearing enemies. I find myself noting their names and manually focus-firing them, as well as ordering soldiers to run when a grenade is thrown their way. I have run more colonists than I care to admit INTO grenades too. It's a lot of fun.

If you're doing well (in one game, I sold every last piece of food and metal to traders for a vat-grown soldier assassin with 17 shooting and an M16) you can build turrets in or near your prison to "intimidate" the prisoners further (no actual effect) and Cass will send bigger raider waves your way.

You have to pay more attention - I wiped out eight raiders, assumed that was the full group, released all my soldiers, and my amazing constructor Ramez happily started repairing the fortifications while I did base management. A lone raider came along with a shotgun and "Ramez has been killed".

Cons

A lot of the cheesy tactics still work. The WSWSWSWS (wall sandbag wall sandbag) structure still works very well, the waffle of sandbags is still effective. Building a maze with hydroponics tables and cover at the end to tempt the enemy into running the maze is brutally effective, turns nearly any raid into a firing range for my colonists.


My opinion, based on about ten hours of no-turret play, is that the game is strictly better without them. Ty could remove them in .255 without changing anything (except maybe scaling according to the best gun you have instead of turret numbers), and the game would play heaps better.

[Renham]

I reinforce my idea, riders and pirate need to escalate more as your colony grows...
your colony will be valuable as it increase in size and people, so they will spend more resources in trying to capture your base.

so the logic thing is, they will spend more technology in it.
therefore you will need better defenses.

[ShadowDragon8685]

They should also de-escalate based on the number of dead raiders you've already accounted for, though.

If you've got a graveyard with pushing 500 dead fools who came before them, what makes them think they'll be the lucky twenty who manage to kill you psychotic militiamen and take your stuff?

[Kender]

And Kender - please think twice before you argue. By your comparison (colonist = walking turret) EVERY GAME EVER is a tower defence. Commander Shepard? Walking turret. Dante? Walking turret. Mario? Walking turret.

It simply does not solve the fundamental turret problem by enhance/add generally new type of turret to the game, or by nerfing them. because the cause of problem is not the turret. This should be clear by now.

That comparison I made was only a attempt to remind you why do you even need to keep the turret in the game but make them man-operated, while colonist can just use a new weapon to fire themselves? Again, turret is not the problem, so with or without them, the problem remains.

One should focus on why players choose the way of 'Tower defense' to survive in this game. and the reason is not because there are turrets in RimWorld.

As for tower defense, as I stated earlier: a game with units can shot in it doesn't make it a tower defense.

[Galileus]

Interesting. While we discuss here a problem of turrets being able to do all the job, you claim it's not the problem.

I'm afraid you're wrong there, pal. Raiders coming in and attacking is not the problem we discuss in this topic. It's your problem - that was already addressed, by adding more storytellers. Problem at hand is turrets and how they lower the game's standards by cutting away a whole big concept behind it. So I have to disagree - with no turrets the problem would cease to exist. As would a fun idea for the game - and that's why we're here.

And why players choose to use towers in the game? Because they learn pretty quick it's the most effective and risk-free option. And if/when the turrets fail, the player is so used to his tools, that he fails to use other tools. That is a very well known shortcoming in gamedesign - when one option is simply superior, player will feel punished when game expects him to use another. Player will say it's a difficulty problem rather than retrace his steps to find another approach - and while he would be wrong, it would be the designer who should take the blame. Game needs to show it's player what tools he has to choose from and give him time to learn them - and it fails at that task if it presents the player with insanely powerful one that renders the others void.

[peppie]

If Tynan wants to do away with the turrets, I think that's fine. 

Just my own opinion though, I think we need better defences which still include the colonists to actively take part in the battle rather than just let expendable turrets do all the work, while the colonists sit pretty inside their homes.

E.G.  You could build a pill box type structure where the colonist can fire, but gains substantial cover bonuses.  Similarly you could build sniper nests, a watch tower that while flimsy, increases range and accuracy of weapons fired from it. 

Just my two cents.

id absolutely love to see anything mountable. Fixed turrets, pillboxes, guardtowers, cannons, etc

[Warduke]

Just kicking this idea around..

When I played Faster Than Light (FTL) a while back, I didn't originally like how when you go to a merchant and buy weapons you had a limited amount of options to choose from.  But, after playing it extensively I really began to appreciate the philosophy of 'making due with what you can get' and I think that could also apply to Rimworld.. Living out on the frontier of space, and making due with what you can get your hands on.

You wouldn't be able to produce turrets anymore, but instead you would need to rely on weapons dealers that visit your planet and purchase a turret from their limited selection, which would also mean that there would need to be a variety of turret types (ie, 50 cal, plasma, dual cannon, etc). This would probably also mean a change to how turret destruction is handled as well, so it’s not so harsh with this design. If a turret reaches 0 hp, it can either A) be knocked out of commission and would need an engineer to repair it, or B) be destroyed as it goes up in a giant fireball which causes damage to the surrounding area. Depending on the weapon type it may change the % chance of it blowing up, the damage amount, and how far the blast radius is.

In a nutshell, you cannot build turrets, turrets would be more rare, and you may not find exactly what you're looking for. You'll have to just make due with what you can get.

[NephilimNexus]

I like this idea of actual weapons inside of turrets.

So what the colonists could build would just be the turret structure & AI, but they'd have to put an actual regular weapon inside of it to make it be able to do anything.  Since you start the game with nothing more than a single pistol, putting a single pistol inside a single turret isn't going to do very much.  Having to buy/scavenge weapons to mount in them is much more interesting, as it would solve the "turret variety" issue right there.

Do you want to put an Uzi in a turret for rapid-fire, close range defense, or a slow firing (but very accurate) M24 sniper rifle inside one to keep the enemy at bay?  And of course losing the turret would cause your expensive weapon to go up with it, which would really hurt on the pocketbook.

[chaotix14]

Personally I would really like to see a turret which is basically nothing more than a protective plate with an aiming hole and a gun strapped to some piping for a base. Choose a gun, strap it in and have your colonist fire from a safer location(as the turret won't explode), at the cost of some accuracy.

And maybe with some research the find out that you can use some piping(like creating a pipework that will squeeze the trigger of the attached guns by moving a lever) and some more straps to fix more guns to one enplacement, of course adding a bit more accuracy loss.

This would make guns like the uzi and the m-17 more valueable as they are great pray and spray weapons for an enplacement like mentioned above. Whereas sniper rifles, and other high accuracy single shot guns, would be worthless to use with them. Quad uzi's around the corners.

[Workload]

Hi everyone my first post on here, hope my spelling is not to bad. Anyways I was thinking about the turrets and to make them more fair I suggest maybe making it so your people have to man a Turret Console, linked to one or two turrets.... I think one would be best. This still can be good cause when the gun is down you still have a unit with full HP. To link a gun to a console just add link button in console menu beside the power button and the console should have to be connected to the same power grid in somewhere as the turret. Though a Turret Console would have to be made but shouldn't be have to code.

For a turret to shoot all it need for logic a, b, and c are set then the gun can work as normal.   Same as before Just it only needed A. to work

A   . Power
B   . Linked to turret console
C   . A unit drafted and told to man the Console


If the someone gets hurt on the console they will get off.

Let me know what you think about this.

[Produno]

Hi everyone my first post on here, hope my spelling is not to bad. Anyways I was thinking about the turrets and to make them more fair I suggest maybe making it so your people have to man a Turret Console, linked to one or two turrets.... I think one would be best. This still can be good cause when the gun is down you still have a unit with full HP. To link a gun to a console just add link button in console menu beside the power button and the console should have to be connected to the same power grid in somewhere as the turret. Though a Turret Console would have to be made but shouldn't be have to code.

For a turret to shoot all it need for logic a, b, and c are set then the gun can work as normal.   Same as before Just it only needed A. to work

A   . Power
B   . Linked to turret console
C   . A unit drafted and told to man the Console


If the someone gets hurt on the console they will get off.

Let me know what you think about this.

Its not a bad idea, but where will the console be? If its tucked up nicely out of harms way in the base somewhere then this doesnt really solve much unfortunately.