Remove Turrets

[Menuhin]

The problem for me in removing turrets is that you need them to tank for you.
(...)
This combat system works under VERY SPECIFIC circumstances. It creates a nice little firefight scenario
(...)
There's no configuration of colonist tactics that lets your ten guys win a fight where sixty a-holes with clubs and spears can just run up and beat them to death in a horde despite the presence of machine guns and assault rifles.

Look what happens when you remove turrets AND reduce raid sizes. Your whole argument topples like a house of cards!

snip

This is a primary point to remove turrets.  The idea that raids are too tough without them is not necessarily a reason to keep them.  how all the numbers work for the amount of raiders you get sent is necessary in current game play primarily due to turrets.  If you remove turrets raids could also be toned down and still be a threat, and in all honesty a more engaging and thought provoking threat.

Reduce raid size while leaving turrets= boring easy game

Remove turrets while leaving raid size= too challenging of a game

Do both= A game that is more engaging, thought provoking, and realistic (hopefully).

A large thing which derails the immersion in game currently is the raid size, the fact that the ai can continue to send wave after wave of hundreds of hundreds of ppl on a so called sparsely populated rimworld is...  The way to reduce raid size is by removing turrets.

Another very interesting thing though a lesser point is the income mechanisms in raids.  Play a game on basebuilder, and find how much slower it is to build up colony wealth.  Without the income from raids, and far larger flow of potential colonists which comes with higher difficulty brings in a different problem of lower income.  Which can make the cost of certain items in game have more weight in your decisions.

TL;DR By removing turrets and adjusting raid sizes, you would have a more engaging believable game.

[Zanfib]

I do not use vanilla turrets.

The last time I used turrets (many alpha's ago), I noticed that building them noticeably significantly increased the size of raiding forces. Because of this and because of the overall feebleness of lone turrets, I therefore concluded that turrets were a liability outside of kill boxes.

To the best of my knowledge, this has not changed.

In the past I have said that turrets are paradoxically too weak and too powerful.

Turrets are too weak because they do insignificant amounts of damage, increase the size of raids and explode when destroyed. You cannot use them as a perimeter defence to deal with nuisance threats (angry squirrels) or to buy time for your colonists to organize against a major attack because they increase the raid size too much. And you can't use them as internal defences to deal with attackers who slip past your fighters, because they are so puny.

Turrets are too powerful because the only limits to how many you can build are the amount of steel you have and your supply of electricity. When turrets are organised into kill boxes the weaknesses of turrets become irrelevant, they can crush any attack with overwhelming weight of fire. Quantity is its own quality.

Why do enemies become more eager to attack you if you build defences? Should not enemies be more eager to attack a defenceless colony with lots of loot than they are to attack an impoverished colony with lots of defences?

If computer controlled turrets can be built without any resources except steel, why can't ordinary guns be built in the same way? You'd think a survival rifle would be easier to make then a computer that can magically tell the difference between good guys and bad guys.

My recommendation is to change turrets in the following ways:

1.   Turrets now require an appropriate weapon (either a LMG or a Minigun) to build.
2.   Turrets no longer explode.
3.   Turrets no longer increase raid size.
4.   Turrets are split into two varieties: Manned turrets which require only metal or plasteel and a suitable weapon and a colonist to man them while AI turrets would need an AI Core and a power supply but not require a colonist. Manned turrets would offer bonuses to accuracy and aiming time allowing colonists with low shooting skill to contribute to the defence at the cost of being immobile. AI turrets would be late game defences: powerful, but few in number and having one destroyed would mean the loss of a rare AI Core.

[Toggle]

The 'increasing raid size' is wealth. It adds building wealth, and wealth effects raid sizes. There's not really a way to not have it build more wealth unless you make them cheaper.

[FMJ Penguin]

1.   Turrets now require an appropriate weapon (either a LMG or a Minigun) to build.
2.   Turrets no longer explode.
3.   Turrets no longer increase raid size.
4.   Turrets are split into two varieties: Manned turrets which require only metal or plasteel and a suitable weapon and a colonist to man them while AI turrets would need an AI Core and a power supply but not require a colonist. Manned turrets would offer bonuses to accuracy and aiming time allowing colonists with low shooting skill to contribute to the defence at the cost of being immobile. AI turrets would be late game defences: powerful, but few in number and having one destroyed would mean the loss of a rare AI Core.

Very cool idea's. How about instead of requiring specific weapons they require "weapon parts" which are gotten only from breaking down ANY weapon or maybe through trade. You know maybe it takes 10 or so broken down weapons to build that shiny new turret. I do like the idea of having ways to use up all the weapon drops

[Menuhin]

The 'increasing raid size' is wealth. It adds building wealth, and wealth effects raid sizes. There's not really a way to not have it build more wealth unless you make them cheaper.

If I remember correctly another factor in raid size is/was colonists, and that 1 turret was the equivalent of 1/3 (?) of a colonist.  I remember talks about that in previous alphas.  I am not sure if that calculation has remained the same or not.

[Mihsan]

Just now I had this idea (which in fact a couple of your ideas too...) and for a moment I thought that it can solve many problems. It is kind of a try to evolve turrets in something new based on how they work in the game right now.



The idea in short:
- Short range (like SMG or shotgun)
- Resercheable
- Energy weapon (like scyther's lance would be best IMO, but with less damage; not one-shot weapon)
- EMP-exploding (let it kill conduits arround destroyed turret)
- Pop-out turret
- Pop-out ONLY when enemy is in radius of attack
- Pop-down when no enemy in radius of attack
- Large cooldown time to pop-down
- Poped-down turret should not count as active target for enemy
- Poped-down turret should be more resistant to damage

What it will change for better:
- Less prone to spamming and killboxing (because of short range multiplied on EMP explosion)
- No more "I made MG out of steel w/o workbench!" (because it is energy weapon (somehow it's working for my brain))
- More explained and reasonable huge energy consumption (because it is energy weapon)
- 999 manhunting boars not killed with one exploded turret (because of EMP-explosion)
- No more "they are sniping my turrets out of range, so I should build killbox!" (because of pop-out feature)
- No more "scythers killed all my turrets w/o any shots back" (pop-out again)
- Enemy should not rush straight at all your turrets and wipe out all your defences in one attack (because of pop-out feature; if turret is not touching raiders, then raiders are not touching turret)
- Turrets could be used for reasonable things like defending from single animal (pop-out again)
- Less frustrating experience in the general

What problems it can not solve:
- Still pretty exploitable (non-curable)
- No special resources needed (not sure if it's bad; I did not wanted to include more new entities for some reasons)

P.S.: And I still want manned HMG turred or something like that. It was in Firefly, by the way...

[akiceabear]

Nice ideas.

Personally I think turrets have gotten nerfed steadily for the last few alphas. And I expect they will continue to be nerfed because Tynan doesn't like one strategy being adapt as the default by too many players without fail. I think the suggestions here are good steps in that direction. Mihsan's are especially cool/unique!

[Zanfib]

The 'increasing raid size' is wealth. It adds building wealth, and wealth effects raid sizes. There's not really a way to not have it build more wealth unless you make them cheaper.

So make them less valuable. It's not like the player can buy or sell turrets and whatever their wealth is, it's clearly set higher then the steel that it takes to produce them.

Besides, it makes no sense whatsoever that raiders would be more eager to attack a place with 3 colonists and 10 turrets then they would be to attack a place with 3 colonists and 1500 steel lying around on the stockpile. The steel doesn't shoot back.

If I remember correctly another factor in raid size is/was colonists, and that 1 turret was the equivalent of 1/3 (?) of a colonist.  I remember talks about that in previous alphas.  I am not sure if that calculation has remained the same or not.

That is insane. 3 turrets is not remotely worth 1 colonist.

[Haplo]

My suggestion would be the following:
- make only manable turrets buildable from the beginning (with a weapon of course).
- remove automatic turrets from the build options and only let them be bought from traders.
- For late game you can also research automatic turrets to be buildable, but it would also need a rare thing to be built. But I would prefer something new, something that isn't really as rare as an AI core.

Just my 2 cents 

[SaintD]

Completely untrue! Actually. For a number of reasons.

I've been on the internet for too long to expect this to be good.

1. War Animals
-Taming a few expendable animals (Squirrels, Boomalopes, and Boomrats are especially good for this) explicitly for tanking raids works wonders. While I don't advise you have your production or hauling animals on the frontlines (Though Elephants are utterly terrifying war animals if you can get a few of them) if you need cheap, expendable, tasty tanks. They are utterly perfect.

So the answer to not having expendable turrets to tank damage is to replace them with expendable animals to tank damage.

It's great how you're instantly showing you're just not getting what the problem is at all.

2. Shield-Using melee
-As long as you aren't fighting a force that can instantly pop shields (Snipers, Shotguns, Heavy Charge Rifles) A shield-user with a good melee weapon can distract the bad guys long enough for a well-trained sniper squad to pick off the more dangerous enemies in a group. This tactic is especially strong against mechanoids. (Just watch out for sythers).

So your solution to removing expendable turrets to tank damage...is to use a colonist as a tank. In melee. Against mechanoids.

Ideally you do no want your shield user to actually fight, as an unlucky crit can make you lose a colonist

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGH!

3.Bunkers

Around your main gates, and in the field, you can set up fortified positions to snipe out enemies before they even get to your killbox. As long as you are wary of enemy snipers and greatbow users, it's an easy way to get many free shots off on your raiders. Remember: It takes the bad guys a long time to break through a stone door, and there isn't any limit on how many you can have in a row. Just order the doors kept open until the raid comes so you don't slow down your colonists too much.

4. Choke-points, Obstacles, Grenades

Choke-points and explosions are a very powerful combination. Using rubble and sandbags (or both!) to slow down invaders is very powerful, especially when coupled with a few choke points. Utilizing one-door "bunkers" that your defenders can use to fire from and retreat behind when melee raiders get close (or if ranged raiders draw a bead on your pawns) can make or break a defense... even without turrets.

So basically, to replace expendable turrets we can use to tank damage, you propose an ad hoc, hideously micromanaged mess of stuff that sort of replicates the embrasures and fortifications people kinda want to actually replace turrets. Which incidentally would also just entirely remove the problem of mass melee which breaks the combat system.

I don't care, we're going to pretend you grasped right from the start exactly what the problem is with the attritional numbers game Rimworld devolves into that currently requires turret spamming, or playing silly wotsits with micromanaging doors and crap enemy AI in order to sidestep the problem entirely. That way I don't have to set my monitor on fire.

Look what happens when you remove turrets AND reduce raid sizes. Your whole argument topples like a house of cards!

Oh dear God it's this guy again. I am SO sorry Jamini, everything is forgiven, I want you back, I was too harsh! 

Ok b0rsuk, I'm gonna put two quotes together for you, then you can look at them both, and try to work out the context. Just....really try.

This combat system works under VERY SPECIFIC circumstances. It creates a nice little firefight scenario when two sides both play ball and have a cool looking, small scale firefight from cover, with minor wounds and stuff. It completely falls apart when the numbers get too big, when melee exists AT ALL....

Look what happens when you remove turrets AND reduce raid sizes. Your whole argument topples like a house of cards!

You just work on that for a while. Idiot.

This is a primary point to remove turrets.  The idea that raids are too tough without them is not necessarily a reason to keep them.  how all the numbers work for the amount of raiders you get sent is necessary in current game play primarily due to turrets.  If you remove turrets raids could also be toned down and still be a threat, and in all honesty a more engaging and thought provoking threat.

Couldn't agree with the sentiments behind removing turrets, but as it stands, simply removing turrets isn't an acceptable act without giving fortifications with the other hand, and making sure that the kinds of fights that occur in the game are the kind the combat system is optimised to deal with.

To beat the horse some more, mass melee should be an easily preventable no-no because of mechanics like pinning, or a very significant change in hit probabilities that makes not being in cover suicidal, and being in hard cover a virtual impossibility of actually being directly shot because you'll just bunker down in it when taking fire. We shouldn't even need embrasures to prevent melee silliness. Enemies and colonists should not be able to close against each other in open ground so easily as they do in this game against midworld tech level sidearms. As far as Rimworld is concerned, the Battle of Rorke's Drift would have resulted in 150 dead British soldiers in under a minute, stabbed to death with contemptuous ease by 4000 dudes with spears who can run fast and lost like a dozen guys in the advance (and lots of fingers and toes). Worryingly for physicists everywhere, the Zulus did this whilst occupying an average of one square meter per dozen men.....

To be honest, I'd much rather get rid of turrets and have more 'realistic' combat in that cover is the king and not being in it will get you killed really, really quickly when you're facing off against a midworld weapon wielded by a supposed 'professional'. Combat where it's possible to pin people with incoming fire and that is how the angry guys with swords catch you and gut you, not because everyone is comedically bad at hitting big, open targets coming right at them, and randomly take out various irrelevant, non-lethal locations according to a dice roll when they do.

Buuuuut we don't have that. Instead, we need meat shields because the house always wins. We don't have a way to make the odds in ANY firefight worth risking our colonists in, because raiders are utterly expendable, colonists aren't, cover doesn't provide...uh...enough cover, and raids are really common, so even without turrets we'll engineer various probably-not-in-the-spirit-of-the-game methods to basically take our colonists out of the risk equation entirely.

[Thane]

I love your comment about the Zulus man. I don't know how many times I have stared at a group of raiders who have somehow absorbed fire from 10 mini guns (i.e. higher tech gatlings) and then waltz in and slaughter my men. HOW did they do that? These weapons came off of freakin centipedes! How did you just take 10 bullets to the chest and still be able to stab my friends in the face?

[akiceabear]

You should try Combat Realism

[Drahkon]

I'd say phase them out. I don't believe the game is ready to drop them just yet. Keep reducing the damage they do and increasing the cost. Maybe we can keep pushing quality of later game raids instead of mass quantity on incoming pawns, 15 to 1 bum rushes are not fun or balanced and produce large increases in wealth that make the next one worse. Better AI can be fun. Limiting the number of pawns that can stack on a square would be nice too.

Personally, my preferred usage of turrets would be:
1: single here and there turrets to decoy incoming raids to gain time to prep
2: 1-2 hard to hit turrets in my main fighting area to help pull fire off my defending colonists. My colonists are not expendable.

If turrets stay in, my vision for them would be...
1: low damage, solid health/armor, damage comparable to a good shot with a good quality pistol.
2: no explosion, too good at killing groups that way, EMP explosion mentioned above would be fine.
3: require more than basic material, shouldn't be able to toss up a dozen your first month. (LMG? Plasteel? AI core? Assault Rifle?)
4: higher energy drain while targeting, reduced the rest of the time.
5: enemies shouldn't prioritize turrets they are not even in range of.
6: Able to uninstall them. Get dropped with 1 at colony start, maybe.

Turrets are currently kill-boxed for the damage output, pull back on that and give them a different use. If building the turrets scales the raid faster than the damage output from the turrets scales then it becomes counterproductive to mass them for kill-boxes. The best way to get people to stop doing something is often to take the profit out of it.

[Jamini]

1. War Animals
-Taming a few expendable animals (Squirrels, Boomalopes, and Boomrats are especially good for this) explicitly for tanking raids works wonders. While I don't advise you have your production or hauling animals on the frontlines (Though Elephants are utterly terrifying war animals if you can get a few of them) if you need cheap, expendable, tasty tanks. They are utterly perfect.

So the answer to not having expendable turrets to tank damage is to replace them with expendable animals to tank damage.

Well... yes? It's fairly historically accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_warfare

It's great how you're instantly showing you're just not getting what the problem is at all.

There isn't a problem. That is my point. The problem is between the chair and the keyboard, not in the game.

2. Shield-Using melee
-As long as you aren't fighting a force that can instantly pop shields (Snipers, Shotguns, Heavy Charge Rifles) A shield-user with a good melee weapon can distract the bad guys long enough for a well-trained sniper squad to pick off the more dangerous enemies in a group. This tactic is especially strong against mechanoids. (Just watch out for sythers).

So your solution to removing expendable turrets to tank damage...is to use a colonist as a tank. In melee. Against mechanoids.

No. It's to use a colonist as a tank to draw fire from low-impact weapons (like inferno cannons and miniguns) Sort of like how tanks were originally used.

3.Bunkers

Around your main gates, and in the field, you can set up fortified positions to snipe out enemies before they even get to your killbox. As long as you are wary of enemy snipers and greatbow users, it's an easy way to get many free shots off on your raiders. Remember: It takes the bad guys a long time to break through a stone door, and there isn't any limit on how many you can have in a row. Just order the doors kept open until the raid comes so you don't slow down your colonists too much.

4. Choke-points, Obstacles, Grenades

Choke-points and explosions are a very powerful combination. Using rubble and sandbags (or both!) to slow down invaders is very powerful, especially when coupled with a few choke points. Utilizing one-door "bunkers" that your defenders can use to fire from and retreat behind when melee raiders get close (or if ranged raiders draw a bead on your pawns) can make or break a defense... even without turrets.

So basically, to replace expendable turrets we can use to tank damage, you propose an ad hoc, hideously micromanaged mess of stuff that sort of replicates the embrasures and fortifications people kinda want to actually replace turrets. Which incidentally would also just entirely remove the problem of mass melee which breaks the combat system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_fighting_position
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_point

Both bunkers are choke-points are well-known strategies in real life.

If you are complaining that something is micromanagey in and event designed around drafting your pawns to defend yourself perhaps you should consider more closely what you are suggesting.

Buuuuut we don't have that. Instead, we need meat shields because the house always wins.

This is what is wrong with your argument. You aren't supposed to win every time. If you are, you aren't challenging yourself.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Lets try not to get too hostile in here people.

I think the best solution is to support all kinds of gameplay styles instead of forcing one or the other on people.

If you dont want to use turrets then dont.  I would be nice to see the combat evolve to a point where this is manageable.  If you do use turrets then that should also be viable, even if you have a single entrance mountain fortress fronted with a killbox. 

The example of the Zulu warriors is a good one.  Also that choke-points and defensive positions are a real thing and should be allowed.

I think that in the end.  Turrets should NOT be removed.  However they should CHANGE.

Lets try to focus on the balance of that change.  Rather than attack people for what they think.  If Tynan reads this thread we want it full of ideas.  Not personal attacks.

In martial arts we learn that its best to have multiple options to solve the same problem.  So lets work out how to solve this from different angles.  Without turrets, with turrets, with animals, with dev mode lightning bolts, whatever.