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So i read Tynan's quote in another thread.

Quote from: Tynan on November 05, 2013, 07:18:01 PM
I actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game. I'm even on the verge of cutting them. They take the fight away from the characters and make it a tower defense optimization game, which isn't what RW is supposed to be.

You could just make turrets really expensive. say 5k metal for one turret, but up their hp a bit. That means people may only get to have a couple of well placed turrets and thats all. You could also up their power usage or even make them so they have to be manned. That way the person manning them will take damage too. This also makes more sense in a Rimworld type of situation, i mean an auto turret is quite a complex piece of kit! i doubt my oaf and a couple of other random people could build one quite so efficeintly! You could even make them unpredictable, ie they get damaged alot whilst being fired. Lots of tactical advantages could be added for turrets :)

So i think theirs plenty to change before the need to remove them completely.

This also leads to more research. And i guess the same could be applied to anything in rimworld to create more cheap content. For instance the walls, first set of walls this ragtag bunch can muster is some basic protection from wind and rain (so walls with less hp and need repairing more frequent). After research better walls can be made. These can be the same graphics as the previous walls for now but with more hp.

Before you know it youve added twice as much content, twice as much fun and twice the playabilty pretty easily. :)


To summarise my suggestion, you could add either or

• make turrets much more expensive but increase HP.
• Limit the amount of turrets that can be built.
• make them unpredictable whilst being fired, or just altogether. (increase repair damage rate)
• Adjust the power needed to operate them.
• Remove the visual range.
• Add a power surge to the rest of your base whilst the turrets in operation, ie nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating.
• Add the need for a capacitor next to the turret to account for more power usage. (a simple battery)
• Make it so they have to be manned, or a colonist within a certain vicinity of the turret, or even assign a colonist to it like the beds.
• Add upgrade paths and make upgrades cost (more) metal. (I currently dont do any research because its pretty pointless)

This means less turrets can be build and maintained hopefully helping with the tower defence, kill zone problems.


I hope you can take this into consideration as i think it will add much more to the game.

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.

Quote from: Sundaysmile on November 07, 2013, 06:50:49 AM
just let expendable turrets do all the work, while the colonists sit pretty inside their homes.

Pretty much everything i stated means turrets would no longer be expendable. Some of them also mean your colonist has to be actively working on the turret for it to even work.

As it stands people can build 8 -15+ turrets and leave them to pummel the raiders. It wouldnt be so easy if you could only build 1 or 2. Then if they needed to be manned or have a colonist near by that would make it even harder. Do you use the turret, or sit back with a m-24, of course this would depend on the type of raiders attacking you. If the turret takes damage whilst being fired (because its been built unreliably by a ragtag bunch of nobodys) do you draft a colonist to stay near by to repair it, or do you issue him a gun and let him fight.
If a turret cost you huge amounts of metal would you leave it in the open for a sniper squad to demolish? In the same breath this would also need to balanced though, you wouldnt want to spend say 5k metal on a turret for it to be blown up by a grenade in the next raid..

Quote from: Sundaysmile on November 07, 2013, 06:50:49 AM
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.

Yes, the basics need to be coverd, guard towers and pillboxes all the way.

Quote from: Oranda on November 07, 2013, 07:07:30 AM

Yes, the basics need to be coverd, guard towers and pillboxes all the way.

Im not dismissing adding the basics, but this thread is about offering options to keep the turrets whilst creating more tactical play and enhancing the game.

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.

Quote from: Galileus on November 07, 2013, 07:13:45 AMsnip

I agree with this idea. Make turrets a trade off between firepower and mobility while keeping their numbers limited by the number of people you have.

Quote from: Sundaysmile on November 07, 2013, 06:50:49 AM
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.

I like the idea of pill boxes and watch towers. Far more in-simulation.

Further, it also helps with making use of your most precious resource - people.
Meaning you need to have people there to fire.

I would not mind tunnels which could be used to reach the pill boxes / watch towers without attracting enemy fire.
(This is, of course, veering dangerously into 3D territory but here I think the rewards would be worth it.)

Quote from: Produno on November 07, 2013, 06:29:59 AM
So i read Tynan's quote in another thread.

Quote from: Tynan on November 05, 2013, 07:18:01 PM
I actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game. I'm even on the verge of cutting them. They take the fight away from the characters and make it a tower defense optimization game, which isn't what RW is supposed to be.

You could just make turrets really expensive. say 5k metal for one turret, but up their hp a bit. That means people may only get to have a couple of well placed turrets and thats all. You could also up their power usage or even make them so they have to be manned. That way the person manning them will take damage too. This also makes more sense in a Rimworld type of situation, i mean an auto turret is quite a complex piece of kit! i doubt my oaf and a couple of other random people could build one quite so effi

• make turrets much more expensive but increase HP.
• Limit the amount of turrets that can be built.
• make them unpredictable whilst being fired, or just altogether. (increase repair damage rate)
• Adjust the power needed to operate them.
• Remove the visual range.
• Add a power surge to the rest of your base whilst the turrets in operation, ie nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating.
• Add the need for a capacitor next to the turret to account for more power usage. (a simple battery)
• Make it so they have to be manned, or a colonist within a certain vicinity of the turret, or even assign a colonist to it like the beds.
• Add upgrade paths and make upgrades cost (more) metal. (I currently dont do any research because its pretty pointless)

IMHO:
It's too extreme and some of the points don't make any sense (eg. "remove visual range" or "make them unpredictable" or "nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating").

And if there are any manned turrets - they shouldn't consume any power at all, or very little of it. (these are kinda like manned HMGs. In real life they don't consume any power at all)

Quote from: Sky_walker on November 07, 2013, 09:00:41 AMAnd if there are any manned turrets - they shouldn't consume any power at all, or very little of it. (these are kinda like manned HMGs. In real life they don't consume any power at all)

In real life we don't crash on abandoned planets either ;)

But I'm afraid you're wrong on this one - the question is not if in real life HMG nests use power but if they use state of the art technology. And yes, they do. While handguns and small arms of times past are still popular and it's reasonable to assume it won't change, nested guns are a different category - a military one rather than a personal one. This is well enough to excuse turrets being on completely different level than antique firearms - because while in the badlands they would be still very popular, there is a huge gap between personal use (equipment) and military use (building defensive line). So we can safely assume colonists would not be able to quite cut it at constructing fully functional firearms of their own at first, but would be more than able to upgrade their nests with a little plating or aiming systems or anything else, and thus - being forced to run them by mechanical drives, and thus needing electricity for them.

And such an explanation is all you need and more - after all, there is real-life logic and game logic, and game logic works on matters "how to balance the ruleset" and not "how to replicate real life".

Sorry Galileus but I don't get your point. While replicating real life is not an obligation, I have trouble accepting the idea of lost colonists being able to build an automated turret from scratch on day one (not to mention solar panels or nutrient paste dispenser, but that's another story) while they have to wait for traders (or dead raiders) to get 20th century personal firearms.

Oh, and BTW, hi everyone ^^ (first post here)

Yeah, it's not a problem of feasibility within the game world it's just that these turrets just aren't thematically appropriate for the game. At least the early game anyways, maybe they can come back in the endgame along with miner bots and other robotic stuff they may develop sentience and try to kill all humans.

But as the game stands (fledgling frontier colony simulator) the most appropriate defenses for a settlement are ramshackle perimeter walls sand bag pillboxes and watchtowers made out of rough cut wood and corrugated metal. This is based on the assumption that raiders get their shit toned down and/or become more civil and less likely to risk their lives to kill a few refugees, better defensive options(MG nests, field guns) as well as a progression for building materials: sandbag and plywood box fort--> Concrete and sanbag pillbox---> Reinforced concrete bunker (stupidly expensive and likely impractical)

Quote from: GenMcMuster on November 07, 2013, 03:41:00 PM
Yeah, it's not a problem of feasibility within the game world it's just that these turrets just aren't thematically appropriate for the game. At least the early game anyways, maybe they can come back in the endgame along with miner bots and other robotic stuff they may develop sentience and try to kill all humans.

But as the game stands (fledgling frontier colony simulator) the most appropriate defenses for a settlement are ramshackle perimeter walls sand bag pillboxes and watchtowers made out of rough cut wood and corrugated metal. This is based on the assumption that raiders get their shit toned down and/or become more civil and less likely to risk their lives to kill a few refugees, better defensive options(MG nests, field guns) as well as a progression for building materials: sandbag and plywood box fort--> Concrete and sanbag pillbox---> Reinforced concrete bunker (stupidly expensive and likely impractical)

We also need pillow forts.

No Raidurz Allowed!

IMHO that idea got it better: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=650.0

Quote from: cidjikai on November 07, 2013, 03:08:12 PM
Sorry Galileus but I don't get your point. While replicating real life is not an obligation, I have trouble accepting the idea of lost colonists being able to build an automated turret from scratch on day one (not to mention solar panels or nutrient paste dispenser, but that's another story) while they have to wait for traders (or dead raiders) to get 20th century personal firearms.

Missed my point - my explanation was on how it could be explained why turrets consume power (and they should - it's a clear balancing mechanic and allows for counter-measures). It was all theoretical and working on assumptions future turrets won't be automated but manned, and did not touch the matter of actually building them.

But that's easy enough too. We're talking about escapees in a escape-pod that was clearly designed to survive re-entry. Such a pod would have necessities and tools for survival - and as we're in badlands, it only stands for reason defence would be one of these necessities. But at the same time while there could be a database allowing for building of automated defensive structures (or manned, if the change flies), there definitely won't be no XX/XXI weaponry or even any personal weaponry at all. It also stands to reason a high-grade weaponry would need more complicated facilities to produce than simple and crude survival tools delivered with the drop-pod.

Seriously, I assume the currently available turret is an automated firearm (using gunpowder based ammo) ; under this statement, I can't see why building personal firearms would be impossible from scratch (blueprints will be more or less the same and since these colonists seems to be brainiacs able to guess how to design explosives, hydroponic stuff and more I can't see why it'd be problematic to adapt these for a personal use) ; plus, the building tools right now allow to make solar panels seconds after landing on the remote moon, so the technical level to make pistol parts is clearly available.

Note that I hope some drastic changes about this when the game reaches beta/ready to launch status : the easy building ability showed in pre-alpha (which is necessary to get a taste of the basic game mechanics) has to evolve into something harsher in the future (I loved someone's suggestion about first using the pods as a source of energy and/or spare parts to build the low tech core of the starting colony)

Quote from: Sky_walker on November 07, 2013, 09:00:41 AM
IMHO:
It's too extreme and some of the points don't make any sense (eg. "remove visual range" or "make them unpredictable" or "nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating").

And if there are any manned turrets - they shouldn't consume any power at all, or very little of it. (these are kinda like manned HMGs. In real life they don't consume any power at all)

I did put 'either or' meaning they are suggestions and dont all have to be used together.
Remove visual range = the yellow circle that shows the range of a turret when placing. This helps stop people placing them in the arc formation for tunnel defences.
Make them unpredictable = i probably should have put unreliable.
Nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating = Isnt this self explanatory? If they take huge amounts of power to operate, your not gonna build many..

Quote from: Sky_walker on November 07, 2013, 03:47:53 PM
IMHO that idea got it better: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=650.0

Im pretty sure i put manned turrets?

Though all in all its good to see everyone else also thinks the turrets are a little too much as they stand now :).


Edit*

Quote from: cidjikai on November 07, 2013, 04:22:37 PM
Note that I hope some drastic changes about this when the game reaches beta/ready to launch status : the easy building ability showed in pre-alpha (which is necessary to get a taste of the basic game mechanics) has to evolve into something harsher in the future (I loved someone's suggestion about first using the pods as a source of energy and/or spare parts to build the low tech core of the starting colony)

This is something i was trying to get at in my first post, that although this thread is about toning down the turret problem, it can also be applied to many other things in Rimworld.

I definitely like the idea of manned turrets.. basically any machine gun, even a world war 1 age one with hand crank etc, could be converted to a mounted gun. I'd prefer that these not only require someone to control them but for more complex, purpose built gun turrets that they require belt-fed ammo, meaning that it would require you to purchase (or manufacture) belt magazines to arm them.

Auto-turrets could be something that is researched and developed in the end-game though.. or perhaps if one of the colonists is a mechanical genius (trait) for example.. but yeh, manned turrets don't seem far fetched at all.. they seem quite logical.

Quote from: light487 on November 07, 2013, 04:40:33 PM
I definitely like the idea of manned turrets.. basically any machine gun, even a world war 1 age one with hand crank etc, could be converted to a mounted gun. I'd prefer that these not only require someone to control them but for more complex, purpose built gun turrets that they require belt-fed ammo, meaning that it would require you to purchase (or manufacture) belt magazines to arm them.

Auto-turrets could be something that is researched and developed in the end-game though.. or perhaps if one of the colonists is a mechanical genius (trait) for example.. but yeh, manned turrets don't seem far fetched at all.. they seem quite logical.

Can't wait for weapon dealing ships selling you good old MG42s ^^

Speaking of manufacturing ammo belts... ahhh, ammunition as a resource, need to reload or even semi-realistic reload system (loosing left bullets when forced reload). The never-ending story of six-bullets left and six enemies standing <3 Also a powerful tool to balance hi-tech guns.

And when we're at it, shells as a new kind of dirt. Cleaning up your house after an intense firefight would be simply awesome :D

I really like the idea of manned turrets, and watchtowers, too. I think giving turrets a research tree to get to the current automated turrets is a great idea, along with giving them small HP bumps along the way. Maybe even make it so you have to research them before you can build them at all.

Another thing I think that would make turrets a bit more of a gamble than they are now is to have them shoot flaming debris when they pop. The debris would be thrown randomly in, say, a 10 tile radius. It would shake up combat and make the player have to react to fires in parts of their base away from the firefight. Or perhaps they would cause a power surge when the were destroyed that could short circuit batteries, walls, or anything electronic and attached to the grid.

I would hate to see turrets go, I enjoy using them. Hopefully we can figure something out to make them more interesting and less of a crutch.

Quote from: Oranda on November 07, 2013, 07:07:30 AMYes, the basics need to be coverd, guard towers and pillboxes all the way.

I was going to propose that turrets require an operator, but this is even better.  Add my vote.

Another thing about pillboxes: This would open the door to fixed mounts for weapons, along with heavier weapons in which to mount them. 

Guard Tower: 360 degree fire arc, low hitpoints, damage split to colonist 50/50.  Can hold one colonist.  Light (man portable) weapons only.  Requires 5 metal, 20 wood (yes, I'm assuming more resource types being added soon).

Standard Bunker: 135 degree fire arc, medium hitpoints, damage split to colonist 30/70 (bunker takes most of the damage).  Can hold two colonists.  One medium (mounted) weapon spot, second colonist only gets to use what they can carry.  Requires 20 metal, 5 wood, 20 concrete.

Hardened Pillbox: 90 degree fire arc, massive hitpoints, damage split to colonist 95/5.  Can hold one colonist.  One heavy weapon mount (think .50cal or rocket launcher).  Requires 20 metal, 5 wood, 40 concrete.

Advanced Tech: 

Hardened Tower.  Looks like giant termite mound.  360 fire arc, medium hitpoints, damage split 30/70, hold one colonist and one medium weapon mount.  Requires 10 metal, 25 wood, and 40 concrete.


Note that I am not really in favor of turrets being removed entirely.  Turrets already have two inherent weaknesses that seriously offset their advantages.  Namely, that they suck power and second that they explode like an atomic bomb when they die.  Currently, the only way to keep a turret from blowing up your own base is to park them far away from everything - and that requires Power Conduits being left out in the open and exposed.  Any explosive using enemy will usually end up cutting their power in the first shot, intentional or not.

Manned bunkers and towers, however, would not require power nor is there any reason for them to explode when destroyed.  So this gives them an inherent advantage over turrets, with their disadvantage being that yes, you have to man them with colonists and thus put them at more risk than a regular turret would.

Being that's the case, I see no reason why both technologies can't exist side-by-side because when you consider this comparison you will see that they actually balance out against each other.  You can put your robot turret far away from base and hope that you don't get hit by a radiation storm ten seconds after the raiders launch their attack (Yes, I've had this happen.  Result = Game Over) or you can mount a wall of bunkers right up against your base and hope that they didn't bring too many rocket launchers or molotovs.

Point being here that you would have options and variations in tactics beside "Spam the One Turret Everywhere and Hope it Works."  A proper base defense would then, in all likelihood, be some sort of combination of the two systems: Turrets for perimeter defense and bunkers closer to home.

Quote from: NephilimNexus on November 07, 2013, 07:15:37 PMTurrets already have two inherent weaknesses that seriously offset their advantages.  Namely, that they suck power and second that they explode like an atomic bomb when they die.

If that would only be the case. A minimal spacing fixes the explosions problem and pillboxes stop these pesky explosives throwers. The power is also rarely a problem, and people even came up with closed off circuits charged up once and then reserved only for turrets. As it is now, auto-turrets are godly powerful.

So, Instead of remove turret completely. The OP suggests to make them useless/none-feasible instead?

You know what, you want players to build less turrets? just increase their bloody explosion radius to 5 (from 3), and there you go.

Quote from: Kender on November 07, 2013, 10:13:55 PM
So, Instead of remove turret completely. The OP suggests to make them useless/none-feasible instead?

You know what, you want players to build less turrets? just increase their bloody explosion radius to 5 (from 3), and there you go.

I see youve mastered the art of discussion o0

The point is i (and others) was brain storming ideas to remove the ability to build lots of turrets. Tynan said hes on the verge of removing them, so either help find a way to convince him to let them stay or just agree they should be removed.

I stick to my point.

So, pillbox, bunkers, manned turret. They are still in the category of 'Turret'. The core of this so called 'Turret problem' is still there.

Let's recall what was the 'Turret Problem' again. Yes, they are too good in base defense, but why do we need them in the first place. Oh, right, the unlimited raider parties that constantly thrown at your colony, which always outnumbers you. No matter what are you trying to add to this game to replace turret, the problem is still there, raider-party that outnumbers you are coming and you need superior fire power to survive.

I don't know which part reminds me more of tower defense, the turrets? or the enemies that comes wave after wave to your base?

PS: Colonist with a pistol is a mobile turret too, you know.

Agreed, so long as we keep getting zerged by endless swarms of raiders... well, I'll just leave this here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU)

Just a strange idea from me - What if you had to research the turrets you have now, and the initial ones are just a few servos and a gun strapped in in a 1x1 area? Would certainly give the massive amount of guns laying about a use. Perhaps having to research different mountings (Grenade Launcher, High-Stability Mounting [for M-24s]) and be able to upgrade the turret armor in a 'Quick, patch this on' kind of way. Gun Turret Cooling, then, could give, say, a 10% decrease in fire time, the High-Stability Mounting would increase accuracy for all weapons.. There could be a Camo Sheet upgrade that lets you make it so the turrets are harder for the raiders to see (They need to get closer). The turrets wouldn't get as good as someone with a 15 in shooting, but they would be some help.
Then, once you research everything, you get the turrets that are here now, or possibly something different - Able to mount two weapons? Either way, that's when you'd have the turrets that run the risk of the bigger explosion, jamming (Could be a Fun event to have happen), or just plain draw more power. Or perhaps they can only mount heavy weapons that you would have to either buy from a weapons supplier or get from a Heavy Weapons Squad of raiders. (Colonists could use these too, but they would have to grab them whenever drafted and would move slower when carrying them).

Just my thoughts on the matter. Also, the Heavy Turrets would cost.. I dunno, 600-700 metal to build? Where the Light Turrets would cost the same as they do now, with a grenade's explosion radius when they get blown up.

Maybe the different things for the turrets (Armor, camo, etc) would simply be different bases for the turret.

A huge part of this problem is people who meta game...Whenever any game is played that way (finding / using the absolute best ways to death with everything) the game will of course be easy. For me, I had 5 turrets knocked out by a large raider rush, with people nearby sniping as well. Granted they weren't arranged in the "perfect" way, but people need to keep this in mind... catering to make the game hard to people who meta game isn't ALWAYS the best idea... Granted the multiple AIs might make it a non issue, but meta-gamers will always find ways to make some games easy.

Not necessarily hating on meta gamers, just pointing out that gearing the game to people who find the absolute best way to do everything, and do it ONLY that way is a bad idea.

QuoteA huge part of this problem is people who meta game...Whenever any game is played that way (finding / using the absolute best ways to death with everything) the game will of course be easy. ...

...gearing the game to people who find the absolute best way to do everything, and do it ONLY that way is a bad idea.

Can't agree more on this.
Leave the 'problem' as an option. If someone alone feels something is overpowered or wrong, don't use it. This is not a multiplier competition game, as least not yet.

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.

"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:

Quote from: Galileus on November 07, 2013, 07:13:45 AM
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.

Quote from: Galileus on November 08, 2013, 06:32:55 AM
"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. :)

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 ?)

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.

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.

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?

QuoteAnd 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.

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.

Quote from: Sundaysmile on November 07, 2013, 06:50:49 AM
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

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.

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.

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. ;D

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.

Quote from: Workload on November 09, 2013, 02:25:32 AM
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.

Hmm I can't figure out how to work the quote on here.
To Preduno yes very right about that but it does take a unit to use it so your down 1 person per turret, Making your front lines weaker of people

Also making them get no or 50% of shooting skill points
Oh and if the gun it gets smash it can blow up the console to set a fire but make this kinda rare 10% more if you like. Adding this can make a big impacted on a battle making a risk to use turrets.

I'm all for harder gameplay
Please let me know if there's more flaws to this. Cause I didn't think of the console blowing up till you told me it be cheap if they were far away safe :)

How about making turrets use "AI" chips, which are rare and valuable,  resource used for other stuff (eventually) and inheriently very limited (perhaps set in the coding so you cant possibly get more than x in y amount of time).

That way you can have a super defensible base with tons of metal, but you might only have enough AI chips to keep 2 / 3 turrets up at a time.

Perhaps the AI chips could be dropped by turrets, or just held as a static number (I guess almost like a level system for your electrical system?).

Either way, I think this would be a balanced way to do it, this way the way to get turrets can be directly controlled by the game AI by controlling how likely you encounter an AI chip.

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 08, 2013, 11:09:08 AM
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?

I think it depends on time, 500 riders doesnt mean they all come from the same place maybe some large rider faction will attack at a time, maybe pirate spaceships... who knows. in human history we've seen many strongholds been under attack constantly with stronger and better equipmen althou still unsuccessfully, so I belive riders would try to capture your base no matter what. maybe no the same raider group you killed 3 months ago, but some other might be interested.

Generally speaking, gigantic fields of graves occupied by hundreds of people who have tried and failed in the last five months are a good reason to say "You know what? Maybe we should go find someone less psychotic to raid."

I think you all have been thinking at the problem at the wrong way.

*short version*

Make the auto turrets expensive, unreliable and low accurate.
Make them costly to upgrade and maintain

*short version ended*

Since something has happened that made your spaceship crash on a deserted planet and only 3 people survived, there have to been some technology and machines that survive too.

Lets say the starting gear will be:

• Control panels, 1-3 units in various shapes that needs to be repaired before use. Out of this you can make communications console, research table, automated cannon console etc
• Military grade automated turret 1-3 units. They will be really good ones, easy to take out 3-5 raiders with small arms fire. They are military grade and should stand against 9mm and or up to 5.56. But when they are destroyed they are gone from the game. They need regular maintenance to work at 100% and they need ammunition too!
• Electronic panels 1-3 units. In order to produce new energy you're need to take parts from the down space craft and mend them into makeshift energy producing thingies like solar panels.

And some more tools. When you crash you really need to make do with what you have. The tier 1 stuff that you make is from debris from the downed spaceship is crude, inefficient and will break often. Like solar panels. The makeshift will only produce around 20-30% compared to the solar panels that are already in game.

The Tier 2 stuff is a mix from materials found on the planet and the downed spaceship. they will perform better but still be crude, breaks a lot and work very inefficient.

The materials from the downed spaceship will be a fix amount. So the goal will still be to become self sufficient and the higher tiers will have to be research either in a research lab or on the fly while making things or repairing stuff. A good scavenge can  yield various needed parts to make basic stuffs before fabrication you'er own materials.

Now to automated turrets. on the lower tiers they can only used as support and suppressing. They are makeshift and they are really bad (DO NOT RELY ON THEM, they will and gonna break when you're using them) , if the military grad auto cannons are destroyed the settlers can scavenge for parts to make the makeshift ones better. Anything from targeting to ballistics and so on. When they reach higher tiers they will become better. But instead of placing a blueprint you will have to mend or produce the required parts before you have a working cannon. Put a shotgun on a platform and lure your enemies inside your base, This way you can personalize it.

And i don't think you should or could be attacked before you make an communications console and send out a distress call. Why does anyone risk their life to attack a very small colony? Maybe scavengers? alternative you will have to find a distress beckon and shut it of to end the raids, or at least postpone them for a few days/weeks. And the raiders should have more diverse missions then just to erase you from the map. Everything from stealing supplies, to sabotage, to build their own base to harass you etc.

Auto cannons should be made late game, when you have to much else to do. Or work as an early defense but not nothing you rely on. I like the idea to depend on your settlers to defend your base, like pillboxes, trenches, barbed wire, sandbags, watchtowers and in late games, missile defense to fend of incoming spaceships and heavy lasers to fend of heavy mechs.

Lets have at least 2 raiders per settler and 5 raiders per auto turrets, so when you got 8 settlers and 5 auto turrets, the smallest force you will encounter is 39 raiders! Who will throw away his life? Even a raider values his/hers life.

The last thing is that EVERY weapon in game should require ammunition!

Quote from: cidjikai on November 07, 2013, 04:22:37 PM
Seriously, I assume the currently available turret is an automated firearm (using gunpowder based ammo) ; under this statement, I can't see why building personal firearms would be impossible from scratch (blueprints will be more or less the same and since these colonists seems to be brainiacs able to guess how to design explosives, hydroponic stuff and more I can't see why it'd be problematic to adapt these for a personal use) ; plus, the building tools right now allow to make solar panels seconds after landing on the remote moon, so the technical level to make pistol parts is clearly available.

Note that I hope some drastic changes about this when the game reaches beta/ready to launch status : the easy building ability showed in pre-alpha (which is necessary to get a taste of the basic game mechanics) has to evolve into something harsher in the future (I loved someone's suggestion about first using the pods as a source of energy and/or spare parts to build the low tech core of the starting colony)

I agree, instead of a turret it should be a gun generating building. Consumes metal in exchange for more guns. You can research to get it to build better guns.

It's been said before but the  real problem is the AI. Currently, they just charge in seeking cover but that's it. They behave like the AI in a tower defence game, hence the best way to defend against them is tower defense mechanics. If they became smart enough to render any number of unsupported turrets useless you would be forced to use better, more well rounded strategies.

I didn't see it mentioned, but straightforward option would be to make turrets only available from trading ships.

• It makes them valuable without increasing cost
• It lets people opt-in to the story if the traders are available
• It forces players to have alternatives if the traders don't come by
• It explains how a simple oaf can acquire one
• finally, it lets the story AI create a feast/famine dynamic making people change their strategy mid-game

I'll say it once again - any linear buff/debuff ain't gonna cut it. This block you off on so many accounts it's insane. With turrets available only from traders you rush head-on into game start moment, when turrets are mostly what separates you from hoards of hungry raiders. It bottlenecks the options, making a defence an outcome of trade. It could work, but it's a cheap and dirty hotfix. There's also problem of late game. And if you limit the amount of towers - again, it's a cheap band-aid hotfix. And these like to accumulate - the more such band-aids you make, the more of a mess is the whole balance.

An elegant way to balance things is when numbers are simply aftermath of the solution - because the solution works on a different level. This is why manned turrets, turrets that require support and ways for raiders to address the problem themselves are my favorite approaches to this matter. The numbers are then irrelevant - you can tweak them to make them work completely aside from the problem. You want turrets cheap and numerous but weak? No problem, even if you spam them, the solution was implemented. You want turrets powerful and godly? Works as well, because turret spam was addressed. This is impossible with balancing through numbers, because then balancing through numbers IS a solution - change approach to the way turrets are supposed to work and it all falls apart.

*too lazy to read 4 whole pages*

I agree that the fight is much more fun with the colonists instead of turrets. But there are other uses for turrets besides shooting. Like i mentioned in the cheap ideas topic, it won't be too much trouble to turn the current turret into a spot/search light? I think a couple of searchlights could add a lot to the atmosphere.

Quote from: Nocebo on November 10, 2013, 11:39:22 AM
*too lazy to read 4 whole pages*

I agree that the fight is much more fun with the colonists instead of turrets. But there are other uses for turrets besides shooting. Like i mentioned in the cheap ideas topic, it won't be too much trouble to turn the current turret into a spot/search light? I think a couple of searchlights could add a lot to the atmosphere.

Oh hell yeah, boy! This idea gets Galileo's Badass Seal Of Approval Shaped Like A Chocolate Termite Barrow With A Cherry On Top!

Quote from: glenn on November 10, 2013, 08:04:22 AM
I didn't see it mentioned, but straightforward option would be to make turrets only available from trading ships.

• It makes them valuable without increasing cost
• It lets people opt-in to the story if the traders are available
• It forces players to have alternatives if the traders don't come by
• It explains how a simple oaf can acquire one
• finally, it lets the story AI create a feast/famine dynamic making people change their strategy mid-game

I mentioned it on page 3. :)

I agree with your points though, it makes turrets more rare, and you can't always count on the fact that you'll have enough at your disposal.

Quote from: Nocebo on November 10, 2013, 11:39:22 AMI agree that the fight is much more fun with the colonists instead of turrets.

And I disagree wholeheartedly. You know what happens when fights with colonists happen? Some raider sonofabitch lobs a grenade that gets lucky, and now one of my colonists is dead. To the AI storyteller, if that's the only casualty that happens in the battle, then it's still won, because it has cost me a finite and very difficult to acquire resource - a whole colonist - and it has lost nothing.

The storyteller has infinite raiders. Spending 200 raiders to kill one of my colonists is a defeat for me, because I've lost something I can't replace easily, and probably can't replace at all, given how bloody fickle capturing raiders alive is and how much of a crapshoot it is waiting on slave-traders to come by. (And I'm pretty sure that raiders are coded to fight to the death rather than get incapacitated the more colonists you have, as well as slave-traders not coming by at all if you have more than ten.)

So now I'm down an irreplaceable, precious resource. I'm going to deeply regret the loss of his labor, as he could be busy mining/sowing/whatever, when the raiders aren't here, and his rifle is now without hands to shoot it when they do show up again. It doesn't matter to the AI - it has no finite resources upon which to draw, it does not run out of money with which to train troops. It just arbitrarily drops more raiders on my map any time it feels like trying to screw me over again.

And worse, colonists are really, really crap in a fight. If I didn't have absolute control over the battlefield and the approach, I'd be slaughtered, given that the AI sends more raiders than you have colonists, and they tend to be both better shots than my colonists, and have destructive weapons that I'd be an idiot to attempt to use in my own defense, yet they are free to use.

Turrets, explosives, and baiting the raiders into traps are the only tools I have at my disposal to overcome odds like those, but they are effective.

So you keep saying you want to nerf them, what you're really saying is that you just want to make the game a lot harder and more painful to the player, and make it a lot more likely for him to lose by giving him no effective defensive options, forcing him into a stand-up fight against superior numbers of superior enemies who have limitless reinforcements, which will inevitably become a battle of attrition in the player's disfavor.

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 04:49:00 PM
*snip*

So you keep saying you want to nerf them, what you're really saying is that you just want to make the game a lot harder and more painful to the player, and make it a lot more likely for him to lose by giving him no effective defensive options, forcing him into a stand-up fight against superior numbers of superior enemies who have limitless reinforcements, which will inevitably become a battle of attrition in the player's disfavor.

Actually i have never thought of it in that way. I just want to feel more proud when my colonists defend their camp well. Not stupid when they had to fight when I could have just planted 200 mines outside. Because the game is still going to change a lot. I was merely hoping the unfairness of current raider attacks would change with time.

If it matters I will append to my statement that fighting with colonists is more fun, but the usefulness of automated defenses should not be overlooked. But be honest that it is -too- easy to use them (gun turrets) right now?

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 04:49:00 PMAnd I disagree wholeheartedly. You know what happens when fights with colonists happen? Some raider sonofabitch lobs a grenade that gets lucky, and now one of my colonists is dead

That's the point. You can run very successful colony that will still loose men from time to time. That's the point of playing with Raiders on. Otherwise why bother with raiders at all. Or why bother with the game at all? You know what? Let's don't. Let's just do that:



[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

Quote from: Nocebo on November 10, 2013, 05:04:19 PM

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 04:49:00 PM
*snip*

So you keep saying you want to nerf them, what you're really saying is that you just want to make the game a lot harder and more painful to the player, and make it a lot more likely for him to lose by giving him no effective defensive options, forcing him into a stand-up fight against superior numbers of superior enemies who have limitless reinforcements, which will inevitably become a battle of attrition in the player's disfavor.

Actually i have never thought of it in that way. I just want to feel more proud when my colonists defend their camp well. Not stupid when they had to fight when I could have just planted 200 mines outside. Because the game is still going to change a lot. I was merely hoping the unfairness of current raider attacks would change with time.

If it matters I will append to my statement that fighting with colonists is more fun, but the usefulness of automated defenses should not be overlooked. But be honest that it is -too- easy to use them (gun turrets) right now?

Not really. Frankly, without the mines, gun turrets simply serve as something to draw Raider fire while my colonists shoot them down. Even upgraded, they're utter shite at killing raiders on their own and they blow up way too easily, exploding like a goddamn blasting charge themselves.

And since something of mine is gonna get destroyed when I fight raiders, quite frankly I'd rather it be 375 metal worth of blasting charges than 480-640 metal worth of gun turrets, which is still preferable 1,800-2,200 to sky's the limit metal worth of basically irreplaceable colonist.

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 04:49:00 PM

So you keep saying you want to nerf them, what you're really saying is that you just want to make the game a lot harder and more painful to the player, and make it a lot more likely for him to lose by giving him no effective defensive options, forcing him into a stand-up fight against superior numbers of superior enemies who have limitless reinforcements, which will inevitably become a battle of attrition in the player's disfavor.

Well, we are in alpha and all thats likely to change. Theirs no point altering raider spawns until the core of the issue is solved, and thats turrets. If Tynan reduces the amount of raiders but leaves turrets how they are how does that solve anything? My guess would be the raider spawns have been increased to offer more of a challenge because of the turrets making it too easy, so sort the turrets so it dont offer a tower defence type playstyle which makes it easy to defend, the raiders can then be reduced as balance tweaks.

Whats happens then is you get the same kind of difficulty but without the tower defence playstyle, which is what Tynans expressed he wants.

The raiders are just a ripple effect of the core problem. If you offer the player something powerful but you want the player to have a challenge then you need to up the power of whatever it is your throwing at the player.

Whilst the turrets allow a tower defence type playstyle this gives the player something powerful.

I didn't read all five pages of this so forgive me if this has already been said. Why are the turrets not manually operated? You should be able to put a colonist in a seat on the turret and allow him or her to fire it and without the colonist it does not work. To me its an easy compromise because then you can only build so many turrets due to only having so many colonist and it still puts you on edge because your colonist could die if it gets blown up.

The problem is raiders altogether. They run in and try to burn down everything you've built/murder all of your colonists. You can't bargain with them, you can't reason with them or try to recruit them.

They only exist to be a zerg-rushing lunatic horde. As long as that pressure exists, combat defense is going to be the single and sole concern for base-building. Making them smarter won't solve that. If turrets stop working, players will just use massive waffles to shoot helpless, bogged-down raiders. If raiders are changed so they stop pathing straight to the nearest colonist to murder him and start pathing to the nearest structure to set it on fire, then players will start building in the mountain exclusively. If raiders are changed so they shoot mines upon first seeing them, then players will just use hydroponics tables to make a zig-zag shooting gallery.

The core of the problem is that combat is the problem. Combat screws with all of the player's plans, and it's the primary reason for a fort to fail and game over to happen. Therefor, players are going to do everything in their power to minimize the amount of combat they have. Nerfing the tools they have at their disposal to effectively defend themselves won't change that core requirement - "Survive combat with as little damage to me and my things as possible." And you're never going to change that core requirement, because contrary to what DF players tell themselves, losing is not fun. If the player doesn't yet know how to play, it can be a learning experience, but it's not fun. If they already know how to play and simply lost because they couldn't get everything set up in time/lost their most effective tools/raiders were patched specifically to work around the most effective solutions, then it's a kick in the crotch.

Quote from: Lothar on November 10, 2013, 05:37:38 PMI didn't read all five pages of this so forgive me if this has already been said. Why are the turrets not manually operated? You should be able to put a colonist in a seat on the turret and allow him or her to fire it and without the colonist it does not work. To me its an easy compromise because then you can only build so many turrets due to only having so many colonist and it still puts you on edge because your colonist could die if it gets blown up.

No, no, NO! Putting colonists inside fucking explosive barrels with crap-ass guns pointing out is not a solution! It's another fucking nerf, and an unneeded one!

Players wouldn't be relying on turrets and explosive highways of death so much if they didn't need to, but they do! So players do. Stop trying to kick the player in the crotch for playing effectively!

Quote from: Lothar on November 10, 2013, 05:37:38 PM
I didn't read all five pages of this so forgive me if this has already been said. Why are the turrets not manually operated? You should be able to put a colonist in a seat on the turret and allow him or her to fire it and without the colonist it does not work. To me its an easy compromise because then you can only build so many turrets due to only having so many colonist and it still puts you on edge because your colonist could die if it gets blown up.

This idea seems to be the favourite and i think this plus increasing the price of a turret dramatically but then balancing the hp or stop it from exploding (so people feel confident enough to use them) could be the first steps to help solve the problem. Though this would probably take some time for Tynan to implement.

@shadowdragon
Just plonking a colonist in a turret the way it stands now wouldnt work, other balancing issues would need to be addressed too like i mentioned above so stop freaking out man.

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 05:42:48 PMThis idea seems to be the favourite and i think this plus increasing the price of a turret dramatically but then balancing the hp or stop it from exploding (so people feel confident enough to use them) could be the first steps to help solve the problem. Though this would probably take some time for Tynan to implement.

Only if the turret:
a: Does not explode or otherwise kill the occupant when the turret is destroyed.
b: Is not stupidly combat-ineffective. It's a goddamned mounted LMG, it should be spewing hot death, fully automatic, and suppressing the hell out of every raider it sees. Being caught in open terrain by a spray of machine gun fire shouldn't be an "Oh shit, run towards it and melee it to death!" situation, it should be an "Awh fuck! Get into cover NOW!" situation. One turret should be capable of mowing down an entire mob if they face it clumped up together under its effective range and out of over.
c: Does use the colonist's own shooting skill, so you can put your assassins, space marines and pirates in it, so the turret isn't so fucking laughably ineffective.

Well thats idea behind the thinking, i think. But please re-read the quote in the first post to remind you what this thread is about.
Its not really about balance, that will come in time, but about the fact Tynan himself wants to remove turrets because of the playstyle they introduce and no matter what you do to anything else, if you keep the turrets how they are now the tower defence playstyle will never change!!

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 05:53:18 PMWell thats idea behind the thinking, i think. But please re-read the quote in the first post to remind you what this thread is about.
Its not really about balance, that will come in time, but about the fact Tynan himself wants to remove turrets because of the playstyle they introduce and no matter what you do to anything else, if you keep the turrets how they are now the tower defence playstyle will never change!!

If you're under constant attack from raiders, defending your home with goddamned turrets is a good idea. Hell, I'd defend it with cannons! And mortars, and rocket launchers, and landmines everywhere, and sandbags and barbed wire and fighting pits and trenches. It would look more like Echo Base or something along the Sigfried Line than a nice rustic outdoorsy settlement.

But we can't build that. So we build something as close to that as we can. Taking that away is just a kick in the crotch.

Sorry but either your not reading what i put properly or just not understanding.

Tynan has stated he wants to remove turrets because of the playstyle it creates, alot of people agree. This is because of the tower defence playstle.
So the easy solution,
Remove the turrets,
Remove the sandbags,
Balance the raider spawns to fit.

If you want to keep the turrets then come up with a solution for the problem were talking about. Anything else is irrelevant at this point in time. I guess the same will come with sandbags down the line too, but thats for another thread.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE RAIDS, TUNE DOWN DIFFICULTY FOR YOU INSTEAD THAN FOR EVERYONE ELSE!

SERIOUSLY! You're spamming the forum with idea no-one seems to agree with! Take a hint already!

WE LIKE OUR COMBAT! So if anyone would be to ladykick... it would be you!

Produno - ignore him. He openly asks for no-combat game, yet refuses to even notice he can just lower the difficulty. He openly asks for more OP mechanics that will allow him to survive with no losses and no sweat EVERY TIME.

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 05:42:48 PM

Quote from: Lothar on November 10, 2013, 05:37:38 PM
I didn't read all five pages of this so forgive me if this has already been said. Why are the turrets not manually operated? You should be able to put a colonist in a seat on the turret and allow him or her to fire it and without the colonist it does not work. To me its an easy compromise because then you can only build so many turrets due to only having so many colonist and it still puts you on edge because your colonist could die if it gets blown up.

This idea seems to be the favourite and i think this plus increasing the price of a turret dramatically but then balancing the hp or stop it from exploding (so people feel confident enough to use them) could be the first steps to help solve the problem. Though this would probably take some time for Tynan to implement.

@shadowdragon
Just plonking a colonist in a turret the way it stands now wouldnt work, other balancing issues would need to be addressed too like i mentioned above so stop freaking out man.

Ya relax a little bit shadow there would obviously have to be other balances to it like the hp of the turret would have to be increased so it does not explode after two shots and such. As it stands now though the turrets make it so there is no risk to your colonist which from what the dev has said is not what he wants the game to be about. He wants you to be scared of losing your colonist and having a mine field with 20 turrets after just does not do that.

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 06:22:48 PMSorry but either your not reading what i put properly or just not understanding.

I both read and comprehend; I reject the entire premise!

QuoteTynan has stated he wants to remove turrets because of the playstyle it creates, alot of people agree. This is because of the tower defence playstyle.

And if he does that, I'll hate this fucking game forever. Constant raids not only bore me, they aggravate and enrage me. That's why in DF, I seldom bother having fighters, I just use Boatmurdered-style deathtraps to kill everything that dares march on my fortress.

Because I don't want to fucking deal with it. I like them as a nice nuisance that hangs around for a bit, preventing trade, then realizes that I'm not coming out there and they're definitely not getting in here and so they sod off.

QuoteSo the easy solution,
Remove the turrets,
Remove the sandbags,
Balance the raider spawns to fit.

Remove turrets and sandbags? You'd make the game unplayable! You're a bloody lunatic.

QuoteIf you want to keep the turrets then come up with a solution for the problem were talking about. Anything else is irrelevant at this point in time. I guess the same will come with sandbags down the line too, but thats for another thread.

Solution: Embrace "Turret Defense" as a perfectly valid response to endless raiders. Machine gun turrets that spit out endless hot lead, mortar turrets that lob explosives over walls if they have a spotter, tall platforms that let colonists with snipers fire over unroofed walls with practical impunity, barbed wire that blocks movement but offers no cover whatsoever. Let the raiders come, if they feel like throwing themselves suicidally into the jaws of defeat!

Let the people who don't want those things simply not build those things.

Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 06:24:16 PM
Produno - ignore him. He openly asks for no-combat game, yet refuses to even notice he can just lower the difficulty. He openly asks for more OP mechanics that will allow him to survive with no losses and no sweat EVERY TIME.

Heheh, i know it gets boring trying to explain the same thing over and over and over again for the small minority. Luckily most people understand the problem and want to help make the game as fun as it can be by offering solutions.

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 06:29:49 PM

Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 06:24:16 PM
Produno - ignore him. He openly asks for no-combat game, yet refuses to even notice he can just lower the difficulty. He openly asks for more OP mechanics that will allow him to survive with no losses and no sweat EVERY TIME.

Heheh, i know it gets boring trying to explain the same thing over and over and over again for the small minority. Luckily most people understand the problem and want to help make the game as fun as it can be by offering solutions.

You're not offering solutions at all. You're offering to make the game head-banging-on-wall frustrating and angering.

And no, "Turn down the difficulty" doesn't help. Because that turns down everything! Part of the fun is designing defensive positions that can, in fact, chew up entire zerg-rushes of idiots with rifles without taking casualties.

Or did you not think of that? That I might like seeing hordes of idiots mowed down like so much wheat? That for me, the challenge isn't in "losing is fun" kicks to the crotch, but in making defenses that kick "losing is fun" right in the crotch.

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 06:28:39 PM

Solution: Embrace "Turret Defense"

Let the people who don't want those things simply not build those things.

Lol. Seriously, im banging my head against a brick wall here!

Quote from: Produno on November 10, 2013, 06:29:49 PMHeheh, i know it gets boring trying to explain the same thing over and over and over again for the small minority. Luckily most people understand the problem and want to help make the game as fun as it can be by offering solutions.

I think I'll just imagine Shadow whining on X-COM being unbalanced in Ironman Mode because his people get shot at. That should lower my blood pressure! :P

Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 06:35:45 PMI think I'll just imagine Shadow whining on X-COM being unbalanced in Ironman Mode because his people get shot at. That should lower my blood pressure! :P

You know what's a good game of X-COM? Turtling through the level, moving from cover to cover, annihilating sectoids and mutons as they come into view, and if you do manage to drop everything in the crapper, saying "fuck that" and reloading.

So why for fuck's sake would I play in ironman mode? Huh?

Remember: Kicking the diverse opinion is not the way to improve a videogame.

Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 10, 2013, 06:37:42 PM

Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 06:35:45 PMI think I'll just imagine Shadow whining on X-COM being unbalanced in Ironman Mode because his people get shot at. That should lower my blood pressure! :P

You know what's a good game of X-COM? Turtling through the level, moving from cover to cover, annihilating sectoids and mutons as they come into view, and if you do manage to drop everything in the crapper, saying "fuck that" and reloading.

So why for fuck's sake would I play in ironman mode? Huh?

For the challenge? that's the whole point so your people actually mean something it makes you appreciate each person and makes you play differently than you would if their lives don't matter.

Best part in X-com Ironman? Having Veteran of the Month, Ferdinand (or was it Fritz?) The Shotgun Ninja run up to a Chryssalid in open terrain, and shock him with a stun gun. Darn, the tears of joy!

Turning an desperate situation into decisive victory is something you can't do in god mode or with save abuse, as no situation is desperate.

Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 07:47:51 PMBest part in X-com Ironman? Having Veteran of the Month, Ferdinand (or was it Fritz?) The Shotgun Ninja run up to a Chryssalid in open terrain, and shock him with a stun gun. Darn, the tears of joy!

Aaaand you've just proven that you know not of whence you speak of.

Chryssalids can't be shocked! First time I tried to capture one, I was wondering why it wasn't letting me shock the damn thing, then I realized it must not have been a shockable enemy. And then I had my close quarters support ninja out in the open next to a melee terrorbeast and had a real "oh crap" moment.

After reading through this I have two ideas:

Make turrets harder to kill, but limit them in some way that you only get like two or three, forces the player to place them smart.

Stop them from blowing up and burning everything to the ground. Seriously, since when do turrets blow up? It's like cars blowing up in movies.

And finally (three for the price of two because I am generous) make the raider AI smarter, though I understand that it is not so easy as it sounds to construct good AI.

It may have been suggested before, but my game is running in the background right now and I don't entirely trust them to not run away with my metal. I still think the best solution to the turret problem, if he leaves them in, is to limit their range of movement. 360 degrees, while nice, is a bit much. Cutting it to 120 degrees would make more sense, but I'd even suggest/be cool with 80 or 60 degrees, though the 60 degrees would have to have some compensation.

I dont know if this has already been sugested....

But why not just make the auto-turret a kit gun? that needs some kind of kit that only the weapons trader sells?

Gives the weapons trader something unique agian, makes turrets less disposable if you can only buy 1 or so per weapons trader if the next one even shows up...

And still lets you have some amount of automated defences.

Other solution: Make base destroying natural disaster events happen slightly (only slightly) more often, just enough for you to be forced to rebuild your defenses in a hurry on occasion. Your field of turrets now reduced to slag you have to clear away would definitely make people be more cautious about overloading a field with turrets.

You know what, if people hate turrets so much, just don't build them.

I don't want to rebuild everything once in a while outside over and over, even without building any of those turrets at all. It is not fun, and tedious.

You want give raiders a better chance. let them air strike your base first, if you built like 20 turrets or something.

Quote from: Stormkiko on November 11, 2013, 01:40:33 AM
It may have been suggested before, but my game is running in the background right now and I don't entirely trust them to not run away with my metal. I still think the best solution to the turret problem, if he leaves them in, is to limit their range of movement. 360 degrees, while nice, is a bit much. Cutting it to 120 degrees would make more sense, but I'd even suggest/be cool with 80 or 60 degrees, though the 60 degrees would have to have some compensation.

I don't think they so much need that..problem isn't the versatility of them, its that once a player has an abundance of metal / power, and isn't expanding as much, they can dump metal / power into getting dozens of guns.

I still think having a separate resource (like my previously mentioned AI chips) to be used for turrets IN ADDITION to metal would be the best balanced idea, as while you would still require metal, having more metal than an entire country wouldn't mean you could have 20 turrets without FIRST having 20 AI chips. Plus, I could see these chips being a good resource in the future for any other automated buildings.

And since the AI chips could be separate from metal, the in-game directors could limit the amount of chips able to be obtained, similar to the methods used to keep a colony from growing 30 strong, or such. (by turning off slave traders after x amount of colonists, and such.)

Quote from: Stormkiko on November 11, 2013, 01:40:33 AMPlus, I could see these chips being a good resource in the future for any other automated buildings.

Now, here's the flaw. If you do that, you end up with forcing player to decide between buildings with a limited stock. You still can overuse turrets, because AI chips would need to be in proper amount for turrets and other buildings. If you limit the amount of AI chips with that in mind, you limit the player in very artificial way. If you use AI chips for turrets only, you're adding a new resource only to explain a hard cap. Now, that's a LOT of complexity for no depth.

Not to mention hard caps are meh. We have some ideas that can soft cap it here.

You act like my idea simply COULD NOT work, which isn't true.

You are being a pessimist without even entertaining the idea, and you are assuming the absolute worst of all possibilities.

Quit acting like something is simply impossible to do, there's plenty of ways things could be handled, perhaps having a CPU for your base which total processing power is boosted every chip obtained. Certain things could take very low processing power (like automated lights based on motion detection) while things like turrets could use more processing power from the CPU. That is just one way you could prevent the "issues" you bring up, and there are countless others.

Quit being such a negative Nancy, please, it doesn't help the forums, and with a new game, exploring new ideas is something which is a natural, and good idea. If things don't work out? Fine, they can remove them, but besides extremely obvious bad ideas (Lets have nuke air strikes!) people shouldn't nay say without at least entertaining ideas first, or giving solid reasons why something would be detrimental to the game. (which yours aren't seeing as how I just explained how your reasons could be delt with in a reasonable way)

Quote from: mumblemumble on November 11, 2013, 05:32:20 AM
You act like my idea simply COULD NOT work, which isn't true.

You are being a pessimist without even entertaining the idea, and you are assuming the absolute worst of all possibilities.

Now, now.  We shouldn't be resorting to namecalling in here.  Let's not have this conversation devolve into a modern political debate, lol.

Really, I think that adding new gameplay elements that can more or less defeat turrets in a rock-paper-scissors fashion would add alot to gameplay.  Maybe stealth bandits or demo units armed with nothing more than a bullet resistant riot shield and a single explosive charge.  It would definitely be nice to be forced to send search parties to look for hidden enemies moving past your defensive line or to send out heavily armored melee knights to attack bullet-resistant enemies.  The game may be Firefly-themed, but I always grin at the idea of fending off guys with guns using ninjas, spear-wielding skirmishers, or even villagers armed with farm tools.

An entire series of alternative methods could be implemented to defeat turrets without having to modify the turret itself.  Having an EMP gun that only disables electronic devices and doesn't cause damage would work.  A deployable wall would also work, since it would block the turret's line of sight and would require colonists to go around the wall in order to get at the enemy. 
An even more involved, but far more useful method would be to modify the enemy AI to count how many enemy units died, where they died, and have subsequent raiding parties not use the same tactics or weapon loadout as those unsuccessful raiding attempts.  Right now, sending waves of snipers or kamikaze grenadiers would defeat many turret killzone layouts.

Tweaking gameplay elements might be good for a beta, but in the alpha stages of game development, it's about having the new gameplay elements, and having them work, rather than having them balanced just right.  The majority of players are going to abuse the turrets and make the game all about turret defense before proper balancing happens.  With the use of missiles and cannon shells, there's little doubt that turrets are going to be here to stay.  The real question at this point isn't how to change the turrets, but how to change the gameplay to most effectively add to the game and open up more gameplay options, rather than finding ways to limit them.  As much as I like the tactical combat that Tynan wants to aim for, I also appreciate the need to fulfill the needs of players that play with different playstyles.

mumblemumble - I've addressed the issues I see with your solution in - I believe - understandable manner. If you have questions or suggestions on how to fix them - you can just ask/write. If you don't understand what I mean - you can ask. You try to censor my input once again, because I take everything with a grain of salt - I'm sorry, but this is what I do and this will not change. I look for possibly best scenario to settle down with the closest thing to it I can find.

Now, I've already told you why I don't see your idea as solid - it's a problem with depth per complexity (situation where you add new rules that don't impact the depth and amount of options too much or even negatively) and hard cap per se. Hard caps (pre-determined "max of") are a low depth element that naturally limits game's potential - of course they are necessary every now and then - ok, a lot of the time - but in design one should struggle to remove as many of them as possible with elegant soft caps. Soft caps are caps that come out of mechanics and rulesets naturally - for example, if turrets would be in need of support teams (manned turrets as suppression fire instead of damage dealer - powerful, but not by themselves) it would actively limit the amount of turrets you can effectively use at once, while giving you the choice to overdo it anyway. You can go low on turrets, big on turrets, mix and match - but system cannot be abused and there is no hard cap telling the player "ok, that's enough now!".

I'm afraid your "solutions to solution" don't help - adding CPU power just to balance turrets is a great strain on complexity. It's and interesting idea to explore no less - I'll give you that. If you could refine that idea to bring a lot of depth for the complexity it eats (we add a whole new resource to manage!) - it can be even worth it. But instead of throwing it out there like it's enough - take your time to try and come up with a way to make it integral part of the game instead of a band-aid. If you manage to do that, you have yourself a very viable and interesting approach to the solution. But that's the catch - it's not enough to fix the problem for something to be a solution. Game design is a complex and intricate process, where simple approaches like band-aid patches and numbers balancing can doom the game by increasing complexity with no depth to add or binding developers hands.

murlocdummy -  rock-paper-scissors balancing? You mean perfect imbalance? Holy shit, boy, tell me you understand concepts of depth-per-complexity-per-buck and negative possibility space and I'll jump into your bed like a 20yo virgin on cok...a cola.

And seeing on how you catch on these things - would you mind terribly if I would ask you for a quick look at my sabotage idea (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=12.msg9620#msg9620)?

At this point i feel if i read all pages of this thread i would actually get more confused. What is the "turret problem" exactly?

I see a bunch of things all over the thread.

• Is it that Tynan wants to remove the turrets and we have to come up with a substitute worthy of replacing it for the gameplay's sake?
• Is it the fact they seem to be a little easy to use for defense at the moment?
• Or is it about some people that can not/don't want to play without them?

First two - Tynan wants the game to be harsh and losses to be unavoidable. As it is now all losses you can have with turrets are turrets. And yes, some people actually want easy mode for everyone, not just for themselves.

QuoteWhat is the "turret problem" exactly?

IMO, the problem is how people abuse raider's AI, by using well place turrets and carefully designed threshold/chock point to lead raider party into a disadvantaged location. Turrets work as both additional firepower and targets to redirect enemy fire from colonist to turret itself, fodders in some case.

The advantage of doing this is to lower the risk of losing essentially irreplaceable colonists in never ending gun-fights.

Remove turrets as you like, the core problem is the AI. It is so predictable, the only unknown is when and where they will land, after that we know exactly how the fight gonna be, as long as that does not change, player will find another way to abuse it soon enough.

Quote from: Kender on November 11, 2013, 10:52:09 AM

QuoteWhat is the "turret problem" exactly?

IMO, the problem is how people abuse raider's AI, by using well place turrets and carefully designed threshold/chock point to lead raider party into a disadvantaged location. Turrets work as both additional firepower and targets to redirect enemy fire from colonist to turret itself, fodders in some case.

The advantage of doing this is to lower the risk of losing essentially irreplaceable colonists in never ending gun-fights.

Remove turrets as you like, the core problem is the AI. It is so predictable, the only unknown is when and where they will land, after that we know exactly how the fight gonna be, as long as that does not change, player will find another way to abuse it soon enough.

This exactly, removing them wont help if the AI remains predictable, another stratagy will form soon enough.

So then a new topic should be started "The AI Problem". And this should be closed so there isn't anymore pointless pro-turret anti-turret arguing since it was just established the turrets aren't really the problem of "the turret problem"   :o

They are.

Quote from: lt_halle on November 11, 2013, 02:54:32 PM
There's a law in game design that states that if there is one solution to a problem that is always available to the player that is clearly superior to the rest (i.e. not limited by rare resources), the player will always choose that solution to solve the problem. If your game falls into this category, chances are it's a bad game, because most games that fall into this category are games in which not much thought was put in. Rimworld is an exception - it is still a good game despite this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed somehow.

Written about the underground bases, but applies to turrets even more than to caves.

But our solution to the problem in this case is the predictability of the AI. Which is being abused. I feel the turrets are just a lazy man's way to deal with the crappy AI at this point.

Quote from: Nocebo on November 11, 2013, 03:08:06 PM
But our solution to the problem in this case is the predictability of the AI. Which is being abused. I feel the turrets are just a lazy man's way to deal with the crappy AI at this point.

How? Are you saying Tynan is wrong about his own game? He stated he wants the turrets removed because they aid in a playstyle that the game design is not aimed towards. If you read the opening post of this thread you would know that. Hence the discussion, so AI or anything else has nothing to do with it because the discussion is about the turrets. If you want to talk about the AI then start a new thread about the AI, but we are still in alpha and the AI will still be worked upon to its a mute point.

Besides, giving the player an infinite amount of turrets that fire in a 360degrees radius is only ever going to be a problem for this type of game. Your answer is make the AI smarter? The more complicated you make something the more their is to go wrong. Just stating make the AI smarter is not a solution to the problem outlined. You also offer no explanations as to why keeping the turrets how they are but making the AI smarter would solve anything.

I don't really see a problem with the turrets at all to be honest. I just find the arguing pointless if the creator o the game already said turrets might be removed. So I did ask what "the turret problem" is according to the current talking inside the thread. I did not derail it. I merely wished to be updated because I don't expect you to keep the first post up to date and I hope you don't expect me to read X pages to share my opinion.

But AI has very much to do with turrets, because that is what the turrets are shooting at. Right?

From your reply I can't really figure out where your stand point is either. Do you want to keep the turrets? Do you want to get rid of them? Can you tell me exactly what the problem is? Because all I see is "Tynan want's to remove turrets." that is not a problem in my eyes. I am really really confused about the point of this thread. I asked what the problem was and from what I saw the problem isn't with the turrets being OP. But with the AI being weak.

...So, why exactly is it that a few random, ragtag bands of raiders feel like it's a good idea to attack a base bristling with fortifications and automated turrets, when all they have is a few rusty rifles and a grenade or two?

Yes, there's an AI problem. However, there's also a tech problem. I hope that sometime in the future, we will not be able to build high-tech automated turrets, comically explosive walls, and solar panels right off the bat. Instead you might have to use basic materials such as wood, stone, scrap, and homemade, improvised firearms in the early game. Where exactly are these colonists pulling schematics for remotely detonated mines and electric lights out of? In a survival situation, wouldn't you start with pitfall traps and campfires?

Sure, the escape pods and what bits and pieces of the ship you may be able to find would help, as well as offer a limited amount of advanced technologies and items. That said, not a whole lot is able to survive being blown up, re-entering the atmosphere, and hitting the ground at terminal velocity.... Especially in a society where they have something resembling nano-assemblers but can't make OSHA-certified wiring with that very same handwavium. Maybe the ship the colonists were on blew up because of an electrical fault, it's not all that much worse than Star Trek wiring. Maybe circuit breakers and fuses were never invented in this universe...

QuoteHow? Are you saying Tynan is wrong about his own game?

Quite the opposite actually, I believe Tynan understands his game and the problem perfectly.

If you read his reply carefully and thoroughly, you will find that he clearly presented a temporary solution. This is what he said:

QuoteI actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game. I'm even on the verge of cutting them. They take the fight away from the characters and make it a tower defense optimization game, which isn't what RW is supposed to be.

The issue at hand is degenerate defensive strategies, and my planned solution basically involves siege tactics that require players to send colonists out to take down camping groups of raiders who are bombarding them with artillery and somesuch. Take it from a defensive game to an offensive one.

Vehicles are also a problem, I'm afraid, just because handling them in a tile-based engine like RW's would be extremely difficult.

Hope this makes sense!

Notice the 2nd paragraph. It is clever. The solution in his mind is that, since the attackers can't adopt to players defense, then switch side, since players are surely more adaptive than AI. We are going to try to break AI's defense.

Since we can't bring turret in offense, it does not matter whether remove it or not. If it is useless, there is no need to have them at all.

Well, this does solve the problem, but I find it reeeeal hard to believe Tynan would completely resign from defensive battles.

Quote from: Galileus on November 11, 2013, 06:54:41 AM

murlocdummy -  rock-paper-scissors balancing? You mean perfect imbalance? Holy shit, boy, tell me you understand concepts of depth-per-complexity-per-buck and negative possibility space and I'll jump into your bed like a 20yo virgin on cok...a cola.

And seeing on how you catch on these things - would you mind terribly if I would ask you for a quick look at my sabotage idea (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=12.msg9620#msg9620)?

The perfect imbalance of your saboteur idea isn't quite there, since it relies on having to teleport the unit into the base.  I think that having a Stealth skill for Assassins would be more useful in terms of adding complexity to the game, but allowing for sufficient depth that doesn't rely on coding deus ex machinas.  Putting too much effort into simply creating events, rather than creating a new gameplay mechanic that naturally creates those events is a recipe for a design disaster, since it requires the development team to continuously have to create new events from scratch every time they want to make something new.  The whole success of Dwarf Fortress stems from the fact that it uses an intense number of calculations that the game processes at each time click in order to create events and situations without the creator having to individually code the event, its time, and its placement.  This, of course, requires several GB of RAM just to run a game with byte-sized text graphics.

Adding new gameplay mechanics throw entirely new cogs into the machine.  This not only causes newer, and more complex gaming strategies to emerge from players, but also destroys any previous strategies that they came up with.  Charcoal destroyed the need for torch hoarding methods in Minecraft, but added the ability to farm your own light source.  The spy decimated the stranglehold that engies held in creating impenetrable no-man's lands in Team Fortress 2, but added an entirely new character to use.  Despite being newer, more complex gameplay mechanics, they added greatly to the depth of the game by allowing the player to play around with and discover new methods of gameplay.  On the flip side, a great failure in adding complexity without adding proper depth for the player would be Dwarf Fortress, which is so ridiculously convoluted that new facets of play are totally and completely lost to players.  The fact that, to this day, only the most dedicated players could figure out, and only barely use and mitigate the Dwarf plague and infection mechanics is one of the many testaments to this kind of failure.

In order to think about adding elements to a game, it's important to think about what kind of effects can be predicted will happen, as well as adding a level of unpredictability that allows players to discover new playstyles on their own and reinvent the game on their own terms.  It's the success story of Minecraft, and giving Western players freedom, or at least the perception of it is exactly what Western customers want.  As for South Asians and Orientals, their psychology is completely different, and that warrants a discussion on a completely different thread.

Minecraft's method of giving players a perpetual perception of freedom was actually quite ingenious.  Notch essentially took the Infiniminer idea of infinitely generating worlds and made it into an actual world.  Players in most cultures would be able to play any given Minecraft game and get a sense that they're on an actual world.  Not a game world.  Not a world in the confines of a narrative.  And actual world that they can explore and there will always be something around each corner that the player hasn't seen, felt, touched, or lit on fire and exploded.  Especially the latter.

Again, I point to the benchmark game, Dwarf Fortress, with its Adventure Mode.  Despite the gameworld being limited, the sheer vastness of it allows for a feeling of exploring a great expanse of endless possibility.  The ultimate answer to negative possibility space is to create an algorithm that fills that negative possibility space with...more space.  Raiding parties that constantly change tactics, automatic equipment generation systems, a tech tree generation algorithm that generates incremental upgrades using the base upgrades implemented into the game, and being able to dig into different levels of ground and/or expanding outward with scouting parties.  The only thing that I haven't seen already implemented in a game is the tech tree generation algorithm, but for everything else, it supports the creation of a whole new world/world of play experience for the player to explore every time they are done exploring the current one.

I'm well aware of shortcomings of my idea - at the time being my goal was to create a bare shoulders skeleton for concept that could address tower defence problem, be easily implemented in the state as-in (restricted mostly to mechanics of low complexity (I'm in loss for right word in English - the computational complexity of algorithm and ease of implementation complexity)) and create a possibility to be refined into a proper perfect-imbalance mechanic. It's true stealth would take much higher standard than teleportation - but due to restrictions I put before myself I believe implementation of teleportation would be much easier task. After all - poorly implemented stealth system would be a design disaster and mechanically would result exactly in teleportation - with a much less player-friendly underlying mechanic. Too be perfectly sincere I simply don't know if such approach has any merit - as far as my belief and available data tells me it does, but I simply lack the in-depth informations needed to properly evaluate it, especially in alpha-opened case. The mechanic of spies identification tries to mirror what I've observed in the last exploration/colonisation era game from Anno franchise - I hope you'll forgive me lack of the exact name - and some other 99-ish RTS which name is long forgotten. It's aim is to engage player closer to the game in personal experience rather than rely on automated minions - while the biggest problem of this approach is obviously the chance of it being seen as element detrimental to natural flow of the game.

In any case I'm always grateful for input, as I rarely have a chance to talk to developers or enthusiasts that are actually aware of all the science behind the art. Or the art behind the science, however do you want to call it.

Quote from: murlocdummy on November 11, 2013, 05:18:33 PM

Quote from: Galileus on November 11, 2013, 06:54:41 AM

murlocdummy -  rock-paper-scissors balancing? You mean perfect imbalance? Holy shit, boy, tell me you understand concepts of depth-per-complexity-per-buck and negative possibility space and I'll jump into your bed like a 20yo virgin on cok...a cola.

And seeing on how you catch on these things - would you mind terribly if I would ask you for a quick look at my sabotage idea (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=12.msg9620#msg9620)?

The perfect imbalance of your saboteur idea isn't quite there, since it relies on having to teleport the unit into the base.  I think that having a Stealth skill for Assassins would be more useful in terms of adding complexity to the game, but allowing for sufficient depth that doesn't rely on coding deus ex machinas.  Putting too much effort into simply creating events, rather than creating a new gameplay mechanic that naturally creates those events is a recipe for a design disaster, since it requires the development team to continuously have to create new events from scratch every time they want to make something new.  The whole success of Dwarf Fortress stems from the fact that it uses an intense number of calculations that the game processes at each time click in order to create events and situations without the creator having to individually code the event, its time, and its placement.  This, of course, requires several GB of RAM just to run a game with byte-sized text graphics.

Adding new gameplay mechanics throw entirely new cogs into the machine.  This not only causes newer, and more complex gaming strategies to emerge from players, but also destroys any previous strategies that they came up with.  Charcoal destroyed the need for torch hoarding methods in Minecraft, but added the ability to farm your own light source.  The spy decimated the stranglehold that engies held in creating impenetrable no-man's lands in Team Fortress 2, but added an entirely new character to use.  Despite being newer, more complex gameplay mechanics, they added greatly to the depth of the game by allowing the player to play around with and discover new methods of gameplay.  On the flip side, a great failure in adding complexity without adding proper depth for the player would be Dwarf Fortress, which is so ridiculously convoluted that new facets of play are totally and completely lost to players.  The fact that, to this day, only the most dedicated players could figure out, and only barely use and mitigate the Dwarf plague and infection mechanics is one of the many testaments to this kind of failure.

In order to think about adding elements to a game, it's important to think about what kind of effects can be predicted will happen, as well as adding a level of unpredictability that allows players to discover new playstyles on their own and reinvent the game on their own terms.  It's the success story of Minecraft, and giving Western players freedom, or at least the perception of it is exactly what Western customers want.  As for South Asians and Orientals, their psychology is completely different, and that warrants a discussion on a completely different thread.

Minecraft's method of giving players a perpetual perception of freedom was actually quite ingenious.  Notch essentially took the Infiniminer idea of infinitely generating worlds and made it into an actual world.  Players in most cultures would be able to play any given Minecraft game and get a sense that they're on an actual world.  Not a game world.  Not a world in the confines of a narrative.  And actual world that they can explore and there will always be something around each corner that the player hasn't seen, felt, touched, or lit on fire and exploded.  Especially the latter.

Again, I point to the benchmark game, Dwarf Fortress, with its Adventure Mode.  Despite the gameworld being limited, the sheer vastness of it allows for a feeling of exploring a great expanse of endless possibility.  The ultimate answer to negative possibility space is to create an algorithm that fills that negative possibility space with...more space.  Raiding parties that constantly change tactics, automatic equipment generation systems, a tech tree generation algorithm that generates incremental upgrades using the base upgrades implemented into the game, and being able to dig into different levels of ground and/or expanding outward with scouting parties.  The only thing that I haven't seen already implemented in a game is the tech tree generation algorithm, but for everything else, it supports the creation of a whole new world/world of play experience for the player to explore every time they are done exploring the current one.

This guy knows whats up, I don't know much about game design but this made a lot of sense to me. That being said i do like The devs idea of  having to go out and take out raider camps because they are shelling the hell out of my base. It would add a lot of tension to the game when that was going on, but if we had a stealth skill with the assassin maybe we could use that to our advantage and use him to try and sabotage said artillery? That i think would be the best solution right there because it adds the tension of losing a colonist while also neutralizing the turrets in a fashion when you are not defending.

Exactly, change isn't entirely bad, its just change without thinking it over / making sure it works ok. Almost anything can work with the right adjustments.

Portal, and magicka are 2 examples, people said the math for making functional portals WOULDN'T work, early on in portal development, but they got it to work (partially cause they made the coding for the portals much much more "vague", and while its not noticeable in game-play, the vagueness of the math is what makes the portals function without crashing the game trying to calculate them)

Magicka was another game, where the magic system EASILY enabled someone to kill themselves / their friends within a few clicks if they didn't know the system, People said such a system would be absolutely DESPISED if the magic system was that way, but it turned into being one of the games biggest assets. (even overcoming the MASS of glitches on release).

Just because something is new doesn't mean it won't work, just means it hasn't been explored...yet.

As before, it's always important to be cognizant of the cog that you're throwing into the gears.  Being able to play around with new concepts without having to emphasize balancing issues is an important aspect of being in the alpha stage.  The game may languish somewhat for now, but at least you're creating new tools to work with.  The important part is figuring out whether or not a stealth system would even work before tweaking the parameters to get a proper balance going.  Not only that, but in implementing the stealth system, being able to have colonists and enemy using Assassin Knives or other melee weapons would also be an important new element to add and test out before modifying characteristics and parameters. 

Ideally, the stealth mechanics would undergo a proper series of line of sight and detection calculations that would allow for an entirely new gameplay aspect to arise during sieges in combination with the cover, body hauling, and cleaning mechanics:  tactical espionage action.

I think you guys were right before the turrets are fine it's the AI not understanding there's 20 guns on the side of a wall. The AI needs to know this and act on it. They should hang back from the wall, grenade it then have people with guns hang back a little then after the wall is down they take cover at the ruble. To spot anything to shoot. Kinda how a Player would do it but there's so many problems to this. Because they could just start shooting/bombing though your whole base.

well for stealth mechanics you wouldn't really need a knife just some frag grenades to throw in the bunker, I agree with everything else though.

Wow this thread has really gone off on a tangent.

Quote from: Workload on November 11, 2013, 06:57:17 PM
I think you guys were right before the turrets are fine it's the AI not understanding there's 20 guns on the side of a wall. The AI needs to know this and act on it. They should hang back from the wall, grenade it then have people with guns hang back a little then after the wall is down they take cover at the ruble. To spot anything to shoot. Kinda how a Player would do it but there's so many problems to this. Because they could just start shooting/bombing though your whole base.

This wouldnt work. They would need to get close enough to throw frags at your turrets, at which point your turrets would kill them. Yes they could blow up any walls you have and hide behind the rubble, but then its still AI vs automated turrets. No matter what you do to the AI the turrets in their current state still promote a tower defence type game. Im struggleing to see how people cant see this. Im not disputing the AI also needs to be tweaked plus other things but the turrets are one of the main causes for the tower defence playstyle and thats what this thread is about, not about balance. Its about the playstyle they encourage and having fully automated turrets with unlimited ammo that fire in 360 degrees is only ever going to promote that playstyle unless something is put in place to limit this. (hence the suggestions)

@Nocebo
I dont want the turrets removed, hence the reason for the thread, so we can come to a solution to keep everyone happy whilst allowing Tynan to keep to his original game design without having to remove the turrets. But most the people argueing are the ones saying leave the turrets how they are, but if Tynan wants to remove them because of a playstyle they encourage then surely if you want the turrets to stay you should try and come to a solution where they can stay without that encouragement??? Im not sure what people dont understand about this??

@kender
I dont think Tynan meant hes making the game all out offensive with no defensive! The problem will still be there on them times they do decide to attack you so that makes n difference. Besides if that was the case why would he even mention removing the turrets?

Anyway this thread has gone way beyond what was meant to be discussed/suggested that mods may aswell close it now. It was meant to be a place Tynan could read to give him ideas on ways to keep the turrets, but people spamming ''its the AI its the AI, theirs nothing wrong with the turrets'' is not a very good arguement to pursuade someone to keep them....

Produno, I hope you didn't confuse my AI chip / processing power idea with talking about inferior AI. My idea was having a computer station which must be upgraded for more processing power to RUN turrets, which could also be involved in other automated systems in the future.

Sorry Produno my bad your right this has gone messy haha. I can't really think of any more ways though other then taking the guns away but that's not good too. There is lots of good ideas in this topic. Like the turrets need chips to make them so you start with some then the rest are bought but rare on traders.
Or raiders with a solar flare weapon.  Can be a gun that turns off turrets and what not or a Item they place on the ground far away that stops all things like a solar flare does. Till smashed or it runs out of power.

More ideas :)

Quote from: Workload on November 11, 2013, 08:58:04 PM
Sorry Produno my bad your right this has gone messy haha. I can't really think of any more ways though other then taking the guns away but that's not good too. There is lots of good ideas in this topic. Like the turrets need chips to make them so you start with some then the rest are bought but rare on traders.
Or raiders with a solar flare weapon.  Can be a gun that turns off turrets and what not or a Item they place on the ground far away that stops all things like a solar flare does. Till smashed or it runs out of power.

More ideas :)

I wonder if you even bothered to read the thread.  An EMP gun has been suggested, as well as dropped items and obstacles that the raiders can be equipped with to help them blast through turrets or otherwise defeat them.

I suppose the whole reason that Tynan is worried about the "degenerate" strategies may lie less with the strategy itself, and more with the "degenerate" individuals that he perceives as the ones that use such strategies.  Personally, I'm hoping that's not true, but it's a difficult topic to avoid when you're trying to troubleshoot problems with balancing, since the player is as much a part of the experience as the actual mechanics.

Think you missed what I was meaning I was saying that I like them 2 ideas, they are not my own.

And the more ideas :) is well for more ideas.

I'm out thought to much hating

Ok I will admit I have only read the first two pages of the thread but i think i got the gist to put in a few suggestions.

Firstly, i do agree that "auto" turrets need to be either a researched (Late game) item that isn't as reliable as it is currently. (Accuracy penalties, and damage nerf among other possibilities) by requiring research and producing a sub-par turret would be fairly balanced for a unmanned machine.

Secondly, Bring in different defensive elements. I liked the idea of pillboxes/bunkers as well as high-ground to increase range and damage factors. This allows more variety in utilizing the colonists in a effective manner. Hell, a manned 'turret' sounds perfectly acceptable to me with a few limitations.

Thirdly, make said defenses something that CANT be manned at all times. Something akin to a 'stand down' vs a 'scramble!' state where it takes time for colonists to get their defenses up and running. (IE takes time to load and prep a MG or maybe a Gauss cannon requires a charge prep time)

I feel that Turrets do indeed cheapen the feeling of RW a bit however i don't think they should be completely cut since they feel very much in-universe and lore friendly. by scaling them back and focusing on new elements that require colonist input, it brings a much needed balance.

As has been stated, the main problem with turrets is that you have no reward tradeoff for taking effectively zero risk. Colonists need to be more efficient fighters than automated turrets.

Some suggestions:
Instead of exploding, destroyed turrets short-circuit and kill power in an area for a short (about 10 seconds on default speed) time period. This would mean that if you didn't rely on them, turrets wouldn't kill your colonists and base by getting destroyed. However, if you tried to rely on them exclusively it would make one going down cause your entire defense grid to fall, allowing raiders to march in freely and raze your base (while killing off the rest of your turrets)

Another suggestion is to make turrets require reloading. This will (probably) be implemented later anyway, given that we have shell placeholders. Make it cost some metal/shells to reload a turret, though probably buff up the turrets somewhat. Maybe make them fire 20-30 shots in a continuous stream, but after that they have to be manually reloaded (which takes a hefty amount of time to stop you from just staffing all your colonists to reload and proceed with TD+small amount of micromanagement)

And obviously later on there will be more ways for raiders to deal with turrets like grenade launchers and EMP.

Quote@kender
I dont think Tynan meant hes making the game all out offensive with no defensive! The problem will still be there on them times they do decide to attack you so that makes n difference. Besides if that was the case why would he even mention removing the turrets?

OK, this is the last reply of me to this thread, since there is no new point of me to add in here anymore.

Just one thing, who ever said 'all out offensive with no defensive'?
Tynan's original words was 'basically involves siege tactics', which part of this suggested this game gonna be an all offensive again? what kind of siege is against no defense?

I am done talking.

Ok, I get it now. I got too hung up on the word "problem". Basically this is rescue effort to save the turret.
I can sort of agree to it, although i do feel using them as it is now is way too easy. I think some simple small changes could make a huge difference. How about this?

Firstly, make the turret smaller. If it is going to be this weak it should only have to be 1 square, since that octagonal concrete base isn't doing much it seems.

Give it a much shorter range. So it can be used near doors or around corners. This will keep them useful for people that wish to make elaborate defenses. Which isn't a bad thing i think. Who wouldn't (try to) build really strong defenses for a colony you made after you crashed on a completely alien world. It should be full of danger and defense is highly important. But it will also prevent giant lines of turrets lining the walls outside bases since their range would not work.

Make it use up 10 maybe even 100 times more power. (This is simply to reduce the amount you can run.) Because keep in mind we have people making gigantic battery banks. So making the turrets cost super much power. To the point where you MUST have batteries because they will use more than you are generating. That would change the game play a lot too I think.

To justify this power use there can be a whole string of nifty visual changes. Make the "gun" part look bigger. Give it a bit of a spotlight in the dark. (This might need a bit of an AI to stop them staring at walls all the time. Or perhaps limit the turret to a 130 degree vision range and make it so we have to turn the turrets the right way when placing them.) Throw in a fancy red targeting laser. And maybe some light humming sounds as it operates and/or turns.

For me this would make me use the turrets less around my base. Especially early on, due to lack of battery banks. And probably only at the main entrance later on. But in return I -would- feel a lot more safe around them. Kind of feel they are capable of something.

The problem with turrets is paradoxical. They are simultaneously too powerful and too weak.

They are too powerful, because there is no real limit to the number of turrets the colony can have. This means that they can be built in such numbers that they reach a sort of ‘critical mass’ where they enemy is wiped out so quickly that your colony never faces any risk whatsoever.

Turrets are too weak, because if you don’t build them in such massive numbers they are simply more trouble than they are worth. They are not strong enough to defend an isolated area alone and their death explosion makes them more of a liability than an asset when put with your main defence line (unless you build so many of them that they outnumber your actual colonists).

My suggestion is to restrict turret numbers (by making them need unique components that can only be purchased by weapons traders and also by requiring colonists to operate them) while also increasing the strength of individual turrets by removing the death explosion and increasing their health.

Quote from: Zanfib on November 12, 2013, 04:40:09 AMMy suggestion is to restrict turret numbers (by making them need unique components that can only be purchased by weapons traders and also by requiring colonists to operate them) while also increasing the strength of individual turrets by removing the death explosion and increasing their health.

This is a hard-cap, and such solutions should be implemented only if there's no way to find a working soft-cap (cap that works on game rulesets and mechanics). Mor importantly, this solution was posted here for at least 20 times, and sometimes in much nicer way (Mumble's CPU power diea that could be then refined into mechanic itself).