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I think the turrets should be stationary and would be like mortars, a colonist has to operate them.

Turret's are not a problem, I don't see why you think they need changing.

In the thread about bringing colonies out into the open, one of the topics that struck a chord with me was turrets. I would like to sum up some of the thoughts from that thread and put them under discussion. I think this is an important enough topic to warrant its own thread.

Problems with turrets:
- they are unrealistic: all other defensive options require direct operation (including mortars). Where would a ragtag band of colonists find the measures to create such elaborate AI systems right upon landing?
- they are anticlimactic: they tend to lead to a passive defense style and killbox galore: the easiest way to defend yourself is to set up a bunch of turrets and hide until the enemies are dead or badly weakened
- they don't sit well with the colony sim theme: they make the game more of a tower defense than a colony sim. Maybe not a minus for everyone, but I find this at odds with basically every other element of the game.

The proposed solution:
- make them a researchable item so they aren't available at the start
- the basic turret should have a console coupled with it (similar to the comms console) that would need a colonist to man it - one console would operate maybe 3-5 turrets max.
- an advanced console could be researched and created with use of an AI persona core, at which point turrets would become automated, as they are now.

Let the discussion begin.

The problem with your argument is it is kind of contradictory, in the sense that you think turrets don't fit into the game, yet it's fine if they are researched.

Personally, I think turret's are a must for outdoor colonies and I think it's a very badly thought out idea to remove them because of those who use them to make killboxes. People have the choice not to make a killbox so what does removing them at the start, or removing them completely actually achieve.
Really it's kind of saying, if you have a drink problem, then ban alcohol for the entire country to stop you from drinking. It doesn't make much sense to do something so drastic when you can solve the problem by stopping yourself.

I agree with Produno there is no need to read the whole thread. We know that Tynan is looking at this thread so if an idea gets repeated, the chance that he will consider implementing it increases.

And it is a good point about the necessity of mining. Mining resources can lead to you having half a mountain base dug out without any conscious decision. Mountain bases are far too cheap currently, compared to outside bases. Whether you look at resources needed, safety or time, a mountain base will ALWAYS be the easier choice. Unless you are playing on a very flat map and have no other choice...

Either mining needs to be made more costly or there need to be some inherent plusses to build outside. Otherwise, it will always be better to make a mountain base.

Also: to add visibility to one of the important topics discussed here, I have created a new thread about turrets. Comment away:
http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=6618.0

Just because you find it easier to build a mountain base doesn't mean you have to, it's your choice. Changing mining won't solve anything.

Removing automatic turrets is not a solution for killboxing abuse, but for the problem that it is possible to get practically infinite firepower with as long as you have enough metal. A single killbox can take dozens of turrets, and if that still isn't enough for some reason, you can just build another killbox behind it and chain them as much as you like. Without turrets, you would always only have as much firepower as many colonists you have. It would not remove the strategy of turtling yourself up in a hole, but it would stop it being vastly superior to all other strategies.

Nobody is objecting to defense being a viable strategy, people just don't like it being the only viable strategy - which it currently is once you are far enough into the game, because fighting off hundreds of raiders with just your colonists is rather futile.

And that's not mentioning other problems with turrets: they take many colonists' roles in combat. I'm pretty sure many people who like turrets would object if we could build an unlimited number of robots that could cook, construct or research, yet it is essentially the same thing. Perhaps turret removal should get it's own thread?




As to other problems, the combat side of the game is not too strong. It can be fun in a city with plenty of passageways and buildings to block the line of sight, but there aren't many tactical options if you fight in the open, and especially not in a typical mountain base. I suppose that's a part of why people want to automate the defense and just want the raiders to die under a hail of turret fire without having to do much. Perhaps if the tactical part of the game was expanded and improved, people would try it out more instead of hiding behind turrets?

I don't think making kill-box abuse super powerful is really an issue, after all those people that would find it an issue simply wouldn't play like that. I certainly don't feel forced or interested to play the kill-box game even on extreme difficulty. I do however find bad game play issues refusing to play like that. For example not being able to attack a siege because of how quickly mental breakdowns occur when running across huge maps, or not being able to kill anything because of the very high risk of dying due to the many snipers that reside in the sieges. Also the lack of resources to rebuild my defense after a big attack.

What the problem with tactical options boil's down to is the contradiction between how you should play the game and how you need to play the game. What I mean by this is your colonists and resources are precious and need to be kept alive at all costs, but if you want to defend your base against huge attacks with colonists and turrets, you have to play them like they are expendable and you just can't do it.
This leads to things like only being able to fight with m24's, because if you use any other weapon your in range and just die and only having the option of waiting for sieges to starve to death, you can't even kill them with mortars because the accuracy is so bad.

By introducing some cheaper different defense options you help erase these problems, pillboxes are a cool solution, made from stone blocks they would be easier to replace than turrets and also being manned by colonists it automatically limits how much you can spam them. There is no point having 100 if you only have 10 colonists, but you can place them throughout strategic point in your base to deal with those enemies that drop into your base, and it won't be a huge investment for something that gets used very little.

At the end of the day the only 'downside' which in my eyes isn't even a downside is it may make kill-boxes stronger. Again though how can it really be a big deal. If you don't want things to be easy you can make the game harder for yourself, and do you really care if the game is easier for someone else who wants to play like that, there is just no reason to care.

ah ok, i think i mentioned something about sandbags giving a bonus somewhere.  I think a better word to use in this case would be a pillbox.  concrete bunker with a heavy weapon and armored door.  would be rather neat!

Yes, that's what I wanted to say hah, it would fit very well into this game.

he just stated that if he was going to do anything 3D he would do it all the way and not just some shoehorned code.  either way i dont think its on the TODO list for the time being.

The tower's don't have to be 3d though, 'towers' was just a word I used to get my point across. It could be something like just sandbags that have a special interaction like you could 'man' them and take cover behind etc to receive those bonuses. Or that could go for any wall you have constructed also and scrap the need to man them, to help when enemy drop into parts of your base that lack proper defense. This idea could help against taking out sieges with snipers by buildings some cover near them and using the increased range.

Tynan has stated he doesnt want pseudo z-levels like towers, battlements, and i assume trenches and tunnels. 

killboxes can be mitigated simply by allowing the raiders to learn to avoid them.  first attack might see them all die in one, but the next might say that digging through the wall is a better idea.  so you then surround your base with killboxes.  then the raiders just drop pod in.  then your base is made entirely of killboxes.  we cant get rid of them so lets not try.  besides, one good mech raid and they tear through them like paper.  the whole system will evolve as updates are released and AI improved.  but rather than kill off playstyles, we need to allow for all kinds.  turret spammers, dwarfers, whatever.

I agree I don't think it's right to kill playstyles, the more option's the better. I was just pointing out that the other changes suggested will only make the problem worse with open colonies. You also have to remember how hard is it going to be to improve the AI enough to protect itself from abuse.

I can't currently play my playstyle very long though because of how expensive and useless turrets are in the open. One group of mechanoids wipes out my defense, normally 6-8 turrets, sandbags and walls for colonist cover. Against 15 mech or a big group of raiders they kill all the turrets and cover pretty quickly with explosives and I have to micromanage a lot with M24's which is fine, but it costs close to 1400 metal each defense. It's way too much considering I try and make the minimum defense I need.

Also I don't understand why he would hate the idea of a tower that increases range and/or defensive stats. Currently we have all these cool weapons in the game, but there is no way to actually use any of them, or get colonists engaged in a fight. We need more than 1 type of defense in this game, or it's really a waste of time having a combat system at all.

Having more defense options would make some playstyles really easy but it's not a problem, after all if you complain it's too easy you can always make the game harder for yourself by just not spamming turrets or w/e, you aren't forced to spam turrets just because you can. If it was a competitive game it would be a problem, but it's not.

The idea of removing turrets is pretty ridiculous. If you want to remove kill-boxes from the game then how will that possibly have an effect. All you guys will do is stack your colonists at the choke point instead. No matter what you do to defense, improve or remove people who just want to play kill-boxes will play them no matter what. Stop trying to find a fix for it, there is not one, that's just how RTS games have always worked.

The ONLY way you can stop a killbox strategy is to stop wall building, if wall building is an option then choke points will always be made. It's not defense that is overpowered, it's the building of a choke point that is overpowered.

We need the option to be able to defend an outdoor colony, currently it's to expensive to maintain good defense over a long period of time, the turrets are incredibly weak against mechanoids and explosives, to the point where they only work as a dummy target while my colonists do the work.
Colonists in combat should be the last resort given how few and far between they come. However at the moment they have to put themselves at great risk almost straight away to defend their colony. Colonist controlled defense (not manned) sounds like a good option to lower the risk to the colonists. Also things like guard towers that can be manned to increase the range of colonist weapons, and boost defensive stats so I am not forced to equip everyone with M24's to out-range the enemy.

It would be a big epic battle if we also had 100 colonists. 10 against 200 is not epic in my mind.

Yes, some cool defense options would help this.

Ah, i understand what you are saying, it's just that i thought toning down the number of enemies is the #1 thing to change n ppls mind, and should be taken into consideration before any further tweakings. By suggesting a slower mining speed, or a mining tool(for example), it already has lower number of enemies in mind. I think It's been mentioned a couple times in this thread alone, together with a more diverse behavior/goal for enemies.

Yes it could be a way to go I agree on that, but, it is fun to battle those big hordes so I would rather it be a last resort after other options are explored. Who doesn't want a big epic battle? ^^

We'll have to agree to disagree then. While giving better defenses is a way to make building outside worthwhile, it's useless if it becomes too easy (thus boring) to build inside. We (at least most of us in the topic) are  trying to make building outside more viable, not dwarfing easier while at it.

Or we balance outside and inside (sticks, carrots, features, investments, etc) or we just add goodies to being outside (happy events, specific types of resources that are only in the open, better trade offers, etc).

We really don't want to create another problem while fixing one.

I don't see how any of those idea's help survival outside sorry. I did say you could introduce things to make underground bases harder but it's pointless if it's still too hard to stay alive outside, I'm not sure why you disagree with this point.

I think everyone is missing the real problem here. I think the lack of defensive choice in turrets, their weakness to explosives, and their high cost to build are too blame.

Not THE real problem, but one of the problems nonetheless. It's not the real problem because if you had better turrets to make it easier to defend open colonies, it would make it even easier to defend inside ones.

It should be one of these: Or open colonies get as many advantages and drawbacks than mountain ones OR building into a mountain is a technological or economical investment. Currently it's neither.

Sieges are too hard to kill at the moment, when they are far away it's hard to get colonists to attack without them having mental breakdowns on big maps. We need a way to them to sustain their needs away from the colony, we have bedspots which are good, but we need some way of taking food reserve to camp out around the siege.

Like other things it depends on the AI director and challenge intensity, but i agree with the mental breakdowns and supplies.
I already suggested that there should be an  "ADRENALINE" mood buff whenever the pawn is within some radius of an enemy and even a small buff when it's drafted.

As per the supplies, I'm together with those who want a (better) slot system, be it general purpose slots or a tool slot or carry slot. Wanna go on the offensive? Pick a few provisions and hit the road. There could be even a new type of cookable/producible food that lasts longer and tastes like nutrient paste and is used in such incursions, perhaps even if someday we get to raid other camps as well. 

Overall i think the moral systems need a lot of reworking, i have a few ideas myself but let's wait for 7 and see what Ty has been cooking up.

Giving us more defensive choices is the best way to make open colonies viable, so what if it makes caves easier to defend. Remember we are not trying to force people into the open. We are trying to make open colonies survival issues better. If people still want to live in a cave after then that's fine but it gives options now.

To make open colonies a viable choice for people you need to fix the problems with open colonies, changing how underground bases work will not solve the problems with open colonies I promise you.

Fix the open colonies, if underground bases are still too good, then it's ok to change underground base mechanics, otherwise it's totally useless.

I think everyone is missing the real problem here. I think the lack of defensive choice in turrets, their weakness to explosives, and their high cost to build are too blame. Currently I play on extreme and I only play outdoor colonies. Now I can survive attacks by big hordes of raiders and mechs. I do this by creating many layers of cover and turrets, but when faced with enemies that out-range my turrets and/or have explosives, they wreck everything pretty quickly. It is possible to survive equipping everyone with M24's and micromanaging to fall back through the cover and it is really fun and interesting to play actually.

The big problem however is how much is costs to rebuild the defence and the lack of metal around, so after a few attacks it's really hard to sustain enough defence due to the high cost of turrets to the point it's hardly even worth building them, at the moment I only build turrets to draw fire while I snipe the enemy. Not how it should be in my eyes.

Sieges are too hard to kill at the moment, when they are far away it's hard to get colonists to attack without them having mental breakdowns on big maps. We need a way to them to sustain their needs away from the colony, we have bedspots which are good, but we need some way of taking food reserve to camp out around the siege.
Also sieges are normally full of snipers so it's incredibly hard to do anything to stop them without getting killed straight away, which at the moment results in me not even bothering to try and kill the sieges. I literally stay in base and repair everything until they starve to death, not very fun.
The drone ships are ok but again I need some way to sustain myself out in the map otherwise I simply don't have the time to do much before my colonists break down.