Turrets overestimated by storyteller

[todofwar]

Wow, this conversation got away from the OP quick

[CmdrQuartz]

See, now, that's why I hate when people don't read my previous posts >.< That's not YOUR side. That's OUR side. I have nothing against turrets, I have everything against turrets as a god-hand mechanic. See, it's simply this mish-mash of terms like turret-problem actually describing problem that turrets are just a part of, and not it's core? Ugly. So I argue that turrets as they are now need to go, you argue that turrets in general don't need to go, actually we agree, just we don't know it.

(but then again, just to be fair, there was so much text-walling done on this topic, I can't blame ya you missed the point. Or I did. Darn, I would probably miss my own point reading it all again. Happens all the time)

Nothing against turrets that help you but don't win the game for you. All the way!

Ah well see I thought you kinda had it in for turrets, wanted them gone forever not just as they are now but whatever the case I'm glad we came to a peaceful conclusion. We shouldn't debate the matter any further until we see what Tynan can come up with.

Wow, this conversation got away from the OP quick

I think it maintained discussion about turrets and the balance of turrets. Oddly enough I think we're still divided on turret use because several of us have said they're useless while others claim they need to go away. I guess it just depends on what strategies you actually use because I'd agree with the original message of the game responding wayyyy too heavily to turrets because 1 turret can mean 3+ extra bad guys which a turret is definitely not worth. I've put them in darkness, behind sandbags, and abused the waffle mechanic and 4 turrets is no where near powerful enough to kill 12+ raiders, even with colonists helping from the side.

[Nasikabatrachus]

I think it maintained discussion about turrets and the balance of turrets. Oddly enough I think we're still divided on turret use because several of us have said they're useless while others claim they need to go away. I guess it just depends on what strategies you actually use because I'd agree with the original message of the game responding wayyyy too heavily to turrets because 1 turret can mean 3+ extra bad guys which a turret is definitely not worth. I've put them in darkness, behind sandbags, and abused the waffle mechanic and 4 turrets is no where near powerful enough to kill 12+ raiders, even with colonists helping from the side.

I've found 5-6 turrets, with colonists assisting, more than enough to deal with ~60 person raids. The key: blasting charges. If anything could use a nerfing, or even just a way for raiders to adapt to their presence, it's blasting charges.

[Workload]

I was trying to keep it on track with my last reply by suggesting some things and nothing else.

[todofwar]

See, now, that's why I hate when people don't read my previous posts >.< That's not YOUR side. That's OUR side. I have nothing against turrets, I have everything against turrets as a god-hand mechanic. See, it's simply this mish-mash of terms like turret-problem actually describing problem that turrets are just a part of, and not it's core? Ugly. So I argue that turrets as they are now need to go, you argue that turrets in general don't need to go, actually we agree, just we don't know it.

(but then again, just to be fair, there was so much text-walling done on this topic, I can't blame ya you missed the point. Or I did. Darn, I would probably miss my own point reading it all again. Happens all the time)

Nothing against turrets that help you but don't win the game for you. All the way!

Ah well see I thought you kinda had it in for turrets, wanted them gone forever not just as they are now but whatever the case I'm glad we came to a peaceful conclusion. We shouldn't debate the matter any further until we see what Tynan can come up with.

Wow, this conversation got away from the OP quick

I think it maintained discussion about turrets and the balance of turrets. Oddly enough I think we're still divided on turret use because several of us have said they're useless while others claim they need to go away. I guess it just depends on what strategies you actually use because I'd agree with the original message of the game responding wayyyy too heavily to turrets because 1 turret can mean 3+ extra bad guys which a turret is definitely not worth. I've put them in darkness, behind sandbags, and abused the waffle mechanic and 4 turrets is no where near powerful enough to kill 12+ raiders, even with colonists helping from the side.

I wasn't talking about turrets being balanced I was talking about the storyteller responding too aggressively to them. Turret balance in general is an oddly touchy subject, apparently.

[CmdrQuartz]

Well that has something to do with balance, one way or another. Either turrets need to be stronger to warrant the response or the response needs to be toned down and yeah there seems to be some conflict over the exact right answer. Such things happen when people form opinions. No matter how strong or weak the turrets are I feel the raiders and storytellers need to use other cues for determining strength. I suggested before with seeing how quickly/slowly they are taken care of and how much damage they deal before routing to see how powerful the next wave is. This would take into account things like game changing events, like solar flares, colonists ability (or lack thereof) to use weapons, and player skill in handling the situation. Of course I have no idea if such a thing is even possible but it seems like a very fair system to go by.

[Caladin]

Tbh, I don't use turrets, simply because they are too much effort, what with how easy they are to destroy and how they explode when they are destroyed (I don't really use blasting charges either); whenever raiders come I assemble my colonists at the end of a wide tunnel, behind a couple of sandbags, and let them slaughter the incoming raiders; since there is only one piece of cover for the raiders to hide behind all but the one raider fortunate enough to grab that cover die quickly and when there is just one left it becomes easy to flush them out. (At this point the prototype became rather boring and I stopped playing it; there wasn't any challenge anymore)

[murlocdummy]

You're just saying the designer shouldn't overreact and over-nerf a degenerate strategy, which is completely correct and good game design. Don't worry, I won't. Turrets are great, and they should be useful, but they shouldn't be everything.

Now, there's the kicker.  What if they could be everything?  When some players play Team Fortress 2, they sometimes will play as a single character or maybe just a few different characters.  Each character has its benefits and its flaws, but a sufficiently skilled player would be capable of using only a single character to take on every other situation they find themselves in.  Personally, I choose the spy, and in matches that aren't sufficiently challenging, I decide to stop using cloak to add a level of difficulty to the game. 

The end product should have a proper enough balancing of different playstyles that players that want to play with a particular playstyle can.  If someone wants to just build a base and maintain the internal economy, they should have the options available to focus entirely on the economy and, with sufficient skill, be able to fend off enemies and stave off internal strife with their economy management abilities alone.  If someone wants to play the commander of the elite Reynold's Rangers and battle their way to victory, an astute enough commander should have enough tools available to them to allow for one-sided victories in which none of the colonists die.

My particular playstyle is that of the Joker, where I do things just for the lulz.  I've gotten good enough at TF2 spy that I assault pyros head-on without cloak and kill them more than half the time.  Starcraft SCVs are a viable combat soldier for me whenever I play a match, and I've found that flanking RimWorld raiders, rushing them, then punching them to death is extremely fun for me.  Occasionally, I pause the game, then play "Amok Time" in the background before the final push.

Each player is different, but the best game is one in which each player, with sufficient ability, can carve out their own niche into the game, regardless of how the game is "meant" to be played, either by design or by what the players intend to get out of the game.

[Galileus]

Now, there's the kicker.  What if they could be everything?  (...) The end product should have a proper enough balancing of different playstyles that players that want to play with a particular playstyle can.  If someone wants to just build a base and maintain the internal economy, they should have the options available to focus entirely on the economy and, with sufficient skill, be able to fend off enemies and stave off internal strife with their economy management abilities alone.

You don't <<design>> it that way. If you design turrets to be a possible hand of god mechanic, you run head-on into all these problems I mentioned earlier. A lot. And as is, it can simply be done by lowering difficulty - you play on easy raiders, turrets are everything. Easy, simple and does not put you in this weird balancing problem, where you can very easily screw the game for a lot of people.

[Ric]

I would just like more defense options. The way it stands just now, I feel limited with the options I currently have.

Turrets are too expensive for their low power. Blasting charges are OP when used correctly.

Different types of turrets would be nice. Or traps would also be a great addition.

[killerx243]

I stopped using them for defense after I noticed raiders like to attack them first, I have a bunch of shooting points that have doors on both sides for protection and only spot I have turrets open to the world is behind them to deal with the one raider that just runs past his comrades and into the heart of my colony. I'm currently experimenting with hiding them in walls and selling parts of the walls so they can shoot but I only use it against fleeing enemies because they explode.

I don't think they should be removed, the fact that they explode is enough to put me off of using them solely for defense. In fact I've found that they die much faster then any of my colonists. With the way the AI is you need colonists shooting, turrets are targeted first and seem to be hit twice as much as colonists. They are more of an auxiliary force.

I admit I use blasting charges but at most it only kills 7 of 20 raiders and does me the favor of destroying some weapons. I don't coat the field in them because I limit myself to that.

Some traps on the other hand would be nice, like a turret that stuns a single attacker for a couple seconds and does some minor damage.

There is one part I think turrets need an improvement, the ability to manually select a target for them. The ones protecting the front doors of my colony should shoot the Muffalo that is trying to break the door down...

Each raid I face I am still worried about colonists, every three or so I lose one and with my colonists killing every raider that falls down I will eventually run out of fighters.

[murlocdummy]

You don't <<design>> it that way. If you design turrets to be a possible hand of god mechanic, you run head-on into all these problems I mentioned earlier. A lot. And as is, it can simply be done by lowering difficulty - you play on easy raiders, turrets are everything. Easy, simple and does not put you in this weird balancing problem, where you can very easily screw the game for a lot of people.

If you design anything to become a God's Hand, it'll cause severe problems.  The engie broke Team Fortress 2 for a while.  The zergrush was the gamebreaker for Starcraft, and the noob tube was one of the major problems with Call of Duty 4.  All of them were eventually modified, but none of them outright removed in an attempt to make the games "balanced".  For the most part, new elements were added into the games in order to allow players access to better methods of play.  Spies got sappers, zergs became more susceptible to artillery, and just about anyone with the right gun can take out assaulting noobs.

In the early parts of a game's development, balancing issues are best solved by adding more elements to a fledgling game in order to increase the content potential.  Things like more and different kinds of turrets, different kinds of attacking units or hostile animals, or improved enemy AI help to not only solve the initial problem at hand, but also serve to improve the overall ability of a game to deliver what particular audience segments want.  At some point, new God's Hands will happen, and those issues will need to be addressed as they happen.  I fully expect an equipment system to have items that will initially lead to an obvious, degenerate loadout that nobody would deny as the best possible equipment for their characters.  Adding more kinds of raiders will lead to cherry picking new captures for the best ones and killing off the rest, and having new happiness-inducing structures will lead to very specific room designs to maximize the effect of them.

Currently, Tynan is working on music.  This will help the game in every aspect by affecting the mood of any given moment the game has to offer.  At some point, the more important questions of what kind of staffing Ludeon Studios is going to need, as well as a means of expanding game content will have to be addressed.  Having an overall better look, feel, and sound to the game will definitely help, but after many players reach the minimum amount of sensory stimulation from the game's artistic design, it starts to become little more than background noise and clutter that has nothing to do with the actual gameplay.

The most important issue right now shouldn't be about what's immediately in front of us, but what's going to happen in the future.

[Merry76]

Currently, Tynan is working on music.

He is? Dang. Music takes up so much time, and offer so little in regard to the game...

This will help the game in every aspect by affecting the mood of any given moment the game has to offer.

Screw mood if the balance is off and the story tellers run out of ideas besides: "lets send more raiders this time around"

[Stickle]

Currently, Tynan is working on music.

He is? Dang. Music takes up so much time, and offer so little in regard to the game...

This will help the game in every aspect by affecting the mood of any given moment the game has to offer.

Screw mood if the balance is off and the story tellers run out of ideas besides: "lets send more raiders this time around"

Of all people you should be used to this aspect of early alpha development! The parts you want to be improved are not always a development priority... Besides Tynan isn't making the music himself, so I can't imagine it'll take too much of his personal time, besides what it takes to vet/approve, and to implement it into the game (presumably it will be somewhat context sensitive?).

[Merry76]

Of all people you should be used to this aspect of early alpha development! The parts you want to be improved are not always a development priority... Besides Tynan isn't making the music himself, so I can't imagine it'll take too much of his personal time, besides what it takes to vet/approve, and to implement it into the game (presumably it will be somewhat context sensitive?).

Yeah I know.
But the last patch for Rimworld was on the 7th, and when I read that Tynan was doing music now, I went into Nerd shock.

It was "waiting for something awesome, then getting sfx, more sfx, skulls on spikes&wall torches and then a fix for said torches for one and half a month" all over again. I cried a bit inside