Jerry Improved Improvised Turrets

[jerry]

I'm guessing it's no secret that the Improvised Turrets in this game lack the punch to do anything and it even fails in soaking damage to take the heat of your troops long enough because it has 140 HP and once it reaches 32 HP it explodes destroying every fortification in place and severely damaging you troops and not to mention that for every turret you have the more troops that attack you which makes turrets useless ... not anymore
here is the change log
1-Increased the Turret HP from 140 to 350
2-lowered cooldown rate from 13 seconds to 3.1 seconds
3-Lowered explosion area from 3 to 1.5
4-Increased damage from 7 to 10
5-Increased range from 25.9 to 28.0
6-Increased overall Accuracy slightly (25%) to be useful
7-Lowered the time between shots to increased rate of fire changed from 8 to 6
8-Lowered building Costs from 160 to 150 so that you need to send metal 2 times only instead of 3 carrying 75 metal each

Update 1:
1-Fixed the about.xml file to display credit properly.
2-Deleted any unneeded lines in the mod.
3-Increased the ticking time for the turret to explode from 2 seconds to 5 seconds .. no more decapitated legs and arms  .
4-Also lowering the explosion radius lowered the explosion damage (damage X radius) to nearby sandbags so it receives only 150 damage instead of 450 damage ensuring that sandbags survive the explosion and still provide cover.

Special thanks to Jaxxa for sharing his knowledge to make this update possible  .

Please note that this is my first mod in this game please forgive any bugs that may appear for my lack of modding skills and note that I tried this on ALPHA 6 myself and it's working
*If you want to modify this MOD do so but please post that mod on this page only and don't post the same MOD with your name on it
enjoy 

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[jerry]

Other things I want to modify but don't know how to do it:   
1-Lower Explosion Damage to half
2-Increase the fuse time it takes for the turret to explode from 2 sec to 4 sec
if anyone can do this please do so on this page with both my name and yours in the mod

[Visitor000]

hello, for a first mod this is really good, but i do have an idea for you or anyone who can help.
make it a reachable thing so you go from the starting Improvised turret ---> the Improved turrets
or
Nothing ---> Improvised turret ---> Improved turret

<OBLIGATORY MOVING TEXT>

[jerry]

you mean it can be researched but I believe it's broken in the first place . but maybe a research plan for it to improve further or make it have slightly more range and accuracy and HP
but my skills aren't that good and I can't Make it   
I only Made the mod because no body made a similar mod and to leave it unbalanced like this is a sin because it's an amazing game
Also I will try Looking For Modding Tools and try to learn more and post more Mods 

[Iwillbenicetou]

I also need to learn coding. I know basic xml... I will eventually learn c# at a place. Though there are mods that add turrets...

[Jaxxa]

Hi Jerry, Awesome to see that you are getting into modding.

You sound like you are keen to continue modding and get better at it so I had a look at your mod and had a few observations, these are intended to be constructive criticism and things you would learn eventually by playing around with it, but it may save you some time.

1. Your about file is called "about.txt", to get this information to be picked up by the game it needs to be called about.xml (there is an option on windows to hide extensions for know file types that I disable so I can always see what type of file it is)
2. In the same file it is missing a closing XML tag, you need to add "</ModMetaData>" as a new line at the end of the file. (Personally I use notepad++ to help me keep track of tags, it will highlight a matching tag if you click on one.)
3. In your Buildings_Security file you have included the defs for Sandbags, Turret_MortarIncendiary, Turret_MortarBomb and Turret_MortarEMP. As far as I can see you are not making any changes to these If that is the case there is no need to include these in the file. In these types of def xml files it will replace based on the xml tags not replacing the whole file, so anything that you don't override will just use the base version of that object (or another mod). Also adding your turret in addition to the turret in the base game is as easy as changing the "defName". Also it does not matter to the game what you call this file, just because the core file is called Buildings_Security there is no reason you could not call your Buildings_Security_ImprovedTurret or something like that.
4. You may want to play around with the <wickTicks> tag, that looks like it will allow you to change the delay before it explodes, you would add it in the comp settings next to where you have <explosiveRadius>. The default value looks to be 150
5. It looks like the damage amount may be hard coded, or at least I cant see a way to change it to a specific number without C# dll modding. although you can change the type of damage that will indirectly change the damage amount. Looking at the code it looks like the options are:

Bomb = 50;
Flame = 10;
Stun = 35;
EMP = 60;

Although changing the type of damage will have other effects, so may or may not be what you are after and I have not played with any of these settings.