My proposal for the turret problem.

[Galileus]

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.

[Lothar]

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?

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.

[mumblemumble]

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.

[murlocdummy]

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.

[Workload]

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.

[Lothar]

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.

[Produno]

Wow this thread has really gone off on a tangent.

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....

[mumblemumble]

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.

[Workload]

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

[murlocdummy]

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.

[Workload]

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

[Joedoe1025]

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.

[lt_halle]

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.

[Kender]

@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.

[Nocebo]

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.