My proposal for the turret problem.

[Workload]

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

[mumblemumble]

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.

[Renham]

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.

[ShadowDragon8685]

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."

[schill]

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!

[todofwar]

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.

[todofwar]

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.

[glenn]

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

[Galileus]

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.

[Nocebo]

*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.

[Galileus]

*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!

[Warduke]

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.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I 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.

[Nocebo]

*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?

[Galileus]

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

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:



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