What's the point of defense towers?

[MarQan]

Wooden defense tower costs 50 wood, with 300 integrity.
9 wooden ceilings (including the floors) cost 54 wood, with a combined integrity of 900.
Same ratio seems to be true for concrete and carbon as well.

Towers have the capacity of one colonist, 9 ceilings can hold all of your colonists.


In case of a missclick (which let's be honest, the game makes extremely easy, sometimes the cursor just straight up lies to you) your colonists will start the superslow ladder animation: the chance of this happening is much lower on a celing, where you can correct.

Do the towers have some (hidden) bonus that I didn't notice and which offset the drawbacks?

[Stimpacker]

I stopped using them after my first Insane gameplay. 100 wood per tower per person... pffft. Better off spending that early wood on fencing up my base.

[Obz3hL33t]

My first maxxed out skill was medical. Those bug bites add up.
Fences + platforms you say? I already have a house, so can I just build a ladder and my "defenses" are done?

[Zep Tepi]

If the bugs chew through the floor, then everything above that floor goes too. They can eat through your house.

But, I stopped using the towers too. The fortification fences also block line of sight shooting. Good for ranged defense, but terrible for offense.

Fences, some well-placed flamethrowers and laser turrets seem to do the job. Mechs help a lot too. And my personal favorite, stone tables for cheap reinforcement.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

I attacked all of the nests and put up the better fenced fortification although, when my first perimeter wall came up (wooden) I used those defense towers for my death runs where I lure the groups into a hellfire alleyway - still use that even with the tri-perimeter fortifications.

[Obz3hL33t]

So chokepoints + flamethrowers + lures FTW? Has anyone tried ramparts?

[Mecklord]

The towers do have the cover trait, giving ranged fire an increased chance to miss, I've had entire attacks whare not a single one of my survivors was hit thanks to that.