How do the turrets work?

[PcbZorg]

Hello, newbie here. I'm trying to set-up gatling/interior turrets in the corners of my base area. I built the turrets, set them up so they can ''see'' around themselves, added ammo, turned on, expected them to kill off the wolves (whose behaviour is a bit demented, btw, they're either stuck in place in a biting animation loop, or darting around like crazy without any logical sense). At first the turret started moving as if tracking something i did not see, but then i saw red crosshairs way off in the grass, and later i saw a dead wolf in there. I thought that it worked. I built some more turrets, and then all hell broke loose. As soon as i clicked on ON under the SHOOT settings, the turret started tracking some invisible thing in the sky, shooting at it, even through parts of the base, which it pretty badly damaged. I played with the settings, but nothing seems to help. Most of the turrets started behaving this way. One of the gatling turrets just pivoted straight upwards and blasted through several solar panels which are several hundred meters above it. I thought that the turrets might be tracking meteors invisible to my eye, but the behaviour stays the same, even when i switch off meteor tracking and set radius to just 200 meters. All the turrets just aim in random directions, shooting nonstop until they're out of ammo. I have absolutely no clue why is that. I'm playing survival SP, earth-type planet. ver 1.186 afaik. Asteroids mode set to safe. There are no scripts running or active programmable blocks in the grid. Turrets ownership is set to ME. Any tips? Because i would really like the turrets to just take care of the wolves, or NPC enemies, if they show up (so far they did not). Nothing more.

[Ulysses]

What I would say is if you wished to you would connect your turrets to manual control so you can shoot the wolves yourself. Auto turrests are great in space, however there are some problems with turrets and its work on planets as well. There are problems that the devs have to work on so personally I would say just set the turrets to manual and go ham on shooting the wolves yourselves until DE reworks the planet physics and the turret physics

[PcbZorg]

Ok, so no automatic turrets possible on planets at this time? Damn that sucks. So rotors on planets are broken, autoturrets on planets are broken, wolves on planets are broken... I wonder what other problems will i discover...

[muffins]

I have wolves off and my turrets work fine. Turrets have always have had problems targeting wolves. Either they ignore them or expend several minutes shooting at a wolf corpse. It might just be that they are trying to track invisible broken wolves. Turn off wolves and see if that helps.

[PcbZorg]

Turning off wolves kinda makes the whole thing nonsensical, because i'm using the turrets only against the wolves atm. I'm playing planetary survival. When i'm finished with the current base expansion, i'll start working on something that can get me to space. Maybe there will be more things to shoot at. But so far, the only semi-hostile thing i met are the wolves, and they're broken too. They just stand in one place, barking at nothing or biting air, or dart around the place like someone set their tail on fire. They won't attack me if i don't get right in front of them, but it's kinda fun to see the turrets shoot them. When they work. I think that it got slightly better after the latest update and hotfix, but it still sometimes tries to track/shoot them through the base blocks. So i just let the turrets run out of ammo, because it's really not safe to have them loaded when i'm not around. In the game session settings i enabled NPC ships, abandoned bases, pirate factions, but i never met any of these. Are there not random bases on the planets? Is every AI vessel or base space-only?

[muffins]

There are no random bases on planets, just the set few in the easy start earth. That's why mods are so wonderful!

For random surface pirate installations get these two mods -

Planetary Installations

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1135484377

Surface Occupation

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1135484957&searchtext=surface+occupation

To enable the bases to spawn drones (don't get within 5km or so of one unless you're prepared) get this mod -

Planetary Pirate bay antenna drone mod

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693339379

If you want hostile air traffic in the planet's atmosphere get the following three mods -

Planetary Cargo Ships

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=973528334

NPC Custom Faction Fixer

https://steamcommunity.co

Air Traffic

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=973526550

Once you get into space you will get the default hostile cargo ships and occational drone attacks so no need for mods unless you want player created cargo ships in your game too.

[PcbZorg]

Thanks muffinz, that was extensive! Damn i should have picked the easy start Earth, but i felt overwhelmed by the already placed systems, i felt like i needed to learn to build from scratch so i progressed in the earth scenario with the atmospheric lander only. So, for interactions i need to go to space, ok? Damn... I would love the planets to have more content, well - it'll have to be mods then.

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by PcbZorg:

i should have picked the easy start Earth, but i felt overwhelmed by the already placed systems, i felt like i needed to learn to build from scratch

What you could do with the Easy Start Earth scenario is to first launch it in Creative mode and just delete the starting base. Or switch ownership to the pirates. Then switch to Survival mode and build from scratch. You may want to suicide and spawn in a lander or otherwise give you starting supplies.

Unless you want to try an "Iron Man" setup where you must get your initial supplies from the scavenged parts of the random probes and enemy bases?

[PcbZorg]

I already went with the lander setup and put over hundred hours in there. I built a basic rover out of scavenged lander parts (i had no idea how to do anything, so i used a Youtube tutorial on how to build ore scanning rover from lander parts without actually destroying the lander), then started prospecting and getting more ore. Then i built a platform with a solar panel tower, then atmospheric V-TOL, then a huge hangar and some basic refinery and storage setup and now i started building a huge ship with which i'll be able to visit space (at least i hope, i'm guesstimating the thruster count). But maaan having large heavy armor blocks in there is expensive. Even if it's not the whole ship, just a skeleton. I have 10x inventory size and i'm still able to carry materials for just two blocks. But that doesn't matter, i like the process.

[muffins]

Don't weld by hand! In this game you want to scale up quickly. Build small ships like miners and welders first so you can mine and weld quicker (dock them to your base with connectors so they can recharge their batteries and move their ore/parts). A welder built around a large cargo container can hold much more than you can. Then get extra refineries and assemblers going and upgrade them with the modules. You can then start thinking about large-grid ships, whether you want to build them with your small craft or (better option) build large-grid miners and welders for much faster mining and welding.

When you build welder and miner ships remember that components are bigger than ore so the welder ship would need large conveyour tubes while the miner only needs the small ones.