Turrets of the new faction.

[I>U]

.. are something that puzzles me up. They cost more than Human counterparts, the basic ones are AoE and aren't anywhere useful against first thiner hordes. Flamers clearly lose to single-entity Autoguns in DPS up to ~4th wave, while Railguns do massive overkill on squishy goos, adding even more to the previous statement. Oh, and those turrets cost A LOT.

I do realise you don't have maintance for Robot units, so their use is a must. But do you even need towers, safe for flaks fending off flyers, costing you fortune and eating away Power, when you can simply combo infinite layers of walls with bunkers at choke points and have a massive mobile army outside the waves?

My personal opinion, but something feels overlooked, considering how fluent unit\tower relation is for Human now.

[MillionMonkey]

Thanks for the feedback. Most robot turrets are cheaper than ones of a similar human tier. Though given their differing economies they might seem more expensive. There are a few changes I still want to make in the 0.2 beta to try to make them scale better. The drone bunker/unit relation may also need to be looked at as they might be providing too much firepower now.

Currently on 0.2.0.1c1
Name | Credits | Crystals | Ore | Uranium
---------|---------|---------|----|----
H T0 Laser | 180 | 10
R T1 Flak | 140 | 5

H T2 Autocannon | 250 | 15 | 10
R T3 Flamer | 250 | 10 | 3

H T4 Missile | 500 | 30 | 20
R T5 Rail | 350 | 10 | 10
H T5 SAM | 300 | 20 | 10
H T6 Beam | 400 | 30 | 30

R T7 Gatling | 500 | 20 | 20 | 10
H T8 Plasma | 500 | 20 | 20 | 10

[kamikaye]

Yea stacking a bunker with missile bots gives an incredibly strong tower. I didnt mind that much but it felt a bit out of whack.

[I>U]

After giving the game a little more time it became obvious to me that the issue isn't with turrets per se:

1) Bunkers with Rocket\Plasma droids are too powerful compared to any piece of defence, Human or Robot.

2) Flaks are actually decent towers for the price. In the mid-game. The problem is that they can't kill a single Flopper by themselves before it scratches your property, let alone a Thrasher. And they eat Flops (Power is too available for Robot), so the best choice to guard your base early is droids (escpecially with Automaton). In the end, you don't have reliable tower early helping you with aggroed Goos durring the "bad" cycles as Robot (Flaks are good against waves, still).

2) Flamers are universally underperforming. Beta gets updates daily, so this may no longer be the case, but durring the last play session "On fire" was plain de-buff draining 10HP while ignoring Armour per tick (something close to 1 sec), aside from a tiny direct AoE portion of damage flamer entities do. You can stack a lot of Human Flamers in a single tile (which isn't anything effective) for that DD portion ot work, but you can't overlap enough turrets as Robot.
"On fire" doesn't work properly atm in my opinion. You can stack Flamers and Reclaimed ones and clear enemies while recieving damage, or just lump a blob of Marines with greater range and, most imprtantly, higher fatality counter. They actually kill whatever enters their range without asking you to wait.

3) Railguns aren't better or worse than Beam Cannons of Human. When there are elites, they are great, otherwise they just overkill.

I do realise the game is in EA and SP-oriented, so I'm not judging or anything. It's actually a perk for an SP title to have traps, like those very early Flaks draining your economy and suspending the growth while not locking areas at all. That's a good experience. But the situation with Flamers is killing diversity right now. They need a little bit of tinkering, like more DD, greater range, shorter tick-time, or a total overhaul, like shifting their damage pattern from entity-based to area-based, introducing overburn and so on.

Just my little piece of mind, the game is actually great and dev is doing the Lord's work at reviving the genre.

EDIT: Ok, "On Fire" works differently, might be even stacking.

[Mauadib]

I think it is more just your play style than anything else. I'm having a great time with the turrets. I generally don't build a massive army and do the

Wall ------------------------ {_____________________________________}
alternating turrets/bunker -- [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T]

Then backup flak ----------- [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F]
And the thing that clicks with me and the robit faction is the perk that gets you extra range on your turrets but also makes the shots cost more. because it gives things like the flak gun just insane range and the ability to stack aoe wayyy the heck out. Granted it isn't MUCH aoe per gun but more gun fixes this. It's also super useful when you have situations that have thinner mountain sections that funnel towards the actual front. You can have multiple flak with the insane range weakening the waves well before they get to you.

I agree that the Railgun doesn't feel as good as it could but I'm not sure what to do about it. TBH when I first saw that I unlocked a Rail Gun turret I had immediate visions of Tiberian Sun's Mammoth MK 2 in turret form demolishing rows of dudes with awesome sound and effects. What I got was, less than that and I know that is completely on me.

I also agree on the flame turrets for the most part. I do still build one but I'm not really sure there is a reason to build one over any thing else.

Edit: formatting because apparently B in brackets makes things bold

Edit 2: The Gatling turret is pure amazing. I realize it is super late game and probably won't be built most of the time but when you do get to build one the thing is just pure kill power. I know it wasn't brought up at all I just wanted to put out that I love that thing to bits.

[I>U]

Originally posted by Mauadib:

I think it is more just your play style than anything else. I'm having a great time with the turrets. I generally don't build a massive army and do the

Wall ------------------------ {_____________________________________}
alternating turrets/bunker -- [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T] {B} [T]

Then backup flak ----------- [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F] { } [F]
And the thing that clicks with me and the robit faction is the perk that gets you extra range on your turrets but also makes the shots cost more. because it gives things like the flak gun just insane range and the ability to stack aoe wayyy the heck out. Granted it isn't MUCH aoe per gun but more gun fixes this. It's also super useful when you have situations that have thinner mountain sections that funnel towards the actual front. You can have multiple flak with the insane range weakening the waves well before they get to you.

I agree that the Railgun doesn't feel as good as it could but I'm not sure what to do about it. TBH when I first saw that I unlocked a Rail Gun turret I had immediate visions of Tiberian Sun's Mammoth MK 2 in turret form demolishing rows of dudes with awesome sound and effects. What I got was, less than that and I know that is completely on me.

I also agree on the flame turrets for the most part. I do still build one but I'm not really sure there is a reason to build one over any thing else.

Edit: formatting because apparently B in brackets makes things bold

Edit 2: The Gatling turret is pure amazing. I realize it is super late game and probably won't be built most of the time but when you do get to build one the thing is just pure kill power. I know it wasn't brought up at all I just wanted to put out that I love that thing to bits.

I'd say, the main issue here is that some things can't be finilised at this point of development. Archetypic flamer turret to me erases infantry in a single strike, but barely scratches vehicles. And, yes, all of these are from CnC-like games (♥♥♥♥ the Firebats) and that require weapon\armour types, but the game is on unified damage currently, like SC or TotAn.

OP was left durring Robot beta, updated every single day, if not 2 times on a day. Flamers are actually MUCH better now ("On fire" is officially stacking now, according to patchnotes), and that's the way to bring it in line with other defensive options. For the time being.

I do agree that you have freedom of having your own style in this game already. Gatlings too are performing way better than they were in earlier versions of Beta. but I still preffer to rely on T3 Cannons off-maps and Relays for later waves. That's because I only pick Samarkand and dump a lot of Crystalls into it, just to squeeze a little more Ore to progress faster. Naturally, I'm overproducing Crytalls and that's just a habbit of mine.

But there a more than just habbits ATM. Automatton have Scrap, Automatton can boost Frameworks, Automaton can upgrade standart Droids into rocket variants and Bunkers combined with them and Walls overpower every other piece of defence, even after 0.2 release. Because there are only two Robot commanders right now, and you can easily tell which one is easier to win with.

Same goes for unit\turret relation in general for the faction as whole. Units have no maintenance, standart Droids can kill rogue Floppers and even Thrashers (with HP loss) alone, so 2 Droids can lock more territory for the price than Flaks. It's just another faction perk - just like wall-gate mechanic - that happen to empower Bunker performance. Turrets are still good and should be used against waves. But Automatton multiplies this advantage with it's perks, making other choices look like [S]crap.

The issue is, of course, the volume of content. There are better and not-so-better Commanders for Human. But there is a lot to choose from with many mechanics engaging with the faction itself. Automatton and AI are unique, but Automatton has multiple synergies with faction mechanics, while AI is quite by itself. One more building, interraction with Tribes, literally anything added to Robot faction can brake Automatton and Bunker dominance and Make Turrets Great Again.

Speaking of AI - turrets should work better for it, but I'm yet to unlock it (three waves away, literally).