Are gun turrets scalable?

[Forblaze]

Medium biters have started spawning for me more and more frequently, and my gun turrets seem to be barely scraping by. Conversely, my flamethrower seems to kill everything it touches nearly instantly. Will my gun turrets still be usable by the time I start getting large biters or should I start replacing them with flamethrower/laser turrets?

[IamNic]

You can change the ammo-type inside your gun turrets ;)

Later you need to switch them out with laser turrets.

[Timi]

Fully upgraded gun turrets with AP rounds are perfectly viable, dealing more damage than lasers albeit with shorter range (even when accounting for physical damage resistance biters get).

[Lawlzer]

Endgame, if you make a megabase you use a mix between laser and guns, but for normal bases (less rhan 1 rocket per 5 minutes) you would usually swithc to just lasers :P

[Rio]

Why would you want to stay with turrets that don't shoot lasers? Ammo is expensive resource wise and its not like theres any rewards for using it.

[Zaphod]

Yeah, fully upgraded turrets, loaded with armor piercing rounds, with all the stackin' submachine gun bonus'... they rip hordes of fully evolved mammoth biters apart.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Some mods adds new turrets , new ammo and stuff

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/sore68/Additional-Turret

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Sashie:

Why would you want to stay with turrets that don't shoot lasers? Ammo is expensive resource wise and its not like theres any rewards for using it.

Laser turrets are a bit imposing to me because I don't know how much storage I'll need to allot to each turret. I wouldn't be able to tell if attack frequency increased, so I won't know right away if I need to scale up my power grid.

Gun turrets get loaded with 10 ammo, so even if power is cut to the inserters or my ammo production stops, I still have a comfortable level of redundancy. Ammo also seems pretty cheap to me, although most of my turrets are actually still loaded with normal ammo from the massive surplus I developed in the early game. AP ammo doesn't seem too much worse though.

[Acarin]

My preference is upgraded gun turrets (+ AP ammo) intermixed with 1 flamethrower turret for every 10 gun turrets. Works like a dream, and isn't that hard to fuel or set up.

[Roxor128]

There's an achievement for finishing the game without building any laser turrets. I didn't think it was too hard to get, though I did try to minimise pollution, which would have reduced the number of times the enemies tried to attack me.

[Josh Franco]

I haven't tried the flamethrower turret much, is it good?

[Acarin]

Yes, but you need to use it interleaved with other turret types. The flamer is excellent at taking down large spawns, with superb Damage over Time, but the flame takes time to reach its destination and hence it tends to miss the lead one or two units in a spawn. The follow-up units get creamed, but the first two are inside the minimum range of the flamer before it adjusts unless you combine the defenses with gun or laser turrets.

[Ruldra]

If you're going to stick with gun turrets then make sure you use AP bullets. With enough research upgrades they are even better than laser turrets, as said above.

And don't forget that laser turrets are a massive drain on your power grid when active. If you're running a small base then it's better to stick with gun turrets.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Pipi:

I haven't tried the flamethrower turret much, is it good?

there are mods who add flamer turrets , and acid turrets too

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/sore68/Additional-Turret

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Acarin:

Um... vanilla has had flamethrower turrets since 0.13...

i play with so many mods i sometimes forget whats in vanilla game:o

[Acarin]

Sorry, just deleted my post again after looking at the mod info. The mod includes 4 different turrets and some new walls, but not flamethrowers (cuz they're in vanilla *grin*)