Minmaxing Turrets with Building and Research?

[🦊 Hermit]

So I'm currently in the midgame on my first save, approaching endgame (reached the barrier, but not breached it yet). And I'm getting to the point where my small destroyer is struggling a little against decent sized fleets, so I'm gonna have to take the jump to a capital build pretty soon.

But when I do, I want to get the best defences I can for it, and that got me thinking how I can improve some of my turret stats. I found a really nice (4k+ DPS) bolter turret which I blueprinted and built more of (don't know where I got it from, just found it in my inventory once!), and a station in local sectors was selling a decent (~3k DPS) pulse cannon which I also snapped up. But aside from that I've struggled to find any turrets with more than 1k DPS that were not tesla/lightning, and I don't want to rely on those due to stone ineffectiveness. I'd especially like to go primarily laser on my capital with some railgun and other backup, but decent damage lasers are scarce in the extreme.

So I started thinking about how one could upgrade, and a shop/research/blueprint combo came to mind. Find the best turret I can at a shop and buy it, then mass produce it and research in high level sectors until I get a big upgrade. Then bloop that and start the cycle over again to get even higher stats. Obviously such minmaxing would take a ludicrous amount of resources, but I'm the sort of player who doesn't mind a bit of resource grind...I often find it relaxing.

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this kind of method themselves in their own games, and if so, what were the results? Did you manage to get the sort of stat upgrades you wanted? And do you have any tips that I should consider when working towards such a goal? Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks in advance^^

[SkollUlfr]

breaking 1k dps per slot is rare before the barrier.
research station is rng for all attributes beside weapon type. and if you mix the input, even that becomes limited rng of what you put in.
so just organise your inventory by type and throw the dice until you get something you want to duplicate.

use stations close to the barrier for better maximum grade that station will produce.

[apellis]

Also, I'm pretty sure NPC ships don't use stone at all.

[FuryoftheStars]

The only NPCs that you need to “worry” about stone with are mines.

That said, due to the way research works, I’d actually recommend mass producing low end, cheap gear (though of the highest rarity that you can). The only stats that research cares about are weapon type, quality, and whether or not it has Independent Targeting. Everything else is rerolled from scratch.

[Drascalicus]

I recommend you find a turret factory and make your own turrets.

I go for Lightning/Railgun Hybrids with 2 or so plasma. The reason is that Lightning and Plasma (if they are of different types) will overcome any type of shield resistance that can make ships completely immune (on Insane at least) to certain damage types. Railguns are the best anti-hull weapon out there. They have the highest relative DPS depending on how many blocks you get pierce on, and I find that even at base, they have a higher base DPS than cannons, lightning, rockets, etc . . .

[SkollUlfr]

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

and whether or not it has Independent Targeting.

im pretty sure it doesnt care about that. i ended up with manual fire point defence chaingun. i found it was a memorable result.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

and whether or not it has Independent Targeting.

im pretty sure it doesnt care about that. i ended up with manual fire point defence chaingun. i found it was a memorable result.

It does (or should), but all turrets put in there need it in order to guarantee it out. If you truly did put in all PD with IT and managed to get one without, then it’s a bug (especially seems PDs are guaranteed in the rng system to have IT, anyway).

[Chaoslink]

Turret factories still seem to produce the best weapons. Build some from there and you will be fine. Just search factories near the barrier for the best performing weapons. Don't use a wide variety of gun types and only use the ones you can make identical as having both a cannon and railgun is pointless since you'll only hit stationary targets due to the different projectiles. Highest DPS doesn't necessarily mean best performance. I had made some pulse cannons that had anti-matter projectiles that were stupid powerful since it had a 89% shield bypass chance and bonus 180% hull damage. I didn't need other weapons really as these deleted everything regardless of shields.

[🦊 Hermit]

Thanks for the responses all, some good stuff here^^

I have definitely seen both AI ships and stations with stone parts in their makeup (I salvage a lot, and I've often heard the 'crunch' of stone and seen the puff of dust when breaking a block on the wrecks). However I have yet to come across anything armoured heavily/exclusivley in the stuff, so perhaps my concern about tesla is a little unfounded yeah. That said, tesla turrets are quite short-range compared to some other options, and with a huge craft that isn't as manuverable I imagine range would be more important to have.

The reason I'm thinking of going mainly with lasers is partly that range, but also their accuracy - I'm far from the best aim out there, and struggle somewhat to get good hits even with my current weapons unless I'm very close range to the enemy, let alone with launchers and cannons. A good long-range beam with pinpoint accuracy would be handy to have to ensure the AI ships don't just dance around me while I lumber through with a big, heavy cruiser, decimating the local asteroid fields with my shots but not actually hitting the attackers at all XD

I have gotten a few different damage type weapons so far, including plasma lasers, so I was thinking if I could get a couple of banks of both plasma and normal energy (or perhaps plasma and antimatter, if I can find an anti-laser) that should be pretty effective against both shields and hull. I have recently seen an antimatter pulse cannon myself, and I figured that could be quite a force too, although it's DPS and quality were somewhat lacking.

Currently in my game I'm making a long circle around the edge of the barrier, locating any civilisations which may have turret factories and/or a research lab in close proximity to the rifts, so I can farm their wares and make use of their facilities. I guess once I've completed that I can take stock of all the turret options on offer and make a final decision on what to aim for from there.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Turret factories still seem to produce the best weapons. Build some from there and you will be fine. Just search factories near the barrier for the best performing weapons. Don't use a wide variety of gun types and only use the ones you can make identical as having both a cannon and railgun is pointless since you'll only hit stationary targets due to the different projectiles. Highest DPS doesn't necessarily mean best performance. I had made some pulse cannons that had anti-matter projectiles that were stupid powerful since it had a 89% shield bypass chance and bonus 180% hull damage. I didn't need other weapons really as these deleted everything regardless of shields.

It's been a while since I dug through the code, but assuming they haven't made any major changes, this is (generally) how turret factories work:

• They roll a weapon of the rarity you have selected. This turret is used for the "base" stats at the factory with you contributing no extra components.
  
• They then roll a weapon of the next highest rarity. The stats on this turret are used to determine the "max" stats when you have all components cranked to max.
  
• They use a fixed rng seed with these based on the factory so that you get the same results each time you visit it, and there may be some additional tweaking to the stats I didn't see to account for if the second turret rolls with stats less than the first turret (such as just rerolling it).

Essentially, what this should all result in is the ability to craft a turret with the stats of the next highest rarity. So an Exceptional (highest you can build at a factory not counting your own blueprints) with the stats of Exotic.

Research, on the other hand, can roll Legendaries, so has the potential of getting higher. That said, there is a lot of overlap of the stats between Legendary and Exotic, even Exceptional, so it'll take a lot of gambling to get a Legendary with stats that only they can get.

[Chaoslink]

Keep in mind that tech level isn’t always the determining factor for a good turret. I’d search as far away as even late Trinium for factories as some of my best rolls were from Trinium based turrets. Don’t let DPS deceive you either. I don’t think DPS considers things like shield penetration or effects like antimatter hull bonuses. You have to analyze each turret a bit more closely to get the best feel for which ones are better than others.

[🦊 Hermit]

That's true, I have found a couple of good ones a little further away from the barrier too. Plus I wanna focus mainly on trinium, because xanion turrets need a xanion base to sit on, but armour isn't available in xanion tech, so I'd rather have trinium weapons and let them sit on a more armoured base. My search currently is just to locate civilisations in the areas around the barrier, but once I've found some I'll probably explore their territories more thoroughly to find other factories they may have too.

My biggest issue I've found so far in my game is shields. As I said in the OP I found a 4k+ DPS bolter turret which I blueprinted, so with a couple of those on my rig I can cut through even armoured ships pretty swiftly. But those bolters do much less damage to shields, and my RNG on plasma weapons has been far worse - I've struggled to find anything even in the 700 range, let alone higher. Which means that often in a firefight I'm sat trying to wear down the enemy's shields while they're burning me too, and if there are a lot of them they usually get me down to critical hull before I can take out a couple of their ships. One pirate faction in particular seems to have extremely strong shields in comparison to their weapons, so while I can easily take out their vessels once their shields are down, I often have to make my escape before I can get to that stage or they will finish me.

I know it's all RNG, so I'm sure I'll find a decent plasma cannon eventually, or something else I can use instead (like that antimatter pulse cannon someone mentioned earlier). And until then I can still hold my own so long as the armadas I face aren't too large - it's only really big pirate strongholds that cause me serious grief. But I know it'll only get tougher beyond the rifts, so I wanna be well prepared before I move on and breach the barrier, and if I'm gonna be building a capital ship soon I may as well do all the upgrades together at the same time.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Turret factories still seem to produce the best weapons. Build some from there and you will be fine. Just search factories near the barrier for the best performing weapons. Don't use a wide variety of gun types and only use the ones you can make identical as having both a cannon and railgun is pointless since you'll only hit stationary targets due to the different projectiles. Highest DPS doesn't necessarily mean best performance. I had made some pulse cannons that had anti-matter projectiles that were stupid powerful since it had a 89% shield bypass chance and bonus 180% hull damage. I didn't need other weapons really as these deleted everything regardless of shields.

It's been a while since I dug through the code, but assuming they haven't made any major changes, this is (generally) how turret factories work:

• They roll a weapon of the rarity you have selected. This turret is used for the "base" stats at the factory with you contributing no extra components.
  
• They then roll a weapon of the next highest rarity. The stats on this turret are used to determine the "max" stats when you have all components cranked to max.
  
• They use a fixed rng seed with these based on the factory so that you get the same results each time you visit it, and there may be some additional tweaking to the stats I didn't see to account for if the second turret rolls with stats less than the first turret (such as just rerolling it).

Essentially, what this should all result in is the ability to craft a turret with the stats of the next highest rarity. So an Exceptional (highest you can build at a factory not counting your own blueprints) with the stats of Exotic.

Research, on the other hand, can roll Legendaries, so has the potential of getting higher. That said, there is a lot of overlap of the stats between Legendary and Exotic, even Exceptional, so it'll take a lot of gambling to get a Legendary with stats that only they can get.

Is that how they worked.... interesting to say the least.

Thing I always like to reiterate on when talking about turrets here though is stat consistency. Even if you could get a lot of good rolled legendaries, unless you can replicate them, you still face the issue of varying range, fire rate, accuracy and other stats. If your weapons don’t perform consistently, then often times the effective DPS is lower than the listed DPS because of weapons s missing being out of range or other issues. It’s like having 8 railguns that fire at random intervals after the first volley versus ones that fire simultaneously. You only have to align them so often if they fire consistently rather than maintaining that aim if they fire randomly.

It’s an underestimated concept I feel some players don’t appreciate and end up suffering the consequence of.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

It's been a while since I dug through the code, but assuming they haven't made any major changes, this is (generally) how turret factories work:

• They roll a weapon of the rarity you have selected. This turret is used for the "base" stats at the factory with you contributing no extra components.
  
• They then roll a weapon of the next highest rarity. The stats on this turret are used to determine the "max" stats when you have all components cranked to max.
  
• They use a fixed rng seed with these based on the factory so that you get the same results each time you visit it, and there may be some additional tweaking to the stats I didn't see to account for if the second turret rolls with stats less than the first turret (such as just rerolling it).

Essentially, what this should all result in is the ability to craft a turret with the stats of the next highest rarity. So an Exceptional (highest you can build at a factory not counting your own blueprints) with the stats of Exotic.

Research, on the other hand, can roll Legendaries, so has the potential of getting higher. That said, there is a lot of overlap of the stats between Legendary and Exotic, even Exceptional, so it'll take a lot of gambling to get a Legendary with stats that only they can get.

Is that how they worked.... interesting to say the least.

Thing I always like to reiterate on when talking about turrets here though is stat consistency. Even if you could get a lot of good rolled legendaries, unless you can replicate them, you still face the issue of varying range, fire rate, accuracy and other stats. If your weapons don’t perform consistently, then often times the effective DPS is lower than the listed DPS because of weapons s missing being out of range or other issues. It’s like having 8 railguns that fire at random intervals after the first volley versus ones that fire simultaneously. You only have to align them so often if they fire consistently rather than maintaining that aim if they fire randomly.

It’s an underestimated concept I feel some players don’t appreciate and end up suffering the consequence of.

Yeah, it's a very odd approach, but considering they didn't leave themselves the ability to manually decide stats within the confines of what the rng system can roll (without having two sets of stats that they need to maintain and tweak), I suppose it's the next best way to deal with it.

While I agree on the weapon consistency, unless I'm mistaken, once you get that good Legendary from research, you can then take it to a factory to blueprint and reproduce it. I think the only turrets that can't be blueprinted are ones with a tech level greater than 50. (I'll be honest, I never tried it after they introduced blueprinting, so I don't know if there's a rarity restriction as well as tech level.)

I also want to point out that the reason you can often find lower tech turrets with better stats is solely because of the rng system. (While tech level isn't used to determine base dps of a turret, the base dps and tech level both derive from the same thing... absolute distance to the core.) Being closer to the core will increase the base dps of a turret, but because of the rng system and the way it's setup, it's still possible for a high tech level turret to get crap rolls while the lower tech level gets good rolls (there's very little in there in the way of guaranteeing minimum stat boosts).

So, yeah, higher tech level has a better chance at rolling more damage, but it's not guaranteed, and thus what you've been observing. Their system would probably need a huge overhaul to solve that.

[🦊 Hermit]

Tbh I'm actually okay with the wide range of stat variety across equipment tiers. Encourages more exploration to find something special, and feels more valuable and exciting when you do get a really good item.

I think the only thing I'd ask for in that regard is a little more consistency when researching - for example a higher likelihood that special attributes be passed on when researching multiple items with that special attribute together, or the items that you input having more influence over what comes out (looking at you, shield ionizer, with your 'research physical, plasma and antimatter resistance, and get electric as a result :P )