Laser Turrets and Over Heating

Just a quick idea about how to reduce the strength of Laser Turrets and their supremacy or Over Powered role in the game.

If I understood, one of the issue we have at the moment is that few T2 Laser Turrets can easily push away assaults brought thought T1 units like Tanks and Bots. Even T1 Laser Turrets can. And no matter how many units you send to meet the turrets, they get hammered.

Lasers are awesome weapons and in many games you can shot a laser for a limited period of time, otherwise the barrel will over heat, and the weapon will break.

So what if Laser Turrets would actually over heat when exposed to a continuous stress? T1 Laser Turrets, having one single barrel, would stop firing for a while. T2 and T3 Laser Turrets, having more barrels, would reduce their fire power accordingly.

A barrel could also break, losing its ability to function, unless a fabber or combat fabber is around to timely repair it.

This way, even if the enemy have walls in front of the Turret, multiple waves of assaults will accomplish something.

Now, you may say that this is bad because it will add micro management in order to repair the turrets. I do not think that’s necessarily true. First it greatly depends by how this feature would be implemented: Turret could just repair themselves giving them time (or simply cool down).

Secondly, Combat Fabbers repair everything in range in automatic, and other fabbers can be set in Patrol mode, which allows them to repair everything in need of attention as well. This will reward players able to keep more variety in their unit productions, and a better positioning on the battlefield, which is key in every game about strategy: positioning and territorial control.

Implement the ammo system for turrets and you're done, basically.

Good enough for me. Even if laser cannons have no ammos, but batteries eventually, if the final result might be good, I would say let's give it a try.

i meant the currently in-game ammo system. Like what bombers, umbrellas, and the Uber cannon have.

It's effectively the same as what you describe, regardless of whether it's cooldown, batteries or bombs.

That's just using energy right? Do t2 defence structures use energy or is it not implemented yet?

AFAIK, no.

How the ammo system works is that a unit gets assigned an arbitrary amount of shots. Once a shot is taken the ammo count is reduced. This means that unit can have burst damage or a lower amount of constant damage.

Umbrellas use energy to regenerate ammo, i believe bombers do too.

so does this mean that we might get an ammo regeneration unit for large armies if this system is implemented???

The system is already implemented. It's just only used for a tiny subset of units.

As for an "ammo bot", it seems decidedly unlikely.

Not gonna to happen... They might just make them shoot slower.

Don't think energy alone is enough. Early game when turrets are so powerful you will just have to pause your factories or your fabbers or both for the few seconds it takes all his ants to die. The reason this is better balanced in TA is because energy is quite easy to destroy or prevent while you send in attacks.
Pause basically just makes energy weapons more tedious.

Well, if you study a bit of military history, machine guns had for long time the issue of the re-loading. So if the assaulting forces were composed by only few soldiers, they had no chances. But massive forces had the chances to finally over come the defending positions, because at some point, machine guns even if technically not short in ammo, had to reload nonetheless. That latency could result in their defeat.

However, machine guns still at today have the issue of over heating.

A Laser Turret is the equivalent of a defending machine gun. It accomplishes the same role in PA. Not that a game has necessarily to copy the real World. But giving an over heating (or reloading) bias to Laser Turrets could allow T1 units to over come them under some conditions, while now T1 units have basically no chances at all.

In early stages of the game, it shouldn't be an issue any way, because hardly one can assault with enough units to exhaust a Turret.

I have a really strong feeling that a lot of confusion is going on in this thread about the ammo system.

Ammo regeneration, not firing, takes energy. So, a T1 tower can shoot down numerous bots before it has to reload. This means that after the turrets have emptied their ammo, your energy economy takes quite the hit while the enemy moves in to finish the tower.

No, because it acts as a balance system for a handful of units (e.g. the commander's Uber cannon).

It can (probably) be modded in, but i don't see why such a unit would be needed, let alone desired.

DPS is more than just a damage figure. I think it's important to understand that reliability of DPS is a thing. Bots, through high ROF, get a very reliable DPS. If a bolt misses, or a unit is killed, not a lot of DPS is wasted.

A bomber has unreliable DPS: it has a quick burst of DPS followed by a period of low DPS, making it vulnerable. A turret, or at least T1 turret, with unreliable DPS would follow the function i'd like it to have: protection against harass. Not army-stopping power (that's what the T1.5 is for) or entrenching (that's what the T2 is for). Rather, it can quickly blast down a small group of tanks.

A Kestrel (gunship) is so powerful because it has reliable DPS: it fires like a bot. Artillery has unreliable DPS because it fires so slow and whatever you fired at can already have moved.

On phone, so sorry for not editing the quote properly. Just in reply to your response; what does this solve? Like say it had enough ammo to kill 5 ants, so you know if you send 7, the other 2 can kill the turret. I understand the system but not sure why we need the break when it can be balanced that the tower can kill say 6 ants before it dies normally.

The method you describe will most likely be manipulated and leave the turrets basically useless.

I want a capacitor bot to quickly refuel your ammo system on the fly Could work on everything and would be an interesting edition of the combat fabber.

np, when i'm on my phone it's usually a battle against autocorrect.

I believe the OP finds the turrets overpowered. The ammo system would solve the problem by making the turret less effective at holding back waves. I'm not sure how it can be manipulated. The point is simply that a turret is more anti-harass and less anti-T1 army.

Dual and triple barrel guns may stay effective against armies

I quote this. Which is basically the point I was trying to make.

A Laser Turret with a high rate of fire, but biased by over heating so that it can't sustain its highest rate for too long, should be able to protect you from early raids when players maneuver small groups of T1 units, because the turret should be done with them in a very short time.

Later in game, a double or triple barrel Laser Turret should still be able to protect you from sneaking units, even T2.

However, if a player manages to mass a decent amount of units, then you need more than a couple of turrets, 'cos at some point they slow down their rate of fire and get overwhelmed. But that's what we want to see in game, large armies, and not a couple of Vanguards making ground zero.

So, or you need to react with mobile units as well or you get to be more creative with your static defenses. On the other hand, this mechanic could add one layer more to our strategy in attack.

Again, it's just an idea. If you feel tempted by it, let's discuss it. If it's not interesting, I'm fine with dropping it as well.

Not really. The ammo is usually there to balance, not to be annoying.

i quite like the idea of being able to swamp turrets with units, even in the early game. At the moment, tech one is practically entirely useless, between the walls, turrets, and commanders ubercannon. Anything to make them more viable would be great.

Just for emphasis:

A turret without ammo can withstand an endless swarm of 5 units per second

A turret with ammo can withstand 10 units in 1s and then 1 second, nothing. (Both 5 units/s)

So, an ammo turret subjected tot an 15 unit army will be subjected to 1 second free damage. The regular turret can constantly chip away the army and may never be damaged.


Obviously depending on the numbers, but an ammo turret is momentarily vulnerable whereas a regular one may never be