Just some recommended fixes that would make the turret system a little more functional. Allow every kind of turret to function as intended from every nub location Longshot turrets are the main victim of this. In Steel Peel they are more or less nonfunctional. Near the moneyball they can't fire, period. Once built they can't be removed unless the other team does it, and intelligent players will just ignore these turrets as they pose no threat. Longshots can't direct fire unless their target is within spitting distance. It would just require some repositioning. Depending on how far they're repositioned it could also allow base defenses to not be entirely worthless, such as the far back turret nub in Spunky, or moneyball turrets when defending against players on the catwalk, which are more or less immune to turrets when standing on a majority of the platform area. Okay, it's impossible to make every kind of turret effective in every area, which is why the next fix is suggested. Allow turret recycling by the player that built the last upgrade to a turret Since they're getting credit for all of the turret's actions, they technically "own" the turret, but what if the turret they built isn't functioning as desired? Perhaps someone built a level 1 longshot under a catwalk and doesn't want it there. Perhaps they pressed 3 instead of 4 when trying to build a shaveice. They have to let the ENEMY fix their mistake, and when the base is in trouble it's not really an option. Also it's dumb. So, how about opening a menu when pressing E on an already built turret as the owner? Disallow other players from interacting with it while that player is in the menu. 1 upgrades the turret, 2 recycles it. Recycling is a simple system. First off, the turret would have to have at least 80% of its health to be recycled (i.e. not under enemy fire and not suffering from a previous attack) to avoid abuse. Then the recycling player, depending on how generous the devs are feeling, might get back a percentage of the money spent on the last upgrade, and after some time (like 5 seconds) in a casing it would be returned to a nub. It would even be an easy casing design, just a little recycling symbol with the bars going BACKWARDS so it's easy to spot what's happening. To avoid griefing, any turret that has been on the field longer than 30(?) seconds would not be recyclable. This means you can't upgrade an old base turret to level 3, recycle it, and spend the cash on juice, nor ragequit and ruin your team by taking all of your turrets with you. This anti-griefing measure would also allow cash back to be much more generous (75%?) without issues. This would also mean the E menu would not appear after the turret has been on the field for 30 seconds. What if repositioning the turrets is not an option to make them functional? Restrict options. Longshots won't function in some maps or nub spots, period! Why is even building them in a location they won't work an option? I saw a team with four longshot turrets on Steel Peel. I saw a shell land in the middle area twice. Twice. Total. Why let players do this to themselves? The very design of the map prohibits this turret from landing shells properly. Maybe this could be fixed by giving more force to the shells allowing them to fly higher and over the ceiling in steel peel, or by lowering those arbitrary walls ever so slightly to allow shell passage, but right now all shells get blocked by the steel peel of Steel Peel, and they can't fire under the catwalks near the moneyball, anyway. The oddest thing is that airstrikes pass through the outer wall of steel peel just fine, so why let them clip through when longshot shells do not? Why do longshots even TRY firing when their arc is clearly blocked? Mysterious... Make bots unable to proceed to the moneyball until the turret on that side is disabled For the most part, bots stand and fight a turret, but for no reason at all I've seen bots that outright ignore turrets entirely. I've watched a jackbot walk past an unhacked level 3 turret and take down moneyball shields without stopping. I've seen slims slip through the gaps in their ranks, get ignored by a level 1 rockit, and hop onto the moneyball while the turret is contending with a couple blackjacks. Hell, I've seen blackjacks outright ignore a turret shooting at it to hop onto the moneyball. I don't get what forces are at work in these situation, though. It's hit or miss. I'm thinking perhaps bots go along their path and are automatically assigned a target to stop at, but if a turret is built or upgraded and it's the only one in their path, they choose moneyball instead and don't stop for anything, and don't re-target the turret once it's built. That's entirely a guess but there doesn't appear to be any AI that goes "OH HEY TURRET IS DISTRACTED BETTER GO FOR THE BALL" because there is no predictable pattern that seems to suggest this. The annoying thing is that these rare instances now easily cost a team a match compared to the old overtime system. If a team is going to lose at their slightest mistake now, don't you think it shouldn't be because of a fluke? Bots should be forced to destroy a turret blocking their direct path to be able to pass. Otherwise every single dollar spent on that turret is wasted the second the shields go down. This could also lead to interesting strategies such as shaveice turrets for cheap effective barriers at the cost of requiring pros to weed out the bots, but perhaps non-firing turrets could be ignored by this. This idea's a little aggressive for changing gameplay, but it would make the game seem less like it's arbitrarily deciding "WELP, GUESS WHAT THIS TIME YOU LOSE". Thoughts?
Or a jackbot. Or they just got upgraded/hacked and are now attempting to kill that firebase that support over there with gold fire rate is constantly healing. Anyway, I agree with the recycle concept. It would be nice to be able to cancel that lazer blazer and give my base the RockIt it deserves. Also, you missed that on Uncle Tully's, long shots are useless there as well. That wall is just too giant.
Not the best version of this idea I have ever saw. Tbh, you did bring up a good point about the longshot turret: Airstrikes- They spawn, are litteraly created, 6 feet above the beacon that is thrown. Which is why if you throw it far enough under the spawnroom in XBox 360, it will spawn inside of the spawnroom and kill everyone inside. Applying the Idea to Longshots- The longshot should be shown firing a shell, but the shell doesn't actually come out of the longshot. Whatever the longshot is targetting should have the shell appear above them about 6 feet. This gets through tall cover like spawnrings and steelpeel-roof, but is still blocked by short cover like the target being under bridges, as they should always function anyway.
I don't think applying airstrike mechanics would quite work depending on a few factors - the function of longshot shells right now is acceptable. It's just that maps were designed to look appealing, not entirely functional. Depending on how airstrike mechanics were applied, it could either turn longshots into a gamebreaker or make them look a fair bit messy. With a few tweaks, it wouldn't be difficult to make longshots a functional asset to any map without many issues. Perhaps being able to apply a RANGE of force to shells if a target is within their targeting radius surrounding the turret, but no acceptable path for the shell can be found. Furthermore, if more careful steps were taken into making sure longshots can actually find acceptable shell arcs onto the battlefield in certain maps instead of firing into obvious walls, and either adjusting their logic or fixing up maps where issues are found, then a lot of issues could be resolved. Personally, though, I find the ability to apply a wider range of force to longshot shells, using the smallest force possible with an acceptable arc that will find its target would be a fantastic solution. Longshots have only three or four situations in which they'll actually hit their mark, and giving them the ability to launch shells at LOW speeds (with a minimum cap, of course) to hit closer, dawdling targets would make them a more useful asset, while allowing them to fire at higher forces would mean potential for higher arcs and a much lower chance for obstructions with a strike closer to perpendicular with the ground. Of course my logic may be a bit fuzzy but you can probably make sense of what I mean. I won't pretend I know how the UT3 engine functions. This all being said, an airstrike mechanic could still work, depending on the implementation. However, the complexity of implementing it in a style that looks clean and still retains original function while eliminating the main issue of them failing to actually function without making them too powerful could make the work greater than the worth of the product. Really, all it comes down to in the simplest possible form is "make the damn walls shorter and put a few windows in where the gap shots keep hitting 'em anyway". No need to over-complicate things when there are honestly more important fixes that are required at the moment. There's your tl;dr, by the way.
Or have the shells in mid-air have a small amount of tracking to them, enough to keep up with a blackjack at least.
I've suggested before that Supports have the ability to "trade up" turrets, e.g. taking a level 3 lazerblazer and paying the difference in cost to turn it into a rocket. I don't think all players should be able to do it, I think it should be specific to a class, and I think it should always COST money, never refund it.
I don't like the idea of any one player, potentially being limited or disabled by a server, having control over the turret system that all players can pay into over other players. Furthermore, the idea of him being able to change turrets to whatever would be a griefer's paradise, unless it would only apply to lazeblazers into rockits which would basically be official, dev-supported condemnation of the turret. And in the end, players could just switch roles to support if it's not limited, swap up turrets, then change out, making the whole requirement a big pain in the butt. And the whole idea of a refund or lack thereof is a dangerous thing to play around with, but the viability of giving them to players depends on the circumstance of it, so it's difficult to outright say "NOPE.", especially when the game revolves around the money mechanic and income is never particularly plentiful outside of curbstomp or long duration stalemate matches. Given the strength of longshot shells and potential firing speed, allowing them to keep pace with ordinary, unhindered bot movement could be pretty damn devastating when bots are basically the most important part of the game. Minor tracking to adjust for SLIGHTLY incorrect angles would be pretty cool, though, and I think it has some level of use to it. What if longshots trumped gapshots? Like, gapshots would be able to get a few shots off but longshots would give them high priority and would basically wipe out most attempts at gapshot spam unless they were eliminated. Gap shots are weak, but pro intervention is required quite quickly to avoid huge losses, a couple gap shots can easily wreck up a large base as long as they're cared for properly and not outright destroyed. Long shots are also weak, but they have no true use outside of taking pot shots at unwary pros and laying down hits on stalled bot groups, and even then their aim on bot groups is subpar. Making them specifically counteract gapshots whenever possible would make them quite a nice addition, sort of a barrier the enemy team has to overcome before they can start wiping out ALL of your turrets. A whole mess of long shots would leave a team vulnerable regardless of gap shots, but single long shots to counter gapshots here and there would be easy enough for players to surgically strike against and remove to make performing such a task before mindlessly spamming bots not very difficult or time-consuming if played right. In other words, it's got balance.
