Turrets and Immobility

FTFY.

Turrets weren't OP in SupCom. Shields were.

Shields were fine, you could punch through them pretty easily especially if you got through. It was the turrets, especially if shielded, that kept you from doing so.

Note to self: remove reclaim in my mod

Supcom 2 steam forums you mean? Because I was never really on GPG forums much. But yeah, I do know about it, don't really care for it.

It was a combination of many factors that made defenses really hard to break. There was the super range of turrets, combined with slow units and fairly weak pathing, which made assaults weak overall. Then the game layered Shields with the cost of 10 Mantis, with the health of 30 Mantis, and a regeneration rate that overwhelmed 20 Mantis after shields went down. Are you seeing an issue yet? Shields absolutely played a role in OP defense.

They did but by themselves they weren't much good.

Overpowered defense is a good thing, too. As I explained. It balances economic commitment to entrenchment with strategic effort on part of the attacker.

Anything a turret can do, a pile of mobile units can ALSO do. Overpowered defense just leads to long periods of waiting for a weapon that can break said defense.

There are roles and mechanics that will break mobile units, but would be totally fine on an immobile structure. Such designs are perfect to integrate into defenses.

Except you know... not die. Turrets are pretty good at that.

Is it wrong I always thought the Vulcan was more a turret then artillery....

anyway... Turrets are balanced by the fact they ARE immobile that's the point. They do damage ideally more then same tier units to an extent but being immobile and still having range limits them greatly. It takes a few artillery units to quickly decimate turrets, that's the artillerys role in the battle, not just against turrets per say, but to remove threats from a range.

I always left turrets I built early on, they have saved me before in many games in TA and honestly I hope they are capable of the same stuff in PA.

Congrats. You have discovered that expensive, long range units are very effective against slow, cheap, clumsy units.

Supcom turrets were always fairly expensive. A 250 or 500 mass turret can tear apart tiny tanks that cost 50 mass. Should that be any surprise to anyone, anywhere? The game breaking part is where they stacked up far better than tanks ever could, leading to some absolutely stupid concentrations of fire power. It got even worse when shields were added into the mix. Experimental units were one of the only ways to break such an overkill defense.

Starcraft fixed defense problems by making defenses larger than units, unable to be packed tighter than a standard army. Supcom2 did a similar thing with its experimental defenses, though shield coverage made any kind of defense pretty damn good.

And for the millionth time, this is a good thing.

It is A thing, yes. Good or not is debatable. There are plenty of ways to tweak turrets towards any end.

Shields in Sup Com broke a lot of things. They prevented attrition & cheap sniping of structures, meaning attacks (land or air) had to be all in or they would fail. They prevented an infinite amount of damage in an alpha strike, meaning a 1hp shield could block a weapon doing 10,000 damage (nukes excepted). They amplified the power of all units behind the shield, and in most cases this prevented sieging, since breaking the shields would take too long while under fire from other defences. Design wise, shields also caused a rise in the DPS of units & defences relative to their health, which was necessary in order to break through shields but meant defences chewed through lower tier units easily (in addition to all their other advantages...).

Given there's no shields in PA, we shouldn't have this mess.

Then I must repeat myself yet again.

It forces a level of strategic effort on the part of the attacker. Making attacking more interesting and more demanding than simply sending death blobs, as these will often fall to a good defence if engaged head on. At the same time due to the expense of creating a heavy defence, good placement is vital on part of the defender.

It encourages strategic play from both sides. Making it one of the many qualities that supcom has in terms of strategic play.

I think what bmb is clumsily and abrasively trying to say is that yes, defenses should burn through tanks/bots/other short ranged units. There should be ways to crack point defense clusters (artillery, missiles, etc.), but it shouldn't involve "zerg moar".

Now, he does seem to be unaware of how hilariously broken shields were in stacks with TMDs and the point defense, but that's another topic.

No. It just creates RPS. Normal units can't do jack, and the next big gun has to be unlocked to tear through the defenses without taking an ounce of damage. I see defense, I build arty, I walk through and win. There's not much strategy to that.

I believe I had a massive thread on this topic. Defenses should be able to be overwhelmed by sheer number of units. RPS is bad. Equally however, defenses need to be far more cost-effective than mobile unit, merely because they are immobile. In other words, normal units should be able to destroy defenses, but only if they outprice the defenses by at least x2, perhaps x3. In other words, defense should be much stronger in terms of bang/buck.

So "zerg moar" is bad, but "turret moar" is ok? Because while he may be making attacking more strategic (which is highly debatable btw), he's making defending less strategic. The burden shouldn't be solely on the attacker.

If point defenses are like tanks/bots but immobile, and don't even win against them, why build them? Unless they are really cheap or strong for their price, which results in them winning fights. The inherent tradeoff of a point defense is that you can't move it, and having similar combat and defense stats as an equivalent amount of tanks just doesn't make them viable.

Range is a good property to have over mobile units (despite it not being terribly realistic when you think about it). It won't save you in a massive brawl, but it'll keep out light attacks better than units will.

Being immobile does allow you to mount a larger gun for less cost.

And I really, REALLY want Gaat guns to make a comeback!