More on turrets...

posted on September 25th, 2009, 5:38 pm

I read a discussion a few days ago about turrets not being balanced and I, for the most part, agreed with Doca's response of them being fine with their current operation in gameplay.  I would like to know if anyone else feels the same as me on these 4 turret adjustments. 

1. The borg turret could use a SLIGHT increase in defense.  I'm thinking 3-5 points.  They're destroyed a little too easy, for my tastes at least (maybe I'm just bad at being borg :-p  ) by Dominion and Feds.

2. The Romulan turret is weak.  Maybe a little more offense, or a different weapon refit or something.  Maybe short range plasma bolts that weaken shields or have a slight chance to deactivate could be added to their arsenal?

3. The Mayson turret:  Where to start with this....It IS over powered en mass.  However I don't think that's the problem.  I think its rate of fire is a little too high.  I think if this was reduced slightly, it would be much better.

4.  This last complaint isn't for a turret persay....but it is related.  The Romulan station cloak ability is virtually a useless tech at this point.  Here is one of two ways to make it more useable.  Option 1. Make turning it on from one station turn it on for all stations within sensor range of one another.  That way mining ops or secondary bases could be activated seperately.  Option 2.  Make stations groupable.  Now, I would like to see both of these features implemented.  I think option 1 would be more effective for the Roms.  Option 2 would be nice for stations with queues.  Most non Borg players build more than one construction yard.

Well that's it folks.  Let me know whatcha think. 

posted on September 25th, 2009, 5:51 pm

Hmm, the Borg turret is already extremely cost effective compared to units to be honest... maybe it could use a defensive boost, but I think they really are fine at the moment.

In regards to the Romulan turret, just use prefine and you've got the most cost effective turret out there. Likewise, only the Helev turret is weak--Mijural's turret is to be feared in my opinion.

The Mayson turret is rather easy to void actually--the more ships you bring, the weaker the turrets are. Against Borg it can pose some issues, but the thing is far from cost effective and hard to build up if you are having a close game. Maybe a change is necessary...as turret walking can sometimes occur with Mayson.

I reaaaaaally would not like the change for the Romulan station cloak. Cloaking one station at a time is a far more effective strategy than having all stations cloak at once (you just simply cloak each station as they are being attacked and thus waste less energy and risk exposing your stations to less firepower at a time). Grouping would be ideal, and I think plans have been made to implement that--I believe that your option 2 is far more effective, as option 1 is extremely limiting and would make it essentially so that my research stations would be the first to be targeted, as they generally have less energy than a hulking Starbase.

posted on September 25th, 2009, 6:07 pm

Indeed, the Mason turret holds enemies off for longer. If you are fighting an experienced player, as Dominus wrote, they are organizing their attack force. (VS mort I even tried running a scout along the line to take off as many voleys before moving in, but the fleet had to be so close, movement autonomy made them go right at them too soon ) If they are inexperienced, they are loosing ships trying to scout around or get through, or even destroy them one at a time as soon as they think there are enough ships.

I have not used station cloaking since V 3.0.5, but using prefine, I spamed Helev turrets (~100) against borg AI, and cloaked whichever ones were about to be destroyed. Did not lose one, vs 3 borg ships. Granted the save file corrupted as happens with long games sometimes, but...

Borg turrets, now that its brought up, never bankrupted me, when even mining ships could sometimes, but take too long to set up with 2 constructors. A battle was pinning down the second on Nirvana II though.

If there were one turret I could change, is the klingon turret. The ships do not last long enough to defend themselves, and so any long range ship can just start to leave and they are safe. I don't want it artilery range, but this gurilla oportunity makes 2 ships a lethal force against a base, untill the ships can get there. This is not always possible with destroyers waiting in behind. The change I would make is long range plus its diameter to the range. It might not matter because it was a Bot opponet, and you are going to lose your ships to spam anyway... So I probably woulden't change any of them.
(Unless you are meaning 3-5 HULL points on a borg turret )

posted on September 26th, 2009, 4:39 pm

Both the Cloaking Generator and the Intelligence Center will get a few more additions in future patches, to make both of them more interessting.

The other points about the turrets are already well answeres as far as i see it

posted on September 26th, 2009, 4:55 pm

Can there be an anti-sensor station to prevent those specials on the intell-center?

posted on September 26th, 2009, 4:57 pm

Like the Shroud Generator from Command & Conquer?

posted on September 26th, 2009, 5:01 pm

That would be cool.  Say a scout discovers your base, and leaves.  If you build this generator, they can only see your base if your there, if not, it completely dissapears off your may, stations and all.  Maybe it could also dampen the range of enemy sensors in that area as well.

posted on September 26th, 2009, 6:09 pm

I think that would be a superbly neat addition... sounds really good for a Ciadan or Romulan ability actually 

posted on October 30th, 2009, 2:54 pm

Certainly very Romulan.

I reckon increasing reload time on the Torpedo turrets would force players into building a variety around their base, probably mostly pulse turrets (unless that small issue with the range/power is fixed in the next patch). But more variety is always good, no?

[mimesot]

posted on November 6th, 2009, 11:45 am

Last edited by mimesot on November 6th, 2009, 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh please please, a shroud generator for the romulans would be  pre romulan style. Great idea! Perhaps it could additionally slowly destroy an enemies sensor-subsystem, or some other nice stuff.

Further i believe that some funny toy should be added to the cloaking generator just to make it mor interesting as station. It is already useful but there is no reason for having it as an extra station and not as reseach feature. Probably upgrades for the cloak could be reseached there, like a reduction of the cloaking-decloaking-duration (like the tavara-system-upgrade), the ability to recharge energy while cloaked, or a higher cloaking efficiency (making it harder to be detected by the tachyon scan). 

As discussed somewhere else before, i'd switch pulse and phaser turrets range.

In all other cases locutus and dominus have said what's needed to be said.

posted on November 6th, 2009, 1:29 pm

The pulse and phaser turrets was mentioned by me, and the first time the devs said they would swap them for 3.0.7 and then they didn't.
And then I brought it up again more recently and they said it was in 3.0.8

posted on November 7th, 2009, 8:05 am

In my mind, the Klingon and Romulan turrets are reversed.  The Romulans are xenophobic, they prefer to strike from the shadows and I think should have the better turret.  The Klingons are all about glory and battle, I don't think they'd thirst so much to win with unmanned weapons platforms ... Klingons /want/ to die in battle! heh.

posted on November 7th, 2009, 9:35 am

In my mind, the Klingon and Romulan turrets are reversed.  The Romulans are xenophobic, they prefer to strike from the shadows and I think should have the better turret.  The Klingons are all about glory and battle, I don't think they'd thirst so much to win with unmanned weapons platforms ... Klingons /want/ to die in battle! heh.

 
  On the contrary!  Klingons would prefer to spend their money and use the resources on ships that can die glorious deaths!  Thus a Klingon would rather have one huge turret capable of turning his opponents into blood worms than spamming crappy turrets.

  Or whatever.  I don't really know.  I just wanted to see if I could make it have sense the other way around

  Think of it this way: 

Rom - Crappy Turrets, Great Ships
Fed - Variety of Ships, Variety of Turrets
Kli - Destructo-Turret, Vulnerable Ships
Dom - Weak Turret/Ships and Dreadnought Perimeter/Ship
Borg - Who builds Turrets?

posted on November 7th, 2009, 10:15 am

all teh turrets will get a slight redo with the next patch to, including some general rebalancing, but the basic turret types won't be touched.

i just feel that the Klingons would rather build a large, gigantic cannon, then fielding a system that allows to produce many small turrets. that reminds me more on mine fields or similar defense grids, that sound much more Romulan. After all they had hundreds of ships in service, just to patrol the neutral zone they wouldn't put all about securing a sector on one card. Thats why they have the cheapest mass-produceable turret. It also supports their isoliation character. The Federation as a defense-fanatic has the greatest flexibility in turrets and a good early-game turret too and the Dominion features large blockade platforms like at Cardassia, the Perimeter. I think its fine that way
The only thing open is the Borg turret, but i have some ideas to make it special

posted on November 7th, 2009, 2:33 pm

I have discovered one time I build turrets with Borg.  When I'm out of connections, but have good mining going on.  I'll turret the crap out of my mining then.  If I run out of supplies as well, I'll start using Assimilation Matrixes as turrets.