Allow stations to target specific units

posted on March 29th, 2011, 9:37 pm

Suppose a turret is built near an enemy station.  It will only attack that station despite the fact that it is being attacked.  It should be able to manually target the vessels attacking it.  There have been games where a turret was built to protect an expansion that had an enemy yard being build within range but was destroyed when the shipyard was completed because the turret just wouldn't attack the ships!  The turrets are supposed to provide defense, but a lot of times, they do not provide that defense because they are targeting a unit that is no threat to them instead of targeting the unit that is the threat!  The logic behind stations not being able to manually target units is good, but is greatly flawed because of the turret's attack logic.

posted on March 29th, 2011, 9:41 pm

It's called "balance", TCR.  Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it should change .

  Ships die most quickly when they are focus-fired.  When turrets could do that (several patches ago they could) it took far fewer turrets to cause unnacceptable losses on raiding fleets.

  Translation = Feds could quickly become unraidable.  Just what everyone else needed ....

posted on March 29th, 2011, 9:49 pm

Whenever I see someone building turrets I think I have an advantage.

i find that too, turrets have no engines and cant protect multiple places easily.

Edit: both posts that have been written while I wrote this mention that turrets would defend miners. I don't think they do, or at least they do only at the very beginning of the game, where ships with a defense of 20+ are rare.

thats true, they work best at the start where they can easily force ships to retreat and stop shooting your helpless miners.

Suppose a turret is built near an enemy station.

lolwut? that is pretty rare. outside of early game, why bring a constructor all that way, bring your fleet.

There have been games where a turret was built to protect an expansion that had an enemy yard being build within range but was destroyed when the shipyard was completed because the turret just wouldn't attack the ships! 

check a recent replay on nebula stream where a phaser turret stopped dominion early large yard in the middle with b5s. clint uploaded it.

posted on March 29th, 2011, 10:44 pm

Hmm, in modding the turrets and stations to allow you to select the target, I found quite a few bugs.  All of them are after the base was upgraded.  The bugged units are:

Dominion Cloning Facility
Dominion Perimeter (requires confirmation)
Federation Outpost
Klingon Starbase
Romulan Starbase (requires confirmation)

Anyways, turrets would be more effective if they could be ordered to target specific units.  Like units that are no threat.  In that replay you mentioned is irrelevant because the phaser turret happened to target the unit that was the threat.  But it always targeted the unit that was closest to it.  Besides, the B-5 rush is way too powerful, which is probably why it's the most common strategy.

posted on March 29th, 2011, 10:56 pm

Don't throw in things that have nothing to do with the thread TCR. It's like Catos "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam". "Furthermore I think B-5s are too strong!"

On topic: I'd still like the idea of a manual targeting for starbases. I wouldn't mind if that ability was "activated" by one of the weapons upgrades. It could work like Borg ships then.

posted on March 29th, 2011, 11:31 pm

check a recent replay on nebula stream where a phaser turret stopped dominion early large yard in the middle with b5s. clint uploaded it.

Cmdr. Marian, I was responding to the above quote.