How to balance turret.

(Glottis-3D) #1

First of all. we need to understand that turret-placement even the bestest in the world is not a kind of skill that should be rewarded with tonns of turret-multikills.
so i thought of how to make it counterable.

What is the main purpose of a turret??
is it a kill or alarm?

alarm turrets with less hp and less dmg, but that can be placed on walls and crazy places. that at least provides a proper pay off for placement skill. if you place then in bad places they dont do *****. but with some imagination you can get info on opponent, and deal some dmg. some advantage for some not very demanding actions.

or the main purpose of a turret is a kill?
then any merc should have a counter measures
now only soldiers have nades - a logical counter ability against turret.
but what about other mercs?
what about proxy with the most littlest hp ever?? vs a human she get advantage of speed, but not vs turret
so here are some thoughts:

  1. turrets should lock on longer vs faster mercs.
  2. turrets can be disturbed for a little period of time by any(or some) throw ability (ammo/health stations, another turret) just like Terminator was disturbed in the movie by machines and facilities. so that lock on time is longer.
  3. turret’s aim gets worse if someone shoots the turret.
  4. some mercs can have a ‘Jam’ ability, that make them invis for enemy turrets for 3-5 seconds.

currently turret is realy OP.

(INF3RN0) #2

Less reliance on automated flat damage, more debuff effects. Same with mines imo.

(tokamak) #3

What both of you said. If you can interrupt the turret and the turret does a incapacitating effect then you can also afford to buff his health. This would turn the turret into a true area denial device rather than a one-use booby trap.

(Glottis-3D) #4

crazy idea:

3rd eye camera, placed nearby a turret lowers lock-on time significantly.

(tokamak) #5

Yes! Excellent. Tracking players through any means should boost the turret’s efficiency.

(PixelTwitch) #6

I still think the turret should spool

(Mustang) #7

Doesn’t it beep whilst locking on?

(PixelTwitch) #8

it does / should (its a little broken at the moment)

but what I mean is it should lock on quicker but have to spool to full fire rate.

(spookify) #9

Just put a small HS box on it somewhere… So if you actually aim at the tiny dot the turret will go down faster…

Its that simple…

(INF3RN0) #10

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;512418]crazy idea:

3rd eye camera, placed nearby a turret lowers lock-on time significantly.[/QUOTE]

*cough merc synergies *cough

(Glottis-3D) #11

i cant believe i am the first one to even think about this stuff!!

…oh wait…

:slight_smile:

(Mustang) #12

[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;512430]it does / should (its a little broken at the moment)

but what I mean is it should lock on quicker but have to spool to full fire rate.[/QUOTE]
Yes I know what you meant, but what I was getting at that beeping whilst slowly locking on versus locking on instantly then making a spooling sound for a while are effectively achieving the same thing.

(tokamak) #13

The baseline of the turret should be less lethal and more interrupting/snaring.

Then as an augment players could get a higher lethality but the turret would need to spin up.

(Szakalot) #14

Slowing down the player seems like a better idea; would be also a cool trap to interrupt trickjumps.

I’m not in favor of higher spin-up, this will render the turret much harder to use effecively. Many corners/corridors won’t be covered well by slow AI, compared to how quickly players run through. Good players will spot slow turrets easily, and take them out.

Also, at 30 sec cooldown, the turret can’t be anything more than an ambush deploayble.

(tokamak) #15

Yes. It needs to move from ambush to area control. It needs to be a deterrent in the first place, not a booby trap.

And that’s why I think it also could use a health/armour boost (to compensate for lower damage output). Keep the weakness to high-calibre, melee and grenades but ordinary rifles should take way longer to sabotage/destroy this thing.

That way the turret something that a friendly team can converge around and hold as a defense front. Or at least it could be used to have one engineer defend less frequently taken paths. The turret serves to disrupt the opponent and the engineer can just pick them off with his own weapon.

This in turn also means that the turret becomes less useful to secure paths by itself. It will slow down players but it won’t hurt them enough to kill them before they can sabotage it. And that’s a good thing because that role should be reserved for mines rather than turrets. They’re two different niches in area denial and the further you set them apart the better.

(Szakalot) #16

So I’ve played against a lot of bushwackers today and couple things come to mind:

  • with +3 bushwackers in a team, turret spam is extremely disruptive to the rest of the game flow
  • turrets are effective at all ranges, allowing a wall of spam reminescent of QW MCP stages
  • turrets can be placed in odd places, such as floating in the air, through objective walls, on a rail
  • turret cooldown is super small, allowing for bushies to keep putting them down over and over again, eventually I had no ammo to shoot at the turrets.
(Glottis-3D) #17

it is the problems because there is now team cooldown.
3 bushwackers
3 stokers
3 skyhammers

3 anyone = huge ability spam.

we need teamcooldown.

(INF3RN0) #18

Well to be fair 3 thunders easily counter 3 bushwhackers. Just random chance in a pub to know what you’ll be up against. Unfortunately it seems like most current counters were unintentional, but I’d rather have a counter ability system rather than cooldowns.

(Glottis-3D) #19

agree on thoughtful counters.
cooldowns are still needed. because counter abilities will not get rid of spammy nature of current cooldown times.
it will be spam vs spam = spam^2

tbh. since its not ETQW(large scale, vehicles) i dont see why we even have so many abilities with so little cooldowns.

i would like to see much less of them in game. like half of what we have now.

(Szakalot) #20

Yes and no.
Thunders can be just as annoying,but at least the players have to be skilled.

Bushwacker spam is annoying on any skill level, its just slowing/locking down movement too effectively, when you are already stretched thin with crossfires.