View Full Version : Turrets and Op Defense
What exactly is the point of turrets? I think they need to be given a look at and redesigned to fit with their purpose. I can see 4 main goals for a Turret.
1) An advanced warning, to alert you that hostiles are present at your op.
2) A small force deterrant, to make a small group think twice about running in and hacking your op.
3) To slow down any hostile force attacking your op and give you time to arrive and defend.
4) To augment your defending of the op against superior forces.
I believe these are the primary purposes of a Turret. Now let's see how Turrets in NC attempt to fuffil these goals.
1) If only used as an advanced warning, turrets are miserable. They only warn on destruction, which means someone could have spent 5 minutes runnin around taking pot shots, or they could have positioned themselves and dug in, making sure to not kill a turret until they are ready. To make matters worse, turrets are extremely expensive. If you don't have time to get them built, they are quite expensive to buy at the store. Alternately building them may be cheap monitarily, but it's very expensive in terms of manhours. It's tedious for a constructor to pump them out on a day to day basis.
2) Turrets are mediocre in this regard, they could deter a single hacker, or a small group with no ppu. Yet to do so, would require using enough turrets to cover every entrance. Said small group is most likely to switch their tactics to killing a turret and leaving. Eventualy they will have enough turrets destroyed to hack, if they move between several ops.
3) Turrets definitly do slow down hostile forces, forcing them to deal with turrets first. If your defensive layout is especialy clever you might actualy prevent them from entering the computer room unless they kill a turret. Most often though players use all kinds of tricks to get around turrets and happily hack away with no turret loss. They absolutely do not slow down op attacks enough though. Hostile forces can arrive at your op, position themselves and dig in, and control when first warning comes so they are prepared for you. The minimum time to hack an op is roughly 3 minutes, giving some time to setup prior to hack a good team can steal an op in 5 minutes. How long does it take for your clan to organize a group to defend? 10-30 minutes... Typicly everyone drops what they were doing and scrambles for a GR. They arrive in UG and someone scouts while you wait for the rest of your forces to arrive. With the new patch you will most likely be caught in the UG when the turrets turn hostile.
4) This is the only goal that I feel turrets do an excellent job at. If you are lucky enough to arrive at your op with advanced warning that actualy worked, ie they only killed a turret on the edge of your op and are not inplace waiting for you to gr in, then turrets are awesome. A small group can hole up inside the op and fend off a larger group outside. Turrets can even be placed during a fight to further your defense. I can recall holding the computer room myself, just a ppu, and some turrets. I managed to hold the hostiles back until my backup finnaly arrived and we kicked some butt. Spies/PE's have done the same, holding the comp room and sniping anyone who comes near, waiting for backup to arrive. This is both enjoyable and fustrating as a player. When you are defending the turrets are a godsend, victory is so much sweeter when you beat the odds. Yet when you are the attacker it is extremely fustrating to be beaten by turrets. You know you are more then capable of killing the people in the op, but their continual dropping of turrets lets them hide. It's especialy bad when they drop the turrets right among your forces, out of nowhere you're ripped apart by a turret that wasn't there a second ago.
This is why I believe turrets need to be redone. They have too many purposes currently and need to focus more. For example it would be worthwhile to make an entirely new turret called an Alert Turret or somesuch. It should be much less expensive and able to be placed just outside the op, aswell as within. Their entire purpose is to send a warning to the clan chat. Idealy they should send a warning as soon as they see someone in range. Problem is what qualifies as an enemy (would actualy have to have working clan war system). The other problems require much more thought, and I've written enough here as it is : )
As I see it these are the main problems with turrets:
1) Expensive in terms of money or manhours, little return on money/time spent.
2) Very difficult to place, with a high tendancy to simply vanish. Also the number of security slots seems to randomly varry. I thought we were supposed to have 10 slots for turrets at each op, but in my experience we often only get 5. Yet even that varries, some days it's 5, others it's 8. One op has room for the full 10, another can only support 6.
3) It is way to easy for people to hack an op and take your turrets. Instant million nc credits down the drain. Even worse, because you took the time and turreted your op, you now have to fight the people that took your op along with your own turrets. It's adding insult to injury to hafta kill your own turrets to get to the people that stole your op.
yea a little clan message like "TURRET HAWKINS REPORTS: 'Woohoo I capped me a private eye called Rade!' END MESSAGE"
Or a camera turret that you can look through from a citycom would be nice.
Psycho_Soldier
25-11-03, 20:19
I think it would be nice to have a remote camera that would be a good combo with the alert turret. So anyone in the clan could access a menu from CityCom and see through the eyes of the camera turret. That way you can tell if it is a large force or just some prick ninja hacker hacking first layer. The alert turret should also detect stealthers, via heat sensors.
Shadow Dancer
25-11-03, 21:50
Originally posted by Archeus
yea a little clan message like "TURRET HAWKINS REPORTS: 'Woohoo I capped me a private eye called Rade!' END MESSAGE"
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Yea, this made my day.
What about booby traps as well? A turret which detonates when the OP is hacked with a large explosion, and is quite small and otherwise does nothing, so you can place it just inside the hack room, and as somebody hacks the OP it detonates killing everyone in range.
Originally posted by Carinth
For example it would be worthwhile to make an entirely new turret called an Alert Turret or somesuch. It should be much less expensive and able to be placed just outside the op, aswell as within. Their entire purpose is to send a warning to the clan chat. Idealy they should send a warning as soon as they see someone in range.
It would be great if there was a radar turret which simply sent an alert when anyone was within range. You could then check this alert from any CityCom and it would tell you the name/clan of the person(s) detected.
Originally posted by Carinth
The minimum time to hack an op is roughly 3 minutes, giving some time to setup prior to hack a good team can steal an op in 5 minutes. How long does it take for your clan to organize a group to defend? 10-30 minutes...
Some time ago, I suggested that it should take 3 minutes between hacks and not 30 seconds. As it is now, the attackers always have the advantage but in real life defenders usually have the advantage. You have to give the defenders more time to get to the OP and mount a proper defense.
I also suggested that the UG be locked by the same security setting as on the GR. In this way the defending clan has a solid 10-15 minutes to get to the OP and they can GR in safely without idiots camping the UG spawn point.
Finally, they need to add a 2nd and possibly even 3rd exit from every UG. It will be very hard for any attacker to have enough people to cover all the UG exits. This would make it harder for those spawn campers.
[TgR]KILLER
26-11-03, 10:50
last OP fight we dit our turrets din't even work right ( before the patch ) they were on fire on all not in faction yet CS clans could just walk in.. some turrets were shooting or sometimes shooting others din't do shit all :/
Also not really going too OT on this security settings upon hack of op. I think the standard setting for this should be faction or clan only seeing as there are not that many people that follow the F6 allies and so when u are fighting a "friendly" and hack the op u then have to lose a fighter to go change security settings.
Lord Mansion
26-11-03, 13:05
Originally posted by RayBob
As it is now, the attackers always have the advantage but in real life defenders usually have the advantage. You have to give the defenders more time to get to the OP and mount a proper defense.
In real life the defenders have a force occupying their land/buildings constantly. The way it works in Neocron is pretty lame, which is why outposts need a work over.
Imagine Caesar taking over a fortress and when he arrives he finds it empty, he then sends a messenger to his enemy to request them to come and defend their fortress.
Top thread. Definitly agree with Carinth on the analysis for before (and I suppose after) patch 192.
To handle such issues in my clan (I play on Venus), I have developed a caracter which is specifically designed to go into the OP as soon as the warning starts: Obliterator / Pistol / Turrets using spy.
The main issue is to be log at the time...
a warning turret would slove most problems........ and make turrets a bit cheaper to cst and buy....
or you could just steal em from other clans like eric cobalt :P
be nice if you could lay down sensers at the op that would warn as soon as a enemy entered the op.
proberbly wouldnt work though:(
i seem to remember that we've swung this way and that over the subject of OP defense.
at the time that turrets were next to useless (no gatlings, artillery or stunners), a single person could hack an OP in under 2 minutes, and you had to use regular GRs with synap, but we were still able to hold onto OPs. when a ninja did get it into their heads to try something on, we could get the OP back with similar ease. if it became a regular occurance, we'd post guards (real, actual players) or just try and get there as fast as possible and gank them before they had the chance to do the second hack.
it was exciting, and OPs changed hands regularly. individual clans had responsibility for their OPs, there was no faction bias on GR rules, no faction chat to galvanise many defenders quickly. also, we often relied on politics and diplomacy to keep our OPs from being attacked in the first place.
the situation now is that factions take a much greater interest in OP owership, and it is in the interest of a whole faction to keep an OP, and with faction chat it's never a problem to alert people and get them moving to an OP that's under attack.
we have a much better range of turrets now, albeit not perfect, but effective if used properly. turrets are not, and should never be, a substitute for a good player defense.
we have recently been informed that we can once again turret a UG, so we don't really need to have a seperate system to lock the UG. those who have the means and skills should be able to do this themselves with existing turrets.
i think having constant turret messages over clanchat about each little thing that happens to your turrets would also be a griefers paradise, and make OP ownership a hellish experience.
we should not be afraid to lose our OPs. the whole point of OP ownership is that it involves you in politics, battles and tactics. none of that would ever occur if they didn't change hands from time to time.
You're partially right s0apy, but the problem is the reversal of roles. Until the GR changes and new turrets, we followed a system where the attackers actually ended up defending because they would take the OP before the previous owners arrived, while the defenders were the ones that actually had to attack. Thus, the attackers always had the advantage of fighting from within the OP walls and with the fortress bonus (where applicable) while the previous owners, who should be defending it, are forced to try and assault.
I think the main problem with turrets is that they are too effective when there aren't any PPUs and nowhere near effective enough when there are.
Originally posted by deac
or you could just steal em from other clans like eric cobalt :P
AHAHAHA! Classic! Oh my .. rofl!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
a turret to a unbuffed player = death
a turret to a buffed player = mld inconveniance
*shrugs* neeeds fixing, but don't worry evey one QD will visit this thread and he will be 100% sure that his answer will fix turrets once and for all :rolleyes:
Dribble Joy
26-11-03, 15:58
If the make S/D self cast only rule was implemented, Turrets would have a much greater impact in actuall defence.
Turrets shoud give a warning when they are first attacked.
Or you could set the turret warning 'sensitivity', when they sop a player, when a player gets close when a player attacks them or when they die.
Making walls stop AoE and barrel dmg would also give turrets a greater impact.
i've always felt that some balacing factors could be applied to OP ownership that would give people an advantage, should they desire it, over and above just the placing of turrets.
one idea i've always had is something like brain slots in the hack terminal of OPs. goes like this - each hack terminal has 3 or 4 slots into which an "OP security upgrade chip" can be installed by the owning clan. these could range from low level store-bought ones that could also be BPed, up to level 3 chips dropped whole from mobs that would do something more exotic.
these chips could be used to add layers of defense over a default of "one hack and the OP is yours". so you'd be forced to install at least a couple of low level cheap ones just to get the current security that we have now. better ones could elongate time between hacks, make the hacks harder (requiring more hack skill on the part of the hacker), require more hacks up to a cap of maybe 5 or 6, create an electrical surge that will kill the hacker if a hack attempt is unsuccessful, or maybe to activate features such as remote monitoring as previously suggested.
if it were designed so that all such chips are destroyed when the OP is successfully hacked there would be a constant demand for these things, and a necessary material outlay to obtain even a minimum level of security.
combine this with slots on turrets and corresponding ammo mods and upgrades, and maybe you've got something a little more interesting and flexible than we already have.
Even though it was abusing a bug, the delayed UG switch actualy made op wars more enjoyable for me. I had some of the most exciting fights in months at various UG's. The delayed UG switch gave us a buffer so that we could arrive and still have a chance of fighting. I thought of the UG as a last stand. Quite often we would be defending and op and the attacking for would nearly overwhelm us, so we call a retreat to the UG! We could be safe in the UG for the time being, since even thogh they hacked the op, we still control the UG. It's not until they storm the UG and clear us out, do they officialy claim the op. I've been in countless fights were we manage to push back out from the UG and kill everyone. It was in short, a blast.
Of course it was not all great, abusing the UG synching to get away is pretty low. Likewise dying due to synching out is the pits. PPU's can be especialy annoying with the UG. The PPU runs to UG to reset spells, then comes back to ressurect the team. Each person that's ressurected also runs UG and pretty soon you have the entire team back alive in the UG.
Now ownership switches automaticly, so if we're gathering our troops in the UG which we turreted and they finish the hack, we're toast. Hacking an op takes much less time then organizing a group to defend the op. The only times I can recall that we had a decent force at the op before they finished hacking was when we faced a small group of enemies or their hacker's plain suck. It is a fact, you will not be able to get your clan to your op before the enemy hacks it. This is how I forsee the patch will effect op fights. For a while people will continue as they are now and be ripped apart by their own turrets in the UG. Gradualy they'll adjust tactics so that only a small group of the fastest/strongest players gr right to the UG. The rest of the clan will arrive at the closest gr and march to the hacked OP. The point of the small group is to scout and maybe try to do some damage before they die. So we will be right back were we were before they allowed us to gr to the UG. Op wars will take a good half an hour to prepare and arrive at. Also consider that as you reduce the ppu's ressurecting and team defensive powers the faster op wars will be over.
When prepare time so vastly outweighs fight time the fight becomes not worth the time.
Originally posted by Ryuben
...but don't worry evey one QD will visit this thread and he will be 100% sure that his answer will fix turrets once and for all :rolleyes:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Originally posted by Carinth
Even though it was abusing a bug, the delayed UG switch actualy made op wars more enjoyable for me. I had some of the most exciting fights in months at various UG's. The delayed UG switch gave us a buffer so that we could arrive and still have a chance of fighting. I thought of the UG as a last stand. Quite often we would be defending and op and the attacking for would nearly overwhelm us, so we call a retreat to the UG! We could be safe in the UG for the time being, since even thogh they hacked the op, we still control the UG. It's not until they storm the UG and clear us out, do they officialy claim the op. I've been in countless fights were we manage to push back out from the UG and kill everyone. It was in short, a blast.
Of course it was not all great, abusing the UG synching to get away is pretty low. Likewise dying due to synching out is the pits. PPU's can be especialy annoying with the UG. The PPU runs to UG to reset spells, then comes back to ressurect the team. Each person that's ressurected also runs UG and pretty soon you have the entire team back alive in the UG.
Now ownership switches automaticly, so if we're gathering our troops in the UG which we turreted and they finish the hack, we're toast. Hacking an op takes much less time then organizing a group to defend the op. The only times I can recall that we had a decent force at the op before they finished hacking was when we faced a small group of enemies or their hacker's plain suck. It is a fact, you will not be able to get your clan to your op before the enemy hacks it. This is how I forsee the patch will effect op fights. For a while people will continue as they are now and be ripped apart by their own turrets in the UG. Gradualy they'll adjust tactics so that only a small group of the fastest/strongest players gr right to the UG. The rest of the clan will arrive at the closest gr and march to the hacked OP. The point of the small group is to scout and maybe try to do some damage before they die. So we will be right back were we were before they allowed us to gr to the UG. Op wars will take a good half an hour to prepare and arrive at. Also consider that as you reduce the ppu's ressurecting and team defensive powers the faster op wars will be over.
When prepare time so vastly outweighs fight time the fight becomes not worth the time.
WOW...I agree 100%. You nailed how I feel about it exactly! Before they "patched" the UG and disallowed UG turrets, there were indeed some very fun fights. I have been on both sides of that--UG trying to hang on to the OP and above ground trying to clear them out of the UG--and each had certain advantages. I don't think going back to that is necessarily the right answer, but there definitely needs to be a way to give the defenders more time to prepare a defense. I like my idea of increased hack time and secure UG entrance.
QuantumDelta
26-11-03, 21:05
Carinth's view point is so similar to my own, it's hardly worth my input but to say I support him in his comments :P
on the other hand people like Ryuben can read my sig.
Freaky Fryd
27-11-03, 07:38
Originally posted by RayBob
I also suggested that the UG be locked by the same security setting as on the GR. In this way the defending clan has a solid 10-15 minutes to get to the OP and they can GR in safely without idiots camping the UG spawn point.
Finally, they need to add a 2nd and possibly even 3rd exit from every UG. It will be very hard for any attacker to have enough people to cover all the UG exits. This would make it harder for those spawn campers.
Sounds good to me!
There's been a few times that myself (or a few members of my clan) have GR'ed in to find a few enemy monks staring at us (thank god for stealthing in) or going above ground just to drop due to the APU (or sometimes 2 or 3) that are barrelling the UG entrance...
I suggest putting 2 extra UG exits in that come out at opposite corners of the zone...or multiple spawn points that you randomly appear at when you exit the UG through the aux exit.
This way, you can come straight into the OP through the normal UG exit, or you can chose to appear in a random spot in the zone (say, one of 10-15 spawn points.) This way, it's not necessarily beneficial to use the aux exit, but it still provides a way out of the UG if you need to get out...
Eldan Sontim
27-11-03, 08:08
Personally I would like to see droners be able to log onto the citycom and control thier own op turrets. That gives the defending clan a little more time to arange a defence, and you couldn't blame the turrets for not working. Of course the turrets would still be automated when no one is controling them.
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