State Of Turrets Discussion

General Discussion
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You know, I’ve been working on some cleaning of backend stuff in the code and been sorta repeatedly reminded of the existance of turrets recently, which has posed a very interesting thought.

What is the current mechanical integrity of turrets as a subsystem?

  1. Sentry gun laptop is a bit outdated and under developed.

  2. Sentry guns are inaccessible to the point of forced scarcity.

  3. Sentry gun upgrade kits are even more inaccessible and there utility basically only applies to generic USCM issue turrets. : EDIT : I forgot to mention you can purchase them for 15 points in the combat technicians equipment vendor, equivalent to 5 plastic explosives making it an inferior deal, thanks samson.

  4. Sentry gun ammo can not be unloaded without depleting the sentry gun’s magazine, and even then you need to have an additional magazine available.

  5. Sentry gun’s are unable to fire on targets if they do not move when the sentry gun is deployed.

edit – This break broke the forum earlier, this is here to keep it from breaking

  1. UA 571-C Sentry Gun - Around a 10 second time to kill, can miss, high AP, doesn’t secure the kill on critical targets.

    1. UA 725-D Sniper Sentry - Actually has around the same amount of time to kill as the regular sentry gun turret, with higher ap, and it never misses. A direct total pure upgrade.
    2. UA 571-D Omnidirectional Sentry Gun - Identical to the main sentry gun, but has a lower range.
    3. UA 512-M Mini Sentry - Far faster time to kill being a generally improved version of the main sentry gun, but firing far faster and firing weaker projectiles. Does well against armour to boot.
    4. UA 12-G Shotgun Sentry - The time to kill on this turret is insane, and it can chain stun a xeno with incredibly efficacy, its ammo economy isnt incredible and it can only attack within 3 tiles, making this turret an absolute MENACE against lurkers and being able to kill even a rav in exceptionally short order.

  2. UA 42-F Sentry Flamer - Being able to fire X-GEL at an ALARMING rate, this turret is INCREDIBLY lethal, 3 shotting a defender in a total of 7 seconds, the downside is its projectile speed makes the weapon prone to missing, and the rate at which the XGEL puddles cause ff.

    1. UA 45-FM Mini Sentry - Firing standard napathal gel, this mini sentry fires at an INCREDIBLE rate, resulting in the rapid death off any target in close range.
    2. UA 60-FP Plasma Sentry - Firing standard napathal gel, this sentry fires quite slowly and leaves no puddles, but sets targets on fire over massive range leaving behind disorienting smoke clouds.

  3. 21-S Tesla Coil - Firing electric arcs, it applies a consistent, debilitating stun and daze within 3 tiles of itself about every 2 seconds to all nearby valid targets, it deals no damage.

    1. 25-S Micro Tesla Coil - Identical to the regular tesla coil but shoots faster, resulting in a more reliable removal of abbilities.
    2. 21-S Overclocked Tesla Coil - Identical to the regular tesla coil, but shoots slower and applies a knockdown effect and longer debilitation. And I mean a LONG time, easily 10 seconds. Enough to fuck over the queen. Doesnt remove a couple of abbilities but does remove the kings bulwark of the hive and the queens screech.

  4. R-1NG Bell Tower - Seemingly applies a slowdown effect to anything within 4 tiles while making a distinct noise and becoming red. : EDIT : I forgot to explicitly mention you cannot get the R-1NG Bell Tower in conventional gameplay at this time, I didn’t think this needed mentioned, but samson made a good point, so do note this isnt formally accessible in the game, much like the APC.

    1. Camoflauged R-1NG Bell Tower - Identical to the regular tower but is reinforced and has an equivalent to the sniper cloak, allowing it to become nearly invisible until it activates.
    2. R-1NG Motion Detector Tower - Applies a stronger? Slow down to the regular tower, applies within 7 tiles, and makes no visual cue when activated.

  5. JIMA Planted Flag - Applies a strong AIM and HOLD buff within 3 tiles. Creates a wide ranging light, and acts as a permanent CAS target.

    1. JIMA Planted Warbanner - Applies a stronger AIM HOLD MOVE buff within 3 tiles. This buff lasts a meaningfully long time once a person leaves the effected radius.
    2. Extended JIMA Planted Flag - Applies a strong AIM and HOLD buff within 6 tiles.

A quick mention to the sentry gun network and its restrictions, CAS Gauss, Map Gen, FOB, Dropship, Hardpoint, ETC turrets are all unable to be linked to the sentry gun network “much to there detriment”, and the sentry gun network itself is a non factional GENERAL network used across factions, which doesn’t make a ton of sense when one considers contexts like CLF Insert, HVH, Vaipo, WY Event, Etc.

And as a final note to work off of for discussion’s sake, the only current sources of turrets in general are eclectic map inserts, a few ERT spawns, a singular contested spawner per combat technican, and as far as im aware that’s every source of turrets in a shift. In general maybe 10 turrets will spawn on average in a shift, and usually less factoring the brute, this makes it pretty uncommon for them to be utilized meaningfully and with there EXCEPTIONAL destructibility, it makes developing tactics that utilize turrets very difficult. Beyond this sentry upgrade kits are even more scarce, exclusively existing on lv-522 in engi as a spawn and being vendible by combat technicians for 5 plastic explosives worth of points.

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I think you’ve done a lot of code diving and got lost in the soup, the belltower isn’t normally obtainable in the game anymore and the descriptions to some of the sentries seem kind of odd? The omni sentry has less range but is able to fire in every direction and not just in a cone in the direction its facing. Maybe you haven’t gotten a lot of playtime with them but they’re not as good as you say they are, with the exception of the base flamer sentry. Shotgun sentry is incredibly ass and you can actually obtain sentry upgrade kits from engineer equipment vendors. Most people choose to not take it because most of the “upgrades” are actually downgrades or sidegrades at best, and it costs precious vendor points.

The sentry laptop is actually the newest addition to the engineer’s arsenal and it actually provides a firerate buff (5% or 10%) to every connected sentry, as well as all the monitoring it provides.The implementation is kind of flawed because when connected to the network it encrypts the sentry with a key you can only get from touching your multitool to the laptop so you can be evil and just hide it somewhere.

I don’t know how long you’ve been around but in the olden times there was an even older sentry that had a lot more depth to it. It was powered by powercells you’d have to feed it, and you could increase the firerate at the cost of higher power consumption and increase the field of fire at the cost of accuracy. Oldheads fact check it please but i think itd be cool to have now

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I’ve found some fun pushing a mini sentry, or a regular flamer sentry up. Both of which make pushing, capping, or doing anything hell and necessitates the sentries destruction.

Though yeah, the most annoying thing about it is that sentries are glass cannons. They are so easy to loose in a single moment of unavailability if thats from rogue nades knocking you out, being lunged and killed or whatever. Also the fact that only an engineer can save your turret or move it back.

They’re also prone to being destroyed by friendly fire. As I and @Gorap found out, my sentry once got destroyed by shrap that literally went backwards from brute, from full health.

Theres a mythical turret rework that I’ve heard about, I have no idea if its still happening or if its supposed to be eventually done per The Vision ™

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:cross_mark:

No idea where you got this from. But some nerd mentor made me fact check you. So.. Suffer.

I barely remember that horrible contraption. It can stay dead. Also unlikely to be balans approved.

BRUTE sobbing in the corner.

Yeah, this is kinda sad honestly. But mostly their providing different forms of utility rather than levelling up your Sentry.

Hilariously this only applies to acquiring a target, so it can still shoot you at 4 tiles away if you moved into it’s 3 tile angy range.
Unless someone fixed that when I wasn’t looking.

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The Plasma Sentry is objectively bad and downright detrimental to your team. It actually causes more FF then the other variants. And the flame damage is downright dog, and sometimes, it literally just doesn’t set the xenos on fire.

Honestly, the base turrets are good, most of the “upgrades” you can do for them are at best side grades. This should probably see some change eventually, but as for now your vendor points are better spent elsewhere.

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you can get turrets from the dropship funnily enough but most pilots recycle the turret launcher roundstart and its a pain in the ass to get marines to put flares/lazes for turret drops

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I personally believe it’s because they are, for most situations and maps (barring LV) just an extremely mediocre investment .

I did an experimental round as a pilot, using 12 turrets on the beachhead, this was most the budget (agreed upon), and some at chokes, and while some had decent effect , they are not worthy of the points beyond maybe one or two due to the steep cost per purchase and the inability to offset them from the flare (making positioning, the most important thing for a turret) a nightmare…as they can’t be near a variety of other structures, even powered down LZ turrets.

The damage output for the standard (Omni specifically due to range)turrets are poor for anything above a T1 I’ve found.

The only viable use I’ve found is, using a few as little “safety” beacons from lz to front line, to at least give a brief safe haven to people moving to front. But this requires a lot of communication and as the sentry launcher holds only 1 per reload, you’d have to do multiple flybys and have one extemely patient JTAC lad flaring, to try make this work

Oh and remote building from queen can make turrets obsolete, weed spam to turret/cade, and it’s usually unable to fire.

(Filled this in on phone so I’ll fix any mistakes later)

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A great turret is super situational/environment dependant, obviously right (probably means its somewhat decently balanced idk). Even though I do spend 15 points to upgrade them into whatever I might want most rounds, I might be getting to the point where I might go for the consistency of giving them to fobbits when I’m not one myself. If they weren’t free, I likely wouldn’t spend the points on them (I upgrade them because its fun and I’m stupid.) My reasoning for this is just that Xenos current meta is Scree-cap at a choke and when it isnt that its a lot of them afk waiting to do that. Its a large part in why BRUTE took so well and I’d say if it wasnt a free alternative would be purchased for points, unlike the turrets. A lot of the Multi-Z also doesnt give a damn if you wanna place something on and edge, so if they ever got around to making turrets Multi-Z compatible you’re still pressed for one range. Frontline turrets are you taking you two tiles and probably not being able to safely do a lot of shooting and turret protecting at the same time, while you take up 1-2 tiles risking getting trampled.

I do think most of the turrets are skill diffs/situational but with no consistency they feel like an obstacle.

Fav turret: Overclocked Tesla Coil, and its best meme is that it will attack other turrets too close to it

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Just to add a bit of context about the bell tower

It was removed purely because of how OP it was, it provided an insanely strong slow, making any fight near it a straight up loss to any xeno without a way to run away from it if caught alone. The Camo Bell was invisible, harder to see than scout, but would basically be a death sentence since the low AoE made it strong for trapping lurkers/runners. The MD Bell was basically just a flat out upgrade, it slowed anywhere within range(iirc it also slowed off screen due to range of MD), the only audio cue was the MD sound, but the slow wasnt consistent and would give you a few steps before it slowed again. There was also a third upgrade for Bell Tower and the Flag, which was turning them into backpacks.

Yes, Bell tower can be worn on the back, and when it rang it slowed xenos, even worked when the marine was dead.

The Flag backpack I forgot why it was removed, might be because of performance issues??? Unsure about that.

The Laptop was actually intended to come with more features, specifically the option to alter the sentry turrets mechanics, like lower Firing angle but faster fire rate and such, but I dont know where those plans went

Also, the upgrades, honestly the only ones that are actually a sidegrade/upgrade are:

Upgrade: Overclocked Tesla, Omni Sentry Turret, Jima Flags

Sidegrade: Shotgun Sentry, Sniper Sentry

The rest are all downgrades, the mini sentries(both tesla, flame, and gun) does abysmal damage and is basically just there to let you plop them faster, but the lowered health and reduced damage makes it worse. The Plasma Sentry is basically just sniper sentry but worse(due to inconsistent projectile hits) and the gas is more harmful to marines due to the gas having a wider AoE.

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The laptop will come with more features, if someone else gets to code it first or I start getting payed more for CM coding or after a few months for my PRs to get reviewed as I have way too fucking many open right now. Or in few days if I go crazy and just ask thwomp what to add and code it. I do not even know what is planed tbh

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I really wish you could buy a second sentry gun in the CT vendor for 45 points. It’d be nice to have multiple areas you can defend autonomously, plus sentry guns are so rare anyway and the default one isn’t much of an issue for non-T1 xenos

Also the laptop should let you remote control the sentry gun to increase its fire rate, as well as be usable while on the go.

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Heres what I want: Nerf the shit out of mini sentry, but you get two.

also make sentrys have a critical state like m2c where they cant be used but can be repaired, unmeltable.

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From personal experience, this is how the sentry guns actually stack up:

Regular sentry - It’s 90% worthless. Gets tossed on a cadeline to ‘secure’ it but cannot actually secure a cadeline, and doesn’t kill anything, gets flanked easily. Too low ranged and bulky to be used on an active frontline, just doesn’t do enough damage to matter.

Sniper sentry - It’s only slightly less useless than a regular sentry. Sometimes it kills a near-crit runner or facehugger incidentally.

Omni-sentry - Actually useful, not because it’s good at killing anything but because it can fire all around it and that’s useful for medic blobs or engineers working alone who want some extra firepower a xeno can’t simply dodge around.

Mini-sentry - Actually useful, especially on the frontline. It deals OK but not Good damage, doesn’t block movement, and gets hidden easily by clutter so it’s missed often. Used to use this to protect myself as an engineer when working on things until the omni came around.

Shotgun-sentry - Absolutely 100% awful garbage that will never kill anything that doesn’t want to die. If you’re a xeno dying to this you’re purposefully committing suicide instead of playing the game. Nobody would even notice if you removed this sentry from existence.

Sentry Flamer - It’s ok, huge upgrade on the regular sentry because it’s actually dangerous, but it rarely kills more xenos than marines (and makes corpses significantly harder to revive). Basically a net-zero sentry. It’s biggest benefit is that it’s ok without costing an upgrade; if it swapped places with the plasma sentry you’d hardly ever see these again.

Mini-sentry Flamer - Actually useful, not as good as the regular mini or omni sentry for self defense due to possibly setting yourself on fire, but better on the frontline because that rapid fire can put a stop to a xeno push by itself and it’s hard to spot. Probably the best frontline direct-damage sentry, incredibly slept on.

Plasma Sentry - Absolutely 100% awful garbage that will never kill anything that doesn’t want to die. If you’re a xeno dying to this you’re purposefully committing suicide instead of playing the game.

Tesla Coil - 90% worthless. It looks like it’s doing nothing. For the most part, that’s true. This sentry scares nothing, it’s barely better than a shotgun sentry, the slowdown isn’t enough to let marines kill anything, even preset HPR/etc. won’t matter. At it’s best you have to combine with other forms of crowd control like grenades to actually make it work. Just too nerfed to be useful.

Micro-Tesla - Same as above.

Overclocked Tesla - One of the most powerful sentries in the game, maybe the strongest. Lots of overconfident xeno players walk into range of this and get stunned while I’ve got an HPR or something ready. The debilitation effect only matters because it prevents ‘get out of jail free’ abilities from escaping the effects of the tesla. Its biggest problem is that it fires on its own tickrate for some reason, instead of an activation cooldown, so xenos can consistently walk into its range and attack it and walk back out without triggering it if they time it right. Very easy to avoid if you aren’t dumb. Has to be used in active fights, worthless by itself. Only takes a stiff breeze to destroy it.

Bell towers - 90% useless. Can’t even get them anymore anyway. They were easily one of the best sentries when you could wear them on your back. Now they’re static but unlike a tesla, don’t stun, and don’t prevent ability use, so it’s mostly useless, easily destroyed, the cloak doesn’t do shit. Anything slowed just uses a get out of jail free ability. No point using any of these over the overclocked tesla.

Planted flag - Short range one is completely worthless. 3 tiles? Come on. Long range one is better but AIM and HOLD buffs barely matter in actual practice. You really should’ve bought an overclocked tesla instead.

In general sentries are:

  • Not dangerous enough to hold a cadeline anywhere by themselves
  • Have too little health
  • Are weirdly irreplaceable
  • Only good (for a select few versions) with the upgrade package

That’s not to say these are all things that need to be addressed or changed, just that they are frankly over-nerfed for what they actually do. Little more than speedbumps in the majority. Which is also why the whole sentry laptop thing is completely unused - a sentry by itself just dies. Xeno players cannot actually die to a lone sentry unless they are suiciding, so why the hell ever put them on a cadeline or something by themselves and watch your irreplaceable sentry explode on camera because a burrower dug up behind it or a prae spit it to death over the cadeline?

In the movies a couple sentries held off an entire swarm of xenos by themselves. Ours obviously can’t be that good, but the majority of them are barely even worth touching. Omni, mini, and overclocked Tesla give you the most bang for your buck, every other sentry is trash to C- tier.

If I were going to change something about sentries, the very first thing I’d change is making them recoverable after being destroyed, or otherwise replaceable.

People think these things are way better than they actually are.

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image
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Still around.

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Overclocked Tesla active: Lurker idle

Overclocked Tesla the second it’s deactivated: COMMS LOST

The rest are just funny soul things that lead to observer comedy (except JIMA, it’s not very comical cause its so passive). Everyone loves rooting for comrade sentry.

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Frontline OC Tesla and when Rav 3 pushes I also reveal that I was packing an M2C and I shoot through the rav, the wall behind the rav, through the rock behind the wall, and manage to make a completely cleared tunnel through to the other side of the planet because I held LMB for so long

Sniper is for annoying runners that stare at you too long from afar. Plasma is for Omsk to grief me by blocking a single cade entrance with it in a three tile choke, I’m pretty sure !!!

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I’m a HUGE JIMA FLAG advocate. I do wish they got like a universal one tile buff addition though, since it’d make them WAY more useful. Three tiles for triple buff (the most useful by far) is rendered quite shit because it’s only three tiles.

Because of this, I often take the extended range mostly for that Hold order painkilling effect. Aim is just ok but barely EVER noticeable. That Hold though? That’s 100-0 from a charging empowered Rav to 100-10 and that might make the difference of them needing one more slash and getting stunned by a rocket or you plabbing them or even successfully standing up and stepping away and living. Also great v Spitters to hold a cadeline a little better.

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I think even the 3 tile one could work if the buff had a timer attached - run into it and then run out of range and the buff sticks for another 30 seconds.

In that case I could see it actually being useful in spite of the range. You’d have to keep coming back to it to ‘recharge’ but it’d enable the buff to be useful for actual fighting that is virtually never happening within 3 tiles of the sentry.

It would also make the flag act as more of a beacon, marines would be constantly coming back to it to get their buff and then run off to make a play. Just seems like it’d all around fit the concept better.

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planted flags are slept on, having a perma jtac flare is actually good. it lets an actual good GP control the battlefield, while letting bad GPs gib entire frontlines, 10/10.

see addendum:

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Bell towers - 90% useless. Can’t even get them anymore anyway. They were easily one of the best sentries when you could wear them on your back. Now they’re static but unlike a tesla, don’t stun, and don’t prevent ability use, so it’s mostly useless, easily destroyed, the cloak doesn’t do shit. Anything slowed just uses a get out of jail free ability. No point using any of these over the overclocked tesla.

People said this until i got a lot of people to finally use them and eventually had them nerf and removed

Bell backpack wasnt the best, Bell MD could literally slow any xeno screen wide and even a bit off screen, while cloaked bell led any runner/lurker/warrior to jump in blindly to their doom. Calling them useless is just ignorance and just shows you never utilized them properly

To be fair, this entire list is fairly right if you only use sentries for one thing, plop down and forget, but literally all of the sentries have their own use case and niche usage. A tesla tower is not a flame sentry, nor is a flame sentry a tesla tower. If they’re used to their advantages and in the right situation they do insanely well.

Tesla towers stun and slow, does the same as bell MD but on top it also disables them from using abilities, basically makes any runner/lurker unable to pounce or go into anyone near this, overclocked tesla does it extremely well especially that it also disables queen screech. Bell and Tesla turrets are turrets you use for proactive engagements instead of defensive.

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