PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
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Also, with that sort of kiting scheme it'd almost certainly compromise their directed entrance to my base. Right now I've got 3 sides heavily fortified with double layer walls and an open door towards that front that leads into a small room of fricken death and gore. No mazing, just thick walls with one entrance and alot of guns trained on it and electric fences :p . Because turret effective range is about 5 blocks. At 7ish blocks they are missing noticeably more and already suffer -15% damage from range falloff and that only gets worse the further out you go. Even Pistol has full damage until like 12 blocks.
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Have you thought about how to deal with demolishers showing up and how the 1 kill room will deal with them?

 
@TFP staff

Not sure who work on model collision box to address to, but a QOL request, could we have a slightly smaller collision box on barbwire fence? it impossible to repair anything underneath it right now.

 
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This seems very much like a bug. I hope you've reported this in the forums! Also, have you seen JaWoodle's video regarding turrets inheriting player damage mods? Surely it's a bug/exploit, but a neat thing to try out (if you're into that sort of thing). Wield a flaming weapon, and your turret will inherit the chance to proc enemies on fire.

Personally, I think if they fixed what appears to be an obvious bug with placed Turrets and their bonuses, they should be very viable. Increasing the base magazine capacity (I forgot to mention they can use the Drum Magazine mod, as well - also seems like a bug/exploit, but would help mitigate some of the issues) should alleviate your main complaint about turrets: DPS drops off sharply due to having to reload constantly. If we could reload without picking them up, and/or if the base magazine size was higher (say ~100, give or take 20 for randomization), and/or if magazine capacity grew with perk investment, I feel you'd find specializing in Turrets much more viable.

Just food for thought.
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They fixed the turret inheriting your wielded weapons stuff. You can no longer flame or electrify enemies just by wielding your firey stun baton and swinging as it fires. So that Jawoodle video is outdated. That wasn't right and deserved to be fixed TBH.

I can also understand why the dismemberment bonus not working with turrets could be a balancing feature. The combined fire rate of the turrets would be dismembering constantly. Not only that but it'd be mainly arms and legs due to their low head shot amount so it could even be detrimental if turrets ended up making legions of crawlers that were then too low to be seen/shot and beat down your lower blocks from complete safety.

When I first heard about the turrets my biggest surprise was that they had such a small ammo capacity. The reloading offsets their usefulness as "companion" greatly and your tests seem to substantiate that suspicion
For example when you want to do melee while they blast the enemy you can't afford to reload them. Or like you said when you have a gun in hand the reload AND placing it again is real downtime.

One thing about horde night: The main objective is to survive. As soon as the horde lasts all night your DPS isn't the most important stat but your ability to hold them off, slow them down and keep them from destroying your base.

I don't have a problem with them having lower DPS even on horde night, but I have a problem with them being a constant maintenance cost when their main appeal should be their independance so you can act as trouble-shooter while they provide base dps and covering fire.

tldr; They need a lot more ammo capacity, at least when perked into.
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It should be noted that they can use drum magazines, this finally get them to a point where you don't have to constantly baby them and can shoot more than half a clip yourself before needing to reload them again. But the leveling process definitely did feel weird as your rate of fire on them increases and then you have to spend more and more time reloading even with Bandolier and the +20% reload bonus.

I'd say if they want to leave them lower DPS, that's a perfectly fine option, but in that case they should prolly give them a mag size bonus to match their fire rate bonus as part of the skill. Then the comments about "but you can fire another weapon while they are out" would have alot more weight because that would become very true with +120% mag size (equal to the fire rate) from the skill + drum mag. It'd still feel pretty off to have to use off perk weapons to do half of your DPS and due to your lower off perk damage you'd prolly spend almost as much ammo as a specialist, but it would at least solve the constant maintenance and relative DPS competitiveness issues.

But again my preferred route is to make the handheld turret worthwhile and tie the lesser maintenance to using Int weapons so that Int can stand on it's own without relying on off perk weapons like every other stat can. Increasing the DPS of the build not by increasing turret DPS directly but by letting you add the handheld in as a viable, but weak on it's own, supplemental weapon and reducing the reload maintenance for people who skill into them so you actually have time to fire it .

 
Btw, there is a good chance I can test who is right: you said upon death if you not engage a zombie horde night is over; Faatal said it's a 30 seconds "safe zone" and then if a zombies sees you, horde is back.
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Test mine.

 
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I'll bet the construction worker zombies could be reskinned for that sort of look....maybe they could be a construction site boss dressed in beige, slightly larger and using the lumberjack walk?
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Yeah I guess that could work!

 
When I first heard about them I assumed that they would be used to augment your own personal damage within the vicinity of where you are and that overall base defense would continue to be handled by the regular turrets we’ve had for ages now. Why anyone would abandon the regular turrets and try and use junk turrets for base defense instead is something I’m struggling to understand. If junk turrets are to be elevated to the same level as regular turrets then why have regular turrets? Or am I misunderstanding and people are complaining about the regular turrets on horde night?
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Well actually the turret perk and and the powered turrets perks are separate. This actually encourages people to try junk turrets without the powered variants. Not saying both perk trees dont work well with each other. All I'm saying is it shouldnt be a requirement to get both. I dont have enough play time in yet to give my full thoughts on the balance yet. Will get back to you on that. 😎

 
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Mining is way better and balanced. Usually my gameplay is 40 ~ 50% looting and 50 ~ 60% mining. In my opinion, the "problem" is xp from building is way too high: should be at least 25% less.
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maybe they fixed it? cuz before the update all i did was mine and level up!

 
One of the problems with this conversation about junk turret ammo capacity is not knowing the difficulty level people are playing. 50 rounds is pretty good on default difficulty, imo. Increase it and it makes them OP at that game setting. The difference between how many shots it takes to down a zombie in default vs nomad is quite discernible. If you are playing warrior or above I can see the need of having to reload the turrets much more often.

We shouldn’t make default difficulty too easy just because people who are playing at higher difficulties want it to be less difficult or inconvenient for them. I think the current capacity is pretty good for the default settings and that higher capacities should be handled by adding a mod to the turret.

At higher difficulties the intelligence build may have to be attempted as an ultra challenge.

That or separate out zombie HP as it’s own slider and not have it be included with the General game difficulty slider.

 
Mining is way better and balanced. Usually my gameplay is 40 ~ 50% looting and 50 ~ 60% mining. In my opinion, the "problem" is xp from building is way too high: should be at least 25% less.
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No. I mean test my blood moon grace period ability instead of Madmole’s or faatal’s.

 
One of the problems with this conversation about junk turret ammo capacity is not knowing the difficulty level people are playing. 50 rounds is pretty good on default difficulty, imo. Increase it and it makes them OP at that game setting. The difference between how many shots it takes to down a zombie in default vs nomad is quite discernible. If you are playing warrior or above I can see the need of having to reload the turrets much more often.
We shouldn’t make default difficulty too easy just because people who are playing at higher difficulties want it to be less difficult or inconvenient for them. I think the current capacity is pretty good for the default settings and that higher capacities should be handled by adding a mod to the turret.

At higher difficulties the intelligence build may have to be attempted as an ultra challenge.

That or separate out zombie HP as it’s own slider and not have it be included with the General game difficulty slider.
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Not a terrible idea with the HP thing. I always like the challenge of harder settings, but turning zombies into sponges on the way never felt fun. It should be more about better position and awareness to not let zombies get on you (with higher damage), rather than spending 5 minutes trying to club the brains out of some basic zombie.

 
Not a terrible idea with the HP thing. I always like the challenge of harder settings, but turning zombies into sponges on the way never felt fun. It should be more about better position and awareness to not let zombies get on you (with higher damage), rather than spending 5 minutes trying to club the brains out of some basic zombie.
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i think that here should be more "sub-types" of zombies some with ups and downs and special abilities!

some may have more damage! more speed but more frail.

some that are mutated and have natural armor. but are much slower!

and more!

and yes i have these ideas drawn up as well!

 
I see turrets as a zombie alert and zombie distraction tool; I've no expectations they'll take care of my wandering horde for me, as they did when 17e came out, but they're good for letting me know something is behind me, they're good for assistance, and they're good for ninja dogs.

Their op-ness comes from how easy they are to get and how anyone can use them, which pretty much mitigates the skill tree for them.

 
When I first heard about them I assumed that they would be used to augment your own personal damage within the vicinity of where you are and that overall base defense would continue to be handled by the regular turrets we’ve had for ages now.
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If they were implemented that way, that would be perfectly fine. However they are implemented, in the skill trees, identically to other weapons. As such there is the expectations that they perform to the relative level of other weapons as they require identical investment levels of skill points. If they were, say, a bonus to the "Yeah Science" skill instead of their own standalone skill you'd see highly different expectations of them.

But as things are, they are positioned as if they are full weapons and thus I expect them to perform somewhere in the general viciniity of the efficacy of other weapon specs with their own advantages/disadvantges/unique quirks/playstyle.

Why anyone would abandon the regular turrets and try and use junk turrets for base defense instead is something I’m struggling to understand.
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I'm using the Junk Turrets as if they are the weapon I specialized into just as I would with AK or SMG or Marksman Rifle. I do not expect them to pull the entire defense alone. I'm a base builder by nature and I expect spike traps, electric fences, electrical turrets, and strong walls to pull alot of weight. However I do expect them to contribute relatively the same amount of defense power as other weapons you can specialize in and not be completely left behind since horde night is a pivotal core aspect of the game.

If junk turrets are to be elevated to the same level as regular turrets then why have regular turrets?
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Junk Turrets are limited to 2 and Electrical Turrets are not. As mentioned above I don't expect any weapon to carry the defense on it's own, though I will acknowledge that some (like Machine Guns) definitely can. Thus it's not a competition between turrets, they are intended to work together and my current INT playthrough has 4 Shotgun turrets already placed and 2 Auto Turrets on the way to compliment my 2 Junk Turrets (along with a couple electrical fences). If you have the ammo for it you can have 10 Electrical turrets shooting shotgun shells and 9mm. No matter what you will only ever have 2 Junk Turrets, perhaps 3 if you use a handheld one too.

Electrical Turrets also have a much greater ammo capacity and so allow you to personally free DPS as they can fire for minutes at a time, electrical Shotgun Turrets are actually pretty darn efficient on Ammo when you consider the availability of paper. It's almost exclusively just a question of mining gunpowder and lead. Auto Turrets go through 9mm ammo pretty quickly and in A17 that was a real issue but in A18 brass is everywhere. That being said, splitting between the two turret types pretty much keeps your only limitation being how fast you can farm gunpowder and this could easily be the gameplay style of an archer. Electrical Turret Ammo concerns only happen when you use them in large amounts of you use the same ammo type. Same ammo type is not a concern of perception/fortitude/agility (if archer).

It should be noted that 2 shotgun turrets is slightly less than the DPS of junk turrets but that 2 auto turrets is slightly more.

Or am I misunderstanding and people are complaining about the regular turrets on horde night?
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You are not misunderstanding, they are talking about Junk Turrets. The easiest way to understand the limitations of Junk Turrets is unfortunately just playing a full play through with them AFTER playing a full play through with any non-archer (archer kind of cheats with explosive arrows now and stealth is a different style of gameplay not conducive to comparing fight flexibility/power lol)

 
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