[Suggestion] Emplaced MBT Turrets

The concept of a base turret is nothing new in PS2. We've had them since forever. But with the new construction system, more defensive emplacements could be a plus.

One idea is a throwback to WWII and the early Cold War. Militaries at the time often had surplus tank turrets sitting around for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they had been taken off tanks as obsolete. Other times the tank's hull sustained damage and the turret was removed, waiting for a new owner. Or just more turrets were ordered as replacements or the hulls were experiencing delays.

The Germans and the Russians in particular were keen to capitalise on this surplus of turrets. After all, turrets sitting in storage meant turrets not shooting at the enemy. And even back then they realised that more dakka was better.

Enter the Pantherturm, or "Panther Tower".


Yes, it's not much of a "tower".

The Germans started to deploy tank turrets that were set directly into the ground. Underneath would be a small bunker, often times filled with ammunition, supplies, and even beds. These were most often not operated by tank crews, but by lower, less trained infantry. They generally had a crew of 3, including a gunner, a loader, and a commander.

Because the turret obviously was immobile, this allowed it a few more opportunities. For starters, many had additional armour bolted on the outside, because when you don't have to bother moving you can afford to be overweight. This was also important because Pantherturms could not move to evade artillery.

In the end, Pantherturms were moderately successful as hardened defensive positions. They could project more power than a pillbox and were much better protected than typical AT gun emplacements. The Russians would emulate this at the start of the Cold War with their own versions.



In PS2, the MBT emplacements would be the first empire-specific defensive structures. Like the IRL versions, they would simply be an immobile MBT turret. In general, they would have improved armour as compared to their MBT counterparts. They would also have heavier weaponry, along with a pair of Kobalts for limited AI potential.

Like the real Pantherturms, the MBT emplacements could be placed mostly underground so that only the turret showed. In this case the access point would be the turret itself. To help with terrain, the turret could also be elevated slightly, to perhaps half the height of a Cortium silo. This trades a greater field of view with an increased target profile. It should be noted that directional armour only applies to the turret, which is a separate hitbox than the tower base. The turret would be more heavily armoured than the tower base.

Because of its emplaced nature, the MBT emplacements would not require rearming per se (like from a Sunderer or Ammo Tower). Instead they would have their own, individual Cortium storages. These storages could not be used for general construction purposes and would only be used to rearm the MBT emplacement. If the storage were to run out of Cortium, the MBT would run out of both cannon and MG ammunition.

And yes, there will be modifications to the Magrider.



First up is the TR's PT-125. The "Prowler Tower" (sadly the only one that rhymes) is outfitted with improved 125mm AP cannon instead of the old 120mm P2s. These deal more damage and have improved velocity over the older weapons. It also has a secondary pair of 12.7mm Kobalts, which are coaxially mounted.

Anchor has been modified into Autoloader. For a limited time after activation, the Autoloader can increase the rate of fire of the 125mm primary weapons (sorry, no hyper-Kobalts). Once that time is up, the Autoloader requires a cooldown until it can be activated again.

An alternative utility, Brace, has also been introduced. When Brace is activated, the PT-125 cannot rotate left or right and can only adjust its fire up or down. Like Autoloader, Brace significantly improves rate of fire of the 125mm cannons. Unlike Autoloader, Brace can be activated or deactivated at any time, with only a short deploy/undeploy period.

It's a cool suggestion, but I think there would be a balance problem. NC vs TR balance wouldn't be so bad since NC has the terrifying Titan AP and you could make the turret be extremely tanky. But VS would lose out on their turret because their MBT's ES advantage is mobility. With an emplaced turret, you take away the only real advantage of the Magrider.

I don't really know how you are going to change it without making the turret drastically different from the tank we all know and love/hate. But do elaborate.

So a Spear Phalanx turret, but lower and empire specific design. Sure.

Well of course. I'm going to... ummm...

Say, what would you do to make the Magrider into an equivalent turret?

They would carry over ES MBT abilities, though obviously modified (not much of a downside to Anchor if you couldn't move in the first place).

They also would probably require a human operator, given how they would be stronger than a standard Spear Phalanx turret. AI modules would not work on them.

On the flipside, they could not be hacked like a Spear turret (just as how MBTs can't be hacked).

And they would have limited AI capabilities at closer range.

Other than that, pretty much a Spear turret.

Not sure how I feel about a stronger Spear turret, that would put them close to being able to solo against MBTs (except a vanguard with shield). Lack of AI seems like such a non issue, since player created bases rarely are threaten by them.
I do like the idea of the turrets being ES design and that the height was somewhat modifiable.

that's too similar to Spear turret. If you want to see something really cool, how about ground based Zepher

The biggest drawback to a turret would be of course that it wouldn't be able to move, dodge, pursue, or hide. That's why I don't feel too bad about them having higher damage or armour.

For example, they would probably trade shots until the tank was damaged. Then the tank would simply withdraw and hide behind a rock to repair. The emplacement, on the other hand, cannot hide to repair and can only repair while exposed. It also cannot chase down the tank to finish it off.

In terms of balance, one turret should probably be able to keep one MBT at bay. Not to do enough damage to kill it, but enough so that the MBT can't just pound the base with fire all day. A single 2/2 MBT might be able to out-DPS the emplacement (as it has no secondary AV weapons). Two MBTs, taking turns to deal damage and repair, should also be able to destroy the emplacement.

It might repair at a slower rate compared to a repair module to make things fair if that's an issue. Maybe only repair when it wasn't taking fire.

I can already envision the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth as the cries of "nerf" and "OP" ring out about the TR's lockdown locked down turret.

Not a bad idea, but I have to agree the VS would kind of get the shaft.

I like the idea of ES turrets, so I'll put forward my suggestion.

Rocket Turrets

They're basically turrets with improved ES RLs attached to them. To keep things interesting (and hopefully balanced), ESRL refers to any type of rocket weapon, not just the special one on the HA.

TR- The TR are defined by lots of dakka, so they get a modified Gatekeeper. It has higher RoF and near zero recoil, but has more drop and a smaller magazine. It chews through ammo ridiculously fast, so sustained fire like the current Gatekeeper is not possible.

NC- The NC are known for high alpha damage, shotguns and teamkilling. Thankfully this turret is designed with only the first two in mind. The NC turret is 6 Ravens duct-taped together in true NC fashion. They fire together at the same time and can do some serious damage. However the magazine is small and the 6 rockets fire out like a shotgun, making the weapon inaccurate at short range as the individual rockets have not had time to align themselves.

VS- The VS have at their disposal a godly tool of destruction, the Lancer. Shame it doesn't have zoom optics. The new VS super Lancer turret is unique because it has two firing modes. The first is a full auto weapon that fires uncharged Lancer shots. It's not very accurate and doesn't have much punch, but is decent at taking care of nearby vehicles. The second mode is a charged shot that consumes all the remaining ammo in the magazine. The more ammo consumed, the more powerful the shot. However, firing the second mode with more than half a magazine causes an overheat which lengthens reload time.

What do you think Chingles? I'm positive that both our ideas are workable with the right tweaks. I can already hear the nerf/buff rants.

I like the initial idea, but won't this be completely unbalanced towards the VS?

You have stripped these turrets from their chassis, which determined most of their individual statistics. This means that the Prowler Tower wins based on it's higher DPS, the Titan Tower would at least have higher base-armor and the possibility of a shield, but the Nova Turret? They have the lowest DPS and no real advantage in special abilities to speak off.

If you want to keep movement as the special for the VS you could maybe give them a hovering turret with a small area it can float in, as long as it remains close to the generator set on the ground it draws power from. The turret is harder to hit, and even if it's ground generator is still hittable and has a hitbox, you can hide the ground generator behind scenery and have the turret be used as a pop-up turret. Revealing itself at the edges of walls or floating above low obstacles. If that's not enough of an advantage and the turret needs it's own special ability, maybe you could allow it to self-repair if the turret sits on the ground generator or something?
Or you make the movement of the turret pretty slow, and add an afterburner to it. That way the movement isn't too OP and the afterburner fills the function of dodging and quickly appearing/disappearing behind whatever cover you have placed nearby.

I liked your comments on this. Since PS2 borrowed some ideas from the Eldar of the Warhammer 40k universe, how about using Holo Shields to protect the VS towers? The Holo Shield acts to warp light around making it fairly difficult to properly aim a weapon at the tower? It would make the tower image shake and move around a set area making long distance shooting very difficult.

It's definitely an option, although considering PS2's engine it would more likely be something like a stalker cloak that gives off a far bigger distortion than the actual turret's size to make it tougher to see where it is.

Of course, if someone already knows where the turret is there's absolutely no problem hitting it repeatedly, and the entire ability is rendered useless. Compare that to the Prowler Tower and Titan Tower who don't lose their abilities no matter what the opposition does and it's still unfair.

That's essentially the problem. The Magrider is based on mobility, which is why it does reasonably well (better than the Vanguard in most situations). Turning it into a fixed emplacement would be problematic, because it would lose that mobility.

That's actually a better idea than the one I had, which was to turn the VS turret into a sniper turret. But again, the mobility thing would turn it into a sniper that wouldn't be able to run away, which would be bad.

Maybe the "floating" turret could be a time-based ability, so pressing "F" would grant so many seconds of floating? Afterwards it would be fixed to its base once again.

Or that in exchange for floating it would lose damage. This would transform it from a MBT killer to more of a harassment tool to keep the enemy from getting close for a longer period of time.

Hmmm... so in general longer-ranged turrets? It would work. They would trade damage for the ability to target the enemy at extended ranges.

I came up with some similar ideas for ES RLs mounted on MBTs awhile back (before Gatekeeper). Why not on a fixed emplacement?

The burried tanks looks funny. Almost cute. The gun turret model is very pretty.

The Vanguard turret is much more annoying to work with. You don't realise how lopsided it is until you remove the turret from the hull. Some people complain that the Prowler turret seems off balance, but compared to the Vanguard it fits very neatly onto the base.

Give the Maggie turret a lancer style gun, that doesn't require a charge up. High velocity, very accurate, reasonable damage and semi-slowish rate of fire. It would be a seriously powerful sniper

Spear Turrets are already kind of imbalanced, due to the prowler being able to 1v1 it while the other 2 tanks can't. Unless you make the health pool such that quick repairs aren't possible, this will be the same. While the tank can go hide around a rock and repair, the turret gunner can repair too, or they could have placed a rep sundy behind a wall.

I don't mind the design, ES specific spear turrets might be nice addition, but I'd much rather tanks were used to defend bases than a bunch of turrets.

The difference is that a turret will remain exposed to enemy fire. A tank can take cover. This means that for a time the tank will not be taking damage, but the emplaced turret might still be taking fire from other sources.

The other point is that a tank can control the number of enemies they engage to a degree. By just peeking out of cover, a tank can engage one enemy target out of many. An emplaced turret, on the other hand,

A Sunderer could also be repairing the tank of course. From either behind the tank, or parked from behind some cover as well.

Tanks will still have an important role in defending a base, namely to actually kill the attacking vehicles. A turret, because it is unable to pursue or to change its angle of attack, can at best delay or deter an attacking force. Defending tanks, on the other hand, will be able to charge the enemy and destroy them when they attempt to withdraw.

Right now the NS Spear turrets are a little too squishy, unless they have a significant base infrastructure backing them up. The MBT emplacements are designed to be a tougher, more damaging turret meant to keep enemy MBTs at bay for a period of time.

Taking feedback into account (thanks!)...



The tower base remains the same as the Prowler Tower. And on top sits a heavily modified Magrider hull, which can swivel around like a normal turret.

The Magrider, not needing as powerful levitating engines, has been shortened to bring it roughly in line with the size of other turrets. The rear propulsion systems have been removed, and instead much of the power is diverted to the Singularity Neutral Particle Beam weapon that serves as the primary weapon of the turret. It is similar to the Saron, in that it is pinpoint accurate and has no bullet drop. However, this version is semi-automatic and has a significantly lower rate of fire. The secondary coaxial weapons are a pair of plasma cannons which function identically to Kobalts.

The Magrider emplacement has two options for utilities. The first, Maglev, allows the Magrider turret to detach from the tower and float in a small area over the tower. Within this space, the Magrider can gain or lower altitude, as well as move in the xy plane. This allows the Magrider turret some limited ability to take cover or to dodge shots (the base, however, cannot move). When active, primary weapon fire rate is reduced as power needs to be diverted to the engines. When activated or deactivated, there is a short period where the Magrider turret cannot move or fire as it floats back to the base.

The second, Eclipse (yes there's a directive weapon of the same name), allows the Magrider turret and base to cloak when it is motionless. After the Magrider emplacement is empty or has not moved for a few seconds, it will become transparent, with only the edges and minor distortions visible. From a long distance, the Magrider emplacement will be difficult to spot. Needless to say, because the Magrider emplacement cannot move, the cloak module is more of a first-strike option as attackers would know the Magrider emplacement's position once it opened fire. It should, however, protect the Magrider emplacement from being destroyed before the defenders are in place.

Overall, the Magrider emplacement will differ from the Prowler Tower with the ability to engage at long range and increased survivability from being able to dodge or hide from incoming fire.