Developer Thread: Auto-Turrets

I think enough turrets to defend my Sunderer would be great. C4 is so ultra-overpowered, it would be a nice change to have six of them surrounding my Sundy.

In fact, that and about 20 mines of AP and AV would make Sundies far more defensible. Especially against the (Sexual) Harrassers.

This update has made me quit the game. It removes stealth in big fights, and that was the last thing I had other than field fights which redeploy + lattice + new resource system killed. Bye Planetside.

You only need 1 or 2 turrets to stop a LA from C4ing a sundy- they are surprisingly effective against light assaults, as they are strangely responsive to anything that tries to jetpack over them.

Still trash against almost anything else though.

I suspect that is more the panic factor, I'd think a LA could easily get enough bricks off and detonated before 2 Spitfires could kill them.

But they are useful in that context, because most Sundy kills are either someone unseen above it or someone unseen running around it/under it.

Hi all, just wanted to add my 2 cents about the spitfire auto-turret.

I am a defensive support player. I am quite horrible with my guns overal (I blame my high age!) and thereby
I work a lot with sundy placements, mines, c4 and repairing. I even jump on the med from time to time to try
to keep our guys up and in the fight. (Got to love that ressurection nade!)

To the point now tho. For me I typicallly stay "ahead" of the battle. I try to expect where the battle will come next
and setup defensive mines, a secondary spawn from a sundy nearby to give the defenders options etc. I guess many
here don't think players like me belong in the game (except all those MAX guys I repair during a night of playing) but
it is my way of playing and I hope we can keep the flaming to a minimum.

I can sometimes really stop an attack with just my mines. A sundy or a tank or two that dies to my tank mines, a few
attackers finding my proximity mines etc. At least I hope that I do this, but I also see part of my work in "delaying" the
attackers so that my comrades in arms get time to get there and help save the base.

So added to this is the spitfire auto turret. I tested it by throwing it up a couple of times and found it to fire off a few rounds
and then was quickly taken out. I started working more with incoperating the gun into my defensive setup. Now I usually set it up in such a way where I hope to block stealthers and that it is placed so that it can "finish off" wounded enemies who has managed to find my mines. It has gotten me a few kills, but nothing extra ordinary. I got a few comments from some fellow players that they appriciated the gun as a "back cover". They could be watching one side and the gun would give a lil heads up if someone tried to sneak in the other way. But overall my mines handle that part, I usually try to mine one entrance etc so defenders will hear when someone tries to get in there.

The gun makes me a bit more effective, but it is still a very minor part of my defence work compared to the mines / repairing. And I can tell you, so many enemies just clears out ALL of my mines and gun in a jiffy, and if they can do it, anyone can. I knew a certain of players that I always try to keep a heads up for, as I know these guys will clear all my defensive setups in a quick manner if I don't try to interrupt them. These guys knows what they are doing and I enjoy ending up in battle with them, even if I die and all mines are gone. I still slowed them down to help my team.

In conclusion, the gun is a minor part and it goes down faster than... (insert dirty word joke) So its all about adapting, I am sure that soon the gun will just be a little bump for most players to beat. And see it like this, every gun you run into, there will probably be at least one on your side annoying someone else.

Sorry for wall of text, just wanted to share how it looks from my side.

Derid

ps. Totally ok btw if you guys let my gun take you down some, this old man wants to get a kill here and there also

What I would do to make it viable... priority list;
1. Remove the need to resupply to redeploy it. No timer, no cert lines to be able to deploy it more times before resupply. Either treat it like a turret or a deployable, not both.
2. Make it smaller, dim lights, lower beeping noise.
3. Either raise the damage a tad somehow or raise it's survivability some. This is where you might consider using Engineer cert lines? Treat it like a MAX and give it resistances to certain things (small arms, explosives, etc) that you can cert into. Ability to cert into higher fire rate, turn rate/acquisition rate, etc...

Maybe make an AV variant that you can cert into.

There must be a way for an engie to pack up a deployed turret and move it to another location. I do like how the turret is like a second set of eyes. Adds a whole new dynamic to being an engie but it is so fragile and has low DPS. The turret beeping gives away its location and the engie needs turret health info in their HUD.

Thanks for posting this.

I have to agree with Wrel's statement on his patch overview video that the dev stated purpose of giving players like yourself (and up until my recent upgrade, myself) a way to more actively participating in the shooting by giving them the Spitfire is not really working as planned. Don't get me wrong, it's useful. It's just not useful in the way they were aiming for. It's great for sundy overwatch to guard against C4 fairies and people trying to drop shots from high up roosts, nailing people as they pop up into a target rich environment, and supplementing other defenders by calling targets and polishing them off. (Protip, it works with the marker implant, auto Q spotting everyone it hits.) However, as anything other than a sneaky deployable BR20, it's horrible in standup fights.

The only thing I sort of disagree with it making it smaller as this would limit its ability to fire over things, unless they made it easier to stick it on things.

Also from what people have said it needs a small arms resistance boost, certainly for sniper rifles, 2 shots to kill is just too little - probably on top of any other certed boost.

To be honest I'd like to know from the Devs what they were going for:

1) A PS1 type spitfire - which was more.... firing mine.
or
2) TF turret which is more DPS with lower surviability if the engi doesn't support it.

At the moment they've sort of mixed both in a way that isn't particularly great.

Sniper rifles being able to take it down from a distance is fine.

The problem is people being able to waltz up to it and destroy it at their own leisure because it's damage model versus survivability is poor. That model is even worse against Nanoweave or an HA shield. It doesn't take more than two or three landed shotgun volleys and that still leaves enough shells to deal with the doting Engineer. An adept slug Baron pretty much rends both quickly. It's also not possible to maintain the turret in any sort of way, even if you tried. Even against a single source of gunfire, you can not outrepair the damage to extend its life by more than a second, up from maybe two or three seconds normally.

The one thing I think is in a good spot, however, is the amount of indirect explosive damage a turret takes. If other perks were better, I'd also saying it's tracking were fine (but only if there were other perks that were good).

My personal opinion is that it might do well with two things:
1) A thoroughly CQC damage model that makes moving up to the turret deadly, but drops off harshly such that other distances are survivable. A 250@2m / 100@10m sort of affair. This would also make the current target tracking speed good because stumbling upon a turret just around a corner still wouldn't necessarily be death, as long as the player doesn't continue to stumble about.
2) Small arms/direct fire resistance (but not explosive/splash resistance), at least enough that it will usually be more important to kill the Engineer actively repairing the turret before tackling the turret itself, at least in a 1v1 situation.

4 shots, 5 shots.... fair enough, but 2 shots it just too little IMO at that range.
But, as you say, in general I think it currently might be too easy to destroy with small arms.

That micro-range of high DPS seems like an interesting idea too.

need this...
1. remove limited carry.
2. more HP.
3. more fast react.

1) Needs a deploy timer (like the spawn beacon)
2) Needs more HP (right now it takes 2 BASR shots to kill it)
3) No/half damage to friendly units

In addition to all suggestions above (agreed with almost every, about buffing turret up):
1. Make turret, placed by player, have different color icons on HUD.
2. Make turrets, placed by squad/platoon members, have different color icons on HUD.
3. Add name of the owner and his outfit tag.
4. Make HUD elements with current turret`s HP bar, ammo bar and location arrow.
5. Add faint circle around turrets on minimap to display their targeting range.

Turrets should be wifi enabled. Multiple turrets placed in close proximity should network so that they concentrate fire on a single target.

My $0.02.

1.) Cert lines into either survivability (more damage resistance), DPS (Faster firing or harder hitting) and maybe a specialty like longer detection range.

2.) Different load out - Give it a small shotgun for short range, and a slow firing grenade launcher for long range.

3.) Specialty maybe? Swap out the standard rounds for Concussion effect causing rounds?

4.) Most importantly, make it so it can't see Sensor Shielded enemies unless they fire.

With those, I think it'll find a good niche since it'll still be too weak to do much on its own, but rather than a deployable BR20, it'll be a deployable BR40.

Someone in an Engy thread had an AWESOME idea on how to make the Spits more worthwhile.

Give them stacking HP/DMG bonuses, if multiple Spits are deployed within a certain radius.

1 Spit within 50m = Base power.
2 Spits within 50m = all get +20% HP/DMG
3 Spits = all get +30%
4 Spits = all get +40%
5 (max level) = all get +50%

...so with 5 Spits deployed within that certain radius, whatever it is...they would share a 1.5x buff. Nothing crazy powerful, but maybe enough to make them not suck so much?

I know this doesn't address the people who want to use them solo...perhaps they do need an all-around buff to dmg/hp (they are also huge and loud...either make them huge, loud, and difficult to destroy - or small, quiet, and easy to destroy. But both is too much).

I fully support a slight effective dps increase (i'd prefer it in the form of opening fire faster or better accuracy than pure damage though), redeploy without resupply, changing that obnoxious noise, but i'm not much in favour of more resistance for it.
Half a mag to kill it can be a lot, especially for weapons with smaller damage per clip, like auto scout rifles, gen1 smgs and a lot of the carbines and ARs (all the 30x143 guns). In a large room, that can also be quite a problem to deal with for shotgun wielders, and apart from slugs, Jackhammer and Baron, all other shotguns would imply going for a secondary, which is not optimal at all.

I really love the idea of auto turrets in the game. In fact, that was my first tought when I started playing engineer. But today I got my weapons locked several times because my turret is trying to kill enemies but allies are always in it´s way.
Sorry, this is dumb. I can´t control when, where and in what situation the turret takes action, it should not be able to lock my weapons. If I´m spraying bullets at enemies and I see an allie running in my way, I simply let go of the trigger for a sec. Maybe the dev´s can consider to fix this?

Im a bit curious about one of its beeping noises.
As someone who played PS1 since 03, and still hop on from time to time, i couldnt help but notice that it makes a sound identical to a CUD (command uplink device) being used.

Is it just very similar? A reused sound? Or just an easter egg for PS1 CR5s?
I instinctively subconsciously feel like someone is about to orbital strike or emp me around those things