So, as it stands the MANA is almost useless. It's pretty good for holding a room, but otherwise there are way too many disadvantages to bother using it in a firefight. Icenode already made some awesome suggestions regarding the default turret (ESPECIALLY about removing the head-shot hole, there's already enough ways to murder a gunner): http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/mana-turret-suggestions.66702/ That I totally I agree with, but expand upon both the category of engineer deployables and turret options, I thought I'd make this post. 1. Varied Turret Types Either unlocked like most other weapons, or just a lower cost cert, allow engineers to get different turret types. Grenade Launcher Turret: Either one that behaves like the Bulldog or one that fires in bursts. Wire Guided AT Turret: Almost no splash, all AP and anti-tank duty, projectile follows the recital as it travels out. 2. Non-Turret Deployables Put something in for people who don't want to bother with turrets, or for the engineers to behave moreso in their support role. Barricades: A small Barricade that's capable of blocking off a doorway, provide deployable cover, or as a tank trap to impede vehicle movement through a choke-point. Maybe make it see-through and glowly like most shielding. You could even make tank traps and barricades separate deployables. All of this is just because the MANA feels like wasted potential, and generally useless in most cases. Also you should totally make MANAs un-deployable at Warpgates, or just widen up that entrance door.
Some nice ideas, but to be honest I think the turret needs the following changes most: 1) The ability to deploy on uneven ground. Reason: the dependence on even ground is the most limiting factor in the use of the MANA-turret. AND it's on a tripod, real tripods don't need the ground to be perfectly even. 2) A slightly tighter COF. (maybe 20-30%) Reason: it's a mounted MG that fires pansy bullets, it should have more stability during firing.
I think the current concept of just throwing down the Disc and having the turret pop out of nowhere makes it difficult to have reasonably powerful turrets without making them OP. What if the current concept would be changed in a way that you still throw down your Disc (Blueprint) but instead of letting the turret magically appear, you would need to nanite (repair-gun) it up to full health in order to materialize. The stronger the Turret the more Time it would consume to get it up and running. This way, Engineers could work together to speed up the creation of an AT Gun before getting blasted to bits, where a single Engineer wouldnt be abled to respond in time.
TF2 (and back to the original QWTF) turrets are first built at rank 1, bad at following fast moving targets and a low rate of fire. You then go get more 'metal' to upgrade to rank 2 at which point it follows targets more closely and has a higher rate of fire. At Rank 3 it's even better and has rockets it will fire as well for splash damage. It might be worth trying the proposal outlined above by Gandrac in PS2, it would be the only way to see if it ends up either OP or the building in any non-OP setup takes too long to not be UP.
