Repairing turrets but stopping just short of full? What do you do?

I always play as an engineer, and I spend at least 80% of my time repairing things. So this topic is important to me. I assume it has already been discussed numerous times, and if so please refer me to those threads if you have them saved somewhere.

I used to repair everything in full, say, all the turrets in an Amp station. If someone came along in a plane and began to blow them up behind me, I figured it was no big deal, just more points for me after they leave.

But now I get kinda aggravated by this sorta thing, because I get "stuck" at the Amp station for hours on end. I enjoy a change of scenery every half hour or so!

So now I decided I would follow what I see other engineers doing... leave the turrets with the last repair segment unfilled. This takes away the incentive for a plane or a tank to shoot them of course, so they leave me alone. And I still get almost all my points, I barely lose anything by doing this.

What I never liked about this strategy is that if the station comes under attack and teammates show up to defend it (rare, yes I know), then the turrets are all out of action unless they are all engineers too. So this strategy can hurt my team over the long run.

Another thing I don't like is when I show up at an Amp station with everything unrepaired... yes!! mega points!!! But then I begin to repair and find that ALL of the turrets are within one repair point of being finished... so I get almost NO points. LOL

What are your thoughts on doing this? Do you repair everything in full, or do you leave everything "one click short" of full? What is the best strategy?

When I first started the game, the tutorials I read said something like "NEVER allow your opponent to earn points!!!" For example, if you come under fire in a Sunderer, the advice was to immediately log out to deny that player their points. Then log back in and keep going. Seems kinda like unsportsmanlike behavior tho. Is not healing turrets fully also unsportsmanlike behavior, especially when the sole reason is to deny the other teams' players their points?

I just started this a couple days ago. For me I'm starting to do it for 2 reasons. Obviously an enemy will be more likely to hover or land amongst a group of what appear to be dead turrets. Nice..you can rep/hop in unload and jump from one tower to another being a menace. Same reason for generators...why let them know you're there? You can bring the entire base back online very quickly if you leave them at 99%.

From a cert standpoint the real enemy isn't the other faction it's your fellow engineers. For the same reasons you outlined I also do it to deter other engineers from even bothering to try to repair the base. They fix maybe three 99% repaired turrets and give up not realizing I haven't even started the other side of the base yet. This is the sort of mess that comes from rewarding us for repairing things like turrets to begin with and also piling on a 40% bonus for just being there alone. Something really needs to be done with health bars on turrets or removing exp altogether for repairing anything but fellow team mates. Honestly if I had more to do as an engineer I would probably be doing it but since I don't...back to the cert grind.

I never thought about fellow engineers being the enemy, but now that you said it, I guess I do mutter a little bit under my breath when an engineer shows up to repair "my" station. hehe Yeah, I do feel like I've lost points in those instances, but I'd never say anything out loud to them.

This does point out part of the problem of Planetside 2, or probably most games for that matter. We adopt strategies for all the wrong reasons. Earning certs should never be a primary reason to develop a strategy. But the reality is, that is exactly why most strategies are formulated. "What is gonna earn me the most in the least amount of time?" It defeats the purpose of the game.

The classic example of this is when you see teammates FLEE a station that comes under attack. They see no point to defending, because it earns them NOTHING! The standard strategy is to leave, let the other team cap the point, then wait til they leave and go in and take it back. It means the game is more boring than it should be, and less filled with good action. By not giving points for defending, it removes any incentive to defend in most player's eyes.

The reason I bring that up is because since nobody wants to defend anything, then why worry about turrets not being usable? All the more reason to leave turrets one click short of full. Kinda sad, ain't it?

It just wasn't like this in PS1...I repaired wall turrets and upgraded them because the enemy was coming!! Now I'm repairing them because my teammates are coming? I guess this is the kind of thing you want happening in a game where the owner is trying to establish a relationship with your wallet rather than encouraging you to establish relationships with teammates. Would you help your teammate if you didn't get rewarded for it?

turrets are too easy to kill. Not worth repairing. I would rather repair an in battle tank or MAX.

base turrets should have a regenerative shield that needs to be drained before damage can occur to the turret. Lets say that represents from 50% to 100%. Then the standard turret damage is from 50-0. If a turret is only damaged to 60% health and the attack stops, the turrets regens the shield back to 100%. The regen stops once the turret is damaged more than 50%.

This would give turrets about 2x the durability under a sustained attack but more if you end up with one guy shooting a rocket every 30 seconds or so from behind a rock. As it is now, it is almost worthless trying to keep turrets repaired in battle with little or no cover.

I also think the amount of turrets, durability, damage, etc should all be based on current territory control, not just the overheating. Have 1 tech plant, get 1 AA and AT turret per tower.

Turrets are too easy to kill, but they are definitely worth repairing, both for the XP and for the defense value. I can be a lone friendly engy in an amp station and keep quite a few enemies stirred up using the air and ground turrets. I love it when a bunch of enemy aircraft are lazily hovering around and I light them up with an AA turret.

I miss the PS1 days where they slowly repaired themselves and would attack targets automatically.

This isn't something I've seen a lot of yet and is not something I do or am a fan of. It's a gamey workaround that to me speaks poorly of the design of a couple of areas of PS2. Bases are too vulnerable when unoccupied (no-one performs guard duty because it sucks) and people are too focused on personal cert gain.

I agree with this comment.

Yet one more thing from PS1 that they inexplicably and stupidly didn't include into PS2..

As for me repairing turrets..... I repair turrets to get them back into working order so they can be used for defense of the base. I don't give a **** about the XP.

The only reason I'd only repair one 99% of the way if I knew that it'd get destroyed right away if it was operational and there's wasn't something more important for me to do in defense of the base. Once the immediate threat to the turret moved on though I'd rep it the rest of the way.

I go full repair. The worst is when you start a repair and enemy air happens to fly over, whether checking out the situation or whatever. I would like to have a turret at least ready to go. If I wish to go to the next battle, I will repair half of the turrets there (if 2 AA, I repair only 1). I would rather have something ready to go then have to run up to one, do a quick repair and then hop in... especially if it is an ESF that starts to hover near a gate. Also, I have seen times when having the turrets working have turned a battle around.

I also prefer if there is more than one engineer repairing with me, it makes the repair that much quicker and easier to get back into the fight. Three working together can make very quick repairs and just run through a base.

It sounds like a good idea actually. Problem is that it's hard to tell that they are 99% and ready to go. Teammates can easily finish them, but they might not no that.

As someone who started out farming certs via repairing turrets and then SWITCHED to farming certs via destroying turrets (lib+tank buster...1 clip=dead turret in <2 seconds flat); I have to say that it really pisses me off when people get turrets nearly up but not fully. Finish the job you lazy slackers! I want my easy(er) points!

Oh that is so sweet you just made my day...99% it is!!! thppppppppppppppppppp

When I realize that I would be in that situation, I stop my second to last final repair at half "heat". That way I can save the time for the final round of repair.

I always repair them fully in hopes some enemy will come kill them again.

Full repair until bored.
They are not a great source of certs and so-so as a defense.

If someone try to screw my work then I either try to kill the intruder or leave the place.
I don't use the partial repair tactics because it isn't really effective. It works against allies in few ways: it distracts friendly engineers and prevents any other classes from using the turrets.

I may use it only to prevent hacking them on bases like Crossroads Watchtower.

I don't repair turrets for the XP. I repair turrets because my squad needs some extra-big sticks with which to pound the enemy.

I do agree that SOE needs to provide some incentive for guarding a base though. Perhaps a slow xp tick as long as there is enemy activity in your hex or an adjacent one. I really like being on defense, but it's really hard to defend a base if you're not already there in force when an assault starts.

For me it depends on when I'm playing. Often times I play really early in the morning; like 4 AM. There's not a lot of people on; most are ghost capping or farming turrets. That's a good time to only repair to 99%

During prime time I repair them up all the way. That's because someone is going to need to use it soon. These bases change hands so often and the turrets will be needed at a moments notice. No time to wait for a couple ENGs to run around topping off turrets. My only exception to this is when we are deep in NC or VS territory. Then I don't repair anything because the station will fall back into enemy hands soon so why leave them with better defenses? Makes it easier for us to come back and re-cap it since they won't have all the turrets up and sometimes they don't even have all the shields back up.

To those how say turrets are worthless... what game are you playing? I've seen many battles where defenders can hold off overwhelming odds because the turrets are manned by ppl who can aim and there are a bunch of ENGs keeping them (and the MAXs) repaired. Particularly amp stations and the crown.

All excellent points. I've modified my own strategy since my post a few days ago... I rarely play on Indar since that map is terribly crowded, and as a "loner engineer" I much prefer the peace and quiet of the other two maps so I can pretty much do my job uninterrupted.

Basically, all I do is look at the map and see where and what the "flow" is. If we're taking territories and trying to capture the entire continent, I will repair in full, because the opposing forces are usually very low in numbers (percentage-wise as shown on the map screen). When we're rolling, the enemy usually just gives up and leaves for the most part. Even if one lone pilot shows up to grab some turret points, I can usually make em leave for good with one quick turret AA burst at em and they almost never come back.

But if we've completed our capture of the continent, and MY team has begun to leave and another team's percentage is on the rise, then I will go to my "99% repair" strategy. Since I have no teammates to man the turrets, there is no point to making sure they are available for them. And since I know the enemy is coming, I don't want THEM to get the points. So I leave em just short of full so the tanks and planes can't score anything, and so their engineers will also get no points for the small "one tick" of repair left on em.

The reason I alternate my repair strategy is because, quite honestly, repairing to 99% is a pain, because I have to watch closely right at the end of the repair to make sure I don't go overboard. When I repair everything in full, I'm on cruise control. I literally watch television while repairing. LOL I know after the gun overheats, all I need to do is release the mouse and re-click it. As soon as the cooldown is complete, the repair will continue until the turret is completed. Then I can look back at the screen and run to the next turret and do it all over again.

Wow, I do not agree with this at all. I can't tell you how many thousands of certs I've earned in the few months I've played (I'm level 41 now) and they have almost all come from repairing turrets and generators, with some base captures added in as well of course. I log in and play until I'm either out of stuff to repair or until I've hit around 100 certs for the session. That usually takes me about 2 hours and by then I'm bored stiff, yeah. But I just keep coming back and doing it over and over and over again. If I do it ten times in a week (and I do) that's 1000 certs a week. Right now I have 2100 certs saved up, just deciding what to do with em.

Yeah I find farming certs from repairing basses is good XP / certs. During off-peak hours it's even better than ghost capping. I can ghost cap a big base and get 4 certs... after standing in one place forever... I can get WAAAYY more certs repairing that very same base! Plus I actually run around, sometimes run in to ppl to fight, or shoot some aircraft. It's still pretty boring so I only do it if I can't find any action or the current public squad leaders are lame brains.

Sure it's nothing compared to the XP / certs you get in big battles. I also don't have tricked out vehicles so I can go farm mad XPs with my pawdz. So for some acceptable, relatively safe, certs... it's a good way to go.

ps: p1mped is a censored word... hah!