Personally I thought the Mana Turret was different to the normal turret too until I looked into it a bit, its very confusing in its wording. I also know 2 other people that made the same mistake. In Beta I'm sure the turret was more accurate but while it's now all but useless at long range it still has its uses. If you set it up where some of the people in this thread have already said you won't go far wrong, also please note this isn't meant (from what I can see) as a "spawn it under fire and jump on it to own" tool, its a "OK I know they are obviously going to come round this corner, let me set up some defences", also... if 3 people run round the corner your probably still dead/in trouble... although its quite capable of taking out 2 people at medium - short'ish range QUITE fast. I'd of liked to have seen these changes to it: Allow us to equip things on it like other guns Allow a hefty (100?/200?) cert for it that puts a shield over the head to stop snipers (Hell I can ping someone's head on one of these are decent range with the standard TR engi gun anyway.. forget snipers). This should not be equippable with the next item. Allow the health of the turret to be increased to about 125% of what we're at currently but make the default we start with about 2/3rds the hp we have on it at mo (Allowing people to take them out still if you have the head cover slot on but giving some variance). Allow us to cert for greater accuracy or greater fire rate (make these the same slot so unable to have both). Accuracy shouldn't be railgun-tastic ofc but still, it could do with a slight tweak for range. This would essentially allow for longer range turret setups (head guard + accuracy) and shorter range setups (more hp and faster firing). A cert that would allow a team mate to jump on the turret instead of you. (50 certs ish?, give them an icon only visible to your faction to show its usable). Also I think an anti-air turret would sell well, make it so once you get in it sits you in it and you face upwards, so your very susceptible to infantry / tanks finding you but in trade-off you get some nice aircraft flak (akin to a max I guess)...
Don't use it in the open; you are guaranteed to get sniped. I've used it in facility attack/defense with some success though. Inside the bio lab in particular there are a number of excellent positions for turrets, where snipers can't just hide in the distance and headshot you. They really need to make the shield certable so that eventually it's at least safe from the front from snipers. Honestly, I've never seen a game with snipers where a mechanic that forces you to stand still actually worked. I dunno why they thought it would here.
