Laser Turret vs. Gun Turret Ballance

[raidho36]

The problem is that laser turrets would completely displace gun turrets as early as mid game, due to far superior damage output, range and supply logistics.

My proposed solution is to increase laser turret power drain proportionally with damage and shooting speed upgrades. And logic behind it is simple and intuitive, too: stronger shot = more power needed, faster shooting = quicker charge = more power needed. Requirement to supply laser turrets with very large amounts of electric power will offset their superior firepower later in the game, making upgraded gun turrets a viable option agasint strong enemies just as well.

Note that right now guns are at additional disadvantage because shooting speed upgrades actually do increase the amount of supplies needed to feed the gun making it more expensive to operate, whereas speed upgrade for laser turret doesn't makes it drain more power thus you get speed upgrade for free (as in, no additional expense).

[dragontamer5788]

due to far superior damage output

But Gun-turrets with Advanced Rounds are far stronger than lasers, and with Uranium Rounds they're... like... way way wayyyyyyy stronger.

Like, Gun-Turrets are on the order of 2.5x stronger with Advanced Rounds (vs Behemoths Biters, already factoring in the armor), and something like 6x stronger with Uranium Rounds in terms of DPS. Against unarmored opponents (ie:Spitters), they're like 4x stronger with Advanced Rounds.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... tatistics/

That was back before we had Uranium Rounds. Now with Uranium Rounds it isn't even close.

[Selvek]

Yeah OMG uranium rounds are WAAAAY powerful!

I think the misconception is that unupgraded gun turrets are weak because biters have armor that first deducts a fixed number, than a percent, from bullet damage. But as the upgrades increase, the fixed deduction matters less, so gun turrets scale better than lasers with upgrades.

[Kelderek]

Range and health are the biggest drawbacks for gun turrets. I'm not sure they can hit a spitter that is at max range (been a while since I tested it up close), and they have something like half or 2/5 the health of laser turrets which means your construction bots have less time to repair them before they are destroyed and must then be replaced.

The uranium rounds are amazing though so I recommend using a mix of turret types, heck use all 3: flame, gun and laser and you get great coverage with a variety of damage types.

[Ranakastrasz]

if gun turrets had like 2-3 more range, they would be great the whole game. As it is, 17 range, compared to spitter's 15 range, while it seems like enough, doesn't cover the walls or avoid taking damage.

A T2 version, with 18-20 range, and maybe 2-3x as much health, would also work great.

Laser turrets, even with somewhat less damage, (based on upgrades and armor) win due to both easy logistics, and superior range. mostly, anyhow.

[Utterbob]

But Gun-turrets with Advanced Rounds are far stronger than lasers, and with Uranium Rounds they're... like... way way wayyyyyyy stronger.Like, Gun-Turrets are on the order of 2.5x stronger with Advanced Rounds (vs Behemoths Biters, already factoring in the armor), and something like 6x stronger with Uranium Rounds in terms of DPS. Against unarmored opponents (ie:Spitters), they're like 4x stronger with Advanced Rounds.https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... tatistics/That was back before we had Uranium Rounds. Now with Uranium Rounds it isn't even close.

That was also before the combat pass, so the numbers on piercing ammo are wrong and the tiers scale differently.

The problem is that laser turrets would completely displace gun turrets as early as mid game, due to far superior damage output, range and supply logistics.

Actually, they don't, gun turrets out perform laser in almost every scenario pre big biters. You have a point on range and that makes up some of the lost DPS but really isn't anywhere even close to enough of a difference unless you are using belts to slow (or something like that). As for logistics, certainly true if you are talking outposts but for core base defence, ammunition production and supply actually takes quite a bit less infrastructure (except for space running the ammo belt around your walls, granted) than the power needs of laser. Obviously that last bit is heavily situational. Also, the turret damage research pushes bullet turrets way out in front quite often.

As for the actual damage outputs, I'm not sure how to best represent the figures neatly with the limits of a forum post so hopefully this is readable....

* The scaling is anything but linear, so I'll just go by 2 tiers at a time. They have similar (ish) degrees of scaling at each tier.
* Research only counts the costs of the upgrades, not the tech to unlock the ammo/turret types.
* AP = Armour piercing; Ur = uranium rounds. Research noted as colour then number of flasks (without research multiplier), E.g. R200 would be 200 red flasks needed for all bonuses research up to that point. R/G/B/M/Y/S = Red/Green/Blue/Military/Yellow(High Tech)/Space. Lastly, upgrades apply to AP and Ur ammo regardless of type, so I will only note research costs next to AP.

Base DPS (with no turret bonus)
AP - 80
Ur - 240
Laser - 60

At tier 2 (2 upgrades each to speed and damage; 2 each to speed, damage and turret bonus for the turret stat)
AP - 124.8 - R150 G100
AP from Turret - 145.6 - R225 G175
Ur - 374.4
Ur from Turret - 436.8
Laser - 93.6 - R150 G150 M150

At tier 4
AP - 230.4 - R450 G400 M250
AP from Turret - 316.8 - R675 G625 M400
Ur - 374.4
Ur from Turret - 436.8
Laser - 205.2 - R500 G500 B350 M500

At tier 6 (highest for projectiles, before infinite chain starts)
AP - 440 - R1000 G950 B550 M800 Y350
AP from Turret - 680 - R1475 G1425 B800 M1200 Y500
Ur - 1320
Ur from Turret - 2040
Laser - 421 - R1050 G1050 B900 M1050 Y550

At tier 6.5? (highest for projectiles (6) and highest for laser (7), before infinite chain starts)
AP - 440 - R1000 G950 B550 M800 Y350
AP from Turret - 680 - R1475 G1425 B800 M1200 Y500
Ur - 1320
Ur from Turret - 2040
Laser - 633.6 R1525 G1525 B1375 M1525 Y1025

But what about Biter armour, Bob? Nothing but the behemoth has percentages and the rest are all 4 (med) or 8 (big). That is a flat deduction per bullet fired, so at tier 6 it's -100 DPS for meds and -200 DPS for bigs. At tier 4 it's -72/-144.

Conclusion (/TLDR):
1) At no equivalent tier do lasers ever outpace AP ammo guns for DPS, even more so for gun turrets with the additional bonus they get UNTIL Big biters. At this point lasers are more effective until either uranium ammo or double ramping bullet damage and turret damage into infinite research.
2) Research times are all identical, 30 seconds for tier 1 & 2, moving to 60 sec there on. Arguably this means gun turrets take 50% longer to research at each tier (damage + speed vs Damage + speed + turret).
3) Research costs for Laser tiers are between ammo only and ammo + turret but often include a higher tier of research flask, making them more expensive than ammo + turret.
4) If we give laser an unfair advantage and take everything to non-infinite research caps, then laser DPS finally beats bullets base (though not after armour, which you will most likely be facing by this point) but still doesn't beat turrets!
5) From Tier 7 onwards, laser gets ahead of guns (laser t7 = 633.6; gun t7 = 520) due to infinite research scaling better for laser damage than ammo damage (and shooting speed capping for both). With each tier of infinite, laser pulls ahead of guns. However, turret bonus alone (i.e. even if you froze research on ammo damage and only did laser damage vs gun turret damage) still outpaces laser, ramping very slightly faster with each step of infinite (making it better against everything but behemoth biters, who's percentage armour keeps the two even). The bullet damage + turret damage, obviously, gives gun turrets vastly more DPS potential than lasers.
6) Holy s**t balls Uranium rounds OP No seriously, they are mutts. Even after the behemoth's massive reduction to physical, a gun turret with uranium rounds hits for 1432 DPS at tier 6, compared to a laser's tier 7 DPS of 633.6!!!! Against a big it's 1840, med is 1940 and the small/tiny/all spitters it hits for 2040.

[Ranakastrasz]

Which is all well and good, except that gun turret range is too short to compete once spotters hit the field.

[Tev]

if gun turrets had like 2-3 more range, they would be great the whole game. As it is, 17 range, compared to spitter's 15 range, while it seems like enough, doesn't cover the walls or avoid taking damage.

A T2 version, with 18-20 range, and maybe 2-3x as much health, would also work great.

Laser turrets, even with somewhat less damage, (based on upgrades and armor) win due to both easy logistics, and superior range. mostly, anyhow.

+1

Gun turrets are already crazy expensive long term, give them health & range updates in late game pls.

[Ranakastrasz]

I think a second tier of gun turret, probably using circuits, steel, and plastic, to upgrade the existing gun turret, would make sense.
Just give it 2 ammo-slots, 22-28 range, and 800-1200 hitpoints.

Circuits because it gets range from compensating for various conditions, and steel+plastic because stronger materials.

[Lav]

if gun turrets had like 2-3 more range, they would be great the whole game. As it is, 17 range, compared to spitter's 15 range, while it seems like enough, doesn't cover the walls or avoid taking damage.

A T2 version, with 18-20 range, and maybe 2-3x as much health, would also work great.

Laser turrets, even with somewhat less damage, (based on upgrades and armor) win due to both easy logistics, and superior range. mostly, anyhow.

+1

Gun turrets are already crazy expensive long term, give them health & range updates in late game pls.

Gauss Turrets, perhaps? Need both ammo and electricity, but get a higher range and health. Plus player should be able to load them with iron ore, iron plates or steel bars in a pinch at a cost of reduced range and damage.

[Frightning]

I was saying back in the 0.13 days that the Gun turret needs an upgrade path into something sturdier. It's DPS is actually great, and shorter range seems like a fair downside to great DPS (Gun turret range is 17, Spitters are 15, so Gun turrets still out-range them, though it's barely enough to cover Walls one tile outward from the Gun Turret). I was thinking of an Armored gun turret, which would use additional Steel and perhaps Concrete and a reg. Gun turret to make. Would be the same gun, but with higher health and perhaps some resistance to physical and explosion damage? (Shouldn't resist Acid though, because that would logically be effect versus armor).

[raidho36]

But Gun-turrets with Advanced Rounds are far stronger than lasers, and with Uranium Rounds they're... like... way way wayyyyyyy stronger.

Not sure how did you get those numbers. Non-upgraded gun turret does 50 dps, 80 dps ap rounds, 240 dps depleted uranium rounds. Against behemoth enemies only uranium rounds do any damage, 160 dps. Non-upgraded laser turred does flat 60 dps but also at 41% greater range, so against incoming wave it does flat 84 and change equivalent. As you upgrade turret damage, the armor offset diminishes because bigger fraction of bullet damage passes through armor. However when you upgrade speed, it increases - gun turret only pisses away rounds quicker while still doing low damage, whereas laser turret increases dps linearly.

Now given that you can enrich uranium, power versus utility comes into play. Nuclear fuel cell is 8 GJ and takes 1.9 pieces of depleted uranium, let's make it 2 for round numbers. That makes each piece of uranium a 4 000 MJ equivalent, and because it takes 1 piece of uranium to make uranium magazine, each bullet is 400 MJ equivalent. With 400 MJ you can power a laser turret for 166 seconds, whereupon it would deal 10 000 points of damage un-upgraded, and damage will scale with both speed and damage upgrades. Meanwhile a depleted uranium bullet does 24 points of damage, against unarmored enemies, and this value will only increase with damage upgrades, but not with speed upgrades. If you feel like using nuclear ammo then yeah sure, but you'll be far better off using that uranium as fuel and power laser turrets instead. Unless you play on peaceful or any other mode where enemies attack very infrequently if at all, where idle drain would be a bigger concern.

And then there's efficiency, i.e. input v.s output. Laser turret starts out at 100% and upgrading it continuously increases its efficiency, as it is doing more damage per MJ of energy input. Guns start out with 0% efficiency against heavily armored enemies and it only starts to climb after few damage upgrades, even uranium ammo starts far lower than 100%. And only damage upgrades improve efficiency, whereas for laser turrets speed upgardes also improve efficiency. Let's do the math. I will use a piece of coal as a reference.

A piece of coal is 8 MJ and will power laser turret for 3.3 seconds, in which time it makes 200 damage.
To make one normal magazine, 4 iron is needed. It takes 0.72 MJ to mine it and 1.26 MJ to smelt, and finally 0.168 MJ to assemble in tier 3 machine, which totals at 2,148 MJ. A piece of coal can therefore make 3.67 normal magazines, which will amount to 183.5 in damage against unarmored enemies.
To make ap rounds magazine, additional 5 copper and 1 steel is needed. Mining 5 copper takes 0.9 MJ and smelting it takes 1.575 MJ. Additional 5 iron is needed to make a steel plate, which has same as copper mining and smelting cost, and costs additional 1.575 in smelting to steel. Finally, assembling ap rounds magazine takes ~0.5 MJ. That totals at 9,173 MJ. A piece of coal can make 0,87 ap round magazines, dealing total of 69.7 damage to unarmored foes.
I will not calculate how much power it takes to make uranium rounds magazine, but it's not even relevant because depleted uranium alone is worth 400 times more as fuel to power laser turrets than as ammunition for gun turrets. Just based on energy value of depleted uranium alone, using 8 MJ worth of it as ammunition would deal 0.48 damage. Half a point of damage, that's correct.
If you give turrets 400% speed upgrade, damage per MJ for gun turret will remain the same, but for laser turrets will quadruple - in time it drains 1 piece of coal worth of power it makes 4 times as many shots.
If you give turrets 400% damage upgrade, damage per MJ for gun turrets will quadruple for unarmored enemies, but otherwise will increase by less than that for nuclear rounds, even less for ap rounds, and even less for normal rounds. It will quadruple for laser turrets.

To abstracise a little bit and get rid of all the convoluted network of things in the way, picture that instead of gun turret there's coal turret. It flings pieces of coal at the enemy, and in doing so it deals less damage than if you were using that coal to power laser turrets instead. And a nuclear ore turret that flings nuclear ore. It deals three times the damage of coal turret but you could've instead used that uranium to power 100 times as many laser turrets plus the rest of your factory.

Gun turrets efficiency is abysmal and only gets worse with upgrades compared to laser turrets. Making laser turrets drain more power with upgrades will at least somewhat offset this.

[BlakeMW]

I was going to say what raidho36 just said but he already said it (that is firing lasers is cheaper energy-wise than firing metal plates).

Now I will make my arguments for why the gun turret is fine as it is

Gun Turrets are awesome in early-mid game

Gun Turrets are *much* better against small spitters due to overkill. Unupgraded gun turrets kill a small spitter in 2 bullets (and a biter in 3 bullets), with +100% damage upgrades it becomes a 1-shot kill and the base firing speed of the gun turret is 10/s. So the gun turret firing regular ammo can kill 5 small spitters/s, or with AP ammo or lots of upgrades, can kill 10/s

Laser turrets 1-shot small biters and spitters, damage upgrades are irrelevant. They fire 3/s allowing them to kill 3 small spitters/s. This number increases with speed upgrades, but in exactly the same proportion as bullet firing speed upgrades.

So gun turrets, despite being a lot cheaper, actually wipe out small spitters significantly to much faster than laser turrets, they also tend to do marginally to much better against small biters depending on upgrades - it's all about hitting those 1-shot or 2-shot kill breakpoints.

What this means is that laser turrets are basically a liability before you're facing mostly at least medium biters - in fact small spitters because they spawn in huge numbers (due to a low "pollution cost" each) can easily swarm and destroy small numbers of laser turrets, whereas a small number of gun turrets would have obliterated them - especially if upgraded to +100% damage for the coveted 1 bullet/kill.

The gun turrets shares upgrades

The gun turret shares bullet upgrades with the machine gun, tank machine gun and defender capsules. If you upgrade the gun turrets to get those lovely 1-shot kills then the gun turrets will be just fine firing regular ammo and defender capsules will be unholy terrors. If you've never run around with defender capsules with unusually high bullet upgrades I highly recommend it, those things put destroyer capsules to shame in the damage they can put out to poorly armored targets. The Tank Machine is also damn good, and just gets better with the bullet upgrades. The main limitation of a bullet based defense/offense is that you do need the upgrades to stay ahead of the biter armor. For defenders to wipe out Big Biters you basically need Bullet Damage 6 (High Tech), and to deal with Behemoth Biters you need 7 (Space Science). But anyway, whether you invest heavily into the damage upgrades or eventually transition to laser/electric, investing in bullet upgrades will give you an unholy trinity of evil - death-spewing gun turrets, unholy terror defender capsules and a tank machine gun that makes everything die at about the speed you can move the mouse cursor. Laser upgrades, combat robot upgrades and cannon shell upgrades are all separate and a lot more expensive to invest into.

The point is there's definitely an overarching game balance, the gun turret and defender capsules are weaker than they otherwise would be, because they share upgrades. Once upon a time they kind of became obsolete with Behemoths, but now you can research space science! You probably will eventually transition to lasers just for convenience but gun turrets can serve you extremely well until the late big biter era and the point is they are a completely viable alternative for defense for most of the game.

The flamethrower turret is the most potent turret

Now the laser turret is nice when there aren't many attackers, but when the biters aren't joking around it is completely put to shame by the flamethrower turret. Extremely potent defenses can be put together using mainly just flame turrets and walls. The extreme potency of the flame turret for wiping out large attacks means the other turrets are basically delegated to cleanup - especially wiping out any biter that gets within minimum range. The point here is that the laser turret isn't overpowered in absolute terms, because as the biter conditions get harsher it is completely put to shame by the flame turret.

The main advantage of the laser turret over the flame turret is just convenience, you don't have to pipe the thing up, and it won't burn your own stuff - you just have to build 10x as many of them. The advantage of using gun turrets with flamethrower turrets is that neither turret requires electricity, it is for example a reasonable solution for a remote outpost in biter territory, a train can deliver both light oil and bullets and the outpost will defend itself much more reliably than if it had to rely on lasers which absolutely require a powerline to a large power plant to deal with swarms of big biters (and that powerline is vulnerable to being chewed by bored biters, unlike rail which pretty much always gets left alone in wilderness because it doesn't block pathing).

[Ranakastrasz]

I generally consider the flame turret worthless, not because it is ineffective, but because between they still fire upon spawners/worms and waste your entire oil stockpile....
That said, I suppose we do need to include them in the comparison, as long as you ignore that serious issue.

[Aeternus]

People seem to be concerned about DPS. Versus large biter waves, DPS wise it isn't even a contest - flame turrets always win because they have both superior range -and- an area of effect attack. They are a friendly fire hazard though, if your walls are breached, the flame turrets can take out a good chunk of your own defenses. I don't like them much for that reason.

Gun Turrets:
+ Available early
+ Ammo can be upgraded as the game progresses. Uranium rounds makes them very powerful.
+ High rate of fire, less overkill means less damage wasted
- Requires ammo
- Low range, can't deal with mass spitters as a result
- Low health

Laser Turrets:
+ High initial damage
+ High health. These turrets can take some damage.
+ No ammo needs, no logistical requirements
+ Good range
- Needs power. Very high power draw while firing, can cause "mini blackouts" during attacks on early factories
- Blackouts or interruptions in the power grid will shut these turrets down.

Flame turrets:
+ AOE damage, can attack many biters at once
+ Very high range
- Turret is 3 long, pipes connect sideways. This means it can't easily stack with other turrets, and must typically be placed in the back row.
- Requires liquid (preferably light oil) to function.
- Limited field of fire.
- Friendly fire hazard.
- Can set off accidental forest fires.
- Unsuitable for attacking static enemies (spawners or worms) due to faulty tracking of immobile enemies.

All turrets have their pro's and cons. Ideally, I think you'd want a front row of laser turrets (tanky, and can deal with spitters better), and behind it a row of gun turrets (to mow down the melee biters ) with a few flame turrets mixed in to thin out the herd. Attacks at corners would be the most annoying to deal with. Overlapping flame thrower fields of fire are difficult to make. The whole thing could be supplied with a few logistic bots moving resources taken from a supply trainstation. It'd not be hard to keep resource bases supplied like this.

[dragontamer5788]

- Low range, can't deal with mass spitters as a result

I'm picking on you because... you're the most recent one to actually state this. But this does not match my experience.

But I've built a base on 100% evolution that handles Behemoth Spiters using primarily Adv. Piercing Turrets (back in 0.13). Gun-turrets outrange Spitters, and with Adv. Piercing rounds they kill even Behemoths in less than a second. The vast majority of the time, the Spitters die without even getting a shot. EDIT: Indeed, adding laser turrets slows down the process and actually allows Spitters to "take a shot". Lasers move slowly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in this game, while bullets travel instantly. Which means Gun-Turrets literally kill faster (both in latency and in bandwidth), as the bullets travel faster than laser beams.

Laser Turrets don't have the DPS to KO Spitters before they enter range. The superior DPS of Gun-Turrets mean that a line of Adv. Piercing GunTurrets (in my experience) take less damage from Mass-Behemoth Spitters than Laser Turrets (even at max non-infinite Research, Lasers fail to KO Spitters before they take a shot.)

The point is there's definitely an overarching game balance, the gun turret and defender capsules are weaker than they otherwise would be, because they share upgrades. Once upon a time they kind of became obsolete with Behemoths, but now you can research space science! You probably will eventually transition to lasers just for convenience but gun turrets can serve you extremely well until the late big biter era and the point is they are a completely viable alternative for defense for most of the game.

BlakeMW: You forget to mention that Gun Turrets have their own upgrade path. Gun Turrets are the ONLY path that benefits from 3 separate upgrade paths (two of which you want anyway because the Tank Turret is so good).

* Bullet Damage
* Gun Damage
* Bullet Speed (non-infinite)

All three of these upgrades multiply on top of each other. And since Infinite Research grows exponentially each step, it is far cheaper to upgrade 12x Bullet / 12x Gun Damage than to upgrade to say... 14x Laser Damage.

Lasers may have a sexy +70% per infinite step. But Turrets get +40% (from bullets) x +40% (from Guns) for effectively +96% damage per tier. On top of far higher base DPS, its clear that Gun Turrets will reach higher amounts of damage than Lasers in infinite mode.

[BlakeMW]

People seem to be concerned about DPS. Versus large biter waves, DPS wise it isn't even a contest - flame turrets always win because they have both superior range -and- an area of effect attack. They are a friendly fire hazard though, if your walls are breached, the flame turrets can take out a good chunk of your own defenses. I don't like them much for that reason.

Flame Turrets are all about working with the arc. Basically don't have anything flammable within the arc - walls, rail and metal power poles are all immune to fire. As pipes are flammable flame turrets cannot be used to defend other flame turrets, this was almost certainly a deliberate balancing feature to enforce the use of combined-arms. Flame turrets are so powerful that two of them is almost always overkill, even against behemoths. So just one flame turret, plus other turrets to defend it / clean up, with a small amount of overlap between arcs.

The power of flame turrets is greatly magnified through the use of walls, they are probably 10x more lethal with walls. The most effective thing I've found is to build a wall just outside spitting range so the flame turrets are far behind the wall, when a swarm comes the biters and spitters all pile up against the wall and get incinerated by the fiery rain. Almost feels like an exploit, but the bugs are meant to be dumb as bricks. Using walls to make mazes and funnels can result in even more efficient fiery death dealing.

A nice thing about a flame turret is that even if a swarm does breach the defences the swarm is usually virtually wiped out in the process with only a few stragglers surviving to destroy the turret, so cleanup is easy. Lasers tend to simply get steamrolled by an oversize attack then you have a large mob of spitters running amok. Playing on Deathworld has made me love the flame turret for its ability to very cheaply and reliably wipe out large forces of strong attackers.

Finally the recent fix to make flame turrets not be idiots (that is shoot at things out of range) has really improved my love for them.

BlakeMW: You forget to mention that Gun Turrets have their own upgrade path. Gun Turrets are the ONLY path that benefits from 3 separate upgrade paths (two of which you want anyway because the Tank Turret is so good).

True that, I probably forgot to mention it because I usually do "forget" those upgrades. In the early game I want to hit breakpoints: 7.5, 10 or 15 damage, usually the turret damage upgrade can lag 1 or 2 techs behind and still hit these break points almost as easily - for example you can get 15 damage on AP bullets from 8 * 1.2 * 1.6 : so I have a tendency to just research the first two for ease of hitting 7.5 damage on regular bullets and 15 damage on AP bullets. While the numbers look good for upgraded gun turrets they aren't nearly as cost-effective as flamethrower turrets, and aren't nearly as convenient as laser turrets. Before flamethrower turrets I'd use gun turrets very extensively until behemoths evolved. Now the flamethrower turret has won my heart and I hardly even bother upgrading gun and laser turrets (just getting the "freebie" upgrades) because all they need to do is kill the very odd biter that survives the fire.

The maths for killing Behemoth Biters with gun turrets IS still pretty damning. In pre 1.5 you could pretty much make an entire laser turret for the plates required to make the bullets to kill a single behemoth biter - now space science complicates that, but the base damage with AP ammo has been reduced from 10 damage to 8 damage so the first two space science upgrades probably only compensate for that "nerf" and even once you've researched a heap of space science upgrades you're probably still looking at something like half a laser turret worth of plates to kill each Behemoth. This kind of maths suggest you're simply better off investing plates into laser turrets, especially given that one well-upgraded laser turret can basically take on a Behemoth Biter by itself (and flame turrets are even better for bulk-damage dealing to behemoths, though extra firepower to finish them off is very beneficial).

[dragontamer5788]

True that, I probably forgot to mention it because I usually do "forget" those upgrades. In the early game I want to hit breakpoints: 7.5, 10 or 15 damage, usually the turret damage upgrade can lag 1 or 2 techs behind and still hit these break points almost as easily - for example you can get 15 damage on AP bullets from 8 * 1.2 * 1.6 : so I have a tendency to just research the first two for ease of hitting 7.5 damage on regular bullets and 15 damage on AP bullets. While the numbers look good for upgraded gun turrets they aren't nearly as cost-effective as flamethrower turrets, and aren't nearly as convenient as laser turrets. Before flamethrower turrets I'd use gun turrets very extensively until behemoths evolved. Now the flamethrower turret has won my heart and I hardly even bother upgrading gun and laser turrets (just getting the "freebie" upgrades) because all they need to do is kill the very odd biter that survives the fire.

The maths for killing Behemoth Biters with gun turrets IS still pretty damning. In pre 1.5 you could pretty much make an entire laser turret for the plates required to make the bullets to kill a single behemoth biter - now space science complicates that, but the base damage with AP ammo has been reduced from 10 damage to 8 damage so the first two space science upgrades probably only compensate for that "nerf" and even once you've researched a heap of space science upgrades you're probably still looking at something like half a laser turret worth of plates to kill each Behemoth. This kind of maths suggest you're simply better off investing plates into laser turrets, especially given that one well-upgraded laser turret can basically take on a Behemoth Biter by itself (and flame turrets are even better for bulk-damage dealing to behemoths, though extra firepower to finish them off is very beneficial).

Well, from the convenience point of view, a line of Laser Turrets is all I do. When backed up by a roboport, they can survive infinite assaults automatically with only a few Laser Turrets being shipped in as replacements. I don't even need to deliver repair packs: just have those construction bots auto-drop new lasers and walls whenever they die. So I agree, lasers win because of convenience. I realize you play on "Death World" so your situation is a bit different than mine. In the normal game, Lasers are "good enough" and perfectly convenient to win.

If I were to do Gun Turrets in 0.15, I'd probably use Uranium Rounds since U-238 is so plentiful. You get a 300% increase to damage by using Uranium, which means you're only going to be using 30% of the Iron for the measly cost of using up your U-238 stockpile. I think I'd rather have 1/2 the Gun Turrets using Uranium Rounds than a full row of Gun-Turrets using Adv. Piercing Rounds. Based on my tests... Flame Turrets are indeed the most powerful by far. So I have no disagreement with you there. But some turrets need to be used to shoot the close stragglers and "form the line". But in the debate of Guns vs Lasers... even if I'm currently using Lasers in my game... I really do think that Guns have some major DPS advantages. Especially when loaded out with Uranium Rounds.

----------

With high enough DPS, you can achieve "Perfect Victories" against the biters. This means that none of your structures took a single point of damage. The number of Laser Turrets needed to achieve "Perfect Victories" is roughly on the order of ~2-rows of Laser Turrets, maybe 3... and only if you have a forest or other chokepoint to slow down the spitters a bit. (Granted, you can build chokepoints and funnels using walls rather cheaply. So that's not a big issue)

Gun-turrets achieve "perfect victory" at far lower concentrations for two reasons: instant travel speed, and far higher DPS. Which means Gun-turrets can be used to hold off points without Roboport support, longer than Laser Turrets. The combination of Guns + Lasers isn't quite good for this... because Lasers don't quite kill spiiters before they get a shot off (mostly because of the laser travel time).