Which turrets are best?

[DukeAl]

Gun turrets don't care about blackouts. Thats what convinced me.
Feeding them with a belt is easier than it seems at first.

[ChoMar]

I only use Gun Turrets on my early defense. Later I switch over to Lasers. And even later i switch to a combination of Lasers and Flamethrowers on my outer walls.
The ONE downside of Lasers is that they fail, if you have a power outage. So i try not to let that happen.
Other than that, Gun Turrets are too weak to defend against later attacks and supplying them IS more effort than supplying laser turrets (or even Flamethrower, for Flamethrowers you just need a pipe. No inserters, no belts, and underground pipes have a longer range than underground belts)
And their lower health makes them even inadequate for Turret Creeping.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Gun turrets don't care about blackouts. Thats what convinced me.
Feeding them with a belt is easier than it seems at first.

They care less about blackouts. A gun turret will chew through ammo very quickly so you have to hope you have enough ammo in the turrets (and belts if using burner inserters) to handle the wave(s) before the power turns back on. I guess if using logistics with burner inserters this isn't as much of a problem but meh. I find it easier to just ensure I don't run out of power.

[Yoyobuae]

Gun turrets don't care about blackouts. Thats what convinced me.
Feeding them with a belt is easier than it seems at first.

They care less about blackouts. A gun turret will chew through ammo very quickly so you have to hope you have enough ammo in the turrets (and belts if using burner inserters) to handle the wave(s) before the power turns back on. I guess if using logistics with burner inserters this isn't as much of a problem but meh. I find it easier to just ensure I don't run out of power.

Use buffer chests, problem solved. Probably will have to adjust the number of stacks to something sensible, since chests store TOO MUCH ammo.

[BlakeMW]

Gun Turrets tend to get better the more severe your biter settings are (on lower biter settings it frankly doesn't matter what you do, so it's better to go with the convenience of laser turrets). Gun Turrets really benefit from upgrades, especially damage upgrade. You need to hit certain damage breakpoints, 5 damage/bullet kills small spitters in 2 bullets and biters in 3, 7.5 damage/bullet 2-shots small biters and 10 damage/bullet 1-shots small spitters, 15 damage/bullet 1-shots small biters. The damage upgrades also help to overwhelm physical resits on the stronger biters. Fully upgraded turrets firing regular ammo have no trouble dealing with big biters, though the Behemoths start to bog them down.

One of the things I like most is that Gun Turrets firing regular ammo which have been upgraded to deal 10 damage/bullet simply obliterate small spitter swarms and the regular ammo is very cheap. In contrast, with laser turrets vs small spitters, most of the damage is lost as "overkill" and the low firing rate equates directly to a low kill rate, allowing spitters to overwhelm the laser turrets. This is a reversal of the later situation where much of bullet damage is lost to physical resists while lasers slice straight through and deal their full damage.

The downside of gun turrets is they become obsolete which makes all those upgrades ultimately obsolete. So the investment into all the bullet/turret upgrades has to be worth it in the short-medium term because in the long term it's not. (another consideration is that Defender Capsules with a lot of bullet upgrades are *extremely* good and much more cost-effective than the higher tech bots, at least until the Big and Behemoth biters become prolific, and the Tank Machine Gun firing AP ammo is pretty potent with bullet upgrades behind it)

On Death Worlds I normally prefer gun turrets w/ upgrades firing regular ammo for its low cost and exceptional ability to wipe out spitters. With that said, Laser Turrets can work on death worlds as well. One of the major considerations for me is how abundant Oil is, versus Iron. Gun Turrets firing regular ammo are almost pure iron (just a little copper for the turrets) and no oil at all (except for the blue science uogrades), this means that if you are somewhat oil limited then a defense based on gun turrets wont limit your tech rate. But on the other hand, if there is heaps of oil available in the starting area, and/or very little iron, I might decide to invest early and heavily into laser turrets. Another consideration is that it tends to be cheaper to cover a large perimeter with gun turrets (fed by an ammo belt), for example on a desert death world you'll have a much easier time affording a gun turret perimeter, but if biters are funneled through a natural chokepoint (a peninsula start) then the cost of laser turrets to cover that chokepoint probably wont break the budget.

[vtx]

What about flamethrower turrets?

[greep]

Gun turrets don't care about blackouts. Thats what convinced me.
Feeding them with a belt is easier than it seems at first.

Actually I think gun turrets are even just as vulnerable to simple mistakes bringing down the whole thing. Possibly more so than lasers. Ever accidentally miss one conveyor belt in a belt line? Still totally possible when gluing blueprints together, except unlike with lasers, you don't get a nifty "no electricity here!" warning on the turret. If something removes a single conveyor belt through damage like forest fire, it also is equivalent to a blackout. Oh and if there's an actual blackout, you're probably not making bullets, and your inserters won't be inserting bullets into the gun turret. Or if there's a metal shortage causing no bullets to be made, that's also basically a blackout.

Actually it feels like lasers are the more reliable of the two, as only a two causes of failure really stops laser turrets, insufficient energy and accidental pole removal, and one of those is very easy to prevent.

I guess they're a bit more reliable if you're supplying bullets' via requester chest, but then at that point you're not really gaining much over laser turrets.

As for flame turrets, they're only useful in conjunction with thick walls on maps with metal shortages. The only scenario I can imagine them being useful is if you want to conquer new hope 4 after the behemoths show up, although there's other ways. Possibly useful on death worlds? Seems like they're not worth it pre-behemoth since a half line of laser turrets takes out just about anything.

[Escadin]

What about flamethrower turrets?

Those have been covered a few posts ago.

I want to add another experience with them though. Since combining them with other turrets usually just means they will hit nothing but thin air I tested a perimeter with just flmaethrowers as defense. The interesting part is that due to their area damage you only need one flamethrower where you'd normally need 4-6 laser turrets. There is a delay until it actually starts dealing damage so the flamethrowers are not as good at killing the aliens before they can attack.
The result is you have to possibly add another layer of wall just to be on the save side and you also need to make sure there are enough supplied repairbots nearby all the time. Since Flamethrowers only cover a specific area any leak would be fatal.
The upside is that even Behemoths in any amount just melt away to the groundfire while they chew on the walls. It's also arguably easier to supply an infinite amount of oil than setting up the necessary accus and solar panels for 6 times the amount of laser turrets. After all, flamethrowers are extremely ammo effecient and just a few "dry" pumpjacks can support several dozen flamethrowers. Even more if you buffer and distribute the oil correctly.

Also note that flamethrowers have roughly the same tech level as laser turrets. Technically they should be equally strong but I think they might actually be the superior solution at some point in the game.

[Albravo]

Man you guys really overthink things. The answer is do you like to hear Daka-Daka or Pew-Pew? I personally like Daka-Daka Pew-Pew Phooooosh. BOOM! I mix gun turrets, lasers, flamethrower and mines on my defensive walls. Sure it is a lot to maintain but the fun is in the challenge of finding solutions for things like this. Does it use lots more resources? Sure. But that means my game goes on longer which I want.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Use buffer chests, problem solved. Probably will have to adjust the number of stacks to something sensible, since chests store TOO MUCH ammo.

You still need inserters to move from the buffer chests which won't work without power. To work around that you would need to use burner inserters which don't feed a turret fast enough and you need to ensure the chest is stocked with both ammo AND fuel, it's possible with inserters only but much easier and more reliable using a logistic network which I pointed out isn't as much of a problem.

[Yoyobuae]

Use buffer chests, problem solved. Probably will have to adjust the number of stacks to something sensible, since chests store TOO MUCH ammo.

You still need inserters to move from the buffer chests which won't work without power. To work around that you would need to use burner inserters which don't feed a turret fast enough and you need to ensure the chest is stocked with both ammo AND fuel, it's possible with inserters only but much easier and more reliable using a logistic network which I pointed out isn't as much of a problem.

Buffer chests can feed from belt then put back into it. It's just going to be a bit tricky to keeping all the burner inserters fed with fuel. xD

Or you can just run powerpoles and use electric inserters. Use a couple of solars+accumulators for fully reliable independent power.

[BlakeMW]

No defenses are infallible. That's what the alarms are for. When the biters start chewing a hole in your defenses it's time to pay attention.

Personally I find it important to have defenses that don't cause alarms to go off if everything is working properly, that is there should be enough dakka to make spitters die before they can spit and inflict damage (later, with repair bots, this requirement is somewhat lessened as the bots nearly immediately repair any damage, and it's bot deaths which indicates something is amiss). This can most practically be achieved with gun turrets due to high damage and no bolt travel time. I call this state "silence of the biters". If the biters start doing something other than dying quietly it means my attention is urgently required.
Gun Turrets make for pretty cheap "canaries" (especially if belt fed regular ammo), they're pure iron/copper and I think nothing of carrying a spare stack of them even in the early game making it quick and easy to shore up a breach.

[Escadin]

No defenses are infallible. That's what the alarms are for. When the biters start chewing a hole in your defenses it's time to pay attention.

Personally I find it important to have defenses that don't cause alarms to go off if everything is working properly, that is there should be enough dakka to make spitters die before they can spit and inflict damage (later, with repair bots, this requirement is somewhat lessened as the bots nearly immediately repair any damage, and it's bot deaths which indicates something is amiss). This can most practically be achieved with gun turrets due to high damage and no bolt travel time. I call this state "silence of the biters". If the biters start doing something other than dying quietly it means my attention is urgently required.

I am pretty sure this is what every tries to achieve so it's just the standard goal. The thing about that is laser turrets have more range than gun turrets which means they can fire at spitter and kill them off before those come even close enough to have a chance at shooting back. Laser turrets are also more than twice as durable which means repair bots have more time to react. And even if a laser turret goes down eventually, you won't have to replace a 100 stack of steel ammo.

All in all, gun turrets can defnitely work I don't deny that but I think laser turrets are still better for the job.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Inserters only load gun turrets with 10 ammo so unless you're manually loading it you'll never lose a stack of 100 from a single turret dying.

[Kryptos]

I've been using flamethrower only (loaded with light oil) for my oil bases. Simply leave a refinery doing regular refining, crack the heavy oil, and pump the PG into plastic or sulfur or something (if no water, just figure out some way to get rid of heavy/pg). Fill up a tank of Light, leave a few buffer chests for PG eating (or train it back to base), and you have reliable 110% damage flamethrowers. Since oil bases are permanent, as opposed to resource miners which I tear up as soon as the patch goes dry, this is usually worth it. It's also nice to see the bellagio-esque torrents of fire as you trail a few hundred biters into your walls from an expansion raid. Sure, your walls get scratched up, but the damage over time stacks from flamethrowers melt anything that gets to the wall, usually before the wall dies. This strategy became a *LOT* more viable after train tracks and power poles were given 100% fire resistance. Before that, I tended to melt my power supply. This did not affect the defenses in the slightest, what with a full tank of oil on deck. The only downside I see is if a train arrives during an attack, crashes into a behemoth on the tracks (which survives) and stops directly in a river of fire. This happens surprisingly rarely.

Normally, I try to do full laser walls until I have a bit of an oil surplus in my main base, and then I switch every 4th laser to flamethrower. They do way more damage, even though it's mostly damage over time stacks. The only annoying bit is planning out pumping stations, but I've found that a 5 pump pipe-filler will generally keep a very large base's outer supply pipe at 10 light oil.

I've tried sticking gun turrets behind my laser/fire lines, specifically to clean up whatever gets within 5 spaces of my walls. Do a belt that's fuel/ammo, and burner inserters. Good intro defense, not great at all late game. Behemoths are gonna make it to the (double) wall unless you start doing really ridiculous things, and that's where flame turrets shine. Wall repairs are cheap, and wall replacements are pretty cheap too, as long as you got a stone mine somewhere. I've never had a breakthrough with the 3 lasers/1 fire setup, and I've done my best to cause one. (several fully loaded attack waves at evolution 1 distracted, combined, and led directly into the walls in a giant pile)

Note: Almost every single one of my maps has "low" settings for everything (because with RSO "very low" oil usually means no oil spawns, at least in starting area), except aliens and starting area, which are all "very big". I guess this is what people mean by "deathworlds"?

Second note: This is vanilla experiences (with RSO). I;ve recently started playing a heavily modded (bob's/angel's modpack) game. I wonder if it still works.

[Frightning]

I haven't used Flamethrower turrets at all yet, though I've been meaning to try them out. I do however have tons of experience with both Gun turrets and Laser turrets. The main differences are these:

Gun turrets:
-Converts resources to damage (Iron ore, also Copper ore with better ammo type)
-Logistics is in ammunition resupply (belt+inserters, or logistics robots+chests)
-17 range, 400 hp (only +2 over spitter range, turrets are rather squishy too, so they are prone to taking damage, and even being destroyed during larger attacks)
-Maximum DPS very high (requires 3 sets of upgrades (bullet dmg and speed+gun turret dmg), mitigated by physical resistance to an extent)

Laser turrets:
-Converts power to damage (high cost during firing, modest idle costs)
-Logistics is in power supply and storage (power poles for delivery, Accumulators for power storage, and steam/solar for power generation)
-25 range, 1000 hp (+10 range over spitters, shots have brief travel time though, turrets rather durable, unlikely to be destroyed unless firepower is lacking)
-Maximum DPS moderate (requires 2 sets of upgrades (laser turret damage+speed), no mitigation)

Guns v. Lasers:
Gun turrets have much higher DPS, even against Behemoth biters they still have about 2x DPS of Laser turrets (assuming both fully upgraded), lack of range and hp however, makes Gun turrets far more vulnerable to suffering losses, and their logistics aren't as simple to setup and maintain. Without damage upgrades, Gun turrets are far weaker than Laser turrets, but 2/3 of the upgrade chains for Gun turrets are shared by the player Pistol and Submachine gun as well as Vehicle machine guns, so they are likely to be researched anyways (although Gun turret damage stacks multiplicatively with Bullet damage, so it's a BIG part of why gun turret DPS can get so high). For maximum effectiveness against large attacks, Laser turrets are at a profound advantage despite the DPS difference because of their higher range (you could mix the two, but then logistics for Gun turrets would replace 2nd row of Laser turrets, hence the advantage in firepower is largely nullified).

[Aeternus]

Suggestion for the devs: To make gun turrets a bit more feasable in late game, have Constructor Bots refill their ammo stock directly? Given that Constructors are meant to do maintenance, and also autograb repair packs... once the later game logistics are sorted, Gun Turrets would become way more feasable.
Also, increase the arc on the flame turrets, they're annoying to do corner defenses with since they do not reach a 180dgr arc, and cannot be rotated at 45dgr.

[noliVe]

Since this story picked my interest i show you my setup a little

This shows just the setup that you can see what is there.

click to show

raw.jpg (156.79 KiB) Viewed 5826 times

And to explain every arrangement as follows:

First Row is the fireline

click to show

fire.jpg (150.48 KiB) Viewed 5826 times

it is the most outtaking dmg to ALL incoming biters, firedmg keeps burning even on Heavier and more ranged mobs!
As you can notice the spread of fire takes a little time to be active burning biters. so only the MASSES BEHIND the first wave are getting damage!

Mass biter outtake

click to show

laser.jpg (137.99 KiB) Viewed 5826 times

And to take out the most with even the most efficient way.. LASERs. As you can see on attackings lasers attack a little bit delayed
so the range only works when they are activated!

Last is my Armor piercing Unit!

click to show

canon.jpg (140.46 KiB) Viewed 5826 times

This shows you the range setup to prevent closer attackings and as everybody sugguest ArmorPiercing Dmg any my critical line
Emergency FIRE RANGE

So why i build this way
FIRELINE kills the most of the smaller faster biters..and burns some on the 2ndline . Remember those Spitters they keep at long distance? FIRE will grill them!
LASERLINE Start killing the first row quickly some calculated damage is already made so its easy to take out ALOT quicker!
BulletLINE in the most cases only GREEN Closecombats can survive the first impact so these guys shoot the last wave.

in most of the attacks biters will die before they reach the emergancy line but since fire is inside the Wallcage all units get simple THAT LOT of dmg instead of only 1 each time

to make it more fun here is it ! all layers ! ;P

click to show

all.jpg (116.39 KiB) Viewed 5826 times