As the article states, the turret is bigger, more expensive and stronger. The new visuals gave me an idea. As you can see their design is comprised of a base and a moving gun part.
My suggestion: Make the base part a separate, intermediate product that has no function by itself (similar to robot frames). The individual guns (ammo, laser and maybe rockets
) are mounted on top of that in a further step of the production chain. This would make it possible to recycle complete turrets and reduce them to only the base, which can be reused once you've advanced in your tech tree and start upgrading turrets.Receipts:
[raw materials] -> Turret base
Turret base + [raw materials] -> Ammo Turret / Laser Turret / Rocket Turret
[Any complete turret] -> Turret base (you lose the resources used for the individual gun)
Note that manufacturing the complete turret is still a crafting process, so setting up a full turret is still just one click. Upgrading a turret requires deconstruction, processing/crafting and re-building.
I'm aware that the base in the images doesn't look identical for ammo and laser turrets but I think the approximate similarity is enough to justify a common base part (robots don't all look the same either).
Edit: Alternative: Turret base and turret weapon are two separate items that are placed one by one. You build the base, than you “equip” the mounted weapon.
Let me know what you think.
