I feel Railgun turrets would improve gameplay
Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 7:30 pm
It looks like Railgun turrets have been brought up a few times, but let me give a (hopefully quick) explanation of why I feel Factorio needs them.
In a typical game of Factorio my base defense goes through a few stages, I'll assume others probably have the same experience. First I start by plunking down gun turrets and loading them buy hand. A bit later I automate the loading of the turrets with belts, which gives me a logistic problem to solve. Sometime later I unlock lasers, at this point powering these is not easy near the start, and attacks will cause brown outs, so need to mix in gun turrets. As I ramp up power production I slowly switch to all lasers, supplying power to them becomes trivial, and I don't need to solve the logistics of supplying ammo to them. Lasers also far outclass the damage and range of gun turrets, so there is no reason to switch back or mix the two. Defending outposts only involves placing down power lines to them and then some laser turrets. Solving the logistics puzzle of moving ammo to outposts never needs to happen. They are the best and easiest option at late game.
And that's the problem; the easiest option shouldn't also be the best, (in Factorio anyway) there should be a trade off, that logistics puzzle to solve for the reward of better defenses should be there, but it isn't. That's where Railgun turrets could come in. They would require both power and ammo, provide the player with better defenses and another thing to automate, which is, what the game is all about.
In a typical game of Factorio my base defense goes through a few stages, I'll assume others probably have the same experience. First I start by plunking down gun turrets and loading them buy hand. A bit later I automate the loading of the turrets with belts, which gives me a logistic problem to solve. Sometime later I unlock lasers, at this point powering these is not easy near the start, and attacks will cause brown outs, so need to mix in gun turrets. As I ramp up power production I slowly switch to all lasers, supplying power to them becomes trivial, and I don't need to solve the logistics of supplying ammo to them. Lasers also far outclass the damage and range of gun turrets, so there is no reason to switch back or mix the two. Defending outposts only involves placing down power lines to them and then some laser turrets. Solving the logistics puzzle of moving ammo to outposts never needs to happen. They are the best and easiest option at late game.
And that's the problem; the easiest option shouldn't also be the best, (in Factorio anyway) there should be a trade off, that logistics puzzle to solve for the reward of better defenses should be there, but it isn't. That's where Railgun turrets could come in. They would require both power and ammo, provide the player with better defenses and another thing to automate, which is, what the game is all about.
I'm too lazy to barrel > train > unbarrel (barrels are such a pain to make and use).