Factorio Forums

There's a lot of discussion around regarding turret creep, and potential ways to nerf it, from buffing worms (hell no) to entirely new mechanics.

I got a fairly simple suggestion: Make turrets unable to target worms.

-Worms are underground enemies. It would be entirely logical for them to be able to hide outside the line-of-side of turrets and lob acid balls at them
-It nerfs turrets offensive use without crippling them entirely. They could still be used to wipe out all above-ground units and act as distraction targets, but force the player to dive in and take out the worms that will be left over, or give them time to take out the turret
-Reducing worm damage while giving buildings a weakness to their acid might be an additional change that could be looked into


Anyway, the whole problem stems from a single missed concept:
In every RTS with static defences, they're fairly weak and easily overpowered, unless grouped up and protected well.
This is not the case in Factorio. Instead of being able to force enemies through choke points, turrets are made powerful enough so that a few can cover an entire perimeter.
A change I would welcome is a heavy nery to turrets, decreasing their damage by a factor 2 or 3. And a change/improvement to biter AI, to seek out openings in walls instead of biting through whatever is in front of them. That way you could leave deliberate, heavy guarded choke points which the biters would seek out and give the whole defence thing a entirely new perspective.

First obvious problem: if the turrets can't hit the worms, why would the player be able to hit them.
Or, as a player would see it: if my character can shoot them, why can't the turrets?
It would seem completely arbitrary without knowing that otherwise turrets would be way too OP.

Although I like the strategic planning of setting up chokepoints, I think the devs will say combat is not the aim of the game.