Actual laser turret

[Zeblote]

Am I the only one who doesn't like how laser turrets throw homing red blobs at enemies?

Maybe it should look more like this

[Arch666Angel]

I approve this message!

[ske]

Am I the only one who doesn't like how laser turrets throw homing red blobs at enemies?

Maybe it should look more like this

Yes, yes, it should look like your solid beam. And the range should be pretty far.

The current laser turrets should be called plasma turrets then.

[lilstrip]

YEEEEEEEPPPPPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYY<=== player BBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ<==== turret AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!<== bitters

[necavi]

I wholeheartedly support this idea! Maybe have a fairly long cycle time though to give gun turrets a chance.

[ssilk]

That would bring in an interesting new element, if implemented like so:

If there is much forest around such a laser turret, then there is a high chance, that he burns a tree. And eventually burns down the whole forest. Which is good. Or? Maybe not, cause that produces much pollution! If you formerly had luck, the biters will come then, cause the pollution spreads...

In other words: If you don't hit down enough (!) trees around a laser tower, it might bring you into deeper problems. Nice.

[TheTom]

Not really. I mean, come on - do you not collect the trees for a kill zone first ?

[Jonathan88]

This definitely looks cool! The beam should have a similar graphic to the bots' lasers.
Also the new fire spreading mechanic will make it interesting!

[Zeblote]

This definitely looks cool! The beam should have a similar graphic to the bots' lasers.

It's a laser though, so it either needs to be invisble or just a straight line.

I quite like this random red line sprite I used, imagine having these flash near the border of your base including the glorious fire effect obviously.

[ssilk]

Not really. I mean, come on - do you not collect the trees for a kill zone first ?

If there is otherwise the danger, that the resulting fire will damage my electric poles: of course.
I mean, think to you as a player, when you see the first time the fire you think "Woooo? Fire, cool, I can use that as weapon..." But the situation escalates really soon:
some biters come through, they burn, cause they run through the burning forest and electric poles nearby begin also to burn. Then a pole falls, power fails, laser cannot defend any more, burning biters come into your base and other poles begin to burn.

Wooooooo! What cool gameplay is that?

The simple solution to that problem: First burn the forest, then build defense. Such kind of simple "aha"-effect that many players really love.

PS: Maybe you don't need to kill all trees, just some, so that the forest is not so tight?

[Zeblote]

Btw, this isn't supposed to be about fire or burning down forests. I just want the laser turret graphics changed to something cooler.

[ssilk]

That's clear, but the idea of that laser is too cool to ignore it.

[Ringkeeper]

oh god, yes... both. Laser and burning/fire damage to building and then plantable trees.... build a nice forest around enemy base and buuuuurn it

[tobsimon]

Yes, yes, yes, and while we are at it, there should be a change to the damage model as well:

Lasers should primarily overheat enemies until they blow. This heat damage is not permanent like bullet damage, but dissipates quickly, when the enemy is no longer under fire. The permanent burn damage they deal should be much less than what bullets can do.

The disired effect should be, that lasers have more problems than guns against big surges of enemies. Injured enemies get slower and fall back, but that means that the beam is absorbed by another enemy now in the frontline and the injured can regain their health. The lasers strategy should be: Lock on closest target until dead or beam is broken.

Lasers are then still very powerfull defensive weapons when there are few drawn out enemies attacking. But using them offensively close to an enemy base wouldn't work anymore. Lasers should be like snipers. The (announced) fire turret, which should be (is) especialy effective against groups (fire deals damage to bystanders), is the other end of the spectrum. This adds nicely to the tower defense aspect.

[bobingabout]

I was actually trying to mod something like this in based on the robot beam attack. unfortunately, my interest in factorio modding died off around that time, due to... things, but my attempts did uncover several bugs that got patched related to the beam weapons.

The end result though was that the devs decided they need to work on reprogramming the whole weapon definition logic at some point, because the bugs basically existed because the current code was a bit of a mess (Due to beams basically being tacked on partially as it's own type of effect, just to make it work)

[ssilk]

Very interesting. So we can assume that if this rewrite is done that this might change...

[Nova]

To be honest, I also don't like the way how "laser" turrets attack. How about some real laser turrent and we rename this turret to something else? Don't know what, it's not really possible to get this kind of shooting behaviour out of energy only. Maybe call it plasma turret? Well, no, that sounds stronger than regular laser turrets.

It's no easy thing to change that.

[ssilk]

What could be done with the current lasers?
I read some time ago a SF story, where they generated the ammunition out of air: The air was frozen and parts of it where overheated, so that it was indeed "steam driven" (air could be thought as "steam"), like a very small rocket. The effect may look similar to the current laser turrets (but not a red, more white shoot).

The range of such projectiles is very far, but in that range the impact is also very low, the more near they come, the higher is the impact.

[bobingabout]

Actually, thinking of the existing lasers "Homing" effect gives me an interesting idea for homing projectiles. I wonder if there's a way to slow down the turn rate a bit, having a projectile curling around an enemy, and possibly get stuck circling it if the angle is just right sounds like an amusing weapon.

[Klonan]

Something like this?

https://gfycat.com/DismalRigidIslandwhistler

Gif