Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

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Stede
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Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Stede »

As in the title, After playing a few games in 0.15, I've noticed that I push for lasers a lot earlier than I did pre-0.15. I think it's because having to manually resupply every gun turret on the base get tedious - particularly by the time yellow science is rolling, which would let me use blue chests with my logibots to resupply.

I remember a year or so ago, there was a fascinating thread regarding the real damage output of gun turrets vs laser turrets and the result was unexpected - I think it was close enough for preference, though understandably most favored lasers. At any rate, by the time I get to Depleted Uranium ammo, the gun turrets have been completely phased out.

Between nuclear power and requester chests being locked behind yellow science, gun turrets don't really seem to have legs in the latter mid-game. I realize a lot of folks feel combat is ancillary, but it's a bit nettlesome that requester chests and active provider chests are locked behind yellow science. I can't make omni train unloads or fully automate a basic nuclear build (sans kovarex) without blues & purples - and I can't have gun turrets sprinkled across my main factory get auto-supplied by the main factory roboport coverage, either.

How do you feel about it? Have you adjusted? Any tips you can share?

EDIT: Link to referenced thread about Laser Turrets vs Gun Turrets (circa 0.13.X): viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25572
Last edited by Stede on Fri May 26, 2017 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Kametec »

I've always tried to replace gun turrets by lasers asap. Disregarding the ammo supply and assuming comparable damage output, my reasons are: Bigger biters have physical, but not laser resistance and laser turrets have bigger range.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Ace_W »

I'm beginning to think of laser as a mid game item. Good to defend the base but not at full evo.

With the addition of uranium bullets, and lategame production, turrets pull way ahead in damage. Lasers may have undefended damge. But I don't think it scales as well.

Unless someone has a handy graph to show off?
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Greybeard_LXI »

If ALL you want is to feed ammo to turrets you can use storage chests with active provider chests. Just put a storage chest next to each turret and output ammo production to an active provider chest. You will eventually get plenty of ammo for each turret.

Make sure you cap the storage chests or all your iron, steel and copper will go to ammo.

If you put anything else in an active provider chest or place a storage chest any place else you will probably not like the result.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by netmand »

I always prioritize mid-game military (which for me is piercing round loaded gun turrets with reasonable damage and fire rate upgrades) over logistics. I didn't go for lasers any sooner than I would in a 0.14.x game.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Killcreek2 »

Ace_W wrote:I'm beginning to think of laser as a mid game item. Good to defend the base but not at full evo.
Seconded, but it is largely due to when they become available in the tech tree.
Lasers do take a little while to kill a behemoth, but gun or flamer turrets will kill it faster [assuming all are decently upgraded]. Much faster with the new DPU ammo.

Early game, a few gun turrets are enough. Hand- or belt-delivering AP ammo is good for up to big biter evo levels in mid game too.

Mid game, lasers are available and are *very easy* to keep supplied. At least until behemoths appear, then they start to struggle without some backup from other damage types.

You can even use flamer turrets only, behind a well-designed wall featuring dragons teeth, all the way to behemoth evo...

Late game, I find a mix works best: 75-80% lasers in front line(s), behind those I put 5-10% flame turrets for AoE & stacking damage, and 15-20% gun turrets to catch any behemoth biters that survive the laser & fire long enough to close the distance.


So, you can do without logi bots till endgame imo. As all turret types can cover you through early & mid game, I think it is mostly a matter of personal preference which to use. I don't feel "pushed" to use lasers: they are simply another option that suits that stage of the game quite well.
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Aeternus »

Lasers to me seem the most sensible way to do large scale defense. Sturdy, good damage, and power shouldn't be an issue around midgame anymore - once you got chemical fuel production going. They can be a bit lacking in the damage department but given their range, they can focus fire, which means lower damage output is only an issue if you've got a lot of biters coming your way. And for dealing with biter clusters, the flame turret is ideal - taking on entire groups of them at once. I'm going to try and mix some flame turrets into base defenses (right now I'm just doing a solid wall of 2x wall, 2x laser turrets, backed by substations at a distance) and see what that does to biter waves. Never really felt the need to, but now that we can barrel light fuel... why not? Roasted zergling steaks anyone?

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Kelderek »

Aeternus wrote:Lasers to me seem the most sensible way to do large scale defense. Sturdy, good damage, and power shouldn't be an issue around midgame anymore - once you got chemical fuel production going. They can be a bit lacking in the damage department but given their range, they can focus fire, which means lower damage output is only an issue if you've got a lot of biters coming your way. And for dealing with biter clusters, the flame turret is ideal - taking on entire groups of them at once. I'm going to try and mix some flame turrets into base defenses (right now I'm just doing a solid wall of 2x wall, 2x laser turrets, backed by substations at a distance) and see what that does to biter waves. Never really felt the need to, but now that we can barrel light fuel... why not? Roasted zergling steaks anyone?
I think it's kind of fun to mix them up and use all turret types together. I just stack the three turrets so that the laser is the outermost one, followed by gun turret and then the innermost one is flame. I had them roughly the same distance apart as medium pole reach. Due to how I placed them, the lasers' range and the flame turret range was nearly the same after they overlapped. Yes it is true that the flame turret sometimes misses the mark for moving targets but the AOE is hugely effective against a swarm that just keeps coming. When I checked the stats later on the flame turrets always had the most kills, maybe 60% of the total, lasers had nearly the rest around 35% and the gun turrets barely had any <5%, but from what I saw when I was there to watch some attacks, the gun turrets were mostly finishing off behemoths that had made it into range and they chewed them up nicely.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by milo christiansen »

My current base is all gun and flamethrower turrets, and not a single logistic bot in sight.

I use a single giant belt ring, with a simple feed system that keeps the belt evenly filled, but sparse enough that I don't have huge amounts of ammo circulating (around 1/10 or 1/20 the amount it would take to fill a single belt lane all around the base). This system is simple and reliable.

Outposts are a minor pain in the rear, as they need supply trains and such.

I generally build a small factory that produces turret ammo, repair packs, construction robots, and replacement gun turrets near the wall somewhere, then later add a train station so I can fill up the resupply train there too.

Outposts start with a resupply station+roboport blueprint. This blueprint has everything needed to support outpost defense, just add walls, a belt ring, and gun turrets. (the current design does not include flame throwers for outposts)

What lasers?

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Selvek »

Greybeard_LXI wrote:If ALL you want is to feed ammo to turrets you can use storage chests with active provider chests. Just put a storage chest next to each turret and output ammo production to an active provider chest. You will eventually get plenty of ammo for each turret.
Except active provider chests aren't available any earlier than requester chests...

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Greybeard_LXI »

Selvek wrote:
Greybeard_LXI wrote:If ALL you want is to feed ammo to turrets you can use storage chests with active provider chests. Just put a storage chest next to each turret and output ammo production to an active provider chest. You will eventually get plenty of ammo for each turret.
Except active provider chests aren't available any earlier than requester chests...
OOPS. That's PASSIVE providers that come with early tech, not active ones. My mistake.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Ace_W »

Here's an idea.

What if the tech for active logistics was put behind a steep wall of the same tech (I think it's red green only right?) or possibly added blue.

That way if you do want to research it, it's semi walled off in this huge (2-3X) jump. Still obtainable, just not trivial.
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Kelderek »

This discussion is about lasers as they relate to logistics bots tech. If you want to have focused discussion on just that logistics bot tech, ignoring the impact on lasers, then we have another discussion for that ongoing in the Balancing forum:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=46236

In my games in 0.15, my designs for biter defenses did not change at all with the changes to logistic bots. I had generally used lasers most of the time anyway in previous games. In 0.15 gun turrets gain in appeal once you get uranium ammo especially, but that is unlocked at the same tech level as requester chests so it doesn't really have an impact on how and when I build my defenses -- I just use whatever is available at the time.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by BlakeMW »

I've felt no difference at all in 0.15 compared with previous versions - but I have never logistic fed ammo, always belt fed. In 0.15 compared with earlier, gun turrets are slightly better firing regular ammo (5 vs 4 damage - but this is a big difference as now with no upgrades it 3-shots small biters and 2-shots small spitters), slightly worse firing AP ammo (8 vs 10) damage, and in the end game can fire DU ammo but it is awkward in the middle where neither highly upgraded regular ammo, or somewhat upgraded AP ammo is entirely satisfactory against big biter armor.

Another difference is increased oil abundance means you no longer need to care about petroleum much so making batteries is less progress-limiting. This does slightly favor the use of laser turrets.

The flamethrower turret, now that the issue with it shooting at things out of range has been fixed, is a powerhouse of crowd control (if you want a crowd on fire and dying), it's available much earlier than laser turrets because altough both are on the same technology level, the flamethrower requires about 1/4 the actual science packs, maybe less. The flamethrower turret is also useful throughout the game, it's only real limitation is it can easily be overkill (it's powerful enough a single one can wreck swarms of behemoths). I play Deathworld a lot and I base my defense around Flamethrower turrets and walls, using the walls to hold spitters out of spitting range and forcing the biters and spitters to clump up. Early on I use gun turrets to protect the flame turrets against anything that breaks through, then transition to laser turrets which with their longer range and freedom from ammo requirements they make for better support, they can also easily sit back out of spitting range and zap away at biters.

I feel on the whole that laser turrets are better than gun turrets outside the early game even tho the gun turret firing regular ammo has been buffed, altough both are relegated to supporting flamethrower turrets against more serious attacks.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by rcp27 »

I can appreciate the reason for putting requester chests so far up the tech tree. Perhaps a compromise would be a "requester turret" that can get supplied by ammunition by logistics bots in its own rights would be a solution.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Escadin »

I disagree. I never stayed with gun turrets before 0.14 because spitters would usually break through them. The only cure: roboports - but those are behind laser turrets in tech level so guess what.

Now, in 0.15 I just stick with gun turrets until way into late game when I build my chinese wall. And that's not even because they couldn't handle it. I'm just too lazy to supply that many kilometers of turret wall with ammo. However, the changes they made to gun turrets + uranium ammo for late game makes them the strongest turrets in the game now.
They certainly have a place in every phase of the game now. Also, laser turrets aren't exactly cheap in power consumption even while offline. People have the blueprints for power anyway but if you had the blueprints for belts/logistic chests and trains supplying your walls it would only come down to cost, not effort.
My bet is the costs aren't that stacked against the gun turret in the end.
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by featherwinglove »

Ace_W wrote: Unless someone has a handy graph to show off?
Courtesy pichutarius, and OP. Unfortunately, his turret damage graph doesn't show depleted uranium ammo, but I'm pretty sure it would be up around where the tank is. The tank curve really makes me long for vanilla cannon turrets.

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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Ranakastrasz »

Flame turrets were fixed? When did that happen?
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by Ace_W »

featherwinglove wrote:
Ace_W wrote: Unless someone has a handy graph to show off?
Courtesy pichutarius, and OP. Unfortunately, his turret damage graph doesn't show depleted uranium ammo, but I'm pretty sure it would be up around where the tank is. The tank curve really makes me long for vanilla cannon turrets.
thank you!

And that is truth. A high damage penetrating attack would be awesome for late game behemoths.
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Re: Do You Feel Full Logistic Behind Yellow Pushes Lasers Early?

Post by BlakeMW »

Ranakastrasz wrote:Flame turrets were fixed? When did that happen?
One of the minor versions of 0.15

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