Gun turrets have higher power requirements than laser turret

[SteelGiant]

This may sound insane, but I have just worked out that the power requirements for the production of gun turret ammunition amount to a higher energy usage than firing an equivalent amount of laser fire.

This calculation is made for fully upgraded guns using piercing rounds and laser turrets (it would only look worse for guns with less upgrades).

Energy cost of 1 piercing rounds magazine:

7275 kJ

=> 727.5 kJ / shot

Energy needed to kill biters (with fully upgraded turrets):

Small biter:
Gun:
1 shot => 728 kJ

Laser:
0.2s of laser => 120 kJ

Gun 6.06x as expensive

Medium biter:
Gun:
4 shots => 2910 kJ

Laser:
1.2s of laser => 720 kJ

Gun 4.04x as expensive

Big biter:
Gun:
24 shot => 17460 kJ

Laser:
6.8s of laser => 816 kJ

Gun 21.4x as expensive


This makes the balance of defences quite strange, as not only do lasers require no raw resource upkeep, they also have lower power requirements!

My full workings are presented below, feel free to check them. I've done the calculation longhand, as no available resource calculators seem to take into account energy usage of production.

I used the shots to kill data from this post: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =20#p36394

Full working

I have done the production using assembly machine 3s, as I believe that despite their higher power usage, the increased production speed means they are working for less time, and therefore use less energy overall.

Gun 24.2 dmg/shot
Laser 600kW

Small biter:
health 15
resist 0

Medium biter:
health 75
resist 4

Big biter:
health 375
resist 8

Resource costs:

1 ore from miner:
171 kJ

1 copper or iron in electric furnace:
1 ore
315 kJ

1 steel in electric furnace:
5 iron
1575 kJ

1 piercing round magazine production in assebly 3:
5 copper
1 steel
840 kJ

=>

5 copper
5 iron
2415 kJ

=>

10 ore
5565 kJ

=>

7275 kJ

=> 727.5 kJ / shot

#######

Recipes and machines:

assembly 3:
power 210
speed 1.25
energy 168


assembly 2:
power 150
speed 0.75
energy 200

Electric furnace:
power 180
speed 2

miner:
power 90
production 0.525
energy 171

Piercing rounds:
copper 5
steel 1
time 5

steel:
iron 5
time 17.5

iron:
iron ore 1
time 3.5

copper:
copper ore 1
time 3.5

[SHiRKiT]

That's actually a good catch. I've always felt that gun turrets are bad, if not horrible, and this confirms my theory.

[SteelGiant]

To be fair to them, gun turrets are very powerful individually when fully upgraded. They will individually kill things roughly three times as fast as a laser turret.

The problem, however, is that you can simply fit 3-6 laser turrets in the same space as a gun and its attendant logistic support (belt and inserter or robots with chest and inserter) and that laser turrets are vastly cheaper to maintain in terms of energy and raw materials.

[FatMcK]

Also gun turrets (or better their requester chests) have to be inside the logistic network to get them filled. So you may need additional roboports (compared to laser turrets which could be placed inside the larger constructions network without problem) which consumes additionaly energy plus charging robots which transport ammunition. Inserters consume energy too.

Another problem, and thats currently what I'm bothering about most is that it is sized 1x2 which couldn't be rotated (You can rotate the turret itself, but it keeps always its size of 1x2, not 2x1 when rotated). It is currently impossible to blueprint a gun turret setup which could be placed rotated in all four directions.

The more I read about gun turrets the worse they get.

[bobingabout]

I think one of the key features about the turrets that you're missing is... build cost.
Gun turrets can be build with little research, and be completely built by hand using basic resources. (Bar smelting bars)
Laser turrets on the other hand require Advanced Circuits and Batteries, which need to be made in factories first (unless you count plastic as a raw resource, in which case, just the batteries), but both of these parts are relatively high level, having to have completed the oil chain first (researched both plastics and sulfur processing).

As such, Gun turrets are considered an early game weapon, and laser turrets an end game weapon, one of the reasons why laser turrets are cheaper and easier to maintain, the time, energy and work goes more into unlocking and building them, where gun turrets the time, energy and work goes into maintaining them.

Not to mention that to power the laser turrets, you need a large power plant with huge energy reserves in accumulators, otherwise you kill your power supply when they start firing, gun turrets on the other hand, the energy is fed into them slowly and constantly as you build your ammo, so can get by on a lesser power grid.

[SteelGiant]

o mention that to power the laser turrets, you need a large power plant with huge energy reserves in accumulators, otherwise you kill your power supply when they start firing, gun turrets on the other hand, the energy is fed into them slowly and constantly as you build your ammo, so can get by on a lesser power grid.

I'll point out that the power requirements for gun turrets are SO MUCH larger than those for lasers: over 20x for killing big biters. That means that if you can power your factory to make ammo for gun turrets, an equivalent power infrastructure would be able to power the equal quantity of laser turrets WITHOUT ACCUMULATORS!

[espritcrafter]

o mention that to power the laser turrets, you need a large power plant with huge energy reserves in accumulators, otherwise you kill your power supply when they start firing, gun turrets on the other hand, the energy is fed into them slowly and constantly as you build your ammo, so can get by on a lesser power grid.

I'll point out that the power requirements for gun turrets are SO MUCH larger than those for lasers: over 20x for killing big biters. That means that if you can power your factory to make ammo for gun turrets, an equivalent power infrastructure would be able to power the equal quantity of laser turrets WITHOUT ACCUMULATORS!

Last night, I went to clear out a few biter nests, and form a few outposts to prevent biter spreading into my secure lands. I went in with rifle/flamethrower, cleared out a large area of nests, then built a turret fort.

Process of building a mini fort... Place some turrets, place conveyor belt and inserters, place an assembler with a supply crate of copper/steel, add in 3 solar panels, and walk away. This spreads out my territory enough that I don't have to worry that much about my pollution spreading and agitating biters. Worst case scenario, I just turn off my main base (by removing the wires from a single power pole) for a short time while I do something else so that the pollution dissipates. When you cut off electricity to all of your buildings, pollution decreases at a faster rate than you would think. Off topic, I guess..

My point is that building a gun turret fortified position takes a fraction the amount of time compared to building a laser turret fortified location and making sure that you have enough reserve/active power to support them. Though you will eventually have to go back and check if more materials are needed for ammo...

[n9103]

Personally, I don't bother with in-situ resources when building laser outposts.
They all get large power poles back to my main base.
If attacks are a particular problem, I'll just make sure the outposts are within range of each other.
I also tend to make a secondary layer to my outposts if I'm reaching out far enough, with a roboport loaded with repair tools that covers the 3-5 surrounding primary outposts on that edge of my territory.

[The Phoenixian]

Unless I've made a mistake here, your calculations are off. Despite it's real life function, a laser is a projectile weapon that fires in discrete bursts requiring approximately 200 kJ per shot. A laser a maximum upgrade will deal 11 damage per shot. (I have no idea if firing speed upgrades affect power usage, but I do not expect them to and even if they do so beneficially, instead of increasing it like speed modules do which I would expect, I would expect the upgrades would knock it down to 3/5ths of it's normal value at most.)

With these stats:

• A small biter with fifteen health will thus take two shots and 400 kJ of energy to kill with a laser.
• A meduim biter with seventy five health will take seven shots and 1400 kJ of energy to kill with a laser.
• And lastly a Big Biter with a whopping three hundred and seventy five health will take roughly thirty five shots to kill expending 7000 kJ of energy to kill.

Not favorable, but far from abysmal.

It is also worth noting that the majority of that power usage is ore refinement, which can easily be reduced by 60% with basic efficiency modules and 80% at tier 2 Thus the 4725 kJ required for ore refinement can be reduced to 1890 kJ and 945 kJ at each respective tier with the grand total being 4440 kJ of energy per magazine (61%) and 3495 kJ of energy per magazine (48%).

At that, just from upgrading your furnace bank with efficiency modules, something I would expect most people with electric furnaces to do, the energy cost to kill a big biter is now roughly either 10650 kJ or 8380 kJ for guns to 7000 kJ for lasers.

Even without that it is likewise important to note that the electric requirements to fire a laser are frontloaded unto the moment of firing, producing it's own problems while the cost of producing ammunition is spread out to all times, not merely the moment of firing.


I will be the first to agree that Lasers need to be rebalanced but please be careful; Even if the true numbers are not quite as impressive a bad argument can rob all weight from the problem when revealed as false.

[bobingabout]

Even without that it is likewise important to note that the electric requirements to fire a laser are frontloaded unto the moment of firing, producing it's own problems while the cost of producing ammunition is spread out to all times, not merely the moment of firing.

That was basically my point, and if the numbers are a lot closer than the OPs, then this point stands even more so.

Even if you can power the constant production of ammo feeding the turrets, using lasers instead will kill that power supply as soon as they start firing, because instead of being spread throughout a 5 minute period, you need all that power within the 10-30 seconds the lasers are firing, meaning although you can use the same power supply, you also need a massive accumulator farm.

[SteelGiant]

Unless I've made a mistake here, your calculations are off. Despite it's real life function, a laser is a projectile weapon that fires in discrete bursts requiring approximately 200 kJ per shot. A laser a maximum upgrade will deal 11 damage per shot. (I have no idea if firing speed upgrades affect power usage, but I do not expect them to and even if they do so beneficially, instead of increasing it like speed modules do which I would expect, I would expect the upgrades would knock it down to 3/5ths of it's normal value at most.)

My understanding of laser turrets was that they drew 600kW when in a "firing" state and 6kW when in an "idle" state. Upgrades to laser firing speed actually acting to effectively decrease the energy required per shot, as power usage remains constant. This oddity is present in the inserter arms as well, where the faster acting inserters actually use less energy than the basic inserter as they are in motion for less time overall.

This should be investigated more fully: a test scenario with a known quantity of biters and some lasers powered by accumulators could get some experimental evidence and settle this.

Even if the laser energy requirements are actually higher, they still only come close to parity with the gun turret energy needs and this discounts the massive resource usage of the gun turrets.

Requiring the use of modules in all miners and factories to make the hidden energy costs of gun turrets comparable to those of lasers offsets the reduced cost and complexity of gun turrets significantly.

[bobingabout]

They might draw 600kW when in a firing state, but they work as the other person sugests, they charge to 200kJ, then fire a 200kJ laser pulse, then have to wait to charge back up to 200kJ before they can fire again. This is one reason why the recipe contains a battery, they contain a personal micro accumulator to hold the 200kJ needed to fire. (I think its actually 201kJ to get around rounding issues, but they do that in a lot of places)

[xnmo]

I agree that guns and lasers need to be rebalanced. I think the main problem is with big biters; since they have so much armor basically anything other than lasers and fully upgraded combat shotguns are completely useless. Even rocket launchers are pretty terrible against them.

I think what needs to change is 1 or several of the following.

1, lasers need to be affected by armor, partially since they are not that expensive to warrant being the only thing good against big biters, and partially because it just doesn't make any sense for them to be armor piercing. If this is the case big biters would probably need to be rebalanced so it doesn't take 5 hours for 50 turrets to kill one biter.

2, a new bullet type that pierces armor. You'd think piercing rounds would do so but they don't, so their name should probably be changed regardless. It should require usage of advanced resources like oil or advanced circuits. The game is set in the future so its easy to make up an excuse for bullets needing circuits; maybe they are seeking like in The Fifth Element

3, a new turret type. I think the game could use a new one either way. It should use ammo and if no new bullet types then it should be inherently armor piercing. Maybe have it be 2x2 (so you have more room to fit in a really cool graphic ) and heavily armored and far better than the laser turret, though with a cost to match. If you make it a bigass railgun then you have a reason to add a new bullet type that the character cannot use, which will avoid upsetting the balance between the current weapons that the character can use.

Man now I really want a railgun turret

[Marconos]

xnmo ... make some top end gun turrents and watch them utterly destroy the large bitters. It chews through them so fast.