Defence economy balance

[NotRexButCaesar]

[...]

+1

[SirSmuggler]

When it comes to power usage, isn't continuous fire a bit misleading?

Considering my own experience (biased as it might be) my turrets spends most of their time doing nothing, and firing only a small portion of them time. Where does the energy consumption calculation end up if we factor in turrets firing say 10% of the time? If I'm not missing something here, lasers will drain energy (even if a small amount) even while not firing? Granted the same is true for the assembly machines producing ammo, they also draw a small amount of energy while idle, but is it comparable to what laser turrets draw?

[Qon]

And maybe the opposite for laser turret energy consumption should increase with research scaling with their damage, make them cheaper to fire at first but with even less damage,

Well, there is laser turret shooting speed research, which does just that.

[Hannu]

Have you considered that your defensive strategies just need improvement?

There is no need for improving at default settings.

At Chemical (blue) science I'm still using Firearm magazines.

I use gun turrets through the whole game. In my opinion they are relatively interestingly balanced. They are not massive but somewhat significant resource sink even in endgame (I make my vanilla bases usually 100-150 SPM level without beacons).

Lasers are no brainers. Yes, you can blackout your electricity once at first game, but with a little planning it is easily avoidable. Few extra rows of steam engines does not cost anything (at default settings). Flame throwers seem to be specially for deathworlds, at least one order of magnitude overpowered for normal games.

In my opinion it would be good to increase cost of lasers significantly. They had relatively large power drain, which was good, but I think they removed it. Gun turrets could be basic defense for long walls and lasers or flame throwers powerful but expensive special guns for most attacked targets.

I never have any turret firing constantly; and your analysis doesn't factor in bonuses and logistics.

I have had situation when full blue belt of copper in ammo production was not enough. It was previous version (before uranium ammo came), but very probably average was more than one turret continuously. I make intentionally my end game mines near borders and do not clear nests with cannons, so it was far from optimal defense (that's why I wrote that improvements or optimality is not needed), but I like to get more interesting resource flow than just to one product.

All I wrote refers to default settings. I know that it not valid with very high biter settings or poor resource settings.

[Hannu]

Well, there is laser turret shooting speed research, which does just that.

It increases laser power. Both damage per second and energy consumption. It is very much like bullet shooting speed, you produce more damage at certain time but keep damage per used stuff constant.

[Nefrums]

Here is an example on what infrastructure you need to have to keep three turrets firing constantly.

To me it feels wrong that gun turrets require 8x the power as laser turrets do.

All research up to pre utility and production:

DPS for gun turrets with red ammo:
(10 + 11) * (8 + 17.92) = 544.32

DPS for laser turret:
(20 + 22) * (1.5 + 1.35) = 119.7

544.32 / 119.7 = 4.5474

So while gun turrets require 8x the power, they only have to fire for 4.5 times shorter to kill an enemy (resistances ignored) which also means less repair and less risk of getting overrun. You don't launch a rocket from earth with an Ion drive even though they are much more efficient than chemical rockets. The goal is not to minmax resources, it's to protect the base. And that's what bullets do here.

So taking DPS into account, now lasers are no longer 8x more efficient. They are 1.76 times more energy efficient (damage/joule). But they also have energy drain which will dwarf the actual firing cost if you have a thick and long wall of them around your base. And to get enough DPS you need much more laser turrets than gun turrets, which means more energy drain and much more turrets to produce. And the time it takes to recoup the energy that is used to produce all those laser turrets is going to take a while.

I made a 0~ drain laser turret blueprint. But basically no one is using it so it doesn't really affet calculations. Also drain is only really an issue for a big base. For a chemical science base the amount of laser turrets you have is going to be limited by your production of laser turrets enough that you can't even get high drain. Which also tells us that they are expensive.

You have to give context to your dps calculations.
Example: blue sci upgrades vs big biter:

rof * damage

gun turret with yellow ammo:
10*2 * ((5*1.8^2)-8)*0.9 = 147,6

gun turret with red ammo:
10*2 * ((8*1.8^2)-8)*0.9 = 322.56

laser turret:
1.5*1.9 * 20*2.1 = 119,7

Flamer turret, is a bit special as it has 3 damage effects:
(3*30 +13 +100) * 1.6 = 324.8

If you use yellow or red ammo does not have significant impact on the balance point i was making. yellow costs 4 plates, red cost 14 plates.
So with the example above red ammo costs 3.5x as much and do 2.2x the damage. not insignificantly more expensive per damage, but does not affect my point. that the gap is to wide.

Also gun turrets (and laser turrets) get damaged in attacks as they do not out range spitters. Flame turrets are completly safe as long as the walls hold.

[mmmPI]

Well, there is laser turret shooting speed research, which does just that.

It increases laser power. Both damage per second and energy consumption. It is very much like bullet shooting speed, you produce more damage at certain time but keep damage per used stuff constant.

What i suggested was to factor in even more increase in power cost as time goes. You shoot more, you use more power.( what's true actually). But also each shot dealing more damage individually, you use more power per shot.( what i suggest is added as a "nerf"). a shot cost 800kj of energy, make it less at first, more at the end.

In my mind this change is supposed to discourage players to try and feed their increasing amount of laser turret with steam engines. If the 2 different sources of cost-increase are multiplicative with each other (you shoot more, each shot cost more). Then the power consumption per damage goes from linear to exponential. Giving strong indications that nuclear or solar power are needed at this stage.

I assumed power consumption late game to be "easy" once you just have to plop down another solar array , or when you have a functionning nuclear reactor design.

Roughly you could have laser turret cost 100% more energy once you hit the first infinite science ( and the cap at which the cost increase goes back from multiplicative to linear) but stays unchanged with pre-purple-and-yellow-science tech, and are 50% cheaper to fire but also 50% less effective before any research.


Then you would need to compare the production of ammo needed for gun turrets versus :

1) early game cheaper-to-fire-lower-damage laser turret. => stressing the fact that laser turrets themselves are expensive to make, you would need more of them if they are weaker, so overall the size/requirement for "gun turrets and ammo productions", would find itself looks comparatively not so bad compared to the size/requirement of producing "many weak laser turrets " for same defense potential. make player think : " this will be good later with more science, but it's still too early i can't build enough". ( adressing the "gap" )


2) mid game (all blue research done) , unchanged compared to now, same thing for everyone. Laser turrets are far superior. giving player incentive to rely on them rather than the gun turrets for the main defense, i think that's how the game is envisionned.

Only thing changing is that you would be told laser turret will have a decreasing amount of energy/damage ratio when looking at the tech tree. Which is the same mentality as when you use speed module or red ammo. You consume 50% more energy for 20% more speed, but it's a price you are ok to pay for saving on numbers of machine providing you consider energy cheap, and it gives you incentive to plan for making energy cheap , like automating solar or setting up nuclear reactor. Turrets be less energy efficient, but capable of delivering more damage per turret hence reducing the amount of turrets per area you cover instead switching clearly the focus on the energy source. => "discouraging player from using even more steam engine."


3) late game, laser turrets cost 2x as much energy for the same thing as now. not much of a change once you are late game and everything is automated. The way to get there is made a bit longer though since you would need more energy for the same thing, the infrastructure for "energy for laser" would be slightly less irrelevant compared to "ammo production" but not so slightly beforehand.

This alongside with more ammo in each or some magazine, and a higher at start but decreasing with research oil consumption for flameturrets; each or all three could potentially adress the point made about the defence economy balance. Changing a bit the pace of the game, but only indirectly the overall late-game equilibrium.

[Yoyobuae]

A research that's supposed to be an upgrade SHOULD NOT put the player in a (irreversible) situation of where energy consumption increases exponentially. That really risks the situation where a player "paints themselves into a corner" without any means to escape. Technologies cannot be unresearched, bonuses cannot be temporarily disabled.

[Theikkru]

I'm going to throw in with nefrums here. I do think there is a rather large disparity in the 3 defense methods, but I'd like to throw my 2¢ about gun turrets into the ring:
halve the recipe costs for at least the yellow and red mags.
I bring this up due to turret creep. (Don't worry, I'm not trying to derail the thread.) I know a lot of people, myself included, feel that turret creep cheapens early-game combat due to its overwhelming effectiveness. The problem with adding more damage or bullets to the magazines in order to reduce running costs is that it would make turret creep feel even more overpowered, since in those cases the limiting factor isn't resources or base logistics, but what can be crammed into one's backpack or brandished at the end of the mouse cursor. Reducing the production costs of magazines, on the other hand, would reduce the running costs of gun turrets in a logistics-limited context (such as base defense) without buffing turrets "in the wild" as a side effect.

[4xel]

IMO, the defenses are not meant to be balanced solely by their economy, let alone by the metric chosen.

Weapons in general sohuld not necessarilly be equal, a pistol should not be made as strong as an SMG for the sake of balancing everything.

Turrets in general however are very well balanced IMO:



Gun turrets:

• The lowest tech turret, so it's accceptable for it to be weaker
• Cheapest setup cost when not fully automated, both in resource and designing time
• can easily be handcrafted from scratch or from intermediates (and are a very good way to keep your queue busy if you don't have a list)
• Very high single target DPS damage using top ammo at similar damage upgrade (beaten by flame turrets pre uranium ammo when they don't miss)
• does not cost anything when not firing

So one reason to use gun over laser might be the same why you use burner drill over electic ones at the very beginning of the game: even though they're less efficient, they're much cheaper to setup at doing the same thing.

They are also the best useless defense: if a place should not be attacked, but you still want to put defense to be safe, gun turrets are the best choice. Indeed, their poor resource efficiency is irrelevant, they are cheap, easy to place, and if they do get attacked, their relatively high DPS should keep the area safe. The same reasoning can be applied to argue they are the best backline defenders, as a very cheap insurance against overruns. They are perfect near buffers for example (a single gun turret is a much simpler cure to your red Circuit buffer hazard than redesigning your whole factory to have it more inward Nefrums)

Laser Turret:

• relatively high tech requirement
• High capital cost, require batteries
• decent range
• Arguably the easiest to setup (still need to bring power), even automated.
• Theoretically infinite resource efficiency
• Still expensive in power, even when not firing!

In a way, they are very comparable to solar panels: very high capital cost, very high efficiency and very convenient to place.

They are useful as the backbone of your defense line, as a supplement to your flame turrets to take down big and behemoth faster, and for small or tiny distant outpost where guns would not be durable enough and flames would be unpractical (eg radar outpost).

Flame Turret:

• medium tech requirement
• High capital cost per unit, but very low cost per DPS. require engines
• long range but also trailing fire and minimum range
• Arguably the hardest to setup.
• Highest setup cost, ignoring ammo belt -which should be avoided when possible (pipeline and their buffer, or assembler and barrels)
• practically infinite resource efficiency
• no cost when not firing

They are the best active turret, good for your main wall, and main defense.

Yes they also have the strongest single target damage but except at oil outpost, they require more time to set up. Also, a lone gun turret can kill a single big biter given good enough ammo and upgrades. A lone flamer never can. A single flamer needs a wall to kill even a couple small biters.

Over all, I like the balance. In most situation, there are defenses that are obviously stronger than others, but all three turrets have use cases where they outshine the other 2. Now landmines would be another discussion...

[blazespinnaker]

What I find crazy is how OP landmines are. They make all of the other military entities redundant in comparison. Once you get landmines, biters become a sideshow to the game.

I think it's telling how landmines don't show up in the beginning menu emulation.

Please don't nerf them though

The other thing that is utterly unbalanced, is artillery on islands with logistics, but it's very late game so maybe not an issue. I made a suggestion about amphibian biters tho, anyways. Nerfing this would be OK, as this isn't just OP, it's game ending.

I don't necessarily have an issue with the other ones. They all seemed more or less balanced to me.

If I had any issue it would be the fact that the best way to play the game in deathworld is tearing down your base before biters attack because the iron consumption by turrets is a tad extreme.

But, I don't really have an issue with that. Peace is better than war.

Nukes are a silly distraction, though maybe that's the point I guess.

[Hannu]

What I find crazy is how OP landmines are. They make all of the other military entities redundant in comparison. Once you get landmines, biters become a sideshow to the game.

Does mines have any significant effect to behemoth biters?

The other thing that is utterly unbalanced, is artillery on islands with logistics, but it's very late game so maybe not an issue. I made a suggestion about amphibian biters tho, anyways. Nerfing this would be OK, as this isn't just OP, it's game ending.

I have understood that game change is the idea if an artillery. Then player begin to build a megabase and most do not want to take biters even as resource sink. Artillery is no brainer method to keep borders clear and also scout area when player conquers new areas. I do not usually use them because I want to keep biters as an resource sink. Defense line with simple gun turrets is impenetrable as long as logistic works.

Nukes are a silly distraction, though maybe that's the point I guess.

In my opinion they should be another tool for easy and fast area clearing. I can not understand logic behind nerfing their power to useless level but making very fancy graphics. I would wanted to improving instead of nerfing. Biters are not survival issue at point when player have nukes, spidertron and artillery. Then it is only question about how many square kilometers you can clear from behemoth weighted biters in an hour of real playing time.

[4xel]

Does mines have any significant effect to behemoth biters?

Biters have an explosion resistance of 12/10%

That means that most of the 250 damage of the landmine will go through (214 to be exact). Which means they don't suffer huge drop in efficiency like yellow and red ammo do.

It does take 15 un-upgraded mines to bring a behemoth down (10 with blue science upgrade and 7 with all non infinite upgrades).
It is usually trivial to lay down a mine field more than 15 landmines deep by the time behemoth show up. Still, I do agree that it's by no way the best or only solution, thus not making other defense irrelevant at this point of the game.

Landmines do more than damage: they stun. So they are also strong in composite defense, eg. along laser turrets.

biters become a sideshow to the game.

Factorio is an automation game, not an RTS, so I think it's fine that under most settings and in vanilla, biters eventually become a sideshow.
It could be argued that this point should be reached with artillery rather than with landmines, but fully automated landmines defense requires construction bots. For veteran, it may not sound like much, but fully automated mine defense comes at a decent cost.

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, I haven't really played deathworld to the point that behemoths become an issue. In default, I can get artillery long before they are a concern.

But landmines, from what I've seen are pretty OP relatively and landmines are super cheap. https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... d-mine:r:1

.. 1.25 iron ore (plus 0.25 coal/negligible oil) for 250 damage Not entirely sure if that's total damage, or damage per biter in AOE.

Compare that to magazine, which requires 4 ore and does 50 damage total.

Even if it's just total 250 damage max, that's 15x value for landmines. Plus stun! Oh right, and construction bots will reload for you. I mean, seriously.

On top of this, biters are dumb and always path the same way, so landmines can be placed on a significantly advanced position. No belts or supply required.

Some mop up with turrets is handy, for sure. I don't really like lasers. Expensive in terms of cost / area protected compared to landmines. And I have better things to do with my oil than waste it on flaming biters, though it looks really cool. I'd rather be rushing for artillery than overspending on defense.

Maybe it's a problem in dw, though, with the behemoths. Been thinking about playing a dw marathon game with zero water (no islands to place artillery on). Might be fun.

Probably though I'd just go green modules all the way and stick to the same strats.

[jodokus31]

This is the prototype of landmine:

Code: Select all

{
    type = "land-mine",
    name = "land-mine",
    --    ....
    trigger_radius = 2.5,
    ammo_category = "landmine",
    action =
    {
      type = "direct",
      action_delivery =
      {
        type = "instant",
        source_effects =
        {
          {
            type = "nested-result",
            affects_target = true,
            action =
            {
              type = "area",
              radius = 6,
              force = "enemy",
              action_delivery =
              {
                type = "instant",
                target_effects =
                {
                  {
                    type = "damage",
                    damage = { amount = 250, type = "explosion"}
                  },
                  {
                    type = "create-sticker",
                    sticker = "stun-sticker"
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          },
          {
            type = "create-entity",
            entity_name = "explosion"
          },
          {
            type = "damage",
            damage = { amount = 1000, type = "explosion"}
          }
        }
      }
    }
  },

From what I understand, the 250 damage is AoE damage so it affects all enemies in radius 6, that's almost the area of a grenade.

There's also a 1000 explosion damage, but I have no idea, where it appears. I tested a bit in editor-mode, and a mine is applying 250 damage most of the time. Does anybody know, where this damage happens?

[Silari]

There's also a 1000 explosion damage, but I have no idea, where it appears. I tested a bit in editor-mode, and a mine is applying 250 damage most of the time. Does anybody know, where this damage happens?

The AoE specifies the enemy force to damage, so if I had to guess the 1000 damage goes to the landmine itself, which is what destroys it. Be interesting to see what happens if it's not there.

[Koub]

There's also a 1000 explosion damage, but I have no idea, where it appears. I tested a bit in editor-mode, and a mine is applying 250 damage most of the time. Does anybody know, where this damage happens?

The AoE specifies the enemy force to damage, so if I had to guess the 1000 damage goes to the landmine itself, which is what destroys it. Be interesting to see what happens if it's not there.

... or to raise the landmine's HP to over 1k (maybe) ?

[jodokus31]

There's also a 1000 explosion damage, but I have no idea, where it appears. I tested a bit in editor-mode, and a mine is applying 250 damage most of the time. Does anybody know, where this damage happens?

The AoE specifies the enemy force to damage, so if I had to guess the 1000 damage goes to the landmine itself, which is what destroys it. Be interesting to see what happens if it's not there.

I tried it to set this damage to 0 and the mine explodes just fine. The landmine has only 15 health.
If the mine is visibly placed in front of a blue biter, it just destroys/defuses it with on swing.

... or to raise the landmine's HP to over 1k (maybe) ?

Doesn't seem so.

[Silari]

Unfortunate. I was hoping it'd leave the mine and you'd be able to setup mines that rearmed themselves.

[Rubypoker]

I haven't really thought about this being an balance issue. But I found Flamethrower turret to be as good as free defence once it is up. It is extremely cost effective as long as you use regular oil. On a death-world map it truly feels like I have to rush up to landmines and flamethrowers turrets as quickly as possible. But once I have them defending feels extremely easy. As it is right now the regular gun turrets role is to just clear up a bit from what the mines or flames did not hit, or to be used as an act of desperation in the early game to survival at any cost. But I do find turrets to be reliable as it is a value in the security you have when the ammo is there the turret will always be ready.