Friday Facts #422 - Tesla Turret

[JigSaW]

Yet another "new" thing I've already seen and experienced in the

completely free

Space Exploration mod

[fly]

This looks awesome!

I only experience some dissonance when sometimes I read something like this:

Maybe I don't take myself and the game too seriously and found it amusing

And then read this

This machine is not simply a tesla coil, technically it's more like a compact particle accelerator that fires a proton or ion beam. Once the primary beam hits a target they are strongly positively charged causing secondary arcs of lightning

[mmmPI]

What a detailed FFF !

I find it funny that previous week's FFF was about optimization, and this week is like "look at what we came up with for lightning" and it's super intricate and shiny. I feel it's not like the optimizations are required for the game to work great, but also to look awesome.

It's not really lightning either, the eletric beam, it made me think of the farseer's spell from warcraft 3, on top of the C&C game tesla coil, It also has some prism tower feel to me the way the initial beam is sustained toward the inital target, which is like my childhood extending and i like it .

I feel the design is reminiscent of the tesla coil but the head facing a particular direction make them look less menacing. I suppose it's better for gameplay reasons, otherwise, it would be funny to have the head having an idle animation where it is rotating, as if searching for target, to make it look menacing again. But i guess the whole turret concept would have looked different if that was the aim design. Must be hard to find something that satisfy everyone

I like the sound they make in the first video, and i tried several time to see if it was not my browser settings that preventing me hearing it on the others, especially the one called fff-422-disco-party. I guess i'll have to wait. I found it difficult as an amateur to try and make such sounds pleasing and not evocating of a problem, and also unique for the game not generic-sounding, matching the rest of Fulgora's sound and bringing a little from it on every other planet late game

I attempted to animate lightning once, with hand drawn sprite, and it looked quite bad, i can totally understand the part that says the lack of RNG will be immediatly obvious and visually un-appealing. It was really interesting to read how it's done by professionnals. I found it looked like sound waves and music with the repeating segment, and the little offset as if it was a rythm with beats. Also when the waves are made to shift over time slightly that's an effect one can use on a synthethizer to change the soundwave overtime. That didn't really help following the rest of the lesson though, had never heard of "Backface Culling".

The way these work is very simple

Not so sure x) But the explanation helps a lot !

There was some biters shown in the FFF, but not new ones, although, it's the closest to combat reveal so far,for me the tension intensifies x)

[Shoco]

Welcome back, electro gun.

[DarkShadow44]

Is the beam always procedurally generated on the fly when a turret shoots? All that logic for every single beam?

[Koub]

This tesla turret is so sick, love it. And the sound effects match the visuals.

[bombcar]

especially useful if Fulgora is your first planet

Oh ho? What's this? Do we get to choose which planet we start on? Or is it a "choose which planet you expand to first" kind of thing? Very interesting ....

[Loewchen]

especially useful if Fulgora is your first planet

Do we get to choose which planet we start on? Or is it a "choose which planet you expand to first" kind of thing?

The latter.

[sarge945]

I wonder what the energy requirements of this turret will be like

Maybe it requires UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!

[Mycroft4114]

especially useful if Fulgora is your first planet

Oh ho? What's this? Do we get to choose which planet we start on? Or is it a "choose which planet you expand to first" kind of thing? Very interesting ....

You start on Nauvis. Once you tech up to flying to other planets, you will have Vulcanus, Fulgora, and Gleba available. Your choice what order to visit them in. Once you have the tech from all three, you'll be able to go to the final planet, Aquilo.

[TheCornishman]

That's just amazing, how much effort goes into making a two-second visual effect look practically perfect (according to the artist's vision, of course. You can't please all of the people all of the time).
Just occasionally, I have to pinch myself, and recall how deeply impressed we were with straight-edged polyhedron ships in Elite, with ::gasp:: Hidden Line Removal. No surface texture or anything, of course. Use your imagination.
We've come a long way since then.

[revanar]

Tesla turret is very cool, and it's impressive how much work went into it!

One small suggestion: one of the things that made the C&C tesla coils so cool was seeing them visibly charge up before attacking. It would be very fun if these tesla turrets similarly had a wind-up animation on which they visibly charged full of electricity before discharging.

[Lord Bumbleton]

I’m assuming that Fulgora has some sort of flame resistant swarm enemy that is weak to electrical damage.
“Damage isn't the only focus of this turret though, it's equally about crowd control. The electrical arcs stun targets, halting their movement for a moment, zapping them back a small amount, and then slowing them slightly for a short time once the stun wears off… and especially useful if Fulgora is your first planet.“
Robots, perhaps?

[rodrigobahiense]

I created a forum account to say I support keeping this in the game.

[DaDrunkCow]

Yet another "new" thing I've already seen and experienced in the

completely free

Space Exploration mod

mad?
just dont buy the dlc then b0z0

[mmmPI]

One small suggestion: one of the things that made the C&C tesla coils so cool was seeing them visibly charge up before attacking. It would be very fun if these tesla turrets similarly had a wind-up animation on which they visibly charged full of electricity before discharging.

There is one ! in the first video, on the right foot of the turret, the little blue lights !

(i can't deny it's subtle, i was staring at the video for long time for unrelated reasons when i noticed )

[morse]

I see three problems with this turret.

1. The lighting effect is still too "lasery". Like the turret still didn't decide whether it shoots laser beam or an electric arc, and decided to do something in between.
2. The visual effects of primary beam and consecutive "chain beams" are drastically different, yet you say the damage is the same. This is strange and confusing, if the chain lighting has the same effect, shouldn't it look the same as well?
3. So basically this is "laser turret, only better". Yes, it's harder to craft, but in the end, it occupies the same niche. I thought that was what the quality system is for: "same thing, only better".

[adam_bise]

OH YEA! So freaking awesome! Cant wait!!!1one

[Danjen]

Looks nice, more toys are always appreciated.
I noticed reference to a few properties like "chance to fork" and "increased damage". I know Factorio is an automation game, but I hope those sorts of properties/hooks are expanded to allow modders to have more dynamic control over things like that (like RPGs).

One thing I've noticed that games like Diablo 2 modding community make extensive use of is "states". Eg buffs/debuffs are tracked by state layers to get the final values for stats. Is this feasible to use? Does Factorio already have stuff like this for eg spitter goop (acid/slow), or is it kinda hacky?

[DaDrunkCow]

I see three problems with this turret.

1. The lighting effect is still too "lasery". Like the turret still didn't decide whether it shoots laser beam or an electric arc, and decided to do something in between.
2. The visual effects of primary beam and consecutive "chain beams" are drastically different, yet you say the damage is the same. This is strange and confusing, if the chain lighting has the same effect, shouldn't it look the same as well?
3. So basically this is "laser turret, only better". Yes, it's harder to craft, but in the end, it occupies the same niche. I thought that was what the quality system is for: "same thing, only better".

1. I think the visuals is just preferences. It looks nice to me. A straight beam wouldn't quite make sense when the beam chains onto other enemies while a random electric arc looks like it should attack my own structures as they are conductive metal. A mix between the two honestly makes the most amount of sense to me.
2. I agree, I think the dev team had it this way to reduce visual clutter and so that the initial beam is distinct from the chain beams so its easier for the player to see when the turret is firing.
3. Well this argument can also be applied to the forge, electromagnetic plant and the new mining drill. They more or less do the same thing as their predecessors, just with a few changes here there. I also wonder why the devs added these buildings despite quality doing the same thing. Oh wait, it's because they aren't the same thing and are actual better buildings with upgrades compared to their predecessor.