Hello all,
I'm stepping into the discussion for the first time here and want to say the art on the telsa turret looks really nice.
However, I would like to make two suggestions. On regarding the sound and one about the propagation of the charge beam.
Sound: I like the sounds associated with the turret and its motion, but the sound of the charged beam is underwhelming. Electricity is LOUD. So loud it is hard to believe sometimes. It is heating the local medium into plasma which expands in volume, lowering local pressure along the charged beam. Then the immense weight of the atmosphere collapses into itself in a clapping motion. This gives us THUNDER. I understand from a game perspective that it may not be productive to have a constant rolling thunder in the background if your anywhere close to your walls and a deafening sound if you're at the walls. Before this discussion continues, I think it will be worthwhile to talk about the propagation of the beam.
Beam Propagation: Electricity is FAST. Charge that wants out will come and go in an instant. It will find ground and nothing short of an insulated faraday cage will stop it. In the linked video from FFF#442 (
https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sy ... aining.mp4) you can see the charge leave the turret and 'travels' to the first bug. It maybe jumps to one or two more bugs before the source cuts out. It then continues to chain to the rest of the pack for around a second. Electricity is going to find its path of least resistance and then spend its entire potential in an instant. Inspect this video of a lightning strike (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHZQM9ZBNb4). I don't think we need positively charged feeler growing out from the bugs, but I believe the telsa tower should give one of the scariest natural effects in nature a better representation.
How to address this within the game: First, let's go to the extreme and work backwards as this seems a worthwhile endeavor.
The Extreme: "A typical lightning flash is about 300 million Volts and about 30,000 Amps." - NWS (
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-power). We can quickly use P=V*I (Power = Voltage * Current) to find our lightning bolt relaxes around 9 TW of power from the local field. Let's imagine a situation where the tesla tower had an extremely long cooldown since keeping that kind of power around on demand is not reasonable. So, let's assume that the tesla turret has a magic capacitor inside of it that takes some large amount of minutes T to charge. When it shoots, it sends out a feeler beam (more amplitude than the current beam, essentially less of a linear beam, the game 'knows' where it's going but the eye may not) that, once it reaches the first enemy, nearly instantaneously chains to all targets/objects nearby (in a more linear sense). This is where the sound comes in, and come to think of it, maybe a frame or two of blinding light. The immediate saturation of both visual and sound senses followed by an immediate (relatively) quiet and dark scene can create strong emotion. Trees hit could ember and glow just a little and have a chance of going up in flame and bugs hit should continue to crackle and pop as the moisture inside of them boils away. Maybe even a little steam. The visuals and sound of the lightening itself should be gone as soon as it came with maybe a little echo on the thunder. The damage and range of the turret should be immense. Maybe even antiquating artillery before arty research is started. I'm not sure the order that these turrets will be unlocked.
This is becoming a little longwinded, so I'll try to summarize my point here. I think that our negatively charged pals, the electron, deserve to be represented in the game with a degree of power (haha) that's more in line with their destructive ability in nature. Electricity is SCARY and the way charged beams are represented in FFF#442 and SE may be practical but is not representative of the true destructive power being dealt with here. The player should FEAR these towers and their effects to the same degrees as the bugs. Electricity does not pick sides.
I'll leave walking back this idea into something that fits into the gameplay of Factorio as an exercise for the reader. Please leave your thoughts below!
ps. Maybe the player can't get near the towers if they are energized