Slow Pickup for Turret Walking

[akmotu]

Has anyone else noticed a severe difference between the time it takes to pick up turrets between 0.16 and 0.17?

So I was turret walking up to a nest in 0.17, and I noticed that the entire rhythm I got used to in 0.16 has changed. It takes a little longer to pick up turrets in 0.17 now than it used to, which changes the game play and the timing of the technique.

It's almost like the devs are increasing the difficulty as they develop the game. I would like to formally request the pick up time be changed back to the same rate that it was in 0.16 when it comes to picking up turrets. I feel that the change is unnecessary and shifts the games balance out of the player's favor for no other reason than to do so.

[Ranakastrasz]

Probably unintended. When they removed mining hardness, All the mining rates got thrown off, and you can't really fix that casually.
In any case, if turret creeping is less convenient now, good. Turrets are for defense. If you want to use them to attack, take the disadvantages too.

I honestly don't know whether this was intended or not. Given my understanding of how Mining hardness used to work, and how it got removed, I would be unsurprising if this was an accident. That said, I still think that turret creeping should be discouraged. However, if people want to play that way, its fine.

A lot of other things have changed too, which increase difficulty. Notably the Pollution and Belt bug-fixes.

Also, How much does that really effect the technique? Even if it takes twice as long to pick up a turret it wouldn't seem that significant. Bring more turrets, and cleanup isn't a combat stressed mechanic.

[akmotu]

Well with the new biter changes and the slower turret pick up, combined with their seemingly increased damage and lower spawn to attack times, it would seem to be a larger deal than you make it out to be.

Meaning, picking up any other item doesn't feel slower to do, just turrets. When I go to pick up a box, or an inserter, the time to do so feels the same. When I pick up a turret, it's slower. That's all I'm saying. Also, the biters seem faster, and definitely do more damage. They were tearing through my basic miners faster than I could run over and kill them. So yeah, the game feels incredibly unbalanced right now.

CORRECTION: It DOES take longer to pick up a Turret than anything else in the game. Test it for yourself and see.

[Ranakastrasz]

Well, turret damage is halved because of no more +100% damage bonus. Also pollution is less effected by terrain, and some bases should spawn closer.
So yes, It would get more difficult.

In previous versions, If biters got to a mining drill, and neither I nor a turret was there to stop them, the drill would die before I got there.
Are they dealing a lot more damage faster, or something? I was, admittedly, more noticing them being larger and having those frikking legs. Also dying horribly in the tutorial final mission. Which, admittedly, is too hardcore for a tutorial.

AT this point, I think I need to do a default freeplay before I can let myself have an Opinion. What you said sounded more of a "I don't like change" to me, which is obviously not the response I need to have for sane dialog. If I die horribly in a vanilla game, then we'll see.

[akmotu]

Yes, please, try it out for yourself.

So far, turrets are the only object that takes longer to retrieve from the ground. Everything else gets back into my inventory extremely quick.

Changes for an existing community feel biased. Design for the first-time player. Of course game vets would be better at playing. Which is what happens when you leave your game in Early Access for 5+ years, it starts to feel old so you ramp it up and before you know it, you have a 1.0 version of the game that is designed for people who've been playing it for 6-7 years. Not smart, wise or prudent, IMO.

[xfir01]

Well, turret damage is halved because of no more +100% damage bonus.

What? Where did you read this? The tank machine gun got hit with that, but I don't remember seeing anything about turrets.

[Ranakastrasz]

Well, turret damage is halved because of no more +100% damage bonus.

What? Where did you read this? The tank machine gun got hit with that, but I don't remember seeing anything about turrets.

Huh. Playing the tutorial I didn't see the +100% damage on my turrets, and assumed it was removed. Maybe I was just blind there.

[SyncViews]

Gun turrets still have the extra bonuses of 0.16, they just rolled all the techs together. When I looked, not including infinite techs the total damages looked identical to 0-16 to me. Laser turrets do 80 damage with 9.6 shots/sec, AP turrets do 60.32 with 25 shots/sec, and Uranium do 180.96 (for very little extra cost over AP). With upgrades the gun turrets do about 3 times the damage (+200%) of the player submachine gun.


Biters are stronger, but I don't think its because turrets are weaker.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, turret damage is halved because of no more +100% damage bonus.

What? Where did you read this? The tank machine gun got hit with that, but I don't remember seeing anything about turrets.

Huh. Playing the tutorial I didn't see the +100% damage on my turrets, and assumed it was removed. Maybe I was just blind there.

You might be confusing with bonus from damage upgrades from techs ?

[Ranakastrasz]

You might be confusing with bonus from damage upgrades from techs ?

Uhm. No. I hovered over a turret, and didn't see a +100% modifier in the description.
I almost never open the tech bonuses tab, except to check robot follower count on occasion.

[BlueTemplar]

My point is that they never had an in-built +100% bonus !!

[Ranakastrasz]

My point is that they never had an in-built +100% bonus !!

They got a +100% damage bonus when they went from a 1x2 footprint to 2x2 footprint in 0.12
I can't find it in any of the changelogs though.

It was kinda a big deal back then.

At least thats how i remember it. If I remember, ima open one of my old versions and check, because yea....

[BlueTemplar]

Ok, they at least didn't have a +100% damage bonus in 0.16 - that would have been a BIG deal when fighting against Red/Blue biters with underpowered ammo !

[xfir01]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-89

Turrets
The final new look of the turrets is finished. The new look should be more consistent with the style and level of detail of the Factorio 2015. You can note, that both laser and ammo turret are now 2X2 entity. We believe it is a better solution if the turret is bigger, more expensive and stronger. For the ammo turret, it means less fiddling with inserters. And the balancing in 0.11 was done in a way, that one turret was almost meaningless anyway, so the smaller granularity shouldn't be a problem.

Not really anything about damage, but going from 1x2 to 2x2 would cause conflict, along with the 2x increase in materials.

[Ranakastrasz]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-89


Not really anything about damage, but going from 1x2 to 2x2 would cause conflict, along with the 2x increase in materials.

Yes, I know its not in the changelog. I am pretty sure if you check an older version you will see it.

[Koub]

Has anyone else noticed a severe difference between the time it takes to pick up turrets between 0.16 and 0.17?

Actually turrets by themselves have not been made "longer to pick up". Buildings are globally longer to pick up (tested with assembling machines, layed 50 of them, and picked them up in 0.17 and 0.16 stable, and the difference was similar to turrets). And turrets are buildings.
I suspect (but might be wrong) that it's just a side effect of Hardness, Mining power, Mining speed & Mining time streamlining (source : https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-266).

[akmotu]

Has anyone else noticed a severe difference between the time it takes to pick up turrets between 0.16 and 0.17?

Actually turrets by themselves have not been made "longer to pick up". Buildings are globally longer to pick up (tested with assembling machines, layed 50 of them, and picked them up in 0.17 and 0.16 stable, and the difference was similar to turrets). And turrets are buildings.
I suspect (but might be wrong) that it's just a side effect of Hardness, Mining power, Mining speed & Mining time streamlining (source : https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-266).

Picking up a turret in 0.17 takes longer than it does to pick up an assembler in 0.17.

Try it and see for yourself.

So far, in all my testing, turrets are the only item that suffer this longer delay. Flame, bullet and laser.

[BlueTemplar]

That's unrelated - Picking up a turret in 0.16 might *also* takes longer than it does to pick up an assembler in 0.16... but probably less noticeable - unless you break your pickaxe !

[Koub]

Has anyone else noticed a severe difference between the time it takes to pick up turrets between 0.16 and 0.17?

Actually turrets by themselves have not been made "longer to pick up". Buildings are globally longer to pick up (tested with assembling machines, layed 50 of them, and picked them up in 0.17 and 0.16 stable, and the difference was similar to turrets). And turrets are buildings.
I suspect (but might be wrong) that it's just a side effect of Hardness, Mining power, Mining speed & Mining time streamlining (source : https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-266).

Picking up a turret in 0.17 takes longer than it does to pick up an assembler in 0.17.

Picking up an assembling machine in 0.17 also takes longer than picking up an assembling machine in 0.16

And picking up a turret in 0.16 was also longer than picking up an assembling machine in 0.16.

I eyeballed picking up 50 of each in each version, with all researches made, in sandbox mode :

50 turrets in 0.16 about 15s to mine
50 turrets in 0.17 about 20s to mine (+33% pickup time)
50 Assemblers in 0.16 about 12s to mine
50 Assemblers in 0.17 about 16s to mine (+33% pickup time)

It's eyeballed, cause couldn't start/stop my stopwatch for obvious reasons, but overall, buildings seem to be globally longer to pick up.

[Ranakastrasz]

Welp. Given someone science-ed it, My initial guess of "Accident" was probably correct. They didn't single out gun turrets, but gun turret feel more time sensitive to pick up. Kinda like walls were way back when. No reason to pick those frikkin things up til you got bots because of how long it took.