When you're not sure what to stick where...

A Lonely Turret Story

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

This article is really going to be a quick overview and not an in depth analysis of turret design. Obviously you won't be able to max out every turret in your base without running into power problems, and much like a defense fleet, customization of this aspect of base design is exceptionally dependent on individual base layout.

I'm writing this based on several requests and a few posts asking about this. Please, if I've missed anything or there are further questions, ask here or ask on these pages on Facebook- This game has, generally, a wonderfully helpful community: The Forsaken Council (this is my home as I Admin here), BP Crib, BP on BV, Alliance Crib (fair warning, AC requires a thick skin at times. lol). I know there are a lot more but those are generally all I mainly visit and have seen good community activity in.

So, let's jump right into it then. We'll start with the new Maxim turret. I will break down the reasoning behind all of the items added to this as well as mention a different option for illistration. Hopefully this will allow you to understand the reasoning behind the design and be able to apply it to the rest of the examples and/or your own designs.:

This turret, in many instances, would sit on your center island. There are a few different options that you could use, but let's start with this one as the theories are straight forward.

1. One of the drawbacks to this turret is the rather high power consumption. The weapon alone draws 3,750 units of power. When equipped as above, it draws a total of 6,937 units of power. If you swap out the Zynthium Shells for Priority Targeting, it comes down to 6,675 units of power. Using this turret will place a strain on a likely already strained resource. One thing to keep in mind with regard to this weapon is the salvo count and the seemingly anemic damage-per-salvo of only 960.

2. Taking the given of center island placement and also taking into account the 'Wind Up' aspect of the gun, it seems that adding A:T-R Transformer for greater range is an interesting option. The turret is on the center island so defense is not a huge issue as the base itself is its defense. The additional range will give it a greater opportunity to spool up as it will engage the targets sooner, hopefully getting it's stacks to max a little quicker and thus adding some depth of additional power to the gun in the form of reaching max stacks quicker. If putting this on the outer edge of your base as a deterrent for Vendettas, you may want to look at the other Transformers to see if they would give you a better advantage depending on where you place the turret. This special makes the outer range of the weapon a massive 245. **Of note, it was pointed out by Ni Gel on the forums that I glossed over an important aspect of this special, of which I mean, it drops 10% of damage. This illustrates the point again, that these types of articles are more for to get you to start thinking, and hopefully understand, the prints you own. Cookie cutter does not work in base defense. (Side note- at publication I had also done the calculation at +10% rather than a flat 10 range addition- Thanks Andy Brett for that catch!)

3. Now we start looking at the specials to hone the use of our turret. In this instance I have chosen Expanded Concussive Charge. This special offers an increase of 60% Splash and 60% Concussive Damage. The added damage is always a boon and will help a seemingly anemic per-salvo damage. The addition of this special will bring the damage-per-salvo to 1,536.

While the Spite is completely vulnerable, this brings damage up above the deflection threshold of the Vendetta (without a Bloodthirst) and above the threshold of a Bloodthirsted Fury or Revenge. It is still well below the deflection threshold of the Malice, Retribution and a Harlock's Revenge (or a Revenge Fleet led by this hull). Clearly, it is meant to be just a puzzle piece in the jigsaw puzzle of your base.

This special will bring the splash from a range of 12 to a range of 19.2. It could help ensure damage to either a fast moving target, or targets that are grouped together adding a little bit more depth to the weapon.

4. This is an interesting slot. I chose Zynthium Shells for this example because of the power draw to illustrate how expensive this can become power-wise.  It also has a higher splash than its counterpart. It is a viable special if you want to increase the projectile speed to help aid in hitting a fast moving fleet if that is what you want. It also stacks it's splash with that of the ECC above, bringing the total splash to 22.8. That is now over a land tile of splash range and given the speed at which the projectile would be getting there, it seems this would be a difficult weapon to avoid entering a base.

5. The armor choice here is rather simple. This is not a direct engagement turret, so why not take advantage of the lower need of armor by armoring up with something that adds some much needed power back into the mix? This armor should fill every unneeded slot in your base. If you decide to put this on the outside and take extreme advantage of priority targeting, you may want to change this armor choice accordingly.

That said and explained, I am leaning heavily toward this particular build for one of these turrets. I am also including it as an exercise so that those that are struggling with turret design can try and understand why I would go this route. (Hint: Think Vendetta deterrent.):

Depending on your intended use, Priority Targeting is likely a top choice for this turret as well so that you can deter lower armored hulls from sitting outside your base to Remote Target - depending also on when (and IF) you can engage them (another boon of the boosted 258.5 range).

Let's do one more turret. We'll do a Blunderbuss.

Using the same talking points, lets go down the list.

The weapon itself uses a decent amount of power again and pushes the use of power for a good set up here, again limiting how many of these you can put in as well as limiting the power you have available for other turrets. As you can see, fully equipped, this example uses 8,167 units of power. It also seems underwhelmingly anemic with regard to damage with a low 950 damage per pellet (remembering that this is a multi-shot weapon).

In this example we are using the A:T Transformer I. This gives us an increase of 35% in damage. Starting a running total, this brings damage up to 1,282.5 for damage per pellet.

Moving on to the specials. The Depleted Uranium Shells special is there just for the added ballistic damage. It is a little costly of a special in terms of power consumption, but it does help the Blunderbuss with regard to the damage issue. Given that the weapon is multi-shot, the accuracy buff is pointless, but the additional 62% Ballistic damage brings our running total to 1,871.5 damage per pellet. This is starting to look a lot better than first blush.

Next special is the Supercharged EM Rails III. This special is rather nice in that it gives you a 25% chance at scoring a critical hit. Since this weapon is ballistic, but not accuracy based, you get this chance calculated for each individual pellet every time the weapon fires. That is a huge mechanic to take advantage of. In addition to this, when it does calculate a critical hit, the damage is increased 300%! Huge combo here when added to the rest.

The armor on this turret is a little different in that it is set up as an engagement turret, so the armor chosen is to try and increase its longevity when directly engaged with an enemy fleet. Just getting one extra shot off here and there is enough to change the outcome of an engagement.

So, that is Turret Design 101. I will include a sample build of several turrets below. I would hope you gleaned enough info from the examples above to be able to puzzle through what the examples may represent as well as helping you in putting together effective builds for your own turrets. As always, feel free to ask for help of the community on the pages I linked above. I hope this helps some people. Thanks for reading and sharing!