The strength of turrets should scale up and down with the number of close enemies and turrets.

[Gireen]

the general idea is to have stronger turrets the more aliens are attacking. stronger could mean more armor/health or a higher damage output.

turrets could also affect each other and reduce there effectiveness if placed close together and stronger alone.

human outpost can become stronger with less turrets and at the same time give aliens better chances to attack enemy bases when there is a low player count.

[Viech]

This is hard to communicate. With rocket pods we explicitly added the shutters that show players how to disarm them. I'd say no to this one and similar attempts to crunch numbers in the background that the player can't see.

Your actual suggestion seems to be that you want the balance to be more robust with respect to the number of players. It would be better to have an issue where we can discuss how to achieve this best instead of proposing just one solution.

[Gireen]

This is hard to communicate. With rocket pods we explicitly added the shutters that show players how to disarm them. I'd say no to this one and similar attempts to crunch numbers in the background that the player can't see.

If that is the only issue we can add some visual effect for humans and aliens that they can see changes in the turret ability. Something like a shield effect that changes color depending on it efficiency. At the end its just something like the momentum or mining rates, but easier to visualize.

Your actual suggestion seems to be that you want the balance to be more robust with respect to the number of players.

😁 that would be a nice side effect. but i think a single turret is to weak wile many of them become to strong again.

It would be better to have an issue where we can discuss how to achieve this best instead of proposing just one solution.

this is just a idea that could be implemented relatively easy. what concrete problem with it will be solved depends how it is used. if you have a good idea how the issues should be organized then can you please create a separate issue for that 👍

[Viech]

I've hidden our two comments because they were discussing a proposal, not the opinion that turret strength should scale.

From now on, let's discuss whether scaling turret strength with number of nearby turrets or enemies is somthing we generally want. If yes, then we can discuss a good solution in a different issue.

[necessarily-equal]

(my two cents is that I also don't like the idea of having hidden variables)

[Viech]

You must also be referring to the hidden proposal because there can be other ways to achieve the desired effect than crunching numbers in the background. For example with the rocket pod, we made it such that it doesn't fire if it could hurt friendly structures or when enemies are directly next to it (which is made visible by the shutters).

I agree with the general notion that base defenses should be stronger if the base is unattended and when there are only few of them (i.e. have diminishing returns for adding more and more turrets in the same place). A good solution may of course be hard to come by but we don't have to find one in this thread.

[ghost]

I think turrets are strong enough as they are.

What human bases need to be more powerful or interesting is not buffed structures, but higher structures diversity imo. One of the problems of human bases is that they are weak in spots where aliens can reach them stealthily, or to adv goon's barbs, because they can destroy 1 turret if they hit it 3 times (no miss, then, while still dodging rockets and being careful about humans around: I often use my body to intercept one of those barbs, effectively saving one turret while not dying...).

Now, bases should not be indestructible, and humans already have very, very strong ones. So I'm against this idea.

[necessarily-equal]

I mean scaling up and down doesn't require scaling up to be the only option. The question for now isn't "what numbers", it's "should we do it". The actual values for nerfs and buffs can be decided another day.

[ghost]

"the general idea is to have stronger turrets" So the general idea is to make turrets stronger. And aliens more difficult to use, in a gameplay where currently 75% of people (including some good players) just refuse to play aliens.

[Viech]

I do like the general direction of having defenses react to their environment as it can potentially fix a few balance issues. But this issue here seems too broadly scoped and won't become an "accepted notion" of what we're trying to achieve or how.