Lucifer and Desolator closing/opening animation is too slow

[darloth]

Both of these units have an option to be toggled off to receive damage reduction.

However, the closing and opening animations makes this too slow to be useful. Anything capable of killing them that you'd like to defend against will probably have done so before they can actually close and receive the benefits of the damage reduction, not to mention then it's a significant chunk of time before they can open and fire again, and they lose damage reduction the entire time they're closing. (I tested Lucifer and found it was about 5 seconds each time, with the Desolator much slower than that - looked like closer to 10 seconds?)

If you want to keep this feature (which currently nobody seems to use - can anyone link a replay where either of these units was closed? Let alone closed for some useful purpose?) they need to be much faster so it is usable. Once it is faster, people will then ask why it doesn't happen automatically like the other closing/opening turrets.

If you do not want to have that faster or automatic, then perhaps the feature should simply be removed. Personally I would be sad about that but I think it's better than the currently almost-unusable feature that sounds much better than it is. Alternatively, if it's intended to be a micro-intensive but usable feature, I still think fast but manual would be better than the current speed.

[darloth]

A further thought - it could be automated based on the grid energy state of the turret. If they opened automatically when connected to a 50 energy grid, and closed if the grid were cut off, that would: a) give the units some survivability when they literally cannot fire, without adding any more micro. b) give cutting off the power a slightly longer effect as they'd need to open again.

I'd still like them faster if this were the case, perhaps on the order of 2 seconds or so? I'd also still like a manual toggle for closed and open, though clearly closed-because-no-grid should override this.

If that's possible, then I'd personally consider this ideal, but I would love to hear more ideas on this. So far nobody seems to want to discuss it.

[GoogleFrog]

The rationale for a long open/close animation is that, if players are going to be clicking a button, then clicking the button should not be a non-decision. With a 2s transition time they may as well just have 4x HP (or something automatic like Razor).

This is another case of model fighting role. Why should the super heavy area denial turrets also be as anti-artillery as Razor?

[Anarchid]

Reuse bunkering animations for powerdown state indication.

[darloth]

Firstly I absolutely disagree with your conclusion that 2 seconds means they should be automatic (that’s a lot of incoming unreduced damage and it’s also dealing no damage for that time, still seems like a very impactful click to me), but if it would get it changed what about 3 or 4? Right now this feature is never used at all, and for good reason.

I would also argue that the desolator at least should have anti artillery properties for the same reason gauss does, to make it hard to remove without solutions that aren’t just more arty.

If you feel they shouldn’t do this then take away the button, make the animation fast and only happen on power down and then it’ll be a way of protecting an investment if there’s a temporary grid disruption but it will change nothing if the enemy manages to push the point during it.

Again though I think a strong area denial structure that costs this much -should- be very effective at holding ground and making it hard to take, artillery or not. The desolator is a huge investment for a medium range turret, and there is no way of protecting a point from units and artillery except spamming gauss turrets and or shields. My argument is if someone can build one, and does so, they ought to be able to rely on it to hold the area artillery or not at least for a while.