Hard counters are terrible design. Soft counters are much nicer.

Essentially it goes 'ha stupid idiot, you brought out something that wasn't the meta, hope you like dying!'. It turns it into a contest of stats rather than a contest of skill.

First Turret Proposal is up in the spreadsheet, just to have a foundation to discuss.

Blaster DPS
Missiles in Clip down
Heat on Rails up

Check out the ratios calculated for comparison.


Attempting to equalize damage per clip/ammo

Also, if you run turrets at 2000 DPS and then use a module to allow you to consistently hit infantry I fail to see how this will not cause issues.

Madrugars suffer from massive fitting failures. The gunnlogi fitting is very generous and allows solid fits. Even to the point of rendering many turrets and AV options moot.

Which is what I have been saying as well, this thread is about making all three turrets viable.

You're basically always going to have issues with any turret that has a high fire rate and lots of shots in the magazine, like the Large Blaster, when it comes to Turret vs Infantry balance. As it is now dispersion is pretty high but even 1-2 shot bursts can land shots pretty close to where you want them to go. This is of course an element of luck involved in hitting infantry with a Large Blaster but the fact of the matter is that you can still do it consistently enough to cause issues, and rightfully so as the weapon is supposed to be AV. It is far easier to consistently kill infantry with a Large Blaster than it is a Railgun or Missile turret.

The immediate reaction is "Oh just increase dispersion further" but you quickly get to the point where dispersion is so bad you can't even hit a vehicle properly with enough shots to deal appreciable damage which is part of what makes the Large Blaster so horrible at AV. Dropping the fire rate and upping the damage might help but might also be worse. It means that while less shots are going out, it takes all that much fewer lucky shots to drop an infantry, so it's questionable if that will change much at all. What is also problematic is that "Short Range" for a vehicle is vastly different for an infantry. Meaning that even though the blaster is "Short Range" for a vehicle, it's actual range is seemingly much larger for infantry trying to take cover.

It might be a bit ambitious but I think a general redesign on how a Large Blaster fires would be the best solution. The two best proposals in my opinion are as follows:

Shotgun Blaster: I've always felt the Shotgun really hit the nail on the head of what a blaster is, which is surprise up-close "OH KITTEN!" damage which is basically going to rip anything apart that's close to it. If the Large Blaster could fire like a shotgun, preferably lots of pellets with a low damage per pellet, in full auto mode with a pretty slot refire rate, you could achieve a true Blaster feel. Dispersion is tight enough to reliably hit the majority of your pellets onto a large target at 30-40m but would struggle to do a lot of damage to a small target due to low pellet damage.

I don't know if you guys can retrofit the shotgun fire mode to a turret and playtest it internally, but if you can give it a go and see how it feels.


Plasma Cannon: This also hits that Blaster feel pretty damn well. The "I dunno if I"m going hit you but if I do, it's going to hurt". I believe it was True Adamance that came up with this one, but essentially to fire either a 3 burst of Plasma Cannon shots or a triangle of them. This is fairly self explanatory, but at close range you could easily land all 3 shots on a large target, but hitting a small target would be....well about as hard as consistently doing it with a Infantry PLC. It's kind of a variant of the shotgun, just with very few, but higher damage 'pellets'. Damage per shot should obviously be lower than a PLC.

Again if internal playtesting is possible, I'd love to see how this sort of concept performs.

I like the blaster in its form of a vehicle mounted assault rifle. I also like that it is an AI-capable weapon. Again, this ties HAVs into the escalation of a match very nicely.

However, if any turret has AI-capabilities - that means if HAVs are part of the rest of the match - then this AI-capability has to be factored in with the 'utility' of the turret. If one turret is good at AV and also good at AI it's going to be plain more useful than another turret that is only capable of AV. That is how we got to the recent situation where the blaster was exceptional against infantry but fell short against vehicles. These days it's bad against both AI and AV.

There are three levers here. AI capability, AV capability and fitting requirements. I don't think we have to reduce the problem to "all turrets have equal AI capability of zero, equal AV capability and equal fitting requirements".

The issue with making the large blaster the best CQC AV turret will make missiles rather worthless. Unless if the large blaster is limited to an incredibly short range like 50 meters, the large railgun will simply be better at AV than missiles beyond the large blaster's optimal.

Compared to large missiles, large railguns have 1) higher accuracy, 2) faster projectile speed, and 3) higher damage per shot. This makes it much easier to hit targets at range and you don't have to land as many shots to deal the necessary damage. Also add in the proposed higher splash radius and damage and it's better suited to killing infantry as well.

The only way I see to keep missiles competitive is to give them slight passive tracking abilities against vehicles. Meaning, each missile will automatically guide itself with limited capabilities to the vehicle closest to where the user is aiming (maybe a slight redesign of the reticle to show this target area where missiles will passively track vehicles). This is to allow the large missile turret to be usable at longer ranges (since currently if you've ever used one you'll know that it's only effective up to about 100 meters) and be able to apply the only thing that makes it good: its alpha DPS.

I'd prefer it the most if the types of turrets (not size) determined their roles:

Blasters: best at AI, worst at AV
Missiles: good at both
Railguns: best at AV, worst at AI

I think the large blaster fell perfectly in its role before it got the dispersion nerf. It was the best at AI but the worst at AV, and people seemed to forget that you need as much skill to aim it as you do with any other weapon. It never did the aiming for you.

what happens if you make missiles like a "burst" weapon with fast launch, lower alpha but a wide area saturation and decently fast reload?

This is PURE brainstorming guys.

This is PURE brainstorming guys.

Is possible to readd the types of turrets from Pre 1.7? That way you have variations?

Dear players,

We want to reach a 100% equilibrium between the AV capabilities of Large Turrets, their primary purpose.

The AI of Large Turrets should be thought in terms of an Active module, reducing Dispersion. All other factors should be towards making it the Close range brawler weapon of choice.

There will not be a Large Fragmented Missile Launcher in Phase 1. Only Small Fragmented, and the current Small Missile Launcher will be converted to an AV weapon.

Guidance Principles
Missile Launcher Alpha is too extreme
Railgun is too good at everything
Blaster is not good enough at close

There are a few "Best to Worst" guidance examples in my spreadsheet, found here under "Large Turrets" HAV Large Turrets

Please discuss.

Just make a blaster turret AI!! IT WAS MEANT TO BE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe missile burst dps is effectively 3600 and blaster havs need to get into short range.

If the consensus is to reduce DPS overall, then we first get the dps/range curve right, and then reduce all dps.

Souce? The only official stance I've ever seen is that Large Turrets are AV, small turrets are AP.

Whatever is AP/AI get's nerfed to sh*t because infantry cry... There was not a single good complaint between chromosome and 1.6 about large blaster turrets. Than CCP messed them up. They need to go back to the way they were. Blasters being AV is some bull crap started by Rattati.

Actually Large Blasters were absurdly good at killing infantry, and it was a huge problem. And that's coming from someone who used them a shitload back in the day. I would constantly get infantry kills in situations and ranges where I had not business getting said kills.

Tell me, if Large Blasters are supposed to be AP, then what is the purpose of Small Blasters? The same thing but weaker? How do you plan to balance those two without making one over or underpowered?