I just returned to Empyrion a week or so ago, thinking to see for myself the changes and explore the new factions. However, I quickly ran into an issue which, for me, has made the game unplayable. Once I have enough resources, I like to create either an HV tank or an SV gunship, equipped with rockets. I use these vehicles to go after the smaller Zirax POIs (Oxygen depot, supply base, etc.), using the rockets to take out the turrets. This has always been a normal part of the progression for me. However, when I tried to do that this time, I found that the rocket turrets on the HV do next to no damage now. It was taking me over 60 rockets to eliminate a single enemy turret. The small Zirax POIs each have four laser turrets, so that added up to 240+ rockets, not to mention two full tanks of pentaxid for the shield. This struck me as an obscene amount of rockets needed to deal with four turrets. I was sure it must be a bug, since in the past I've needed maybe at most 6 rockets per turret. However, Taelyn confirmed that this is not a bug. This means that we are supposed to expend 240+ rockets on every small POI we wish to take out, plus two full tanks of pentaxid. Those resources add up, and will rarely be made up by the loot in the POI. It therefore becomes a net loss to take out POIs. A better way to play the game would be to simply mine out everything you need in uncontested territory, and never fight a single battle. Which I personally think would yield a very boring play-through. I would submit that the damage of all turrets/mounted weapons need to be considerably buffed, otherwise there's very little reason to use any of them at all. The only use they really have is shooting down drones or predators. Against a POI they are virtually useless. I would also submit that it makes no sense for a single clip from a Pulse Rifle to do more damage than 10+ rockets from a tank-mounted turret. Because with the current damage numbers, that's the case. For your convenience, I have tested ALL of the player turrets/mounted weapons (excluding sentry guns), and listed their numbers below. I put all the guns in creative, and fired them all at a single block of combat steel. I've also included how many shots it would take the weapon to eliminate a normal 5000 HP POI turret. Spoiler HV: Minigun Turret (HV/SV): 15 damage/shot. 333 shots to destroy turret. Rocket turret: 79 damage/shot. 63 shots to destroy turret. Plasma turret: 107 damage/shot. 47 shots to destroy turret. Artillery turret: 1210 damage/shot. 4 shots to destroy turret. SV Rocket Launcher: 274 damage/shot. 18 shots to destroy turret. Plasma Launcher: 90 damage/shot. 56 shots to destroy turret. Laser Gun (HV/SV): 26 damage/shot. 192 shots to destroy turret. Railgun (HV/SV): 185 damage/shot. 27 shots to destroy turret. Base Canon turret: 46 damage/shot. 109 shots to destroy turret. Rocket turret: 895 damage/shot. 6 shots to destroy turret. Flak turret: 79 damage/shot. 63 shots to destroy turret. Laser turret: 70 damage/shot. 71 shots to destroy turret. Plasma turret: ~3305 damage/shot (block destroyed). 2 shots to destroy turret. Artillery turret: ~3834 damage/shot (block destroyed). 1 shot to destroy turret. CV Canon turret: 42 damage/shot. 119 shots to destroy turret. Rocket turret: 832 damage/shot. 6 shots to destroy turret. Laser Gun: 66 damage/shot. 76 shots to destroy turret. Rocket Launcher: 814 damage/shot. 6 shots to destroy turret. Flak turret: 62 damage/shot. 81 shots to destroy turret. Laser turret: 70 damage/shot. 71 shots to destroy turret. Plasma turret: ~2790 damage/shot (block destroyed). 2 shots to destroy turret. Artillery turret: ~3274 damage/shot (block destroyed). 2 shots to destroy turret. Obviously not all of these weapons are meant to destroy enemy turrets. But for some, such as the rocket and plasma weapons, that is their primary job. It baffles me then that we are expected to fire 18-63 times per turret, depending on the weapon we have. That is just a nonsensical amount. What are your thoughts on this? For me, turrets/mounted weapons are now virtually useless, save for drone defense. This means enemy POIs are virtually unassailable, unless you drill under them and attack that way. Which feels like cheating to me. With weapons this useless, what is the normal progression? How are we expected to take out POIs?
Enable "di" "di expr" and "di expv" to see the explosion damage calculation. Impact damage after hardness and damage multipliers is 32.333 impact damage for the rocket itself and 33.333 for the explosion per affected block determined by blast radius + ray casting on exposed voxels. The total amount of damage inflicted by an HV Rocket Turret (vanilla) should be roughly 250-350 damage per rocket depending on where you're hitting on the model, so you're looking at a maximum of 20 rockets per turret. No one else has reported an issue, so it might just be a bug on your end.
Interesting. Thanks for those numbers Vermillion; not sure how to fix it if it is a bug since Taelyn said it was by design. 20 rockets per turret still seems like a ludicrously large number to me - I can't really use weapons like that to take over POIs. I'll need to find a new way to progress I guess.
Considering the CPU costs of the vanilla HV Rocket Turret are cheaper than the minigun turret; the output of a single rocket turret is 30 seconds per turret. Your average HV will have 4 rocket turrets, so 7.5 seconds to destroy a turret with just 4 HV Rocket Turrets. Most POIs have only 4 turrets (some have less, a rare few have more), so that's only 30 seconds per POI focusing only on the turrets. Excluding any additional damage from turrets or weapons you might be packing on top of 4 rocket turrets. That's not very long for a fight. But in this case it looks like turret damage is determined by damage over time and not by damage per shot. Especially when the construction cost of rockets is only 4 iron ore, 1 promethium ore and 3 magnesium ore per enemy turret. Spoiler Factoring in a shielded HV, it takes 55 seconds for a zirax laser turret to down your shields; 14 seconds for an Ion Cannon; 72 seconds for a zirax rocket turret; 78 seconds for a zirax artillery turret; and 8 seconds for an EMP Turret. That's assuming that all shots hit you. Most 4-turret POIs can only fire at you with two turrets at any one time, and Ion Cannons and Artillery are easy enough to dodge due to slow projectile speeds.
Automatic turrets are pretty CPU-inefficient weapons for the damage they do. I would suggest outfitting an H/SV against a POI with fixed weapons instead. You'll do more damage, and you'll actually get to shoot. Railguns on top of an HV make for a pretty neat looking self-propelled gun. Or you can put five dozen cannon turrets on a CV. That's also a solution.
