Nomad Defensive Structures

The Ghost has the EMP now. I hope it gets lockdown more than anything.

 

I imagine that 'semi-permanent' means that the turrets will die automatically after a certain amount of time (similar to Broodlings in the original). Why is this necessary, some people ask? Because of balance. It is overpowered to be able to create lasting turrets with the only limit being Nomads' energy. Lore wise, we can assume that the auto-turret, since built so quickly with nano-bots, has a relatively limited amount of ammo. It doesn't quite explain the turret disappearing if it isn't firing at anything, but it works. And not all of Blizzard's lore totally explains everything. The key is to have a good game, not necessarily a realistic one.

As far as your guys' ideas to have multiple turrets, I love it. I even wouldn't mind if the Nomad only dropped turrets, and Blizzard removed Irradiate or Defensive Matrix. The three turrets could be something like this:

Auto-Turret - as shown and seen on the website.
Repair Station - all friendly mechanical units in a certain radius are healed at some rate, rate doesn't increase with more turrets.
Dummy-Turret - looks and acts like the auto-turret, but doesn't do any damage. Costs very little energy compared to the other two turrets, a great use would be to hide which turret is the actual auto-turret (very tactically valuable for skilled players)

There could be so many more turret ideas. I really think that Blizzard should make all of the abilities the Nomad has be turrets. It would help to further differentiate the Nomad from the Science Vessel, i.e. Starcraft --> Starcraft II.

 

niner, i like all of ur turret ideas! One idea i have would be for the nomad to drop mines and what not. if the vulture is not there i still want mines, and this unit looks like it is prefect for that job!

 

Ninerman13, you have the same idea as me and GasMaskGuy. The Nomad is a construction ship, it should make turrets! The decoy turret is a nice idea. Could be good for base raiding where you really only need a few real turrets to deal enough damage to the supply line, but the decoys would prolong them enough so that they can survive long enough to do their job.

 

I like those concepts that several of you have posted about the Nomad constructing a variety of turrets, and that being its' primary function

and to ninermans' point - I understand the need to balance the turrets usefulness... there has to be some sort of check on a structure that (presumably) only costs energy... but while this is a sci-fi game, and it doesn't need to be "realistic" it helps for ideas to at least be intuitive... and there really is no reason for a gun emplacement (apparently built from physical materials) to just fall apart, disappear or dissolve on its own

I fully agree that some sort of trade-off needs to be in the game for the turrets quick appearance and lack of expense.... the most intuitive answers to this would seem to be low hit points and limited ammunition - how can that be modeled?

low hit points is easy - limited ammunition would lead us to believe that the gun emplacement needs attention of some sort from a unit to continue being effective - an alternative is to simply give each turret a limited number of shots, after which it sits useless... but that seems an inelegant solution... following the former line of thought, what units suggest themself for being the one to keep the turret active? obviously the Nomad itself is an ideal candidate.... hence the idea that turrets might only work with a Nomad nearby... I'm sure somebody else will come up with more variations of that theme

the SCV fits the bill also, maybe turrets slowly lose health naturally, and need to keep being repaired to remain effective.... i'm reluctant to suggest being manned by a Marine, because we already have the Marines in Bunkers dynamic... and that would seem too much of an overlap...

perhaps turrets are an automatic drain on resources? every time a turret fires it takes a mineral or two away? thus, if you ran out of minerals, you couldn't supply your turrets and they'd sit useless.... it'd keep people from spamming turrets as well, and make them think about the best strategic placements for them

other ideas? there's got to be something better than the dissolving machine gun concept

 

I'm pretty sure that if these turrets were destroyed after a time limit, Blizzard would've said "temporary" instead of "semi-permanent."

Maybe the turret loses effectiveness after a while, not in hp, but in things like damage, attack rate, vision rate possibly as an effect of overheating.

 

Well id personally like to have it so that the Nomad has to be nearby for the turrets to be effective kinda doing something along the lines of "transmitting" power to them as an added feature you could make it so that with in a certain range of buildings they also remain active. doing this would do several things

* Make it so that you have to do precision strikes if you want to remove turret threats
* Limit the number of turrets you could have active do to the amount of Nomads you have
* on a similar note if this were all to be the case i feel that each nomad should have a maximum amount of turrets it can have active at once in its range. (the mechanics can be dealt with later if this were to all be the case or if it were to be adopted.
* This would also in my opinion mean that turrets cost minerals and possibly (depending on type) gas
* this would also allow the Terran to take an already formidable Defense and make them with out a shadow of a doubt the
best all round D (this is merely my opinion)
* help in establishing forward bases and other mining bases (sounds like the reasoning for the unit anyway )
* and finally really would make it a huge upgrade from the science vessel even if it looses the rest of the science vessels
powers except the sensors of course

 

well,isn't every unit/building "semi-permanent" already ??

i mean,you can build a couple of Marines at the beggining of the game,and they can last until the game is over.however,they can be killed.doesn't this make every unit/building "semi-permanent",as they can last the whole game,but can be destroyed ??

i am pretty sure this isn't what blizz meant when they said that,but it's just something i've thought about it...

on a more serious note,i think the main limitation for the Nomad's turrets will be the HP.i think that,compared to other Terran defensive structures,they will be quite fragile and easy to dispatch.but they will be cheaper and faster to build than the other towers,making them still useful...

 

I just take semi-permanent to be that the turrets will last till destroyed but you can dismantle them at any point with very little time and effort

 

Yea, Terran can salvage structures so... And I like the idea of ammo, and when it runs out simply refill the ammo at the cost of 50 minerals with a Nomad. That'd balance things out.

 

Thanks for your ideas Ninerman and Nate.
Here's another one. What if they run on power? Turrets could have a bar that slowly goes down.
Lets say it lasts for 20-30 secs (remember that I am talking about SC "fastest" seconds, which are pretty fast). When a Nomad creates a turret, it starts with a full bar. When the Nomad goes out of a certain range, the power starts to go down. When it reached 0, the Turret looses power and stops shooting. It also looses all armor bonuses and can quickly be taken out when without power.
When a Nomad enters its perimeter again (can be done without the power being depleted)
the power goes up to full, or maybe increases per second. That way you would have to keep a Nomad nearby to maintain them, or do quick raids and missions with your Nomad(s) to later return.
the turrets would have low health, around 100-150.

Back to the different structures.

I don't really like the "Dummy" idea. High Templars can cast hallucinations, and they seem to work the same. Might be a bit too similar mechanics.
What if Nomads could construct "Orbital Mines", one of Nate's previous ideas? It would certainly go with the Nomads defensive theme. They would be cloaked and probably work like Spider Mines; when the enemy gets a little too close, the OM flies/hovers into them and goes boom.
They could cost around 10 energy or something like that. Could probably be used offensively to harass Overlords etc.

 

Here's another idea - they're as long powered as they stay in Nomads conduction field (they get electricity via microwaves). When some border needs reinforcements, nomad flies there and activates previously placed turrets.

Auto-turrets are also detectors, which makes them much more useful than anyone could think that piece of stationary defense can be.

 

Nomads detect, turrets don't. You must have missunderstood something.

 

I like the nomad, it helps with defences and it's also a detector

 

Right, I was assuming somehow that autoturrets have detection just as nomad... anyway it isn/t bad idea too

 

I don't how it looks the Nomad, is very ugly, but is very important in the battle life a Detector, and they's can atake quickly the economy of the other's players

 

lol imagine using it on harrassing economy wit reapers lol that would be jks

 

Hey are those green shapes in the screenshots turrets appearing or dissapearing? And if they're appearing, then what made that big blue explosion?

I'm betting the other defenses will be mines and maybe an AA autoturret or some sort of stasis trap.

 

The green things are unplaced turrets. Look in the Nomad action clip on the official site and you'll understand.

 

I tihnk the Nomad should have other structures instead of more turrets. It could be so that turrets do all the work, like Nano Repair and Defensive matrix. More turrets seems unimaginative. Seeing the Nomad has msotly defensive spells, how about some kind of force field generator or something? I think it'd be so much more useful to have other structures built instead of just turrets.

I tihnk semi-permanent is just a word. In the zealot descript, it says they can dodge bullets with their speed, but i REALLY REALLY doubt that'll be added in game. I don't see everyone going crazy about how zealots will be able to dodge bullets. So why now do we ponder about semi-permanent? The most logical reasoning is that it has low health. Anyways, as someone posted earlier, everything in teh game is semi-permanent. everything in life is semi-permanent. So yeah

Also I tihnk urrets will be built with min and gas beforehand, then they'll be deployable. I'm guessing two will be able to be built and stored at a time, seeing that two were deployed in the action shot.

Lastly, the turrets most likely do not have more tghan 150 health, or else they'd be mbalanced. The DT getting off four slashes is just to kind of "advertise" the nomad and its turrets. the turrets really can't be expected to survive that much. Or maybe the dark templars got a downgrade.