What would you say is the ideal location and time to build some turrets? At choke-point worlds late-early game when you already have 3-5 worlds? Are they worth building in late-game? (even if you researched every single defense research) (I usually play TEC, sometimes Vasari)
Turrets are really difficult to use well. Even if they do succeed in bolstering the defense of the target planet, sometimes they don't do it well enough to merit their cost. A smart enemy will just ignore or go around a turret, so you either need to use this to your tactical advantage or force him to engage that turret. This is the big challenge of effective turret deployment.
I mostly use turrets in the early game to provide breathing space. Sometimes I need a place of refuge, somewhere that my fleet can retreat to and the enemy wouldn't dare to attack them. A starbase with repair bays will definitely do this, but that's too expensive. A formation of turrets around repair bays is a much cheaper alternative. This gives me a place to regroup. Even if the enemy can bombard the planet (as is often the case) I now have time to muster my forces and push him out. By putting long range units and flaks inside the formation, I can often continue to fight at a distance successfully.
The key here is the synergy between turret and fleet. The turrets give you strategic control over an area of space (area is proportional to radius squared... in other words, a range upgrade for turrets exponentially increases the area they can protect). If the enemy enters that protected space, they start taking excessive damage. Now you combine this with your mobile fleet of long range units, attacking the enemy form inside your protected zone where he cannot pursue.
I tend to create something like a Fortress world defensive strategy. Where I build up the 1-2 chokepoint worlds with turrets, a SB, 2-3 repair platforms, and 2-3 frigate factories. Basically a fleet Headquarters on world the enemy would have to get past in order to conquer more of my planets.
If you already have a starbase, those turrets are probably superfluous. If he's packing enough firepower to bring down the starbase, he's definitely packing the firepower to bring down the turrets. I'd either save the money and buy fewer tactical upgrades on the planet, or spend them on additional repair bays (or as Vasari phase stabilizers are a good choice). This is still an effectively strategy; late game, it's ALL about controlling choke points and having powerful starbases on them.
Now, that said, the whole point of a fortress like this is so that your fleet can attack aggressively. With this kind of fortress, you know that if things get antsy you have a powerful stronghold you can fall back to.
Im talking about meson bolt, not the 12% range boost of highly conductive rails (tier 3) that youre talking about, Meson Bolt is tier 6. Precision beam focus is tier 7.
Yeah, I almost never get Meson Bolt. Too many labs. I've only gotten it once in multiplayer, and that was when I had four asteroids (all front-line... that random map was seriously fun) all of which were protected by turret farms.
TEC do not have techs to increase the power of the Gauss Turret
Rate of fire upgrade. They're specific to the gauss cannon (no other units) but they're very inexpensive. I rarely get more than the first level (required for range upgrade) but when I'm turret farming I max this out.
The 6 techs that are prereqs to Precision beam focus upgrades INCREASE the power of their turrets, Cap ships, illuminators and bombers. Its something that most Advent players are getting anyways.
But you almost never max it out; if you do it's extremely late in the game.
What im saying is at the point a TEC turret is fully upgraded(tier6), an Advent turret is not far off, already has shields and shield mitigation(65% dmg reduction ftw!?), 30% upgraded firepower plus and additional 50% ontop of that
You're missing the point; it's not about tech levels at all, it's about how much you have to invest for the techs you want. My whole point is that range upgrades are the most important upgrades for your turrets. TEC can max this out easily in the early game. Advent cannot max it out until late game. That is why TEC turrets are awesome and why Advent turrets are not.
Oh and the extreme range on Advent starbases is their last weapons upgrade which ends up costing around the same amount to get (sb tech+sb+deploy+upgrade 1+ upgrade 2) as getting the 6 prereqs to precision beam focus
Actually, the basic starbase attack already has long range properties. If you max out the beam range upgrades, turrets only begin to match short-range starbase attacks. Secondly, you're comparing the cost of actually building a virtually impregnable early game defense with researching the prerequisite of a technology that will make turrets a viable defense structure.
And 3 or 4 cap ships? try 2 and some change.
No, I just ran the math and it turns out the numbers I threw off the top of my head were right. To buy all six beam damage upgrades will run you about 6700 credits and 3000 metal/crystal. Doing a standard resource to credit conversion, this is about 20k credits. A capital ship costs about 6k credits after resource to credit conversion, and therefor it comes out to three and some change. My guess is that you're ignoring the fact that high level technologies have exorbitant metal and crystal costs, and were just looking at credit costs, which is an invalid comparison.
Anyways, my fundamental point: bloody expensive. Can't do it until the late game.
So yeah theyre defenses may not have the best range, but that doesnt matter much when you can just shove the entire enemy fleet at your defensive cluster
If you have the forces to completely maul the enemy, what are you doing trying to build a defensive nest? If you're on the offensive, don't waste cash on immobile defenses. If you're on the defensive and need to hold ground, you can't use illums as recklessly as you otherwise might.
To repeat what I said in that buried post: area is proportional to radius squared. A range upgrade has grants exponential improvement to the area protected by a turret. This is why range upgrades are by far the best kind for turrets. I only turret farm as TEC, and even then only when I have an Akkan. The reason is that turrets require stacked range bonus to be effective. I occasionally build turrets as Vasari and hope to get off a shot on a capital ship or support cruiser. I only build turrets as Advent when clearing militia, never as a serious defense.
