Mini-turret

Improvised turret

An improvised turret that automatically fires at nearby enemies. Explodes when damaged. Its hacked-together AI brain isn't very smart, and can't be directly controlled, so beware of friendly fire.

Base Stats

Type

Security

Mass

100 kg

Beauty

-60

HP

100

Building

Size

1

Placeable

Yes

Power

-350 W

The improvised turret is a stationary defense mechanism which fires at any enemy pawns which enter its firing range. It will automatically target any raiders or psychotic animals which enter within a 25.9 tile radius around the turret. The turret is a 3-round burst weapon which has no warmup time required to fire, but has a woefully long 5.15 second cooldown period after firing. While turrets are somewhat underwhelming on their own, large groups of turrets are able to incapacitate or kill hostiles within seconds.

In order to construct Improvised Turrets, you need to research gun turrets, which in turn requires microelectronics basics to be researched. Gun Turrets is pre-researched if you choose to start off with the 'Rich Explorer' scenario, and you can also implement Gun Turrets as a starting research in a custom scenario.

A visual representation of an Improvised Turret: The red carpets represent the explosion radius, the white carpets represent the turret's range

Tactics

Used alone or in small numbers, turrets do not provide much additional firepower. However, raiders will often target the turret instead of the colonists if it is closer to them, shielding the colonists from harm until the turret is destroyed. However, attackers will not take an unpowered turret as a primary target. The firepower of the turrets adds up when massed together, to the point where turrets alone can sometimes beat back even massive raids. Larger colonies often build a "killbox": An entrance area designed to funnel raiders where turrets can do maximum damage while the raiders' own ability to fight back is minimized. Using Sandbags to protect your turrets can be a solid tactic in either case.

When building a turret, there's a 50% chance that it will never explode; regardless of what amount of health it's at. Normally; a turret will spark and emit a hissing sound that increases in pitch, once it drops to or below 20% of its maximum HP (e.g. a Steel Improvised Turret will begin hissing at 20/100 Hit Points), and explode a few seconds later. When a turret's about to explode, all nearby raiders will run in an attempt to get out of the blast radius to keep their skin intact.

When a Turret explodes; it does 200 damage to all structures within its radius, 50 damage to the slag chunks and components that drop, and typically 12-36 damage (with variances in increments of 4 points) to all pawns unlucky enough to get caught in the explosion - but it will sometimes do 48 damage too.

Example of an Explosion

Trogo is attacking a Steel Turret with his Awful Wooden Shiv. It's at 21 HP, but it's still fine.

The turret's now at 20 HP and begins to spark and hiss - Trogo's in danger.

The turret has now exploded: Trogo's wounded, structures are damaged - all hell's let loose. Took several screenshots and merged them into one image to demonstrate the full extent of the damage.

Materials

Naturally, Turrets come in 5 flavours: Shocking Steel, Perfect Plasteel, Unaffordable Uranium, Stunning Silver, and Glorious Gold. Regardless of what material's used; turrets will always give out -60 beauty - so don't even consider building your turrets out of Gold, or even Silver; they'll have more of an impact on colony wealth (therefore increasing the size of raids), while doing less for you by having less Hit Points.

Material	Steel Cost	Cost	Hit Points	Flammability (%)	Market Value	Beauty
Steel	175	3	100	20	425	-60
Plasteel	100	3 + 75	280	10	1,335	-60
Uranium	100	3 + 1,500	250	0	9,280	-60
Silver	100	3 + 1,500	70	20	1,775	-60
Gold	100	3 + 1,500	60	20	15,270	-60

The most effective material to use which is also worthwhile is naturally Plasteel: It has the most HP, very low flammability, is somewhat easier to obtain mid-late game, and saves Steel for other things (e.g. power generators, weapons) - especially as you should expect Turrets to be frequently replaced, and Uranium is too rare and expensive to be practical. Steel is the most viable option early-game, but it's advisable to switch them out for Plasteel Turrets as soon as you can, as Steel Turrets aren't very durable and therefore can't withstand sustained gunfire.

From left to right: Steel, Plasteel, Uranium, Silver, Gold

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Architect

Security

Barricade • Sandbags • Spike trap

(research)

Autocannon turret • Foam turret • Mini-turret • Rocketswarm launcher • Uranium slug turret • Mortar

IEDs

IED trap • IED incendiary trap • IED EMP trap • IED firefoam trap • IED smoke trap • IED antigrain warhead trap • IED tox trap

Related

Antigrain warhead • EMP shell • Firefoam shell • High-explosive shell • Incendiary shell • Smoke shell • Tox shell