turret autopilot idea

Szlat wrote:

I am still not keen on the idea of using unmanned turrets due to the arguments that will occur with the engineer wanting to use them unmanned but others getting in them.

Can you prevent players from entering turrets?
ex:
I spawn a turret, activate the remote control. As long as I am within range, no one can enter it except me. Once I enter it, or go outside of range, the remote link is disabled and would require re-enabling it.

An overlay could be applied to remotely controlled turrets (I am thinking something like the energy wep overlay)

An alternative has just occurred to me. Once every half or quarter second the auto-turrets would check what the engineer was looking at - if it was an enemy and in range, they would target it - until it was dead or out of range. No keys to press, and would get away from what happens with sentinels where the eng spawns the sentinel in a busy place, then goes elsewhere to kill.

This would make the targetting much much faster

Cool idea.

Should this only work for turrets owned by the engineer, or should an eng be able to control turrets owned by other players?

tgroombr wrote:

With this ability, any unmanned turrets you have deployed will automatically target and attempt to kill any enemies in range that have not already died. At level one....

greg11 wrote:

Can you prevent players from entering turrets?
ex:
I spawn a turret, activate the remote control.

I have reservations about allowing unmanned turrets to automatically target enemies. This essentially gives the engineer 2 more sentinels - on top of their existing sentinels. So, if we go this route, it will have to be for the turret specialist only.

greg11 wrote:

Should this only work for turrets owned by the engineer, or should an eng be able to control turrets owned by other players?

Just their own I think.

Szlat wrote:

I....An alternative has just occurred to me. Once every half or quarter second the auto-turrets would check what the engineer was looking at - if it was an enemy and in range, they would target it - until it was dead or out of range. No keys to press, and would get away from what happens with sentinels where the eng spawns the sentinel in a busy place, then goes elsewhere to kill.

This would make the targetting much much faster

I have tested this out, and it is much better. It is very responsive - twist round to see the monster and immediately the turrets are firing.

So I think I need to up the maximum turrets to 4 and see how it will perform with me in one turret with 3 other auto-turrets. Perhaps for balance reasons it shouldn't be possible to have a link turret and auto-turrets - would be similar to having sentinels and a link turret.

Just got to see what small turrets would be useful as auto-turrets.

Szlat wrote:

...it shouldn't be possible to have a link turret and auto-turrets - would be similar to having sentinels and a link turret...

I made a link turret a long time ago that never had the power to link, however other players could link the turret. If you change your mind on this, I will gladly send the code to you.