Mini-turret

Mini-turret

A portable automatic turret. Requires steel to refurbish its barrel after heavy use. May explode when damaged. Its dumb AI brain can't be directly controlled, so beware of friendly fire.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Security

Mass

8 kg

Beauty

-20

HP

100

Flammability

70%

Path Cost

50 (21%)

Building

Size

1 × 1

Minifiable

True

Placeable

True

Passability

pass through only

Cover Effectiveness

40%

Terrain Affordance

Light

Power

-80 W

Ranged Combat

Mode

Burst

Damage

12 dmg

Armor penetration

18%

Cooldown

288 ticks (4.8 secs)

Range

28.9 tile(s)

Accuracy

77% - 70% - 45% - 24%

Velocity

70 (m/s)

Burst Count

2 (per burst)

Burst Ticks

8 ticks (0.13 secs)
(450 RPM)

DPS

4.86

Stopping power

0.5

Creation

Required Research

Gun turrets

Skill Required

Construction 5

Work To Make

1,800 ticks (30 secs)

Stuff Tags

Metallic

Resources to make

30 + 70 + 3

Deconstruct yield

15 + 35 + 1 - 2

Destroy yield

7 - 8 + 17 - 18 + 0 - 1

Technical

thingCategories

BuildingsSecurity

The mini-turret is a stationary defense mechanism which fires at incoming enemies.

Acquisition

Mini-turrets can be constructed once the Gun turrets research project has been completed. They require  30 Stuff (Metallic, 300 for SMVs),  70 Steel,  3 Components, 1,800 ticks (30 secs) of work, and a Construction skill of 5.

Alternatively, turrets can be uninstalled and looted from various world sites.

Summary

The mini-turret uses the mini-turret gun weapon. In addition to the weapon's accuracy, the turret itself has a per-tile shooting accuracy of 96% or equivalent to a Shooting skill of 8. It fires a 2-round burst, with no need for warmup, but with a slow 4.8 second cooldown. It has a maximum range of 28.9 tiles.

After firing 60 rounds, it needs to be reloaded with  80 steel by a hauler. This can be adjusted in the storyteller settings, but all default difficulty settings do not alter this.

Mini-turrets do benefit from cover, following the usual rules of adjacency and angle. The long standing bug regarding this mechanic has since been resolved as confirmed through empirical testing.

Like all turrets, they cannot target enemies through blind smoke and are temporarily disabled by sources of EMP, with downtime scaling to the EMP damage dealt. Unlike mechanoids, turrets do not adapt to EMP and thus can be continuously restunned.

Visualization of effective turret range of all three turrets, from uranium slug turret (top), to autocannon turret (middle), to mini-turret (bottom).
Green is 80 - 100% of peak accuracy, blue is 50 - 80% of peak accuracy, red is below 50% of peak accuracy and grey is outside range. Gold tiles are spaced every 5 tiles. Values from 1.0.
Per-tile shooting accuracy isn't concerned in these accuracy values.

Explosion

Mini-turrets have a 50% chance to explode when damaged below 20% health. The exploding turret will spark and emit a hissing sound for 240 ticks (4 secs) before exploding, dealing 50 Bomb damage in a 3.9 tile radius centered around the lower left tile of the turret. Bomb damage is multiplied 8x against walls, 4x against other impassable structures and plants, and 2x against passable buildings. All nearby raiders will attempt to move out of the blast radius before detonation.

Radius of mini-turret explosion visualized.

Analysis

See also: Defense structures#Turrets

A single turret isn't much firepower. Each mini-turret is roughly equal to a good short bow or normal recurve bow shot with 8 Shooting skill. Even when massed up, turrets are unlikely to handle raids on their own. But they can be useful.

• In large numbers, turrets do add up. A group of turrets, when combined with colonists, can make a meaningful difference.
• Mini-turrets are great as decoys. If a turret is closer to an enemy, enemies will often target it over your colonists. It's better for a doomsday rocket launcher to hit a turret than a colonist. Turning a turret's power off (such as with a power switch) will prevent manhunters from attacking them.

Turrets can also be used as explosive bait. While IED traps are generally more efficient, a turret that happens to explode will severely damage any enemy in melee range.

Killbox structures are natural fits for turrets. Killboxes funnel enemies into 1 place, allowing you to take full advantage of your turrets' firepower. In a killbox or not, you'll want to place turrets at least 4 tiles apart. Otherwise, a single explosion can cause a chain reaction, and destroy all your mini-turrets.

Enemies that are unusually clever, as well as sappers in general, will try and avoid a turret's line of sight. While this might seem like a bad thing, a lategame colony can place mini-turrets where you don't want sappers or breachers to go. Even if your main killbox uses turrets, you can place another, turret-less killbox near your colonist's bedrooms in order to lure sappers in.

Material

• You should expect turrets to be frequently replaced.
• Steel is the most viable option early-game, but steel turrets aren't durable and won't survive sustained firepower.
• The most effective material is nominally plasteel. It has the most HP and is non-flammable. However, it is relatively high cost and is typically in high demand in armor, bionics, etc. Uranium is commonly received as a quest reward and is significantly less in demand, while offering similar performance.
• As mini-turrets only require  30 stuff, the cost of upgrading is relatively minor. Not including work to build, uranium only increases the cost by  123 while making the mini-turret significantly less likely to be destroyed. If the upgrade prevents destruction a single time, it has more than paid for itself. Should mini-turrets be retained past the early game, it is strongly suggested to upgrade them to uranium. Notably, either Uranium and Plasteel are required to withstand a single standard explosion without destruction, and the effect of the chance to wick at 20% health further incentivizes higher HP pools.

Stats table

Mini-turret	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flamma­bility	Market Value
Material
Bioferrite	-20	004,500 ticks (1.25 mins)	200	52.5%	270
Gold	0	001,620 ticks (27 secs)	60	28%	3,235
Plasteel	-20	003,960 ticks (1.1 mins)	280	0%	515
Silver	-14	001,800 ticks (30 secs)	70	28%	535
Steel	-20	001,800 ticks (30 secs)	100	28%	290
Uranium	-20	003,420 ticks (57 secs)	250	0%	420

Images

• 

  Steel Mini-Turret

• 

  Plasteel Mini-Turret

• 

  Uranium Mini-Turret

• 

  Silver Mini-Turret

• 

  Golden Mini-Turret

Graphs

True DPS over Range

Version history

• 0.2.363 - Made turret look and sound weak to match its functionality.
• Alpha 3 - Auto-turret renamed to Improvised Turret.
• 0.19.2009 - Renamed from Improvised turret to mini-turret. Power decreased from 350W and cost decreased, but now requires barrel changes.
• 1.1 - Nerfed to fire a 2-round burst, down from 3.
• 1.1.2569 - Range increased from 25 to 29.
• 1.1.2618 - Reload cost was doubled and the fuel capacity was halved, while the damage was increased to 11 from 10.
• 1.3.3200 - Damage increased from 11 to 12. Accuracy increased: touch 0.7 -> 0.77, short 0.64 -> 0.7, medium 0.41 -> 0.45, long 0.22 -> 0.24. Turret ammo cost is no longer factored by difficulty (previously: Adventure Story and below reduced cost).
• Between 1.3.3117 and 1.4.3580 - Turrets now properly benefit from cover. Despite displaying in the mouse-over box as such, empirical testing demonstrated that mini-turrets did not benefit at all.

• 

  Original sprite of the auto-turret and improvised turret.

References

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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 • IED deadlife trap

Related

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