Mini-turret

The mini-turret is a stationary defense mechanism which automatically fires at any enemies entering its range of 24.9 tiles. It fires a 2-round burst with no need for warmup, has a slow 4.8 second cooldown and 96% per-tile accuracy. Mini-turrets are somewhat underwhelming on their own, and need to be placed in large numbers to be effective.

After firing 60 rounds it requires a barrel change to be performed by a hauler, costing:

40 steel in Peaceful and Base Builder difficulty
60 steel in Medium difficulty
80 steel in Rough difficulty and above

Construction

Constructing the turret requires Gun Turrets to be researched. Note that some scenarios start with it already researched.

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

Materials

The Mini-turret is built with 30 Stuff (Metallic, 300 for SMVs), 70 Steel, 3 Components in 1,800 ticks (30 secs).
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.
The most effective material is plasteel. It has the most HP, no flammability as of v1.2, is somewhat easier to obtain mid-late game, and saves steel for other purposes.
You should expect turrets to be frequently replaced, and uranium is too rare and expensive to be practical.
Silver and gold are poor material choices due to their poor durability and extremely high cost.

Images

Steel Mini-Turret
Plasteel Mini-Turret
Uranium Mini-Turret
Silver Mini-Turret
Golden Mini-Turret

Usage

See also: Defense structures#Turrets

Used alone or in small numbers, mini-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. Raiders with long ranged weapons can snipe mini-turrets from outside its range, so forcing them into close range with walls or terrain is recommended.

The accuracies listed in the infobox are for the base weapon, the Mini-turret gun - similar to weapons used by pawns both the weapon's accuracy and the pawn's Shooting Accuracy combine to make the true accuracy. In this instance, the Mini-Turret has a Shooting Accuracy of 96%, equivalent to a pawn with a shooting skill of 8.

Turret explosion

Radius of mini-turret explosion visualized.

Turrets have a 50% chance to explode when it reaches 20% health. The exploding turret will spark and emit a hissing sound shortly before exploding a 240 ticks (4 secs) later. All nearby raiders will run in an attempt to get out of the blast radius to keep their skin intact.

The explosion deals 400 damage to walls, 200 damage to all others structures and furniture, 50 damage to the slag chunks and components that drop, and around 50 damage across multiple body parts to all pawns unlucky enough to get caught in the explosion. Due to this, it's best to space out groups of turrets so that one exploding doesn't create a chain reaction. This is somewhat less of a risk with Plasteel turrets.

Stats table

Mini-turret	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
Material	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
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

Graphs

True DPS over Range

Cover Bug

Despite displaying in the mouse-over box as benefiting from cover, practical testing implies that this is in fact false and mini-turrets do not benefit from cover at all^{[Citation needed]}.

Version history

0.2.363 - Made turret look and sound weak to match its functionality.
Alpha 3 Auto-turret renamed to Improvised Turret
Beta 19, renamed from Improvised turret to miniturret. Power decreased from 350W and costed decreased, but now requires barrel changes.
1.1 it was nerfed to fire a 2-round burst, down from 3.
1.1.2569, range was increased from 25 to 29.
1.1.2618 the reload cost was doubled and the fuel capacity was halved, while the damage was increased to 11 from 10.

Original sprite of the auto-turret and improvised turret.

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