100m Defender needs rework?

The best thing about defender is it's vision range, but glaives kill it regardless of how high the terraform below it is.
For a 100m defender, 65m glaives or 75m bandits die.

I understand that it was nerved in cost because peoples push with it, but could it not get 1 missile for long range, 1 for medium range and 1 for short range instead and use shortest possible range first?

1 Missile could have 800 range, 1 missile 600 range and 1 400.
Only then, the missiles could have a small damage buff to 2-shot a bandit, so that 2 defenders get 3 bandits and finally make cost

A good player let each glaive tank just one shot before rushing in and get that position for zero cost.

Buff the offender!

imo med/long range defences should beat 2x cost in mobiles of similar range and weapon efficiency (fast/instant/tracking projectile is worth more than slow unguided projectile), even more for the particularly short ranged ones.

the key comparison here would be picket vs fencer. Fencer has the same range, costs 50% more and has no burst, but it's mobile with above average speed and has 2x the hp and dps. It would be op if it didn't have its setup delay and could fire on the move. The only thing picket has going for itself is burst, which gives it niche utility atm.

this reminds me of the hacksaw AA turret. which is has somewhat better burst than pickets but much shorter range. It'd need to be buffed too.

Im not sure it is worth building in its current state though.

Pickets have their uses, I still see a lot of people make them. They barely do anything by themselves but I like to think of it as a sort of support porc turret. It assists the real porc and it just sort of makes it painful for enemy units to move easily around your territory, especially super light stuff.

Also it will always be the go-to turret to build just slightly outside the range of enemy porc :P

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it, but I think we've entered a HLT meta as a result of the picket nerf. You just can't really defend from skirms or do defense wars with the nerfed Picket. So people are rushing HLT instead. This has pros and cons for the meta, it makes it quite a lot harder to stop early light skirmishers.

Might be interesting if they dropped down and got 75% armour when no missiles were available and they were reloading. They'd still be very fragile, but they'd die a lot less in a support role where they were at the back and weren't immediately focussed.

Not sure it's a good idea, but we already have a few other turrets with vaguely similar behaviour.

If you just want to make them better for cost, they could have a longer range (maybe 660?). That would let them slowly whittle down Stingers if built in an offensive position, and they'd do better in the flex-AA and anti-scout role without being significantly better at raiders or anything much else, and they'd still be a poor choice of DPS per metal.

I only use Pickets when Lotus has not enough range to cover 3 mex spots against glaives or bandits.


You say> Build a line of them, and they become a safe space for your units to retreat and fight under.

Only until the enemy gets 2 Hammers and focus-fires Pickets. 3 Pickets and the 2 Hammers made cost.


You say> A suprise picket or 2 in radar-less territory can turn a glaive war and make your enemy timid.

Only if he is stupid enough to fight there instead of making warriors and repairing them.
Once you have enough to kill 1 warrior per fight, the enemy can morph a Shield into Shield Walker and it is much more effective than your defenders because he can choose where to fight with it.


You say> Picket is also extrordinary with it's flex AA capabilities. a lot of people build a razor, but I find it lackluster against anything but gunships, and even that it's lackluster against gunships like Nimbus, which can be outside vision range but within fire range, causing missed shots from radar dots.

You can build a 500m Radar a little bit behind your defense line.
It reduces Radar Wobble and your Razor will not miss any longer.
It also buffs Snipers and Hammers.


You say> If they build nimbus, no amount of ground AA will help me anyway unless it's a chainsaw or higher. May as well build swifts or mobile AA that can dodge. But picket helps every bit for air control. what are they concerned about 1 picket? what about 3 pickets? they may still engage my airforce over my pickets and I'm fine with that, cause that area is also ground-covered too.

You can use Razor also to tank shots against your statics. It increaess survivability of a Stinger if built in front of it.
Especially if you have 2 Stingers, 1 Razor and a Sneaky Pete behind it so that the enemy can'T queue attack orders with hold-fire units.


You say> I think picket still is very strong but situational. It works better when there are more pickets around. We have turrets whos job is to stop raiders for cost like llts and stardust, we don't need every tower to be unassultable.

But what is better? 4 Pickets or 1 Stinger/Gauss?
Stinger kills 1-2 Glaives per shot and has 2 shots before raiders do damage.
You can also repair it a lot better, saving metal in the progress and have less of a problem if the enemy chooses to flank your defense line.

It was OP at its old 80m; at 100m it feels overpriced (but situationally useful). I think defender nerf has directly led to the rise of the skirmisher, which was discouraged by Picket spam. I’d like to see what the game looks like with a 90m picket.