Turrets need not be complicated. The design issues were complex, but using them is easy:

For defense: One turret will be a threat to an assault (75% kill rate), but will not do much good against fighters.

Since one trained fighter can take out three turrets, on average, without being killed, it is important to have at least 10-15 turrets to have an meaningful defense of a planet against fighters. Each turret requires 1 million defense to build.

If you build turrets, do not reduce your defense on the planet below 5 million minimum or your turrets will be very weak, as the amount of defense you have on the planet determines how many turrets can fire at attacking ships.

If you have no uranium on the planet, turrets will not shoot. They use uranium as ammo, instead of energy like ships. Unlike ships, the uranium is used up as it is fired, so it is possible for turrets to run out of ammo during an attack. So, keep 100k or more of uranimum on your planet when you have turrets defending the planet.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

For attacking: Fighters kill turrets. Fighters attack one by one using a new button to attack planet.

Trained fighters are better at killing than untrained fighters, but the cost of attacking with either is fairly similar when the cost of training fighters is included in total cost.

A single fighter (or assault) attack will tell you how many turrets are on the planet. Spies will not see turrets. Each fighter attack will be followed by a screen showing how many turrets were killed and damage (or death) of fighter.

Fighter attacks, results shown of number of turrets killed, then next fighter attacks until all turrets are dead.

Then, you send in the assaults to take the planet.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Strategic opportunities for using turrets:

Even one turret can be useful as defense of a modestly defended planet. It will not fire at all without uranium or if defense is below 1M for the planet. However, with a bit of uranium and at least 1 M defense, a trained assault attacking has a 75% chance of being shot before it hits the ground with its troops.

Hint, since spies can not see turrets, be careful about attacking any planet with more than one million defense that has more than 700 units of uranium on the planet. An easy way to see if the planet has turrets is to use either a small assault or a small fighter to attack the planet. You will receive a turret attack report if there are any turrets on the planet. If no turret, send in the big assaults with safety, but if there are turrets, clear them all with fighters first.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Best use of turrets in defense:

Defense with turrets is most effective if you have a large number of them. More than 10 is needed to have a strong advantage over trained fighters, and more than 30 turrets will be annoying to most players to take out.

However, at best, turrets will only slow down an attack. Beyond about 30 turrets, the value of more turrets declines rapidly, as any player or alliance that can afford to take down a planet with more than 30 million defense can also afford to train the fighters to take down the turrets.

So, it does provide some additional defenses, but not enough alone to make a planet safe without using shields and without strong defenses is excess of the amount of resources stored.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Attacking strategy for planets with turrets:

Planets with turrets will slow down an attacking fleet. Therefore, it is wise to have multiple players ready with trained fighters to attack quickly with one figther after another over and over. Attack with trained fighters until all turrets are gone, as there is no cost of attacking after they are all dead, so don't want for the reports until you have hit with a lot of ships fast.

The most difficult aspect of turrets is not knowing how many there are on a planet. Even though turrets built can not exceed planet defense, it is possible that defense was higher in the past, and thus, a player may have reserve turrets that will fire when the initial turrets have been destroyed (the reserves come in after the primary attacking turrets are killed).

This means you can either attack with a small ship as a early test attack to see how many turrets are on the planet (with a risk of alerting a player that a major attack may be coming) or you can bring more fighters to the battle than you are likely to need for the attack (potentially wasting fuel getting them to the battle and resources and time in training them).

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Untrained or trained fighters? If you have a planet nearby, untrained fighters might be cheaper to use, overall, but if you have to bring them from a long way away, trained fighters will be much more efficient due to lower cost of iron and uranium (since you would have to build larger untrained fighters to get them to the fight).

Eventually, if we have a fighter carrier ships (which idea annoys Iiridayn due to difficulties in programming such a ship), then untrained fighters brought in as a fleet will be cheaper to use.

If the fight is near the battle zone or at a warp point planet, untrained fighters will be good value, but you will need a lot of them (on average, 180 of them for a planet with 90 turrets).

__________________________
"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Can turrets be build only on HWs? 1 planet per player with turrets?

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Waiting for technical singularity in 2035.

You need 1 mill def for turret to work remmeber but i can see your point
If someone trys to take a system and buff up def then will past built turrets be active on that planet as well?

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Founder and Lord Admiral of The Legendary Swarm.

Go For It.

Also do attacking turrets appear in news?

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Founder and Lord Admiral of The Legendary Swarm.

Go For It.

They should. But, I had not thought about that. They will as soon as we can get that change made in the code, which should be fairly early in the December round. I will view not appearing in the news as a bug, so it will be fixed so they appear as soon as I can make it happen.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

You can build turrets on any planet, but there must be 1 million defense for them to be active.

Also, remember that a trained fighter will get to shoot at an average of seven turrets before it dies, with 50% chance of killing each of these seven turrets. Thus, if you only have one or two turrets on the planet, or only one or two firing, due to low defense (they only fire if you have 1 million defense on the planet per active turret), then a trained fighter will wipe them out.

For example, a planet with 90 turrets and only 3 million defense would have only 3 turrets able to fire. The trained fighter would be shot at by the first three turrets, but would have a free attack against the other 87 turrets. Since it is impossible to kill a 24k defense ship with 3 turrets, the fighter would destroy a massive amount of invested resources and would get a huge amount of points. So, building a lot of turrets and then cutting defense afterward is not safe at all if you drop defense below about 15 million minimum level. And, any planet with 15M defense is clearly a HW. Players can have more than one HW.

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"Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."