They're unlocked very early in the game and can shrug off big biters, shooting right through their armor. I get by on my 10-20h playthrough with not even a solid line of these around my wall.

Due to how pollution spawns higher tier enemies later on in the game, you end up with LESS threatening swarms as the game progresses, because very little of the damage capacity of the sniper turret is wasted on overkilling enemies. Fighting big biters is actually EASIER than fighting small/medium biters, and you only need sniper turrets past a certain point.

Until the game throws stronger enemies at me, I'm just gonna sit on sniper turrets the rest of the game without needing ANY other tech. I'm also not seeing any variance in enemies from bobs enemies mod (default mod settings, .6 or so evo factor).
Even if/when the game DOES throw leviathans at me, won't it will be the same thing with big biters? Just spam more snipers to get higher single target damage, and use ammo/turret upgrades if needed?

think you'd be more likely to get a response if you don't use words like "crap" in your subject line.

if it's not enough for you, add more enemies.

Sniper turrets were added by request, and have been a complete headache ever since.

Basically, if I set the range too low people complain they're not really sniper, have it too long they complain that it's too powerful
if I set it to fire as fast as a standard gun turret, people complain that's not really sniper, so it needs to fire slowly. but then it doesn't do enough damage. So I have to increase the damage multiplier per shot, but do it too far and and again, it's too powerful.

currently, it's around this middle spot, where it actually does less DPS than the gun turret, but with a longer range (though accounting for damage reduction per shot isn't easy, the DPS against smaller things is much lower, but the DPS against larger things is potentially higher)

So, I'm stuck in this position where SOMEBODY is going to complain at me no matter what I do, even if it's doing nothing.

Do nothing: people like you complain.
Reduce the damage: people complain it's not powerful enough
Increase the damage: People complain it's too powerful
Reduce the fire rate: people complain it's not powerful enough
Reduce the range, or increase the fire rate: it's not sniper enough.
Delete the sniper turrets: People complain that I deleted the sniper turrets!

So... what would YOU suggest I do to fix this, WITHOUT upsetting someone.

I think the most problematic thing with Sniper Turrets in their current state is how effective they are with ammunition compared to Gun Turrets and how they basically completely ignore armor.

I think it would be nice if they had some special ammunition type which would be more expensive than classic bullets or have smaller magazine size. This would also make Sniper Turrets more of an investment and harder to set up and get (you would have to research the ammo and set up the production chain).

I'm not sure how to solve the armor problem, but I think the Sniper Turret ammo should only deal physical damage and should not have such high base damage as regular ammo (you should not be able to shoot Plasma/Acid/Fire/etc. bullets from Sniper Turrets).

If it's just a case of how much damage they do, in theory I could just lower the multiplier, but again, it has already been lowered significantly compared to old values.

Different ammo... should the sniper gun that the player uses then instead use this new sniper ammo?

either way, if I change anything about it, someone will complain at me for the change.

As a preliminary statement - I will say I quite like the sniper turrets. But then I play with a fair number of mods that jack the biters up on steroids.

As has been suggested increasing the cost is one way to balance. But most of the problem is the item completely bypasses armour at the higher end. But if they don't do enough damage they become useless.

Have you considered having them fire clustered rounds, such as duplex or triplex? Bit of a work around I expect, but would let you have another way to balance them. If they hit the Biter at the same time it would still look right. However 30 damage in one bullet is much better against biter DR than say 3 X 10 damage. 3 x 10 would also encourage the use of higher tier ammo.

I will however state I have no idea how feasible this is with the code base. I also do like the sniper turrets as is.

could also just split it out to its own mod. or a dropdown selection in startup settings for the balance preferred.

there's no such thing as burst mode firing, just a delay between shots.
you could however cram in even more damage types, but that wouldn't really work either.

Hy!

I think the best option is to add a config for it (if its not already done I'm too lazy to check).
My personal opinion is that they might be a bit powerful but i didn't realize the "just make a lot of them" tactic.
I would solve the problem with a DPS reduction. Increasing the time between shots a bit.
Snipers aren't known for they're speed anyways. The high range and damage would stay the same so it would be useful in just the right conditions.
Thanks for the great mods btw. ;)

If it's just a case of how much damage they do, in theory I could just lower the multiplier, but again, it has already been lowered significantly compared to old values.

Different ammo... should the sniper gun that the player uses then instead use this new sniper ammo?

either way, if I change anything about it, someone will complain at me for the change.

Hello,
its hard to make everyone happy .. or make it at least a little more realistic.
Sniper Turrets should use special Ammo which reflects the higher Damage (like cal .50 Sniper)
The Standard Ammunition is more like cal .223; which has far less punch

Just my 2 cents

I think making sniper turrets as a separate mod with separate settings for damage multiplier and shooting speed will make everyone happy since it will allow customize the turret behavior to each own needs.

I would suggest to add a new ammunition type for the sniper turret and the sniper rifle, like another caliber with only one shot per round