Balancing the cannons: my suggested aproaches

[jbox1]

You know what sucks?

When you spawn into a world, only to find the entire area is littered with cannons all ready to shoot you down. It's painful, and I'd dare say a lot of people would agree with me. However, the idea of directly "nerfing" cannons doesn't seem quite right. Sure, the ability to instantly destroy parts is definitely daunting, but also adds a healthy level of difficulty to the game, nor do I want cannons reverting back to shooting a random bullet as they did in the demo. However I have a solution. Instead of nerfing cannons, there should instead be a way to counter them. I present a few changes that I believe would better balance cannons, while keeping their one shot kill ability, but also rewarding the equipped player.

Increase the magnetic properties of cannon shells
As some of you know, bullets can be deflected by magnets of sufficient power. As of the moment, a magnet can deflect some cannon shells, but it is not very reliable. So, I suggest that magnets should have a stronger influence over cannon shells. Also leading on from that, cannon shells should also friendly fire, so you can not only deflect shells, but also send them back at the enemy

Make shells take damage
Commonly referred to "point defense", the theory is that you can shoot shells out of the air with your own bullets or lasers. This will of course take practice, but the ability to shoot shells out of the air will grant skilled players an ability to block incomming shells. This adds more skill level to the game, as well as a good method to counter cannon shells.

Make cannons require the transmitter to be active
Think about it, if you've got an array of drone-killing cannons, you've probably got them hooked up to some kind of controller. So, should the transmitter be destroyed, the cannons should have no way to control themselves, effectively killing them. However, I don't want this to effect the smaller guns nor the transmitter defense drones.

Add the ability to disable cannons with Cryo/EMP weps (or add an upgrade in the tree)
I also recommend some sort of upgrade or mechanic to EMP cannons. EMPed cannons will not reload or fire while EMPed, but they will also be more resistant to damage as well. This means EMPing cannons will act as a defensive strategy, rather than an offensive one.

[Markus]

Great suggestions @jbox1. I think at least one of them will be included in the next update  Other ones are interesting as well. The turrets need more balancing, so they will definitely change in the future. Your suggestions and observations are very helpful.  

[STM]

Great ideas! 

Maybe adding a 'turret-free zone' around the spawn point just to avoid beeing shot at after a few seconds of entering the planet...

[jbox1]

6 minutes ago, STM said:

shot at after a few seconds of entering the planet...

I couldn't agree more