Laser defense turret

Laser Defense Turret
Structure
Faction	Townes
Role	Anti-surface and ground base defense
Armament	Laser cannon
Properties
Hit points	1000
Armor type	Base Defense Armor
Production
Cost	$1000
Produced by	American construction dozer
Requires	Cold fusion reactor
Combat
Ground attack	40 (Explosion)
Air attack	35 (Explosion)
Cooldown	250 (per laser) 2000 (per burst)
Attack range	225 (vs. ground) 350 (vs. air)
Sight range	360
Function
Power	-5
Abilities	Detects stealth

The Laser Defense Turret was an advanced replacement for the Patriot missile system developed for and solely used by General Townes.

Game Structure

Laser Defense Turrets are essentially more powerful Patriot Missile Systems with their increased damage per burst. Their pinpoint accuracy combined with their damage type allows them to efficiently take out both Infantry and Vehicles, while bypassing enemy countermeasures. The laser can target large missiles such as the Tomahawk and the mobile SCUD, though not smaller rockets.

Counters

Although not particularly expensive to construct, each Laser Defense Turret costs a whopping 5 power, making them very difficult to field in large numbers. While Townes can compensate for that with his improved Cold Fusion Reactors, sometimes the destruction of just one can take many of them offline.

Laser Defense Turrets also have trouble against a number of targets. Artillery units, for example, have no trouble whittling them at range, with the Chinese Nuke cannon and Inferno cannon being the most dangerous examples, as the turret can't intercept their projectiles. Even the SCUD/Tomahawk Launcher's missiles can overwhelm them with their sheer weight of fire in sufficiently large swarms. It also struggles to take down large swarms of infantry (specifically Angry Mobs) due to its slow, single-target attacks.

Glitches

When two or more laser turrets are near each other, if a target comes into range the nearest turret will open fire and usually annihilate the target. The ones further along that received the ability to assist fire can attack another unit twice as far as the normal range, even more than standard range-assisted Patriot batteries. This can easily destroy even artillery units if they should engage a battery of laser turrets.

Changelog

• Zero Hour patch 1.03:
  • now spawns the correct number of Rangers when destroyed
  • tooltip changed to show correct power requirement
  • fixed related unfinished building exploit

See also

• EMP Patriot system, Superweapon General specialized counterpart
• Gatling cannon, basic Chinese defense
• Toxin network, Toxin General specialized counterpart