Laser Towers - Where do you use them?

[tyrwith]

Hi all! I just finished story mode a couple days ago. As I was playing through the levels and experimenting with different combinations, I noticed laser towers really didn't seem to improve the overall effectiveness of my defense, and gun/cannon towers seemed to be all I really needed through the whole game. As a fan of directed energy weapons in real life, I decided to run a quick experiment to see if I could find where laser towers could fit in the mix.

I ran through the map "Standing Orders" in the 10k resource challenge and, while keeping my tower placement fairly constant, ran through with different types of towers. I made two main kill zones: one at the first platform and one at the center platform. I placed a temporal in each and made sure to spend the full 10k in upgrades evenly amongst the towers (except the temporals). Here are the different combos I tried:


All guns

All cannons



Half guns, half lasers

2/3rds guns, 1/3rd lasers (this makes resources spent equal between the two)

Half cannons, half lasers



Half meteors, half lasers, with a level 2 missile tower

Half concussions, half lasers, with a level 2 missile tower

The results where a little disappointing. Both the all-guns and the all-cannons setups beat the level extremely easily, with no aliens even touching the cores until the last wave with the crashers, who were quickly finished off by the center platform after they grabbed 9 cores.

The gun/laser and cannon/laser hybrids saw no improvement, but generally didn't underperform either. The aliens generally made it the same distance, and the crashers grabbed 9 cores at the end but were killed. In one of the gun hybrids, however, they didn't die until they met the first platform again near the exit (so, underperformed a little I guess).

In the last two experiments with meteors and concussion towers (meant to see if a NON-gun/cannon setup is viable at all) both resulted in cores being lost completely.

I concluded that gun or cannon towers are required in order to win, and that strategies that use them almost exclusively also win. I also concluded that there are probably some situations where a laser tower or two might improve your defense, but that a general rule of thumb is that spamming guns/towers works fine anyway, so why bother.

Do you agree/disagree? Where have you found a laser tower to be a key tower in beating a level or a challenge?

My thoughts are this: lasers need a buff. I read that laser towers have the best DPS/cost in the game, but my opinion is that this is nullified because of shields. If they do double the DPS, but only do damage half the time because of shields, it's a wash. Seeing as the US military has mostly speculated that laser weapons could be used to shoot down missiles and artillery rounds in flight, I think it would make sense to allow lasers in Defense Grid to target flying aliens and gain increased range.

Also, it's your game, but traditionally in other games I've played, "energy shields" are opposite: effective against kinetic weapons but defeated by lasers/emp/etc. Even giving lasers a 50% damage against shielded aliens (on par with the inferno tower) could make them more viable.

[Phatty]

I don't use laser for squat. It's not effective either as a single target or an AOE attack, and doing zero damage to shielded targets and aerial attacks makes is somewhat useless. I'm not sure the tactical function that was intended with this type of tower, but there's nothing a laser tower can do that a cannon can't. One could argue that perhaps if an enemy were susceptible to energy\burning damage that this would do the trick, but if that were the case I would still pick the incendiary because it would address groups of enemy, thus serving a dual function.

While we're at it you could lump in Tesla as well, since it doesn't do as good a job at anything that either a gun or cannon couldn't do better. I think it was intended as a fail-safe where you could leave a strong one powered up as a last defense mechanism, but why make a mostly unused tower when you could put one in the same location that can fire farther and be of use through the entire combat scenario and prevent units from getting that far in the first place.

IMO there needs to be some tweaks to the Laser and Tesla towers to make them more viable. I like the idea (not unlike CnC) where if Tesla towers were close enough together they could chain and add to damage but perhaps directly stealing another game's mechanics is going too far. Ideas: If you built them side by side you could upgrade to a single, more powerful unit? Increased range and\or line of site would also help. Or, If a laser tower could fire OVER other towers it would make them significantly more valuable. Just some thoughts.

[Rodin]

Laser towers are primarily useful on the early stages. In particular, it makes the first stage where you can get Temporal towers immensely easier to get golds on. You can drop a single Laser tower on that stage and survive for quite a long time due to the enemies burning to death.

On the later stages the design of the maps doesn't favor Laser towers that much and it's simply easier to obliterate the enemies with cannon towers. I've also observed that Laser towers don't "scale" that well when you upgrade their stats, and the burning isn't that useful against the higher HP enemies of the later stages.

Early game though, I wouldn't have been able to get gold on a number of maps without them.

Tesla towers on the other hand are bloody useless. Never been able to find a use for these outside of self-made challenges like using ONLY Tesla towers to pass a map.

[btdenn]

I use an occasional laser tower in conjunction with guns and cannons where aliens path by a locaton multiple times. Usually following a number of temporal, guns, and cannon.

Since it appears the "tank" alien draws most of the fire coming down a path the guns/cannon may not take out the big alien so as they path by I want the quick firing laser to hit the aliens trailing the larger alien(s). This works better when there are multiple "tank" aliens. I only do this on a few maps and works best with side-by-side temporals to keep aliens pathing by multiples times as slow as possible.

Typically there is a better tower choice and at best I have one or 2 laser towers on any given map. If you can't force the aliens to path in range of laser tower multiple times it really isn't a best choice.

[parasiterex]

I think laser towers do retain value throughout the game, due to one specific situation. On several levels (the penultimate stage comes to mind) there are areas where due to line-of-sight a given tower will only be able to fire on an alien for a short time. This is compounded further by the sprinting aliens, the leech thing that runs fast, etc. In this case, I think a red laser will do more damage than a red cannon--it will tag the alien and confer the heat damage penalty, which will continue hurting the alien after it flies out of range. I am not saying lasers are the equal of cannons by any means, and I only use one or two per level toward the end, but they still have their uses. Honestly the only tower I don't use at all is the tesla tower.

By the way, I like that shields protect against energy attacks but let projectiles right through. It's completely ficticious, obviously, but I like the idea that the magic energy shield protects against the magic deadly laser much more easily than the real life physical cannon shell coming it at several thousand feet per second. I guess it comes down to how you like your fiction. Earth 2150 was like that, another great game from long ago.

[xaduurv]

I sometimes find the laser tower useful, for reasons already mentioned in this thread, but mostly because using it reminds me of Dr Evil doing is air-quotes and saying "LAAYZZER" or mentioning frickin sharks with frickin laser-beams on their frickin heads!

I'll see myself out...

[elliott264]

I find grouping three or more lasers together near a temporal and maxing out the upgrades tends to be an effective defense as long there is a long stretch for the aliens to continue their march. I have seen all but the strongest enemies continue to burn and die on extended platforms after meeting my barrage of high class lasers!

[takista]

1. Let us suppose that one alien is running away with a power core.

but there is much time to build towers.



In your opinion, which tower building is optimal choice to gamer ?



Methinks...Buiding a Laser is good choice for the gamer

because of its 1-level fire power

while gun is weak and needs upgrade

and cannon is powerful but firing rate is low at 1-level.



2. "Ancient research" and "The long descent" need Lasers.

Absolutely if the gamer wants to get higher points on these missions.



3. Some practice levels require lasers, too.

Needless to say that, laser or inferno can be a good supplement

to defense grid power structure.