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Somewhat related, but rocket turrets have a somewhat overly long range, longer than that of the rocket launcher. (at least in 0.5.0) With steel armor, running in to fire a single rocket took me down to half health because the turret managed to get 5-6 shots off before I could get in range.

Shalashalska wrote:Somewhat related, but rocket turrets have a somewhat overly long range, longer than that of the rocket launcher. (at least in 0.5.0) With steel armor, running in to fire a single rocket took me down to half health because the turret managed to get 5-6 shots off before I could get in range.

These turrets are quite slow, how did they manage to fire so many?
Did you aim correctly (mouse pointer pointing very close to the target) ?

BTW: do you know that you can have more armors of the same type at once?

The problem with alien rocket turets is that you have no way to avoid its misels as they seem to have infinite fuel.
Take an example:
Yesterday I build a railway between two of my stations. Becouse railway goes to close to one of the alien bases alien rocket turets launched rockets towards my train. And those rockets just folowed my train until they catch it and hit it. And by the time they hit my train it was already athleast 5 if not even 10 times further away (almost half of the fully zoomed out screen) than rocket turets range of fire is.
And even when I was driwing with my car near alien base whenever rocket turets fired on me I always got hit. Not a single rocket missed me and I tried everything like trying to get as quickly as far as I could, rapidly changing direction just before misels hit me, trying to get behind the forest hoping the misels might hit it. Well ony thing I didn't try is get behind some alien structure as that would be definite suacide as I would be shot by other turets.

SilverWarior wrote: The problem with alien rocket turets is that you have no way to avoid its misels as they seem to have infinite fuel.

I have to agree with this, I noticed it even more when I made the bomber mod on the wiki. I suppose I never posted anything about it because I'd simply gotten used to how Factorio works lol.

Just to chime in from someone that's actually used missiles IRL:
I was an operator of an AA missile system, and our maximum engagement range was only about 1/3rd of the missile's maximum range.
Admittedly, the speeds I dealt with aren't approached in Factorio, but the idea that a target should be hit well beyond the point where missiles are no longer firing is quite sound.

Additionally, a static defense should by all rights have a harder, faster, and longer reach than any equivalent portable system. (Artillery will always out reach and out destroy a Tank, in terms of ordnance.)

I would vote for something between 1.5x-2x the firing range.

Do you think that there is a considerable difference between being hit by a "full" missile, or with one with almost empty fuel tank?

Since the fuel is not directed at the target, no.
The warhead is the damage source, and the kinetic energy of the casing is negligible in comparison.
You might have a bigger fireball, but fireballs themselves don't cause real damage.