Weak Turret Gun



Despite designing a gun that basically never runs out of ammo, it can never be designed in such a way that someone can't destroy it or knock it down fairly easily, although smarter game designers will usually put them in hard-to-reach places or at the end of long corridors. Most frequently seen in FPS's.

Video Games
""So, we're ALL supposed to be blind, right?"
 * Starcraft has the occasional turret gun in Installation levels. They are some of the feeblest units in the game.
 * Starcraft II features a flying unit that can periodically drop turret guns with unlimited ammo but limited duration. While not as weak as the lowest-level units, the turrets can't stand up to stronger units or concentrated fire.
 * Splinter Cell has computer-controlled turrets. They couldn't be shot, but they could be disabled by reaching their computer. But to get to the computer, they had to be distracted by chemical flares. As long as you weren't in the area when the flare ran out. If you were...
 * Averted in Conviction, where the ceiling-mounted turret guns in  cannot even be targeted by Sam - you get a(n un)helpful white cross in place of the crosshairs when aiming at them - much less destroyed. Similarly for the ground-based turrets you encounter in various places, though for these you at least can take out the operator, which will also prevent them from firing on you after that.
 * Duke Nukem 3D 's turrets would go haywire and stop shooting you for several seconds after a single shot, from any weapon. It didn't take much more than that to blow them up, too.
 * In Half Life, its expansions, Half Life 2 and the subsequent Episode sequels, the turret guns are simple lightweight tripods that are completely invincible, but if knocked over will go insane and fire wildly for a few seconds before shutting off until they're set back up (even picking them up and dropping them can be enough), which can be a boon when they're used against you, or a curse when you're trying to use them yourself. This weakness is offset somewhat by their portability and ease of deployment when firing support is needed in defensive situations, as well as their inability to be destroyed and always giving you a chance to set them back up.
 * Averted, however, by their big-brothers in HL1, which are mounted in floors and ceilings and are both tough and deadly. They will also hunker down into a little armoured wart when idle, so beating them to the draw means you do less damage. HL2 featured similar turrets in the Overwatch Nexus area. The only way to destroy one was to slide a grenade into the hole, which was only open while it was shooting.
 * In Portal, while the turrets are again on a tripod and can be permanently shut down by knocking them over (by throwing an empty milk carton, if you so choose), an increased difficulty option does exactly the right thing to turrets: they are surrounded by a steel cage making their disablement impossible. PAIN. (Storage cubes suddenly become a player's best friend on said increased-difficulty level, not that they weren't already.) They are, however, adorable, with their deceptively innocent-sounding voices and apologetic catch-phrases. Definite Monster Sob Story material.
 * Portal 2 introduces us to what happens when the above-mentioned turrets are defective. It's easiest to let their lines speak for themselves:

"Anyone got any bullets?"

"Er...Blam! Blam! Blam! I'm not defective!""


 * The Crusader games use this trope pretty prominently... and then subvert it by having some such turrets protected by unlimited shielding and, naturally, using the biggest, baddest, shield-penetratingest weapons in the game.
 * In Mercenaries Playground of Destruction, it's possible to effectively destroy stationary machineguns, grenade launchers, and recoilless rifles by ramming them in a vehicle. So hop in a vehicle owned by that faction, convince the enemy to get away from the gun... and knock it down!
 * The automated turrets in Red Faction were unique in that they functioned exactly like the stationary emplacements. By this, I mean that if you could run up to an autoturret that's plugging away at you without taking too much damage, you could hit the action key and literally just use it like a stationary gun! Even stranger, when you hit the action key again to leave it, the thing'll immediately turn on you again like nothing happened.
 * While they're extremely tough, just like everything else electrical in Deus Ex, autoturrets could be hacked with computers, disabled with multitools, stunned with electromagnetics, fooled with radar invisibility, and just blown up with any explosive. Yeah, that kind of game.
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution has turrets that aren't weak in the physical sense - indeed, they're quite resistant to damage and so very hard to destroy. However, if you have a strength-increasing augment merely walking behind them lets the player pick them up and relocate them somewhere they won't be a threat - like, facing straight into a corner. Even more fun, hack the turret so it's on your side and you've got an infinite ammo portable shield and machine gun. You can even use one of these against a boss.
 * Inverted by City of Heroes, where the Malta TacOps Engineer can create a gun turret that does relatively weak damage, but which can take a lot of damage before being destroyed, and will stick around and shoot at you even after its creator is dead. Compared to some other Malta enemies, it's merely a nuisance.
 * And recently, all turrets have been upgraded to hovering models...
 * Starting with Wing Commander III, these are the primary defense for capships. (Earlier games had turrets, but you couldn't select them as individual targets, due to limitations of the game engines at the time.)
 * The first Ratchet and Clank game had a turret gun that worked within a 180 degree field of vision. When the player character reached that angle, the gunner would just sit there until struck. Subverted later on, when the turrets are set in bunkers it's impossible to get into without solving a puzzle. At one point, you couldn't even get into the bunker, and had to shoot the gunner through a tiny vent hole.
 * Some missions in the Free Space series have sentry guns, essentially two or four gun turrets attached to a frame. They only take a few shots to destroy.
 * In the second game, the GTSG Mjolnir Remote Beam Cannon. As the name suggests, it's a turret with a beam cannon (the most powerful in the game for the GTVA) mounted on it (and nothing else). They also tend to die quickly when under attack, making them semi-literal Glass Cannons (in that they are cannons, but not made of glass). If you can keep them alive, they are your best friend in the one mission they appear in (in which you must kill a few capital ships, something the Mjolnir excels at).
 * Iji features turrets whose weapons span the range of available guns from weak to strong. However, they're all vulnerable to being kicked or blown up, which instantly disables them (and sends the head of the turret flying). You can also crack them to make them retract, which also gives you a little ammo. Some turrets are set up so that they'll shoot and disable each other if you just duck.
 * Later in the game, you'll run into Skysmashers, turrets that can float around, making them much harder to hit. They're still just as vulnerable to kicking, though.
 * Enemy Territory Quake Wars features a number of turrets, however all of them are weak and can easily be destroyed unless all 3 are put together-the Anti-Vehicle turrets are the worst, making it so that unless a vehicle is going unbearably slowly, they will not even get hit.
 * Used effectively by Total Annihilation, where every turret has its meaning in the appropriate phase of the game. First-level tank rush? Not a problem if you've built three or four light laser turrets. Entire enemy army going for your base? Why, that's precisely why you build stadium-sized super-cannons that can cover most of the map with utterly devastating showers of death. Play a game long enough and all sides will build enough static defences to make all standard units useless, and the only possible way to win is with atomic warhead slapfests...
 * Spiritual successor Supreme Commander is similar, though the developers downplayed the importance of turrets slightly, apparently realizing TA's problem with them.
 * The big difference is in the addition of the siege breakers. Defenses are still terrifyingly powerful, but units are even more powerful. Mobile artillery is even stronger in Supreme Commander negating the defenses.
 * Also, higher tier turrets, while more powerful, tend to have weaker rate of fire. They can stop most attack force of their own tier, but can be easily overwhelmed by the hundred of tier 1 bots that three tier 1 turrets could have held back easily.
 * Justified and partially averted in Starlancer. Capital ship turrets aren't much of a direct threat to the player's ship, but they can take out torpedoes. They're also small and hard to hit, forcing you to fly dangerously close.
 * In Jak X, the only way to destroy a turret gun is to drive into it (of course, you're always in a car, so...). However, you receive no collateral damage for doing so, nor do you slow down.
 * In Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 low level sentry guns can be instantly killed in the online play by knifing them.
 * However, you must attack from behind or have Cold-Blooded perk. Other than that, they're actually pretty resistant to damage and they deal a lot of it themselves.
 * The online game S4 League allows players to place one turret on the map, but they have to take up one of their three weapon slots to do so, they have fairly low health, you only get three of them each spawn (other held weapons have unlimited ammo for reloading), and they are completely stationary so their usefulness relies on how well you hide it on the map while keeping it effective.
 * The turrets, however, make great distractions, support options, and enemy detectors (The scoreboard reports when your sentry gun is destroyed). Not only that, but they can spot enemies the second they get within firing range, so cover is much less effective with them around.
 * There are a couple of turrets in Fallout 2 which can fire a lot of bullets/plasma bolts, but a good rifle and a careful shot to their camera lenses renders them harmless if you stand far enough away. Some of your teammates don't figure this out, however.
 * Its probrably rather inverted. Fighting those turrets with short-range guns and melee/unarmed combat is tatamount to suicide. Specially those plasma turrets in Navarro.
 * Completely averted in Unreal Tournament. There are various turrets on Assault arenas that will only attack the attacking team, and they are completely indestructible. The only way to survive them is to outrun them somehow. But than again, that's the whole point of Assault Matches.
 * Double subverted in Defense of the Ancients. In early game, the power of the towers serves to discourage enemy heroes from a frontal assault on defenders in their vicinity. As the game progresses, however, increasing health and damage available to both Mooks and heroes, while the towers don't grow stronger, means that the threat they pose just keeps dropping.
 * Played straight and subverted in Team Fortress 2, by the Engineer's sentry guns. At level 1, sentries are fairly weak things that work like an automated assault rifle; up quick enough to shoo off at least the pesky enemy Scouts that may already be marauding about your base. At level 2, they transform into an automated minigun. At level 3, the miniguns gain a rocket launcher. Sentry guns can be hugely effective because of their automatic targeting that can track even Scouts combined with high firepower, but are balanced out by the fact that you can only build one at a time. At all levels, they partially avert this trope because they cannot be knocked down, despite enemies firing masses of rockets, thousands of bullets, and everything else they can find at it.
 * The Engineer now has a new unlockable, The Gunslinger, that makes 'Mini-Sentries' instead. It's a weaker version of a Level 1 sentry that cannot upgrade. It's appeal is that it can be deployed near-instantaneously and that doesn't cost much metal.
 * Both played straight and averted with the Laptop Gun in Perfect Dark, depending on your game mode. If your playing single-player, co-operative, or counter-operative, the Laptop Gun is best used as a machinegun, since the levels are more or less linear. In multiplayer matches, however, the turret mode becomes far more useful, as the turret can kill enemy players in seconds.
 * Averted hard in the Quake II expansion pack Ground Zero. Turrets are small, hard to spot, anything but fragile, and their shots are powerful. To make it worse, they're one of very few enemies in the game that can actually lead their shots. They're so frustrating to deal with, they change gameplay entirely from "run-n'-gun" to "cover-crawling nightmare".
 * Averted with the Troika stationary guns in Gears of War, which are armored in front and will reduce you to Ludicrous Gibs in a second.
 * Descent 3's sentry guns fire weak easily-dodged lasers and go down quickly.