TURRET MOD

Anti-Air Seagull Cannon
Version 0.1.18 for How to Fish / BepInEx 5

TURRET MOD adds portable automated defenses that can protect an island from seagulls, loose fish, and bosses. Turrets have purchasable weapons, ten upgrade levels, three targeting tiers, unlimited reserve ammunition, player protection, ownership, naming, recovery, and a dedicated metallic control-center interface.

Controls and first use

1. Press F2 and buy an empty turret.
2. Hold the turret and hold E while aiming at a surface to deploy it.
3. Open F2, select the weapon socket, and buy a gun.
4. Purchase upgrades or targeting tiers as desired.
5. Recall the turret from F2, or look at it and hold E, when you want to move it.

Turret Control Center

The F2 interface uses a dark metallic console layout with cyan system information, orange purchase and deployment controls, red removal and sale controls, framed system sections, and a live status feed. The left panel lists every available owned turret and marks it as deployed or portable. The selected unit panel shows its name, owner, distance, weapon, combat statistics, ammunition state, upgrades, targeting tier, and safety setting.

Nearby management uses a spherical 12 m distance from the live turret object. Direction, player facing, crosshair position, and walls do not affect this check. Recall remains available remotely.

Deployment and ownership

Deployment uses the exact surface under the crosshair up to 8 m from the camera. Flat and steep upward-facing surfaces are supported; undersides are rejected. The compact base needs 0.55 m separation from another deployed turret. Its bottom snaps to the hit point and follows the surface angle.

Deployed turrets are anchored, cannot be destroyed or knocked over by explosions, and remain solid so players can collide with or stand on them. Looking at a turret within 6 m displays its name and owner when terrain does not block the label.

Picking up another player's turret preserves its owner. Hold it and use Authorize Ownership Transfer in F2 to claim it. Only the owner can manage, recall, upgrade, or sell a turret. Each player can own up to eight available turrets, with a limit of 32 per world.

Weapons

Turret guns are purchased only through the F2 weapon socket. Buying a different gun charges its full displayed price and replaces the previous gun immediately. The equipped gun is marked EQUIPPED — no charge and is protected by both interface and host-side duplicate-purchase checks.

The complete gun-and-hands model is normalized to a 1.35 m longest dimension and centered above the socket. The orange cradle rotates only around its Y axis. A separate weapon pivot keeps the muzzle upright and 30 degrees above the local horizon during the slow idle scan, then aims directly at an acquired target.

Mounted guns use their native firing animation, muzzle particle, report, mechanical audio, and reload animation when available. Procedural recoil and reload movement provide a fallback. The muzzle, targeting laser, and shot tracer share the same aim point.

Reserve ammunition is unlimited. Deployment fills the magazine. An empty magazine reloads automatically using the base weapon's reload duration. Reload speed compounds by 10% per level, so level ten reloads about 2.59 times as fast as level zero.

Targeting and accuracy

Tier 1 targets living seagulls by default. Tier 2 adds ordinary fish. Tier 3 adds bosses. NPCs and unrelated creatures are excluded. Dead creatures are ignored. Fish cannot be targeted while attached to a fishing line, held by a player, or stored in inventory; a fish becomes eligible after it is dropped from the line.

Acquiring a target starts a two-second lock period, plays the target-acquired sound, and projects a red laser at the target before firing. Losing or switching targets restarts acquisition. With no target, an armed turret performs a slow scan. An empty turret stays centered and stationary.

Level zero has 85% accuracy within a 3-degree cone. Each level adds 1.5 percentage points of accuracy and narrows the cone, reaching 100% accuracy and a 0.3-degree cone at level ten. Misses consume magazine ammunition and appear through the shot tracer.

Upgrades and resale

Ten upgrades are available. Upgrade prices start at $1,500 and rise by $1,500 each level. Bonuses compound on the previous level: 10% damage, 5% range, 10% reload speed, and 10% firing rate per level, plus improved accuracy. At level ten, damage, reload speed, and firing rate are about 2.59 times their level-zero values, while range is about 1.63 times its base value.

Turret kit pricing doubles for each currently owned turret. The first costs $5,000, the second $10,000, the third $20,000, then $40,000, $80,000, $160,000, $320,000, and $640,000. Each turret remembers its purchase price for half-price resale calculations.

Fish targeting costs $20,000. Boss targeting costs $100,000 after fish targeting. Selling returns half of the turret kit price, purchased upgrade levels, and purchased targeting tiers. Remove the gun before selling. NoSharedMoney wallets are credited when that mod is installed.

Saves and multiplayer

The host stores turret records in BepInEx/config/AASC-worlds.json; the normal game save stores the physical turret items. Keep both saves together. Startup recovery compares saved records with loaded world and player inventory kits. Missing records are retained for recovery but hidden from management. Sold serial numbers are retired so older saves cannot restore sold turrets.

Every co-op player needs TURRET MOD 0.1.18. The mod uses network protocol 3 for commands and synchronized state. Build checks, API compatibility checks, balance and targeting tests, package validation, and save/network serialization round-trip tests are included in the development project.

Installation

Install the Thunderstore package for How to Fish, enable TURRET MOD, and launch the game through the mod manager. Restart the game after updating the mod.