Got the warning to defend castle last night. Got there in time to see a group coming up the road, so I hurried and hit the siren to call my forces to alert and ran to the top of the battlements to snipe.

Just as I got there, both heavy turrets started firing, and seconds later the gunners took the both out. Okay battle won, time for bed. So I'm now wondering, can we put railings, wall and raise the turrets high enough to shoot over it, but protect the body?

Basically give them a smaller target to shoot at.

What I do with turrets, I always build one of the small prefab structures and place the turrets on top. You can also then build a small railing around it. The railings are under structures -> wood -> misc (where the wood bridge piece is). I haven't tried it with the small railing yet, but the elevation certainly helps.

I build the concrete shack foundation slabs to elevate pods of multiple turrets onto, with a generator for any powered turrets walled off by the base of it.

I think they would have no problem unless something made it to the base of it. Then it might have issues shooting down. I use the shack stairs prefab with walls and turrets on top as my basic settlement defense. Works well to give them a good range of fire and keeps them from being rushed by melee.

I do wish there was something like a turret shield.

Something similar to the shield plates one would see on world war two howitzers (you know those plates that extended on either side and left ONLY the barrel and nothing much exposed) would be pretty cool as a potential add on to turrets.

What's wrong with those awesome shopping carts some raiders put their turret in? lol

Believe me, would use them if they were in the workbench.

You can shoot through the shopping carts. I think they only put them there so they can easily move them around.

I'm not sure if putting barriers would help, as they need to be low enough not to impede the turret fire. The problem is that the enemies' aim is really good, and it only takes a few shots to disable one, at least on survival.

That's a nice idea for a mod. A pushable shopping cart with a turret in it.

You could always build a tower, place turrets on top and then delete the tower, for floating turrets. It looks terrible, but they're immune to melee and grenades that way.

I try to place my turrets in places where there is no long range LoS; if you can see it, it can shoot you. However, I haven't witnessed many attacks, especially ones on more fortified settlements.

I put them up high and preferably behind fences or walls. So far so good.

They fire through the walls?

My favorite is to build the first base floor/ceiling structure in place of a wall section (at ground level at a 45 degree angle). Put a floor section on top of it, then put a small guardpost on the bottom floor so its ends match with the walls and then put some number of turrets on top. One settler with a decent weapon in the guard post can hold out against tons of attackers while the elevated turret(s) lend support (or visa versa). The layout is quite economical in terms of materials as well.

You could easily build a 45 degree angled concrete foundation and place the base floor/ceiling structure on that if you wanted additional elevation and ensure the guard post destruction does not allow an easy entrance to the base.

Yes.

WELL HOT DAMN. I've been leaving them exposed, thinking that a barrier would block line of sight.

Picture? I can't quite see it from your description.

Sorry, thought you meant, could you enemies fire through the walls. Yes, they can. Your turrets cannot. The only time that works is if you use one of the walls that has a lot of holes in it and you have to be careful because it doesn't always work. I do find that, simply having a roof over the turret does seem to minimize their being targeted though.

A couple of tricks I found were:

1) Make sure your turrets are above the 2nd level. Apparently enemy range is large enough to fire above the 2nd floor (mine on the 3rd have yet to be destroyed)

2) Face some of your guns in to your compound. You'll get enemies inside regularly and, apparently your enemies won't shoot their backsides.

3) The turrets I have that are both elevated and shoot "over" walls tend not to be destroyed as easily. Those in the open, even when elevated seem to be the most vulnerable. I have a group of them set right at the top of the walled gate going in to my compound in Hangman's, just barely visible and they have yet to be destroyed, yet they can still fire at enemies.

4) Laser turrets seem to be the most vulnerable as well as missile turrets. Enemies mostly ignore my machine gun and heavy machine gun turrets if I have them as well.

5) I always place a guard post near my outer turret defenses and my settlers do a great job not only defending the compound with turret backup but seem to protect the turret as well.

Note that these are just my experiences over the last three runthroughs. It's been pretty much trial and error to discover this stuff though.

On a completely separate note though. Apparently putting a roof over just about anything will help to protect it from destruction. I roof over my water pumps and my generators and haven't had more than a tiny loss since I did it during any attack. Now all that gets destroyed are my crops and their easy to replace.