They aren't exact copies of red alert tesla coils and arne't taller than other buildings, and if i made it so they could shoot over buildings that would make the game extremely easy and i would end up with people asking to make it so they can't shoot over walls, or i would have to add extra high walls that they can't shoot over because it could get very annoying having your weapons shooting over walls when you don't expect them to because its not consistent with the rest of the game, you could maybe use one of those embrasure mods to simulate shooting over walls

I mean, in game they definitely look taller than walls, especially if you place them right next to the walls.

Maybe they could shoot over walls but with less power. Right now it seems like when they hit targets, it arcs to nearby targets and kind of has a small AOE attack. Maybe that could be changed to only hit a single target, over walls. That would make more sense IMO.

I'll see if they can shoot thru embrasures. That would be weird tho. I'll post here if they can or can't so others can know.

Yup they can shoot thru embrasures. Even 2 layers thick. That's weird but it works so OK

embrasures just allow line of sight and tesla coils just work on line of sight like any other turret, and they dont chain or have aoe its single target attacks, and the ai in this game has no counter to you being able to shoot over walls, nothing in the game says how tall your wall is, is it 4 feet, 10 feet, west bank barrier? if its only the height of a normal building wall why can't the raiders just scale over it, or throw grenades over it, i think its assumed that if you have wall thats not roofed as a perimeter fence then its going to be extra tall so they can't just throw bombs over or scale it, just so that it fits with the logic of these raids

oh another issue is it wouldn't be realistic to allow something to shoot over a wall at a target thats directly adjacent to the wall, because it wouldn't have line of sight, unless the shooter was actually standing on the wall itself looking directly down the length of the wall, so you would need a whole custom targeting system that calculates how far the shooter is from the wall, how far the target is from the wall, then what the angle of sight would be based on the shooter height, the walls height, and the targets height, which would probably be expensive

https://prnt.sc/v3vns4 example of what i mean, would need a whole custom line of sight system for it to detect how far things are from the wall to know the angle of the line of sight

even if i did code a custom targeting system like that, the next issue would be making it obvious to the player that this new game mechanic is happening on only my energy weapons, else i'll get bug reports from people saying their tesla coil can't shoot things over walls and i'll have to explain the coil is probably too far from the wall, or the target is too close to the wall

Isn't that what the SACS is supposed to be? Either way, embrasures seem to work. Also, it's not AOE? It seems like it is... whenever it attacks something it hits multiple targets if they're clustered tightly together. Is that a bug, perhaps? Or does it attack many times in quick succession. All in all, really enjoying the mod. You've done a great job.

well it causes fire so it might be proximity to that causing pawns to jump back or something

In the original Red Alert, tesla coil defenses used 150 units of power, and were significantly larger. The Advanced Power Plant in that game provided 200 units of power, and is basically just the Battersea Power Station in greater London, which throughout it's operational life had an output somewhere between 148 and 504 megawatts.

So I think it could be argued the original tesla coil weapon demanded 150 megawatts of electricity, and providing that much power in a single rimworld colony would be a tall order indeed.

tldr: rimworld tesla coil too small

I don't believe anyone mentioned its power usage.