Auto Turret Rust: Power, Setup, Best Gun & Raid Cost

There is a specific sound that ends raids. Two beeps, a servo whine, and then the tearing noise of a gun that never has to reload its aim. Somebody who logged off four hours ago just killed you through a window bar from thirty metres away, and you are looking at your loot bag on the wrong side of a wall.

That is the auto turret. It is the single most effective defensive deployable in Rust, and it is also, once you know the numbers, one of the cheapest things in the game to remove.

The auto turret in Rust has 1,000 health, draws 10 rW of power, sees roughly 30 metres in a 180 degree arc, and takes whatever gun you feed it. It costs one Targeting Computer, one CCTV Camera and 10 High Quality Metal at a Workbench Level 2, or you can walk into Outpost and buy one for about 400 scrap and skip the entire research step.

This Auto Turret Rust guide has every verified number: the exact power draw including the trap nobody mentions, battery runtimes, the full raid cost table sorted by sulfur, the DPS of every gun a turret will accept, the 12 turret interference cap that most guides are still ten updates behind on, the rear blind spot, and the things a turret shoots straight through that will surprise you.

• What it is
• Stats
• How to get one
• Power
• Setup
• Peacekeeper mode
• Best gun
• Interference
• How to destroy one
• Beating it for free
• Placement
• Vs other traps
• Mistakes
• FAQ

What is the auto turret in Rust?

The auto turret is a powered, deployable sentry gun. You place it, authorise yourself and your team on it, drop a gun and matching ammunition into it, feed it electricity, and it shoots anybody who is not on its list and who walks into its cone of vision.

Facepunch describe it in one line: an automated electric sentry turret that will engage and neutralise any moving targets it has line of sight to. That line hides the two things that actually matter. First, it ignores your tool cupboard. Being authorised on the TC means nothing to a turret. Every teammate has to be added to the turret’s own authorised list by hand or the turret will shoot them in the back of the head on their way to the furnace. Second, it has its own separate power budget, and a turret with no power is a 1,000 HP box of free loot with your gun inside it.

It arrived in 2015 as a fixed weapon platform with a built in assault rifle. The version you use today came out of the Modular Turrets update on 6 February 2020, which stripped the built in rifle out, made the turret cheaper, and let it accept almost any projectile weapon in the game. Since then the important change has been turret interference in October 2023, which we cover in full below because it quietly broke every “just put ten turrets on it” base design in the game.

Auto Turret Rust stats

How to get an auto turret in Rust

Craft it

The recipe is 1 Targeting Computer, 1 CCTV Camera and 10 High Quality Metal at a Workbench Level 2. That is it. Ten HQM is nothing by mid wipe, and the craft takes 45 seconds, or 22 at a Workbench 3.

The blueprint is the expensive part in practice, because both components are loot only. Neither the Targeting Computer nor the CCTV Camera can be crafted or bought, so every turret you build starts with a crate run.

The hackable Locked Crate is far and away the best source, which is why every wipe turns into a race for cargo, the Missile Silo and oil rig timers. Killing Bradley at Launch Site is the other reliable route: three APC crates with a 50 percent targeting computer roll each is usually a turret’s worth of parts in one trip.

Buy it at Outpost for 400 scrap

This is the part that most Auto Turret Rust guides bury, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for anybody under 2,000 hours.

The Outpost weapons vending machine sells a complete Auto Turret. The base price is 400 scrap. No blueprint, no research table, no Targeting Computer hunt, no Bradley fight. Walk in, pay, walk out with a turret in your inventory.

Facepunch’s dynamic vendor pricing system means that number moves with supply and demand on your server, so treat 400 as the centre of a band rather than a fixed sticker. In game data the turret sits inside a roughly 200 to 800 scrap range, the same 0.5x to 2x band the SAM site uses around its own 500 scrap base. If your server has been quiet, buy early and cheap.

Loot it whole

A finished Auto Turret drops directly from crates. A Locked Crate has a 16 percent chance of 1 to 3 turrets, which is the single best drop in the game if it hits. Bradley’s APC crates are 5 percent, elite crates 2 percent, and a Military Crate is 1 percent. Every scientist type in the game has a small chance too, down to a 0.01 percent lottery ticket on Tunnel Dwellers.

How much power does an auto turret need?

An auto turret needs 10 rW. That is the whole answer to the most searched Auto Turret Rust question there is, and it is also incomplete in a way that gets people killed.

The 11 rW trap

The turret has three output slots: Has Target, Low Ammo and No Ammo. Wiring any of them into a smart alarm, a siren light or a trap is one of the best things you can do with a turret, because it turns a defensive deployable into an alarm system that pings your phone through Rust+.

The catch is that each output costs 1 rW to push a signal. So the moment you use the outputs, your turret is a 11 rW device, not a 10 rW one. Build a circuit with exactly 10 rW per turret and your alarm will silently fail at the precise moment something walks into the arc, because the turret prioritises itself.

What can actually power a turret

Every one of those sources except the generator is variable, which is why nobody serious wires a turret straight to a turbine. You wire the turbine into a battery and the battery into the turrets. The battery smooths out the dead air when the wind drops and keeps the sentries awake at 3am while you are asleep.

Battery runtime, in minutes you can actually plan around

Those runtimes assume a fully charged battery and nothing recharging it, which is the worst case you should design for. A Large battery on its own carries a single turret through an entire offline night with 30 hours to spare. A Small battery carries one turret for 40 minutes, which is enough to cover a wind lull and nothing else.

The Large Rechargeable Battery is also, conveniently, the tech tree node the auto turret sits behind, so if you are going down the tree route you are buying the right battery on the way anyway.

How to set up an auto turret

The order matters. Do it in the wrong order and you will either shoot yourself or spend five minutes wondering why the turret will not accept a magazine.

1. Face the direction you want it to watch, then place it. The turret’s 180 degree detection arc is set by where you were standing at the moment of placement. You can change the facing later from its use menu, but getting it right first time saves a step.
2. Authorise yourself. Hold E on the turret and pick Authorise. Do this before you power it. Tool cupboard authorisation does not carry over, so every single teammate must walk up and be added individually.
3. Load the weapon and the ammo. Hold E, open the turret’s inventory, drop a gun into the weapon slot and the matching ammunition into the ammo slots. The turret must be switched off to accept or change a weapon and ammo, which is the thing that trips up everybody on their first turret.
4. Wire the power. Run at least 10 rW into the Power In socket. Eleven if you are using the outputs.
5. Pick a mode. Attack All by default, Peacekeeper if the turret sits somewhere your neighbours walk past.
6. Turn it on. Toggle it from the use menu. The laser comes on, red for Attack All and green for Peacekeeper.

Peacekeeper mode vs Attack All

Attack All is the default and it does exactly what it says: anybody not on the authorised list gets shot on sight. Peacekeeper mode is the interesting one, and it works exactly like the turrets at Outpost and Bandit Camp.

In Peacekeeper mode, every player starts out friendly. The turret only opens fire on players the server itself has flagged as hostile. Two things get you flagged:

• Firing a gun or a bow
• Dealing damage to a player or to a player built structure

Because the flag lives on the server rather than on the turret, it does not matter how far away you did it. Shoot a bow on the other side of the map and every peacekeeper turret in the world, including ones placed after you fired, sees you as an enemy. The flag clears after roughly one minute of not repeating either action and not being spotted by a turret.

Best gun for an auto turret in Rust

Since the Modular Turrets update, a turret takes almost any projectile weapon in the game, from an Eoka to an M249, plus every ammunition type that weapon accepts. Attachments work too. That opens up a genuinely interesting decision, because the right answer depends on whether the turret is protecting your loot room or your outer wall.

The rule of thumb

Match the gun to how likely the turret is to survive. Every Auto Turret Rust setup ends up with a tiered lineup rather than one weapon everywhere:

• Loot room turret: M249 with incendiary if you have one, otherwise an AK. This turret exists to kill somebody who is already inside, so raw damage wins.
• Perimeter and roof turrets: MP5A4 with pistol bullets. You will lose these, and losing an MP5 hurts a lot less than losing an AK.
• Bait and trap turrets: Custom SMG. Eight HQM. If a raider spends an incendiary rocket killing a Custom SMG turret, you won that exchange.
• Long uptime while you are offline: Bolt Action. Low fire rate means the internal magazine lasts, and 89.6 per shot still kills anybody who is not in full metal.

Turret interference: the 12 turret rule

Most Auto Turret Rust content on the internet is still years behind on this rule, and it changes how you build.

On 5 October 2023, in the Solid Foundations update, Facepunch added turret interference. Only a limited number of turrets can be active inside a given radius. The two server convars are:

• sentry.maxinterference defaults to 12
• sentry.interferenceradius defaults to 40

In plain terms: no more than 12 powered turrets will function within 40 metres of each other. Turn on a thirteenth and it powers up, emits a blue electrical glow, and acquires no targets at all. It is not broken, it is not out of ammo, it just will not shoot anything.

There is no cap on how many turrets you can deploy. The cap is on how many are active at once. That distinction is the whole design space:

• Wire spare turrets through a Smart Switch or an HBHF Sensor so they only power on when somebody is actually there, keeping your active count under 12 the rest of the time.
• Spread turret clusters more than 40 metres apart across a compound rather than stacking them on one loot room.
• Remember that an interference disabled turret can still be remoted into from a Computer Station and fired manually, though the signal will be weak.

How to destroy an auto turret in Rust

This is the half of Auto Turret Rust that nobody building a base wants to read. A turret costs you a Targeting Computer, a CCTV Camera, 10 HQM, a gun and a magazine. It costs the person removing it almost nothing.

The cheapest way to kill a turret

Three answers, depending on what you have in the bag:

• One incendiary rocket. 300 sulfur and 75 low grade. It does roughly 1,713 damage against a 1,000 HP turret, so a single rocket does the job with room to spare. This is the answer if you are already raiding and have a launcher out.
• Seven cannonballs, 105 sulfur. Cannonballs craft two at a time from 50 metal fragments and 15 gun powder, which works out at 15 sulfur each. If you already have a cannon in position for the raid, this is the cheapest sulfur route in the game.
• Seven molotovs, zero sulfur. Three hundred and fifty low grade fuel and 24 seconds. There is no cheaper way to remove a turret, full stop. Metal doors take no fire damage at all, but the auto turret very much does.

How many bullets to destroy an auto turret?

More than you want to carry. Explosive 5.56 sits at just 9.008 damage per round against a turret, which is 112 rounds and 2,800 sulfur, worse than a C4. Plain rifle ammo is worse again. Shooting a turret with a gun is a losing trade unless you are already out of range and simply have nothing else, and the turret is very likely shooting back.

Melee is a different story. The turret has 1,000 health but very little melee resistance compared to a door: a hatchet swing does roughly 20 damage, so about 50 swings kills it, and even a starter rock does around 5 per hit. That only works on an unpowered turret, or one you have approached from directly behind, which brings us to the good part.

Beating an auto turret without spending anything

The auto turret has four exploitable weaknesses, and none of them cost sulfur.

1. It only reaches about 30 metres

Thirty metres is roughly ten square foundations. On open ground that is nothing. Stand at 35 metres with a bolt action and the turret is a decoration. This is why turrets on the outside of a base in flat terrain are usually a donation rather than a defence.

2. It cannot see behind itself

The turret detects in a 180 degree arc set at placement, even though it can rotate a full 360 to fire. Approach from the rear half and it does not know you exist. It will only spin round on you if you shoot it first, and by then you should already be close enough to hammer it.

3. It runs out of ammo, and it wastes it

A turret has an internal magazine the size of whatever gun is in it, and it has to reload when that magazine empties. Worse for the defender, the turret will happily dump rounds at a player who is half hidden behind cover, and its shots lag behind a moving target. Running tight circles around a turret is a genuine, well known way to empty it. Once the magazine is dry and nobody is home to refill it, the turret is scenery.

4. Power is a single point of failure

No power means no turret. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries are all destructible, and they are usually outside the strongest part of the base because they need height or sky. Killing the power supply is often cheaper than killing the twelve turrets it feeds.

Where to place an auto turret

Placement is worth more than the gun you put in it. Every good Auto Turret Rust position follows the same three rules: cover exactly one approach, keep the turret body protected, and make sure a raider has to enter the arc before they can hit the turret.

• Behind window bars or a prison cell gate. The turret shoots through both. The raider has to break the wall to reach the turret, and gets shot the entire time they try.
• Above a doorway, angled down. Height keeps it out of melee reach and forces a raider to shoot upward from inside the arc.
• In the loot room, facing the last door. The final turret should be the one with your best gun in it. If somebody gets that far, damage is all that matters.
• Covering a garage door or airlock. Tight spaces are where a Spas-12 turret goes from mediocre to horrifying.
• Never in the open on a roof edge unless you accept it as bait. An exposed turret is 400 scrap of loot to anyone with one incendiary rocket.

Auto turret vs shotgun trap, flame turret and SAM site

The important distinction is that a SAM site is not a turret substitute. It only targets air vehicles like the minicopter, scrap helicopter and hot air balloon, plus MLRS rockets. Three SAM sites is the usual recommendation for full MLRS protection. It costs 25 rW, more than double a turret, and does nothing at all about the person with a satchel at your door.

Shotgun traps and flame turrets need no power whatsoever, which makes them the correct early wipe answer while you are still farming for a Targeting Computer. At 300 HP each they die fast, but at 150 scrap they are meant to.

Five mistakes that get your turret farmed

Almost every Auto Turret Rust failure comes down to one of these five, and four of them are free to fix.

1. Forgetting to authorise the team. Tool cupboard authorisation means nothing to a turret. Every player, every turret, by hand. This kills more teammates than raiders do.
2. Budgeting 10 rW instead of 11. The output slots each cost a rW. Four turrets with alarms need 44 rW, not 40, and the failure is silent.
3. Building past twelve. Anything beyond 12 powered turrets in a 40 metre radius glows blue and shoots nothing. Wire the extras through a Smart Switch instead.
4. Picking a turret up repeatedly without repairing. Each pickup costs about a third of its health. Repair at a bench for 6 HQM before redeploying.
5. Putting your best gun in the most exposed turret. The outer turret dies to a 300 sulfur incendiary rocket, and your AK goes with it. Custom SMGs go outside, M249s go in the loot room.

Auto Turret Rust FAQ

Sources

• Facepunch Rust Wiki, item page for autoturret, for craft cost, research cost, recycle output, repair cost and power consumption.
• Facepunch Rust Wiki item pages for the M249, Assault Rifle, MP5A4, Custom SMG, Spas-12 and Bolt Action Rifle, for the per ammunition DPS figures.
• RustClash Rust Wiki auto turret durability table, for per hit damage, quantity, time and sulfur on every explosive and fire tool, plus the loot table drop rates.
• RustClash entity pages for the Targeting Computer, CCTV Camera, SAM Site, Flame Turret and Shotgun Trap, for component drop rates and comparison stats.
• Facepunch news post Solid Foundations, 5 October 2023, for the turret interference mechanic and its convars.
• Facepunch news post Modular Turrets, 6 February 2020, for the change that let turrets accept any projectile weapon.
• The Rust Electrical Handbook at rustrician.io, for the 10 rW plus 1 rW output figure, the 180 degree arc, the 30 metre range and all battery capacities and runtimes.
• Rust Wiki (Fandom) Auto Turret page, for the peacekeeper hostility rules, the pickup health penalty and the pass through list.
• Corrosion Hour, RUST Outpost Vending Machine Loot Tables, for the 400 scrap Outpost price and the shotgun trap, flame turret and SAM site prices.
• The whenisforcewiperust.com Rust raid calculator, for cross checking explosive counts and sulfur costs.