Before you head down the stairs, talk to the shaman, by the garden at the N end of the village. He will give you Rad-X. Note that you can steal from the turrets here; each has about 40 large energy cells.

Booze Miller <karnovbox@hotmail.com> adds:

I found out something about the Surface Turrets in the Preoria Mission... They have unlimited Ammo. I had Rage Take out the batteries in these toys before hand thinking they would run out of ammo... They didn't. Oh well, at least I didnt lose a single tribal to their bad aim. I had 3 guys with Neosteds standing right in front of them and Beth and Kevin with A Powerglove and that crazy Ripper Sword... Melee attacks rock against these things.
----2.4----

Head down the stairs and look out for the radscorpion behind the stairs. Loot the dead tribals for items when the scorpion is dead. Head S to the room with the shelves and through the door there. In the next room are some roaches behindsome machines, and you'll fight a number of smaller oaches on the way. They go down in 1 or 2 hits, so it ought not to be a problem. In the ice chest is fruit and a super stimpak. Move out into the hallway carefully to pick off the smaller roaches. Beware the larger one further down (I swear, those things creep me out).

Move down the hall, to the room at the end. There are some small roaches inside, with shelves and a fridge. On the shelves here is the Yellow Pass Key, important for later. In the fridge is Rad-away, which you will need.

Return to the stairs area and head NE this time. Stop in the first room on the right. Inside are roaches, worth XP, but nothing else. The first room on the left also features some small roaches and little else. Head up to the 2nd room on the left and find the single crate in the middle of the room for a little loot.

Go around the corner (SE) and take out the roaches in the room to the SW. You can then get at the desk with the science book inside. Now you must get into the room to the NE, which has 2 large roaches in it. Position most of your guys right outside the door, in line of sight with them if you can 'perceive' where they are from outside, and when you open the door you ought to be able to at least severely wound them on the first volley. Your reward is the ice chest, crate, fridge, and shelf. While most of it is food, you also get some small energy cells.

Your next task is to clear the exercise room, the next room to the NE. There are 2 doors, one at the NW end and one at the SE end. There are many roaches in here, and 2 big ones. There is a locker against the NE wall with rad-away in it. Now head into the room across the way, to the SE, which will be a complex of rooms, including an office.

Try to head to the entrance and fire on the several large roaches from afar, drawing them to you where you can hit them in the room with the shelves. There are 4 or 5 of them, and be careful because they can spit. Once they are subdies, check the desk in the bunk room for a gun magazine, and the big white desk under the monitor, in the room with the hole in the floor (the biggest one).

Then, head into the office. If you have the yellow pass key, you can open the large yellow vault door here. You get Rad-X, flechette shells, and a fusion battery from the lockers, and a science book and a 44 from the locked safe (my lockpick was 100, plus the kit).

The 44 is a nice weapon because it takes 1 less AP to use; this means that if you have 10 Agility and Fast shot, you can get off 5 shots a round. My weapon of choice at close range, although it has to reload pretty often.

Head back into the hallway and, up to the double doors, which should open automatically for you. It might be a good idea to power up the facility using the control here, but it will put the turrets on line. As any Fallout gamer knows, the defense systems (the turrets) are the first things to break in the event of an attack (i'm gonna shoot the contractors that did this job, you can be sure). But they don't really break. Nooooooo... they go HOSTILE on anyone that moves <grumble mutter spit>. In any case, be careful of them. They are guns, not roaches, and will do much more damage as a result.

Once the backup power is on, you can go through the next set of doors. Doing so will activate the alarm though (but it does say 'have a nice day'). Go and loot the splattered Vault 0 citizen for some stimpaks. The turrts are very hard to take out with small arms fire. Wait for the turrets to kill off the cockroaches they can see. You won't be able to see anything, but you should hear firing.

Each of the turrets has about 350 HP, and you'll be lucky to do more than 1 point of damage to them each time. The turrets go up and down, so if you don't have explosives, the best trick might be to wait for them to go down and then run past them. You don't have much time, though, so you'll have to use cover to do it. Bonus move is a real boon here. The turrets have pretty bad accuracy, but save it before you try this (best to do it 1 guy at a time) so you don't get chewed up too bad.

You could try putting your best grenadier at the pile of boxes in the middle of the floor, there to chuck grenades at them, but it's hard to do and doesn't do as much damage as you might expect. You could also try targeted attacks on its various parts to try and cripple it. I couldn't find it in the manual, but a targeted attack is done by activating the small dot with a circle around it in the lower right-hand corner of your weapon button. Destroying the turrets will not get you any XP. They do, however, have a large amount of power cells on them (for your weapons, not for the quest). In fact, if you can steal all their power cells with a thief character and then let them fire at you from long range, using up their ammo, they will pose no more threat to you.

george indigo <yodawon@yahoo.com> suggests:

easy way to take out turrets is to out range them with your snipers they will still shoot but only about 1 in 20 will actually hit you will on the other hand you get about 85% on the targetted attack target their sensor hitting this knocks them out then blast them with any ap rounds you have with your attackers. This also works great when shooting through windows. It does require alot of ammo though.
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Justin Cramer <thinredpaste@yahoo.com> writes:

I found this interesting tidbit about the turrets in preoria. They can't stand up to melee attacks. Sounds wierd, but if you get right up next to them, they can't hit you at all, and you can tear em apart with a crowbar. takes a long time, but its very satisfying to know that you took out a heavily armed and armored enemy with a piece of metal, swung like mad. Of course, it's a little tougher if there's a pair of turrets, so you might want to snipe or grenade one and then beat the crud out of the second.
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Gilkey, Gregory <gsg@lucent.com> writes:

This might be a bug that the player can use to his/her advantage. During real time the turrets are going up and down with a certain rhythm. However, if you initiate combat while the turret his down, it will stay down while the turn-based combat system is active. I stood my characters up and ran (actual walked) all the way past them with ease. I even tried to "steal" the Large cells. I kept getting caught however, the turret never came up to shoot at me. Of course, this only works if you use the turn-based combat system. I only used it with the squad-based combat system.
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KittyH suggests:

Turn on CTB and passive and just run like heck past them.
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Chris369@aol.com writes:

In the Preoria mission, I've found it easiest to just run past each of the turrets, moving guys one at a time. I take a guy, put him on ignore (so that he won't stop and shoot something), go into CTB mode, and dash past it . Haven't taken more than one hit from a turret per guy this way, and a lot of times don't take any hits. For short distances, such as across a hallway in the field of fire of a turret (the third turret comes to mind), I take each guy, and go into Individual mode once he has all his action points. Quite often the turret won't fire as it doesn't have/get a turn. The lack of opportunity fire seems like a bug to me, so this might get fixed in a patch.
--------------

(This can be difficult as you have to time it right like an RTS and turn off the control fast enough if you still intend to save the villagers.)

lobar <lobar@home.com> sends a monster of a tip, saying:

Preoria <Killing Turrets Made Real Easy>
I have become a specialist in killing these things quick and easy. A well balanced group can deal out well over 100pts of damage per combat turn.

Most importantly, turrets are terrible shots at close range. If you stand beside one, it rarely ever hits you. When facing the first two you encounter, make sure to stand someone beside each so both turrets are firing point blank at someone. Otherwise the second turret will be at range and cut you to pieces.

Weapons of choice; Power Fist, Ripper, Neostead.
Other effective Weapon; Diamond Spears.

Power Fists and Rippers will do their full range of damage. In case of the Power Fist, in the hands of someone with 9AP, that's three attacks.
Really effective. The cattle prod is effective as well, but does smaller damage. I'd rather put the batteries into a Ripper or Fist. More bang for your buck.

Neosteads rule. Burst mode is okay, but wastes ammo. Better to do aimed shots into the sensors. Damage averages between 20 and 50 pts.
Critical hits do far more and sometimes knocks the turret out. (Once Ice shot one in the sensors and did 616 points of damage in one shot!! I was really impressed). At point blank range, you rarely ever miss.

Diamond Spears. Not bad but only do 6-8 points of damage. Might be better if used by a Melee Weapon character type but I don't play those so I am unsure. In general these spears are effective agianst many things because the diamond tips act as armor piercing.

Every other weapon is a waste of time. You may get lucky with a critical hit on an aimed shot to the sensors, but this is very rare. AP ammo used to work great, got all kinds knockouts with it, but after the patch, this ammo is just as useless as the rest. Flash grenades seem to always stun turrets, but they still fire at you anyway so again, waste of ammo there too. Though the stunn effect may reduce their chance to hit which could prove helpful when you first charge up to them to reach point blank range.

Tactics, place one person with a Neostead right beside the turret. To either side of the Neostead you place a person with a power fist or ripper. In behind the Neostead person is where the diamond spear people go. Reason, even though you are doing aimed shots with the Neostead, it still sprays buckshot around. If you have people ringing too much of the turret, you'll end up hitting them as well. Either side of the Neostead person has proven safe, and since spear thrusts have a range of 2, you can stand behind the Neostead person in safety.

Generally, I go in with two Neosteads, two spears, a powerfist and a ripper. This way when you fight the first two turrets, you can split the group in two and have a balanced set of attacks on each. With one turret, I've managed to get two Neosteads beside it with each flanked by powerfists, and still did not shoot my own people. The Leader Perk works well here. I had one person, Ice I think, with a Neostead and Diamond Spear. At 9AP, she could do an aimed shot with the Neostead and thrust with the spear. Good way to stack up your attacks and pile on the damage. As a group you can polish these things off really quick. Each turret will gain you some where between 650 and 700 Small Fusion Cells. Well worth the effort. You can leave this mission with thousands of these things of which you can save some for later while trading some off to recoupe the Small energy cells you used up.

Later on, when you have big weapons and better armor you can go for the ones in the rooms you have to run through and the ones on the surface.
One way to keep the Villiagers safe from the surface turrets is to place one of your people in front of each surface turret. When they pop up, they'll shoot at the closest target, you, and at point blank range, it's rare that they will ever hit. Later on with better equipent, you send one person down to flip the switch, and your surface team, waiting point blank, rips them apart when they pop up. Once they're gone, you can go for the ones you left in the rooms below.

For the rooms where you have 10 seconds to run through, an easier way to make the time limit is to run through the first two rooms. In the third
room with the lockers and one destroyed turret, lay your people down just past the row of barrels and flip the switch. The turrets in the first two rooms have their line of site blocked by the wall under the windows, and the one in this room is blocked by the barrels. You can also crawl up to the lockers and search them this way without getting shot. Only tricky part is getting past the last turret. If you crawl to the edge of the barrels, then stand and run into the hallway beyond you should make it. You may take a hit or two. I just wind up running into the corner and destroy the turret.
----2.2----

Once past this obstacle, head out into the hall. You will be ambushed by 2 radscorpions to the south and a turret to the north. This turret is best (and more easily) avoided.

The door to the SW cannot be opened yet, so you have to go NE, towards the turret. Try to get into the workshop across the hall to the SE. You will discover a number of cockroaches and radscorpions in adjoining rooms. If it is too much to handle, bait them out into the hall where the turret can take care of them.

Head SE into the adjoining room with the workbench and shelves. The work-bench has a microsledge, which is good for melee types. Go into the next room, the one with the flashing light. You can see cockroaches and scorpions coming towards you, but what you can't see is the scorpion hiding by the locker. You have been warned. In the locker is one of the quest batteries and poison antidote.

Move SE and get the fruit on the dumpster. There will be several bugs in the next room that will come for you, so be warned. Move NE to the automatic door and send your fastest person in to activate the controls. Try to avoid the turret in there.

Once the power is switched on, head back around to the workroom with the windows and out into the hallway with the turret. Hopefully you can shoot all the bugs in the conference room through the windows here; you don't want to have to fight them and dodge the turret at the same time.

Now for the dangerous part. You must run past the turret into the workshop past it, and try to get at the crate right near it, and then run into the conference room behind. A good tactic is to use the power generator room nearby to aid you in this. The crate only has a roast bug in it, so it's safe to skip if you're not exhaustive. The workroom only has a repair kit in it, so you can skip that, too, if you want. But you should try to get into the conference room. Actually, it's not the conference room that is important, but rather the hall to the NE of the conference room. The conference room does have a table with some good stuff on it, though.

The hall beyond also has a turret, which ought to be avoided. Go to the room at the north end of the hall, the medical-looking room. There are several items on the table here next to a terminal that opens the door to the second room. In the fridge is Rad-X and another yellow pass key. There are also lockers in the corner with medical items and texts. Go into the back room and get the medical items on the table there.

Go across the hall to the room with the shelves. Use the yellow pass key to open the vault door and go in. Disarm the trap on the desk and open it to get Leather Armour Mark II (previously, there were 2 suits available for sale at the store) and some ammo.

Now, do you feel lucky? In the locker at the end of the hall near the turret is a bunch of cool stuff: an M16, a custom revolver, and a large amount of ammo. The revolver is much like the magnum, 1 less point to fire, and the m16 does little more damage than the hunting rifle (less than the AK) with the same range, so it's up to you.

Head back to the set of doors that were closed before, right by the double set of turrets at the beginning of this section. Go through those doors and use the controls there. The unfortunate thing is that it will activate the surface defenses in 10 seconds. This means you have 10 seconds to move whoever you want through the door before the guns start killing tribals topside. Run them through the doors and then have at least 1 person stay behind to pull the control again, switching to internal systems again. This will continue, if you intend to save the inhabitants of the town above. You must open the doors for a short time and then close them after everyone has run through.

The first room has a single turret to avoid. The second has 2, and even if you switched off the security and slaughtered the villagers, they will still attack you. This is hard because these turrets aren't flaky like the last working pair you encountered. They attack you, and attack you, and attack you. You can try to destroy them, but it's probably better to try to run by them. This will take many tries. The next room has 2 more turrets in it, one of which is dead. Make sure to loot it for about 40 power cells or so. There are also 3 lockers in here, with another M16 and ammo, and antidote. Once through there, you end up dashing right into a hall full of bugs. Fun, eh?

The best tactic, I believe (assuming you can't easily destroy the turrets) is to advance using the walls of boxes and then just make a straight dash for the room beyond and the hall beyond that, and hug the NW wall by the door in the hall as you pick off the bugs. Advance 1 or 2 at a time, if you can.

UPDATE 2.3:

The absolute easiest way to do this is to hit enter and go into TB mode before you even switch the console on. Because the turrets never change
stance in TB, they will never pop up, and thus never fire at you.

Beyond the green bathtub room are some more bugs and a single shelf containing a cats paw magazine and some other forgettables. Still, if you want to go...

Now we see where the Rad X can come in handy. Take 2 before heading into the green bathtub room (we'll be back for the rest of the complex in a minute). It's best to only send 1 or 2 people down here; any more and your radX runs out fast. The shelf room is teeming with bugs, so be careful. I have found that the magnum is great on bugs. Give it a shot.

Head to the hall across from the bunk room (to the SW). There you find a radscorpion and some bugs in the bathroom. In the closed room across from the bathroom are small roaches and ammo on the shelf. Move SW down the hall and kill some bugs on the way. Watch for the SE turret, by the green wall.

Go get the lockers around the corner in the NW room. It contains 3 M-14s and associated ammo. They are passable rifles, but not as good as the hunting rifles or even the automatics.

Now head S to the room full of boxes. It has several smaller roaches in it but nothing serious. The classroom, however, has a scorpion right around the corner. Make sure to loot the crate for ammo in the middle of the box room.

From the classroom you ought to be able to shoot more bugs in the shelf room to the SE and then advance into the room with the bookshelf and ice chest. Loot them and then continue to the shelf room. Watch for the scorpion behind the shelves to the N, and then go up to the door of the next room. It should open automatically.

I found a large cockroach in this room that appeared to be stuck in the scenery, a bug presumably (ironic). Disarm the trap on the shelf and take its contents (ironically, a traps book). Loot the lockers for an electronic lockpick (crucial later) and stimpaks.

If you want to get the locker in the next room, open the door to the green room and use 2 rad-X's if you haven't already. Be aware that this room is full of large roaches. Try to stay near the door and take them one at a time, especially since you should only be using 1 person to go in there to conserve rad-x's. There is also a big freaking roach in there called 'Roachor', pretty much the Godzilla of roaches. He is hiding and you won't be able to see him until you get close to him (he's between the door and the locker), but when you do, move back and shoot him from afar. It is possible to hit him from the other room, so do so.

KJ <batistutaforever@hotmail.com> adds:

The big bug, I assumed it is Roachor, is stuck in the map, but it still can attack you. Beware!
-----------

In the locker is the last battery. Proceed to the exit, avoiding the turrets in reverse order. Talk to the shaman on the way out, and then the elder, too, who will give you another battery.

UPDATE 2.2

The elder will only give you the battery if no villagers died. Keep this in mind.

"Angus Lai" <sakuragk@home.com> adds:

I am playing v1.25. This might be a bug. When I got 3 fusion batteries in the mission in Preoria and saved the tribals, the elder was suppose to give me the fourth battery. However, when I talked to him with 3 of my batteries in my inventory, the forth battery did no show up, even he said he have given it to me. So, I dropped the 3 batteries on the ground and talked to the elder, and I got the fourth battery. I got 150pt exp for having 4 batteries, and another 150pt exp when leaving mission.
----2.3----

lobar <lobar@home.com> adds:

As a final note, for anyone wanting to come back to Preoria at a later time, a problem exisists with having the exit grid crossing the only entrance to the villiage. How you get around this is easy. Just run your people across the grid one or two at a time to the other side. So long as your whole team is not touching it at once, you can move across it without triggering the map exit routine.
----2.2----