Make Classes more Unique (and prevent 3 man hull tanking)

[Captain Smollett]

No matter how many people are camping a hull, the armor will go down in the normal amount of time.  Even with 3 people rebuilding the hull of a Pyra it will still stay down for almost 2 seconds.  With many weapons, this narrow window is more than long enough to get the kill, but if for some reason the timing is off and you don't make the kill in the narrow window, the armor can be broken again with an additional 4 seconds of chaingun opening that window again.

Even if you have to break the armor 3 times, the enemy is still not shooting back at you and you are still able to make the kill within 30 seconds.  This is actually why you will almost never see a Cogs team rebuilding the hull with more than 2 people and rarely with more than one.  Camping the hull is not nearly as good of a defense as killing your opponent first.

[Kinesis]

Please dont try to think you know how I have been playing or who I have been playing with by my rank, its misleading and also incorrect to do. Ive played with level 8-10 captains on standard pyramidans to crazy flamer goldfish designs. Ive seen more than enough normal time to know this issue because its not that prevalent in noob town (noob town is just ragequits and captians who dont fly their own ships). Anyway aside from "win builds" anything else has an extremely hard time dealing with turtling. To the point where your "high level captains" you claim I dont fly with just move on or get hit by their teammate. Only so that we can end up doing the same turtle maneuver a few feet away from the ship we just beached. Ironic huh? Its far too effective and drags out games longer than they should be. The unrepairable hull is there to prevent constant survival but the speed that the armor can be rebuilt is almost a shield of its own. As where the only real counter is a chaingun/flack combo which is already absurdly effective as is.

[N-Sunderland]

Look, here's the thing.

As I said earlier, if you have three people camping the hull, you will invariably lose the engagement. You don't have anybody firing the guns, so you're not hurting the other ship at all. Three engineers can only keep the ship together for so long, and eventually you will die. How the hell is a strategy that makes sure that you won't land any kills overpowered? Simple answer: it's not. It's delaying your death, but it's damn well guaranteeing it.

[Kinesis]

Please read all of it before posting, as I said just earlier your not going to get kills, your going to be a time sink until the other person comes along and attacks your attacker. The game is not entirely 1v1s most games involve atleast 2v2 so you may not get a kill in this instance but you wont give a kill neither, and the other team will just sit there vulnerable attempting to kill you until your teammate finally comes along and returns the favor. Im far from the only one who thinks that the game ends too often in stalemate ragequits do to this issue. And id really appreciate it if I got less "Im an old player your just a noob I know whats best" mentality in terms of feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3N20k0zlgw
*because its funny yet sadly true in some ways*

[N-Sunderland]

Please read all of it before posting

I did.

your not going to get kills, your going to be a time sink until the other person comes along and attacks your attacker

What's preventing the teammate of the attacker from getting there at the same time? If there's a ship that's sitting there without attacking at all, both ships are going to see it as an easy target and attack it. No amount of rebuilding will keep it alive against double ship focus. It won't take very much time at all to kill.

[Kinesis]

What's preventing the teammate of the attacker from getting there at the same time? If there's a ship that's sitting there without attacking at all, both ships are going to see it as an easy target and attack it. No amount of rebuilding will keep it alive against double ship focus. It won't take very much time at all to kill.

I have yet to see that in normal games, maybe in the pro end of the game sure, I bet its no problem with built teams and parties, but pros and pubs are too different birds please try to relate. only a small percentage of the game is pros the rest is pubs, and this is an issue with the pubs is typically ships will set off on 1v1, get locked in turtle mode, then the enemies teammate will see you sitting there pounding them and set course for you with your ally in toe. After he pounds you, his ally repairs and leaves, and the vicious cycle continues. Usually ending in whole teams ragequitting after 1 hour of gameplay.

[N-Sunderland]

What's preventing the teammate of the attacker from getting there at the same time? If there's a ship that's sitting there without attacking at all, both ships are going to see it as an easy target and attack it. No amount of rebuilding will keep it alive against double ship focus. It won't take very much time at all to kill.

I have yet to see that in normal games, maybe in the pro end of the game sure, I bet its no problem with built teams and parties, but pros and pubs are too different birds please try to relate. only a small percentage of the game is pros the rest is pubs, and this is an issue with the pubs is typically ships will set off on 1v1, get locked in turtle mode, then the enemies teammate will see you sitting there pounding them and set course for you with your ally in toe. After he pounds you, his ally repairs and leaves, and the vicious cycle continues. Usually ending in whole teams ragequitting after 1 hour of gameplay.

So this is only a problem when the enemy comes and your ally doesn't?

It seems to me that hull camping isn't the problem, in that case. Getting 2v1ed messes you up regardless of whether anybody's tanking or not.

[JaegerDelta]

Please read all of it before posting, as I said just earlier your not going to get kills, your going to be a time sink until the other person comes along and attacks your attacker. The game is not entirely 1v1s most games involve atleast 2v2 so you may not get a kill in this instance but you wont give a kill neither, and the other team will just sit there vulnerable attempting to kill you until your teammate finally comes along and returns the favor. Im far from the only one who thinks that the game ends too often in stalemate ragequits do to this issue. And id really appreciate it if I got less "Im an old player your just a noob I know whats best" mentality in terms of feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3N20k0zlgw
*because its funny yet sadly true in some ways*

its not that people are saying they know whats best. they are saying that it is impossible to keep a hull up indefinitely if the armor keeps going down. earlier you said people will just sit on the sand and keep the hull up, while it is possible to keep it up for a while, the math does not work for indefinite hull repairing.

When the armor goes down, it takes X amount of time to get it back up no matter how many you have repairing it, that window of perma hull health damage may be small but it is there. if someone is sitting on the sand as you said earlier they are taking constant damage. that means during that small opening some perma hull damage is being done. if that cycle continues eventually the ship will just run out of health even without any outside input of damage.

that is the reason people suggested you shoot their baloon ( so they cant get up and eventually die) or have your teammate attack the same target as you (so more damage can be done during the perma hull windows or so the perma hull windows can come around more often.)

I dont think people are trying to be rude, I'm just not sure people are understanding what you mean because the math doesn't add up.

[HamsterIV]

We are a small community Pros and Pubs are essentially the same thing. I have accidentally run into most of the people who fly in the COGs at some point or other. You do address a valid issue with pub games breaking into a series of 1v1 engagements, but that is due to poor leadership and coordination from the captain's side. 2v1 encounters usually end in under a minute via death or disengagement. If both teams bring sub optimal builds things can last longer, but that is what the Surrender button is for.

[Kinesis]

Please read all of it before posting, as I said just earlier your not going to get kills, your going to be a time sink until the other person comes along and attacks your attacker. The game is not entirely 1v1s most games involve atleast 2v2 so you may not get a kill in this instance but you wont give a kill neither, and the other team will just sit there vulnerable attempting to kill you until your teammate finally comes along and returns the favor. Im far from the only one who thinks that the game ends too often in stalemate ragequits do to this issue. And id really appreciate it if I got less "Im an old player your just a noob I know whats best" mentality in terms of feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3N20k0zlgw
*because its funny yet sadly true in some ways*

its not that people are saying they know whats best. they are saying that it is impossible to keep a hull up indefinitely if the armor keeps going down. earlier you said people will just sit on the sand and keep the hull up, while it is possible to keep it up for a while, the math does not work for indefinite hull repairing.

When the armor goes down, it takes X amount of time to get it back up no matter how many you have repairing it, that window of perma hull health damage may be small but it is there. if someone is sitting on the sand as you said earlier they are taking constant damage. that means during that small opening some perma hull damage is being done. if that cycle continues eventually the ship will just run out of health even without any outside input of damage.

that is the reason people suggested you shoot their baloon ( so they cant get up and eventually die) or have your teammate attack the same target as you (so more damage can be done during the perma hull windows or so the perma hull windows can come around more often.)

I dont think people are trying to be rude, I'm just not sure people are understanding what you mean because the math doesn't add up.

Well the math from what ive seen is 3 players, pipe wrenches have 4 rebuild (only 1 shy of the wrench). Which on average from experience ive seen the hull back up in 1.5 seconds. Most guns take longer than 1.5 seconds to reload. Especially the manticore and most all low deck guns you can put on the Galleon. So unless you are running the win combo (chain+flack) there is very little room for error in terms of hitting the actual hull for damage. The ship may take constant damage on the sand but its barely noticeable given how quickly the armor comes back on line. So "eventually" yes they will die if left unhelped but that eventually I have seen first hand go on for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a lot of time for their ally to see you standing in place and come attack you.

Alot of the games in pubs end in rage-quit stalemates or 1 sided victories, that much I hope is understood by the community. If not then we have a long bridge to gap. If they do understand that much then why? Maybe half of it is incompetent players sure, but whats the other half?  Surely this is a prevalent issue and all is not well and dandy as some here want us to believe. This is what I frequently experience and why I have seen teams I have played with leave.

[Shinkurex]

Ok so Kinesis, essentially what I am seeing, is that this is way more about coordination, rather than tanking. If you are running a hwacha build on your galleon, then you need to tell your gunners to wait until they see the "hull destroyed" message in the upper left hand corner... with just a little bit of accuracy, you can kill any ship with one volley and no amount of tanking will save you. This is something I see all the time (even among lvl 8+ gunners)... Same goes for if the enemy's ally starts barreling in on you. If your ally just is not there, or close enough to help, then there is generally a lack of communication (which leads to uncoordinated gameplay)

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Don't take this the wrong way, we (or at least most of us) are takling from experience, and wish to help you and others that have same issues.
So caled "Pros" aka. COGs players modstly play in random matches. And we play literaly hundets and thousands of games. If we ever ever get up against such enemy and don't have such gat/flat or gat/mortar combo becouse we have a ship that is not good at that (like Goldfish) or are packing some wiert experimentary build and seed enemy is no shoting back or dying, we either try to get ally to help us or faling that we go and focus on the enemy that is actualy a threat and kill that one (sooner or later we'll either get 5 kills on the other enemy, the turtle will stop turtling and we'll kill it or we'll manage to gang up on it. If you get killed by the ally of the turtle while you are trying to kill the turtle that is your capatain's error (not to mention the error of the ally that allowed that to happen in the first place - unless ally was actualy asking for help and your captain ignored him).

[roder]

i agree with the idea, but not the implementation. the main problem is, an engineer and even a pilot can be an effective gunner (e.g gungineer), but a gunner cant be a pilot or an engineer. that speaks to the flexibility and utility (or lack of) in some classes.

imo these are the best options

1- make some items class-exclusive, ie. only pilots can choose claw, only eng can choose mallet

2- give gunner more options (being able to use spyglass while sitting on a weapon, a new tool that feeds a new clip onto a weapon someone is using so the subsequent reload is quicker, not only bullets but more gun attachments like 2x scope, variable zoom, a more defined crosshair sights, infared sights through cloud etc.) taking some ideas from cod unfortunately, but they've ironed out all attachment ideas thruout the years

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Only the guy on helm can use pilot tools with the exception of spyglass as it is. And if you have someone that is not a pilot on the helm then there is something very wrong. Pilot's tools are life savers, and the 1 pilot tools other 2 classes have just doesen't cut it.

As for other ideas I like them with the exception of infrared sights, couse clouds are essential to hiding from long range and completely make flare-guns completely useless.

[Eleanor Thornholt]

So this is only a problem when the enemy comes and your ally doesn't?

It seems to me that hull camping isn't the problem, in that case. Getting 2v1ed messes you up regardless of whether anybody's tanking or not.

I agree with you that hull tanking is plain stupid from the way he pointed it out. The big issue here IMO ain't about that, but about the fact that multiple ammo types aren't needed often enough to be more useful than engineer tools. This bring the gunner class to a state where it becomes an almost useless class in a ship where you could use 3 engineers instead of 2 + 1 gunner (I said ALMOST, so please don't bring out specific situations, because both sides have these). If you read earlier posts on page 1 by "Arthem White", "Bauldr" and "Mattilald Anguisad", you can see different approaches towards the issue that make a lot of sense. I like gunners and IMO some guns have a big use in multiple ammo types, yet I must agree that a lot of times those extra ammo types have nothing on the engineer tools.

TL:DR
Stop focusing on the hull tanking thing, it's not the problem, the problem is that having multiple ammo types is just not useful enough.