Engagement length

[Squash]

You know what, yeah, you're right. I'll have to agree with you. All the guns with the actual piercing damage type are very direct fire and uninteresting. I'm on board now, I agree.

[Queso]

If I understand correctly what Queso is saying is that the damage output of weapons are disproportionately high compared to the survivability of ships. I don't agree with this, but I think that's what he's saying.

It isn't? Armor goes down like nothing if a Gat is pointed at you and health is wiped instanly after armor goes down from a barrage of explosives while you can do nothing to bring it up fast enough cause even the spanner has a limit and most ships can't dodge gatling fire that easily since it's a raycast weapon.

I think what he is trying to say is that weapon damage types are attributed to the wrong weapons, the gatling is the main armor stripper, it's the most boring weapon ever and it's the easiest to aim at your enemy. Just an example of what I think he is trying to say at least.

Uninteresting gameplay is his concern.

It's a bit of both really. The armor strippers are uninteresting AND the hull armor and health are fairly low. Both of those factor contribute to less fun fights.

[HamsterIV]

Right now it is easy to train a new crew to be effective with the gat/flack than any other gun combo. With flack timing and turn compensation there is a little extra to master before you can optimize the meta. I also like how the need for separate ammo types encourages the use of ships where more people can shoot. I do not fondly remember the days when heavy flack goldfish ruled the skies. Mostly because I never had a good gunner.

I would like to see some viable weapon/weapon combos that have a greater skill in to effectiveness out than the gat flack, but the game needs the gat flack to always be viable as a way to help newbies get acclimated to the game play.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

Gatling might be boring for us, yup, I agree.

But speaking in terms of getting to know the game they're good starter weapons because they're so easy and boring. Everyone will quickly know how to use it. It's a smooth start for new players.

Sure it is boring for experienced players, but that should not lead to just calling it boring and demanding changes but using other guns that aren't as boring! Like getting better with a Lumberjack. Or try two lochnagar light flaks on a pyramidion. Go with two burst mortars. use a flamer/carronade Junker, heck there are so many possibilities.

But just because those piercing guns are too boring for you, don't make it harder for new people.

What I would suggest are new piercing guns which need an experienced player and thus have an increased difficulty.

[Squash]

Hold on, I agreed they're uninteresting direct fire weapons, but there's nothing easy about the gattling gun, it's one of the harder guns in the game to use to its best effect.

[Serenum]

Honestly I can't see an easy solution.
Gat-flak combo is basically the only thing in this game that has reasonable ttk on the enemy, without piercing damage taking down an enemy ship takes so long that it becomes a bit boring. Also, gat-flak in my opinion makes teamwork more important. You really don't want to find yourself alone against 2 gat-flak ships, sticking to your teammate becomes essential.
And to defeat a gat-flak ship you are encouraged to run a disabler ship and wreck their weapons before they can wreck your armor.

Gat-flak is healthy for the meta in my opinion, but I agree that as a combo it's a bit too boring and easy to master, mostly because of certain ships like the pyramidion which is by itself incredibly easy to fly.

[Echoez]

It's still a direct fire weapon and it's still harder to miss with than even a flak cannon. Generaly speaking, it's not the best skill indexed weapon. You just point it towards you enemy's armor and it goes down. I want to see a piercing weapon that can take down armor as fast as a current Gat but require more effort from the gunner's side and nerf the gat a bit so it is still a reliable armor stripper but doesn't destroy the whole armor in one clip.

Seeing armor go down any faster than it already does would make me leave the game, seriously, it's already way fast and makes me sigh each time my hull goes down as a deck engineer cause all the mallet strokes in the wolrd wouldn't keep it up against the damage number generator than is the gatling.

Personaly if you ask me, I want to see the range on that thing get lowered. I would prefer it if it was just like the Heavy's minigun from TF2, DPS machine up close, but severely loses effectiveness over at its max range.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

Hold on, I agreed they're uninteresting direct fire weapons, but there's nothing easy about the gattling gun, it's one of the harder guns in the game to use to its best effect.

->

It's still a direct fire weapon and it's still harder to miss with than even a flak cannon. Generaly speaking, it's not the best skill indexed weapon. You just point it towards you enemy's armor and it goes down. I want to see a piercing weapon that can take down armor as fast as a current Gat but require more effort from the gunner's side [...]

Seeing armor go down any faster than it already does would make me leave the game, seriously, it's already way fast and makes me sigh each time my hull goes down as a deck engineer cause all the mallet strokes in the wolrd wouldn't keep it up against the damage number generator than is the gatling.

Agreed, but you can prolong the time it takes until your armor gets destroyed - and just hope that the enemy's armor will go down first. Afterwards it also depends on what ammo you use in the flak.

Personaly if you ask me, I want to see the range on that thing get lowered. I would prefer it if it was just like the Heavy's minigun from TF2, DPS machine up close, but severely loses effectiveness over at its max range.

That might actually be a good solution. This would boost merc/flak a little bit I guess.

[RustedShut]

Remove heavy clip from the equation and the Gat would be balanced.  Right now you drop in heavy and you have a laser beam cutting through armor and some pretty silly ranges sometimes.

[Chrinus]

I would prefer it if it was just like the Heavy's minigun from TF2, DPS machine up close, but severely loses effectiveness over at its max range.

I'd just like to take a moment to appreciate how awesome this concept is. Depending on the degree, the gatling having damage falloff would mean more payoff with a mortar combo and limit heavy clip's effectiveness to being used almost solely as a component laser since up close, there are better ammo types to drop armor. I'd expect something similar to Rainer's statement showing up. Merc/Flak and Gat/Mortar being prominent with the change.. ideally.

[Squash]

Again, only very top tier gunners can drop a ship's armor with one clip of gattling fire, it's a difficult skill, and without it a quick kill turns into a long kill.

[Echoez]

Again, only very top tier gunners can drop a ship's armor with one clip of gattling fire, it's a difficult skill, and without it a quick kill turns into a long kill.

Well, let's look at numbers.

The Gatling deals: 10 Piercing and 10 Shatter damage per shot.

On the armor, that is: 15 Piercing damage and 2 Shatter for a total 17 damage per hit on a ship's armor.

  The Gatling has 60 bullets per magazine, so assuming you are actively looking to hit armor only, it can deal a total of 1020 damage on an enemy's armor. Assuming your whole magazine goes into the armor and no components.
 
Even if you take components into account, that is still more than enough to take out any ship's armor even if you miss a lot of shots, unless you are aimming at a Galleon or the Junker, both of which have their componenets set up in a way that they can easily absorb some damage and one being extremely slim.

So no, I don't believe it is a great skill, it just takes a minimun ammount of practice if your pilot doesn't turn around at full speed all the time like a drunken idiot, then even an average gunner should have no problem taking out a ship's armor in less than a clip, heck, I'm not even top notch, but I can manage to do it easily.

The only ships that have armor even close to match that tremendous number is the Galleon and the Junker, one of which has 800 and the other 700 armor and that's still at least a 200 damage difference. meaning, those ships are the only ones that can legitimately avoid having their armor reduced to nothing from a single gatling clip (One mallet stroke included which means +250 more damage needed). On every other ship, your armor is hilariously exposed and that's only assuming you are only getting hit by a gatling mind you.

[Queso]

Again, only very top tier gunners can drop a ship's armor with one clip of gattling fire, it's a difficult skill, and without it a quick kill turns into a long kill.

That's assuming you're only taking damage from that single source, which is highly unlikely. The math works out to around 8 seconds of every bullet hitting to take down a Galleon's armor with no engineer whacking the hull and no special ammo.

[Squash]

You're forgetting a rubber mallet hit on the hull, and I can't speak for you, but I definitely have a lot of trouble landing even 80% of my gattling shots on the hull.

You know I'd really like to get Fluitaire in this discussion, he's really devoted himself to that gun in a way nobody else has, and I consider him the best gattling gunner in the game.

[Echoez]

You're forgetting a rubber mallet hit on the hull, and I can't speak for you, but I definitely have a lot of trouble landing even 80% of my gattling shots on the hull.

You know I'd really like to get Fluitaire in this discussion, he's really devoted himself to that gun in a way nobody else has, and I consider him the best gattling gunner in the game.

  Most ships won't survive a full clip even with the mallet stroke. You will need to hit less than 80% of you shots for this to happen and that would be just one more ship, the Pyramidion. Still, you are assuming only one gatling is pointed at you, which is wrong as there are always 2 ships in one team at least, which means that even if both gunners are terrible and only hit 50% of their shots with a raygun, then your armor is still down, you get blown up and then they procceed to murder your ally, the meta is basicaly who can do this the fastest. There is no thinking behind poiting a gat at someone and generating damage from its max range with not incencitive to go closer besides having a steady hand.

  I'm not trying to say that there aren't amazing Gatlers in this game and I know Fluitaire can hit almost all of his shots, I've played along him in a ship, but that doesn't mean anything since the Gatling, no matter what, is the most simple weapon to fire at someone and that simple weapon does one of the most major jobs, which is taking the armor down and does that at a significant range for an automatic, point-an-click weapon.


Chirnus makes a very good point as well:

I'd just like to take a moment to appreciate how awesome this concept is. Depending on the degree, the gatling having damage falloff would mean more payoff with a mortar combo and limit heavy clip's effectiveness to being used almost solely as a component laser since up close, there are better ammo types to drop armor. I'd expect something similar to Rainer's statement showing up. Merc/Flak and Gat/Mortar being prominent with the change.. ideally.

Heavy clip is need sot be nerfed on the Gatling and this is the best way, nothing that can fire that accurately in full auto and cause some much damage to one of the most important components on a ship should have this much range with no drawbacks.