1.3 General Speculation

[awkm]

Nerfing Heavy, in my opinion, is either going to cause more coordination between Combat Engineers in pub matches (everyone bringing Heavy won't cut it for close quarters engagements) or cause us to see a few more gunners.

Heavy is now no recoil but -30% ammo in clip.

All balance changes have a heavy focus on pub matches.  While yes, field gun could always kill stuff with one hit... it's very hard to position to kill those things.  Penetration makes it easier for pubs.  However, it makes things WAY TOO EASY for pros.  Now there's dbl tap kill.  2 shots to kill all engines and medium guns.

I hope it works.

[N-Sunderland]

Which components in particular are you referring to with regards to the invisible hit boxes? I've only ever found the guns on the Pyramidion annoying, apart from the occasional dead hit on a heavy gun with absolutely no effect.

[Echoez]

Problem is that many components are occluded by invisble hit boxes that I cannot solve.

I think Penetration needs to stay to mitigate this.  It might be time to bite the bullet and accept changes to the gun.

If you're a tester, please try it.

I am looking forward to tester feedback on this.


Although, the Field Gun is just a big goddamn slippery slope.  Every time I touch it, I'm asking for it.  So yeah, I know this.  FML.

Penetration could stay, but penetration through the whole ship is unessesary.

I think the one shot kill of components needs to remain for the Mercury, making it harder to hit with by slowing down the projectile is fine, but not absolutely nessesary. But here is where the penetration becomes a bit too powerful, but if you can reduce the damage it does after it hits one component, I think it will be fine. You can still hit engines and weapons a bit more easily, but it can't destroy a row of components easily and can not be used to both destroy a component  and damage the hull as well for a full shot's damage.

I also think that if penetration is to stay, the piercing damage the mercury deals should be lowered, then it can keep its original 1.2 reload and shatter damage.

[MetaFive]

I still think that if Explosive damage type was a bit better at getting armor broken down and a bit worse at getting killshots at an exposed hull, it would be a step in the right direction. The damage types have been drifting further apart into extreme specialization, and I think it's compounding the issue with paired weapons, especially THAT set of paired weapons. And right now, because of this, a ship with armor stripped either takes almost instant death or almost no damage at all, and gatling/flak hasn't so much become the preferred strategy as it's become practically the ONLY close-range strategy. This game is so unique and interesting in part because kills aren't GOING to be lightning-fast like in so many FPS games nowadays and instead calling for a lot of interaction between everyone involved... but lately, the kills have been getting faster and faster.

Assuming that explosive rounds become a more generalized damage type, ships that are unable to use paired weapons now have a better chance at being able to get kills or finish a ship on their own power, piercing weapons stop being a strict requirement and accelerate the process instead of being a requirement, and the flak finisher is still able to deal big chunks of permanent hull damage at once without bringing engagements to an all-too-rapid close.

And that last point I think is perhaps most important of all. The fact that we have a hullbreaker type and an armor piercing type means that a ship becomes vulnerable very quickly and vulnerability is a death sentence for many ships; to be honest, I don't think that a single armor break (assuming a fast and dedicated response) should be enough to conclude a battle.

Or if that's too far gone to consider at this point, give the gatling a much longer reload time, give the flak a slower firing rate and a slightly faster reload time. Make it so people will want to actually fire off a few flak shells instead of holding their shot for the inevitable (and very reliable) armor break, and so the flak cannon can't dump all its damage in the span of a second or two.

[Echoez]

All balance changes have a heavy focus on pub matches.  While yes, field gun could always kill stuff with one hit... it's very hard to position to kill those things.  Penetration makes it easier for pubs.  However, it makes things WAY TOO EASY for pros.  Now there's dbl tap kill.  2 shots to kill all engines and medium guns.

My concern with this is, if a pub can't position correctly and make the shot, the penetration isn't gonna benefit him at all anyway, while it does break the gun in the hands of a decent player, for better or for worse. The double tap currently is a bad thing in my eyes, while the penetration along with the one shotting components is definately a nightmare come true.

I stand by my suggestion to make the shot penetrate a bit but deal 70% less damage to each consecutive component it strikes. So first hit is 100%, second hit is 30% and then third is even less.

[Frogger]

Is it possible to make the Field Gun shells penetrate only hull/armor/balloon, but stop once they hit a component? That would mitigate excessive component destruction, and reduce the need for potentially gun-ruining nerfs like 10s reload time and 2 shot medium weapon kills.

[Frogger]

For the record, as a frequent user of this gun, the only time I have difficulty disabling components is certain light weapon mounts on certain ships (but even these can be hit from certain angles). I would be much more frustrated by the increase in reload time or multiple hits necessary to disable single components. It works very well as-is as a component disabler.

[Frogger]

I also like Echo's suggestion of lessened damaged for subsequent penetration component hits. But I think the gun needs to be able to one-shot any component it touches initially, given its currently difficulty of use and reload time. Few people in the game are really able to use it effectively as a component buster, even with its relatively lower reload time and higher shell speed - it takes coordination from the captain to provide a steady shot, as well as a lot of skill on the part of the gunner.

[N-Sunderland]

Is it possible to make the Field Gun shells penetrate only hull/armor/balloon, but stop once they hit a component? That would mitigate excessive component destruction, and reduce the need for potentially gun-ruining nerfs like 10s reload time and 2 shot medium weapon kills.

This is an idea I really like. It prevents people from disabling Galleons in two clips (I tested it today, and it's kind of sad...) while also giving players in pub matches a boost in terms of ease of disabling, and letting everybody get around the aforementioned invisible hitboxes. If this was implemented, you could keep the 1-shot component kills, old reload time, old projectile speed, etc. The only thing I'd recommend would be to lower the piercing a bit (not much) since getting components disabled and taking major hull armour damage is a bit much.

[awkm]

Is it possible to make the Field Gun shells penetrate only hull/armor/balloon, but stop once they hit a component? That would mitigate excessive component destruction, and reduce the need for potentially gun-ruining nerfs like 10s reload time and 2 shot medium weapon kills.

Interesting.  This may be our solution here.  Although damage reduction could be enough as well.  Depends which is easier to implement at this point.

This does fix the problem of "luck shots" where just a seemingly randomly placed shot on a ship breaks a bunch of stuff.  This is why I'm leaning towards lowering shatter and requiring 2 shots to kill major components.   It also does not need a code change.  It already works right now.

[Frogger]

I agree with Sunderland. Make the gun penetrate armor/balloon/hull but stop at components, drop piercing damage to prevent massed mercings at range, keep current shatter damage (that seems to be the primary purpose of the gun now, as opposed to pure armor/ship destruction), keep current reload time and ballistics.

Again, having to two-shot main engines & medium guns seems an unnecessary overnerf due to the skilled involved to hit such components at range. Keep in mind that the gun has to be fired at medium to far range due to its small rotation. Depending on how much the shatter damage is reduced, it could take three or more hits to disable medium guns if the gunners are on the ball repairing their guns with mallets, or possibly even wrenches. This seriously complicates one of the main uses of the weapon, as a viable counter to ranged medium weapons that allows brawl teams, with some skill and luck, to suppress enemy sniping fire and move in for a close-range kill.

[awkm]

@Frogger:  Are you a tester?  If you are, then I urge you to try the dbl tap.  The rate of fire now is very fast.  It will still require slight adjustment between shots or a the proper lead up to it, but I think it's very nice.

If you are not a tester... then I can't really respond a whole to speculation.  Your feedback is of course appreciated though.

Right now, of all the recommendations: dbl shot is the only thing that's in the build.  Everything else requires code changes and I don't know if we have time for that.

The team is deciding on this matter soon.  In the meantime, try dbl tap.

[Frogger]

I am a tester, and I just logged on to give it a shot.

Admittedly, I only tried it Sandbox vs. the floating dummies, so I can't give you a thoroughly battle-tested opinion.

First, I personally do not like the feel. It suffers badly from the ever-present ghost shot bug. Though I make two or three clicks in rapid succession, I get BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM, whereas I would expect only BOOMBOOM. This has been an issue for a while with a number of other guns (merc, med flak, light flak), and it'd be nice to have it fixed, though knowing nothing about code I cannot say what would be involved.

Second, it seems like the shots are fired so quickly that they might as well go off at the same time. Why bother with double tapping?

Third, it doesn't seem appropriate for the weapon. It's a long range cannon, not a machine gun.

Those are my preliminary thoughts. I will try to log on tomorrow with a few of my clan members to give it a shakedown in battle.

[Frogger]

Also, the visual jitter effect from firing the weapon makes the follow up shot much more difficult (though perhaps that's intended, can't say it's necessarily a negative)

Finally, I don't always reliably see two shells exiting the weapon upon dbl-tap firing. This makes judging the effectiveness of your shots and recalibrating your aim much more difficult, and just doesn't feel right.

PS thanks for all your hard work. Goes without saying that I love this game

[Moo]

I have to say... Shouldn't the release of the new version be when it's ready, rather than in whatever state it's in at a pre-determined time?
I'm sure most players would understand a delay if it meant a better version eventually releases, and also less needing to adapt several times to things being changed again.