Some interesting math about the Mercury Field Gun.

[N-Sunderland]

Echo's not suggesting that shatter's effectiveness against components should be reduced, so the Hwacha's disabling capabilities wouldn't be affected at all. He's only suggesting that the merc's shatter damage should be reduced.

[RearAdmiralZill]

It was my suggestion to lower shatter's modifier to bare hull, as I assumed it's already at the least possible shatter damage to all components in one shot.

And I probably got mixed up in my own argument and made myself look silly, which happens with lack of coffee ;x

[Echoez]

I worry about shatter on other guns less for perma and more for their disable capabilities. For hwacha, it would mean more rockets needed to disable x part, which would in turn nerf it as getting a full clip into someone is relatively hard.

Increasing their explosive then increases their chance to ignite a fire on their own (% chance to ignite based on damage) so that becomes an indirect buff.

I'm not saying lower any other gun's shatter damage, the Hwacha would still take the same ammount of rockets to kill components. You got me a bit confused now, I was talking about changing the damage modifier of shatter damage to the permanent hull, nothing else. So basically any ammount of shatter you have will deal 0 damage to permahull from any gun.

Ignition chances wouldn't be increased all that much by adding a little more explosive to each shot (2-3 more explosive damage), so I say that's fine, it wouldn't realy break the gun at all aside from maybe 1 extra stack of fire once in a while.

And that is to say if change is even warranted. You obviously feel strongly in favor of a nerfed mercury, but many others feel the opposite. Biased or not, I've been increasingly taking out teams who use more mercs than my side and still coming out on top. It's not an impossible thing to beat, nor overly difficult.

I feel the gun accomplishes too many roles by itself at the moment and does so with a very high efficiency for a light gun and especially a long ranged one with very high accuracy provided by a massive zoom, hence I can't help but believe the gun is not balanced as is, no matter if it is beatable or not simply because it shouldn't be able to do so many things, I don't think any other light gun can accomplish what the Merc can with such freedom, due to very restricted range, lack of zoom and straight up less damage/efficiency.


And to complete my thoughts on that last 'supposed change', I'll provide a small changelog:

-Shatter damage modifier to permahull is now 0 (from 0.1)
-Manticore Heavy Hwacha now does 27 explosive damage per shot (from 25)
-Mercury Field gun now deals 85 piercing damage (from 75) and 170 shatter damage (from 300)

Figured 170 would be better so even if the engineer can repair it with a mallet before you shoot it again, you can still destroy it with the second one, rewarding you for 2 accurate shots no matter what. Also added 2 points of explosive damage to the Manticore per shot to make up for the permahull damage loss from its shatter. Any other gun doesn't realy lose all that much.

[Captain Smollett]

Taking away shatter's ability to damage the hull would definitely dissuade people from sitting at opposite ends of the map and missing at each other for an hour while still retaining the current primary functions of the mercury.

Zill you probably don't recall the modifier being .1 because it used to be higher however it's been dialed down bit by bit ever since I started playing. 

I do think if shatter ceased causing hull damage you probably would need to slightly tweak the balance of the other affected guns to compensate for their loss as they are all weapons in the sort of mid tear of GOI guns.

That being said I can't stress how important it is that the mercury changes be done one at a time, very slowly and incrementally.  The merc has been nerfed slowly but surely ever since I started playing the game with good reason and is currently at a decent spot; though I know people have issues with it as it stands, it wouldn't take much more to nerf the gun out of existence, and I don't think effectively removing guns ever benefits the game.

[JaceBoojah]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESe-gdBWuJ4&feature=share&list=UUQuR0B-HhVm-YhxqNwuyCtg
here is in game data from before the last patch.  the mercury can now disable through ships but takes longer to reload

[RearAdmiralZill]

Yea I just messed my argument all up, but meh.

Zill you probably don't recall the modifier being .1 because it used to be higher however it's been dialed down bit by bit ever since I started playing.

Yea I never keep real close track with the numbers. I always go off "feel" in-game, so when people start throwing numbers around I tend to shake my head and hope my point gets across. I let awkm deal with the numbers, and just make sure it has the "feel" I want in-game.

-Shatter damage modifier to permahull is now 0 (from 0.1)
-Manticore Heavy Hwacha now does 27 explosive damage per shot (from 25)
-Mercury Field gun now deals 85 piercing damage (from 75) and 170 shatter damage (from 300)

What's the point of lowering the modifier if you want to lower its shatter anyway? It needs to still do perma hull damage to be a useful gun.

[N-Sunderland]

The merc doesn't need to do any permahull damage to be useful. It's an excellent long-range armour stripper and disabler.

[Echoez]

Taking away shatter's ability to damage the hull would definitely dissuade people from sitting at opposite ends of the map and missing at each other for an hour while still retaining the current primary functions of the mercury.

That is one of my main concerns and what I realy want to be honest.

What's the point of lowering the modifier if you want to lower its shatter anyway? It needs to still do perma hull damage to be a useful gun.

Basically it just requires the gunner to hit both shots for a disable on a heavy gun. That is not a necessary change though. I disagree completely that this gun should still be a threat to permahull to be useful. It is immensely useful even if you are using one just because of the disabling power it has plus it's a good armor softener.

Also lowering the shatter damage it does won't change anything with its damage to permahull if shatter does no damage to it anyway. Anyway, what I realy want is the permahull damage this gun does to be gone, it has no place doing that damage to permahull as a piercing weapon and at that range. Smollett explained it for me anyway.

And I've already stated the numbers of how much damage other guns with shatter lose per clip, I can assure you for the carronades at least that this damage is minimal, hence won't hurt them at all. The Artemis doesn't lose out on much either and I already proposed a slight buff to the Hwacha's missiles explosive damage to compesate for the loss of shatter on perma by 3 points which is eventually 4.2 on perma and 0.3 on armor, the original loss of damage on perma from the 45 shatter it deals is 4.5, so by buffing its explosive by 3, you retain most of that while very slightly buffing its armor damage, but realy, just by 5 damage per clip.

The merc doesn't need to do any permahull damage to be useful. It's an excellent long-range armour stripper and disabler.

And since Sunderland made me a favor and posted this while I was writing, there you go as well.

[awkm]

I agree with "feel" as well.  I want the game to played with 80% feel 20% numbers.

The field gun has not changed for many months.  The fact that complaint around this gun does not arise until major tournaments draws me to the conclusion that it requires highly coordinated teams and skilled gunners to pull off the strategies.  If this happens during competitive play and it does require such coordination, I don't think there is a huge problem.  So long as that this does not happen in public matches, then I think we're okay.

This is not to say that there aren't other issues like map design and skills that may mitigate line of sight problems.  These will slowly be worked into the game as we move along.

Otherwise, the field gun will not see any further changes until more piercing and shatter options are made available to lighten the field gun's burden and usage characteristics.


And for the record, the Field Gun does not penetrate.  Ever.  We've seen reports this past weekend and we don't know what to say until we can get reliable reproduction cases for the possible bug.  Everything looks dandy on our end, though.

[Captain Smollett]

awkm thanks for the reply.  I have a deep suspicion that Muse is already working on another piercing weapon and is looking to rebalance when it is introduced.

What's the point of lowering the modifier if you want to lower its shatter anyway? It needs to still do perma hull damage to be a useful gun.

That's an interesting perspective.  I think I have to respectfully disagree.

For me the merc was always more a support weapon almost like a gattling gun with greater precision and range but less dps.  A gun good for stripping armor to allow a kill and precision component desctruction.

Being able to outright merc someone's armor and perma down never really felt right to me.  It always seemed like it should be a gun to soften up a target but not to outright kill it.  I remember commenting to Squash months ago that the merc would probably be perfect if it just stopped doing perma damage and since then the perma damage has been lowered quite a bit through several different methods, and I think for the better.  Reduicing the perma damage even further might not be a bad idea in my opinion.

[Echoez]

So what you are trying to say is that if I want to play against people that are are being serious and use that gun as a spamming tool across the map, making approach 80% more difficult because the damn thing can kill you on top of disabling you and armor stripping you, I should look for an other match?

I'm sorry but I am not a tournament player yet, maybe in the near future, but in game I will encounter people that will abuse the gun in pubs as well and that takes out a lot of the fun of the game for me. I want to be able to play against good players while I'm sure that there is no gun that can be abused to such extend as the current Mercury.

And despite the fact that Zill messed up his arguement, what he proposed is actually the best solution without touching the gun itself. Reduce the damage modifier of Shatter on Perma Hull to 0, buff guns like the Hwacha a tiny bit to compesate for the loss, boom, gun is mostly fine now since it lost 2/3 of its Perma Hull damage source, effectively trippling the ammount of shots you need to put on a target to destroy them with it.

[N-Sunderland]

I have to agree. Getting rid of shatter's effect on permahull would make no difference to the mercury's use as a disabler or armour stripper, so there'd really be no cause for concern. The sole change would be reduced instances of quad mercs (which occur in pub matches and don't require very much coordination). I think everybody here can concur that quad mercs are not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

[RearAdmiralZill]

From Echo's wording, it sounds like he wants absolutely 0 perma hull damage from a merc, which I believe will make the gun useless. It needs to make people move. That's always been my intended use of it apart from a disabler.

If it does no perma damage, the other team can just sit back and chuckle at their attempts to do anything worth moving for. That would force the other team to move closer, into the effective range of the real damage dealers.

It's really a fine line to make it so it's not so powerful that it kill's too fast when spammed at max range, but also not so tiny that the enemy can ignore it and simply beat the team using mercs outright. I've never considered the merc a killing weapon, but one that forces people closer, as if you just sit back and let me merc you, yea, you're going to eventually die, very slowly.

Of course, the whole thing is moot as awkm has worded his reasoning. I just wanted to explain my thought there.

[Echoez]

4 shots of that thing into permahull is one less flak shot and 2 less mortar shots you will later need to destroy a ship and with its reload time and accuracy plus how fast it takes down armor if brought en-masse, putting 4 shots into an other ship isn't so hard and gives you a big advantage.

The gun will still deal Permahull damage, it deals piercing as well after all, but it won't be a threat unless you realy sit there and eat it in the face.

[N-Sunderland]

@Zill

But quad mercs are difficult enough to approach (especially on Dunes) that you'll usually end up with both teams taking them, and that's what leads to hour-long sniping matches.

The merc has other uses. You can combine it with a flak like Polaris did to get some serious range with the piercing-explosive combo, or you can use it to disable while approaching (like on the front of a Junker). It excels at those roles, and neither require any permahull damage. So I don't see how it would be useless.