Some interesting math about the Mercury Field Gun.

[Zenark]

No one has fun getting shot at.... Well... Except maybe a few masochistic engineers.

If you're up close with a gold fish and the enemy snipes out your main gun, you can still turn your side guns on them. A Carronade clip would take out their balloon so you could go up and repair your gun. A flamer might distract them enough for you to get into a better position.

[Echoez]

No one has fun getting shot at.... Well... Except maybe a few masochistic engineers.

If you're up close with a gold fish and the enemy snipes out your main gun, you can still turn your side guns on them. A Carronade clip would take out their balloon so you could go up and repair your gun. A flamer might distract them enough for you to get into a better position.

Instant disable = No reactions allowed.

This is the not 'fun' part of it and that it can keep doing that and keep a gun down indefinately.
Getting shot at isn't fun, but it's part of the game. When it comes to the Mercury, you are completely at their gunner's mercy the moment they get an arc on you, nothing you can do about other than hope he misses or find cover.

[Frogger]

I have to respectfully disagree here. I use a mercury extensively for weapon disables, and there is a very wide range of skill levels when it comes to accuracy with it - it's not something that can be done reliably by someone who hasn't trained in the weapon, and even then it takes a lot of skill and coordination to pull it off successfully. I think this is an analogous argument to claiming that lumberjack is OP - no, it's just chances are that you're used to seeing highly skilled players use it.

[Echoez]

I have to respectfully disagree here. I use a mercury extensively for weapon disables, and there is a very wide range of skill levels when it comes to accuracy with it - it's not something that can be done reliably by someone who hasn't trained in the weapon, and even then it takes a lot of skill and coordination to pull it off successfully. I think this is an analogous argument to claiming that lumberjack is OP - no, it's just chances are that you're used to seeing highly skilled players use it.

Lumberjack can be avoided due to the much slower projectile and its vulnerability to disabling weapons, you know, rockets.

The Mercury is very easy to aim and if you feel like you are a bad shot, there's always Lesmok to make it even easier to land an accurate shot. "You are probably playing against very skilled players" is not a valid arguement to excuse a light weapon weilding all this power, it litteraly forces you to take cover or get disabled and armor stripped.

Also I know how you use the gun Frogger, I've seen the Raft play and practice, I didn't realy expect you guys to agree with this since you based a whole strategy around it, but something needs to be done with this gun, no matter how it is used now because the only reason it is used like it is now is because of the stupid power it has. I'm not sure how you guys think it should be balanced like, but I for one know the piercing it has isn't going anywhere and if it's going to keep penetrating armor, I want the shatter gone so some ships can have more of a chance against this menace instead of going "Oh they saw us, gun is most probably going down" that's ridiculous.

[Serenum]

Being against a Mercury can be frustrating for sure, expecially when you are flying a ship with medium weapon mounts, like the Galleon, Goldfish and Spire. But, of all this ships, only the Goldfish is rendered completly unable to fire (if you keep facing the same direction that is) and can be reliably pinned down. On a Spire or Galleon you can mount a Mercury too and disable their guns as well.

Plus in certain maps the effectiveness of the Mercury is greatly diminished, like in Canyon or Rumble, where the firing arc of a weapon is much more important and fights are more often at close range.

Finally some clever manouvering can make the life of a Mercury gunner much more difficult, if you approach the enemy while changing altitude with Hydrogen or Chute Vent chances are he won't be able to reliably disable any components.

[Echoez]

Being against a Mercury can be frustrating for sure, expecially when you are flying a ship with medium weapon mounts, like the Galleon, Goldfish and Spire. But, of all this ships, only the Goldfish is rendered completly unable to fire (if you keep facing the same direction that is) and can be reliably pinned down. On a Spire or Galleon you can mount a Mercury too and disable their guns as well.

Plus in certain maps the effectiveness of the Mercury is greatly diminished, like in Canyon or Rumble, where the firing arc of a weapon is much more important and fights are more often at close range.

Finally some clever manouvering can make the life of a Mercury gunner much more difficult, if you approach the enemy while changing altitude with Hydrogen or Chute Vent chances are he won't be able to reliably disable any components.

A Spire without its heavy gun loses way too much firepower, you would be better off bringing a second Pyra or something, where your guns are safer and you can have 2 Mercs instead of one.

Goldfish is rendered useless with just a single shot.

Mercury can be used in any map and to very good effect, Canyons have massive open areas and you can still snipe in Rumble.

So it is okay with you that a single light gun should force you to resort to Vertical tools just to save your gun?

[Serenum]

Yes.
Just like the Carronade forces you to keep your distance, etc...
There's plenty of weapons that force you to use a specific strategy in order to win against them.
The Mercury has its niche, the only thing that I might concede is that it is pretty easy to use, but making it harder to use would change nothing in high-level play and would make it more frustrating for newbies.

[Echoez]

Yes.
Just like the Carronade forces you to keep your distance, etc...
There's plenty of weapons that force you to use a specific strategy in order to win against them.
The Mercury has its niche, the only thing that I might concede is that it is pretty easy to use, but making it harder to use would change nothing in high-level play and would make it more frustrating for newbies.

Unlike the carronades, the Mercury has no range restriction, enemies can keep distance, but the carronade user must all think around a lot of things on how to approach without getting decimated at medium range, hence the carronades are balanced. You also fly 'under' the carronades and they are relatively harmless to permahull unless you are talking about the Heavy one, in which case, it's still not as deadly as a light explosive gun like the Flak or Mortar.

You are kinda comparing the 2 polar extremes on the board here, the Mercury is a long range weapon that is still easy to work with even in medium and closer ranges while the carronades are extremely close range guns and work there and ONLY there and it is only the Heavy carronade that has significant brawling prowess by itself and nobody in their right mind would use carronades as their main weapons on the common brawler ships, they will usually be left on the support side of a Pyra or the second side of a Junker cause unless brought in pairs, light carronades can only realy do significant harm to the balloon and are restricted to a meager 350 meters range.

The Mercury isn't a niche, it is a widely used gun cause it can cause significant harm to armor, weapons, engines and permahull ALL IN ONE PACKAGE, I do not understand why is it so hard to understand that such a weapon is broken.

Making it harder to aim isn't the issue, it won't change anything, its massive utility is what needs to be looked at. Snipers should be specialized ranged weapons, not jacks of all trades.

[RearAdmiralZill]

How about tweaking the shatter damage multiplier on bare hull? Leave the damage the same, tweak other guns that use shatter to do a tad more if needed (though no gun that I know uses shatter as primary damage) to compensate. You have an armor strip/disable with much less bite on the exposed hull.

[Echoez]

How about tweaking the shatter damage multiplier on bare hull? Leave the damage the same, tweak other guns that use shatter to do a tad more if needed (though no gun that I know uses shatter as primary damage) to compensate. You have an armor strip/disable with much less bite on the exposed hull.

That is an interesting take on it. But the multiplier on bare hull for Shatter is already like 0.1, it would have to be very low like 0.05 or even 0.

Still doesn't solve the one-shotting guns problem though, but if Shatter does 0 damage to permahull, I believe then if you lowered the Shatter it did to 150, so it doesn't one shot a heavy gun, but still severely cripples it, it could be fine.

I also did some research to look at how much lethality do other guns with shatter damage lose to perma hull if Shatter dealt 0 damage to it.

Hwacha with Heavy clip loses out around ~67 damage from a full barrage on perma.

Heavy Carronade loses 44 damage per clip.

Artemis loses 48 damage per clip.

Light carronade loses out on 64 damage per clip, 51.2 if you are using Heavy clip.

Considering most of these guns aren't real permahull killers though, aside from the Hwacha maybe, they aren't hurt that much from Shatter not doing any damage to permahull, only the Mercury gets realy hurt due how it is used to pierce even perma from range.

[Machiavelliest]

I would argue that the pilot shouldn't bring a Goldfish against a Mercury build on an open map. Or, suffer the damage, dont fully rebuild the main gun until you're in range and get in close. Even on Dunes, you only spawn 1km apart.

There really hasn't seemed to be massive backlash over this gun, so I'd say empirically, it's not as unbalanced as its made out to be in this thread.

[Echoez]

I would argue that the pilot shouldn't bring a Goldfish against a Mercury build on an open map. Or, suffer the damage, dont fully rebuild the main gun until you're in range and get in close. Even on Dunes, you only spawn 1km apart.

I had to make serveral other points about this gun obvious in this thread, but don't be fooled, my main concern is elimitating the permahull threat this gun is currently and easing up a bit on the pain of instantly disabled guns.

Also mercuries are everywhere, should we not bring a Goldfish or a Spire at all in the game the moment our enemies start being serious and bring the damn gun? I see that as a balance problem since every ship should be at least competative, not sure about you.

There really hasn't seemed to be massive backlash over this gun, so I'd say empirically, it's not as unbalanced as its made out to be in this thread.

This gun is at the tip of the iceberg with everyone, they know it's not balanced but can't think of what needs to be done with it so it doesn't end up useless. You might not see it but when I sent a mail to Muse about it, they assured me there have been many others that voiced the same opinion as me. The gun is not balanced properly.


PS: Dunes is a horrible map since it only favors sniping over brawling, a balanced map should offer both playstyles roughly equal chances.

[RearAdmiralZill]

How about tweaking the shatter damage multiplier on bare hull? Leave the damage the same, tweak other guns that use shatter to do a tad more if needed (though no gun that I know uses shatter as primary damage) to compensate. You have an armor strip/disable with much less bite on the exposed hull.

That is an interesting take on it. But the multiplier on bare hull for Shatter is already like 0.1, it would have to be very low like 0.05 or even 0.

Still doesn't solve the one-shotting guns problem though, but if Shatter does 0 damage to permahull, I believe then if you lowered the Shatter it did to 150, so it doesn't one shot a heavy gun, but still severely cripples it, it could be fine.

I also did some research to look at how much lethality do other guns with shatter damage lose to perma hull if Shatter dealt 0 damage to it.

Hwacha with Heavy clip loses out around ~67 damage from a full barrage on perma.

Heavy Carronade loses 44 damage per clip.

Artemis loses 48 damage per clip.

Light carronade loses out on 64 damage per clip, 51.2 if you are using Heavy clip.

Considering most of these guns aren't real permahull killers though, aside from the Hwacha maybe, they aren't hurt that much from Shatter not doing any damage to permahull, only the Mercury gets realy hurt due how it is used to pierce even perma from range.

Eh I didn't think the modifier was so low already. I also said that for all other guns using shatter, if they did modify that hull modifier, then they would need to increase the shatter on those other guns as they are balanced currently. No point nerfing hwacha's and carronades.

I don't agree with the sentiment that the merc shouldn't be able to disable. Even a well shot gatling can disable guns. One shotting them might warrant a look into it, but it needs to be able to take out those heavy guns in some form (be it heavily damage them with one shot, kill with two), else ships with no heavy guns wouldn't have a good time, even if they tried spamming artemis.

PS: Dunes is a horrible map since it only favors sniping over brawling, a balanced map should offer both playstyles roughly equal chances.

That's heavily opinionated, and best for a new thread. I'll say that not all maps need to cater to all play styles, else we'd end up with one map doing so. IF you take a short range build into an open desert map, that's your fault, not the map's. Same for taking a pure long range build into Paritan, or any cp map.

[Echoez]

Eh I didn't think the modifier was so low already. I also said that for all other guns using shatter, if they did modify that hull modifier, then they would need to increase the shatter on those other guns as they are balanced currently. No point nerfing hwacha's and carronades.

I don't agree with the sentiment that the merc shouldn't be able to disable. Even a well shot gatling can disable guns. One shotting them might warrant a look into it, but it needs to be able to take out those heavy guns in some form (be it heavily damage them with one shot, kill with two), else ships with no heavy guns wouldn't have a good time, even if they tried spamming artemis.

 Heavy guns have a total of around 400 health, I know that since Lochnagar that now does 250 damage to your gun when shot, deals more than half its health pool. 2 Shots with a Mercury that has 150 shatter damage are still sufficient to destroy a heavy gun. Shatter damage multiplier for components is 2, so it would deal 300 damage to it per shot, more than enough to destroy it within those 2 shots.

If Shatter did nothing to permahull, as my numbers prove, other guns don't lose out on much of their permahull damage due to them not realy using shatter as a main source of permahull damage. Only the Mercury gets most of its permahull damage out of the shatter it does. Hence, only the Mercury is realy hurt while all other guns won't feel much of a change.

 If you feel like tha Hwacha especially does, you could potentialy buff its explosive a bit to even it out without risking much difference in the armor damage it does due to difference of the modifiers of explosive damage on perma (1.4) and armor (0.3).

That's heavily opinionated, and best for a new thread. I'll say that not all maps need to cater to all play styles, else we'd end up with one map doing so. IF you take a short range build into an open desert map, that's your fault, not the map's. Same for taking a pure long range build into Paritan, or any cp map.

Heavily opnionated doesn't mean it's not close to the truth, cause even a long range focused team can still play in a tight map like Rumble albight not as a effectively, yet in Dunes playing as a Brawler is almost impossible and your victory is completely dependant on your enemies making some sort of stupid mistake, since the map doesn't have almost any cover aside from 2 ruined metalic hunks who do have quite the space between them. So yes, Dunes for a brawler isn't just 'difficult' it's near the edge of impossible to beat a sniping team there, you might score some kills, but you will most probably not win.

I am implying that both teams are realy good at what they do for simplicity's sake. Cover is an essential element on any other map, Dunes is the only map that lacks sufficient cover over a very wide area.

That's all about maps in this thread though.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Heavy guns have a total of around 400 health, I know that since Lochnagar that now does 250 damage to your gun when shot, deals more than half its health pool. 2 Shots with a Mercury that has 150 shatter damage are still sufficient to destroy a heavy gun. Shatter damage multiplier for components is 2, so it would deal 300 damage to it per shot, more than enough to destroy it within those 2 shots.

If Shatter did nothing to permahull, as my numbers prove, other guns don't lose out on much of their permahull damage due to them not realy using shatter as a main source of permahull damage. Only the Mercury gets most of its permahull damage out of the shatter it does. Hence, only the Mercury is realy hurt while all other guns won't feel much of a change.

 If you feel like tha Hwacha especially does, you could potentialy buff its explosive a bit to even it out without risking much difference in the armor damage it does due to difference of the modifiers of explosive damage on perma (1.4) and armor (0.3).

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.

It's increasingly looking like the best option (initially) is to lower merc shatter damage to where it can either still kill a heavy gun in one shot or heavily damage it (up to devs).

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.