Some interesting math about the Mercury Field Gun.

[N-Sunderland]

I don't think that restricting what guns can be put on a ship (other than the distinction between light and heavy, of course) should ever be used as a solution to a problem.

I think Chrinus put it best. The only viable light weapon long-range combo is merc/merc. Changing that could be a good way to bring back the rather underpowered Artemis.

[Sammy B. T.]

Bias disclaimer, this is coming from a Merc hating brawler.

What if instead of changing the damage of the Mercury and the Artemis, the skill requirement for them was changed. The Artemis could use a bit of a speed and/or range boost. Perhaps the Merc needs the opposite. Increasing the arc and/or slowing down the shot could force people to bring Lesmok, move less, and still be likely to miss a few shots. The Lumberjack is easily the most powerful weapon in the game, it is just hard as all get out to shoot, often require Lesmok rounds. What if a similar approach was taken with the Merc?

[Echoez]

I've thought of that Sammy, but realy, there's so much drop and slow down of projectile speed you can give to a bullet... from some point onwards it would look kinda silly if it got too slow.

[Zenark]

Give it a clip of one shot.
(Just throwing random stuff out there, now. I've yet to ACTUALLY have any quarrels with the Mercury)

[Echoez]

Give it a clip of one shot.
(Just throwing random stuff out there, now. I've yet to ACTUALLY have any quarrels with the Mercury)

This lowers its DPS a bit too much and would basically make 2Merc a necessity if you wish you drop armor at range.

[N-Sunderland]

Well in that case they should definitely double the piercing damage.

Because there's surely no way that could go wrong with lochnagar...

[RearAdmiralZill]

Let's give it a silly hat. Surely no one will take it seriously then.

[awkm]

That's it. 

The Field Gun is getting locked.

You will now have to get all the achievements in order to use it... and also play in matches with it equipped.  It ensures everyone using it and everyone getting shot at are progamrs lulz.

[Echoez]

Let's give it a silly hat. Surely no one will take it seriously then.

I can see that being an april fools thing, Mercury fires mini top hats. Don't derail though, humor appreciated

That's it. 

The Field Gun is getting locked.

You will now have to get all the achievements in order to use it... and also play in matches with it equipped.  It ensures everyone using it and everyone getting shot at are progamrs lulz.

Eric nooooooooooo!

[awkm]

But in all seriousness, other things are being taken into account.  As of right now, I don't think the fault is entirely with the gun itself.

Furthermore, once new guns are added I have room again to mess around with piercing and shatter.

Spoiler alert!

[Queso]

new guns

Sounds like an update of volcanic proportions.

[Kuratius]

What's confusing me is the potential damage the mercury can deal with the right ammo and ship:
If you had a ship that's capable of equipping 3 mercuries that are able to focus on the same target (probably only at long range though) while equipped with  lochnagar shot and if those mercuries were buffed by the buff tool as well, you could technically get (75*1,5+300*0,2)*2,5*1,2*3=1552.5 armor damage, which is sufficient to one-shot the armor of any ship afaik and allow you to damage their hull, used on lightly armored ships like the squid it might even be able to oneshot them. Even without lochnagar shot it would still be (75*1,5+300*0,2)*1,2*3=621 damage when all three guns are fired at the same time. This becomes 621*1,3=807,3 dmg if one is using charged rounds as well (which don't limit the turning radius), for a total of 807,3*2=1614,6 armor damage per magazine if all three mercuries fire at the same time.
While this doesn't tell us anything about actual ship health damage, since there are different multipliers for that, it still seems like a huge amount of damage.
Would the Mobula be suitable for this kind of strategy? I don#t know if it can equip three front-facing mercuries at the same time, but if it can, it would be one hell of a beast when used for sniping.

Edit:
My mind is blown. The Mobula can actually equip mercuries on all 5 of its weapons, all of which are front-facing.
If you fire the one in the middle and the ones on the upper level and then jump down to the other two mercuries instead of waiting for the reload, you might be able to deal 1614,6*1/3*5= 2691 armor damage within less than 6 seconds.
Aussuming you could directly damage the hull and all the damage had the same multiplier for the hull as shatter damage, (which it doesn't, the piercing part of the mercury has a higher multiplier) of 0.1, you'd end up with (2691-850)*0,1=184,1 which means that, if the stats on the wiki are correct, the squid's hull would be left with 200-184,1=15,9 health points.
Now, to remind you: this in actuality, the hull damage is greater than that, meaning that a squid might very well get killed at long range by a Mobula within less than 6 seconds (estimation, but the time it takes to fire all 5 guns on the Mobula should be something around that, maybe even less).
Any other ship will already have lost its armor completely and be easy prey for any ships with hull-damaging weapons.
If my calculations are correct, Mercuries are good to the point of being frightening, at least on a Mobula.

[N-Sunderland]

Two facts:

-The Mobula can only get two mercs on one target due to the gun's low maximum yaw. There is no ship in the game that can get more than two mercs on a single target at any given time.
-The number given on the Wiki for the Squid's hull are wrong. It has 850 hull.

[Kuratius]

Two facts:

-The Mobula can only get two mercs on one target due to the gun's low maximum yaw. There is no ship in the game that can get more than two mercs on a single target at any given time.
-The number given on the Wiki for the Squid's hull are wrong. It has 850 hull.

Then just turn the Mobula like Leonardo da Vinci's cannon tank thingy and fire them separately. While this will increase the time it takes to fire all five mercuries, it's probably still incredibly fast. I'll do some testing on this tomorrow. 
And even then, being able to remove the armor of any ship at long range within a very short of time still seems pretty frightening.
But now that I think about it, I still need to know if damage multipliers are multiplied with each other (i.e. 100base*1,3chargedrounds*1,2bufftool) or just a percentage of the base damage of the weapon (i.e. 100base+100*0,3chargedrounds+100*0,2bufftool).
Also I haven't done anything accurate regarding actual hull damage, I might need to do that sometime.
Anyways, if we take the base damages of 75 and 300 of the merc and calculate the final damage dealt with percentages of the base damage and with damage modifiers applied after all the other damage bonuses, we'd have
(75+75*0,3+75*0,2)*1,5+(300+300*0,3+300*0,2)*0,2
=168,75+90=258,75 armor damage per shot.
258,75*2*5 would still be 2587.5 damage, which isn't all that far off from 2614 damage.
3 mercuries firing their mags would still be sufficient to take down any ships armor, as they would deal 1552.5 armor dmg.
And turning from the left side guns to allow the middle gun to fire should be even shorter. Now if you take hull damaging weapons on your right and have your left-side gunners run to the right while middle one is firing, any enemy that can't get past you or kill you fast enough could already be considered dead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but with this strategy a Mobula can kill any approaching ship in a matter of seconds, and anything without powerful long-range weaponry has basically already lost anyways because by the time it has gotten close it has already taken enough of a beating that it needs to retreat, thus forcing the usage of other long-range weaponry, and what would be more suitable for this than another set of mercuries?
I only theorycrafting here, as I don't have any practical experience with mercuries, neither on the giving nor on the receiving end, but this does worry me a little bit.

[naufrago]

...I don't have any practical experience with mercuries, neither on the giving nor on the receiving end...

I can tell.

On a mobula, in the time it would take you to rotate from the arcs of mercs on your right side, to give arc to the mercs on the left side and stop rotation, the mercs on your right side would already be reloaded and ready to shoot again. You severely underestimate how long turning will take and/or how difficult it is to aim while turning. EDIT: And if anything manages to get in close range with you, you're screwed.

Your assessment ignores repairs, rebuilds, the presence of cover, the ability to break spots and line-of-sight, the ability to dodge, and the possibility of missing. If you get 4 mercs on a target and manage to hit with every single shot, yes, that can do a fair bit of damage. It's a legitimate strategy, and a strong one. But by no means will every shot hit in every circumstance, and they won't all be synched up to hit at the same time.

Math is all well and good, but the usefulness of math in this game is fairly limited in scope.

EDIT2: Sorry, I got kinda fed up with clueless newbie posts (and clueless newbies ingame) and took it out on you. My apologies.