Author Topic: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1  (Read 80078 times)

Offline awkm

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #45 on: August 20, 2013, 12:12:45 pm »
Max distance on Gatling is 700m, but with its amount of jitter it'll take a few clips to kill Galleon armor.  Heavy Clip will help, but with the -25% clip size the Gatling still needs one more reload to finish Galleon armor off.  Of course, you'd have multiple ships attacking the target Galleon and then it's a piece of cake.  However, you'd also have a friendly ship flanking your Galleon and distracting anyone focus firing the Galleon...

Just sayin'

1v1 is hugely imbalanced.  This is where your 2nd ship comes into play.  We didn't design the game for 1v1.  Make sure you're talking to your friendlies.

Offline Gambrill

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #46 on: August 20, 2013, 01:16:01 pm »
Have you ever seriously attempted to fly a Galleon? You seem to have no notion of what Galleon crews are going through. When a pyramidion/goldfish/junker/squid/spire/etc decides to attack a Galleon, they first of all rarely charge from the Galleon's broadsides. That means that the Galleon has to turn. For the Hwacha to work, the Pyramidion needs to be in 750 meters. The Pyramidion's chaingun has a range of 750m and starts firing usually while that Galleon is turning. Now, why wouldn't a Pyramidion chaingunner not target the Hwacha's that are turning towards him?

In short, those hwacha's are more often gone than not before the Galleon has turned to fire. It gets worse from here, because the heavy guns die so easily, you need an engineer below deck to repair them and that means the hull is being sacrificed. Now you got an engineer downstairs, your hull is down and the Pyramidion starts to fire its mortar. Do you still think it's fair for a Galleon to die without firing a shot?

Don't forget that you silently agreed that the Galleon cannot outrun its pursuers. The Galleon's guns also go down to easily for the ship to make a proper stand and the only thing in between instant death right now is the hull armor that it provides. That hull armor takes very long to repair and ships that are trying to kill a Galleon will have done so before anyone on that ship has had the time to respond in the first place.

I will reiterate once more that I don't think it's fair for a ship classified as tank, where the crew is working their hardest to keep the vessel alive, to have their ship evaporate at a moment's notice. And it's only the mortar that is this bad. Flak cannon, rocket carousel, artemis and any other sources of explosive damage are much more moderate.

I actually came from a locked thread where you were whining about a different thing vs. Galleons and just HAD to see what else you would put.

You argue and assume the people talking have no idea about this game. Well done you fly a galleon. Yet you complain about a chain gun taking out your manticores? A galleon is meant to be at the fight before it happens. You can't just fly into a battle half done.

the fact that you are being ambushed and having your manticores taken out before even a rocket fires. Shows you are not using the galleon to its full potential.

Offline Gambrill

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #47 on: August 20, 2013, 01:18:35 pm »
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1813.15/topicseen.html

Read this thread,a fellow on there will give you a great tip for galleons.

Offline QKO

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #48 on: August 20, 2013, 01:41:56 pm »
Yes, I have flown a galleon countless times. I'd also like to point out that I engineer on Zill's galleon in competitive play, so I'm likely more aware than the average player of what galleon crews go through. Now, yes, the galleon has to turn. Phoenix claw on a galleon (or most ships really) is a 100% necessity. Whoever told you that you need to be within 750 meters to use the hwacha was sorely mistaken, I'm afraid. It fires up to 1.2k, and as long as you have heavy ammo loaded in, you can hit at that range with a bit of practice. A gatling gunner may target your hwacha, but it's fairly difficult to consistently hit a heavy gun with a gatling gun, especially while both ships are moving. Not to mention the galleon crew should be focused on not letting their guns get destroyed, so they'll be repairing them while this is happening.
Yes, but I recall that even with heavy clip, almost no rocket will hit their target at such ranges. Either that or the gunners I've been up against are terrible shots. Quite frankly, I have a history in FPS and I have had to aim in situations much more intense than that this game has to offer, and beyond 700 meters is a range I simply won't go for because most of my rockets would miss anyway.
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If your hwacha is gone before the galleon has even turned to fire, something is going seriously wrong. Having an engineer downstairs absolutely does not mean the hull is being sacrificed. You should have two engineers; one upstairs on the hull and balloon, and one downstairs on the guns and engines. Again, if your galleon is dying before even firing a shot, something is going seriously wrong.
Yes, they came at you faster than you wanted. Of course I do my best to avoid the really bad situations myself. But having been on the other side of things, it's simply impossible not to notice how easy things are, especially with a greased round mortar.
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I didn't "silently agree" that the galleon cannot outrun its pursuers, I simply said that it doesn't need to. If you'd like to try outrunning your pursuers, the galleon certainly can. It has poor acceleration, but a fairly high top speed. The only reason it's generally a bad idea is because then your broadsides are no longer facing the enemy. Of course you have things like tar barrel to help mitigate this.
So you're saying that the Galleon can clear any pursuer, most notably the Pyramidion carrying the front side guns, before your engines are down or before they destroy your ship? I would really really really like to see that.
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You keep coming back to your point of "have their ship evaporate at a moment's notice" ... I'm not sure what's happening in your galleon matches, but the galleon should never be evaporating at moment's notice, and that's almost never my experience on a galleon.
What is happening is this: Galleon hull armor goes down, I pump out mortar shots, Galleon dies at shot number 13. No armor repair made. Does this game have any recording tools? I'm sure I can show you. Or you could add me as friend and we'll do a dummy 1v1 for the sake of argument. Once hull armor is down, that Galleon goes down to a single ship with the double barreled mortar onboard, if there were any helpers, they might as well turn away to kill another ship.

Max distance on Gatling is 700m, but with its amount of jitter it'll take a few clips to kill Galleon armor.  Heavy Clip will help, but with the -25% clip size the Gatling still needs one more reload to finish Galleon armor off.  Of course, you'd have multiple ships attacking the target Galleon and then it's a piece of cake.  However, you'd also have a friendly ship flanking your Galleon and distracting anyone focus firing the Galleon...

Just sayin'

1v1 is hugely imbalanced.  This is where your 2nd ship comes into play.  We didn't design the game for 1v1.  Make sure you're talking to your friendlies.
You need 4 clips of heavy clip chaingun before Galleon hull armor is down, after that, less than 1 full clip of greased rounds mortar. With other types of Mortar I reckon they can get their ship repaired before they receive the killing blow and thus mitigate a lot of explosive damage. And I picked the Galleon for this discussion because it is specified to be a tank; we're completely ignoring what it does to other ships and with what ease it is doing it. And I still stand by my point that killing the strongest ship with one burst is just not fair.

[I actually came from a locked thread where you were whining about a different thing vs. Galleons and just HAD to see what else you would put.
Oh! A follower! How nice!
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You argue and assume the people talking have no idea about this game.
No, I questioned him on what he seemed incredibly casual about. It turns out that he has every right to be to some degree, but on the other hand... he's no world champion either(I think).
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Well done you fly a galleon. Yet you complain about a chain gun taking out your manticores? A galleon is meant to be at the fight before it happens. You can't just fly into a battle half done.
Ah, an argument neatly scoped to your own perspective. Did you know that it is perfectly possible for a Pyramidion to rush the long range side of a Galleon without sustaining any permanent damage? I'm talking about opponents hitting every mortar shot on our vessel and still not dropping us out of the air or destroying our hull. And when the Pyramidion gets within armtime range, the only gun that could potentially still hurt it is a fieldgun(unless proper self defense equipment has been put in place). So when a pyramidion is charging your sniping side and is not dropped, you have to make the choice on whether to turn or not. And even if you do, that Pyramidion still has the first shot on your brawling side. That is how you can lose your manticore and your carronades.
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the fact that you are being ambushed and having your manticores taken out before even a rocket fires. Shows you are not using the galleon to its full potential.
I'm not ambushed, I only get bumrushed. Furthermore, saying you never go down without dishing out a rocket barrage is plain delusional, even for the best of the best.


Offline N-Sunderland

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #49 on: August 20, 2013, 01:55:41 pm »
Ok, what build do you take on the left side of your Galleon, and what ammo types do your crew members take? I'm sensing that that's the source of your problems, rather than the light mortar.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #50 on: August 20, 2013, 02:13:54 pm »
Ok, QKO, I've said this before and I'll say it again, you need to find better gunners.

When you're in an engagement with the Galleon, unless you've made a serious mistake. the Galleon should be getting the first shots off.  A Galleon can easily drop a charging pyramidion before it reaches armtime (lemme lay some math on you)

A pyramidion has 650 armor, add on 250 armor worth of mallet repairs and the charging pyra has 900 armor.

If he's already at mid range (like you implied) then you should have some easy shots.  Two charged rounds in a mercury do 448 armor damage,  6 lumberjack shots do 690 hull armor damage.  With ace gunning you can single handedly drop a pyra's armor before it is in range and kill them with a well timed hwacha (trust me good gunners can hit this at 1200 meters, just watch Lambert from MM) or Flak shots.  Gunnery that good doesn't often happen, even so, assuming your gunners hit at an average accuracy of 75% of their shots.  You can still kill a charging pyra in two clips or with focused fire you can burst down a ship in seconds once they reach your allies range (theoretically your teammate is fighiting with you).  This should leave you a 2v1.

Secondly regarding your concern with light mortars, it actually is very difficult to one clip a galleon with light mortar if your galleon is actively tanking.  There should always be two people top deck on a Galleon, the engineer and the pilot.  If they both are rebuilding the hull with a spanner, it will almost always go back up before the mortars kill you.  Regarding getting your guns shot out, yes you should always have an engineer below deck, and your gunner should also be repairing his gun through damage being taken.  Every shot that hits your gun doesn't hit your hull, and the galleon has a lot of armor to break through, so if they're shooting out your guns it leaves your ally a ton of time to kill the opponent while they try to kill you and theoretically your ally should get the kill on them long before you go down.

Honestly, I know you're speaking emotionally because you love the Galleon and think it could be better than it is, but the ship is not under powered.  It squarely falls right in the middle of ship hierarchy and is probably the most balanced ship in the game, it just has the highest skill ceiling.  Anyone can waltz into a beginners game and load 4 hwachas on the thing and murder everybody, but at high level play it's one of the toughest ships to use, but can become almost infinitely good and easily the best ship in the game when used to its full potential.

Currently there are two competitive teams using this ship near its max.  Merry men and the Paddling.  Check out the videos of their matches and you'll see just how not underpowered the Galleon is.

Find some regular people to crew with and fly alongsiede, learn the maps to find out optimal Galleon positioning and flight routes (this matters more for a Galleon than any other ship) and enjoy the steep learning curve of the ship.  It can easily rule the battlefield when all of the pieces come together.

Offline awkm

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #51 on: August 20, 2013, 02:24:21 pm »
Can we move Galleon discussion to another thread please?

This is about GUNS and GUNNER SKILLS.

Thanks.

Offline QKO

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #52 on: August 20, 2013, 03:43:31 pm »
awkm: we're still partly on topic here and you ignored a key question: is there a way for me to record in guns of icarus?

Or for theoretical proof: what is the equation here? How many repairs does it take to fix a hull? What are the timers on shots and repairs?
« Last Edit: August 20, 2013, 03:45:11 pm by QKO »

Offline awkm

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #53 on: August 20, 2013, 04:09:47 pm »
We don't offer any built in recording solutions.

Final answer regarding the Galleon having too little hull health: if your armor is down to allow someone to pump an entire clip of anything into you then what were your engineers doing, what were your teammates doing, and where were you in combat?  There are a lot of factors that can ensure the Galleon's survival as well as many factors that can bring it to its knees, just like any other ship.  This is the first time that any kind of Galleon balance has been brought up in recent times and there is only one voice saying that Galleon is underpowered.

Please move all Galleon related discussion out of this thread or at least into the Ships thread.

GUNS

GUNNER SKILLS

Offline Letus

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #54 on: August 20, 2013, 04:19:15 pm »
As much as I find the incendiary rate chance nice...I feel like those clips easily outweigh the Flamethrower.  Perhaps it's because I don't quite understand how the flamethrower works....(I'm a "vet" who still thinks burst rounds in a flamethrower is great...could be the ammo count and the fact that there is no damage, but I always seem to ignite more in an area with that round than others...)

But with Incendiary being 25% chance per shot, and Flamethrower being 20% per particle...which I guess means round...

Perhaps I just need more explanation on how the Flamethrower works...(also, I think it'd be cool of the flamethrower had an Eastern Dragon head on it...around where the fire comes out...just to fit the name...)

Offline awkm

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #55 on: August 20, 2013, 04:22:27 pm »
Flamethrower works with Burst rounds.

Each flamethrower particle has a sphere on it.  Each particle has a chance to ignite things.  Burst Round is increasing the size of the sphere. Lesmok works on flamethrower too.... super long range flamer :D

Offline Letus

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #56 on: August 20, 2013, 04:29:00 pm »
Flamethrower works with Burst rounds.

Each flamethrower particle has a sphere on it.  Each particle has a chance to ignite things.  Burst Round is increasing the size of the sphere. Lesmok works on flamethrower too.... super long range flamer :D

So...
Does the particle cross through components like a flare then? 
I knew about Lesmok, I just never really used it back before 1.3.1 except to start igniting, and halfway through my clip, switched to burst to have EVERYTHING stay ignited...

I think most of my early screenshots of the game are me on NateDawg's squid destroying ships with burst round flamethrowers....

Offline awkm

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #57 on: August 20, 2013, 04:39:43 pm »
To be honest, the flamethrower is broken in a few ways and we have to fix it soon.

The particles do in fact go through things that they've hit.

The most reliable way to light people on fire is probably to increase the size of the detection spheres or slow down the rate at which those spheres travel.  Because of the way that the particle system is set up, the spheres jump.  It's possible for you to point blank flamethrower an enemy's gun and not have that gun ignite.  Everything behind the gun will have ignited though.  This is because those particles 'skipped' that gun, jumped ahead of it.  Lesmok will increase the size of those jumps so that's an obvious drawback from flaming someone at range.  Kinda works out.

It's not ideal so we've been trying to fix it for the longest time.  Particles are really tedious to tweak right now.  We have to rewrite the entire system for just one gun so we put it off.  For most cases, the flamethrower is quite effective.

Offline Letus

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #58 on: August 20, 2013, 04:53:24 pm »
To be honest, the flamethrower is broken in a few ways and we have to fix it soon.

The particles do in fact go through things that they've hit.

The most reliable way to light people on fire is probably to increase the size of the detection spheres or slow down the rate at which those spheres travel.  Because of the way that the particle system is set up, the spheres jump.  It's possible for you to point blank flamethrower an enemy's gun and not have that gun ignite.  Everything behind the gun will have ignited though.  This is because those particles 'skipped' that gun, jumped ahead of it.  Lesmok will increase the size of those jumps so that's an obvious drawback from flaming someone at range.  Kinda works out.

It's not ideal so we've been trying to fix it for the longest time.  Particles are really tedious to tweak right now.  We have to rewrite the entire system for just one gun so we put it off.  For most cases, the flamethrower is quite effective.

Interesting!  But I can see how, saying that the flamethrower can shoot through rocks..yeah that needs to be fixed.  On the other side, it would make sense for flames to pass through components with a flamethrower...well to a point.  A Direct blast to a direct spot, that spot should get most of the flames...where as from a distance, you have the ability to allow the flames wrap around said spot, and spread beyond....and burst, basically, means more flames in a wider area...

But I can see how one system for one gun will be tedious...but my question was answered...now I can just say "Because Awkm says ____" when people question my want for burst rounds in my flamethrower!
Been saying "it ignites more area" for the longest time with no one wanting to believe me .__.  ...and I was right technically.

As for the first point incendiary vs. flamethrower.  Still seems like Incendiary Gatling gun is the better choice...perhaps if incendiary's ignite chance (25%) was the same as the flamethrower's particle chance (20%?)  Incendiary in a Gatling gun was already effective before the 25% chance was implemented, in my opinion.

Offline N-Sunderland

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Re: GUNS & GUNNER SKILLS Balance Discussion v1.3.1
« Reply #59 on: August 20, 2013, 04:59:53 pm »
Letus, you're forgetting that the flamer fires waaay more rounds per second than the gat, and it hits multiple components at once. It's a far better choice for lighting fires.