Ships with the power to kill

[Eukari]

We are arguing about a video game on the internet. Let's keep this in perspective, please.

Echoez, please appreciate the fact that, even if you have personally tested things like more hull armor, we have not. Simply saying "No, doesn't work, trust me" is not the kind of argument that wins people over. Perhaps if you described what happened in matches with increased hull, it would help us understand better why you think it's a such bad idea. Things like that chart are just going to make people mad, and that's not constructive.

The problem is this: In any given situation, the most efficient tactic is always to simply kill the enemy. At the moment, this typically means stripping armor with a Gatling and then blowing up the hull with Mortar/Flak. All guns that disable the enemy ship do is merely prolong the engagement and decrease your chance of getting a kill. (through lost potential killing power by replacing a Gatling-Mortar/Flak with something else) Working together with an ally simply compounds the problem- it is still better to bring two "finishers" than to bring one "disabler" and a finisher. After all, why disable, then kill when you can just kill twice as fast?

The question is, how can we make disabling builds more viable without going too far and making them required? How do we make Disable/Finisher more on par with Finisher/Finisher? Right now, it's easier to kill than it is to disable. Making the hitboxes for weapons a little bigger might aid in that- if it doesn't require such crazy good aim to take enemy guns individually, a disabler can potentially last longer against a killing ship. However, you're still relying on player skill rather than simply making the fight longer (as flatly increasing the hull would do).

[Echoez]

We are arguing about a video game on the internet. Let's keep this in perspective, please.

Echoez, please appreciate the fact that, even if you have personally tested things like more hull armor, we have not. Simply saying "No, doesn't work, trust me" is not the kind of argument that wins people over. Perhaps if you described what happened in matches with increased hull, it would help us understand better why you think it's a such bad idea. Things like that chart are just going to make people mad, and that's not constructive.

Simply put, what happened in that test:

Disables were even less of an issue than they are now. When you have even more health than the current one, since disables aren't that much of a threat on your health already, you pretty much know that the disabler now can't kill you no matter how hard he tries. Sure engagments were longer because the disabler didn't die fast either, but in the end, the people that brought kill builds won and the disablers didn't realy have a chance after all.

It was a horrible experience, not only did it worsen the condition of disablers vs killers, but it made disablers the most frustrating thing to fight against since they didn't kill you but just prolonged the fight with absolutely no other effect than prolonging it, we just rebuilt our guns and kept firing cause they couldn't kill us at all this time.

You have to realize that by increasing hull and armor totals you buff the ships across the board, what is already the best, will remain the best, no matter how much health you have.

The more health the killers are allowed to have, the worse disables will work against them since it enlarges the gap of kill time between the two types of weapons even more.

There. Constructive enough? I realy don't want to sound patronizing to anyone, but I'm realy getting bored of how stagnant the meta of this game is where mostly all weapons are ignored in place of Piercing and Explosive.

My frustration is towards the game, not you guys, so I'm sorry about that.

[Eukari]

There. Constructive enough? I realy don't want to sound patronizing to anyone, but I'm realy getting bored of how stagnant the meta of this game is where mostly all weapons are ignored in place of Piercing and Explosive.

My frustration is towards the game, not you guys, so I'm sorry about that.

Yes, it was. And we share your frustration- that's why we are here, trying to help find a solution.

What you said makes sense. The problem is still that in any given engagement, the ship with the most killing power is probably going to win. (barring large disparities in crew skill) A disabling build can potentially reduce the enemy's abilities, but only temporarily, and unless the ship also has a way to kill them (or is working closely with an ally who does) will eventually slip up and get murdered. The only ships that can really do both jobs are the Junker, Galleon and Moblua, and they're all pretty good in the right hands. (though the Galleon and Mobula have more obvious weaknesses) Ships that can just straight-up kill are also very strong; those that focus on disabling/support are the weakest. (i.e. the Goldfish) Having some way to break armor is also mandatory- I cringe when I see that a ship that doesn't have at least one Gatling.

So what's our solution here? Buffing hull damage (to try and give disablers more time to do their work) merely prolongs the inevitable. Buffing shatter damage could work, making disabling easier, but could also backfire and make outright killing too hard- nobody wants to spend the entire match rebuilding their guns only to have them immediately destroyed. (what was it called- peaching?- is fine in small doses, but I don't want to always have to do it) As I said, I also like increasing the hitboxes for guns and such. Make the Banshee and the Artemis more viable.

I think reducing explosive damage could also be useful. Not a lot- you still need to be able to get kills, but I've flown enough Pyramidions to see a lot of hulls dissolve under a single mortar barrage. Should anything but the most fragile ships be dying to one clip of anything? (and I'm not talking Spires here- I mean Pyras and Goldfish) Or perhaps nerfing piercing damage slightly, so that it takes longer to get them vulnerable.

[Echoez]

I still think that guns like the Artemis and the Carronades have stupid restrictions on them that simply don't allow them to do their job properly if your ship is focused around them.

People think that if the carronades were able to aim slightly further downwards, suddenly balloon camping would be easy, well, it realy isn't that easy staying above someone in the correct position, I suggest you try doing it before calling out the gun being too easy.

I still don't get why can't the Artemis can't aim up :/

[N-Sunderland]

The Artemis can't aim up because it was OP for a week, and it got an unnecessarily harsh nerf.

The whole balloon camping thing used to happen all the time and was pretty balanced, but this brings us back to the aforementioned problem: new players couldn't deal with it, and complained that it was broken. So once again, yeah, better tutorials and things please.

[treseritops]

An idea for testing is where the damage goes once the gun is down.

It's my understanding that any component that is already damaged sends any damage it is currently receiving to the hull (if balloon is down and you shoot it again with carronade it damages the hull). However, is this done at the "carronade vs. balloon" damage amount, or the "carronade vs. hull armor" calculation?

Testing how the damage once the gun is down is transferred is probably an easy thing to test. Ideas I've thought of in the last 2 minutes are:

1. Transfer damage calculated at the components level. If the round would have done 50dmg to the balloon, it does 50dmg to the hull, instead of 50dmg to the balloon, balloon goes down and not only does 25dmg to the hull.

2. A risky idea is transferring the damage to a different component than the hull. After a component drops future damage goes to the engines, if all engines are down it goes to front guns, side guns, etc.

3. Totally insane idea- damage to a dropped component goes straight to hull, not hull armor? Seems like an awful idea but I'll throw it out. 

[treseritops]

Okay, and then a second testable idea I have is changing the secondary damages of some of the "disabling" weapons. Seems straight forward.

[HamsterIV]

While the Manticore is considered a "Disabling weapon," when paired with a piercing damage it becomes a killing weapon. This can be done on one ship like the spire or galleon, or with two ships like a goldfish and a 2x gat pyra, junker, or squid. The gat pyra + hwachafish is one of the deadliest combos I have ever played with. However this is anecdotal evidence and the disparity in crew skill may have played a part in the many fast one sided victories I won with that combo.

[Echoez]

While the Manticore is considered a "Disabling weapon," when paired with a piercing damage it becomes a killing weapon. This can be done on one ship like the spire or galleon, or with two ships like a goldfish and a 2x gat pyra, junker, or squid. The gat pyra + hwachafish is one of the deadliest combos I have ever played with. However this is anecdotal evidence and the disparity in crew skill may have played a part in the many fast one sided victories I won with that combo.

While effective on paper, 2Gat Pyra with Hwachafish is practicaly worse than Gat/Mortar Pyra and Hwachafish cause like this your ally can't kill by themselves either, if one of you is down, you can't kill anyone either.

That's the primary problem we are discussing here, either all ships need to become this connected, hence any loadout has to rely on their teammate to finish the job or every loadout realy needs to be self sufficient by itself and I think the second option is better.

[Zenark]

I would like to see kill ships work harder to get said kill. One gatling clip takes out armor, less than one mortar clip finishes the ship off. Seeing that it takes only a few seconds to empty a gat clip, the ship getting shot really doesn't have enough time to fight back, escape, call for help, etc.

If two kill ships (two gats, two mortars, any ship) focus on one ship, even if that target has an ally right next to them, that ally ship can't do anything before their ally is dead. Nothing short of a Hwacha volley or getting in the way can help your ally.

Lower piercing damage, lower explosive damage, give players a few more seconds to try and counter the situation.   Make it so that it takes more than one clip to kill a ship. Currently, the game is focused around who can shoot fastest and most accurate, not maneuverability or tactics, which, I feel, should be the focus.

[Plasmarobo]

I'm honestly not sure that lowering damage is a good solution. If your engineers are doing it right, it can take more than a full clip to get that armor down. I've hit with every shot in a 45 clip, and the damn armor never went down, cue other ship booking durning my reload.

I think the current situation requires great engineers. I'd love to see it timed so that as long as the hull engineer has split second timing, he can at least get the gat to re-load before the armor goes down. However, I foresee it being too easy to keep the armor up if the piercing damage is lowered.

Something to test out in the dev app maybe? Also I like quick kills and prefer a quick game where every tactical decision has dire consequences, so it might be down to a difference in desire here! To me, tactics happen before a single shot is fired!

[Captain Smollett]

With top notch engineering by an entire crew; all ships other than the goldfish, spire and squid can survive a full clip of heavy ammunition before their armor breaks.

[QKO]

A proper Galleon is most definitely a kill ship. As for the damage vs hitpoints talk, meh. People take piercing because it has the longest range weapons available with that purpose. People take mortar because it's OP. And that's that really. There's no point in spending brainpower on the issue.

If the pilot wants, he could be running a much more brawly build by using carronade flamer, or he could go longer range and use lumberjack + explosive weapons. Though both of these options are vulnerable to the range of a ship with gatling+mortar on board (effective range vs arming time).

I do however think, and have thought for a while, that the repercussions on killing a support ship is too high. The ships would be balanced around this concept, but not really. And since hull is zapped the first time the armor goes down(by the OP mortar+greased rounds) anything with a low armor value is not really viable. That is why Pyramidions and Junkers are so common and why the Galleon is picked over Spire.

Instead of having it cost one full point to lose a squid or goldfish, it would make much more sense to lose just a fraction of it. Then the hull life on these ships can also be lower and the ships would see a lot more use far more easily(because then they are cheap). In comparison now, a ship that gets lasered out of the air like nobody's business, like the spire is now given the same worth as killing a Galleon that can stay in the air almost indefinitely, doing the exact same thing, just better.

The point system I'd propose is the one used in the Gundam VS games. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX4qE5FhfjU In the loading screen you can see their points (2500, 3000, 3000, 2000), the max points to be expended in that game is 6000. That is the green and red bar you see in game. When a suit dies, it's points are taken from the amount of points a team has to spend. So if a 3000 ship dies, 3000 points will remain, if it dies again 0 points remain, if either ships dies then they lose.  Support suits in that game are far less costly than the mid range and high range suits in that game, which is also why they see quite a bit of use in there.

The same thing could be done in GoIO making it much easier to balance the game and balance certain ships in the competitive context of the game.

[Echoez]

With top notch engineering by an entire crew; all ships other than the goldfish, spire and squid can survive a full clip of heavy ammunition before their armor breaks.

Does it realy matter? Now that they added visual effects of the armor being weak (few smoke clouds here and there indicate that their armor is low) you just begin spamming mortar shots before the armor goes does, break it and procceed to maul their hull, not too hard to learn and pretty damn effective.

Again, that's not realy the problem, but I think I've wasted enough brain power explaining it already so do excuse me.. I'm not doing it again.

[Zenark]

I've avoided using heavy clip on a gatling in favor for greased. (I know, I've heard the arguments, I still prefer greased)

It seems that every gun has a weakness except for the gatling and mortar. Artemis can't aim up, carronade has short range and can't aim down, flamer has incredibly short range, flak is inaccurate and has a relatively small clip, Mercury can't aim down and has low ammo, Harpoon is useless, hwacha has a long reload, heavy flak has only two shots and is only long ranged, heavy carronade has two shots and can't aim down, lumberjack has a small Horizontal arc, etc.

The mortar is supposed to be short range, but Lesmok rounds turn it into a laser gun which still has enough ammo to kill a ship outright. The gatling is 'inaccurate' but ships are big enough that most shots will hit unless you're at max range.

I can't think of any other weapon that can kill a ship in one clip, not to mention so easily. Any ship that can get a gatling and mortar on a target becomes a kill ship, so I still think the issue isn't with the ships, but with these two guns.