New Role Ideas

[Thomas]

Well, with the personal score thing implemented, I get a little disappointed after a match when I play certain roles; namely the gungineer.

Why not take the step to turn this into a full class? Essentially the idea is to fuse the engineer and gunner roles, giving them 2 engi items and 2 gunner items. Allowing them to do a little more on the gun without sacrificing a lot of their repair ability. It'll also help coax some newer players into the role of being an engineer that guns; as a fair amount are adamant about doing exactly what their role specializes in and needing a fair amount of encouragement to get them to do otherwise.

(Getting gunners to bring wrenches instead of a buff hammer, getting gunners to change to engineer but still gun, getting engineers to use the guns, etc)

So the gungineer can bring two ammo types, pipe wrench and buff (or spanner and a mallet) along with a spyglass and such.





Another thought is, what would happen if there were no roles? Essentially just pick 4-5 items total. Meaning that pilots could specialize by bringing 3 tools for maneuvering, a pipe wrench, and even a spyglass to sight the enemy. Leaving a crewmember to bring a spanner/mallet/fire ext/ buff kit, and an ammo type. Or range finder, spyglass, and fixing stuff. Or 3 ammo types, buff hammer, pipe wrench; etc.

What do you think about a gungineer class? Or what would you have your crew bring if there was 4-5 item slots capable of housing any current item?

[Coldcurse]

I think gungineer is overpowered.
being able to have 2 ammo type and 2 repair items.

then you would replace the gunner and 1 engineer.
this will change crewloadouts with:
1 captain.
1 engineer.
2 gungineers.

making the gunner not needed anymore.

[Regule]

I don't think new class is good idea as it would be hard to balance and having
someone "between" engineer and gunner will sort of kill concept of crew specialisation.
Also developers would have to create new set of achievements just for this class .


As for your concept of gungineer I think it could be balanced a little by not having
any pilot equipment so while you are more versatile in both shooting and repairing you
also loose ability to spot ships.

[Thomas]

Well it's just based off the idea that all current roles carry 5 items, 3 of their role and 1 of the other roles. (ie: 3 captain, 1 gunner, 1 engi)

This leads to some pretty standard loadouts. However, a lot of players aren't a big fan of gunners. Lately I've been seeing more captains trying to get 3 engineers instead of the classic 2 engi 1 gunner. Even in the 2 engi, 1 gunner setups; 1 of those engineers was designated the 'gungineer'. They'd have all the perks of the engineer, but still be in charge of shooting stuff.

The idea of the gungineer is to make the role that players created a reality. Two gunner equipment means you're not as well equipped as a gunner, but also 2 engineer equipment makes you less equipped than an engineer. You're a jack of all (two) trades and a master of none. However, as coldcurse pointed out, it would pretty much negate the gunner class. We could get into the whole 'gunners are useless' 'no they're not!' debate, but if you had to choose between a gunner and a gungineer, I'm sure most would opt for the gungineer. Three ammo types is great and all, but you generally only need one, and at the most two. Very few gunners will actually make use of that third type.


I'm not really sure that making gunners obsolete is a good reason for rejection though. At the very least it pushes more for the point that they're not ideal. Perhaps this hybrid could even be the updated gunner role. Gunners still get to gun without completely sacrificing their repair ability.


It's more of an interesting thought of what would happen, just like removing the classes and letting players pick any 5 items they desire; which I think would lead to some super specialization.

[Coldcurse]

you're still making the gunner obsolete.

what you are currently doing is making a wrench out of crew material.

and now your making limitations to the amount of items you can bring.
removing classes? sounds great, but not in my town. ;P
in my eyes this idea has become rejected by yourself as soon as you posted your second part.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I don't want a watered down engie as my new required gunner class. That's as far as I'll go into that.

Just picking any 5 tools wouldn't do much either, and just make for more standardized builds. Engie would take mallet/spanner/buff/fire-tool/x ammo, pilots would take 4 pilots tools and repair tool, gunner would take whatever ammo works on the guns/repair tools/maybe spyglass. It would just water down what's here.

[Thomas]

It's an interesting thought that changing a single item slot would make gunners obsolete. Already there's a lot of debate on whether they're obsolete already. The idea of the gungineer isn't necessarily to replace the gunner (although that's not such a terrible thought), but to fill the role players are already being put into; the gungineer. So you'd have your engi, gunner, and gungineer. Except you're probably right when you say players are likely to bring two gungineers and an engi. All I can do is shrug at that.


As for watering down builds by increasing variety... eh? Right now we already have 'standard' builds. A large portion of pilots bring kerosene, phoenix claw, and one other; along with a spanner/pipewrench, and some ammo type they'll almost never use. Standard engineers have a spanner, mallet, fire ext, spy glass, and an ammo. Gunners actually show the most variety, but even then it's pretty standardized based upon the weapons they're going to be using, having a pipe wrench and spy glass along with it.


You can't get much more standard than that. Allowing more variety increases the number of possibly combinations. You'd certainly have 'standard' sets pop up, just because players like something familiar, but I think you'd see that less than you do already.

As a captain, you could opt for 3 maneuver tools, a spy glass, and a repair tool. Or 5 maneuvering tools. Or 4 and a wrench. Or 3 and two wrenches (such as if you were going to be in charge of repairing the balloon).

Players doing a repair oriented role would often go spanner, mallet, fire ext, buff, ammo; but they might opt for spanner/mallet, fire ext, chem spray, ammo. Or spanner/mallet, fire ext, buff, spy glass. Or range finder. Or bring all the wrenches to optimize repair times.

Then your offensive players would go for some ammo types (probably two), followed by more repair and maybe a spy glass. Maybe only 1 ammo type and more repair. Maybe they'll bring a spy glass and a range finder along with their ammo and a wrench. Maybe two ammo, a wrench, a buff, and a spyglass.


Suddenly whole new combinations open up. And as the amount of items increases, the possibilities expand as well.

[The Djinn]

You can't get much more standard than that. Allowing more variety increases the number of possibly combinations. You'd certainly have 'standard' sets pop up, just because players like something familiar, but I think you'd see that less than you do already.

I actually like the sound of this. You could make classes with it as well, by adding non-item related buffs to the picture to actually give classes more of a reason to exist in such a system.

For example...

Gunner: 10% faster reload, 10% faster gun turning speed, 5% more gun damage.
Engineer: Repair cooldown reduced 10%. Movement speed increased by 10%.
Pilot: 10% faster ship turning/acceleration when on helm.

...or something of the sort. It allows classes to have specialized perks in their specific role, which allowing everyone to, in theory, bring the tools necessary to perform any given task.

[Coldcurse]

You can't get much more standard than that. Allowing more variety increases the number of possibly combinations. You'd certainly have 'standard' sets pop up, just because players like something familiar, but I think you'd see that less than you do already.

I actually like the sound of this. You could make classes with it as well, by adding non-item related buffs to the picture to actually give classes more of a reason to exist in such a system.

For example...

Gunner: 10% faster reload, 10% faster gun turning speed, 5% more gun damage.
Engineer: Repair cooldown reduced 10%. Movement speed increased by 10%.
Pilot: 10% faster ship turning/acceleration when on helm.

...or something of the sort. It allows classes to have specialized perks in their specific role, which allowing everyone to, in theory, bring the tools necessary to perform any given task.

this is going way off track XD

[Thomas]

I wouldn't really give the different roles a boost of sorts, the tools they bring should compliment their role. The 5 slot free for all would just allow for further specialization and creative configurations without sacrificing functionality in other ways. An interesting idea, although a lot of the game is based around the risk/reward factor. Do you risk bringing a buff hammer as a gunner to always maximize damage output at the cost of not being able to fix things in a pinch?


Which is generally where the gungineer comes into play. Without being amazing in either role, they're not as effective as a full engi or full gunner. I believe the common gungineer build currently has a buff, pipe wrench, and fire ext (or buff, spanner, mallet) along with their ammo type. The gungineer role would reduce their engineering equipment and increase their gunner equipment. They'd most likely bring a buff and pipe wrench (or pipe wrench and fire ext, etc) and two ammo types. Allowing them to be more effective on a gun (although not as effective as a gunner, in theory), and less effective as an engineer; than an engineer doing the same role.

[Byron Cavendish]

Does anyone really care about this rating? Its an arbitrary number. More often that not I'm an engineer captain, I'll probably get a bad rating, I know that. But really who cares? You know you did a good job or that you didn't, you don't need a silly algorithm to tell you that.

[Thomas]

There's a whole 'nother discussion about the rating system in general.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3025.0.html


It just brought into focus how we have a role (engineer) often doing more of a gunner role. While the rating system isn't the gold standard for doing well, it does seem to emphasize that each role should be doing their related role tasks. Reminding me of the gungineer, which is a player created role that already exists. It doesn't really have a place in the current system, so giving it one would be kind of neat.


If there was a gungineer role as described above, how might players form their crew? I think I'd try to have one of each role on most of my ships, although on some of the other ships (squid for instance), I might go with a 2 engi's and a gungineer.

[Crafeksterty]

We would have a whole new aray of achievements. Levels and costmes....

All for a slot being traded to have 2 gunner and engi slots? Or whatever.

I really dont see the benefitt of that. The classes benefitt as they arre at the same time a limit. This is a balance. While a multi role would just be a standard player with random specialisation. This would be less beneficial in high level play and confusing in low level play.

That THIRD item slot (especialy for engineers) Is super important. It determines what makes the class. An engi with no extinguisher is going to cry for it. A pilot with no spyglass (also On crew) is going to have the ship on all the wrong places.  A gunner may as well run engineer without a third ammo option.

[Omniraptor]

The problem is that there isn't a single light gun that needs three ammo types. The heavy guns need at most two.

[Imagine]

The problem is that there isn't a single light gun that needs three ammo types. The heavy guns need at most two.

Yeeeeah, about that, let's not get into this again shall we?