Zenith (concept for a new ship)

[Milevan Faent]

This is how I cheat, since this forum's table system is too complicated to mess with.

[redria]

And a major part of my concept is intentionally changing the gun mounts to actually be angled up or down (depending on which deck they're on). It doesn't actually make a gun fire with a bigger arc than normal, it just changes the default angle of the gun. For instance, an Artemis on the upper deck right gun from the wheel can (treating level with the deck as 0 degrees) fire between 40 degrees up, and 5 degrees down. Since the gun is also at 30 degrees to one side, it can aim out to 95 degrees right (treating 0 degrees as straight behind the ship) and 35 degrees left, which is enough to fire straight to the side, but not toward the front of the ship at all. Looking at these numbers, the gun's arc is the same, it just covers a different area than it normally would (which is noramlly mostly below the ship, and with a wide arc to cover front, side, or back, depending on where the gun is mounted. This covers more diagonally back and up than anything.

Nothing really prevents Muse from making a ship that is like this, and I think the concept is interesting enough that I wanted to share it, which is why I made the Zenith.

I think we all understand the idea you are presenting regarding guns. The thing is that since no other gun in the game is mounted like this, there is no indication that Muse has an easy way to do so at this time.
Having ships where the weapon mounts angle up or down would make for some interesting play on height, so not all engagements have to happen with both ships at nearly the same height. But the game would have to support such a feature. Theoretically it wouldn't be too hard, but coding can sometimes surprise you in certain situations and just kinda slap you and say "nope. that won't actually work. you are a bad person and you should feel bad".
I do like the creative thinking though.

[Milevan Faent]

So, I'm considering changing the stats I've posted so far for the Zenith from 600 Armor/800 Health to 680 Armor and 750 Health (the ship is suppose to be more about the armor than the health), but as I can't really test the ship out, I have no idea how viable it is with the current numbers, and don't know if this would be a buff or a nerf. Not sure if it's a good idea, but it would bring the numbers more in line with the original stats concept I posted in the OP.

[redria]

I think my biggest problem with this ship is that despite it being creative, you are trying too hard for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the heavy weapon points straight down, right? This means you can basically only hit someone if you are directly above them. If you are directly above someone, with your pilot shadowing them, your gunner is going to hit every shot. That would be easier to shoot than the front gun of a goldfish.
So in situations where you get directly above an enemy, your ship is absurdly over powered. That heavy weapon will have a field day against ships that don't have that same mechanic and can't shoot back up at you.
If you fail to get above somebody, which any experienced pilot will refuse to let you get above them, your ship is so underpowered it is laughable. Those 2 light front guns? good luck getting them to hit something at your height with any appreciable firepower.
Your best firepower is your back side when an enemy is matching heights with you.

Your back side is essentially 3/5 of a mobula, without a balloon helping guard your armor from piercing, and with all your engines sitting pretty and exposed. So when your engines are shot out and you can't turn, your firepower is gone. Firepower that really wouldn't help much anyway. Those guns will really only help you if they are close range guns. Putting sniping guns on those back 3 slots... I just can't think of a combo that would work.

I like the creativity. I really do. But it all seems very forced to me. You are forcing the guns to be in this configuration because you want to make it interesting. But it just doesn't pan out to me.

But maybe I am crazy and wrong. I just want to point out what I see to be major flaws so if you agree you can fix them. The biggest of those being that you have one way, and one way only, to fly this ship.

[Milevan Faent]

I hadn't thought of some of that, so the feedback is appreciated. One thing that was part of the concept since I started was to make it a sort of "bomber" ship, though I may have over-specialized it. I'm open to ideas for improving the concept while trying to maintain the feel of a vertical combat ship niche. Really, with so few ships in the game, every ship tends to have a niche feel to it. Most often, I pick my ship based on the map, rather than my being any good with it. Like on any open map, I'll take my Mobula and snipe the hell out of everyone, or Spire if I don't have a full or competent crew, while on more confined maps its Goldfish or Squid. I don't even really think of using a Junker or Galleon, and I don't really like how Pyramidions fly.

Also, as to the 3/5ths of a Mobula, I'd like to point out a Mobula really only ever has 3 guns anyway. 90% of the time, I tell my crew to just ignore the 2 guns on the far sides, and only use them when I'm not on the wheel using one myself. I wasn't too sure what to do with the guns, so a lot of that part was made up as I was writing it, rather than thought out beforehand as was the case with the core concept and shape of the ship. Help improving that part is always appreciated.

[redria]

Playing with the vertical angle of a weapon mounting is interesting, but the flaw there is that weapons are balanced around specifically that mounting angle. If you could point a carronade down, it suddenly becomes OP since you can sit above someone and shoot out their balloon with no threat of ever being in their arcs.

I am more interested in the no blind spot idea, although I would do it differently.

The idea I was imagining is a ship where your firing arcs depend heavily on how you control it.

Take a weapon mounting on the tip of a ship. It normally points forward. However, the gunner can get off the gun and engage a mechanism next to it to manually turn the gun to completely alter its firing arcs.

You tie up a person and can't fire while doing so, so doing it midfight to maintain arcs might not be the best idea (unless you could keep firing while someone else turned the mount). But it would let you customize for an engagement before the shooting started.

[Milevan Faent]

Playing with the vertical angle of a weapon mounting is interesting, but the flaw there is that weapons are balanced around specifically that mounting angle. If you could point a carronade down, it suddenly becomes OP since you can sit above someone and shoot out their balloon with no threat of ever being in their arcs.

I am more interested in the no blind spot idea, although I would do it differently.

The idea I was imagining is a ship where your firing arcs depend heavily on how you control it.

Take a weapon mounting on the tip of a ship. It normally points forward. However, the gunner can get off the gun and engage a mechanism next to it to manually turn the gun to completely alter its firing arcs.

You tie up a person and can't fire while doing so, so doing it midfight to maintain arcs might not be the best idea (unless you could keep firing while someone else turned the mount). But it would let you customize for an engagement before the shooting started.

Hmm... Rotating weapon mounts? Well, color me intrigued. It's certainly different. I still prefer my bomber concept, but as an alternative, this is certainly a possibility. Perhaps to simplify it, rather than letting it rotate to any position, a toggle system? Hell, could even go as far as letting the position of the guns toggle between the top and bottom decks, a concept I used in the original Zenith, though I never thought of the idea of an external button to use it. I originally had it based on the height of the ship itself, and if it was moving vertically.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Modified OP with updated concepts at request. Please see OP for changes.

[redria]

Now we have several more problems.

The first being that your shots do not collide with your ship. Grab one of the front guns on a pyramidion and aim up at the beak. If you shoot, your shots pass through the beak.

This means that limiting the behavior and arcs of your guns based on what level they are on doesn't actually limit anything but sight lines.

In this way your button to swap gun slots instantly changes the configuration of your ship to handle an enemy coming from anywhere. This is pretty absurdly unfair.

My suggestion was to have a slow process by which a person could devote all of their value on the ship to turning their gun mount in a limited range. This would allow you to make each engagement unique as you alter your angles prior to each one. This makes you sacrifice the repairing/gunning power of a person to alter your arc, which means more risk/reward.

The other problem I see is that you have recreated a goldfish, just with better turning abilities and 3 light guns on the back of the ships that all point in the same direction?
Getting a trifecta in this game is something you have to work at in each ship to be able to do, if not downright impossible. Having such an easy trifecta would be absurdly OP.

[HamsterIV]

One of the most important aspects of a ship is the repair locations. The mobula should be the most powerful ship in the game with its easy quadfecta and the ability to kite, but the repair positions make it more of a glass cannon since the crew can not access the balloon, engines, and hull easily. Likewise the pyramiddion is one of the least well armed ships in the game, but is considered the premier brawling ship because it can be repaired so easily.

[Milevan Faent]

The ship doesn't just magically change it's setup. It moves the guns like an elevator, so it takes time. While moving, the gun can't fire. That said, the hull of the ship not interfering with the guns is really stupid -_- It would be a natural balancing mechanic if, when you put a wide arc gun on a space with a lot of clutter around it, you get limited firing arcs. It would have made SENSE. Shooting through your own hull just annoys me as it breaks all sorts of natural laws.

That said, firing 3 guns at once will always mean you either can't repair, or can't fly. The 3 guns to the rear requires the enemy to be behind thet ship, and also means it will take a while for whoever is shooting to switch to the front guns to adapt if someone comes from a different direction. The Mobula can fire four guns in one direction easier and without moving everyone far away from the hull and balloon, which are both on the totally opposite end of the ship.

A few other things to consider: this ship is relatively fragile and slow, and has a relatively weak hull. It has decent armor, but as soon as that is taken out this ship can die very fast. If you manage to get to a position where it's not focusing it's guns, it could take upwards of 6-10 seconds for it to readjust to bring more guns to that spot, and the ship has below average turning capability so it can't just turn to fix it (or it will now at least ;p).

Lets use a few example setups to show the strengths and weaknesses of the ship. Using the default setup (3 back, 1 foward and to either side) the obvious first weakness is anything not chasing you is facing a Goldfish. A slow, hard to repair Goldfish. Anything that gets behind this ship will take a pounding. Anything that gets anywhere else will do the pounding.

1 back, 2 to either side, and 1 foward: forward and back fire power is obviously weak, but it's capable of broad-siding to either side just as well as a junker. Overall this one doesn't have as many weaknesses. The first that comes to mind is if anything gets behind it, the ship is obviously more vulnerable there now. Depending on which of the two centered guns is pointing forward, and which is pointing back, either side could be more or less dangerous. Obviously this setup means no one side has a great deal of focused firepower on it as it's more spread out. This setup also has no one near the balloon, so repairing the balloon could take longer, or make the hull vulnerable by drawing the main engineer away from it.

3 back, and 3 forward: this setup obviously has great forward and back fire power. While charging, you can fire with the medium guns and both the forward side guns and deal a lot of damage. And anything that gets to the side will probably kill you before you can counter it. Now, if you move the two back side guns to below deck so they fire to either side, that just creates a reversed super-Goldfish with 3 still relatively weak sides, and no medium weapon to make that third side still kinda dangerous. Also, switching to any of the other guns means not firing the three forward guns. The obvious advantage to this is all 3 on the guns are right next to the balloon, so it's easily fixed. The obvious downside is no one is near the hull. While it's easier to get to the hull from here, that then takes one of the guns out of the equation, weakening the firepower of the ship.

While this doesn't cover all of the possible (and likely) configurations, it does cover most of the ones I see as potentially problematic. While it IS technically possible to get 4 guns pointing forward or backward, firing 4 guns at once is generally not worth the downsides, and really you could just take the Mobula and get the same effect easier. Also, the 4th gun is always going to have things in the way of it seeing what it's aiming at in one direction (and assuming the actual hull of the ship stops guns, perhaps it can't even fire in those directions). I don't see this particular setup as an actual problem worth covering more though.

EDIT: I may consider removing the medium gun in favor of a light gun, but I haven't decided yet. I'll be considering the implications this change would have.

[redria]

That said, firing 3 guns at once will always mean you either can't repair, or can't fly. The 3 guns to the rear requires the enemy to be behind thet ship, and also means it will take a while for whoever is shooting to switch to the front guns to adapt if someone comes from a different direction. The Mobula can fire four guns in one direction easier and without moving everyone far away from the hull and balloon, which are both on the totally opposite end of the ship.

3 Mercury field guns on the back of your ship could fire on the same target at once. Instant hull break and significant chip damage. You don't have to worry about repairs. Noone would be able to get close to you.

Mobula's guns are angled apart. This makes a huge difference in firepower as getting 3 guns to arc together is harder than you think with those angles

A few other things to consider: this ship is relatively fragile and slow, and has a relatively weak hull. It has decent armor, but as soon as that is taken out this ship can die very fast. If you manage to get to a position where it's not focusing it's guns, it could take upwards of 6-10 seconds for it to readjust to bring more guns to that spot, and the ship has below average turning capability so it can't just turn to fix it (or it will now at least ;p).

Armor: your ship has more armor than a pyramidion, and is in 3rd place in the game falling in just behind junkers and galleons.
Permahull: Falls in behind galleon, goldfish, and squid. Tied with spire for 4th place.
Speed: Slower only than squid and goldfish at top speed.
Acceleration: Second only to the squid.
Turn speed: Basically equivalent to mobula and goldfish, only lagging behind squid and junker.
Turn acceleration: Significantly better than every ship (including golfish) except junker squid and spire.
Vertical speed: Essentially equivalent to all others.
Vertical Acceleration: Behind mobula, spire, squid, and goldfish. Tied with junker.
Mass: Lagging behind only the galleon and pyramidion.

I'm not sure how you are reading those stats, but this would be one of the faster, more maneuverable ships in the game, quite sturdy in regards to health and armor, and carrying nearly as much raw fire power as a galleon, just more easily focused on one point.

There is OP, and there is just flat out unfair. This falls in the unfair category.

[Milevan Faent]

That said, firing 3 guns at once will always mean you either can't repair, or can't fly. The 3 guns to the rear requires the enemy to be behind thet ship, and also means it will take a while for whoever is shooting to switch to the front guns to adapt if someone comes from a different direction. The Mobula can fire four guns in one direction easier and without moving everyone far away from the hull and balloon, which are both on the totally opposite end of the ship.

3 Mercury field guns on the back of your ship could fire on the same target at once. Instant hull break and significant chip damage. You don't have to worry about repairs. Noone would be able to get close to you.

Mobula's guns are angled apart. This makes a huge difference in firepower as getting 3 guns to arc together is harder than you think with those angles

A few other things to consider: this ship is relatively fragile and slow, and has a relatively weak hull. It has decent armor, but as soon as that is taken out this ship can die very fast. If you manage to get to a position where it's not focusing it's guns, it could take upwards of 6-10 seconds for it to readjust to bring more guns to that spot, and the ship has below average turning capability so it can't just turn to fix it (or it will now at least ;p).

Armor: your ship has more armor than a pyramidion, and is in 3rd place in the game falling in just behind junkers and galleons.
Permahull: Falls in behind galleon, goldfish, and squid. Tied with spire for 4th place.
Speed: Slower only than squid and goldfish at top speed.
Acceleration: Second only to the squid.
Turn speed: Basically equivalent to mobula and goldfish, only lagging behind squid and junker.
Turn acceleration: Significantly better than every ship (including golfish) except junker squid and spire.
Vertical speed: Essentially equivalent to all others.
Vertical Acceleration: Behind mobula, spire, squid, and goldfish. Tied with junker.
Mass: Lagging behind only the galleon and pyramidion.

I'm not sure how you are reading those stats, but this would be one of the faster, more maneuverable ships in the game, quite sturdy in regards to health and armor, and carrying nearly as much raw fire power as a galleon, just more easily focused on one point.

There is OP, and there is just flat out unfair. This falls in the unfair category.

The image is out of date. Speed was nerfed. In regards to armor and health, you're not looking at it right. I nerfed the armor to match the Pyra, but the Health is VERY low. Consider the actual range health covers: 500-1400. 750 is very clearly on the LOW end of that scale. I will consider further nerfs though. As I already said, turning is being nerfed. Mass doesn't matter for enough for me to give a crap about it at this point, as it has no major impact in a theoretical environment where it can't be tested.

[Erheller]

750 is very clearly on the LOW end of that scale.

Three ships have more health than your proposed ship.
Three ships have less health than your proposed ship.
One ship has the same amount of health as your proposed ship.

750 health is clearly not a small amount of permahull - it's obviously around average. And I would argue that it's a high average, at that - the median ship health is 700.

And considering that the three ships that have higher permahull have very clear drawbacks to them (galleon can't maneuver very well, goldfish and squid the second least and least amount of armor in the game), your proposed ship doesn't seem to be balanced at all.

Mass doesn't matter for enough for me to give a crap about it at this point, as it has no major impact in a theoretical environment where it can't be tested.

It matters, because if nothing else, it determines how easily your guns can get rammed off arc.

[Milevan Faent]

Fine then, how would YOU balance it? Rather than just telling me its wrong, why not give some suggestions?