Author Topic: Nerf the Gunner  (Read 8788 times)

Offline N-Sunderland

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Nerf the Gunner
« on: April 01, 2014, 03:17:11 pm »
This has been bugging me for a while.

Let's start off by thinking about the most powerful guns in the game. The best heavy weapon is the lumberjack, no contest. The best light weapon is by far the Hades. The thing is, the main balancing factor of these guns is their limited effective range. A vanilla shot from either can't hit up close because of arming time, and it can't hit distant targets because of the slow projectile speed. If you have one extra ammo type, you can fix one of these (e.g. lesmok for long or loch for close), and the gun's balanced because there's still a certain range that it's useless in.

But what if you have three ammo types?

This is where the gunner gets silly. As an engi you need to pick between range extension, damage increase, or arming distance reduction. With the gunner, you get the whole package. Ever wonder why mercuries and gatlings have become less used in high-level play? It's because a Hades with lesmok can hit at 1500+ metres and still do crazy DPS, while a greased Hades can hit IN GAT RANGE without losing damage (in fact, its DPS increases!). What's the point of having these restrictions on a gun if they're just going to be nullified like that? Don't even get me started about how there's still an extra spot left over for a third ammo type. For the lumber that can mean the addition of charged, burst, or, scariest of all, heatsink.

Other guns are the same. Charged might seem like the only ammo type you need for the heavy flak, but lesmok is so, so much deadlier than people would have you think. Do you know how much damage an unbuffed, lesmok flak shot does to hull? 462. That's almost enough to kill a Junker. Throw in a couple of, say, Artemis shots, and you're killing Pyras and Mobs and Spires in seconds at over 1500 metres. If a gunner gets good enough at switching between lesmok and charged (and loch), there is not a single ship in the game that can survive the onslaught of pure explosive damage.

There is, in my mind, one other glaring issue with the gunner, which concerns general rather than mid to high level play. Let's take a look at the AI: there's an AI engi, and an AI gunner. The AI engi will make full use of their mallet, spanner, and fire tool. The gunner on the other hand will only really use one of its ammo types, and seems to have no idea when it should do so. The AI gunner is therefore entirely useless. What connection does that have to gunners being OP? Well, imagine you start a match with a pilot and an engineer. What AI does the game give you? An engineer and a gunner. You now have one member of the crew who is entirely useless. If you have a pilot and a gunner, on the other hand, the game will give you two AI engineers. Now none of your crew are useless. This strongly encourages people to bring gunners rather than engineers in pub matches with many AI.


Here's what I think should be done to nerf the gunner:

-Lower the gunner's capacity to two ammo types
-Force the gunner to use a clip of vanilla rounds between ammo switches. So for example if I want to switch from lesmok to charged, I'd have to fire the clip of lesmok, fire a clip of vanilla, and then I'd get to load charged in.
-When there are two AI and a gunner on the ship, force one AI to be a pilot. That should be enough to compel people to consider running engi instead.
-Apply a -20% modifier to the number of rounds in a clip loaded by a gunner, partly for the sake of realism. If you're carrying so many different types of heavy bullets around, you can't be expected to take an entire clip.
-As a small buff to go with the previous point, increase the gunner's running speed by 20%.

Offline Dutch Vanya

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2014, 03:32:20 pm »
Oh, you!  :P

Offline Battle Toads

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2014, 03:36:46 pm »
I honestly hope this is an April Fool's joke. If not, I hope you are just really, really drunk today... (sorry if this is actually serious :P)

Offline N-Sunderland

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2014, 03:39:56 pm »
I honestly hope this is an April Fool's joke. If not, I hope you are just really, really drunk today... (sorry if this is actually serious :P)

I mean, I present all these arguments, and all you've got is "you must be drunk"? Surely you can do better than that.

Offline Omniraptor

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2014, 05:09:50 pm »
The scary bit is that I can't find any glaring flaws in your logic.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2014, 05:17:56 pm »
N-Sunderland's proposition that the gunner is the OP class in Guns of Icarus is laughable. The pilot is the linchpin of the whole operation. You could have the best gunners and engineers in the game but without a pilot to direct them, they would be useless. Eventually all of the veteran players come to realize this and start flying all pilot builds. If you are going to have one human player on a ship you go pilot to stand the best chance of winning. The AI can take care of everything except piloting because all the other rolls are just busy work to provide an audience for the pilot as he wins the game.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2014, 07:38:30 pm »
I agree, and honestly think it should take two pilots to fly a ship. One can throttle up, go down, and turn left. The other pilot throttles down, goes up, and turns right. They both have to use tools simultaneously for them to work. It is the only way to balance the game for the OP pilot class.

Offline Tropo

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Re: Nerf the Gunner
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2014, 08:26:58 pm »
you hight light some good points and you fail at apirl fools please read the rules all apirl fools jokes must be sumitted beteen the hours of 1am and 12am