Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

[Pickle]

The hwacha is still vulnerable to counter-hwacha fire directed at taking it out, and the Mercury is a valuable counter-battery sniper and should be used to de-fang any Hwacha Goldfish before it can approach.  The spread if the hwacha could be further increased to reduce the chances of total devastation - as it is, a lot of the medium-range power comes from using heavy clip to reduce the spread and pack a focussed punch against the target, heavy clip is almost essential with the hwacha.

As it stands, light and medium weapons require the same effort to repair.  If light weapons required only 60-70% the effort to repair compared to medium weapons this might tip the balance back to a more neutral position.

[Spud Nick]

You can still use your pilot tools to lift out or drop down giving your crew enough time to rebuild the engines.

[awkm]

More than one person can rebuild stuff.

Make sure your Captain is coordinating with the other ships on your team.  Your own fault for being ganged up on   If you're alone, it's pretty devastating unless you're really good at hanging back and picking people off.  I played an awesome match where all 3 captains on my team were flying in formation and wiping the floor, finding solo ships to pick on.  I was a ramming ship and my teammates would help bait ships towards us and then I'd go in for the ram. 

The 'C' chat key is valuable.

Either way, I have my eyes on the hwacha but I'm still unconvinced that it needs more nerfing. 

The small guns SHOULD be rebuilt faster than medium ones though.  Perhaps after the doubling, the gap has been reduced.  I'll go test that later.

[Ageotas]

Numerically, doubling actually increases the difference between two numbers, so your initial instinct was right @awkm. To be honest I have never noticed a difference in build times between light weapons and heavy weapons, but then again, I spend most of my at the business end of the helm rather than a spanner

[Pickle]

I raised build times because with about 15 hours on Engineer I've never noticed a difference between Light and Medium weapons when it comes to rebuilding a broken gun (I think there is a slight repair difference).

[awkm]

Every repair tool adds a different amount of HP and has different rebuild power, both being discrete numbers (never scaling).  The number of rebuilds required scales with HP of the component.  That's why the balloon takes so many rebuild hits because it has to much HP.

Medium guns are about double the HP of small guns so they'll require more rebuild hits.  If you have the small wrench (most rebuild power) you won't notice the difference between small and large all that much.  With the mallet you definitely will.

[Ccrack]

i do think the manticore is to powerfull now with the new rebuild times. before it wasnt so bad, you could rebuild the engins to avoid another volly or build a gun to try disable it but now they just blow up everything before you can repair anything.

i also think the ignition chance on the banshee is a bit to high. half the ship just bursts in to flames from a clip or two

[N-Sunderland]

Agreed on the rocket carousel. I crewed on a Junker today with two double carousel broadsides, and once the enemy ship comes into arc and range there is nothing they can do. The engines and guns drop dead immediately and can't stay up long enough to have an effect, and the hull just gets progressively weakened until there's nothing left.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I have been noticing the banshee's getting spammed now. I swear its almost like a flamethrower in rocket form. The fire takes down the hull armor pretty quickly, and then rockets on the hull just add salt to the wound. Maybe something to look at in any case.

[Lord Dick Tim]

Well, we all knew this would happen, never a perfect build just new ways to exploit.  All that aside, I dont think anything is truly unbalanced unless one ship can kill 2 ships like the old merc could months ago.  Am I being niave on this?
On another thought, what about if we looked at some weapons in a different grouping like, crowd control, armor damage hull damage.
From this perspective I'm able to take a look at certain weapons and notice how they overlap into more then one category, which in my mind makes that weapon more effective then one that occupies only one of those categories.  Using this kind of logic is how I usually approach ship load outs and can identify a cheap exploit rather quickly.
Thoughts?

[RearAdmiralZill]

Well, we all knew this would happen, never a perfect build just new ways to exploit.  All that aside, I dont think anything is truly unbalanced unless one ship can kill 2 ships like the old merc could months ago.  Am I being niave on this?
On another thought, what about if we looked at some weapons in a different grouping like, crowd control, armor damage hull damage.
From this perspective I'm able to take a look at certain weapons and notice how they overlap into more then one category, which in my mind makes that weapon more effective then one that occupies only one of those categories.  Using this kind of logic is how I usually approach ship load outs and can identify a cheap exploit rather quickly.
Thoughts?

I see what you mean. I never did say it was unbeatable. But the stacks of fire it puts out is, impressive. I just got out of a match where we got hit by one volley from the banshee. I walk up to our flaming balloon to find 12 stacks on there. I was surprised. Maybe it was the intent for, as you say, crowd control. It sure does pack a punch though.

[MasX]

funny thing about this update is we actually kill ships faster  then we could ever do with flaks

[HamsterIV]

Is it just my imagination, or does the mallet have a longer cool down?

[N-Sunderland]

Is it just my imagination, or does the mallet have a longer cool down?

It wasn't in the patch notes, so maybe your game was just lagging.

[Machiavelliest]

I've found the update to be pretty good, for what it's worth.  The spread of the Hwacha means that it's pretty ineffective at medium range (without heavy ammo).  Because of the reload time and inaccuracy of the weapon, it's a pretty big commitment to put it on a single-heavy platform (i.e. not the Galleon).

I feel the arming ranges on both the Lumberjack and Heavy Flak are a little far out, however.  They -are- HEAVY guns.  They should always overpower medium emplacements.  The Lumberjack has been made nigh unusuable.

Also, having it take more than a single stack of fire to disable a component was money.  Good idea!