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Guns of Icarus and the Law of Diminishing Returns

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Sammy B. T.:
The need for comboed weapons is one of the great things about this game because it holds great to the law of diminishing returns. To explain this, I will use the example my college professor gave me a few years ago. Imagine you're moving into your dorm alone. Now imagine you have one person helping you, that makes things a lot easier. Add a third, things are going great. Keep adding. At a certain point, there is only so much work that can be spread around and each additional person isn't helping as much as the initial people. The difference between 100 and 101 is negligible whereas the difference between 1 and 2 is the ability to move a couch.

You have this in guns. An example near and dear to my heart is the double carronade. I used to run double carro on the side of my Junker and thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I could quickly destroy balloon which in turn allowed my gat mortar ally to not worry about balloon blocking. I swore by this build for a long time.

However, later I realized how redundant it was. The job of the carronade was to pop the balloon. The thing is, you really only need one, especially if you played with a buff engineer on the gun. So while the double carronade is faster for destroying the balloon, the single does it well enough (one clip).

It was hard to realize that because I saw the side's job as being "kill the balloon" and it was doing just that, mission accomplished.I wasn't seeing the lost opportunities. I wasn't seeing that I was realistically shooting most of my carronade into the enemy hull due to how fast the balloon went down. I wasn't seeing that I could have more different types of damage.

Finally I was shown the light and began running carronade and carousel on my right side because it allowed me to set fires and lend some explosive damage once there was an armor break, and my game became substantially better.



This game has many examples of this. Every vet of this game has tireedly told someone that their build was bad because they doubled up on some form of damage. "No you don't want two h.f flaks on your Galleon" "Your gat, hades Junker is completly reliant on your ally for the kill," "Why on God's green earth do you have have five light flaks on a Mobula?" However I wanted to go into some not as obviously bad builds.



I already went into the double carro. I will mention though at in the team scenario, if both ships are blend focus, then its not as much a problem as your strategy is already so completely focused to put the enemy on the ground.

Double Lumberjack
Quite possibly one of the most annoying Galleons in the game, this ship is a powerhouse but ultimately a flawed one. One competent lumberjack can easily suppress a balloon, and a godly lumberjack can suppress two balloons. At the range at which you engage at with this long range of a galleon, you've got time. Throw an H flak or Hwacha and you still have the enemies bouncing on the floor but you gain the ability to kill them too.

Caveat an argument could be made for the galleon to be a support galleon. While this is an effective strategy, I feel like the loss of killing power is an issue with this. Regardless of efficacy, with the double lumberjack you are still sacrificing a lot of options.

Artemis spam

The infamous double triple artemis junker config

A screenplay by Sammy B. T.

Artemis number 1; This is great, I can easily suppress two thirds of a ship.
Artemis number 2; This also great, I can keep the rest of the ship disabled.
Artemis number 3; I guess I'll shoot at the next ship and get two thirds of it
Artemis number 4; Oh, well I thought i was going to be the inital two thirds but I can do the remaining third
Artemis number 5; Well I guess I will just do explosive and shatter damage to the hull, that helps right
Artemis number 6; Surely it must be doing something.

As a long time user of the artemis, nothing angers me more than excessive artemis. It is a great weapon and while effective in competent hands, it is godly in veteran hands. But if sacrifice piercing just so you can fit a bit more shatter in there then you are being quite foolish. It fails in the same way a quad hwacha Galleon fails, its not enough to take down components if you can't kill them.





Am I wrong or oversimplying things? Are there other examples i missed? Where do y'all see diminishing returns in GOIO?

GreyTea:
First off I like this thread,

Now to pick your brains, how about a double merc pyra, that is a common enough build and seems to do a good enough job, it has shatter for disable and piercing for taking down the hull, and ultimately can ware down the hull enough for a kill, i would love to hear your thoughts on this?

RearAdmiralZill:
Two gunners. Diminishing returns.

Alistair MacBain:
You got a point there but there are things i disagree with you.
I wouldnt count the all explosive ships. This is not the same as your examples. The aim of explosive weapons is to finish the enemy permahull once armor is down. But they usually cant get the armor down fast enough. Thats why you need to pair them with other weapons.
Your carronade example is different to this. A carronades job is to kill the enemy balloon. They dont need another weapon to do that. They can easily perform alone. A all explosive weapon cant do its job alone.

Then i disagree on some of the diminishing returns some disable weapons have.

Double Lumberjack
Ive flown on a Galleon for alot of my competetive time. The dual lumberjacks ability to pop the enemy balloon so fast gives you the ability to kill enemys much closer to you. Yes a hwacha could do a similiar thing.
But the hwacha isnt as good as a lumberjack on range. (1.2k hwacha range compared to above 2k lesmok lumber) So you sacrifice a bid of closerange ability for a better longrange.
A flak would add a different dmg thats true. But when do you need that when your enemy is just bouncing in the ground forever. And you never fly alone. Your ally usually brings the explosive dmg you miss with the dual lj combination.
Also the split fire of a dual lumberjack is 10 times superior to the one of a single lumberjack.
I wont compare that to a dual carronade cause the higher rate of fire of the carronade leads to a much faster pop of the enemy balloon.


Artemi Junker
With those its similiar. Yes you sacrifice alot of different dmg types. But you also get a much fastened ability to do what you want. That can count alot. Usually 3-4 is all you need thats true.
The decreased effects are sometimes higher than expected.


Dual mercs is a different thing.
They are usually a counter to any other longrange longrange build. They are much easier than any other gun to shoot on the longer ranges. They are a hardcounter to any longrange build aslong as you can operate at their maxrange. Sure they lack alot of things when the enemy gets closer but as long as you stay in your optimal window you can easily outsnipe any other opponent.

Diminishing returns are there thats true. But they are higher than in some of your examples. You always have to keep in mind what the individual gun can do and what more of it can do. They are definitly existing but sometimes they are still better than other things.

RearAdmiralZill:

--- Quote from: Grey T on May 08, 2014, 10:35:10 am ---First off I like this thread,

Now to pick your brains, how about a double merc pyra, that is a common enough build and seems to do a good enough job, it has shatter for disable and piercing for taking down the hull, and ultimately can ware down the hull enough for a kill, i would love to hear your thoughts on this?

--- End quote ---

Double merc pyra? Its nice because you nearly always start a match in its prime position, being opposite ends of a map, and across some for of open terrain. It still lacks versatility, killing power, and accuracy due to the arc of projectile weapons.

More times then not, double mercs cant kill a ship if that ship flat out charges them and gets within a range where the merc fire is consistent enough to do much. One merc and an arty has more potential to, plus added disable and explosive. Merc/L.flak has the quickest kill potential.

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