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Guns of Icarus and the Law of Diminishing Returns

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redria:
For me it isn't so much diminishing returns as it is making things interesting.

Diversifying in damage type along with weapons makes the game more fun. If you are going to take 2 artemis, why not take a light flak or a banshee instead of your second artemis? It has the same damage type, but it makes your ship more interesting, and possibly more capable of destroying an enemy.

I think the biggest point here is that a team is going to take what they want to take regardless of what anyone else thinks. It doesn't have to be the best build. It doesn't have to be optimized. It doesn't necessarily have to work. Even in competitive, half the goal is to have fun.

My own personal example is that when I take carro-flamer pyramidion, I refuse to put carronade on the left and flamer on the right. It makes more sense that way, and is probably a better build. But I think it is prettier with carronade on the right, so I take that.

My point being, whether you believe there are diminishing returns or not, whether you think doubling down on a weapon is good or not, having a variety of weapons on your ship adds diversity. Incoherent diversity can be easy to fight, and well-meshed diversity can be OP. Either way, I personally think it makes things more interesting, which is always a good thing.

Frogger:

--- Quote from: Dementio on May 19, 2014, 05:52:56 pm ---In contrast, this thread started with: This fails.
--- End quote ---

If you are referring to Sam saying "It fails in the same way a quad hwacha Galleon fails..." (which are the only instances of the word "fail" in the OP) I don't think he meant that in a categorical sense, but rather "it comes up short in this particular way". Triple artemis obviously doesn't "fail" - plenty of teams have had some degree of success with it - but it does have glaring weaknesses, which was what Sam was trying to argue in a broader theoretical sense.


--- Quote from: Dementio on May 19, 2014, 05:52:56 pm ---Multiply that with 2 and you have the most annyoing enemy in GoIO history, so annoying in fact that you might just surrender because there is no way to win (in the worst case scenario).
--- End quote ---

lawl, you got me. ;)


--- Quote from: redria on May 20, 2014, 10:40:49 am ---If you are going to take 2 artemis, why not take a light flak or a banshee instead of your second artemis?
--- End quote ---

The reasons we opted to stick with two artemises were as follows:

1) It becomes much more difficult to maintain the trifecta with the forward artemis with either a banshee or a flak. As it stands, the trifecta window (as viewed from the helm in first person) for the double artemis-hades setup is barely wider than the width of the ladder leading up to the turning engines, requiring constant attention from the pilot in order to track an even slightly moving target. Even with the more ample 65 degree horizontal traverse of the artemises, this meant that the pilot was constantly making micro-adjustments in azimuth in order to ensure that all three guns had arc at all times. The flak and the banshee, with traverses of 50 and 60 degrees respectively, became even tighter, with the flak in particular almost impossible to maintain in arc with the front artemis. One might argue that this could have been overcome through fancy flying; however, given the speed of kills we attained from the combined four artemis setup, we saw no real reason to sacrifice disable (which even with 4 artemises was not always quite ideal) for additional explosive.

2) The maximum effective range of the artemis (1330m with burst) was a much better fit with the hades than either the banshee or the pre-1.3.6 LF. Our hades gunners, with lesmok, could reliably hit and raspberry targets at the furthest end of the burst artemis range, whereas the limited range of the LF (875m pre-1.3.6 iirc) placed a serious constraint on its synergy with the rest of our build. The banshee, though numerically more in sync with a max range of 1170m, had a practical limitation, which could be somewhat mitigated by the use of heavy clip, but with an unacceptable accompanying drop in clip size (and therefore DPS). And even with heavy clip, it was tough to hit reliably. And on top of that, chemspray would completely negate its secondary effect. So it really wasn't worth it.

3) Given the limitations arising from 1 & 2, the flak and the banshee provided only a marginal increase in explosive DPS and little to no increase in secondary effect compared to the artemis, and did not warrant losing the very useful and reliable disable power (especially against ships with medium weapons). I can give you damage per clip / damage per 10 clip / shots to kill / time to kill figures for each weapon but at this point you're probably bored senseless anyway. :)

[As an aside, I'd like to say that if I were still playing competitively in a double junker setup, with the recent buff of the LF I'd definitely consider swapping an artemis for a LF on one of the junker left sides, but only situationally, and mostly likely only vs. pyra-heavy builds -- though I'm sure Sam and I would have a fine argument about this one]


--- Quote from: redria on May 20, 2014, 10:40:49 am ---My own personal example is that when I take carro-flamer pyramidion, I refuse to put carronade on the left and flamer on the right. It makes more sense that way, and is probably a better build. But I think it is prettier with carronade on the right, so I take that.
--- End quote ---

You know, I think you can really make an argument for either setup having real advantages, despite my earlier thoughts. Sorry redria, you're still a filthy tryhard :P


--- Quote from: redria on May 20, 2014, 10:40:49 am ---My point being, whether you believe there are diminishing returns or not, whether you think doubling down on a weapon is good or not, having a variety of weapons on your ship adds diversity. Incoherent diversity can be easy to fight, and well-meshed diversity can be OP. Either way, I personally think it makes things more interesting, which is always a good thing.
--- End quote ---

I agree!

Frogger:

--- Quote from: Frogger on May 20, 2014, 02:57:50 pm ---1) It becomes much more difficult to maintain the trifecta with the forward artemis with either a banshee or a flak. As it stands, the trifecta window (as viewed from the helm in first person) for the double artemis-hades setup is barely wider than the width of the ladder leading up to the turning engines, requiring constant attention from the pilot in order to track an even slightly moving target. Even with the more ample 65 degree horizontal traverse of the artemises, this meant that the pilot was constantly making micro-adjustments in azimuth in order to ensure that all three guns had arc at all times. The flak and the banshee, with traverses of 50 and 60 degrees respectively, became even tighter, with the flak in particular almost impossible to maintain in arc with the front artemi1) It becomes much more difficult to maintain the trifecta with the forward artemis with either a banshee or a flak. As it stands, the trifecta window (as viewed from the helm in first person) for the double artemis-hades setup is barely wider than the width of the ladder leading up to the turning engines, requiring constant attention from the pilot in order to track an even slightly moving target. Even with the more ample 65 degree horizontal traverse of the artemises, this meant that the pilot was constantly making micro-adjustments in azimuth in order to ensure that all three guns had arc at all times. The flak and the banshee, with traverses of 50 and 60 degrees respectively, became even tighter, with the flak in particular almost impossible to maintain in arc with the front artemis.
--- End quote ---

Actually, now that I've had a minute to think about it, this analysis is partially incorrect - let me make an addendum here.

If my thought experiment is running correctly this time, the limiting factor for the artemis-hades trifecta is the rightmost arc of the hades (which has a very narrow 35 degree horizontal traverse) and the leftmost arc of the front artemis. The rightmost arc of the top deck gun is not in itself a limiting factor for the entire trifecta, which I appear to be claiming above. That is to say, by time you'd be about to lose your flak/banshee-front artemis (fartemis?) overlap, you've already lost your hades-front artemis overlap 20 or 30 degrees ago. So by themselves, the reduced horizontal traverses of the LF and banshee wouldn't affect the trifecta as a whole. My mistake :)

The other two reasons I give, however, were still sufficient for us to dismiss using those weapons. 

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