Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

[HamsterIV]

Crank could start the cooldown timer, preventing multi user abuse. Besides the goldfish needs a buff anyway.

[Crafeksterty]

Ofcourse, thats why we have ammo like barricade, or +health to heatsink or ironclad.

But yeah, adding a cooldown seems like a thing but it then becomes an engineer tool. There are no other tools in the game that produce cooldown other than engineer tool so this i believe "Would break design paradigm and etc etc" -muse

[Richard LeMoon]

Speaking of cooldown...

Boreas Ammo:

Increases cooldown times on components hit, based on converted damage.
Converts 90% of damage to X milliseconds of cooldown.
90% less actual damage.

"Cool your ."

[HamsterIV]

I had an idea for specialty ammo that targets specifically engines or guns (but not both).

Glue Ammo: +50% dammage vs guns -30% dammage vs  all other components. Reduced aim wiggle???
Sawdust Ammo: +50% dammage vs engines -30% dammage vs  all other components. Reduced aim wiggle???

It could turn a gatling gun, carronade, or banshee into an effective disabler so long as you had a gunner with multiple ammo types.

[Dementio]

Gatling and carro are already good disablers with their shatter damage, but the idea is interesting. It would allow a mortar to shoot by itself without assistance or even bring a heavy flak on a goldfish without it depending entirely on its ally.

An "engineering"-tool for the gunner has already been mentioned. As well as the idea of tweaking the buff hammer to be less useful on guns, but give the gunner a tool that IS good for guns.

[awkm]

IDeas from Milevan Faent:


Lochnagar
No changes to suggest for this one, it's already a niche ammo as is!

Heavy Clip
While this one is also sort of niche, it's also kind of dull. I see this used on maybe 2-3 guns in the game period. So, I'm gonna throw out the suggestion I've seen a few other people make, as it's also one I strongly agree with. Make Heavy Clip make the ammo heavier! This means instead of just reducing the recoil to 0 and the ammo by 25%, make the projectiles actually gain an increase in their drop speed. This should have no effect on the life of the ammo (that is, how long it takes before it stops existing automatically), but on any ammo that drops, goes up, or even has no drop, it now gains a drop.

Why? Because this actually has a HUGE impact on how many guns work! On some guns, like the shotguns (aka carronades), the effect is minimal as it would still almost work as it does now, just maybe hitting lower than it does right now and requiring a bit more work to aim. On guns like the Mines or Hades, suddenly the way it works has changed SIGNIFICANTLY! Mines are now depth charges if you fire down, dropping huge distances, and even if you fire up, the way they move has changed enough to change how this will place them! Perhaps you just hopped a mine over the enemy to land right on the opposite side of them, instead of it ending up way above or below them, due to the change in it's arc!

*new* Light Clip
With this change, I feel it's appropriate to create a counter-part to it, similar to Dragon Ash and Dense Slugs (dev app ammo that we will probably see eventually!). Light Clip works in the opposite direction of Heavy Clip. Instead of reducing the recoil, it doubles it! Suddenly, that very narrow blast is fired wildly, and no one knows WHERE it will go. In exchange, the ammo is increased by a decent amount (not sure how much, but probably more than the 25% that Heavy Clip reduces it by), perhaps the turn speed of the gun is increased slightly, but most important of all, bullets (or flying orbs of death, or mines, or missiles, or whatever the gun fires) are lighter, and thus float upwards for a brief time after firing (like 1-3 seconds at the most), rather than falling down like normal. This again changes the arc of the shot, but does not change the life of the shot.

Why? This change actually creates a new way to manipulate a gun's arc, and when combined with the other ammo types, creates whole new ways to use many of the guns, especially for a Gunner. Suddenly your gun can hit that little bit higher up than it used to be able to, and when combined with Heavy Clip, the reverse is true. Depending on what you're firing, you've suddenly got a LOT of new options!

Incendiary
I actually suggest this one not be changed. We need some not-super-niche ammo types for Engineers, and while this isn't exactly NOT niche, it's not really niche either. It's rather generic actually. I don't usually see it get used much though, so it may actually need a slight (SLIGHT!) buff.

Among the other ammo types I haven't covered so far, I'm either uncertain what (if anything) to do with them, or they are probably better off just remaining as they are as the more generic engineer ammo, so I'll leave this here for now. I'll probably touch on others if ideas come up.

If you have any ideas of your own, discuss them here! If you either agree or disagree with what I've said so far, speak up, I wanna hear from you! Let's gather a bunch of feedback to share with Awkm in his quest to improve gunners!

[redria]

So I had an idea, and it doesn't work. You will understand shortly. But suffice to say it makes things too complicated, requires a whole lot of work, and wouldn't necessarily help gunners. But it would make choosing your ammo type(s) fun and interesting! So perhaps I am posting this simply to give others a way to build ammo types they think would be cool/niche to help continue the growth of ideas.

A complete overhaul of the ammo system:

Exhibit A: Currently you get 1 or 3 ammo choices based on your class. My overhaul would take each of those ammo choices and break it into 2 choices each. You now get 2 or 6 ammo slots.

Exhibit B: Every pair of 2 ammo slots would be linked inherently, so the effects of your 2 choices would combine to make up one ammo type in game.

Exhibit C: Your first ammo slot of each pair would be a range modifier, and the second ammo slot would be an effect modifier.


So for example, your ammo type would be <modifer A> <modifer B> Rounds.

An example of choices and effects:

Name Modifier Type Effects Lesmok Range +50% Muzzle speed -25% Rate of fire -20% Spread Light Range +25% Muzzle speed -15% Rate of fire -10% Spread Steady Range -5% Spread Slow Range -10% Muzzle Speed +5% Rate of Fire +10% Spread -8% Damage Boulder Range -20% Muzzle Speed +10% Rate of Fire +20% Spread -16% Damage

Name Modifier Type Effects Incendiary Effect 20% Chance of setting 1 stack of fire -5% Damage Burst Effect +20% Area of Effect -10% Rate of fire Concentrated Effect +25% Damage -10% Clip size Dispersed Effect +25% Clip size -10% Damage Destructive Effect 50% Health loss of gun per clip +25% Damage Heavy Effect -50% Spread -10% Turning Speed Locked Effect -100% Spread -95% Turning Speed +10% Damage Chilled Effect Prevents Fire Stacks Removes 3 stacks of fire when reload completes +5% Spread -5% Rate of fire Normalized Effect +5% Clip size Greased Effect +20% Rate of fire +10% Chance to catch fire from fire effects +5% Spread

So say I want to run a close range ship. I am going to have my crew's ammo types probably taking steady, slow, or boulder as modifiers to make myself more effective in close ranges. Or perhaps I would make them go with lesmok or light to make them better while I close the distance.
Their effect modifiers would maybe go into concentrated. A gatling gun running concentrated boulder clip would get +9% damage, -10% clip size, +10% rate of fire, +20% spread, -20% muzzle speed.

You could use effect ammo types to take a specific design, while taking range modifiers to give yourself an appropriate range. As I've seen, right now heatsink, incendiary, lesmok, and lochnagar are used more for range modification than anything else. That means their intended purpose tends to get ignored in favor of their secondary effects, which seems sort of silly to me. This style would allow you to take long range incendiary ammo. Imagine a locked lesmok hwacha. Suddenly the hwacha's range description would make sense.

As I stated in the beginning, this is entirely infeasible. But I encourage you to build an ammo type that you would consider taking (or maybe a set of 3 ammo types that would make gunner interesting) and see if you can come up with suggestions to help guide the ammo development ongoing.

[redria]

Ooh. Ooh ooh. Zill talking about damage in a different thread made me think of 2 ammo types.

Inhibited clip:
Damage % is directly related to gun health. 75% damage at 100% health, 100% damage at 50% health, and 150% damage at 1% gun health.
(Possible buff to rate of fire as the gun is damaged?)
(Possible increase in projectile speed/reduction in arming time to make shots travel faster as the gun takes damage, without changing arming distance)
Rewards gunners with bonus damage for guns not being fully repaired.
"As the gun breaks down, certain safety features stop working."

Inverted/hacked clip:
Gun behavior for taking damage is reversed: full health guns operate terribly and low health guns operate at optimal rates
Buff to damage and maybe something else to make it not useless in decent health guns
"These bullets feel weird. Are you sure you should be putting them in our guns?"

[Richard LeMoon]

I would call the inverted/hacked clip 'Large Bore' ammo instead. In the olden days, they had to use larger and larger cannonballs as the bore increased in size due to use and heat. Larger projectiles caused more damage as the gun 'wore out'. As an added bonus, make this the only ammo that will still operate in a gun with 8+ stacks of fire.

[Crafeksterty]

Both those 2 ammos sounds awesome to have.

Kinda afraid that the inhibited clip is a more gunengineer thing. (Gunengineer with normal engineer loadout)

[Omniraptor]

I actually think it would be a gunner thing, mercury or mine launcher + lochnagar + large bore/inverted + spanner = awesome

[Verbose Mode]

As an inverse of the Large Bore / hacked clip idea: Match Ammunition, temperamental ammunition that squeezes every ounce of performance from a well-maintained gun, but is awful in guns of poor repair.

Gun condition 90-100%
+10% projectile velocity, -10% arming time (increased range, but keeps its arming distance!).
+10% fire rate.
-50% weapon spread (not as good as Heavy Clip).
-25% Magazine Capacity.

Gun Condition 50-89%
+10% projectile velocity (looses arming time bonus).
-15% weapon spread.
-25% Magazine Capacity.

Gun Condition 20-49%
+5% projectile velocity.
-10% fire rate.
-25% Magazine Capacity.
5 damage to gun per shot fired.

Gun Condition -19%
-50% fire rate.
+25% weapon spread.
-25% Magazine Capacity.
5 damage to shot fired.

As you can see, this is best for situations where a ship is very safe, and does not take fire. However, as soon as the gun(s) begin taking damage, they will be rendered much less useful. Squids and snipers will like this ammo, but tankier ships will find it very situational, and overall this will require a quality engineer to keep it perfect.

[Verbose Mode]

I like the sound of "Proximity Ammo" someone mentioned earlier, perhaps because it bursts as soon as it enters its normal splash it can ONLY deal secondary damage, and has a bigger splash range. This would let things like a hawatcha throw up a solid wall of flames after a ship, and make hitting with a lot of weapons easer, but in exchange you would loose primary damage and projectile speed.

[Milevan Faent]

I like the sound of "Proximity Ammo" someone mentioned earlier, perhaps because it bursts as soon as it enters its normal splash it can ONLY deal secondary damage, and has a bigger splash range. This would let things like a hawatcha throw up a solid wall of flames after a ship, and make hitting with a lot of weapons easer, but in exchange you would loose primary damage and projectile speed.

Hmm.. We already HAVE a proximity ammo in the Dev App (though it's been temporarily removed while we test something else), but this could be a nice way to balance it.

[MrJeff]

I like the sound of "Proximity Ammo" someone mentioned earlier, perhaps because it bursts as soon as it enters its normal splash it can ONLY deal secondary damage, and has a bigger splash range. This would let things like a hawatcha throw up a solid wall of flames after a ship, and make hitting with a lot of weapons easer, but in exchange you would loose primary damage and projectile speed.

Hmm.. We already HAVE a proximity ammo in the Dev App (though it's been temporarily removed while we test something else), but this could be a nice way to balance it.

This could also be one way to manage smoke screens. Large secondary range with little damage, but the explosions it creates when triggering lasts a while.