Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

I saw there was an update to the dev app this morning and I thought I'd take a look at what's in there, aside from matchmaking which is a whole other topic, there are some new engineering tools and ammos that I think can make gunners more useful. I like dragon ash and would like to see that make it into the game, but that's not necessarily going to make gunner more useful. Mostly I'm looking at the shield buff tools and "armored rounds", I think. I could be mistaken with regards to how the shield tools work, but it seems to me a gunner could use that on the main gun to A) help keep the main gun from going down during merc/art assaults and B) allow a goldfish to ram without losing the front gun or make the spire a little bit more survivable.

I also want to take a moment to reinforce the idea that was brought up earlier about passive gunnery equipment. Something like an adjustable scope or joint/bearing grease. Those could make gunners a lot more useful in a lot of situations where a light gun only really benefits from 1 ammo type.

[Queso]

Any discussion of ammos and stuff in the Dev App should be in the dev app forums.

[Goldenglade]

yeah not suppose to openly talk about the Dev app..... keep that in the desired place.....

[Milevan Faent]

Rule #1 about Dev App: you do not talk about Dev App.

[CitizenFry]

Ammo idea: increases firing arcs for the gun it's loaded in. Engineers probably aren't sitting on a gun enough to make much use of this, but particularly for the faster-reloading heavy weapons (i.e. not hwacha) I could see using this as a gunner on a goldfish or galleon.

[Wundsalz]

increases fireing arc? What does that mean? increased muzzle velocity, decreased gravitational force applied on the projectile or something entirely different?

[HamsterIV]

I think it means turn the gun further than it is currently limited to. This would dramatically effect game balance since blind spot dancing is one of the skills that separate good pilots from great ones.

[Wundsalz]

ah, sounds interesting

[CitizenFry]

Yes, I meant turn the gun more left/right or up/down than normally allowed.

I think it means turn the gun further than it is currently limited to. This would dramatically effect game balance since blind spot dancing is one of the skills that separate good pilots from great ones.

Anything that's good enough to be used will affect game balance, that seems self-evident? How much it changes balance depends on the numerical parameters - obviously if it lets a gun turn a full 360 on any axis that's insane, and if it only increases arcs by 1 degree that's probably useless. I imagine there's an in-between where it's useful but not overpowering.

[HamsterIV]

It certainly would be an interesting change, however the turn arcs of guns is one of the constants that other game play variables are balanced around. Imagine if a mobula could have three Mercuries shooting at a target or if a squid could get an easy gat/morter overlap. Pyramidion side mounted flares could overlap with the front guns. Altering the turn arcs of guns would shake the meta significantly as inviable weapon combos become viable.

[CitizenFry]

I imagine there's an in-between where it's useful but not overpowering.

[Wundsalz]

Sure it will be rather hard to balance as a lot of builds revolve around and are restricted by gun arcs. And I think such an ammunition has got the potential to turn into a must have for certain guns/positions (e.g. easy pyra trifectas, junker front (or dual arte + hades with this ammo type), galleon beacon gun, squid...) but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It has got the potential to unlock entirely new guns for certain slots - that's interesting.

additional 5°-10° or something relative to the normal gun arc (e.g. 10-25%) paired up with a hefty malus (e.g. fire-rate reduced by 50%)... I could see something along the line blend in well into the existing mix.

[Milevan Faent]

Gun arc changes have already been part of the gun ammo tweak tests. Not on new ammo, but on existing ones. We won't ever see an ammo specifically for something like that, but you might see things like -20% gun arcs on say Lesmok.

[Queso]

Coding that modifier was fun, mostly because of literal edge and corner cases.

[Wundsalz]

Gun arc changes have already been part of the gun ammo tweak tests. Not on new ammo, but on existing ones. We won't ever see an ammo specifically for something like that

why not? Is there a thread/post about it in the dev-app section?