Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

[redria]

(Don't want to push, or sidetrack, but i suddenly really like the impact idea and this thread begs for discussion on it - last post unless people ask for more)

I ran some numbers and based everything off of the power of a single mine. If you have any concerns, run your ship into a single mine and see what that does to you, then consider proportions.

Damage modifier: 0.2
Clip size: 0.7
Gun deals only primary damage, losing the ability to inflict any secondary damage it has.
Primary damage is converted to impact damage.

Per clip, light carronade easily wins, dealing 68% of a single mine's damage per clip. Gatling deals 56%, Hwacha 47%, and Heavy Carronade 45%. All others are below 40% per clip.
Only 4 weapons deal less than 20% damage per clip: banshee (12%), mercury (10%), harpoon, and flare gun (1% lol).

Per shot (for immediate knock-back effects), Heavy carronade loads up 45%, making it easily the best pusher. Heavy flak falls in at 20% (along with mines) per shot before carronade shows back up, along with merc and artemis.

With modifiers in consideration, The most possible damage to deal is 185 to balloon, 154 to hull, 62 to component, or 82 to armor per clip of the light carronade.

I don't know how AOE would come into play (if at all) for how impact damage works when hitting multiple components.


I ran numbers for allowing in secondary damage only and the lumberjack runs away with the show, dealing 160% damage per clip. The next closest was hwacha at 84%, meaning dropping primary damage and applying only secondary damage makes the ammo OP on one gun to the point of non-viability.


I don't have numbers comparing reload times or buffs, and it's on excel, not a google doc i can share, but if it has real interest I can make one. ^.^

The ammo type turns any gun into a utility weapon, and works best on close range weapons (preventing snipers from spamming knock-back). With the heavy nerf of the damage modifier, the guns don't deal massive damage by any means. The guns become effective against armor, hull, and balloon, but can't do enough damage per clip to be truly dangerous in terms of damage (can be nearly effortlessly denied by an engineer making a simple repair. This is not an ammo type your engineer would take - it is next to useless as a singular ammo type. However, a gunner being able to load it in when the opportunity arises, or when their own weapon is not in effective range, or when their weapon can't fire effectively (inside arming times, or firing a gatling down at a ship trying to balloon-block the shots) suddenly becomes much more desirable. A single mine can be devastating when it explodes, knocking off arcs, throwing ships into and out of situations of danger or advantage, etc. The ability to apply that pressure at any time would be incredibly tempting to any pilot, meaning gunners with their multiple ammo types are very tempting.

Thanks for your patience.

[Milevan Faent]

(Don't want to push, or sidetrack, but i suddenly really like the impact idea and this thread begs for discussion on it - last post unless people ask for more)

I ran some numbers and based everything off of the power of a single mine. If you have any concerns, run your ship into a single mine and see what that does to you, then consider proportions.

Damage modifier: 0.2
Clip size: 0.7
Gun deals only primary damage, losing the ability to inflict any secondary damage it has.
Primary damage is converted to impact damage.

Per clip, light carronade easily wins, dealing 68% of a single mine's damage per clip. Gatling deals 56%, Hwacha 47%, and Heavy Carronade 45%. All others are below 40% per clip.
Only 4 weapons deal less than 20% damage per clip: banshee (12%), mercury (10%), harpoon, and flare gun (1% lol).

Per shot (for immediate knock-back effects), Heavy carronade loads up 45%, making it easily the best pusher. Heavy flak falls in at 20% (along with mines) per shot before carronade shows back up, along with merc and artemis.

With modifiers in consideration, The most possible damage to deal is 185 to balloon, 154 to hull, 62 to component, or 82 to armor per clip of the light carronade.

I don't know how AOE would come into play (if at all) for how impact damage works when hitting multiple components.


I ran numbers for allowing in secondary damage only and the lumberjack runs away with the show, dealing 160% damage per clip. The next closest was hwacha at 84%, meaning dropping primary damage and applying only secondary damage makes the ammo OP on one gun to the point of non-viability.


I don't have numbers comparing reload times or buffs, and it's on excel, not a google doc i can share, but if it has real interest I can make one. ^.^

The ammo type turns any gun into a utility weapon, and works best on close range weapons (preventing snipers from spamming knock-back). With the heavy nerf of the damage modifier, the guns don't deal massive damage by any means. The guns become effective against armor, hull, and balloon, but can't do enough damage per clip to be truly dangerous in terms of damage (can be nearly effortlessly denied by an engineer making a simple repair. This is not an ammo type your engineer would take - it is next to useless as a singular ammo type. However, a gunner being able to load it in when the opportunity arises, or when their own weapon is not in effective range, or when their weapon can't fire effectively (inside arming times, or firing a gatling down at a ship trying to balloon-block the shots) suddenly becomes much more desirable. A single mine can be devastating when it explodes, knocking off arcs, throwing ships into and out of situations of danger or advantage, etc. The ability to apply that pressure at any time would be incredibly tempting to any pilot, meaning gunners with their multiple ammo types are very tempting.

Thanks for your patience.

So, if I understand you right, you're theorizing (should this ammo be made) based on the damage being reduced by 80%, and the clip by 30%? Just want to make sure I understand how you're working this out. I'm liking what I'm reading otherwise. Maybe, if nothing else, we could get it in the dev app just to see what happens when we make random weapons deal impact damage as an experiment.

[redria]

So, if I understand you right, you're theorizing (should this ammo be made) based on the damage being reduced by 80%, and the clip by 30%?

Correct. A normal 100 piercing damage slug would instead deal 20 impact damage.
A normal 100 ammo clip would instead have 70 ammo. (and a 2 shot clip would instead only have 1 shot due to rounding, similar to lesmok)

[Milevan Faent]

So, if I understand you right, you're theorizing (should this ammo be made) based on the damage being reduced by 80%, and the clip by 30%?

Correct. A normal 100 piercing damage slug would instead deal 20 impact damage.
A normal 100 ammo clip would instead have 70 ammo. (and a 2 shot clip would instead only have 1 shot due to rounding, similar to lesmok)

About the only odd element I can see to this is flamers with impact damage XD

[Crafeksterty]

- Pilots tools can only be used on helm (aside from spotting, which are the only unique cases)
- Engineers tools can only be used while running around and on components
- Gunner ammo can only be used on a gun, while on a gun

Then why not instant effects on selection?
Ive made this thread few days ago, and it was on addons. (Dont know if you remember).
At first, i tought of it as a tool outside the gun, applied on the gun.

But then one can eliminate the need for tool model, effect and animation if you simply make it...
An instantaneus effect on selection while on the gun. Much like on the helm.

So with an ammo loaded, you then select over to a non-ammo gunner tool while on the gun, much like on the helm.
And those are addons that slightly help the weapon from being detrimental off of the ammo drawbacks, or strengthening the buffs.
I dont know how this cannot be done, all it needs is icons as a selection. And ofcourse as new gunner selections.
Applying buff hammer buff to the gun is no different from this, just that this addon buff is active whenever the gunner has it selected on the gun.

[Dementio]

I am tempted to suggest new engineer tools that are only a good choice for gunners, for some reason.
A new sort of pipe wrench that is best for repairing/rebuilding guns, but has barely to any effect on balloon/hull/engines, or something. Something that an engineer would never take, but a gunner could drive immense use from. The problem is that the gunner can only have 1 engineering tool and a tool that reacts differently on every component it hits, might require too much coding/effort...

[awkm]

RE: Instant/Passive Effects

Yeah, it fits in the overall design paradigm of when what skills are used when.  However, the other thing to note is that while it is a Gunner item, it behaves differently from ammo.  Now, something that's in the same class of items (the Gunner slots) doesn't do the same thing as the others.  So far, the only exception are the two Spotting tools... they're Pilot tools but are used while running around.

In the case of an instant/passive gunner skill that is activated while on a gun, the item doesn't force a reload.  Having this item activated will also produce a strange interaction with reload.  Under the current reload mechanics, you will reload to whatever ammo you have selected.  However, I won't necessarily have an ammo selected now.  What do I reload?  It would make sense to reload whatever was previously in the gun if I have that ammo... but how do I know what was in the gun?  You can see where this goes.  Not that we can't solve the issue, it's already steepening the uphill battle that we're trying to fight in making choosing Gunners more desirable than Gungineers.

A lot of the difficult issues end up being clarity of behavior and how to tell players what is going on in a way that is clean (UI) and intuitive.  Intuitive and clean usually mean as simple as possible.




RE: Gunner focused repair tool

Such an item would be obviously great for a gunner who normally just needs a repair tool to fix their own gun (engineers already have a lot to worry about).  However, then this selection skews heavily towards collapsing the decision space of "What engineer tool do I pick as a gunner?"  The decision space is currently quite skewed where users will most likely take Pipe or Spanner.

However, there's always the Engineer and how this kind of tool will affect their loadout decision making.  For Engineers, it becomes a little more unclear... maybe that's a good thing.



Just to make it clear, I'm not shutting anything down outright.  I want to let everyone know all the considerations that need to be taken into account before things are set into motion, and then to steer the feedback into a direction that is more immediately actionable.  There are numerous good ideas so far that I'm working into this big change.

[GeoRmr]

As I've said previously adding new ammo types is cool, however it will not affect the desirability of gunners. Instead of having literal 'passives' that are activated while mounted on a gun, make them work like chem-spray and be pre applied, this shouldn't cause a coding nightmare by affecting the reload mechanic.

[awkm]

Where do I equip this Gunner Chem Spray?  In a gunner slot?

That breaks paradigm and introduces behavior confusion.

You're right that it'll be little to be very little coding... but how do we display it to the user?  It's a running-around tool only available in the gunner slot?  That's weird, breaks paradigm. 

What if it's an Engineer tool?  But then why would a gunner bring it?  It's more useful to bring something to repair the gun if you need to.

Then the question is: why is the engineer more desirable?  Maybe the answer is Buff Hammer's effect on guns.  Maybe we'll look at dealing with that.

[GeoRmr]

Where do I equip this Gunner Chem Spray?  In a gunner slot?

That breaks paradigm and introduces behavior confusion.

You're right that it'll be little to be very little coding... but how do we display it to the user?  It's a running-around tool only available in the gunner slot?  That's weird, breaks paradigm. 

What if it's an Engineer tool?  But then why would a gunner bring it?  It's more useful to bring something to repair the gun if you need to.

Then the question is: why is the engineer more desirable?  Maybe the answer is Buff Hammer's effect on guns.  Maybe we'll look at dealing with that.

Yes, In a gunner slot. We're all comfortable with the pilot tool exceptions, I don't think people would be that confused by having some gunner 'tools'.

Edit: I strongly feel that this would be the best way to go. Maybe you could introduce some engineer passives that aren't tools to even it out. (that, or you should probably remove the spyglass and range finder from the game)

[awkm]

Again, we do not want to introduce any more exceptions than we have to.  This is not a 'no'.

No conclusions can be made without proper testing.  This means that these kinds of passives, tools, etc... could be the solution.  However, they're definitely not going to be tested first because of the time it would take to implement them.  The thing that can be easily implemented and tested is more ammo or tweaks to ammo.

Again, I'd like to hear ideas for new ammunition or changes to current ammunition... or even changes to Engineer tools (like buff) to increase the desire of Gunners on a ship.

If tests prove that ammo doesn't solve anything, I'll take suggestions on new mechanics.

[Richard LeMoon]

Trying to keep with awkm's base, easy-to-change criteria, yet keep things useful. Pros and Cons color coded.




Lesnagar (Rail Ammo):

+100% damage
+200% projectile speed
+50% projectile lift
+20% ignition chance
Removes arming time (DONT USE ON MINES!).
Single shot.
50% proportional damage to gun per clip.
Adds 10 stacks of fire to your gun, chem or not.
-120% rotation speed

Hyper velocity ammo. From the insane minds that brought you Lochnagar, we now have Lesnagar! All the benefits of Lochnagar and Lesmok, with twice the danger! This devastating ammo requires both a gunner and engineer to use, and pilot to aim.


Anti-gravity rounds:

+[whatever it takes]% lift to make arcing rounds go up instead of down.

"What goes up must take them down."


Aries Clip:

+1000% damage.
Removes arming time.
Single shot.
Destroys gun. (could it automatically fire as soon as loaded?)
Range reduced on all guns to <5 meters.

"Why did you name this infernal contraption the Aries?"
"Simple, sir. Aries' symbol is the ram."



Ammo types that don't fit so well in the easy to do restrictions, but would make gunners far more desirable:

Buff Rounds:

100% buff over the progression of the clip.
-20% damage.

"She don't do much now, but wait till you see what comes next.

Tinker Clip:

Gun is fixed (options below) by this clip.
Gun fixes itself when broken?
Damage modifiers? Reduction in firing speed? Fewer rounds?

"Engineers? We don't have time for bloody engineers!" 
Going with gunners needing to fix their own guns, make a special mechanical clip that fixes the gun while firing. Opposite of the DevApp special damage modifier ammos. This frees the gunner up to take something other than pipe wrench.

Options:

Rate of repair? 50-100% repair over full clip? Would greatly benefit low ammo, fast reloading guns. Not so great on high ammo or slow loading guns.

-OR- Instant fix when reloaded, like heatsink or a pipe wrench tap. More beneficial to all but long reload guns.

-OR- Constantly repairs guns while loaded. Would benefit large clip, long-firing guns, as well as load and forget. Would require more code changes.

[Richard LeMoon]

Is there possibility of having ammo types that change the turning range of guns? Another player asked as well, I think. If there is, I would add:

Overclock:

+ X% turning range.
Damages gun while firing.

"We didn't need these safety stops in the first place."

Lefties/Righties:

Shifts the gun's entire turningrange left or right. -10% left, + 10% right, for example.
Con is that you lose range in the other direction, and use normal ammo.

[awkm]

Test for experimental ammo is now on Dev App for brave testers.

[SirNotlag]

RE: Instant/Passive Effects

Yeah, it fits in the overall design paradigm of when what skills are used when.  However, the other thing to note is that while it is a Gunner item, it behaves differently from ammo.  Now, something that's in the same class of items (the Gunner slots) doesn't do the same thing as the others.  So far, the only exception are the two Spotting tools... they're Pilot tools but are used while running around.

In the case of an instant/passive gunner skill that is activated while on a gun, the item doesn't force a reload.  Having this item activated will also produce a strange interaction with reload.  Under the current reload mechanics, you will reload to whatever ammo you have selected.  However, I won't necessarily have an ammo selected now.  What do I reload?  It would make sense to reload whatever was previously in the gun if I have that ammo... but how do I know what was in the gun?  You can see where this goes.  Not that we can't solve the issue, it's already steepening the uphill battle that we're trying to fight in making choosing Gunners more desirable than Gungineers.

A lot of the difficult issues end up being clarity of behavior and how to tell players what is going on in a way that is clean (UI) and intuitive.  Intuitive and clean usually mean as simple as possible.


Just to make it clear, I'm not shutting anything down outright.  I want to let everyone know all the considerations that need to be taken into account before things are set into motion, and then to steer the feedback into a direction that is more immediately actionable.  There are numerous good ideas so far that I'm working into this big change.

So my previous example for the "auto loader" does not run into a lot of these problems, selecting it would force a reload and having it selected would just start another reload. I'm not the only one to suggest something like this either, but my favorite part about it is its simple with no affects except when the gun is reloading.
Anyway enough about that there are plenty who agree with me( just look at the number of suggestions for something that does this effect, I can't clam it as my own idea anymore ) and those that don't as i would argue that there may be some builds that would take the third ammo choice over faster reloads but I cannot think of any so i have to agree that it would likely become a mandatory gunner tool.


I find it really hard to come up with new ammo types that would be useful in very specific situations but ill give it another try.

How about Flash power Clip:
drastically reduce range by -70% or something, arming time is reduced by 80%, rotation speed of the gun is doubled, reduced damage by -35% ( basic idea for this ammo would be if you were fighting point blank, it allows weapons with arming times to still be very effective)


As for previously mentioned ammo i like the idea of some sort of acidic ammo that does more damage on each subsequent hit, and i also love the idea for ammo type that adjust the arcs, even if one adjusts it right and another adjusts it left, it would make gunners ability to carry three ammo types very nice.