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Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Helmic:
--- Quote from: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 04:08:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Helmic on April 05, 2013, 02:22:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 11:02:40 am ---I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.
I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.
I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.
--- End quote ---
The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships. In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner. That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs. That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing. Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.
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Im not here to pick your loadouts for you or anyone else here. If you want to run 3 engineer's, be my guest. However, you cannot base the entirety of gunner's success/usefulness on certain matches that happen to sway in the favor of the team that went all engie. There are way more variables involved there that can sway wins one way or another.
I personally cant stand using gungineers. I tried it. I dont want him off the gun buffing. I want him on the gun, with ammo loaded, and firing on the enemy im pointing him at. Under that mindset, a gunner fills the role better.
That extra 25% damage over a few seconds can mean the difference between a kill or not. A kill is worth more to me than surviving a little longer, only to die because he's still shooting and my 3 engies are repairing or buffing things.
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That's great that you find a gunner useful, but the issue is that the current meta at large tends to prefer three engineers and no gunners. That's not something we want to stay around, we don't want there to not be changes to the gunner just because some people can kinda sorta see a slight advantage to having one over a gungineer. Having some variety in the crew roles should give you a MAJOR advantage over those that have all gunners or all engineers and that currently isn't the case, and the meta reflects that. Plenty of people have been comparing gunners and gungineers side by side and finding that gungineers are in general winning out, that they're doing so great in the Cogs (galleons nonwithstanding) is about as objective of proof we're going to get. There needs to be some changes so that gunners aren't seen as something useful to only half of the competitive community.
Shinkurex:
Here's how I look at this... You're going to play your way, I'm not going to sway this... I like my way so it's split 50/50.... I respect your opinion, but don't call me useless... There is no rule to say that you have to bring a gunner and some groups play well without needing them... for MNS, we will always run with gunners... It works for us
Helmic:
Except I don't want to play this way, it's simply what's currently effective. I don't want it to be effective, and that this thread exists means a lot of people are unhappy that three engineers are so effective, it's something that should be a novelty setup like three gunners or a flame pyramidion. And nowhere did I say that Shinkurex was useless, just that in my (and many other competitive players') experience someone that can shoot well is more useful to the captain as a gungineer than as a gunner. The role doesn't change the players' skill or actual job on the ship at all. Someone that's good with ammo switching is obviously going to be more useful a gunner than one that isn't, but there isn't enough emphasis on that skill in the game right now and that's the issue.
I'm not arguing that those who currently use gunners shouldn't, but that just because those people CAN use gunners doesn't mean there isn't a need to tweak the mechanics to make gunners more appealing to more than just half of the competitive community. I think a lot of the problem has to do with the current penalties to ammo switching, as even before this thread was made gunners apparently were more in demand because of heatsink (a defensive, chemspray-like ammo) than actually being able to switch to the most effective ammunition to fit the situation.
Ammo right now is tailored to specific guns and there's an expectation that each player should only be on one gun (two on a Galleon), the result is that more often than not whoever's shooting isn't making use of all three ammo slots. If the mechanics could be rebalanced a bit to encourage more ammo switching then the meta would probably start to favor the gunner over the gungineer.
Just to give an example, let's say a Pyramidion has two engineers and a gunner. Both engineers are on repair because the ship's taking heavy fire, the front guns are a gatling and flak. This SHOULD be the perfect situation for a gunner, strip off armor with the gatling and run over to the flak to smack their hull to distract the enemy crew off of your ship; however, the current penalty for leaving your gun during reload makes it so that the gunner can't really make use of his multiple ammo types and stay equipped for both guns, he might as well have just been a gungineer with heavy clip in that situation. You CAN do the gun-swapping trick on a Galleon with double Hwachas and still make use of the Gunner's unique traits, but right now that's the only setup where that's possible and that's a damn shame.
Apparently the way reloading works right now is due to some UI limitation rather than any clear vision of how the Gunner should work, though I don't see why defaulting to vanillas is going to be any clearer than defaulting to what was last left in it.
Helmic:
god damn edit timer
My point is that there's more to this than just telling those that have issues finding use for the gunner to suck it up because you can. This isn't limited to just a handful of people who haven't really played the game yet, or those who aren't as skilled and can't handle a high skill ceiling.
N-Sunderland:
An interesting thing to note is that in the Paddling vs. Gentlemen championship Cog game today, a match where heavy flaks and lumberjacks were used, there was not a single gunner.
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