Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

[Toddler Cain]

Hi. FIrst of I want to say that I'm really new to this game but I still want to verbalise some of my thoughts about changes to the gunners, please take them into consideration atleast.
1. Make the vanilla rounds a skill or take them away. This would give engineers 1 ammo to use instead of the 2 that they have now and leaving the gunners the same way they are. (The gunners would even become slithly buffed since the vanilla rounds won't be loaded when you first grab a gun.)
2. Buff the current ammos. Or rather making them all more niche.
3. Give more utility skills to gunners. You could even take away some of the guns, like the harpoon gun thingy, and make that into a skill instead. I don't think many people use the harpoon with it being so niche but as a special round you could load it, shoot the harpoon and then slowly reload some other ammo into the same gun, using that gun when they are hooked. Maybe we could even make that flare gun into a gunner skill.

If you combine the three sugestions we could have gunners with 1 long range ammo, 1 short range ammo and either an harpoon or a a flare to hold ships were they are or to be better to track ships. While engineers would be forced to take either long range ammo OR short range ammo. If the vanilla rounds are kept engineers could run them as well for some al around ammo. What do you guys think?

[Sammy B. T.]

Suggestion one would actually increase the power of engineers on a lot of guns as their specialty ammo would always be loaded, yes? Engineers having to fire a clip of vanilla often times before they get to fire their special rounds is one of the weaknesses of an engineer.

[Chrinus]

I like the idea of giving the gunner some niche utilities as stated above. Just to further discussion, I thought of the flare ammo mentioned and thought "Hmm what if we made a handheld flare gun equippable/usable outside of the gun (without the damge and fire stacks, obviously). Something like that might be the change we're looking for; a choice between a tool that can save a gun slot, or a 3rd ammo type. It also forces engineers to make a choice in their gunner slot as utility or destruction.

[dragonmere]

Not going to lie, I didn't read all 9 pages of this post, so this was probably mentioned somewhere in there.


Instead of the gunner holding 3 ammo types and 1 repair tool... Why not give the gunner 2 ammo types, and 2 repair tools? I cannot really think of a situation where a third ammo type is absolutely necessary or even overly beneficial. Two ammo types will get you through on the lumberjack just fine, and that is the most ammo-dependant weapon in my opinion.

With 2 repair tools, the decision of gunner/engineers would then come down to how many chem sprays/buff hammers you want on your ship. If default loadout was spanner/hammer, quick join new gunners wouldn't be the bane to a ships health as they are now. It would also be as easy to teach a new gunner at both crew tasks as it is to train an engineer. The basics of rebuilt/repair would be available to both crew classes.

If this was implemented, I can immediately think of several situations where I'd finally WANT a gunner, possibly two, on my ship. I may be missing something, but I don't think this would unbalance the game at all. Well, at least not as badly as gunners are unbalanced right now. It might actually give them a benefit, and I think they deserve the chance to shine.

Just my two cents.

[Moo]

You might as well keep the current gunner role then, and have the 2/2 as a gungineer role, which would probably be very popular...
Having the gunner and engineer roles different by only one tool would be odd, I think.

[dragonmere]

Agreed it would be odd. I was just looking for the simplest way to make the gunner class viable until ammo types are (hopefully!) balanced to become more necessary. As it stands, most good captains I've seen will instruct their gunner something along the lines of "Bring ammo x and ammo y, third one is your choice but you won't hardly be using it." If we only need max 2 types in the current game, why not give the gunner an actual ability to repair comparable to the engineers ability to gun?

This would be an easy way to bring crew lineups other than 2/3 or 3/3 engineers into the 'meta'. Almost any combination of crew members could be completely usable.

In my opinion, the "gungineer" class should be connected to (or outright be) the gunner, not engineer. Full engineers should be the unsung hero of the ship. Not the starring role.

[Eleanor Thornholt]

I read a lot of these posts and the idea of passive boosts doesn't seem bad. One thing that could be nice instead of passive boost items is constant boost for the class.
Example: Pilot (-5% angular drag), Engineer (+5% buff duration), Gunner (-5% recoil).

That would give the gunner a boost towards gunning that Gungineer CAN'T get.

Alternatively, debuffs towards other class roles.
Example: Pilot (-5% buff duration, +5% recoil), Engineer (+5% angular drag, +5% recoil), Gunner (+5% angular drag, -5% buff duration)

This would make the Gungineer less strong with gunning and wouldn't risk unbalancing the guns.

Please give me your point of view on this and keep in mind the examples are EXAMPLES.

[Machiavelliest]

Honestly, I think only the gunner should get that constant, passive boost if anyone.  The pilot one is unnecessary because piloting tools take care of it.  The engineering ability to better repair/buff at all is taken care of by the engineer's tools.

[Captain Smollett]

Here's an idea that might even satisfy awkm.

What if passive bonuses filled an ammo slot, so anyone could take a passive bonus but a gunner could take up to 3. Imagine taking faster gun rotation, bigger zoom, and burst rounds for an Artemis party.

[Spud Nick]

What if only gunners could use ammo.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Here's an idea that might even satisfy awkm.

What if passive bonuses filled an ammo slot, so anyone could take a passive bonus but a gunner could take up to 3. Imagine taking faster gun rotation, bigger zoom, and burst rounds for an Artemis party.

Ammo already does this in a balanced way. I would highly doubt you could stack passive buffs just because doing so would toss gun balance out the window.

[Eleanor Thornholt]

Honestly, I think only the gunner should get that constant, passive boost if anyone.  The pilot one is unnecessary because piloting tools take care of it.  The engineering ability to better repair/buff at all is taken care of by the engineer's tools.

I actually prefered the debuffs over buffs since they don't affect balancing at all, they just give each class a better feel of their duties.

[-Muse- Cullen]

We need to be careful about how this works... Currently, each role is similar in the sense that they all get two bonus tools to their respective skills. In order to keep that sort of thing, each role should get a benefit to its role, a passive. We should avoid making engineer/pilot less desirable, we should only make the Gunner more desirable. An increase to damage would definitely make it desirable as heck, but a small % wouldn't cause enough waves, and a large % would ruin balance. Perhaps...

What about a small buff to all aspects of each role? Gunners have 5% increase to rotation, ammo, reload, clipsize, recoil, and whatever else, while engies get a small increase to hp repaired, rebuilt, buffed, and pilots get a small increase to ship speed, turn, altitude change, etc? This would definitely make the gunner role viable to dedicated shooters.

[Mill Wilkinson]

I am severely against passives, as it would only lead to people wanting to play just one role because of the passive that "suits their style" and other nonsense. I'd rather see that the gunner be lifted among the two others by other means. GoIO is not your basic RPG or shooter, and I am quite happy with the fact that equipment, and the amount of it, determines the quality of the class rather than some random numbers you can't affect.

But, I think we should discuss the option of having gunner-specific tools a bit more. It sounded an interesting proposal, but I believe some serious thought should be had before minting the idea fully.

[Machiavelliest]

What if loading heatsink into a gun that was on fire put it out?  That would keep gunners from being stuck with the "DAD my gun's on fire" vs "DAD my gun's broken" dilemma, plus aid in the extinguishing achievements that are annoying and force you to sacrifice your team's patience and effectiveness for an achievement.

It would keep the gunner from being so helpless at the gun, but not allow them to put out fires on non-gun components.  Sure, an engineer could bring it too, but they'd have to spend time loading the gun with the ammo, and couldn't extinguish non-gun parts, so it wouldn't make it so they could go spanner/hammer/buff and still fight fires.