Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

[Charlemagne Montigue]

1. Give Gunners Priority over weapons.
2. Take away special ammo types from other classes.
3. Make Gunners shoot weapons more accurately than other classes. (a bigger modification than the rest)

[Moo]

For 1: On a well-organized ship, there shouldn't really be competition for guns. A gunner, if available, would logically be the first choice to man a gun.
It would perhaps make the gunner role a more attractive idea to (certain) players, but I don't think it wouldn't make the gunners any more wanted by captains; in fact perhaps the opposite, if shots get missed due to gunners kicking engies off the guns "because they can"...

I think the other parts have already been discussed here or elsewhere.

[Lovex Lazil]

Honestly fear as much as you like; I personally don't see the lack of actual gunners as a bad thing.

I find that although gunners are a third and class not welcomed most ships anymore due to the majority of light guns can be easily maned with heavy or lesmock ammo (depending on the gun).
A good gunner is hard to find and although a engineer can be a great gunner and a gunner can be a horrible engineer at best it is slightly biased and we're getting slowly cut out overtime.

But that's the risk of taking a gunner on board your ship myself primarily I love the Loch ammo and it's great I can bring Lesmock and Charged with me as well to not always destroy my guns. The gunner is the most weapon/ shooting flexible class and that's how I believe muse designed it.

Pilot/Engineer/Gunner are perfectly fine the way they are; but a solution would be to give gunners higher accurcy/recoil/something per level they gain. You can also do the same for engineers and pilots example being engineers do point .25 extra rebuild/ 5 repair per level. Pilot tool's do less damage per level etc etc etc.

I don't see the point in saying that the gunner class is underused and underplayed. I personally LOVE the gunner class right now what I HATE about playing a gunner is most captains who don't know me (so nearly every non falconeer) will ask me to go engineer and when I reply no they assume I'm a bad player/sportsman when I'm only playing the class I believe I play best and have the most fun with :3.

Moral of the story; Learn to switch it up with your guns so people want you to be a gunner <3

[Shinkurex]

Hey Lovex,

First of all, if you ever want to fly as a gunner outside of the falconeers, the MM have no problems with this. However, I do want to disagree with your suggestion, and that is based on the fact that if you increase base traits by lvls, the community will fragment (I guess this is becoming my favorite word :\)... I'm fairly certain that Muse wants to keep it to where a full crew of lvl 1's could still beat a lvl 11 crew.

Thanks!
Shink

[timmymonsta]

I for one don't see why other captains hate gunners so much. I've seen my fair share of captains who will tell their gunners to go engineer and that only want an all engineer ship. Honestly I believe that without one gunner, you are severely crippling the effectiveness of your ship. Sure an engineer can have one specialty round with them, but for many guns you need more than one ammo type in order to be effective. Even for a simple gatling gun, sure heavy rounds will give you extra accuracy, but once your in closer range you have nothing you can do in order to increase your effectiveness. You need another ammo type such as burst or charged in order to do that extra bit of damage. Also from my standpoint, ships that use 3 engineers on them lose more often and get less kills than ships with a 2-1 team.

[HamsterIV]

If you have captained with as many bad gunners as I have you would hate gunners as well. Two nights ago I flew with a gunner who messed up a reload on a hwacha fish. He gave the enemy team 30 seconds to do whatever they wanted with my ship. We lost a fully crewed 2v2 and inflicted no permahull damage in that encounter. 7 other people were adversely affected by his mistake. Credit where credit is due, the other team flew exceptionally well and we were probably screwed regardless. This, I think,  is why all engineer Pyramidions are so popular. A single paste eater can not cripple an entire ship.

[Moriarty]

The OP returns!

Due to various small changes (the wrench in particular) i think the game allows gunners a little more play (in the streamlined competitive sense) than it did when the thread started.

The need for a gunner is still very gun specific though, and I'm sure we can all reasonably agree that most guns don't *need* a gunner, we might argue about the existence and extent of any benefit having a gunner might give these guns, but the fact there is an argument at all shows the limited extent of any benefit.

This being said, shifts in the meta, particularly the emergence of the Mortarmidian (as far as i know a coining of the term) means we *might* see a lot more gunners than we used to, if the build catches on.

However despite the gains made by the class, if you were dead set on efficiency they'd still be a sometimes thing or a goldfish thing.

*be sure to read at least some of the thread so we don't go in circles
 

[RearAdmiralZill]

Due to various small changes (the wrench in particular)

Uhm, what?

[Moriarty]

Pipe wrench's rebuild value.

[RearAdmiralZill]

It changed?

[Moriarty]

since i started this thread sure, it was in the last patch or something.

[Dev Bubbles]

Pipe wrench rebuild value did not change.  Just FYI, but I do love my gunners! 

[Moriarty]

wow, that *is* news to me, could of sworn it was bumped from 3 to 4 or something. Oh well guess there goes a pro gunner point.

Oh and Bubbles good luck on the weekend!

[Dev Bubbles]

Thank you!  I will need it, lol.  With the gunner discussion, I know there's a lot that's been said, and I know where the ducks stand on this, lol.  But, personally I think having a gunner on my ships with my builds is advantageous.  Perhaps that is because I am not the greatest pilot in the world, which I'm far from, but I do tend to fight in different ranges, and my ship loadouts usually will allow me to fight at multiple ranges in the same match, so having a gunner to me is advantageous.  And I've debated with Squash and Smollett a lot about my galleon build for example, but if my team coordinates well, which is a big if, hahaha, my build is viable and sensible in my humble opinion. 

[Echoez]

From a personal experience, I always want a gunner if I have mortars on my ship, they benefit the most of having multiple ammo types out of all the light guns. Mind you the only time my ship will have mortars is when I have a gunner I know I can trust on my ship.

Other than that, in my humble opinion, all heavy weapons benefit a lot from having multiple ammo types as well and I always want a gunner on a ship with a heavy gun, no matter if I know them or not.

Basically, I think gunners are fine, I don't mind having one gunner on my ship even if it runs Gat/Flak, I think the lack of just one more engineer doesn't do much harm and I want at least one guy to be focused on shooting at the enemy.