Author Topic: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.  (Read 86172 times)

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #90 on: August 07, 2014, 11:48:04 am »
it would be in the gunner slot that both engis and gunners could choose.  maybe I'm weird here but does every gunner need all 3 ammo types? I rarely need more than 1, let alone 3!

Offline Ultimate Pheer

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #91 on: August 07, 2014, 12:11:19 pm »
I rarely need more than 1, let alone 3!

And that, right there, is why Gunners as a class are considered Niche.

Because almost every gun works fine with just one ammo type, and far too often each person only needs to man one gun.

Make the ammo types more effective at changing the way the guns work, make it worthwhile to carry more than one ammo type, and it will be instantly fixed.

I still advocate some sort of nerf to the buff hammer, though.

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #92 on: August 07, 2014, 12:25:44 pm »
or make the buff hammer a gunner tool and this make the gunner less niche

Offline Dementio

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #93 on: August 07, 2014, 01:04:46 pm »
Let's break the game by giving everybody a default engineering tool, as everybody should have, considering helm and guns both have their defaults.

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #94 on: August 07, 2014, 01:27:42 pm »
We can't fix this problem by giving the gunner more repairing possibilities, but by giving gunner such gunning possibilities that sometimes it's worth having two gunners instead of two engineers.

Offline Deltajugg

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #95 on: August 07, 2014, 01:48:43 pm »
We can't fix this problem by giving the gunner more repairing possibilities, but by giving gunner such gunning possibilities that sometimes it's worth having two gunners instead of two engineers.

and then you fight against Cake and realize that this is not the best idea

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #96 on: August 07, 2014, 01:56:44 pm »
or a hwacha fish or a trip art junker

Offline Tanya Phenole

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #97 on: August 07, 2014, 02:38:10 pm »
If you are giving gunners any passive buffs, I request introducing dash for engineers. Cause someone has to be in 2 places simultaneosly since that lazy butt always sits on his guns.

Also, I kinda thought of builds where gunners entirely replaced by engineers, and came to interesting conclusion.
Heavy carronade on goldfish REALLY needs a gunner. Because charged actually has 20% more damage and 10-ish% more DPS than buffed vanilla. And on a distance of heavy clip you may afford baloon engineer buffing front gun.

I guess, if light guns had such difference from ammo, as heavy guns do,  it will be nice having different types of them, the situation will be same with my example above. But game has only 3 ships with heavy guns (and one of them is claimed underpowered). So I see, that new ammo types and changing effects from current ammo types is the only possible way to make room for gunner and save the game balance.

I might totally look like slowpoke, but I came up with any opinion on this topic only now.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2014, 02:54:11 pm by Phenole »

Offline Crafeksterty

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #98 on: August 07, 2014, 04:21:00 pm »
I still feel like the gunners need a tool that can be used on the gun.

Much like the addon idea where you can select a tool while on a gun and itl effect the gun like a pilot.

So for example, an addon tool that adds 10% more damage whenever it is selected on the gun.
So the gunner reloads to an ammo type,
When that is done
Selects the addon tool for the extra damage.

So in clarity, addons then neglect the negative effects of ammo.
So add in the +%dmg addon to greased, add in fire rate addon to burst, add in rotation speed addon to lochnagar.


The problem with this idea of what i heard is that it is a new mechanical behaviour to a gun.
What does it reload if an addon is selected during the reload?
Does it add on the + buffs with the ammo and a buff hammer buff?

Well not much else but thats the thing, its a new mechanical behaviour. The ammo being overhauled is cool but prooves for a very difficult to change tool the more you think about it.
Possible but the math is more difficult. The new tool type is easier to comprehend and make work for balance but is more difficult to make exist within the existing behaviour. (coding, programing, content making etc).

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #99 on: August 07, 2014, 06:44:04 pm »
sorry my clever elegent ideas that would not be that difficult to implement coding wise wasn't up to par... ;-P

Offline GeoRmr

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #100 on: August 07, 2014, 08:14:26 pm »
No one read my first post that started this thread lol.

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #101 on: August 07, 2014, 09:21:19 pm »
I did I did! 

Offline Tanya Phenole

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #102 on: August 08, 2014, 09:32:19 am »
No one read my first post that started this thread lol.

I did, and I totally disagree with your idea which will totally ruin the original balance system

Offline GeoRmr

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #103 on: August 08, 2014, 09:38:47 am »
Lol, changing one tool rather than DRASTICALLY CHANGING ALL AMMO IN THE GAME. sure.

Offline Jamini

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Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.
« Reply #104 on: August 21, 2014, 10:25:32 am »
Gunners don't have gunner tools.  They have gunner ammo.

That's the rule for now until ammo testing is determined to be finished.

I'm fairly new to GOI, but I do feel like this may be an error that is preventing gunners from becoming more than a Niche class.

The main issue is, Gunners rarely need more than two ammo types for the weapons they use. Even good gunners, the ones that use downtime to load secondary guns with specialist ammunition while buff engineers are buffing engines/prebuffing mobility parts, rarely need to use more than two ammo types in addition to normal ammo. Heatsink ammo in particular seems heavily underused despite the utility (mostly due to the penalties of using it when not about to get lit on fire.)

Gunner "tools" might not be a bad thing to look into. I do not suggest any "tools" that could be used outside of a gun, but rather active abilities along similar lines of pilot tools might be helpful for bringing a gunner in-line with the buffing engineer. Ideally these abilities would be used alongside ammo types, and would be suboptimal for a non-gunner to take.

Example Tool 1: "Active Reload"
-This tool takes the same slot as an ammo type. When selected it immediately starts a reload on your weapon. This reload is notably faster than a standard reload (33-50%), but damages the weapon through the entire duration of the reload.

-Essentially a Kerosene for a gunner, this would give an aggressive gunner the ability to make certain long-reload weapons (Hwacha) capable of firing more often and ultimately drastically increasing their overall Damage per second without touching the weapon's burst. In addition, it would allow gunners to swap ammo significantly faster at the cost of having to repair their weapon more often.

Example Tool 2: "Heatsink"
-This tool would replace heatsink clip. This active ability would immediately extinguish a weapon and render it immune to fire until the end of a reload, at a significant cost of damage output (~25% or so)

-Heatsink clip is extremely useful for a gunner, but it can be exceedingly difficult or impossible to quickly change a weapon out in time to counter a flamer (Most heatsink clips I have seen used are on weapons with fast reloads, like gatlings or mortars). When compared to chemspray, heatsink clip is without a doubt significantly weaker and used much, much less.  Currently, dual-gunner ships are extremely weak to flamers due to the lack of firefighting ability gunners possess, an active ability such as this would permit gunners to continue to fire even as their engines and balloon go down in flames (which should be your engineer's job anyway!)

Example Tool 3 - "Jerry-Rig"
-When activated applies a debuff to all aspects of a weapon for the current mag (-10/15% damage, rof, range, and no turning radius), but permits the weapon to be fired, even if destroyed,until the magazine is spent.

-This "tool" would give gunners an ability that no other class has, a final "Hail Mary" salvo when facing imminent weapon destruction. As an ammunition type this tool would virtually never see use due to penalties in virtually every category, but as an active ability it could allow a gunner to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.