Rebalancing the gunner?

[Hyakk E. Douran]

Hello fellow air buccaneers,

I am new to the forum, so hopefully I am not creating a duplicate topic.
I love Guns of Icarus Online, but after 20 or so hours of play, something as struck me as problematic : the class balance is not quite good yet, the problem being the gunner.

Basically, having 3 engineers is considered a valid strategy, but having more than 1 gunner is almost seen as suicidal by most captains.
Sure, you don't need to have two pilots, but not having one is a huge detriment. Not having a gunner is basically not a problem at all, and it is even encouraged by many captains, which I think is weird.

I wanted to suggest to the dev team to think about this. There has to be a way to make the gunner more useful, so that having one would give an advantage significant enough.
Ideally, having 1 gunner should be almost mandatory (kinda like pilot) and having two should be a quirky but valid strategy.

Now of course, the question is : how to achieve this? There are probably many ways and this is why I am starting this topic, but here are some suggestions (could be combined together):

- Gunners do bonus damage with guns they maneuver
- Gunners reload guns faster
- Gunners have exclusive ammo types that are straight up bonuses, rather than trade-offs
- Gunners rebuild and repair guns faster than other classes
- Gunners have built-in range finder upgrade for themselves. Only works on spotted ships.
- Gunners can use range finders while gunning
- ...?

Maybe the community and more experienced people could come up with better ideas than this. Hopefully we can reach the best way to make the gunner a more necessary element of a balanced crew. 

[Imagine]

I wouldn't say it's seen as suicidal by most captains, it's more split down the middle than you'd think. The reason why people use an extra engineer instead of gunner isn't because of the extra repair power, it's solely because of the advantages of the buff hammer while gunning.

Regardless, there are currently things being tested for future patches, as well as a plethora of other threads already discussing this

[redria]

I am new to the forum, so hopefully I am not creating a duplicate topic.

Regardless, there are currently things being tested for future patches, as well as a plethora of other threads already discussing this

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4079.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4254.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4214.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4125.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4076.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4009.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4034.0.html
Just to give you a sampling.

To answer your specific suggestions, current Muse philosophy is that all classes are inherently equal (no passives) and no tools will be locked to any particular class. This means your gunner will never inherently shoot better than an engineer, or have a tool an engineer can't take. But he can bring a greater diversity of ammos, and various other features are being looked at.

Click that first link I posted and read through. Currently the simple solution is to add better ammo types that make gunners more desirable. If you have any suggestions to that regard, post them there. Any other ideas are sort of on the back-burner until Muse finishes other, more important projects (like co-op and adventure mode!).

Also, welcome to the forums. We won't bite (too hard).

[Dutch Vanya]

The reason why people use an extra engineer instead of gunner isn't because of the extra repair power, it's solely because of the advantages of the buff hammer while gunning.

That is too much of a blanket statement, and simply not true all the time.

[Imagine]

The reason why people use an extra engineer instead of gunner isn't because of the extra repair power, it's solely because of the advantages of the buff hammer while gunning.

That is too much of a blanket statement, and simply not true all the time.

It's true more often than not. Without the buffhammer, 3 engineers just starts having diminishing returns.

[GreyTea]

Galleon-Pyra-
Pilot-spanner
main deck engineer-mallet spanner extingusher
-Gunner with spanner
-Gunner with chem/buff depending on map and opposition weapon choice

I would take 2 gunners then , with goldfish/spire you only have 1 heavy weapon so 1 gunner is optimal, whereas the pyra if you go with 2 gunners, hades flak might work with 2 gunners rather than brawler

main thing if you are at range over brawl you normally will take less damage. 1 ammo per gun is very limiting but perfectly viable because every ammo has advantage and disadvantage depending on weapon and range, so most higher level teams have optimial builds but this does not mean 2 gunners is not useful with certain situations just like engineers, it also has to do with mentality, repair over firepower.

This is all just my opinion by the way,

[pandatopia]

So I've been thinking about this, and I'm wondering, why is gunner balance necessary?

Like redria stated the muse philosophy, all classes are inherently equal. The only difference is how many of a specific tool type you can use.

I used to think "gunners" need a buff, but now I think, well why?

Why not just go engineer if you want? Theres nothing stopping you. If your ship calls for more ammo type usage, go gunner, otherwise, go engineer.

Might as well say, "Type A" and "Type B" characters.

I am really liking the difference, or should I say lack of difference, between the "classes". It really actually gives you far more freedom to customize not only your ship but your players as well.

If you start forcing people into roles then that takes away a lot of that freedom of doing whatever you want (or rather, whatever you need). We all have horror stories about that gunner that is slaved to the main gun and cannot budge, or that engineer who refuses to use the mortar to secure your kill even though your ship isn't taking any fire at all.

The labels engineer and gunner are something we generally shed by the time we graduate from newbiehood (at least, we should).

[SirNotlag]

while I dont think there is an ISSUE per say because i do lve the fact that 3 engineers is a viable option in this game and I dont like things being stock meta all the time. I still WANT to see more ship types having 2 gunners as a viable build because they are snipers and gunners should be able to do more damage or at least have a larger variety of damage to dish out which currently is not the case.

Again I don't think anything needs to be fixed i just want adjustments for the sake of variety and if Muse can find some way to do that whether it be by adjusting ammos or adding more gunner tools I will be all the happier!