Greetings. The situation that i'm about to describe has bugged me since the first time i saw the damage multiplier table. But i thought i would understand it better when i get more experience. It didn't happened.
Before i begin, let me explain 2 things:
1)
TTK - i.e. "time to kill" is the average lifetime under constant fire. In most FPS TTK is less than a few seconds. But in an airship game longer and more intense battles are more enjoyable.
2)
The official damage multiplier table mentioned above.Is something bothers you when you look at it? Hint: explosive type deals 7 times more damage to the hull than piercing. Granted, all guns were designed with a specialisation. But when heavy flak could pound squid's armor all day without dealing any real damage
it's not "specialisation" it's "Pigeonholing" The guns are so specialised that they're completely useless outside of their area of expertise.
Why it it bad for the game:
1)
Inconsistent TTK. I could have a very long and enjoyable fight against a goldfish but a sniper spire could kill me in a matter of 10 seconds giving no fun.
2)
Limiting loadouts. Some weapons are completely unusable and therefore nowhere to be seen.
3)
Turning away many new captains. Some people (like me) come into this game to be a pilot. But a newcomer may (and most likely will) try an imbalanced loadouts. Like all rocket carousels for example. Then they play a few matches without any chance to kill someone and quit. They aren't getting their portion of fun not because they're bad pilots but because the system works against them.
Therefore guns should be specialised but not pigeonholed.
To fix this:
1) Even out all guns' DPS.
2) Even out all damage types' multipliers. They should be 1.5-2.5 in their speciaisation and 1 everywhere else.
That way TTK would be stabilised around one point that gives the most fun for both teams.
The second thing that bothers me is the carronade. No need to sigh and close the page, i won't suggest to nerf it to the ground.
If you ever got pinned by a carronade you know how bad it could be.
when you lose your guns you can't shoot but you still can run. Or use other guns because they rarely can be taked out in the same time.
When you lose your engines you still can move (vertically) and shoot. And engines are quite easy to rebuild.
But if you lost your balloon...
- You can't shoot because all of your guns quickly lose the target.
- You can't move in ANY direction.
- You take serious damage from the fall.
- You can't recover. The balloon have a very long rebuild time and the moment it comes back up it comes back down because the enemy's carronade is reloaded.
Basically, one gun makes your ship completely helpless. Being pinned by a carronade is
a very long and a very, very frustrating death. On top of that it doesn't require any "skill" from the enemy. Just bring a carronade.
No, "asking for your teammate to help" and "bring a drogue chute" aren't the solutions.
1) If you need 2 ships to deal with one then it's overpowered. (same true for sniper spire) Moreover, your teammate may be busy with other ship. Or worse - be pinned by a carronade himself. Then it turns into a GoIO-style teabagging.
2) Enemy shouldn't choose what tools i should bring. Forcing the whole team to select one specific item (and never use it afterwards) because enemy have one light carronade in a 4th pyramidion's slot is a bad thing. Also, drogue chute doesn't counter carronade. It just eases the pain a bit.
The solution is simple and IMO elegant:
Make a ship with destroyed balloon be unable to control its altitude but do not fall.With such tweak we would have a larger time window to shoot back before enemy can get out of our firing arcs, we won't take fall damage and we still would be able to move horizontally and escape.
That's it. 3 squids in a single shot.
I really hope these changes would be implemented as they can fix a lot of game's flaws.
