Author Topic: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage  (Read 40596 times)

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #15 on: January 02, 2015, 03:04:29 am »
Actually you can always aim for the balloon.
Once the balloon is down the damage will directly transfer to the hull.

Offline ShadedExalt

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #16 on: January 02, 2015, 08:54:00 am »
Huh.  Well, you learn something new every day.  ...Other than that, my advice was good, right?

Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #17 on: January 02, 2015, 11:12:42 am »
Sure. Shooting the balloon with a carronade is the thing to do.
The only other possibility you have with a carronade is using heavy clip and sniping guns which can be rather hard.

Offline Schwalbe

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #18 on: January 02, 2015, 11:30:41 am »
Well, heavy carronade is also good for runaway scenario; enemy squid piloted by absent-minded one is trying to run from you goldfish? HAHAHA, NOPE. [ charged / loch shot in the back at particular distance ]

Offline seriouschess

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #19 on: January 20, 2015, 12:46:32 am »
I read your posts and played a few more games. Here's what I came up with as of now.

Whirlwind Light Gatling Gun:  Want to kill a ship? Damage the hull! Want to damage the hull? Use this weapon. It’s the best for breaking that all important barrier, and it breaks a lot of other things too such as guns and engines.

Hellhound Heavy Twin Carronade: This weapon is so popular, it has an entire build named after it called the ‘Blenderfish’. Pop a balloon, and kill a ship. This single weapon is a complete strategy, and dang is it annoying to go up against!

Scylla Double-barreled Mortar: Break ships with stripped hulls at short range. Little use for anything else, but that’s a pretty important thing to do!

Barking Dog Light Cannonade: Yeah I can admit when I’m wrong. A balloon popper is not fun to fight against. Pair that with a flamethrower and now you’re just being mean. It does have a very short range though, so it has a specific role.

Dragon Tongue Light Flamethrower: If batman were chemspray this weapon would be the joker. Still, it remains quite popular as it can overwhelm enemies with persistence. A solid close range option for speedy ships that can afford the risk, or larger ships that want to give speedy ships something to think about!

Banshee Light Rocket Carousel: A longer ranged slightly less effective flamethrower. Want to send engineers running and give them something to do? Pelt an enemy ship with some of these. Not bad against stripped hulls either. A persistent stream of rockets will eventually disable and kill a ship. Recoil issues prevent extreme range use without heavy clip.

Artemis Light Rocket Launcher: Hull damage and explosive damage in the same weapon. Enough of them (say 2 or 3) is capable of killing ships, if you are patient enough. Wide firing arc permits many different applications.

Hades Light Cannon: If you can hit with it, you should use it. It’s better against larger ships because it is difficult to aim. A consistent volley will put any ship it bad shape though, removing its armor and setting it on fire.

Manticore Heavy Hwacha: You better Hwatch yourself! One barrage from this weapon can disable an entire flank of a ship’s guns and engines. A good finisher with enough persistence.

Echidna Light Flack Gun: This weapon is only good as a long ranged de-hulled ship killer. It must be used at range and does not have much armor damage capability. Pair it with a mercury, shoot ally ship’s targets, but whatever you do don’t expect to use it alone. Its overly specific role belies its usefulness.

Beacon Flare Gun:  Once again, a useful utility. I have seen it turn the tactical situation of games by revealing a target or denying a squidfish a flanking opportunity. Is it a weapon? Some say it is. I have yet to see 2 mounted in front of a pyramiridion though.

Lumberjack Heavy Mortar: The long ranged balloon killer. Good for 3v3s or stopping enemy ships in their tracks. It’s heavy and has a narrow fire cone though. See mercury field gun.

Mercury Field Gun: While not completely useless, this weapon has a purpose which is so specific it is rarely used. A very long ranged narrow cone light hull damage weapon. Having such a specific purpose relegates this weapon to open maps of 3v3 where ships spend time in a standoff exchanging ranged volleys.

Phobos Mine launcher: I have seen people use these more often now beyond king of the hill. It actually is a good area denial tool which can knock ships off course or flat out kill them by shooting down on them. Takes a lot of practice to get the arc right which makes it less reliable, but it pays off when it works.

Typhon Heavy Flak Cannon: It’s rarely used for a reason. Hard to hit with at range and does less damage up close. Perhaps hitting targets with it is a question of skill, but there are better, more dependable weapons out there.

Javelin Light Harpoon gun: I haven’t found a sky whale yet so I haven’t found a use for this.

Offline Schwalbe

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #20 on: January 20, 2015, 04:27:58 am »
Maybe one day, I, Zan and a good captain will wreck you with merc-flak-art combo. :) Then you'll reconsider it once more, and once more, and once more up to point where you'll find that there's no better/worse weaponry, only those that are more difficult to handle.

But you are heading the right way so far. ;)

Offline Kamoba

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #21 on: January 20, 2015, 10:53:13 am »
@seriouschess RE: Harpoon gun.
This gun is a slow balloon popper, though other weapons do a better job at that, its also a good tool for when you want to Mine and enemy at close range, but is most commonly mentioned as a ramming weapon, get a galleon and moonshine, time the harpoon shot and the moonshine right and you can effectively pull in the enemy into a pretty nasty ram. Other uses could be for if you see an ally in a 1v1 situation about to be 2v1'd and you want to redirect them away from your ally without a ram. (Such as when you're on a squid.) however in terms of effectiveness more often than not other weapons will do better jobs.

Offline Imagine

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #22 on: January 20, 2015, 11:25:42 am »
@seriouschess RE: Harpoon gun.
This gun is a slow balloon popper, though other weapons do a better job at that, its also a good tool for when you want to Mine and enemy at close range, but is most commonly mentioned as a ramming weapon, get a galleon and moonshine, time the harpoon shot and the moonshine right and you can effectively pull in the enemy into a pretty nasty ram. Other uses could be for if you see an ally in a 1v1 situation about to be 2v1'd and you want to redirect them away from your ally without a ram. (Such as when you're on a squid.) however in terms of effectiveness more often than not other weapons will do better jobs.

It's not a balloon popper. The damage type is piercing, so if anything it's a hull stripper.

Offline Ightrril

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #23 on: January 20, 2015, 11:31:53 am »
@seriouschess RE: Harpoon gun.
This gun is a slow balloon popper, though other weapons do a better job at that, its also a good tool for when you want to Mine and enemy at close range, but is most commonly mentioned as a ramming weapon, get a galleon and moonshine, time the harpoon shot and the moonshine right and you can effectively pull in the enemy into a pretty nasty ram. Other uses could be for if you see an ally in a 1v1 situation about to be 2v1'd and you want to redirect them away from your ally without a ram. (Such as when you're on a squid.) however in terms of effectiveness more often than not other weapons will do better jobs.

It's not a balloon popper. The damage type is piercing, so if anything it's a hull stripper.

Harpoon does 70 Flechette damage and 60 Piercing. That means each shot with default ammo could do 138 damage to balloons (which have a health of 1200) or 108 damage to armour (which varies between ships from 230 for an unbuffed Squid up to 1040 for a buffed Galleon). Considering it takes over 16.5s to reload I think it's fair to say that damage output isn't one of its uses.

It's not good at breaking armour or balloons, that's not what it's for. It works well with disrupting movement in engagements and possibly using your own ship as a wall to smash other ships into (e.g. with a Galleon especially). It doesn't really matter what damage it does since, with the reload time on it, that can pretty much be ignored.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2015, 11:35:18 am by Ightrril »

Offline Kamoba

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #24 on: January 20, 2015, 11:49:36 am »
I did say other weapons have better effect! ;)
Though the numbers speak true..
However it still has a place in the world.. :)

Offline Ightrril

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #25 on: January 20, 2015, 11:58:16 am »
Certainly. It's similar to a flare, not really something you want for the direct damage output (ignoring the 10 stacks of fire per shot of course) although it is still useful in some cases. Who doesn't enjoy having a harpoon connecting to an enemy ship anyway? I'm sure it has a possible use in hunting for food, or even stealing supplies straight off the deck on a merchant ship (now that'd be fun).

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #26 on: January 20, 2015, 12:12:47 pm »

Beacon Flare Gun:  Once again, a useful utility. I have seen it turn the tactical situation of games by revealing a target or denying a squidfish a flanking opportunity. Is it a weapon? Some say it is. I have yet to see 2 mounted in front of a pyramiridion though.


With the absurd turn arc of the flare gun there would be no need to front mount them on a pyra. I often see them doubled up on the side mounts of a pyra for two reasons. 1) the AI won't touch them so it forces the AI to stay on the front guns. 2) With the wide turn arc the main engineer can get involved in the fight without the pilot having to offset the target much.

The flare gun is the weapon of a main engineer. It can dump its clip quickly, doesn't need any specialty ammo, can engage in a wide arc, and turns quickly. A good main engineer can get off two flares in the space of a mallet cool down. It lacks the DPS to be the main killing power of a ship, but can add an extra 10% lethality to a ship for next to no cost.

Once I killed a ship with nothing but flare guns. A newbie junker thought they had the drop on a pyramiddion I was main engine on, since we were busy murdering his team mate. Before the Junker got into gat range I put two flares on his balloon and two flares on his hull. I then went to tank the hull. About 30 seconds later the captain asked "where did that junker go?" Nobody knew, but we had an extra kill. Also nobody reported firing on it except me with the flare guns.

Offline GeoRmr

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #27 on: January 20, 2015, 01:25:28 pm »
Flare

>

Hades, Heavy Carronade, Lumberjack, Mines

>

Banshee, Gattling, Mercury, Mortar

>

Artemis, Light Carronade, Heavy Flak, Hwacha

>

Harpoon, Flamer, Light Flak

Offline Schwalbe

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #28 on: January 20, 2015, 01:39:53 pm »

Once I killed a ship with nothing but flare guns. A newbie junker thought they had the drop on a pyramiddion I was main engine on, since we were busy murdering his team mate. Before the Junker got into gat range I put two flares on his balloon and two flares on his hull. I then went to tank the hull. About 30 seconds later the captain asked "where did that junker go?" Nobody knew, but we had an extra kill. Also nobody reported firing on it except me with the flare guns.

That's a hell of a cool story. :D

But on the other hand those guys on junker must've been idiots not to take anything to prevent such thing to happen.
On the other hand - if you broken junkers hull and balloon at around the same time, it's possible that it just got enough speed to hit the ground with crucial parts down, and hence - he died, as junker has lowest permahull.

Still - nice. ^^
« Last Edit: January 20, 2015, 01:42:30 pm by Schwalbe »

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Weapon Ratings: From Golden to Garbage
« Reply #29 on: January 20, 2015, 01:51:06 pm »
I did say they were newbies. I think we won 5-0. The interesting part about flares is how non threatening they are. No big explosions or fancy particles, they don't even move that fast.  I think the Junker was trying to line up a trifecta so all hands were at guns and didn't realize what was happening until they were already on the ground.