Problem with gunner/Two engineering slots on gunners?

[MightyKeb]

I've seen this thrown around by Pies alot for a while, and I'd just like to bring it up again.


First of all, Why?

Let's look at the comparison between Gunner and Pilot. Both of these classes lack heavily in two areas, their common ground being the lack of engineering tools.


Captain/Pilot:

Captain's tools tend to be irrelevant most of the time and only comes into play when a component/components of value are damaged and it becomes ultimately pointless to keep piloting for a short amount of time. Even so, some ships' layouts don't permit this style to an extent at all (Squid, Goldfish, Mobula). Couple that with pilot's array of tools that benefit their ship in some way or other, I'd say pilot meta wouldnt really change even if you took their engineering slot away completely.


Gunner:

This is where the problem starts. What happens when a class that is effective as long as it's functioning as intended in a specific position, (Think pilot on the helm), gets forced out of that position in some way or another? I'm looking at you, Artemis and Flamethrower. While I don't have many problems with these two weapons and anything of similiar nature, I feel that gunner can easily become redundant as soon as they, and other disabler weapons come into play. What if there was an item or a function in the game that forced the pilot out of his helm? Fire stacks maybe? Engineer would end up reigning supreme. Gunner's effectiveness relies completely on a specific, interactable and destroyable component type that the engineer's playstyle encompasses in both maintaining and in some cases, using aswell. Unlike the pilot, who helps the ship function from a specific, undestroyable position that he can go as far as to force his crew out of should they take it from him. Furthermore, no matter where you look at it, gunner is considered "crew" and therefore has much more freedom to move about and interact with the ship than the pilot. And in some cases, he HAS to do this. This is part of the reason why competitive teams run triple engineers incredibly often. They simply lack the reactive power of a mallet-spanner or even pipewrench-chemspray. Ultimately, Pilot is countered by disabling 4-5 components (Engines and balloon), while gunner is, in most cases, countered by disabling 1 component due to the nature of how crew positions have evolved throughout the game. This is also another strong point of the engineer - It has no hard counters. The rest of the classes are countered by disabling components that allow them to function effectively- Engineer's literal job is to deal with those disables. If anything, they -counter- disables. Fire, Shatter, you name it.


So what would happen if gunner was given two engineer slots?

Two gunner builds would be viable. Period. Scary, isn't it? Well no. Let's imagine your typical metamidion being maximized to it's effectiveness with 2 gunners:

Top Right Gatling: Lesmok, Greased, Heatsink. Kit: Pipe wrench, Buff hammer. For once, gunner is almost exactly equal to, if not superior to, a buff engineer on something that isnt mines or lumberjack. This guy can do anything a buff engineer can do, with the added bonus of having an ammo handy for any range. The only thing it falls short at is dealing with fire, which it can do anyway but at the slight cost of a decrease in range/damage due to how Heatsink works. But they can literally get around the damage part completely simply by having the buff hammer around. They would also be responsible for all buffs aboard the ship as the most optimal two gunner build I can think of would involve only this crewmember carrying it. Though that would mean the gatling would fire much later if they don't predict combat or spend too much time on the lower deck, which is less of a hassle when you're on the mortar, which needs to standby for some time before it starts becoming amazingly effective. Come to think of it, this build could be better with Mortar-right and Gat Left, but let's continue anyway.


Top Mortar: Same build Lesmok, Greased, Heatsink/Charged?/Incendiary?/SomeOtherAmmotype. Kit: Pipe Wrench, Chem/Ext. Suddenly, the mortar has become much, much more versatile. Not only will you able to unload on enemies with greased as usual, but you'll also be able to greatly extend your effective range and have an easier time chasing faster ships as if you were using the old Light Flak. And ontop of this versatility, you're also able to maintain your gun, the balloon, and potentially the entire ship against fires if the need arises.


Other situations include:

Galleon lower deck, Mallet-Spanner. In the regular 2-engi-1-gunner format, this would be nothing but a great buff to the lovely, situational and easily countered bulky mass that is the galleon.

Mobula: Top gun, Pipe Wrench-Buff. Since it's apparent that the Captain can help the gunner extinguish his gun, this would basically be a buff engineer that can control his range. A bit OP? I do agree that it's superior to buff engi top in almost every way, but gunner ammo types arent as powerful as the current buff engineer's fire control ability + damage boost on guns to begin with. Furthermore, this build would also fall short on assisting your engineers against fire damage, something you cant actually deal with without the pilot's support, thus further contributing to Mobula's vulnerability against this specific damage type.

Goldfish: front gun, Pipe-Buff/Mallet-Spanner: This would be a fair buff to the Goldfish aswell, and would also extend the meta, allowing the choice between damage/ship performance boost versus disable protection.


Spire: Lower deck heavy gun, Pipe Wrench/Chem: This in particular would work VERY well with spire builds that encourage double engineer top and leave the gunner alone downstairs, as not only will he be able to take ammo types for two different guns to maximize his effectiveness in regards to gun versatility, but you'll also be able to perform chem cycles on the lower deck without one of the engineers having to jump down and decrease top deck's survivability. I could see this working very well with the hwacha's reload time, but it could still be a bit cumbersome to perform in combat.



So would gunners be OP now? Well, perhaps it might seem a bit powerful in comparison to Double engis-one gunner format, but for instance, our first example of a metamidion completely fails to exceed past the power of a triple engineer metamidion, which would basically have on top, a mallet-spanner gunner with the added bonus of a buff hammer + a buff engi near balloon, which makes it much easier to get the damage boost on both of your guns at the expense of controlling range.


Would the gunner meta that follows after end up outclassing Double-Engi-One-Gunner setups? I dont know, maybe. But I'd rather have double gunners stand up as a fair sidegrade to Triple Engis than for muse to discriminate gunner gameplay wise any further.



I think I'm a bit done for now. Discuss, if I haven't covered literally everything already.

[Dementio]

I like the idea of the gunner having two engineering slots, because I happened to suggest this idea too when there were all these discussions about gunner needing a buff.

But Muse has made the decision that keeping the loadouts 3/1/1, 1/3/1 and 1/1/3 was what they wanted. A problem with that though was the engineers and pilots actually have two ammo types, while gunners have four, because of the default ammo type while there was no default engineering tool. That is a problem, because having three engineering tools instead of one is often seen as more important than having four ammo types instead of two. An idea of Muse to solve that problem was to introduce more ammo types and make the current ones more extreme in their respective areas. This idea was eventually scratched.

A suggested alternative to two engineering slots for the gunner was to create an exclusive buff tool that buffs guns and was to be equipped through the gunnery equipment and at the same time removing the current buff hammer's effect on guns or changing it to something less good. This was an acceptable idea, because the buff hammer is arguably the primary source of the gunner problem. The idea was rejected, because Muse wants to keep the gunnery equipment ammo types only, something that can only be used when mounting the gun. A similar case to this that actually exists in the game are the Spyglass and Rangefinder, which are the only pilot tools that can be used when not on the helm and Muse wants to avoid more of these exceptions.



Earlier I would have said two engineering slots for gunners would be great to have, but now there is Stamina, something that is rumored to have been introduced to be a plain buff to gunners. A weakness that the Metamidion has with only one gunner or none is that movement is slow. The Gatling has great arc, but the Mortar is limited and not for everybody easy to shoot when the enemy is a bit further away, so the error of missing a few too many Mortars is a great punishment that the easy to crew and fly Metamidion has. If you know put two gunners on both those guns, both with two slots for engineering equipment, than it will be even harder to escape Gatling and Mortar and even harder to punish a mistimed or inaccurate Mortar. This example can be applied to multiple ships and loadouts.
Without Stamina, you could argue that for survival and manouverbility boni the second engineer would be your chose while pure dps and increase of utility of the gun's capabilities would be a reason to take the second gunner. With Stamina you not only the greater dps through the buff hammer and the utility of more ammo types, you will also get a buff in more than one gun, arguably decreasing the skill ceiling while kills happen faster.

Short version: I would vote for an additional engineering equipment slot for gunners, if gunner stamina was nerfed.

[MightyKeb]

Short version: I would vote for an additional engineering equipment slot for gunners, if gunner stamina was nerfed.

I think you might've noticed that I haven't mentioned stamina once in this argument. I've been against it from day one and I think it's a really unnecessary layer to the game and puts too much effort to changing it simply to balance the gunner. Picture this now: Currently, you can run Hwacha in two ways: Engineer with Burst on Hwacha basically dominates, whilst Gunner on Burst Hwacha can still do the same with more arcs and slightly shorter reload speed, but has inferior repair capabilities. Thanks to the heavy clip nerf you now basically have two wasted slots on the hwacha as a gunner and will make use of Burst 70% of the time, and that is provided you're not playing competitively which is where the pilots are good enough that you wont need the arcs most of the time and where you would question whether the 2 second reload was worth it. If anything, the patch itself strengthened the engi meta in some ways.


TL DR, this suggestion hypothethically ignores Stamina's existence as I personally dont feel as if it's worth factoring into balance, not due to it's power but more due to the poorly designed nature of it. This discussion assumes Gunner recieves this simple buff without the need to add Stamina to the game.

[Daft Loon]

Beyond making the title "Gunner" used more often I'm not sure what this achieves. In most cases it seems like the gunner would play the same role as an engineer would but substituting marginal use of the 3rd engineering tool for marginal use of 2 more ammo types. I'm not sure that a solution of making the gunner more like an engineer makes sense when the problem is underuse of the gunners abilities.

Imo the solution should be to make the gunners abilities a superior choice to the engineers for the third crew slot rather than reducing the difference in engineering abilities. The main obstacles to this are the buff hammer and ammo utility. The buff hammer on guns should be moved into the same engineering cycle type role as chem spray and buffs to other components, at the simplest making it +10% damage and double current duration, more complicated would be moderate buffs to turning speed, arcs etc instead of damage. The ammo types and guns need to be tweaked to make each gun get real benefit from the second choice at least, 4 or more would be ideal so you actually have to think about gunner ammo choices. I think adding 1 or 2 new mechanics into the mix would help this ex - post clip reload time and recoil jitter debuffs (i tagged a suggestion to add a recoil debuff to burst to restore the burst + heavy hwacha combo onto some other suggestions i sent in).

The extreme option - remove gunner and engineer and replace them with "crew" class with 2 ammo's 2 tools + spyglass. Its an interesting thought although i can see it being difficult to adjust to.

[Dementio]

Then I completely agree with you, Keb, but I suppose it all comes down to wether at least one gunner should be mandatory or if two gunners are a possibility or even if triple engineer should still outperform two engineers and a gunner in more than just repair and fire management (although extra fire management is often not a thing, since the 3rd engineer does most of the time not have an anti fire tool).

The alternitive of splitting the buff hammer so that there is one for gunnery equipment is also a valid gunner buff, as far as I see, but wouldn't make two gunners viable. And although I rarely do triple engineer, there is t least one loadout I came to know that can not be done anymore, if the buff hammer was split. However, a second engineer equipment slot for the gunner wouldn't negate its possible execution.

Beyond making the title "Gunner" used more often I'm not sure what this achieves. In most cases it seems like the gunner would play the same role as an engineer would but substituting marginal use of the 3rd engineering tool for marginal use of 2 more ammo types. I'm not sure that a solution of making the gunner more like an engineer makes sense when the problem is underuse of the gunners abilities.

The problem isn't necessary the underuse of the gunner abilities, rather: The lack of gunner abilities and the power of the buff hammer, and you already provided a few solutions for it.

I use at least one gunner on almost all my ships, but that doesn't mean that I am not aware that people that use the same ships with three engineers are just as successful, in some cases even more so. And I am not talking about the extra repair power, but about ships and loadouts, where the gunner's utility does not matter. This includes all the ship except the Mobula and I think so, because I use most of the current gunner's utility there and so personally don't see triple engineer that superior on a majority of loadouts.

A while ago there was testing in Dev App where the current ammo types were changed so they fulfilled their roles in an extreme manner, in order to make all ammo types worse outside their niche usage, thus promoting the gunner and his ability to work in multiple scenarios. I would have liked a change in ammo types, since for many guns most ammo types only bring disadvantages with them or bear no better end-result than the default rounds, which causes many guns to need only one or two ammo types at best. One would think putting the gunner on multiple guns would mean that with multiple ammo types one would have the best dps in all primary guns, but that is not true since the buff hammer adds a lot of damage to guns, causing engineers to outdps the poor gunner. The utility can also be ignored, when you can just outright kill a ship.
New ammo types were also introduced.
What Muse tried to accomplish lead to a broken gunner. Balancing all the ammo types was too great a task. Muse also seemed relatively clueless about the direction a majority of ammo types were headed and thus added a thousand different modifiers.



The two choices of giving the gunner a second slot for engineering equipment and splitting the buff hammer in two both solve the obvious problem: The gunner can then finally out dps or out repair an engineer in battle.

The choice of more ammo types or just changing the current ones means that a gunner may not do more dps in on situation, but does more overall guaranteed damage. It starts to get complicated here when you ask the universal question: "What more other than dps do you want from the gun?". More range and projectile speed for easier hitting is one thing, which Lesmok Rounds do and the 3rd engineer brings that almost exclusively, while Default Rounds plus buff hammer still work well even on the guns where Lesmok Rounds are not necessary, like the Gatling. The fact that the engineer brings Lesmok Rounds also negates one of the gunner's greatest utilities: Adapting the gun behaviour to range. A Gatling loaded with Greased Rounds does more damage while buffed than a Gatling that is loaded with Greased Rounds with no buff. And if you were to use Lesmok Rounds on the Gatling to start shooting earlier, why don't you take a Hades or a Mercury and start to shoot a lot earlier?

[MightyKeb]

Beyond making the title "Gunner" used more often I'm not sure what this achieves. In most cases it seems like the gunner would play the same role as an engineer would but substituting marginal use of the 3rd engineering tool for marginal use of 2 more ammo types. I'm not sure that a solution of making the gunner more like an engineer makes sense when the problem is underuse of the gunners abilities.

Imo the solution should be to make the gunners abilities a superior choice to the engineers for the third crew slot rather than reducing the difference in engineering abilities. The main obstacles to this are the buff hammer and ammo utility. The buff hammer on guns should be moved into the same engineering cycle type role as chem spray and buffs to other components, at the simplest making it +10% damage and double current duration, more complicated would be moderate buffs to turning speed, arcs etc instead of damage. The ammo types and guns need to be tweaked to make each gun get real benefit from the second choice at least, 4 or more would be ideal so you actually have to think about gunner ammo choices. I think adding 1 or 2 new mechanics into the mix would help this ex - post clip reload time and recoil jitter debuffs (i tagged a suggestion to add a recoil debuff to burst to restore the burst + heavy hwacha combo onto some other suggestions i sent in).

The extreme option - remove gunner and engineer and replace them with "crew" class with 2 ammo's 2 tools + spyglass. Its an interesting thought although i can see it being difficult to adjust to.

"In most cases it seems like the gunner would play the same role as an engineer would but substituting marginal use of the 3rd engineering tool for marginal use of 2 more ammo types." - It already functions that way, the only lacking factor is that the gunner has to roll around with Pipe Wrench only, which happens to be inferior to literally every viable loadout engineer gets. And yes, it is supposed to be this way. But in comparison to Pilots, Gunner functions much more like a Crewman than a specialist who functions through a disable-proof helm. This buff is meant to help the gunner adapt to the crew role.


"Imo the solution should be to make the gunners abilities a superior choice to the engineers for the third crew slot rather than reducing the difference in engineering abilities" - This exists, but only in a select few guns. I'd love to spread the ammo love around too, but you would have to fundamentally revamp the entire balance around ammo types to accomplish this.


"more complicated would be moderate buffs to turning speed, arcs etc instead of damage." - I think the problem with Buff Hammer is that while the gun buffs are powerful, next to nothing can replace the bonus. When you want to buff guns, you want something simple and universally beneficial for all guns. A turning speed buff would simply be a slight buff to those Artemis junkers and less so for Banshees, for instance, while a damage buff works well for both guns.


"I think adding 1 or 2 new mechanics into the mix would help this ex - post clip reload time and recoil jitter debuffs" - That doesn't sound like a bad idea, it could potentially force the engineer meta to revolve around Heavy Clip as a utility, thus making the extra two slots matter to an extent for the gunner and should the meta continue as normal, it could slightly increase pilot skill ceiling.



"The extreme option - remove gunner and engineer and replace them with "crew" class with 2 ammo's 2 tools + spyglass. Its an interesting thought although i can see it being difficult to adjust to." - As established by the many before us, gunner fits very well within the few niche guns it has going for him ,but can hardly keep up with anything outside of that. This buff's intention is to to expand it without making gunners the top dogs of Icarus. I can see where it's coming from, but I just have faith in the current system in general.

[Richard LeMoon]

No DPS gun buffs. Most problems solved. With buff, engineers get 4 ammo types. Standard, special, buff standard, buff special. That breaks the paradigm.

I would be ok with gunners having two tools, as long as one of them was pipe wrench by default. And NO DPS GUN BUFFS by any tool. Faster turning, lower recoil, more armor, slightly better arcs, a combination of all of those, whatever. Just get rid of the damage buff.

[Mr.Bando]

The balance of it all is more complex than it can be fixed by tweaking just a part such as adding an extra tool for the gunner and has to be seen as a whole.

Give a gunner an extra tool, it can be seen as a nerf to disable weapons to have an extra spanner mallet crewmember on board. Or a fireX + wrench will see flamers being less effective. It will be harder to keep a ship immobilised or unable to fire back. It's all theorycraft tho. A gunner forced to repair, albeit more effectively, is still considered disabled cos the ship that doesn't have crew shooting is a target rather than a threat.

By natural extension, should engineers get a second ammo slot as long a ordinary ammo type is added? It would make a gunner pointless on any ships that uses heavy guns cos most need only 2 ammo types to work effectively. Or how about a wrench given to all gunners without taking up a tool slot. Then that's a nerf to disable as mentioned earlier.

[Dieter Sprockets]

The real problem isn't the number of slots, the problem is that most of the time gunners are completely redundant.  The people who use that are just trying to get achievement unlocks, nothing more.  Why?  Because there isn't a ship in the game that ever requires more than three different types of ammunition buffs, and a coordinated group of three engineers is perfectly capable of doing that.  Combine this with the fact that anyone can man any weapon and that engineering tools are always in demand far more often than ammo swaps, the end result is that gunners are moot.  Irrelevant.  There is nothing that they can do that intelligent engineers using teamwork can't do just as well, on top of all their engineering perks.

However, that's only one facet of the problem.  The other is that this is a player skill based game, not a stats-driven RPG type game.  A player with excellent marksmanship is just as deadly behind the sights of a weapon regardless of what character class they choose.  Likewise, a player with terrible aim gains nothing by choosing gunner as a profession.  It is entirely plausible, and in fact quite common to see, veteran engineers who are far deadlier with a ship's weapons than novice gunners.  This only further exacerbates the problem of gunner being an inherently inferior choice.

The real solution, then, isn't to give them more engineering slots.  That only admits that they're basically useless and is a cheap ploy to make them more like their clearly superior engineering counterparts.  This solves nothing and would only limit gameplay by forcing everyone to be even more alike than they already are.  What gunners really need is more diversity - something that sets them apart from engineers instead of beneath them.

What I propose is actually much simpler: Instead of trying to turn gunners into discount, second rate engineers, how about we enhance the gunner's abilities to be a better gunner?  (Mind blown!)  To that end I suggest that we consider perks of the more direct variety.  For example, how about increased gunsight zoom for gunners (compared to engineers and navigators)?  The ability to zoom in farther would lead to better weapon accuracy and more precise target placement, and it would be the simplest thing in the world to code into the game (FOV zoom).  Or perhaps an inherent decrease in projectile dispersion simply from being a gunner?  Say, 25% reduction on top of any specific magazine buffs applied.  Again, the gunner is now able to deliver much more accurate weapon's fire, and over longer range, than his counterparts.

If you like, you can make these into gunner exclusive magazine buffs that only gunners would be allowed to choose (although there is already such a buff for dispersion, currently anyone can use it).  As long as we're doing those, how about another unique gunner power - the ability to load exclusive defense buffs into weapons as well (thus helping alleviate the helplessness of a gunner who's weapon has been hit).  Meaning moving the Heat Sink into a new category of "defense" buffs that can be loaded alongside an offensive, magazine buff (thus each weapon could have two item buffs, one magazine and one gunner exclusive defense).  Add in "Increased Armor/Damage Resist" as an option so that a gunner's weapon is less likely to be crippled while they're manning it.  Or perhaps a "Fast Reload" buff that does exactly that & reduces reload times by 25% or more? 

These are just a few ideas that I am tossing out there.  By no means should they be considered the definitive solution.  They are, rather, simply a proof of concept to prove my original point: That the fix to gunners isn't turning them into 2nd class engineers.  The fix to gunners is to improve gunners ability as gunners.

[BlackenedPies]

The extra zoom idea is interesting, but I caution against reducing jitter because it effects guns differently. It would have a major effect on guns like the hwatcha and little or no effect on most other guns.

Muse has shied away from passive buffs and I don't think they will be implemented. There is a good medium for gunner buffs and that is stamina. Currently gunner stamina has potential but it's weak due to brief use and slow recharge. Extra zoom could be added to the list of stamina effects, such as +20% zoom while zoomed in. Other suggestions have included resisting the effects of damage/fire on a gun while using stamina.

Another addition could be rangefinder effects added to the spyglass when used by gunner. The issue is that we are trying to balance gunners compared to +20% damage from a gun buff. Until gun buffs are addressed gunners will always have a utility role. Buffed regular does higher DPS than greased...and I love it.

[Dracorean]

To me the buff hammer and 'Normal' ammo seems to be the problem in a nut shell. A quick and simple solution would be to modify these two tools and others accordingly to balance things out, such as buff hammer increasing performance than damage. Or make normal rounds a selectable ammo type and modifying other ammo types is another option.

This would lead to empty guns at the start, but I can say at the start, gunners and engis usually load in a special ammo type within 15 seconds of the game. It was suggested before but there really isn't much else that could be done without drastically changing something about the classes you can choose from. Gungineers are very flexible given the two ammo types, if restricted to one that would remove this flexibility.

This won't remove gungineers however, an engineer with a buff hammer and grease rounds can give out high DPS, but only at short ranges, the buff hammer 'should' be modified to either remove negative effects of an ammo type or buff the attributes of the ammo type, depending on the type of ammo used and not the gun itself. So having a gunner with multiple ammo types can benefit from an engineers buff hammer. Though its just a concept, engineers, buff/gungineers, and gunners should all be viable class options regardless of ship they are on really.

[BlackenedPies]

Removing normal ammo would be a huge nerf to all engineers, armtime guns, and would be universally contested by players. Regular ammo is required and the answer to buffing gunners isn't rendering guns and ammo nearly useless in the hands of an engi or pilot. Getting on a gun and not being able to shoot it until you load ammo would also be confusing to players. This has been suggested before and it's not the answer.

The problem with affecting gun performance is that it affects guns differently. Gun buffs increasing damage is simple and balanced, but the problem is that +20% is a lot and buffing guns is easy. It takes 6 seconds to buff a gun and lasts for 20 seconds. Even if a gun gets disabled it can be fully buffed quickly. My favorite way to address gun buffs is to increase time it takes to buff and increase duration. Longer buff time means more maintenance required to keep up buffs and longer buff time would allow a gunner to have a buffed gun for longer. There was a bug once where buffs lasted 90 seconds and it benefited the gunner the most because they could have a buffed gun and benefit from extra ammo. Another option is reducing the damage bonus to +10% and then gunners could outperform gun buffs, and gun buffs would be less OP.

I don't think gunners should be required on ships because buff engi requires more skill and is an advanced form of gunner. There is a huge gap that should be addressed but I think the gunner should stay a utility roll rather than a required damage roll. If gun buffs were less powerful there would be no problem.