New Lochnagar - Math and speculation

[Daft Loon]

Light Carronade
-Shots: 3
-Shot damage: 648 (component), 453.6 (balloon)
-Total damage: 1360.8 (balloon)
-Time to empty: 4.5s (calculated)

Gatling
-Shots: 41
-Total damage: 1222 (armor)
-Time to empty: 7.21 (timed)

Lumberjack
-Shots: 3
-Shot damage: 1237.5 (balloon), 191.25 (armour)
-Total damage: the balloon and then 382.5 armour
-Time to empty: 5.63s (calculated)

Hades
-Shots: 4
-Shot damage: 205.88 (armour)
-Total damage: 823.52 (armour)
-Time to empty: 5.87s (calculated)

Scylla mortar
-Shots: 6
-Shot damage: 283.5(hull), 60.75(armour)
-Total damage: 1701(hull), 364.5(armour)
-Time to empty: 7.535 (calculated)

Light flak
-Shots: 3
-Shot damage: 252 (hull)
-Total damage: 756 (hull)
-Time to empty: 1.58s (calculated)

Flamethrower
-Shots: 125
-Total damage: 270(armour), 506.25 (balloon), 438.75 (hull)
-Time to empty: 10.77 (timed, with a little lag)

Minotaur
-Shots: 2
-Shot damage: 405(armour), 1053!(component) – 210.6 per buckshot
-Total damage: 810(armour)
-Time to empty: 6.06 (calculated)

notes:
-clip times are assuming 'idiot mode' without any repairs for the sake of simplicity and getting a general ballpark
-gatling and sometimes flamethrower can survive emptying their full clip by 1 shots worth of damage

Speculation:
Where to even start, except the flamethrower everything seems broken.

An idea:
Increase self damage to say 120% per clip but give the first shot a 'discount' so it takes only 50% (= 60% per clip for 1 shot weapons), it would dial back the multi shot weapons a little and restore the heavy carronade somewhat.

[DJ Logicalia]

ZanC's idea is give loch -50% RoF, which I agree with. Additionally, we could just revert the loch changes, since I'm not really sure what the point of it was

[DrTentacles]

Please revert loch changes. I want to fly carrofish.

[Daft Loon]

ZanC's idea is give loch -50% RoF, which I agree with.

I'm somewhat biased against that on the basis of the loch minotaur which i love. It would take 12 seconds between shots and strangely become better to just reload in some cases. Though admittedly thats what it was before too.

[MightyKeb]

Please revert loch changes. I want to fly carrofish.

It still exists, but in the form of loch Light carronade(close range popping and disables) and loch Lumberfish (close range high popping power)

[Fynx]

I think it's considered a bug, so they'll fix it.

Too bad, I wanted a light carronade that pops balloons.

[Letus]

I mean...look I know why they wanted the +62.5% damage, but that hindered every gun that used it immensely due to the damage and the RoF decrease..
and I still am happy its +125% damage, but that seems insane...the question is, what is the magic number?
+90%?

[DrTentacles]

The magic number is not changing loch, and making blenderfish useless.

[Eldarion Telcontar]

The magic number is not changing loch, and making blenderfish useless.

I always did enjoy the blenderfish.  Hard to fly but provides some of the more interesting battles between highly skilled captains (helps to have a gun where a low level gunner can just click and pop ).  RIP my poor Koi.

[Letus]

The magic number is not changing loch, and making blenderfish useless.

Well if it became useless, I won't miss it :V
I always used loch when I nailed out balloon, and if you're blendering WELL, then...you have at least ONE engineer who can help rebuild the gun...

For me, Blendering became useless when heavy clip got changed, because my tactic against another blenderfish: heavy out their carronade first.  Then Blendering became an anti-Spire / Galleon, where, if you had a decent ally, or decent crew, you wouldn't need Lochnagar, because you can just do a little dance, charge round carronade with a flammer bifecta....not much they can do.  Granted that first pop is great, and that first pop is always great, it just comes down to "Okay, Engies, prep for gun rebuild"

Otherwise, now I'm gonna have my gunners put a Loch on my squid's carronade to nail out big guns with

[Mr.Bando]

Don't know about you, but I'm seeing a lot of lochnagar abuse on gatts that shreds armour up like nobody's business, from max range with heavy ammo precision and a DPS that would make greased ammo green with envy.

Or how about loading it in a miniflak and you have enough firepower to destroy most ships with its 3 shots, save the Goldfish and Galleon. Highly accurate and a reduced arming time to make it practical for short range.

Those are only 2 examples brought up, didn't even mention how the light caronade can potentially destroy a balloon in a single magazine. I'm not completely convinced that damage done to weapon is a reasonable enough disincentive to have other ammunition choices. It's going to encourage high risk/high reward playstyle where this ammunition is key. Gatt + flak/mortar/banshee meta squids come to mind. Whether that is a good thing or not is a different question altogether. Ambushes is all but a guaranteed death sentence.

I don't know what the magic number is, but its definately not high enough and whoever this crazy Lochnagar guy who invented this insane ammuntion is, he would be rolling in his grave.

[Eldarion Telcontar]

Don't know about you, but I'm seeing a lot of lochnagar abuse on gatts that shreds armour up like nobody's business, from max range with heavy ammo precision and a DPS that would make greased ammo green with envy.

Or how about loading it in a miniflak and you have enough firepower to destroy most ships with its 3 shots, save the Goldfish and Galleon. Highly accurate and a reduced arming time to make it practical for short range.

This is exactly why I stopped playing GoIO.  It's just not fun anymore; the emphasis has changed to the metagame "Lobbies of Icarus" which was never supposed to be the game's main feature.  With that kind of kill power you have to have very high level engineers, 3 of them.  No more gunners, ever, on any ship.  Just bring three engineers with a couple of ammo types between them.

No thanks.

[Skybox-]

New lochnagar is basically the same as new coke.

[Mr.Bando]

Don't know about you, but I'm seeing a lot of lochnagar abuse on gatts that shreds armour up like nobody's business, from max range with heavy ammo precision and a DPS that would make greased ammo green with envy.

Or how about loading it in a miniflak and you have enough firepower to destroy most ships with its 3 shots, save the Goldfish and Galleon. Highly accurate and a reduced arming time to make it practical for short range.

This is exactly why I stopped playing GoIO.  It's just not fun anymore; the emphasis has changed to the metagame "Lobbies of Icarus" which was never supposed to be the game's main feature.  With that kind of kill power you have to have very high level engineers, 3 of them.  No more gunners, ever, on any ship.  Just bring three engineers with a couple of ammo types between them.

No thanks.

I know rite... the miniflak was originally nerfed with reduced damage and arming time way back when everyone and their dog was running their metamidions with it. Are we going back to those dark old days? Spires are probably going to go extinct since they tend to get sniped easily, tho you may find the odd minotaur countersniper spire or two. Galleons are going to have a hard time, no one will see the point of dual heavy flaks and recent hwatcha nerf does nothing to help.

I've made little mention of loading loch for banshee and mortar. Sure it improves their damage output, but banshees are designed for setting fires rather than putting out large damage numbers. And mortars use would become less popular when the miniflak is a more practical solution against most ships. You might want to use it against a goldfish, but they are pretty fast and their armor gets fixed quickly enough. Reduced ROF from the ammo may not see enough hits getting in to finish it in one go. Having said that, its more useful to have the loch mortar against a galleon if you are able to safely get close enough, but it would be reducing the loch mortar into a specialist damage role against just one ship. A buffed loch mortar on a galleon would do the trick but you wouldn't use it against other ships if they were loch mini-flaking against you.

And so we will probably see a rise in meta ships with very little variety with their loadouts. You might get hwatcha goldfishes thrown to counter them. 3 engineer meta ships will start stacking their rebuilds on guns. Hydro abuse. balloon buff. captain stamina.  Loch lumberjack. Minotaur. blah blah blah. Mine launcher, etc. Harpoon blah blah blah. Damn this game has turned into an absolute mess....