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The new Minotaur

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Daft Loon:
Misc. observations on its usability since the patch. Primarily relating to experience using it on a spire.

Ammunition choices:

Heavy Clip - For long range scatter reduction, same as before
Greased - Valuable out to 500m or so, provides rather devastating push force and armor dps
Lochnagar - Eliminates scatter entirely and deals 405 armor damage making it lethal against spires, goldfish and squid (if you can hit them). Also has some merit for long range heavy gun sniping. Due to the delay between shots lochnagar actually has higher dps than heavy clip.

With 3 useful ammo choices and use for stamina in compensating for the turning speed a gunner is worthwhile for the Minotaur now.

Armor damage:
Highly dependent on the target. When lochnagar can be used it is the superior piercing weapon, this can be used against the Pyramidion as well by using lochnagar after a full clip of heavy connects or another weapon makes the armor likely to be <400. The Galleon has enough armor to force a reload and recover most of the damage in that time while the Junker and Mobula are difficult to get full hits on the armor.

Component damage:
Variable, the incidental damage is worthwhile and the front gun of the goldfish in particular is vulnerable because it is exposed and in the ideal target zone for turning the ship too.

Range:
I have inflicted useful disruption with the Minotaur out near the maximum range and useful damage at around 1000m max. On the other hand bringing it into within 300m for optimal greased rounds gets the maximum damage and disruption. The most effective tactic seems to be to use it at whatever range your opposition is weakest by disrupting them as much as possible while you advance or retreat from their optimal range, the Minotaur will almost certainly lose to Merc-Art at 1200m, Hwacha at <500m or Gat-Mortar at 200m but can choose to attack from any other range.

Weapon combinations:
Hades, Lumberjack and Light Flak benefit greatly from the ability to remove opponents from arming range.
Artemis can be used to disable the engines of a turned opponent which will additionally be more exposed and potentially damaged by kerosene use.
Banshee is the ideal second weapon for a Minotaur gunner, a full clip can be fired during the reload and the fire and damage is enough to prevent full repairs on armor.

Weaknesses:
Damage. The Minotaur is next to useless at 50% health and even fairly weak at 75% health. It becomes far too slow to shoot and turn. Even an out of proper range burst Hwacha or scattered Carronade hits will limit it severely.
Outflanking. A Minotaur spire can lock down a single ship but takes a fair while to kill compared to a Hwacha or Flak and is faster to recover from than being sunken by a Lumberjack. It also takes longer than most weapons to turn and have an effect on a new target.
Kerosene/Moonshine. I haven't noticed this being a problem but its possible people just don't know to use it, the higher push force spread over a longer time make it harder to use also.

Ethics: (This needs an ethics section  :-\)
It is still really annoying and most new pilots cannot deal with it at all. Set up your ship and tactics to actually get the kill, being pushed around the map unable to retaliate for several minutes is incredibly frustrating. If your opponent requests you not use Minotaur don't use it (unless they took Mobula to your Spire in which case you have every right to Minotaur if you can pull it off).

What have you found fighting with or against the new Minotaur?

Out of 7 how annoying do you find the new Minotaur?

Byron Cavendish:
My testing:

The minotaur's ideal ammos are: heatsink, lesmok and heavy. Heatsink puts out the most damage per clip, but fires the slowest and fires the slowest bullets. Therefore it is only viable at extremely close range. With a buff, the ammo will put 448.2 damage to armour per clip. With normal and lesmok ammo it will put out 432 damage per clip to armour. The perk of lesmok is that it increases the speed of the pellets from 550 m/s to 935 m/s! It moves from slow as a turtle to a much more reliable speed. This allows the gun to be much more reliable for tracking and hitting at mid to far range. This also makes lesmok the best overall ammo. Heavy is only for sniping critical guns like enemy hwachas. The damage is the same as normal at 432, but the speed of the shot is a mere 550 m/s, so not reliable for much else.

Daft Loon:
I can see heatsink being a good alternative to greased, the +50% turn speed could be very nice.
I'm not sure about lesmok, by the time you get to range where its needed the scatter means most of the shot will miss anyway and the slight speed buff made heavy easier to hit with, maybe I just tend to have more predictable opponents though.

Byron Cavendish:
I've been finding with the speed that lesmok is quite reliable at far range. In fact so reliable that it was often pushing the ship too far for even my hwacha to hit, which is when I switched to heavy flak. Now paired with a lesmok mino, a heavy flak can do the work it wants to do. Don't take my word for it though, try it out. The other nice thing is that my buffgineer on mino has time to fully buff the h. flak and get back to his gun in time while the gunner can make any ammo changes to the mino if needed.

Daft Loon:
By my calculation the scatter at 1000m is 61m so if the target ship fills enough of that space to collect 3/5 buckshots it compares well to missing 1/3 heavy clip shots and for an engineer who leaves the gun to buff etc every reload missing only 1/3 heavy clip shots might be generous. I shall give it a try if I'm crewing/flying a ship with Minotaur secondary.

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