Lochnagar

[Spud Nick]

What change could be made to lochnagar ammo to make it more useful on light guns? (other than the mine launcher, harpoon, and flare gun) Does it need a change at all? Does lochnagar need to be useful on light guns? Does every ammo need to be useful in every gun? Please discuss your thoughts below!

[Kamoba]

As a joke yesterday I was blabbering and came up with an idea, imagine loch emptied a whole clip at once but with increased jitter, plus the damage and shot speed slowdown..
Gatling would explode but if buffed and in good range could potentially strip armour one shot on most ships, hwacha would be hilarious and light carro hit markers would hide an enemy ship....

I was mostly just blabbering idly though, it would be an extreme change but funny.

I like loch as it is but it can be a nuisance when a new player who does not come uses it on any gun they can get..

[ZnC]

If Lochnagar were to be viable or designed for Light Guns, the first thing that should be buffed is the amount of self-damage it does. Destroying any Light Gun in 1 shot makes it really inefficient.

Even so, I can't really think of any Light Gun that would benefit from it besides the Mine Launcher. It works well only on 1-2 shot weapons with arming time - H.Flak, Lumberjack, and H.Carro now that Heavy Clip is nerfed.

[Caprontos]

I don't think every ammo needs be useful on every gun... But I'd not mind seeing other "Experimental" ammo that works well for different guns in certain cases..

Like an ammo that makes the projectile much faster and has piercing (ie goes through multiple targets) but reduces the ammo to 1 and breaks the gun (or does like 90% damage and reload is slowed a bit? idk depends how broken it was)... So like makes art or merc super point and click and able to break multiple parts with one shot.. but missing or hitting one thing is costly.. cause you need to rebuild between shots..

Super Burst ammo that makes the shot hit everything on a ship basically but breaks the gun.. .. Thinking about mines maybe this idea should stop here..

Anyway you get the idea.. I'd support more ammos over changing current ammos.. Loch is fine imo where it is..

[Daft Loon]

The 'one click starts all shots firing' mechanic mentioned for the hwacha in the test notes could be a good basis for allowing lochnagar or an equivalent for many shot guns. With an ammo reduction closer to 50% and the self damage spread across all shots or applied only on the last shot. Probably some reduction in rate of fire would be needed.

[Kingsania]

I love Kamoba's suggestion, but alas it may never be.

What I was thinking is get rid of ammo debuff, reduce the damage increase to compensate the new ammo. Now each time the gun fires, it damages the gun by the percent of the clip that's fired. So a mine launcher will still break the gun when fired but when a mercury fires it'd be (1 shot/ 2 in clip) = 50% damage to the gun per shot. This would make using loch light guns a bit more viable.


And as a bonus, this would work well with the upcoming hwacha update as you'd have issues aiming the hwacha about 10 shots in.