Long-haul speed increase

[Daft Loon]

Adding a second type of acceleration that mostly kicks in after 30 seconds or so to make all ships significantly faster when traveling at continuous full speed over long distances. The main benefit would be making king of the flayed hills less tedious.

Something something something the engines warm up over time...

[MightyKeb]

Huge buff to brawling aswell. Go all the way to your spawn, build up speed like a charging bull, use a cloud here or there and get within hugging distance head on against a sniping team. Rip.

[Daft Loon]

Huge buff to brawling aswell. Go all the way to your spawn, build up speed like a charging bull, use a cloud here or there and get within hugging distance head on against a sniping team. Rip.

True, but depending on the implementation it could end up balanced, a bit too much momentum and a slight turning nerf would make a few mines and some evasive maneuvers fatal for such a charge.
If one team manages to stage a complete surprise attack from 1500+ meters they deserve it.
If it was too easy to change direction while keeping the buff then it would be problematic though.

Edit
I would probably tie it to time spent on full forward throttle setting, after enough time on full forward thrust starts to increase and the ability of the turning engines to reverse/slow down (and therefore turn the ship) reduces, to change course would require cutting off full throttle (even to 3/4) to allow the effect to decay enough for the amount of turning needed.

[MightyKeb]

It could be bothersome to switch throttles up and down every 30 seconds just to make sure your turning rate is alright though. The penalty either has to be small, or there needs to be no penalty at all. The problem here is that the current throttles are much more dynamic and instantaneous in their effects, whilst you'd have to work for the long-haul throttle.


This has nothing to do with suprise attacks. On dunes you have a giant cloud storm between you and the enemy team to build up speed through, and on firnfeld anything well beyond 1km is generaly out of render range.

[Daft Loon]

I see your point about changing the throttle mechanics being troublesome, I'm starting to lean towards a pilot tool. Since the intention is that it not be used in combat it could be best carried by an engineer or gunner at the small cost of 1 spyglass.

The mention of a surprise attack was because of how i envision this working. It requires a significant run-up to have any real impact on speed and should have drawbacks that make it essential to stop using it a significant time before entering combat, essentially it would lock you into a straight(ish) line course once in full effect. To use it effectively for a charge:
- You would need to know their position so that you are going the right way after picking up speed.
- You would need a solid run-up to gain a meaningful reduction in the time you have to spend being sniped.
- They would need to be less aware of your intended 'trajectory' or they could start dropping mines or moving around to take advantage of the side-effects of its use.
I think with the right implementation it would be generally inferior to getting as close as possible in cover and then charging normally.


To fulfill its purpose it would need to:
-Significantly boost speed over long distances
-Have side effects that prohibit its use in or immediately before combat

I measured one of the longest crazy king runs (from E to A on flayed hills) as taking 2:35 in a pyramidion (no tools, a little stamina to start). Going back to an old discussion about movement mechanics I think i correctly calculated kerosene as giving 158% speed before accounting for damage so that time drops to 1:38. Ideally this tool would make that time shorter and remove the need for engineers to hit the engines repeatedly the entire way there.

+100% thrust, -50% linear drag would give 200% speed.

To get the first drawback the thrust bonus could be applied directly to the engines additively rather than multiplicatively accounting only for the engines damage state.
ex trying to turn with engines at 80% health, throttle full ahead, normally one engine would be reversing at 0.5*0.8 = 0.4 = 40% thrust backwards accounting for the normal reversing penalty with the other at 80% forwards giving 120% of an engines worth of turning. With the tool active the 'reversing' engine would 100% of its capacity added to it giving 40% forwards thrust while the forwards engine would have 160% thrust forwards giving the same net 120% of an engines worth of turning that while traveling at double speed would mean doubling the ships turning circle size. It would also have the effect of prohibiting reversing, the minimum speed would be 50% when the throttle is set to full 'reverse'.

The second drawback would be similar to hydrogen/chute vent, a timer before the tools effects stop, probably 10-20 seconds.

Thirdly to prevent abuse in combination with moonshine etc +300% or so fire damage to engines while active, its unlikely that this would have much effect on incoming fire since compared to tools guns do very little fire damage (kerosene does 40 fire damage per second while banshee does 30 per shot).

[Richard LeMoon]

Well, if you wanted an 'as the arrow flies' speed boost, we could have some fun with this tool.

The buff is simple. The longer you use the tool, the faster you go.

Now for debuff thoughts.

Start by making the helm very sluggish and unresponsive. You would have to fight your ship to make just the wheel turn. The ship would still have the same turning abilities, but you could not spin the helm quickly.

Tool locks throttle to full speed. This lasts for (n) amount of time after deactivated. Tool is also locked, disabling all other tools for same (n) time.

Reduce angular drag substantially. If you do start turning, your ship won't want to stop. Add that to the sluggish helm, and you could end up spinning out of control at high speeds (though this might benefit the Galleon).

Armor or bare hull and balloon would take constant damage once you reach a certain speed due to wind shear. Damage increases the faster you go. Barrier wind effect from map edge would also come at this speed, shaking the entire ship.

Make the ship take more damage from all sources.

Basically, you implode when hitting another ship, terrain, or a bird. NOT for ramming.

[Daft Loon]

Well, if you wanted an 'as the arrow flies' speed boost, we could have some fun with this tool.

The buff is simple. The longer you use the tool, the faster you go.

Now for debuff thoughts.

Start by making the helm very sluggish and unresponsive. You would have to fight your ship to make just the wheel turn. The ship would still have the same turning abilities, but you could not spin the helm quickly.

Tool locks throttle to full speed. This lasts for (n) amount of time after deactivated. Tool is also locked, disabling all other tools for same (n) time.

Reduce angular drag substantially. If you do start turning, your ship won't want to stop. Add that to the sluggish helm, and you could end up spinning out of control at high speeds (though this might benefit the Galleon).

Armor or bare hull and balloon would take constant damage once you reach a certain speed due to wind shear. Damage increases the faster you go. Barrier wind effect from map edge would also come at this speed, shaking the entire ship.

Make the ship take more damage from all sources.

Basically, you implode when hitting another ship, terrain, or a bird. NOT for ramming.

I like where most of that is going. Not sure about constant damage though since that was partly what i was trying to avoid, hitting the same thing with a mallet for 60+ seconds during transit.

And to somewhat contradict the previous objection another idea for a drawback:
-Engines take severe damage while changing their speed ex to turn while going forwards one engine must go from full forwards to full backwards, until it settled at full backwards that engine would take damage a bit faster than moonshine. This would limit fine maneuvers since the engine would need to be repaired before the turn could stop (when it would take damage again) or break.

[Richard LeMoon]

Ok, so no engine damage until you try to turn? I am down with that. Personally, I would not allow throttle changes while the tool is active. So, it would be pretty damn risky to use in tight quarters.

I see what you mean by not causing damage, but I counter with asking what else are the engineers going to be doing during the trip?

[Daft Loon]

Ok, so no engine damage until you try to turn? I am down with that. Personally, I would not allow throttle changes while the tool is active. So, it would be pretty damn risky to use in tight quarters.

I see what you mean by not causing damage, but I counter with asking what else are the engineers going to be doing during the trip?

The engine damage from changes in speed would penalize throttle changes too, going from full forward to full reverse involves all 3 engines going through the same changes that 1 does to turn so all of them would take the damage.

I usually prefer climbing onto the railing, roof, guns etc or in crazy king taking optimistic potshots at the opponents rushing to the same point. Given that the tool might be carried by another crew-member a buff tool pilot is also an option, while the engineer flies the ship in a straight line the pilot buffs everything.