How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

[Solidusbucket]

Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch

I lol'ed.

[BlackenedPies]

Being too hard to kill is the most fundamental issue with a ship that is supposed to be an evasive sniper or "paper cannon".

I'm surprized no one has talked about how small the Hull profile of the Mobula is unless you are directly above or beside it. Combined with 600 Armor, it usually takes 2 Gatling clips to strip it. For a ship that is difficult to disable, has good maneuverability and tons of firepower, this is nonsense. Mobula Armor should really be in the 400-500 range.

That's what I tried to mention. I think it's more balanced to reduce hull than armor, but either would help. The mobula is naturally resistant to disable and kill, and the high maneuverability further increases its kill resistance. Reducing maneuvering makes it less fun to fly and is more difficult to balance. The easiest nerf is reducing armor or hull. I prefer hull because when I fly mob I feel the armor is fair but my hull is too much. Hull damage isn't punishing enough with the balloon belly and good maneuvers

[Byron Cavendish]

I wouldn't, I'd just un-nerf all the other ships and revert some of the changes that have lead to the Mobula being so dominant.

Bring back heavy-clip heavy carronade (perhaps with a drastic reduction to shatter damage to prevent the old component sniping fun "problem") fix the pyramidion so the natural gatling carronade hard counter is playable and all will be well.

do it like this:

Roll back the game to February 2015
Add stamina and adjust gun arcs accordingly
Add current minotaur
Reduce shatter damage of the heavy carronade so it's slightly less effective and can't snipe components
Reduce range of the heavy carronade.
Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch

This. I've asked why they never consider buffing in a fireside way back. Long story short, Eric is against buffing. Something about it being too hard, and leading to continual power creep (instead of continual nerf creep?!). He prefers nerfing. Basically this has lead to nearly everything being reduced to water gun status in guns, and painfully stressful to fly in ships. We don't need to nerf mobula (much), we need to buff a lot of guns and a lot of ships to be...drum roll please...FUN.

[GeoRmr]

This. I've asked why they never consider buffing in a fireside way back. Long story short, Eric is against buffing. Something about it being too hard, and leading to continual power creep (instead of continual nerf creep?!). He prefers nerfing. Basically this has lead to nearly everything being reduced to water gun status in guns, and painfully stressful to fly in ships. We don't need to nerf mobula (much), we need to buff a lot of guns and a lot of ships to be...drum roll please...FUN.

It's not like they're ever going to be happy with balance anyway - it seems like as soon as one strategy become dominant it is nerfed to all hell, but ultimately players are always going to keep finding a preferred strategy. If this endless (and somewhat pointless) circle of, brawling meta sniping meta brawling meta sniping meta brawling meta sniping meta, must continue - then I feel the changes should be less drastic, more frequent, and the retention (or increase of) fun should be the most important thing on their agenda.

- Yes - I agree, and as I have said before: it feels like with every balance patch released, muse is just removing more fun from the game. This is in pursuit of, well who knows what? Like the spire nerf currently in the devapp, possibly based only on statistics. These unnecessary, continual, and out of touch nerfs, don't lead anywhere good:

One ship with only one type of gun (sadly this is the only way the game will ever be """balanced"""" to muses satisfaction)

Or possibly - a meta where the flare gun is dominant.

Post Scriptum

Power creep? How the fuck is power creep relevant at all in balancing a game like GOI? Power creep is only relevant in physical trading card games where designers have to keep printing better cards to make people buy them and old cards become too weak (solution is left to the players that choose which sets of cards they use - the designers don't even give a shit about the power creep). In this game
at any point you can just tweak the numbers of the old stuff to make them competitive again, or for that matter just nerf the new things that are too strong...

When something is too strong in a game you have 2 choices - nerf it so it's inline with everything else, or buff everything else with possible balance breaking consequences.
When something is too weak in a game you have 2 choices - buff it so it's inline with everything else, or nerf everything else with possible balance breaking consequences.


If you pick nerf in both situations then there is something wrong.

[spoiler](Hint to muse - The idea is you pick the option that requires the fewest number of changes)[/spoiler]

[Solidusbucket]

I said it before and ill say it again.

I feel like all ships are balanced minus spire and pyra which need armor and accelation buffs.

I dont feel like mobula is op. Its tough but the damn things sucks as soon as you shoot at it.

My opinion.

[Newbluud]

I said it before and ill say it again.

I feel like all ships are balanced minus spire and pyra which need armor and accelation buffs.

I dont feel like mobula is op. Its tough but the damn things sucks as soon as you shoot at it.

My opinion.

Pyra and Spire need attention way more than the Mobula, and I said myself that I'd prefer to see changes to other things to shake up this boring-as-hell current meta rather than a straight up numerical nerf to the Mobula.

In all honesty, it's just the one Mobula build that infests the game like a fungus between an old dude's toes that I feel is overpowered. Disable enough to lock down a ship entirely, power enough to kill quickly, very specific approach angles that might provide an advantage, but the dumb-as-fuck verticals might as well make that favourable engage a coin flip as to whether you will kill the ship in time.

My biggest problem with it, however, is how painfully unfun it is at this stage. I know that is subjective and I can't hide my biases here. I'm just so bloody sick of seeing them. When 75% of the ships in a single match are Mobulas and Mobulas make up just over 14% of the available choices, with infinitely more if you narrow those Mobs down to the overused meta build, then you kind of see where the power is sitting. And considering how seeing three quarters of the ships in a game being the same thing with only tiny variations is not even remotely surprising, it kind of shows how polarised the metagame has become.

In its current state, that single Mobula build is overpowered, but likely as a result of aggressive nerfs to everything else in the past.

[Kamoba]

Mobula nerf in dev app is pointless and a waste of time.

The only thing I would change to mobula, is possibly a tweak in its hull numbers to lower it a bit, so it becomes a scary thing to loose armour, if the vertical Dodge fails, so would the mobula, but in this current state the mobula has ample tanking abilities to be able to afford mistakes...

The balance changes needed compared to the ones proposed are vastly different...

Small tweaks to everything.. And rather than screw the hwacha to a newbie crews worst fucking nightmare, I'd rather see a state on the thing changed...

Balance changes over gameplay changes...

Mobula OP?
Nerf it's perma-hull a little (Little!)

Pyramidion UP?
Buff it's perma-hull or turning speed a little (Little!)

Hwacha OP?
Nerf it's jitter reduction a bit. (Or just revert all the changes to heavy ammo, Carronades and hwacha!)

Heavy flak Under Used?
Realise that it is the Hwacha dominance that's killing the use of Flak! Why use flak when you can use "LION GUN, FUCK YEAH!")

Also I agree with Newbluud..
Matches these days fall into three types..

Vets using what ship and weapons they want against other vets of a like mind. (Rare, hard to find lobbies, but the most fun.)

Vets stacking the fuck out of the game either with custom no scramble lobbies or switching sides with new pilots, using Mobula, unless someone takes a squid then they go squid. (I won't name the clan who do those, but they might want to watch the fucking salt and shit talk they throw at people when they stomp a level five flying with 7 novice players, fuckers.)

Mixed lobbies of vets and newbies, the vets hard countering any chance they get and a lot of rematch votes, if there happens to be three vet ships in a 2v2 lobby it often turns into games of " pass the newbie, suck up the loss." This lobby you see mostly Pyramidions from the newbies (because the guides are all outdated now, pyra is no longer a great ship.) Or they use Hwachafish.

It's the stacking vets which is why I play less often. I will rant about them, I will hate the specific fuckers who do it, for one reason, their salt and shit talk. It is not skill to win a fucking stomp.

#endofrant.

[Mean Machine]

Newbluud, to answer your first post or question, I believe this is not a proper or valid reason to nerf a ship. I'm personally sick of quad hwacha galleons and double gat hwacha spires for example, but I don't think they are op. They are however very frustrating. Now I bet everyone can jump in here and start enlightening us on how quad hwacha galleons are easy to fight and are no big deal, but that's not the case I see everytime I play the game lately. Yes, you won't see these kind of galleons in comeptetive, but outside competitive I had to fight a lot of them and usually we have a lot of troubles with them, since not all of us play all our matches stacked with all 45 level clanmates while rolling with metabuilds. So in this case, I usually have to deal with not experienced crewmates or even worse, the ones who can't possibly bother using any kind of communication IN A MULTIPLAYER HEAVILY TEAMWORK BASED PVP GAME! Even I as 45 pilot had problems with quad hwacha galleons quite a few times, because, you know, I have low level crew and poor ally and we're fighting mid to high level enemy team, but oh no that's not enough that we are underdog by far, enemy also decides to bring quad hwacha galleon in KotH JUST IN CASE right? I have to cringe everytime when obviously superior team feels the need to make already unbalanced lobby even worse by taking very strong builds that their skilled crew can easily manage, while low level team are pretty much stuck with gatlings and flamethrowers in order to get at least few hits before they get annihilated.

So considering all that, my opinion is that this game is unbalanced only because matches and lobbies themselves are unbalanced. I never felt, even in competitive matches, that any of the ships or builds are op. You can always find ship and build that can deal with whatever enemy has. The rest is up to piloting, positioning, coordination and your crew abilities.

I agree with Geo and Byron, trying to balance things with non stop nerfs is what broke and consumed fun of a lot of games for me. It's just not the right way. In this case, I don't think that we should try to nerf the ship just because of that one powerfull builld or even just weapon. How come mobula was not OP when pyra dominated skies? So with pyra out of the picture mob is suddenly OP? We nerf mobuula, then what? Squid is OP? Nerf squid, then fish is OP? And so on. Do you see where this is going? Everyone who has played at least couple of online games knows by now that there is always one or few builds, classes, ships, weapons or whatever that are considered "the best". That's how it is and always will be, because you will never balance ships or weapons or whatever to the point that they would all be absolutely equal. How could you? What could exactly determine how effective or powerfull is particular ship in comparison to others. There is just no way to balance stuff to the point that everyone would be happy. There will always be people who will complain about something. Let's say someone loves spire and wants to fly it non stop, but they are getting wrecked by mobula. Does that mean that mobula is op or just that spire is simply not a good solution against mobula, just like all other ships are not the best solution in every match and every situation. Even "op mobula" is weak against squid for example if squid knows what they are doing. So these ships that are effective in a lot of situations and maps are op? How about they are balanced and fun, while other ships that are barely used anywhere are "underpowered" and needs buff, so they would get used too? Or do we want to nerf everything so at the end we will have lobbies of icarus not because of deciding what ships would be more effective in certain match, but instead which one would suck lees because we nerfed everything?

So in short, what I'm trying to say here is that in my opinion we need more buffs than nerfs and that when it comes to balancing of the game, tha main issue I see are not ships or weapons themselves, but the fact that majority of matches are simply not balanced at all, which is a result of a lot of factors that I won't go into now, because some of them were already discussed and others are just not my expertise and it's not a topic for this thread.

[Newbluud]

Thanks for the input, Mean, but I feel you're trailing off on a point that I actually address in that first post. The title of the thread is misleading, but it keeps the conversation centered where it should be. If you read what I have said, you'll note that I am in favour of buffing other ships and playstyles to combat the over-saturation and ridiculous versatility of the metamob build. I also never acted as if the metamob is unkillable. The problem is, it's a direct upgrade from so many other builds. Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win. That is a problem.

I also hate stacks, but that is not what this thread is about. I also feel that more balanced lobbies would highlight the strength of the metamob even more, assuming balance is settled at mid to high level. At a lower level, blitz-centric ships seem to be extremely powerful because newer pilots do not know how to avoid getting caught out.

Let me state again, because I've seen several people TL;DR the shit out of me and argue against a statistical nerf I never called for: I feel the best nerf to the Mobula is a buff to other ships.

[DrTentacles]

Mobula is OP, considering it does everything that the Junker does better.

When one ship is *the* best long-range ship in the game, without question, and better than all but 2 close-range, maybe you should give balance a look?

To the post above, Mobula wasn't OP when Pyra was dominant, because Pyramideon sniping was viable, and because neither Carronade nor Flamer hadn't been nerfed. It was still a very powerful ship that got taken to Hephaestus finals--definitely high-tier, but it had competition. Now, it's a safe choice for basically any team comp. There is no place where you go "no, taking a mob is a bad idea."

The Pyra's nerf made "head on killship" style play pretty damn hard. The Mobula laughs at Hwatchafish, but it much weaker to gat-mortar, and the Pyra back then could keep it in arcs effectively. It can't do that anymore.

Can you say that about any other ship in the game?

Other ships need buffs. Heavy Weapons need buffs. The game's balance is fucked, yo. But you can only evaluate a ship's power in the context of the meta, and in this meta, the Mob is definitely OP.

[nanoduckling]

How would I nerf the mobula? Well if I have to nerf rather than buff other underused parts and ships I'd add two big hull strips that wrap around the balloon on the edges so that you can gat / mortar or gat / banshee or hades / flak or hades / art that son of a biscuit more effectively from below.

The problem with the mob is that a smart pilot has way to many ways to kill you while avoiding getting killed themselves. Cant use a heavy carro because double light carro or carro mine counters it due to mob vertical mobility, and mob will usually kill you before you effectively blend it. Cant hwacha or art it because of wide separation of components. Cant meta it because good luck getting on top of a top tier mobula pilot so your gunner has a shot at the hull. Even if you could they have three light guns, you have at best two (or three if you are a junker but good luck being in position first), gg hasta-la-pasta.

So what we need is an interesting way to make a mobula easier to kill. We could decrease its hull. That will work. We could change the layout of the guns or reduce the number of guns. Both of these are options but they take away interesting viable strategies. I like the idea of reducing the viability of the balloon, better vertical mobility but don't scratch that thing or you can kiss that advantage goodbye, but that makes it an odd exception.

The question I ask is, was the mobula ever intended to be borderline invulnerable when it is above you? If not, then give me some way to kill that thing from beneath.

[Mean Machine]

Thanks for the input, Mean, but I feel you're trailing off on a point that I actually address in that first post. The title of the thread is misleading, but it keeps the conversation centered where it should be. If you read what I have said, you'll note that I am in favour of buffing other ships and playstyles to combat the over-saturation and ridiculous versatility of the metamob build. I also never acted as if the metamob is unkillable. The problem is, it's a direct upgrade from so many other builds. Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win. That is a problem.

I also hate stacks, but that is not what this thread is about. I also feel that more balanced lobbies would highlight the strength of the metamob even more, assuming balance is settled at mid to high level. At a lower level, blitz-centric ships seem to be extremely powerful because newer pilots do not know how to avoid getting caught out.

Let me state again, because I've seen several people TL;DR the shit out of me and argue against a statistical nerf I never called for: I feel the best nerf to the Mobula is a buff to other ships.

Yeah, sorry I could have worded and formulated my post better. Only first sentence was meant to you directly, the rest was just talking in general, because I know people usually ask for nerfs, not for buffs. And even in first sentence I just wanted to say that I disagree with that particular idea in general, not with your entire post.

"Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win" I'm not sure I'd go that far with this. This depends on a lot of factors. If this is 1v1 fight, then yes, usually mobula should win, but not alway by far (I'll give one example below). 2v2 is however totally different situation and is also what game is arguably balanced around, so the result would differ a lot. Let's take one example: "2v2, red team with 2x meta mobula, blue team with 1x meta mobula + 1x kill squid - both team equally skilled, map:canyon ambush." I'd say blue team will have advantage, even tho they have only one OP mobula on their side. Squid will make all the difference there. Mobula sure has ability to fight at all ranges, but it's not equally effective at all ranges. It can't possibly track and effectively damage and kill squid in close combat, while squid can do that, unless squid does something wrong. that's just one example. Metamob could struggle in duel at dawn as well, or especially in paritan. No one, no matter how skilled pilot you are, you won't convince me that you can fly mobula with same effectivness as you can in maps like fjords or dunes for example. Even if you don't hit any buildings by accident, you just don't have the same amount of space to dodge and escape as you have in other maps. The map itself restricts your effectivness. Not to mention the fact that as a metamobula you don't benefit from taking cover and waiting for ambush in paritan as some other ships and builds would.

So, the only scenario where I would definetly agree that metamobula would probably always win in 1v1 equal fight is open long range engagements. All other scenarios immediately drop effectivness of mobula, some more then others. Of course I'm not saying it would suck in all other scenarios, it's still strong in many of them, but I'm saying that in many of those scenarios there are other ships that can perform as effective as mobula or even better. So, if we agree to that, then we can say that metamobula is only OP in open long range engagements. But now, is it really? I mean, is it really Op if it's the best ship for long range engagements? Or is that just the fact that it was maybe suppose to be just that and that someone has to fill that role. If there would be no mobula, then that would be galleon. If not galleon, then spire or whatever. Someone has to be. I doubt anyone could possibly balance two different ships to be exactly equally effective in same situation.

I don't know, maybe it's just me and my perception or definition of what OP means to me, but I think gamers today in general are jumping to conclusions way to fast and are in general way more competitive and agrressive and can't take a loss or being beaten by others (not talking about you, Newbluud, of course, just in general what we can see in online games). Take for example any fps game out there. "OP gun here, OP gun there". Everything that kills you is OP. Maybe it's a fact that there are so many very young players in gaming today. I think 20 years ago there weren't so many kiddies that even had PC, let alone play these games and communities were a little bit different. Today, you're born and your first gift is cellphone and few years after that here you go, PC. Anyway, I'm getting of topic here, I just don't feel what some poeple are saying, not jsut about mobula, but in general. I think game is fairly balanced atm and biggest issue are lobbies like I mentioned in ym first post.

Mobula is OP, considering it does everything that the Junker does better.

When one ship is *the* best long-range ship in the game, without question, and better than all but 2 close-range, maybe you should give balance a look?

To the post above, Mobula wasn't OP when Pyra was dominant, because Pyramideon sniping was viable, and because neither Carronade nor Flamer hadn't been nerfed. It was still a very powerful ship that got taken to Hephaestus finals--definitely high-tier, but it had competition. Now, it's a safe choice for basically any team comp. There is no place where you go "no, taking a mob is a bad idea."

The Pyra's nerf made "head on killship" style play pretty damn hard. The Mobula laughs at Hwatchafish, but it much weaker to gat-mortar, and the Pyra back then could keep it in arcs effectively. It can't do that anymore.

Can you say that about any other ship in the game?

Other ships need buffs. Heavy Weapons need buffs. The game's balance is fucked, yo. But you can only evaluate a ship's power in the context of the meta, and in this meta, the Mob is definitely OP.

Again, just because performs well in many situations doesn't necessarily means it's OP, not in a sense that you should go and nerf it. Remember, pyramidion was also considered OP and what's with it now? Are you sure you want to ask for nerfs again? Mobula is fine, buff other ships. You said it yourself, pyra can't keep up anymore. Yes, but pyra can't keep up with a lot of ships anymore, which means it's pyras' problem, not mobulas'. Give pyra some speed back and it will be good close range ship again and effective against mobula and others hips as well.

[Letus]

I'd get a Lumberfish and keep it out of the range of the Artemis...one balloon pop and those guns can't hit you :V

Otherwise, I'd reduce the turning speed.  Only one of those engines (the one on top) actually is in a spot to grab air, the two turners have this thing called a Mobula infront of them, making for terrible airflow, meaning they'd have to work harder to turn the ship.

And then I'd [redacted]

[HamsterIV]

The Mobula works in the same space as the Spire. It brings 3+ guns on a forward facing target, but its repair points are far enough away from the guns that the crew is forced to decide between repairing and shooting. It is superior to the Spire in that the Mobula's horizontal profile vs the Spire's vertical profile is not as vulnerable to long range high damage shot drop weapons (hadies, lumberjack, flacks).

If I were to nerf the Mobula I would increase the damage output of long range non shot drop weapons like the banshee. I would also move the repair points further away from the guns. The effect would be to increase both the frequency that components catch fire at range and how long gungineers are spending engineering instead of gunning.

[Newbluud]

The Mobula works in the same space as the Spire. It brings 3+ guns on a forward facing target, but its repair points are far enough away from the guns that the crew is forced to decide between repairing and shooting. It is superior to the Spire in that the Mobula's horizontal profile vs the Spire's vertical profile is not as vulnerable to long range high damage shot drop weapons (hadies, lumberjack, flacks).

If I were to nerf the Mobula I would increase the damage output of long range non shot drop weapons like the banshee. I would also move the repair points further away from the guns. The effect would be to increase both the frequency that components catch fire at range and how long gungineers are spending engineering instead of gunning.

I like this one. Probably because I like the banshee.