How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

[DrTentacles]

Five light guns in the same direction is the defining characteristic of the Mobula.

The vertical mobility is a stupid, nonsensical oversight.

[Jamini]

Vertical mobility was always a defining characteristic of the mobula.

Source

New ship, the Mobula - an more advanced attack ship with 5 front facing gun and no guns on side or back.  It has good vertical movement, but it is more difficult to repair in the heat of battle.

[Dementio]

If we apply logic in order to nerf the vertical mobility, then I will argue with the same logic to buff its turning speed. Remember that the Pyramidion got nerfed, because its turning speed was so high it could keep gat/mortar arcs on everything, apply logic to the Mobula and this is what you get.

Five guns facing the same direction means nothing, if you just flat out die, the Spire has already taught us that. Nerfing vertical mobility is going to do exactly what people think will happen with Muse's nerf decision: It will stick to long range Hades and double Artemis, because it won't have the means of survival in any other scenario. I am honestly more in favor of removing the Mobula than kill its one  chance and keep it in the game.

[Jamini]

The Mobula is strong right now because balloon-popping is weak. A slight carro, heavy clip, fire, or gravity buff would dramatically make the Mobula weaker (as much, if not moreso than the junker).

Mobulas do well because they are good against Hwacha and Artemis spam (due to well-protected components). Give alternatives, and the Mobula will seem more in-line.

[ZnC]

This thread is got heated up as much as LION GUN OP.

But yea. Mobility, Survivability, Firepower - all ships should have two of those and lack one.

Mobula is designed to have its signature vertical Mobility and large Firepower, so let's keep it that way. But IMHO, it really should be easier to kill at close range if you get the drop on it. Turns out it's harder than expected in practice. This is because, as Pies and I have mentioned, Hull is hard to hit and 600 Armor is quite a lot (in the range of vanguard ships - Pyra, Junker, Galleon). If it becomes more susceptible to damage, then I'd agree that the Mobula actually has a striking weakness to be a balanced ship.

@Jamini: The problem with balloon-popping is that the Mobula, unlike a Galleon or Spire, can maneuver its way out of the blend. A well timed hydro will save it from grounding out, even though Balloon might be lost in the process. Whenever it manages to get arcs, it will disable your guns and start gaining the upper hand. This is the experience I've had while developing a blendersquid build with Kamoba for months.

[Jamini]

@Jamini: The problem with balloon-popping is that the Mobula, unlike a Galleon or Spire, can maneuver its way out of the blend. A well timed hydro will save it from grounding out, even though Balloon might be lost in the process. Whenever it manages to get arcs, it will disable your guns and start gaining the upper hand. This is the experience I've had while developing a blendersquid build with Kamoba for months.

Mobulas also drop like a stone due to their vertical acceleration without drogue chute. This also doesn't take into account that a mobula virtually requires an on-point, buffless, engineering team in order to stay repaired due to its structure. (Or a three-engineer setup to get engine buffs). Let's not mention that Mobula armor is often slow to be repaired due to the layout of the ship (Especially with newer players crewing).

The real issue isn't the Mobula. It's the fact that balloon-popping setups are both nerfed and heavily out of vogue right now. If heavy clip and carronades were stronger, the Mobula would be as it was when I started flying it: A long range, difficult ship to crew that is best used as a sniper platform.

If I were to nerf the mobula, I would keep the hull armor high, but reduce the hull health. Reward crews that can keep the armor up, especially in sniper matches, but punish those that allow an kill-ship to get too close.

[BlackenedPies]

The mobula's balloon is underneath which makes it resistant to being popped. Sammy thought experiment: if the balloon was suspended above would the mob be OP? I'd say no

[ZnC]

Mobulas also drop like a stone due to their vertical acceleration without drogue chute. This also doesn't take into account that a mobula virtually requires an on-point, buffless, engineering team in order to stay repaired due to its structure. (Or a three-engineer setup to get engine buffs). Let's not mention that Mobula armor is often slow to be repaired due to the layout of the ship (Especially with newer players crewing).

I generally dislike going into a chain of arguments but I had to correct some things. The Mobula's vertical acceleration has nothing to do with how fast it drops. Many pilots have beaten attempts at blending the Mobula with Blenderfish or Blendersquid. I have intentionally paid attention to and analyzed this situation many times. Even Dementio the Ryder Mobula man himself will tell you blending is not the way to go.

The Lumberjack can reasonably bombard the Mobula's Balloon and does pose a threat with its sheer DPS. However, the Mobula can also reasonably disable it, especially a control Mob running Merc instead of Hades. Basically all I'm saying is this: for a ship that can easily hydro its way out of many bad situations, it's just bit too tanky IMO.

[Richard LeMoon]

The only thing that works really well at blending a Mobula is another Mobula. You get under it, drop their balloon with carro, then let them fall on you as you push up. Pretty funny.

[Atruejedi]

Here to weigh in:

Nerf vertical mobility. I don't care if it's in the "lore," it makes no logical sense, and doesn't help that the Mobula is already difficult to hit when moving at all vertically. It's just overkill right now to the point of imbalance.

Leave gun arcs as they were a month ago. There is no problem with gun arcs.

Tune its turning speed if you must. I'm fine with that, that makes more sense.

Someone called it a Fat Spire above. What's wrong with that?

P.S. Let's define ship roles more clearly. See my subjective number suggestions for the Mobula and other ships here:

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,7462.0.html

[Daft Loon]

There's plenty of room to reduce its vertical acceleration a bit without changing its position as the best vertical ship, currently it has at least double that of everything but the squid. Reducing it to somewhere between its current self and the squid might actually be a good use of muse's preferred blind testing.

[BlackenedPies]

I very much agree with Daniel that mobula is most balanced ship in the game. It has unique design, it has strenghts and weaknesses, it provides many different possible builds, crew combos and strategies. That for me means it's well balanced.

I don't wanna keep repeating the same things but I want to make sure people aren't mislead. All ships provide many different builds, crew combos, and strategies. All ships have unique designs and strengths and weaknesses. The mob's unique design of having an underbelly balloon is strictly an advantage - same with its thin profile and spread out components. This doesn't mean it's well balanced. Take the junker for example which performs a similar role that's worse in practically every way except more armor. This doesn't necessarily mean the junker isn't balanced compared to the other ships, it just means the mob is better

If a ship is only useful with one build or only in one situation or against one type of enemy, then that is IMO not balanced and it's boring and something needs to be done with that ship.

The fact that the mob is good against everything doesn't mean it's balanced and that's not how games work. The test is to put the other ships excluding mob up against eachother and see if they're balanced. The truth is that they're relatively balanced to eachother with the possible exception of pyra, but today I flew a mortar-gat pyra against a vet kill squid to prove a point and barely scratched the hull under my buffed armor. No ship is "only useful with one build or one situation", but the mob is good in all. There's no other ship where you can simply swap out loadouts and fight anything without worry. Mobula is the least risky ship to bring (which is ok but it's OP!!)

Everyone should strive to make muse buff other ships so they are more like mobula, diverse and provide more possible and effective builds and roles that ship can do.

Again, how would you propose that muse buff the other ships and keep balance? Saying that the mobula is balanced and all the other ships aren't isn't how balance works. Mob has an advantageous design with an underside balloon and thin spread out profile, great stats with excellent maneuvering and good armor/hull, and nearly the best possible light gun setup. This puts it steps above the other ships and is why it's not balanced. It's fine to have a good easy jack of all trades ship and that's why I only want to touch the hull value!

I can't imagine how you'd buff the other ships to balance the mob so you need to explain it. I'm a numbers guy with over 2700 hours so I'll understand it if you can describe it

[Dementio]

I can't imagine how you'd buff the other ships to balance the mob so you need to explain it. I'm a numbers guy with over 2700 hours so I'll understand it if you can describe it

I imagined something about increasing the gaps. The Mobula does have an unnecessary large amount of vertical acceleration, while all the other ships are almost identical to each other, so increase all of them in proportions with the Squid only so far behind the Mobula or even better than it. Vertical top speeds are pretty much identical, but I imagine a Galleon could have a higher top speed than a Squid.

Horozintal top speed is rather fine in terms of gaps, but you barely feel the difference unless you are fighting a Squid with something slower than a Goldfish. Horizontal acceleration plays a big part for almost all engagements, so even if I do want that to also show more diversity, it may kill the slow accelerating ships.

Turning stats are alright, I think.

Thing is, when everything is in intervals of 1m/s(²) away from something else, pure design is the only thing left to judge a ships viability, something that hurts the Spire the most. You can see it in the Meta, the ships outside these intervals profit the most from a lot of things, Mobula with its high vertical mobility, but really low turning speed, Squid and Goldfish with their high speed stats in all horizontal directions. Everything else is just kind of mixed together and so the ship's very design is looked at (Junker being easily disabled, Spire stuff, Galleon forced to rely on guns). Armor and hull are factors as well. And nobody forget about the guns either, but I believe the guns matter on a deeper and much more competitive level and ship balance shouldn't revolve around them too much.

All the ships are unique by design, but if all their stats are so similar, there can only be so many left to be considered as good, or even the best.

[BlackenedPies]

The mob has much higher vertical accel than every other ship, so if it's too much why not reduce it instead of increasing all others? It might be difficult to maintain balance because +20% for a fish means more than +20% to a galleon, and it would also effect balloon poppers. I happen to think junker vertical is a bit low and the answer isn't to nerf everything else. Maybe vertical accels should be raised as a whole, but just because of the mob isn't a good enough reason

[Jamini]

P.S. Let's define ship roles more clearly. See my subjective number suggestions for the Mobula and other ships here:

Nerfing the signature strength of the mobula (vertical lift) would do the opposite of defining ship roles more clearly.

If we want more defined ship roles, then gaps in other forms of manuverability/mass/armor values would need to be expanded to match the current strength of the mobula.

Think about the following:

Mobula - Kept roughly the same. Reduced hull permahealth (to reward hitting the hull at long range, and punish mobulas that get into brawls/get rammed)
Spire - Boosted armor, dramatic turning acceleration buff. (Turns spires into fantastic close-range turrets)
Squid - Bring squid permahealth down and acceleration/speed up, closer to release squid. (Uncatchable, fragile speedster/flanker)
Pyra - Dramatic forward acceleration, slightly boosted armor, turning and vertical acceleration even worse than current. (The pyra excels at spearing/charging enemies, but needs to plan ahead to get that ram)
Junker - Mostly unchanged. (Junker manuverability is in a good place for their role)
Goldfish - Mostly Unchanged. (Goldfish manuverability is in a good place for their role)
Galleon - Mostly unchanged. Further top speed increase, acceleration remains very poor. (The Galleon would be the fastest, heaviest ship, but the absolute slowest to get there. Anyone unfortunate enough to be rammed by a galleon should be in for a world of hurt.)

This would solidify each ship in a specific role by giving them one or two things they excel at (minus the goldfish and junker... which are both jack of all trades ships by design), and would give most ships maps/areas where they can excel.