Hey, first post to toss in my two cents on the balance patch. As a disclaimer, I've only been playing at length since January, so I'm commenting purely based on the changes made in this patch, having not been around for previous ones and did not participate in any testing sessions.
In general, to me, it felt like changes were implemented around an idea had in mind about which ships should excel in which situations and how particular ship vs. ship matchups should play out. That's the base for most of my arguments for an against certain changes implemented, or how they were implemented.
Squid rear gun move/acceleration increase
I have no issues with the gun movement and it will probably encourage me to use the Squid a bit more often. I've seen very solid Squid play prior to this change, so I understand why comp/tourney players see it as unnecessary, but at my level I see no issue with it. However, with the speed change, you sort of double downed on not wanting to pick a Mob or Spire vs. a Squid in any situation at all. The Squid was already the fastest ship in the game, and with the Mob's huge blind spot and the Spire turning slower, a well-piloted Squid is just way too effective to even consider picking those ships.
Mobula gun movements
I don't mind the top deck movements, but the bottom ones seem wholly unnecessary, or should be scaled back even more. Like others have stated, you've sequestered the Mobula to very specific loadouts in order to use it to the best of it's ability. Guns with 50 degree arcs should overlap to some extent on the bottom deck slots, but you then run into the issue of Artemis overlapping "too much", making positioning much more forgiving. I'll echo sentiments I've seen kicking around that the problem w/ the Mobula wasn't necessarily the guns all being able to hit at the same time, but that it can escape danger and dodge shots too easily because of its vertical movement capabilities. One of the larger threats to Mobulas at range was Hwachas disabiling guns, but with that change stacked on top of the Mob's vertical mobility, you've compounded its ability to navigate one of its threats outside close range.
The Mobula was put into a corner and told, "You're only meant to win these battles, all of these other ones you are supposed to lose. "
Spire turning speed decrease
It feels entirely unnecessary. Again, the change is compounded by other changes made. Being so weak it was already high risk, high reward, but it has now been put into a corner like the Mobula and told that it's only allowed to play on maps which have open space, and that it is not allowed to bring close range loadouts vs. enemy pilots of any competence. It was bad enough getting flanked in a Spire previously, now you have zero chance at all.
Again, with the componding idea, the decreased speed of Hwacha rounds means Spire has an even more difficult time of preventing such a situation by damaging enemy engines or guns.
Pyra health and mass increases
I don't really have too much of an opinion, but added with the Lochnagar shot buff it's too tanky. I've survived a few times where I would've otherwised died with the additional health. Any sort of rushing/close range Pyra build was again a high risk/reward situation similar to the Spire, but the reward seems much greater than the risk now. The increased mass makes it feel sluggish or floaty when trying to slow down/change directions, but it might just be my imagination. The changes don't feel unreasonable here, but even as someone who piloted Pyras a fair amount before the patch, they feel too tanky.
Hwacha projectile speed decrease
It feels unnecessary. They were considered by many to be too dominant at mid-ranges, but I personally only feared them at close ranges and this doesn't change their efficiency there. To me it felt like a gunner vs. gunner fight when going up against a Hwacha. Can you disable their Hwacha before they can disable you? Outside of perhaps a Galleon, that fight is taken care of by any pilot tool to move the ship. It just doesn't feel like this is the right way to try and mitigate that mid-range dominance.
Harpoon
Awesome
Heavy Flak
Haven't played with it enough to really comment, but I don't understand the switch in damage application. What I've been seeing though is consensus that light flak with lochnagar is more effective than the big flak, which is sort of weird.
Lochnagar Rounds
The downsides to its inclusion are not enough to not load it into just about any light gun you have on your ship. A solid pilot can easily compensate for the turning speed decrease, and any engineer can hop off the gun before it breaks and smack it quickly, then resume firing. You can of course try to counter by using pilot tools or having a mobile ship to take advantage of the slow turning speed, but it doesn't feel like that's enough to negate any advantages laid on by loading it. I've yet to use loch in a situation and thought, "Ah, maybe I shouldn't have used this right now, and instead used X."
As others have said, I think bringing back the pre-patch Lochnagar would be nice, and nerfing this new ammo type by having it do more damage to the gun or another compensation.
So yeah, that's sort of how I feel about the changes. In general I'm not a huge fan of them. I'm a pretty mid-level player, so many of my assessments may be off when weighed against the competitive scene. I used to be pretty heavily involved in the competitive fighting game scene, and had to deal with my fair share of balance patches prior to this game, but the community response to nerfs there seem to mirror what I'm seeing as responses to these: if something is considered over-powered or difficult to deal with, completely taking it away isn't necessarily a good idea, but to just tone it down a tad.
It easier to make things that are weak a little bit stronger rather than take things that are too strong and try to make them more reasonable. The latter ends up taking things that are on one end of the scale and shifting them completely to the other, which is never fun if it was at least manageable.
I can't shake the feeling that the changes were chosen to shove ships into very particular boxes and discouraging creativity to reel them away from them. The compounding effect of some of the changes just exacerbates this. I dunno.
Peace
