GUNS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

[Captain Smollett]

I've never thought of the gattling as OP, since honestly something has to take down the armor of an enemy. I just think we need more ways to do it.

I will give it to you though hands down that the gattling is the best weapon in the game. 

[awkm]

Ah I get it.  Piercing is very tricky.  I can't touch gatling right now until more piercing options are available.  Right now it is a close/middle range option for armor destruction.  Harpoon is weird enough that upping its piercing in the future feels alright to me but I'd like to see it with additional harpoon work.

In order to mix things up, we're reaching feature request territory so it's going to be tough.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I think he is asking when/if the Gatling gun is going to have its effectiveness reduced. This is a question that weighs on my mind as well. The Mo' Dakka Dakka Dakka (my Pyramidion) is currently sporting three Gatling guns. When used in conjunction with an ally ship that has a Manticore the combination is very powerful. I have won games that I don't feel I should have been able to win by throwing a crap ton of bullets at my target via multiple Gatling guns.

My thinking is as follows:
Against a good team 80% of the time your bullets are going to be hitting hull armor so I should take the gun that does the most dps against hull armor.

That's the power of coordination, unfortionately such builds can fall prey to divide and conquer, and then the fall hard. [Divide an conquer could work in a number of way in this game -belive we have tried such builds, they only work against poorly coordinated teams]
Unfortionately as awkm pointed out it's the only medium and short range piercing weapon (harpoon doesen't really count due to it being a support tool rather than an offensive weapon)

[RearAdmiralZill]

Awkm, I only meant the firing arc of the gun itself, not the damage. I can see why you don't touch it with a 10ft pole currently, though one could argue a merc can perform the same result with some finesse.

[Watchmaker]

Machiavelliest: My own observations agree that there's something ...funny... going on with guns+turning.  At the moment I (along with the rest of the programmers) am obsessing over server performance, so I haven't had time to investigate it fully.

There is one piece of buggy behavior I have identified: when you first jump on a gun, you see it at zero yaw/pitch even though the gun may not actually be there yet on the server (it's moving towards that position at its normal yaw/pitch speeds).  This can definitely cause the first shot or two to appear wildly off in some cases, and will be fixed soon-ish.

[Machiavelliest]

Machiavelliest: My own observations agree that there's something ...funny... going on with guns+turning.  At the moment I (along with the rest of the programmers) am obsessing over server performance, so I haven't had time to investigate it fully.

Thank you for responding to that issue.  I'll stop harping on it now.

[awkm]

Awkm, I only meant the firing arc of the gun itself, not the damage. I can see why you don't touch it with a 10ft pole currently, though one could argue a merc can perform the same result with some finesse.

Firing arc? Maybe later when there are other piercing options.

And yes, the Field Gun is great at taking out armor.  Although it does require some planning and therefore skill.

[Squash]

What if instead of shatter carronades did piercing damage? We already have the Lumberjack for flechette/shatter.

[RearAdmiralZill]

What if instead of shatter carronades did piercing damage?

To be fair, carronades are pretty decent at armor destruction already. It's the hull that stops them.

[Squash]

Totally right Zill, they're pretty decent, but they aren't at the same level as gattling guns, a small amount of piercing damage would give them that.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I was about to say you never felt the bite of Zil's Blender-Galleon, but then I remembered that he used it on your team as well ^^
Against some ships heavy carrorade focus works well, just not against a galleon that has both a LJ and a hawacha (I have been on the receiving end of that build amd I just couldn't outrepair double heavy carrorade armor damage, and then when the armor was down, he just finished us with echidna). Heavy carrorade with piercing could very easily be OP.

[Squash]

How was he hitting you with a heavy carronade, a hwacha and a lumberjack?

[RearAdmiralZill]

I was about to say you never felt the bite of Zil's Blender-Galleon, but then I remembered that he used it on your team as well ^^
Against some ships heavy carrorade focus works well, just not against a galleon that has both a LJ and a hawacha (I have been on the receiving end of that build amd I just couldn't outrepair double heavy carrorade armor damage, and then when the armor was down, he just finished us with echidna). Heavy carrorade with piercing could very easily be OP.

Yea hwachas are the scourge of that layout. It's too bad the only recorded use of it was in that match, lol.

I like the shatter on carronades for the small degree of gun destruction you get, like when facing a metamidion. I agree with Mattilald that adding piercing, even if removing the shatter, would make it OP. I mean, at 1.1.5 they had to lower the armor modifier to balance it out.

The reason they aren't as great as the gat is of course because it's not the primary role of the gun, which is fine. Merc and gat will have that advantage, and I think a new gun would be preferable to tweaking the existing armory to that extent.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

How was he hitting you with a heavy carronade, a hwacha and a lumberjack?

No you understood wrong. He was hitting us with double carrorade, but when Zil went against your team with the same build, Captain Smollet was hitting Zil with hawacha and LJ and that is an anthithesis for Blender-Galleon.

Yea hwachas are the scourge of that layout. It's too bad the only recorded use of it was in that match, lol.

I like the shatter on carronades for the small degree of gun destruction you get, like when facing a metamidion. I agree with Mattilald that adding piercing, even if removing the shatter, would make it OP. I mean, at 1.1.5 they had to lower the armor modifier to balance it out.

The reason they aren't as great as the gat is of course because it's not the primary role of the gun, which is fine. Merc and gat will have that advantage, and I think a new gun would be preferable to tweaking the existing armory to that extent.

It didn't help that your timing wasn't as good as it was against us. I fogot on that map we were doing our match 3, I just remember we lost that match ^^ (and with it our Scrimmage with score of 2 - 1).

[Ofiach]

god forbid, 2 LJ's are stomping a ship.

Not as effective as you'd think.

Ummm WHAT? 2 LJ's rip hull armor faster than 2 gats can! not to mention every permahull shot takes ~ 95 damage! I'm sorry but to bring the lumber in line it needs to lose 2 shells! it penalizes you for missing. and rewards you for hitting.