Messages

16

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The Everyone Think Really Hard And Make Rangefinder Useful Thread

« on: March 04, 2016, 01:00:29 pm »

Djinn's suggestion of bonus damage, I think it's a bad idea (no offense djinn) because it forces people to stare at an enemy, not fun gameplay in the least.

No offense taken!

My goals wasn't to put a player in stand-by mode. If you're taking damage or have three guns on target it's always superior to heal or fire as necessary. The damage boost suggestion was aimed at times when your Pyramjdion is approaching the enemy's blind side, and only two guns can fire, or when your Flak/Lumber Galleon side is shooting. What's the last guy doing? Most likely checking buffs that are already up, or sitting idle.

17

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Suggestion: Ships tilting more when turning

« on: March 02, 2016, 02:47:58 am »

What do you guys think about having ships roll back and forth/left and right in the wind when they are idle?
Maybe also when they are mobile, but not as much due to acceleration forces and momentum.

That will make gunning and piloting a lot more interesting.
Galleons may be able to shoot directly up if the gunners time their shots right

Given that this is effectively randomized if it's not tied to the pilot's control, I'm incredibly opposed to it. Nothing would be more annoying than being in the perfect position at the perfect time and losing the engagement because window you can't really predict blew your gun arcs off.

18

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 08:04:13 pm »

My suggestion to Muse was swapping Buff hammer and Gunner Stamina. After reading a lot of the ideas here, my thought is this (copied from the email I sent them):

"OK, so, you know I am not a big fan of 'stamina', especially on the gunner (pilot is a close second). As you may know, there is one thing I dislike even more than gunner stamina, that being the effect of the buff hammer on guns. We all know this breaks the balance between gunners and engineer with a buff. There are very few cases where a really good gunner is more valuable than a really good buffgineer. In addition, you have to practice quite a big to be an efficient buffgineer. This makes it inherently unfriendly to newer players.

Then we have stamina, which is trying to bring gunners back to a valid choice, mostly because of the buff hammer.

I feel this solution is ignoring the original problem, and would like to make a suggestion to overhaul both buff and gunner stamina. while making both more fun and relevant.
The suggestion is basically this: Switch the effect of the buff hammer and gunner stamina completely. Rename 'Stamina' to 'Focus'. The new effects would be as follows.

Buffed guns would:

1. Have improved arcs.

2, Reload faster.

3. Move faster.

4. Perhaps have more health.

These make sense from a mechanical point of view. Unless you are taking individual bullets apart, no mechanical change should increase the damage of the ammo. However, adjusting stops can increase arcs. Tuning mechanics can make things turn and load faster. Tightening loose bolts can make it hold together longer under stress.

Gunner Focus would:

1. Increase damage.

2. Reduce recoil.

3. Give the gunner a 'tunnel vision' visual effect, slightly zoomed in with a dark haze around the edges

4. Possibly muffle all other game sounds.

[[To add to that email, and taking from this thread, I would increase the repair power gunners have on guns with all tools.]]

These are very common aspects of most shooters. 'Holding breath' is a common way to reduce recoil and gain focus on a target. Gaining focus generally comes with some sort of zoom and tunnel vision, along with bonus damage due to the extra concentration put into hitting the target just right (supposedly). All these effects would make a great deal of sense to new (and old) players. There is an instant "Oh, I get what this does." familiar feel to the 'holding breath to focus' mechanic. Stamina is for running. Focus is for shooting. It is not intuitive for your guns to be briefly moved out of arc or load faster just because you push a button.

These changes would shift classes back where they belong, with gunners ruling the guns, and engineers making everything work better while running around like insane people."

Finally, to top off the "Gunner OP" shift, add in four new ammos:

1. Gibble mount - Shifts gun arcs to the left. Could be several ammos that shift 5-10-15 degrees left at the cost of 5-10-15% ammo.

2. Hook mount - Shifts gun arcs to the right. Could be several ammos that shift 5-10-15 degrees right at the cost of 5-10-15% ammo.

3. Airburst - Shift gun arcs up substantially, removes most arming time, cuts clip size, increases burst radius.

4. Depth charge - Shift gun arcs down substantially. Have not done the math on this to figure out balance, but it would need a substantial debuff.

...this is fantastic.

19

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 07:57:23 pm »

Still, I'm not sure that's a good solution to the problem.

Why not?

Mainly because I'm opposed to design that lets players trap themselves. I don't like the option to take no repair tools, either in current GoI or in this proposal, because a ship needs them to function.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 07:25:11 pm »

I think you're misunderstanding me.. Ammos would take up tool slots. So if you wanted 2 ammos, and to be able to buff your gun you would bring: Wrench, Buff, Ammo, Ammo. This way if you need someone to have alot of repair-power, they would have to sacrifice firepower. or vice-versa. Sidenote: "Crew" stamina would be the current Engi stamina. If we decided we needed those extra arcs on guns, we could add a tool (similar to the buff hammer) or an ammo, that increased the angles guns could face. (which would also take up 1 of those 4 tool slots)

No, I got that. I just misread it as 5 slots. My bad.

Still, I'm not sure that's a good solution to the problem.

21

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 07:02:19 pm »

If I'm counting correctly everyone gets 5 tools. Gunner has 1 pilot, 1 engineer, and 3 gunner tools.. right? so just combine the engineer and gunner tools. "Crew" would have one pilot tool, and their choice of 4 crew tools. (and yes, ammos are tools)

That's sort of a non-choice though. Mallet/Spanner would be taken on EVERYONE.

Heck...few guns need more than 2 ammo types, and many only really run one. Mallet/Spanner/Chem+Ammo/Ammo and Mallet/Spanner/Chem/Buff+Ammo are pretty much ALWAYS your best options.

22

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 06:38:04 pm »

Just get rid of gunner entirely. Make a single, unified "Crew" class. People who want to call themselves "gunners" still can. It would open up new combinations for crew (and consequently ship) loadouts. We might even start to see something new. Some of the tools might need re-balanced. We'll deal with that when we come to it though.

If you gave it three engineer and two-three gunner slots it could work. I'd be worried about only 2 engineer tools though.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 01, 2016, 11:40:58 am »

Why do you think gunners are underused? Most ships have gunners and when they don't it's because they're using a simple gun that doesn't need multiple ammos. Permanent arcs (shooting angles) won't make gunners more useful on simple guns like gat than the extra damage, buffs, and repairs from a buff engi. The gun arcs were designed years before gunner stamina was implemented

Gunner is used on guns like hwatcha because despite only needing one ammo (burst), the extra arcs from gunner stamina is a great bonus. Making the extra arcs permanent would only buff guns the gunner is already used on. This would break balance because all guns would have 20% better vertical arcs which benefits some guns much more than others. It's a common complaint that it's frustrating enough fighting a hwatcha with the current gunner stamina and it'd be infuriating to do so with permanent arc bonuses

Agreed.

Which begs a question: what CAN a gunner improve that will give them a more permanent place? Let's look at a list of options and figure it out from there.

Off the top of my head:

• Damage
• Reload Speedl
• Swap Buff to Gunner (either as a tool or a built-in feature like my previous suggestion)
• Second Engineer tool
• ...list continues?

I'd like to avoid the second Engineer tool direction unless it's required to bring them up to par, as that blurs the lines a bit too much for my tastes. Other thoughts on mechanics we could use and/or add?

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Suggestion: Ships tilting more when turning

« on: March 01, 2016, 10:39:22 am »

The turning power is generated from the back of the ship via turner engines.
The force is pushing the ship forward just with one side engine pushing with more force than the other, causing the ship to turn.
How can this cause "tilt"?  Tilting would imply that a force is being directed at the side or lower areas of the ship causing it to "swing" up and down  while hanging under the balloon.

I looked this up, because I've long been curious (especially since I once attempted to code up a slightly more realistic set of airship controls in Unity).

Blimps (and thus I'm assuming zeppelins) CAN roll, just not that much. This is due to the force of the turning engine being affected by the drag of air, specifically on the parts farthest from the engines, much in the same way that the hull of a boat is subject to water drag, causing the boat to roll into turns. So realistically the ship WOULD turn slightly into rotations, although I'd imagine not a hugely significant amount given the force the engines have to put out (to move that much metal) vs. the weaker resistance that air provides over water.

...and you have no idea how hard that was to confirm. There's basically no information easily accessible on the mechanics of blimp / zeppelin flight.

25

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Pilot tool-Decoy

« on: February 29, 2016, 05:19:11 pm »

Newer players would. Regulars not paying attention to lobby would.

Regardless of falling for it, it is still a decoy. It is still something that could be used to establlish a tactical situation.

Something that preys on new players and inattention seems like a poor design.

A decoy that places an object that fires towards spotted enemy ships might be interesting though: something you might use to retreat into a cloud and place, leaving dummy fire to convince your opponents you're somewhere you're not.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The Everyone Think Really Hard And Make Rangefinder Useful Thread

« on: February 29, 2016, 10:30:47 am »

Hm. I'm honestly surprised that I don't see a "grant weapons from your ship a damage boost against the target" feature.

It's a nice niche for the tool on ships that run a mix of close + long range weapons, and would definitely give it a place on several ships that can't bring all three weapons to bear -- at the expense of having someone immediately available to repair, which seems fairly balanced.

Perhaps something like "When active, spots the enemy ship for your ship only (probably with some sort of special effect to show priority is on that ship). Displays the range to the target and increases damage against that ship by 10-15% as long as the Rangefinder is active and on-target. Rangefinder spots decay in 3 seconds after the Rangefinder is put away."

Might make having one of these on a ship really strong -- Galleon long-range sides come specifically to mind.

27

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: February 29, 2016, 10:20:09 am »

Weird thought...

What if Buffing just became a core part of the Gunner / Engineer class, and was pushed into a pre-combat role exclusively?

By that I mean remove the Buff Hammer entirely, and allow Gunners and Engineers to hit components repeatedly with the Spanner or Wrench when they're at 100% health to "over-build" them, which triggers the buff. Gunners are the only ones who can buff guns, and Engineers can buff other components (Engines, Armor, Balloons).

It might require the introduction of a new Engineer tool to make tool choice have some deeper choices again, but I think it might make the Gunner effective and distinct while not causing tool slot confusion. It will also help the Gunner have more responsibility on the ship (pre-buffing weapons), and help solidify the buff into a pre-combat tool and not a mid-combat tool. Finally, it has a nice side of effect of discouraging Mallet Gunners, which are a bane to my existence and unfortunately more common among newer players than I'd like. 

Thoughts?

EDIT: Might even be worth re-thinking the gun buff in this case. Maybe to make guns more durable instead of giving them more damage? Maybe to give them a bit of both (+5% damage, +25% durability, for example)?

28

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The Case for Falloff Damage and a Third Damage Type

« on: February 28, 2016, 11:48:18 am »

Pretty close. Guns could have any damage type on the falloff, which I am going to start calling 'Terminal' damage, as well as moving it to secondary in place of Burst since it happens before Burst.

So this is a really cool idea, but I'm not sold on the presentation.

I think an easier way to present the idea (and increase clarification) would be to simply give all weapons three Range Increments and 2-3 damage types at each increment (make that a variable amount, possibly).

The you might see something like this:

ARTEMIS
0-500m: X Shatter Damage
50-250m: X Shatter Damage, X Explosive Damage (Secondary)
250-1300m: X Explosive Damage (Primary), X Shatter Damage (Secondary), X Fire Damage (Tertiary)

I think it's a little clearer, and has the added advantage of being able to display ranges immediately for clarity, instead of dealing with terms like "Terminal" for "Point-Blank," which is a bit confusing (since Terminal typically means "end"), and without having to math out how useful the weapon is after Terminal range but before Arming range.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Hull repair tool: Welding Torch

« on: November 08, 2015, 11:27:37 pm »

Thoughts?

I'm not a fan -- it's kind of a trap choice, as it actively weakens your ability to keep your ship alive for a desperate hope that you'll win and have time to heal up. Probably only useful in stomps as a result, but much too strong in them, as it allows a team that's winning hard to be effectively full health every time.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please make rematch the default option

« on: November 04, 2015, 06:55:31 pm »

I would prefer something like "Rematch with ship scramble Y/N" and only those who vote being counted.

Yes, please. Or, better yet, a "rematch" option and then a second "ship scramble" option, since sometimes a team literally just wants an even rematch.

Also, when a game DOES fall apart, can we please make it so it remembers if I went into that game with two ships and we end up back in the match search together? Having to re-lobby with my friends after every game gets pretty old.