Messages

46

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Why the current level system is not good

« on: May 20, 2014, 06:45:52 pm »

Yup, planning on ways to move towards non achievement based leveling.. more XP related... things you shoot... things you repair... etc.

When?  Dunno!  Definitely for co-op though.

47

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 06:04:08 pm »

There was some brief discussion between me and the Lead Engineer, Watchmaker, and we're so far leaning towards looking at the Buff Hammer's effects on guns.  Buffing damage outright, or the amount of the damage buff, will need to be looked at.  We think that this will solve a lot of issues so those of you who brought up Buff Hammer, great observation.  The next step then would be to look at the current set of ammo and introduce a few new ones in the effort to push things into niches.

RE: vanilla

Again, the vanilla rounds is good idea theoretically... it just introduces a lot of weird behaviors.  Even if the guns are loaded with Scavenged rounds, a lot of people will be up in arms about it.  Basically you just start each match nerfed.  It's pretty detrimental to new players.

RE: penetration

This existed before.  The Field Gun was able to do it for a short period of time in Dev App... it was severely OP.  The functionality is still there but making it into an ammo for all guns seems risky to me.  We'd have to be smart and limit the penetration power based on muzzle speed and so forth, Field Gun being one of the most effective cases here.  Ideally, I'd prefer if it were linked to a particular weapon.

RE: Impact... sort of

I don't mind weapons dealing Impact damage, what I don't want is that knockback given to all weapons.  If were ever the case, it'd have to be cleverly limited based on some variable like muzzle speed or explosive damage etc...  But same as above, I'd like it if it were linked to a gun.




You can always change my mind though   Giving guns super unique functionality, and potentially abusable functionality, just feels dangerous.

48

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 03:50:08 pm »

RE: Current Ammo Overhaul

Yeah, this is on the table too.  I'll take feedback on those as well.

49

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 02:31:12 pm »

RE: Engineer Nerfing

Don't worry.  There are some really cool tools coming down the way that'll make it awesome.

RE: Scavenge Ammo

Hmm...  interesting.  Could work.  Although maybe just forcing guns to stick to what ammo you reload with forever may be better....  Yeah it'll be riskier in general.

50

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 01:13:53 pm »

Another idea that was emailed to me:

Instead of going more niche and extreme, make an ammo that is pretty general with smaller buffs.  This may make it more attractive for an Engineer to take a more general ammo than specializing in one thing or another when it's not really their job too.  This may mean the existing ammo needs a healthy push into one niche or another to make it work.  The idea is interesting is because it takes the opposite approach.  Gunner = Specializes in situational damage dealing.  Engineer = Specializes in situational repairs.

RE: Normal Ammo

Interesting idea.  Although it's kind of troublesome that all guns will be unloaded and you have to sit there and load everything in before a match.  Guns like flare would be hideous to load at the start of the match.  Basically what this may collapse to is racing towards each other, trying to load each gun (maybe even choosing guns that reload the fastest), and whoever loads their guns first wins.  It almost sounds like a Western quick draw shootout at high-noon.  I like the concept but I worry about how it'll affect the phases of combat.  It's pretty dramatic.  If there was a way for guns to be loaded when you start... guns are loaded randomly with the collective ammo that everyone has brought?  I hate randomization but the captain choosing what ammo each gun takes based on the collective ammo of his/her crew would increase an already painfully long Readying time and make it excruciating—definitely don't want to do that.

RE: Loading gun at last second

We've actually jumped back and forth between this.  While the interaction is totally weird as it is now, we felt that it was less punishing and allowed players a degree of freedom to react.  Reloading and locking the type of ammo means that if the combat situation changed with those 4-12s would mean you'd be really screwed... especially if ammo became more niche.  It's a huge risk.  Being able to switch ammo at the last second mitigates some of the risk; some of the risk still lies in the fact that the gun is reloaded (unusable) but at least you can recover and respond in a more meaningful way than not being able to use your gun because it has an ammo that doesn't work for the current situation.

This issue was one of the biggest decision issues we wrestled with.  We're still willing to look at it again, though.  This change would be required if we decided to have guns unloaded at the start of a match.  This means the first thing that everyone does is:
- Pilot starts steering and setting up position
- Engineers buff or load ammo
- Gunners load ammo, but since they have more variety and don't have buffing responsibilities it'll likely be up to gunners.

So what it should be at the beginning/recoup phase:

- Pilot steers
- Engineers buff the ship
- Gunners load ammo

RE: buff hammer

Can definitely look into this as well.

RE: the ideas so far

I really appreciate the feedback and your ideas.  There definitely a lot of crazy ideas out there... some you may think are totally jokes may actually be rather interesting.







The timing of when these changes drop will be... 'interesting'.  It's like asking if I want to fight 20 five year olds or if I want to fight one five year old that is 20 ft tall.  It definitely seems like highlighting the gunner means I have to nerf some engineer stuff too.

51

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 03:23:38 pm »

I see how it is... you want it named after you

I can entertain that idea.

52

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:09:58 pm »

 Everyone's ammo ideas has been copied to that thread as well.

53

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:09:35 pm »

From Caprontos:


An ammo that deflates an enemies balloon, causing it to move down quicker, and up slower. like mimicking the pilot tool

An ammo that has a chance to remove chem spray seconds or buff seconds..

An ammo that "seeks" specific components.. So if you shoot with in a certain range, the ammo will turn to hit it (so like, if you have engine seeking ammo, the ammo will turn and hit engines as long as your close) (Reduced rate of fire though..).

On that note.. magnet ammo that makes it pull toward metal parts of the ship..

An ammo that changes a guns dmg type.. (goodbye  balance!)

Light loch.. that works like loch but will only reduce light guns to 1 hp.. with slightly reduced stats..

Some new debuff ammo.. Things like, if you hit an engine its output is reduced by 25% for 20seconds..

An ammo that marks a hit ship.. works even in clouds.. but the mark follows normal rules and will go away if not visible.. (single shot, +20% reload + a bit more range).

An ammo that creates small tar clouds.. on impact..

Friendly ammo (heal - buff - chem spray allies from afar..)

Friendly ammo 2 - (Use the magic of friendly ammo to heal - buff - chem spray yourself..)

An ammo that makes a ship magnetized.. and pulls it toward any nearby ships..

Delayed fire ammo.. it only tries to add fire stacks x seconds after hitting an enemy ship..

Ammo that only works for mines, but lets you use a hot key that explodes all the mines you shot with the ammo..

buff ammo that adds a buff to the gun that lasts for two clips.. second clip can be any ammo.

Ammo that extends the life of engi buffs and chem spray... maybe it makes a buff last 2 clips, instead of timed.. if the ammo is active when the buff is added.. the point is so... having one buff engi is fine because he doesn't have to buy your gun all the time, and still buff and shoot his.... or just to make chem spray last longer..

Ammo that increases the turn ratios of the gun .. but dmgs the gun the entire time it is outside its default range.. (They said the pyramidion couldn't shoot to the right..)

Random stat ammo.. that randomly adds buffs and debuffs from a pool that includes all available buffs and debuffs.. (... no? I didn't think so)

54

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:08:47 pm »

From SirNotLag:

Dropper ammo: adds a drop of like 15 m/s to all projectiles shot, 50% less arming time, +10% more damage ( i thought of this due to the dropping mines discussion but figured a new ammo type could get the job done and may be useful for other weapons due to the damage increase and less arming time)

Rocketry ammo: 20% chance of adding a fire stack on the enemy and +60% projectile speed, however every shot adds a fire stack on the weapon your using (I was thinking of having the chem spray stop the fire stacks but since this is a range ammo type its be to easy to keep the weapon chemed and then you would just have a super powerful lesmok. So have the fire stacks added from this ignore chem spray immunity and that may also have the extinguisher become more useful as a niche tool.)

Flat ammo: reduce accuracy, projectiles travel -15% slower, +20% damage increase

shredder ammo: -30% clip reduction, +20% faster fire rate, +20%  damage increase, every round deals 10 damage to the weapon.

55

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:08:33 pm »

Boom. 

Dedicated thread for ammo.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4079.new.html#new

56

Feedback and Suggestions / Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:08:20 pm »

Everyone knows that Gunners may not be the most popular role to play on your ship.  Many think that running Engineers is the most beneficial due to the assortment of Repair/Buff equipment Engineers can carry.  It's time to make Gunners more desirable and the easiest, fastest, and arguably best way to do it is through new Gunner Ammo.



This is a call for new Gunner Ammo that you think will make you choose the 3 slots for ammo that a Gunner has over the 1 slot that the others have.



Theoretically, coming up with ammo types that are more niche means that players will need to take advantage of the the additional gunner slots.  Non-gunners will usually decide to carry 'safe' ammo, which will give them as many gun options as possible.  Niche ammo has very specific use cases: situational and on what gun.  If a gunner is coordinated with the pilot, using these niche ammo should have a large pay-off.  That's the direction I'd like to steer new gunner ammo.

Here is a short list of things we can do, but we welcome other ideas.  However, try to keep the ammo effects localized to the gun they're loaded into.

• Effects can stay while a gunner is not on the gun, but ammo is loaded into it (like heatsink)
• Probably could increase max gun health while ammo is loaded
• Modify primary and secondary damage
• Modify damage modifier of gun
• Modify range
• Modify muzzle speed
• Deal proportional damage over entire clip (e.g. reduce gun health to 20% by end of clip) 
• There's a lot we could do... brainstorm away!

Many have suggested other things like new tools and passive abilities.  While these ideas may be good and could solve the gunner issue, these ideas require many new features, code work, UI, and will require new interaction paradigms (how to select and use things) or break existing ones.

Here is a simple rule that we try to follow as much as possible due to results in alpha and beta of the game (more about that later):

• Ammunition is only used at a gun and forces a reload.  The new ammunition is 'loaded' into the gun at the very last microsecond of the reload time (the bullet icon filling).  Up until then, you can switch between what ammo is being loaded.
• Repair equipment is only used when you are running around the ship and must be used on a component
• Pilot tools is only used while on the helm.  They are active so long as you have the skill selected.
• The two spotting pilot tools, Range Finder and Spotting Glass, are the only two exceptions to the above interaction paradigm.  We'd like to keep it this way and not introduce any more special cases outside of 'spotting' equipment.

Here is information regarding what has happened with Gunner ammo in alpha and beta:

• Ammo affected reload time.  E.g. one ammo reloaded very quickly but had fewer shots.  However, the way in which the reloading mechanics worked we had to remove reload duration effects because it was breaking in several cases.  It was subject to a lot of abuse.
• There were gunner passive abilities but were removed because there was a difficulty of selecting what passives were active.  Ultimately, passives caused the decision space to collapse and therefore did not offer players any additional meaningful choices.

Thanks for everyone's input.  Dev App usually has some some weird things to be tested.  Get in touch with Keyvias for a key to Dev App.

57

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 19, 2014, 12:18:27 pm »

Yeah we can do something with gun health.  Finding a way so it makes that ammo can add health is another story

We had variable reload speeds before in beta.  The way ammo worked at that time make it very broken so we had to ditch it.  I have a feeling it might still be a little broken but I haven't sat down to think of all the edge cases yet.  Either way, it feels very risky to me knowing what it was like before and how easily it broke

And not to say that these are ideas we can't do... it's just that I'd like to evaluate what can easily be done before saying yes to a ton of work that won't be done for months.  It's a matter of finding the path of least resistance and that path is through thinking of new ammo.  To be honest, the addons might be the solution we're looking for but I need to bring it up with the team to decide of how 'passive' we think they are.  In addition to variable reload speeds, there were also passives.. believe it or not lol.

58

Gameplay / Re: 1.3.6 Tar Changes

« on: May 19, 2014, 11:55:22 am »

The way in which it looks won't make it in until another patch.

Damage can be changed whenever.  But given its current problems of actually getting someone into tar... fair trade off?

59

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 19, 2014, 11:50:06 am »

I really want to keep this to ammo for now.

Selection other than selecting your tools and following existing interaction paradigms and its related UI will take months of work to implement, and then more months to test.  Adding/removing/tweaking ammo is the fastest thing we can do with minimal feature implementation.  If I had to guess, adding these new Gunner mechanics like passives or addons won't make it till Co-Op if we ever decide to pursue them.

However, this doesn't mean these kinds of additive effects cannot exist.  The issue is with UI and interaction.  When you're on a ship, we need to think about how players will select these various addons where they will happen.  Adding new buttons to press or menus is very clunky so I'd like to avoid those as much as possible.  This brings us all the way back to the ammo themselves but also how you select which ammo to bring.  There may be something that can be done here like all the 3 equipped ammos affecting each other in some way.  Maybe deciding which slot they go into is important.  Maybe the mixture the 3 ammos becomes your default in some weird way?  These things may have potential.  However, I also want to stay away from passives and random things.  The experience as a gunner (and the rest of Guns) is active, you are doing all of the time and not run around with a magic aura.  Randomness is just unclear and doesn't allow players to be active when they want to.

Yeah, there are a lot of constraints but some constraints are always good.  I don't think there are too many right now.  Constraints and following design principles and previously established paradigms means the game is easy to understand and the systems don't feel like band-aid fixes.  Instead, they should be deep and rich with many viable options.  There are some good ideas here, let's keep going in that direction.




We have passives before in beta but there were several issues with them.  I'll bring the idea up again with the rest of the team to see what they think.  If possible, I'd still like to generate more ammo ideas.

60

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 16, 2014, 06:42:20 pm »

If the problem can't be solved with ammo then we can consider other alternatives.  However, the issue is that these addons or new mechanics are not only new but they break several design paradigms that we have in place.  All pilot skills (aside from the 2 spotters) must be used at the helm, the engineer skills are used while running around, gunner ammo is used on or while shooting a gun.  We already really don't like the spotter tool exceptions so we'd like to keep them as few as possible.  While addons may be a solution, it's a very messy solution which will require a lot of work.

Again, if the problem can't be solved with additional ammo (again crazy ideas for ammo are okay... like effects while the ammo is loaded like Heatsink) then we can examine additional mechanics.