Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: Squidslinger Gilder on July 15, 2013, 05:05:45 am
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Bringing this in here since it is a bit of theory crafting involved and I don't think people see it in the feedback section in this thread: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1580.0.html
Original concept is for an aerial Torpedo I codenamed the Barracuda. Hammered out some ideas behind it. When it gets brought up in game there is quite a lot of interest in the weapon's concept. The term Torpedo alone seems to raise plenty of excitement among new and vet players. I personally think there is a opening for this weapon to be used in the medium mounts as well as the mere concept of it would bring some new strategies as well as new players to the game.
Note the initial concepts change in that thread by the end but the general idea stays intact. We were a little hung up on the firing mechanism and overall design. Whether or not it has a tracking capability of some form is also questionable. Some want, heat seeking...I kinda favor a magnetic effect like Ressorius, but balancing would be a greater issue with either method so a dumb fire torpedo is certainly fine.
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I like this idea after reading the thread, and it reinforces my idea of the game being separated into different phases of combat in order to balance the use of weapons.
This weapon would be a counter tool for the Long range/buffing/support stage of a ship battle, forcing ships to evade quickly or move to medium range to get "under the guns".
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I've also been thinking up a new concept for a torpedo boat ship. Codenaming it the Lionfish. It'll have the dual front medium mount firing which I was kinda hoping the Manta would have but didn't. Will make it possible to have it as a torpedo boat with dual firing Barracudas. Maybe make it a sniper hunter. Will have similar regalia as the Goldfish. Still considering that. Would be nice to have some of the frills like the real Lionfish. Just haven't thought up all the component placements and balloon design. Or overall weight and mass other than it should be bulkier than a Goldfish.
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I like the concept of making this have VERY limited pitch and yaw, something like 10 degrees.
Additionally I love that this thing would go off like a mine, and ruin everything near it. Basically dynamic area denial.
But I think what would make this awesome is dynamic arming time. Basically have timer settings on the torpedo. It would add a massive element of skill to get the range/timing settings correct.
I can see this being paired with a merc for devastating power in the correct hands. The gunner would either have to coordinate with the other gunner (gungineer's) torpedo or coordinate with his own by running over to another gun.
Additionally this system would have to be severely ammo limited (one shot, 15 second reload, max 15 second timer, min 5 second timer). Homing would totally break everything (may be mitigated by only homing to spotted targets, but I dislike the idea of fire and forget in this game).
Posting this here instead of the other thread.
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I like this idea, but I also like the homing idea.
What if it was to home like an old school torpedo, very limited homing as if the ship is not moving very far, it would hit it, make it only be able to home in an arc of let's say 10 degrees. That would give a new dimension to game play where the crew spots an incoming torpedo, and alerts the captain that they have to move in order not to be hit. Make it escapeable. If you run, youäll be fine, but if you're distracted with other things, there is a chance it will hit you.
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its interesting, but im not sure why you posted, or i guess re-posted, to the gameplay section.
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Ammo limited of course but how much may depend on the mount since these are large heavy warheads being fired. Also slow firing speed. I think it would depend on how the weapon launcher design looks. Whether it is a tube design or something more like a huge hwacha with animated tube doors. Either way, it would be neat to see a door or tube opening as the tip of a torpedo comes into view.
Yeah I think any homing would be very minimal if folks wanted one. Hence a magnetic effect if there was one. As it gets near, the torpedo would start to pull slightly towards the ship whether friend or foe. This could also work detrimentally as mines would have a magnetic attraction and you could use mines as a way to shield a ship from torpedoes. The turn would not be quick or sharp. A pilot could avoid it if they see the torpedo coming to start with.
I reposted it here because I see more activity here involving theory crafting as well as Muse chiming in on ideas.
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If they are big and slow, and I imagine not very tough, they'd presumably be easy enough to shoot (and blow up)? So you wouldn't need to avoid them always.
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That is just the thing. How easy is it to shoot down mines? I've seen some try it but often times it is preferable to focus on evasion rather than waste time and effort on minesweeping. Even merely hitting a mine is not like dev app where your ship is virtually crippled. You'd have to hit 2-3 before you'd be in serious trouble.
The fact that you can do it, gives a defending ship an option in an emergency as a gunner sees a torpedo about to make impact. But you gotta consider in 2v2 or 3v3 engagements, that if torpedoes are being used, they'll be accompanied by enemy ships or other weapon fire. Sitting still to shoot up torpedoes will not be a viable strategy when you have a Pyra barreling down on you. Plus if long range engagement happens first, you'll have ships with all their gun points shot out before they can shoot down a torpedo.
When you combine it all with tactics, you could have a torpedo boat keeping the opposing team from getting comfortable while your wingman exploits it. Or other strategies. If the torpedoes are deadly enough, even if slow moving, they'll serve a purpose and be enough of a reason for a crew to be on their toes in spotting one incoming.
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There would be a tactic in taking out the Engines first, then firing a torpedo, and just Watch them sit there, in desperation.. Keeping their Engines down :p
There is also a denial effect, if people camp a Place, you can have them vacate by firing Torpedos at them. Make them move, and herd them closer to somewhere else.
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While the idea may be interesting I think that it would change the meta too much and it would be too difficult to balance.
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While the idea may be interesting I think that it would change the meta too much and it would be too difficult to balance.
Which is exactly what many folks want. They want new weapons and new combinations. The same old loadouts forever get boring.
1.3 changed it some. The cqc game was altered enough where I think we should be seeing a resurgence of some flame based combat, which is good. Also the mines are adding another factor to deal with. This has returned some usefulness back to the gunner class.
The long range game is still being ran by merc/jack. Adding another standard mount weapon won't really change that. But medium mount weapon, that is where possibilities like torpedoes come in. Balancing wouldn't be as bad as you'd think. It would come down to speed, arming time, and power of the weapon just like any other weapon. The only other factor is combinations of the weapon on things like galleons. Jack/Torp combo could potentially be the most devastating combination ever unleashed in the game. But, with slow firing, reload, and potential for the torpedoes to be intercepted...there is the potential for countering it. Not to mention if the opposing team ran their own torpedo boat. The Jack/Torp would have to stay more mobile to be effective since the galleons move so slow that if they sat still firing, there would be the chance enemy torps would tear them up should they miss one, or if they got flanked by the torpedo boat.
That would be something, a light sniper boat drawing attention and fire to get a target spot to allow a fast Torpfish the chance to get in enough range to fire torps from a blind side. All the time using the bait boat as a spotter so the Torpfish could shoot from cover. How about that for your sniping meta!
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Weapon mount: Medium
Range: Long
Rate of fire: Slow
Reload: Very Slow
Ammo capacity: 4-6 shots
Primary damage: Piercing
Secondary damage: Explosive
Piercing and explosive? Trololololol.
Seriously though, that's not going to fly by any stretch.
Beyond that, just how slow are we talking here in terms of projectile speed? It couldn't be much slower than flak shots, or it honestly wouldn't do much at range.
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I think it was changed at the end of the thread to perform basically like the mine, only with forward movement and homing.
Personally, I'd like to just see a timed mine with a larger explosion radius that moves forward reasonably slowly.
Would very rarely actually hit, and more is a "Get the fuck out of whatever you are hiding in" sort of weapon. Pure area denial.
Homing is a bad idea. There are too many weapons that are easy to hit with, we don't need more.
I'm a fan of higher power weapons that even the best of the gunners have incredible difficulty with.
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Weapon mount: Medium
Range: Long
Rate of fire: Slow
Reload: Very Slow
Ammo capacity: 4-6 shots
Primary damage: Piercing
Secondary damage: Explosive
Piercing and explosive? Trololololol.
Seriously though, that's not going to fly by any stretch.
Beyond that, just how slow are we talking here in terms of projectile speed? It couldn't be much slower than flak shots, or it honestly wouldn't do much at range.
I think speed should be around pyramidion maximum base cruise speed. Maybe kerosene speed.
Range should be the entire map.
The goal is here that the projectile is easy to evade if you see it coming. It is just a deterrent against staying still and sniping.
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Why would I want to get closer to a ship outfitted with torpedoes that are so slow that staying far away from them makes it easier to dodge? Sure I'll move, but nothing stops me from just moving back and forth and watching them pass by.
I'm playing a little devil's advocate here.
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You could make it a wire guided torpedo.... Figure this:
Medium gun with maybe a little less arc than the merc. Arming time of three seconds. Long as hell reload. Heavy shatter and piercing (making it explosive would make it paired with a merc OP.) The gunner controls the torpedo by aiming the gun at the target; the torpedo following the crosshair. A line of sight must be maintained and if the gunner leaves the gun, the torpedo flies in a random direction.
Firing this weapon means you can't move the ship if you want a good shot. If the enemy sees the torpedo, they'll most likely see you too. If an enemy destroys the gun, torpedo explodes.
Oh, and it causes an impact like the mines! <3
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Maybe give it a long arming time so it really can only be used long range. Best if it's something easily visible on the torpedo itself.
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I'm telling you, settable timer.
I say make it invulnerable (or at least very hard to hit), and give it a massive explosion radius.
It should be something you NEED to see coming, and then get the hell out of dodge.
It'd make taking cover risky since you might fail to see it coming (and then it explodes right over your head, damaging everything on the ship severely. Impact damage is definitely the way to go. I wouldn't make the timer visible to enemies. Add a bit of chaos there.
Still not on board with any kind of guiding. That's silly, and takes the skill out of shooting it.
I like the idea of this thing being area denial and only area denial. A support weapon, not a outright killing weapon.
With a super large explosion radius the speed would need to be pretty slow (to give ships a fair chance to escape). Thinking Galleon at it's fastest?
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Not to go too far off topic but I always thought it would be awesome to have a really powerful medium weapon that exploded after a set time, only did damage upon explosion and arming time had to be set manually by the gunner.
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Yeah it was changed by the end of the thread Zill. I cannot edit old posts so you kinda have to check the other pages and not just read the initial proposal. There was also a minimum distance arming time and a gravity drop on the ammo before balloon deploys talked about later. So getting close to a torpedo ship would be ideally what you would want to do.
Smo that was an idea I had. Dunno if I mentioned it or not but having a timer set manually by the gunner. Like say torpedo would not go active till a certain distance and would be able to ride it's initial firing momentum longer, which would be faster than normal flight once the balloon opened. Just getting the idea to work and implementing it are issues that could be a mess. Lot of this needs some Muse input to see if it could even be possible with Unity. Ressorius liked the idea but that has been all I've been able to find out and that was from talking to him in game one night.
I've never been 100% on board with the guidance idea either. But folks have mentioned interest in it. Personally I'd like a dumbfire Torpedo and if guidance is what folks want, then go magnetic style with very minimal guidance.
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Forgive me for not reading through 4 pages of speculation. Perhaps in the OP you could give what the idea has evolved into?
Guidance in this game would be massively OP, unless the weapon was so weak it wouldn't matter anyway, so dumb fire for sure.
If a gunner would set the timer, why not just set it at the lowest range and fire-and-forget? What about other guns that could benefit from this if it ever did become a thing? Would they too get those mechanics?
I still don't see the point of a weapon that I could stay so far away from that dodging it would be easy, become OP at medium range, and then useless again (depends on stats) in short range. That just makes me want to avoid it altogether.
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Presumably the idea of setting the timer is that it explodes at the set range, and not when it hits something, rather than just setting an arming-time-type activation delay. If you set this to the lowest range you'd never hit anything further away...
Presumably it also doesn't explode when it hits something, so setting it to maximum range won't work for closer things either. I think this adds a level of skill (and/or luck) to what could otherwise be considered an OP weapon.
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Yeah, a hit before the timer went off would result in zero damage and the destruction of the torp. Basically the thing only does damage if you correctly set the timer for the range you want to use it at. This would make it super difficult to use. Which I think is a good thing.
There would also still have to be a minimum timer. Something like 5 seconds, or even 10, just to ensure the gun is useless (or at least very low power) at short range. Or just have the thing do massive friendly-fire damage if the gunner sets the timer too low.
Zill, I would say this has different roles at different ranges: Area denial long range, high damage/difficult to aim or time medium range, and useless short range. I think it would mostly mix up the long range game by forcing snipers into the open. Ships with this would be pretty weak against brawlers, sure. You need a good ally. Or an amazing gunner to hit them as they approach.
I'm not talking an overhaul of arming time system. The set-timer mechanic would only be for this gun (and maybe subsequent guns it makes sense for, but none I can think of). I'd be exicted to test this sort of thing, and maybe it'd never be viable (it could be too OP or too weak to make sense) but I think it deserves a shot.
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It may help rather than hinder snipers though... If they are on a galleon or spire and sniping at you, they could fire the torpedoes off at you too, making it even more dangerous to approach them.
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this weapon, while cool to think about in theory, just kinda doesnt seem to work if you pick at it.
all other guns in this game, with the exception of the mine launcher depending on how it is used, depend on the user to hit the enemy. this weapon seems to depend on the enemy dodging it. why is that a thing on a weapon that is the main damage dealer of 2 out of 3 of the ships that have them.
the recent talk of damage depending on a timer after zill's observations are another problem, a gun that depends on the gunner setting the correct time to do damage is awesome from a design standpoint. but why would someone on that ship use that weapon at all, it depends on alot of variables going exactly according to plan to kill your enemy and save your life.
Im with zill on this one, i just dont see the point.
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Speculation is mostly all we can really do with some of the design until Muse chimes in.
Problem right now with making it have a short range capability is we already have short range weapons. It would also be very powerful at short range because it is using an impact style damage like the mines use. Yeah I'd like it if you could use it at any range but then we'll go through another medium flak fiasco. I'd rather have it designed from the beginning with balancing in mind than have it nerfed to hell and be completely useless.
The concept on the range we discussed was similar to the mine launcher right now. Have the 3 sec style arming timer before the balloon deploys. Torpedo would be similar so it would drop till the balloon and engine activate. This puts some effort into aiming it and getting the torpedo on course. Ammo types could change the arming time so you could have the Torpedo going active much sooner but say at a cost to the overall range of the device.
The fact that the weapon is so visible makes it a bit weaker in standoff engagements. It will force ships into moving more than it may impact hulls, until engines are sniped out. Pilots with vertical assist tools will still be able to dodge but if the torpedo gunner is good enough, they can follow up their next shot predicting the direction of the ship. So battles on Dunes will likely be so-so. The real beauty of the weapon will not really be seen until on cover controlled maps. Canyon would be perfect. You could not have teams just sitting in the open areas of the map because there is so much cloud cover that all the torpedo team would need is one spotter. The torpedo boat could then fire from within clouds and keep the camping team on it's toes. Allowing the spotter ship to close range and prepare for a kill. The counter to this being good use of flares and gunners able to not only react quickly but also be accurate enough to stop the torpedo boat before it got it's shots off.
Jaeger if you read the original info you'll see the gun is very dependent on aiming. This is not a FOF weapon.
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I would say that forcing ships to move even with an easily-avoidable projectile complicates the Mercury gunning solution for the ship targeted by a torpedo. They would have to deal enough damage (a massive amount) to make it worth it to move the ship and not just eat one or two while using a Merc to snipe out the launching platform.
Also, if these things go really slowly, how do they fly? It'd look wonky to have a giant hoverboard out there.
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The planned design would involve a balloon with propeller drive. Think we talk about it in detail about midway through the other thread.
Imagine if you will, someone in this world found a surplus of old torpedoes. They're big, heavy, and are not designed for air usage. Yet...they pack a heck of a punch. Now imagine them trying to figure out a way to get it to work for aerial combat. Remember limited resources and knowledge. Plus also the craziness of how technology would work in a steam/dieselpunk world. Common sense does not always factor in.
The casing would be modified with a small engine with a balloon support. Pressurized air tank enclosed. With that there would not be much room for a rocket mechanism so a modification of the propeller would come into play. So alone this weapon will fall like a rock, no question about that. But that is where the balloon comes in as it deploys and keeps the course maintained. Speed is not necessarily the reining factor since the warhead would pack a heavy punch. It would be a weapon meant for downing galleon or larger size ships. Damage would be consistent with the mines prior to nerfing. Critical damage level. If you get hit with one, you're literally Zuka'd.
So to offset that amount of dmg there is the slower movement and firing mechanism. Plus each warhead will have a contrail effect generated by smoke coming from the mini engine driving it. It is the "oh shit, TORPEDO!!!" moment when that contrail is spotted. Pilots need to be worried, they need to be terrified. Specially if a torpedo boat has gotten close enough to make evasion difficult. Gunners must be perfect with aims. Accounting for travel time and predicting not only their own ship movement but also enemy ship movement. Which is all very possible.
Lorewise I think it would fit in as kind of an Anglean Raider weapon, maybe even Arashi scavenger. I imagine an Anglean finding this old tech and then modifying it for use. Lack of resources in their area may serve as a backstory. They wanted to turn it into a big rocket but lack enough fuel to move it so they designed a different mechanism. Arashi maybe similar. Imagine desert dwellers finding water based weaponry so what do they do...turn it into aerial weaponry in some bizarre scavenged way for use against the Guild.