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« on: October 06, 2013, 08:14:00 am »
Lochnager:
Only one shot which deals 225% of the normal damage
No Recoil
-90% Turning speed
250 dmg to own gun
-60% arming time
-50% AoE
So the one shot clip reduces it's usefulness to four guns: Hellhound Heavy Twin Carronade, Typhoon Heavy Flak Cannon, Phobos Light Mine Launcher, Mercury Field Gun
While the reduced arming time gives it very limited use on all guns with arming time, that would add Lumberjack Heavy Mortar and Echidna Light Flak Cannon to the list.
Echidna:
Even under arming time range this gun deals more damage per second and per clip with standard ammo than with Lochnager, scratch it from the list.
Lumberjack:
Would only make sense on very short ranges on which the reduced turning speed and (after two shots with a repair in between) reduced reload time would make the gun useless, scratch too.
Hellhound:
Loch can be used alternating with Heavy Clip on ranges where other ammo would be useless. Here the damage increase per clip would be mere 25%, arguable wether that is worth or not to relinquish another ammo type. On close ranges Charged gives a boost of 30% per shot resulting in 260% damage of a single shot in the clip, does not loose turning speed nor damages the gun, so it is superior to Lochnager up close.
Mercury:
Other than on the Hellhound, here the rate of fire decrease of Charged has a serious impact on this gun. If another player is free to do repairs with the shooter, Loch might actually result in a higher damage per second than Charged. If not, fixing the gun would decrease the rate of fire with reload too much for Lochnager to be useful.
Typhoon:
When the enemy is too close for other ammo types, Lochnager enables the AoE damage to be applied and increases the damage of the shot, resulting in a single shot dealing more than double the damage that two shots under arming would deal. Though on ships that use the Typhoon usually are guns that allow to strip enemy ship's hulls from afar so it is arguable wether or not enemies even come into Lochnager distance without coming from a direction that is out of the Typhoons gunarc anyways.
Phobos:
The only gun in which Lochnager actually and definitly is "High Risk - High Reward". The Risk being even greater because the Lochnager mine arms with barely any distance from the ship. The Reward being that a single mine can strip all ships but the Galleon (which is left with 3% armor), even dealing hull damage to all ships with less than 500 armor (Spire, Goldfish, Squid). The reduced AoE allows for denser minefields without the mines setting one another up - on the other hand it makes it harder to make multiple mines explode to damage the same ship that triggered on mine. It also makes it harder to disable multiple components on enemy ships.
What I'm saying is, the Lochnager is described as a "High Risk - High Reward" ammo type. The way it is now it's inferior to other ammo types in most situations - the Phobos being the only exception. I'm not saying "buff Lochnager" since that would mean raising or changing a single statistic of the ammo type, it actually needs a lot more done before it becomes a viable ammotype.