Messages

361

General Discussion / Re: #BANSQUIDVIPS

« on: September 07, 2016, 04:37:41 pm »

I feel bad that I had to take a Squid to a VIP.

No one else would captain, and I will be the absolute first to admit: I am an AWFUL captain. I am, however, good at manuevers, and that was the only way I didn't simply throw the match.

I hated myself for doing it, but it was the only option. My ally would refuse to switch (Honestly, I don't really think I should have switched with him as he was being a troll the entire time), and the only, ONLY reason our team managed to win was because he rage-quitted and a much more competent captain joined.

I have completely forgotten the Goldie captain on the enemy team, but I do remember Xedeon claiming that he was one of the best with a Hwatcha, something I felt all too painfully. However, three engineers kept us (read, me) from completely throwing the match. I know the pain of chasing the squid, and I can certainly agree with the above: Fix VIP.

Having a squid simply sprint around the map teehee'ing with the Tar and squeezing through gaps other ships simply can't follow. Adding in the one point on Escorts is the easiest way of doing it, but I would say increase the point cap for the number of ships in the lobby. A 4v4 shouldn't be as quick as a 2v2, despite VIP taking more time than any of the other matches as it is. I know I'm probaby the least experience here to comment, but having it locked to 10 or 15 in a 4v4 might make it a little too fast. Just my opinion, and I'm probably going to be keelhauled for it, but as it may be.

Just my experience from it, and kind of an apology. I fully admit to cowardice in the line of duty.

362

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Atlas Howitzer: Heavy gun

« on: September 07, 2016, 04:16:16 pm »

Hadn't thought of the ship-wide recoil, and I agree, it'd be better overall, making a weapon with it a load easier than having the weapon self-damage.

However, the annoyance is part of what I had considered, making the weapon harder to use and requiring higher level players to properly manage it. The obnoxious cantankerousness of such a weapon would be balanced out with the hellish damage the weapon could output in such a shot amount of time. It's a scenario where you have to question whether or not you want to deal with attempting to fix the damnable thing as it's firing and keeping your DPS up, or else using it as a semi-sniper and trying to slowly wear away at the enemy.

But in technical feasability, I can see how it would work with the ship-wide recoil. Perhaps by adding a certain level of acceleration at the location of the weapon, an instant increase in acceleration just at that point. On a Gally it would make the poor ship spin if you didn't balance out the weapons, like having only one turner active and burning moonshine through it.

363

World / Re: What is this?

« on: September 07, 2016, 03:45:28 pm »

If we recall the gargantuan size of the Blackcliff Metal works, and the monumental weaponry and defenses in Firnfeld, I would say that that structure is a piece of a factory, perhaps the entrance.

The location of Canyon is unknown, but the massive gears and works all around Red Sepulcher show that huge factories were a thing. Monumental factories that would be what we would consider a manmade mountain. Just looking at the Juggernaut on Dunes shows that mammothine building projects were not only common, but necessary.

With the smoke-stacks and other bits of material around Canyon, I would say that that arch is all that remains to a gigantic factory.

364

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Atlas Howitzer: Heavy gun

« on: September 07, 2016, 03:25:21 pm »

I had a similar idea for a weapon but in a different light.

As before mentioned by another, a lot of the niche's are filled by the weapons that are already in game, either by light weapons and not being heavy weapons or heavy weapons and not needing them as light weapons. The gatlings strip the armor while the Flak takes care of the rest, or the Hwatcha paralyzes the enemy and the carronade sends them to the ground.

One of the weapon niche's that haven't been taken is the Obvious Kill Weapon, one that, on the surface, is extremely easy to attack with but in practice is very, very difficult to use.

So this brings me back to a weapon concept I had, the Dawn Star Field Howitzer. Piercing and explosive damage as both of its damage type, making it such an obvious weapon to want to use, but having no horizontal arc and significant vertical arc, making it difficult to use. It would require perfect coordination between the captain and the gunner, and ships such as the Goldfish or the Spire would be lethal with them. One round magazine, but with a lightning fast reload in comparison to other heavy weapons, as well as a somewhat predictable trajectory and an impressive range would make it tempting to take.

The catch to it, however, would be that every shot would damage it. Practically always loaded with Loch, so to say. Every shot is extremely dangerous to the enemy when they land, but it would need an engineer practically camping it to ensure that the rounds keep going out. Without the engi there to keep it up, your DPS goes down quick, as the gunner would constantly need to jump off and on the gun to repair it. However, this means that the engineer wouldn't be able to repair parts of the hull as reliably, just making another part of the ship that will constantly be damaged. I imagine that this weapon would be like the Loch Gat combo, where you can keep the rounds pouring out and onto a target if you have someone there to support the weapon. Sure, the Gunner can hop off to repair after every shot, but it would drop the DPS for the weapon pretty hard.

Perhaps the same could be done for your Atlas? Instad of piercing, impact, but with a higher amount of damage from impact and damage to the weapon after every shot. It would balance it out enough if you kept the reload pretty quick and the fire rate rapid, meanwhile needing support from two men.

365

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: A rather large and well armed idea for Alliance: Dreadnoughts

« on: September 07, 2016, 02:42:17 pm »

1: Unfortunate. I had hopes and I still will have hopes on it for the future, if not at any point in the near future. Perhaps in a few years then, you never know. I can dream...

2: That wasn't even a reason I was thinking. The reasoning for it is the same reasoning behind all of the ships in GoI: Teamwork. Yes, wo ships require more coordination between them to execute an objective, but in a much larger and much more expanded Alliance, a command vessel might need be determined. One ship that leads the others and offers some measure of command in the middle of the raid or the defense. " 'coz it's keewl" is... insulting as a reason.

My thoughts on it don't simply range to, "Yeah! Bigger! More guns!", they extend towards offering a tactical advantage to teams on a large and difficult raid, where multiple boss ships will be spawning and where there will be an overwhelming amount of enemies to fight. It's trying to plan around the largest and most powerful member of the team, trying to both support it and keep it alive and letting it draw the fire, allowing the smaller vessels strike at targets that the Dreadnought could not. The thought is teamwork both in the ship itself and with the other ships on the team, focusing on where support is most needed and who will lead the charge. It's fleet tactics and team dynamics on a much larger scale than what you have with the ships available. Perhaps they may be considered if or when Alliance is expanded to a much larger state and part of the game, when the fleets get larger and the servers are more capable.

Nevertheless, thanks for the feedback. I hadn't heard on the fact that they had stated they would not do anything larger than a 4 crew.

366

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Alliance mode: Repel

« on: September 06, 2016, 03:55:24 pm »

I was thinking to use the decentralized bases to discourage base defense and more so defend the convoys moving in. You can afford to lose the bases, call them more ports than anything, but your primary objective is to defend the convoy.

Make the ports like a secondary objective, like attacking the escape pods.

367

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ship Cosmetics Wishlist

« on: September 06, 2016, 02:53:30 pm »

Brother's In Arms theme.

Actually have quarters and personal themes and such, cots or hammocks hanging on some places, something like a small stove for cooking meals on or a spot where someone would be painting or something. Like on the Galleon, you could have a kitchen inside the engine bay beneath the piloting spot, and a dinner table out on the deck, or a painting in progress up on the Poop deck.

Meanwhile on a Junker you could have bits that the engineers are fixing, like a part of an engine being repaired, while the guner has a spare gatling gun next to his/her cot on the bottom deck like they were repairing it cuddling it.

Small stuff like that. It would make it much more homely and personal, like the ship were the home of those on board.

368

Feedback and Suggestions / A rather large and well armed idea for Alliance: Dreadnoughts

« on: September 06, 2016, 01:43:56 pm »

An idea I've floated to a few players in the lobbies, and now that I figured out how to access the bleeding Forum I can actually leave it here where it can be critiqued to pieces.

The Dreadnought. Massive, 8 man crewed ships with power and strength to give the enemy an existential crisis, and let the players truly go toe to toe with bosses as they come.

These would be very heavy ships, slow and extremely well armed, but still difficult and requiring skill both by the captain and by the crew to man them. These Dreadnoughts would take up the space of two ships, gaining both of their crew while occupying both slots. In combat, it would be heavy and slow, but different dreadnoughts would have the chance to attack in a varying number of ways. They would be command ships, raid leaders, and act as a kind of defensive platform, guarding the smaller ships from either Titans or from waves on waves of enemies, acting primarily as the flagship for the team.

Now, the balancing of this ship is... a little odd. It's so heavily armed and armored that just making it slow is not nearly enough to make it balanced, especially while it's moored in the middle of a swarm of bot-boats and putting out enough fire to level a small city, so the general slow-speed-high-armor balancing wouldn't apply. So I devised a way to make them still fun and intensive to crew: Multiple hull and balloon repair points. This sounds counter intuitive at first, but hear me out.

The idea for the armor would be that the armor is now counted in a limited way as a component. Say you are on a Dreadnought that has two armor points, one on the port and one on the starboard. If you begin taking damage on the starboard side, the armor point on the starboard side will take damage, leaving the port side armor point unharmed. "But wouldn't that mean you just have to have one armor point active to keep your ship from taking perma damage?", no, no it wouldn't because of the second part of the "armor component" theory; should the Starboard armor fall, you will still take perma damage from the Starboard side, but it will be reduced. So, saying that you have a ship that has two armor points, if one point goes down, then half of the incoming damage would go to the hull, and the other half would go to the still active armor point. In the event of three armor points, then the damage would be spread across the hull and the two remaining armor points, 1/3rd to hull and 1/3rd to each of the armor points still active. This is supposed to somewhat simulate the weak points that can be found on Boss ships, and to keep it fun *Coughstressfulcoughcough* for the engineers. It also encourages the captain to try and switch the side that the ship is taking the majority of its damage, attempting to twist hard to put the still armored side to the source of incoming fire in order to minimize the damage taken to perma hull.

A similar strategy would be applied to the balloon repair ponts, where multiple balloon repair points would be required to keep the ship afloat. If one goes down, then the ship will become less responsive to elevation commands, and on heavier ships will slowly begin to descend, the rate of descent and the responsiveness both increasing/decreasing as more balloon points fail. Damage on balloon points, however, would be spread equally across all points instead of being on the component system. If you take, say, 50 damage to the balloon on a ship with two balloon points, then both of the balloon points would take 25 damage. This means that, for full effectiveness, both points would be required to be repaired, but that they would not fail as quickly, since the damage is spread out.

On a ship like this, firepower goes without saying. Bristling with weapons like an angry procupine of war, the Dreadnought would be a floating existential crisis. I don't think I even need to go on in this regard. It's a Dreadnought. Enough said.

I can also see another game mode that could be developed out of crewing aboard a Dreadnought class ship, a kind of survival mode, or else a Capital Clash, where Dreadnoughts face off against Boss ships and their escorts in a wave-based mode, or else the mode that Luharis mentioned, where you have to hold out for a certain amount of time for reinforcements against a heavy enemy presence. Putting these ships in either Assault or Defence would make them extremely powerful, so I would say they would be limited to either Hard or Hell modes in order to maintain balance and to make the experience more enjoyable.

Any and all criticism is happily accepted, and I hope it is at the very least entertained as a thought. I would just relegate this type of ship to Alliance mode, as in Skirmish... well, I'd rather not go up against that. It might be fun as a kind of tactical fight, but Skirmish is delicate enough as it is. It'd be easier to keep this to Alliance mode in order to have the massive armada fights we all hope for and love.

369

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The End is inevitable, you will not survive

« on: September 06, 2016, 01:11:57 pm »

Luh, I believe I told you of my Dreadnought idea, and I'm wondering if it would work out for that "Land Air Battle" idea.

Instead of the ground platform, the large capital ships that I'm still trying to work on. It'd be perfect for that and the Survival mode.

370

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Alliance mode: Repel

« on: September 06, 2016, 12:25:32 pm »

I like the idea, but I would rather have it as multiple defensive points. Instead of one, central defensive platform, make it multiple unload points where the cargo is being unloaded.

Say, for instance, you blockade over one or two, and let the rest of them fall. You win, but you gain a substantially smaller War Chest. If you manage to unload cargo on all of the platforms, or retrieve all cargo and return it to the ones you have guarded, you get a slightly larger warchest, but no bonus for all of the platforms defended.

Say it's like this:

All platforms defended, all cargo delivered: +30% War Chest
All platforms defended, adequate cargo delivered: +10% warchest
All cargo delivered: Base War Chest
Adequate cargo delivered, platforms lost: -10% War Chest for each platform lost.