Messages

91

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Simple moderate Incendiary ammo buff

« on: November 03, 2016, 04:04:53 pm »

Like I said, options. I like making tactical choices. Heavy clip Flares are great, obviously, but I also like Heatsink in some situations (Scrap comes to mind)... and I want to like Burst in some situations as well! It should be a big decision whether I take Burst Flares to try to light up a Junker's entire gunning pit, for example... or if I take Heavy to snipe that Goldfish's main gun!

And maybe Incendiary? Or Loch? You get my point. Options.

I personally am fine with most ammos being garbage on a gun, as long as the optimal ammos on different guns is sufficiently varied. The main issue with greased is that it is optimal (Mortar, Banshee, Gatling(close), Hades(close), L Flak) or at least beneficial (L Carro, Lumberjack, H Flak, Artemis, Mine Spammer) on so many guns. This is why greased is basically the default ammo for engineers, and why other ammos get drowned out. Incendiary has no gun where it is optimal and a bunch where it is beneficial (L Carro, H Carro, Lumberjack, Mines, H Flak, Gatling(barely)), of which only one of them could get away with running it full-time (L Carro) but is drowned out by other powerful ammos (Heavy Clip, Greased).

By comparison, here are the other ammos and most of the guns they are optimal on (and notable beneficial):

• Lesmok: Hades(long), Lumberjack(long), Gatling(long), H Flak(long), Mines(long), Harpoon(lol); (situational on Mortar, Artemis, Merc, Banshee, Flares)
• Heavy Clip: H Carro, L Carro(mid), Flares(mid/long), Minotaur (situational on Hwacha, Gatling(though unused), Banshee)
• Burst: Hwacha, Artemis, H Flak(DPS/DPC), Lumberjack(DPS/DPC), L Flak(DPC), (beneficial to Banshee)
• Lochnagar: H Carro(initiating), Gatling(DPS), Lumberjack(damage per shot/close), Mines(DPC/close) Minotaur(DPS)
• Heatsink: Flares(mid/close), Merc(disable), (situatonal on all for fires, beneficial on Hades, H Carro, H Flak, L Flak, Lumberjack, Mines)
• Charged: Merc, Mines(DPS), Lumberjack(damage per shot), H Carro(DPS)

Also, greased carronade is about burst damage up front with little change in overall DPS (when counting for reloads). Heavy clip is superior for surgical applications, incendiary is top tier at point blank range due to the synergy with damage type but outranged by greased/heavy.

Currently Incendiary and Charged (especially charged) are the two ammos I see complaints about most often for being terrible or unused in general, while there are complaints about the ubiquity of Burst and Greased.

One thing they could do is nerf Greased to Incendiary's range to give people a reason to use it over greased (Incendiary becomes optimal close range for L Carro, competes more with greased Gatling), though that might end up with Greased taking Incendiary's place in range reduction due to its greater versatility.

Charged definitely needs a buff to compete with the other ammos, as it is not even notably beneficial to a wide variety of guns, and good on only a few. A couple changes could be to give it a partial jitter reduction to make it more of a sidegrade in certain applications (sniping with gat, possible use over heavy for H Carro), which may compete too much with Heavy Clip, or make it the dedicated DPC ammo (remove clip size penalty, slightly larger RoF penalty) so it can push Burst out of the applications that aren't even related to burst radius and make it a potent option on guns with long reloads but high rates of fire (Hwacha, Minotaur, Mortar, Gatling(arguably)). The rate of fire reduction should be enough to lower DPS compared to standard by at least 10%, as currently its DPS is actually a hair under normal in a gatling (not counting for reloads).

Hopefully it's not rude of me to put all of this in an incendiary thread.

92

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: STEAMPUNK QUAD BOFORS

« on: November 03, 2016, 02:07:24 pm »

I don't know about nothing but shatter, as the Hwacha already fills that niche extremely nicely, but I definitely agree with you on the area denial, and that's kind of how I'd fit my math together on it.

...

Hwacha does all of its disable at once, then has a 14 second reload. It's also a potent kill weapon, as it can one-clip a Pyramidion. It is good at disable, but the enemy can simply rebuild their artemis faster than the Hwacha can reload and now you're the one permanently disabled. My idea was slower, but more consistent pure disable that isn't as easily countered but that doesn't double as a kill weapon since it would already be a potent and consistent disable weapon. It would also bring a new weapon type into the game, as all current shatter weapons either double for killing or double for balloon shredding. There is no gun that is purely a defensive option besides mines, and even those are used as kill weapons.

I also don't want the fish to get another powerful option, it already is everywhere in pubs and I'm tired of seeing it. Any heavy gun that has been too potent on a Goldfish has gotten nerfed (Heavy carronade has terrible shatter damage now, Hwacha has damage nerfs and I think lowered arcs, all from being good on the goldy), so it needs to be something that a Goldfish can't use to be oppressive.

I also specifically do NOT want it to be a pierce weapon. We already got a heavy gun with piercing, and you can tell the devs were afraid of it being good at actually taking down armor, because they made it have absolutely terrible damage output unless you use nothing but Lochnagar. And they're rightfully afraid of making a powerful piercing heavy gun, the heavy flak, the most powerful explosive weapon in the game, can be slotted right next to it.

If this enters as a piercing weapon, they'll likely do the same thing and make it another Minotaur that doesn't see play outside of newbies' and Jedi's ships.

93

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: STEAMPUNK QUAD BOFORS

« on: November 03, 2016, 12:25:04 am »

Historically, guns like these were defensive guns that effectively were area denial weapons for aircraft. The question is how this can be ported to the game without any obviously overpowered builds stemming from it. If it had heavy piercing,  it would be a goto weapon for Galleons, comboing too well with the heavy flak. Or it with triple banshee on a Spire.

What about a defensive, supporting heavy gun? Give it nothing but shatter damage, horizontal arcs like a gatling, an excellent upwards arc, and carronade quality downward arcs. It is now an excellent weapon for denying attacks in its range, forcing enemies to approach low to attack or putting you self dangerously low to take advantage of it, but has neligible killing power. It would be great at setting up kills for allied ships or other guns, but the other guns still need to do work for the kill.

Some immediate strategies would be putting one on each side of a Galleon to defend against highly maneuverable ships or ships trying to outrise you at the cost of killing power.  Or making a "trapping" Spire that hangs low, disables a target, then rises up on its prey to kill with its other guns. For a Goldfish, it would be like the Heavy Flak: almost completely useless. It may be able to be used as a weapon to occupy and harass one ship so the ally can have a 1v1 against the other, but that's it.

The idea of this is to give Galleon a heavy gun without abysmal arcs to defend itself with without augmenting it's killing power and to give the Spire another playstyle without giving another powerful option to the ubiquitous Goldfish.

With wide arcs and a good rate of fire, it would also be reasonable at shooting down Alliance planes, unlike all the others save the heavy flak.

94

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ship Cosmetics Wishlist

« on: November 02, 2016, 06:06:30 pm »

This thread is still stickied, so I'll engage in some necromancy.

The Traveler theme adds a few potted plants to each of the ships, but it's not nearly enough. The ship needs to be decked out like a private garden. The Chaladon hippies will love it, too.

Oh, and add some potted plants to the Shrike's Traveler theme if you can. Last I remember from the open alpha, it didn't have any. It made me sad.

95

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Bad AI are killing us.

« on: October 31, 2016, 07:12:32 pm »

I too would enjoy being able to setup anything other than a Pyramidion or Goldfish when I have an AI crewman. I personally love flying the Mobula and shenanigans with the Spire, but I feel that 90% of the time I'm picking ships based on my real crew count, which means more Pyra and Goldfish. I think it's the same for most others, hence why they are the most common ships if anyone is short any amount of crew.

AI are just too unmanageable for anything else. Even on those two ships, having two crew and one AI is worse than two AI on a Goldy because the AI is completely unpredictable, and two AI on a Pyra is only manageable if you can convince your one crew to be main engie or have them inside the top left gun at all times.

96

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Notify crew when ship or guns change

« on: October 31, 2016, 07:01:12 pm »

But yeah this issue of ship changes is only an issue when a pilot has poor communication skills (and planning ability). Hence the fundamental issue being the pilot being too dumb to communicate his intentions being the core issue than the system itself. Its an instance where I actually agree with muse that communication simply makes the issue an non-issue.

Communication is overpowered for a reason, it solves nearly everything. That doesn't mean this is not a problem. In Team Fortress 2, you can use voice chat to communicate everything better than any other system possibly can, but they still have the "Spy!","Incoming!", "Sentry ahead!", and "MEDIC!" commands.

The current system doesn't punish the pilot for being absent-minded and not preparing their crew, it punishes the crew for not compulsively checking their ship loadout every 5 seconds, as they are the ones that are going to have to abandon match to adjust their tools and ammos. It's practically altruism if the pilot recommends loadouts with every switch. The pilot gets away with it by telling their crew to exit and change loadout, or the crew taking it upon themselves to adjust their loadouts.

There's also the problem of newbie pilots, who don't necessarily know everything they need to communicate to the crew, or who assume the crew will figure it out. It's a problem that makes the game less enjoyable for 3 out of 4 players on a ship, and seems to me like one that is easily fixed.

Also, I personally would prefer to not feel compelled to scan loadouts constantly for 5 minutes in lobbies.

But ye the counter picking thing is annoying. But thats why I'm mentioning the hiding of information than the feed of it when it comes to enemies.

Its a fundamental thing fighting games have solved years ago. You don't reveal the character and match up until both players have confirmed their selection.

With that new fog of war, the idea of direct counters becomes nonexistant because 1 direct counter means you get countered by several other basic metas. It would be a nice change of pace for high level play.

I agree with this. Counter picking isn't particularly fun when you're the one getting countered, or when you are shoehorned into playing a small handful of  ships that are hard to hard counter. I just want to be a filthy casual and have fun.

97

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: 'Half Court' Skyball

« on: October 28, 2016, 10:04:41 am »

 Sounds like sd_doomsday from TF2, except without the flag having to respawn before the other team can take it.

Definitely an interesting idea though. To counter the camping, the attacking team would need long-range firepower to punish the camping team, as going in to fight at close quarters risks getting bumped.

Alternatively it might put more of an emphasis on stealth and ambushing, since the attacking side would be "spotted" by the flag, so the defending side could come in undetected for a swift kill and steal the flag.

Would definitely put more of an emphasis on ship combat than the current version, as speed would not be nearly as important as being able to fight.

98

Feedback and Suggestions / Notify crew when ship or guns change

« on: October 27, 2016, 09:28:28 pm »

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets so caught up in 15 minute Lobbies of Icarus that I forget to check if the captain has changed anything and change my ammos accordingly.

There should be a popup notification (like the 30 second warning) or some sound should play (a drum or clank would be fine) when your ship has any major changes to notify the crew to double-check their equipment.

Some might argue that good communication solves that problem, but communication is overpowered for a reason: most people don't do it. It also does not feel right that the crew should suffer from the captain not announcing a change.

99

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make crew loadouts visible without having to go to another screen

« on: October 27, 2016, 04:52:33 pm »

Your main issue here is the needed refresh rates to do so will destroy the server for the most wasteful of reason.

The screen is there because it has to load the info. If the game must refresh constantly just to keep track. A lobby may as well be a running game as far as the server is concerned.


essentially impractical wishful thinking. Almost as bad as boarding.

I honestly don't believe any of that. It only needs to pull new data when you click on the class icon for the first time, and if they changed their loadout before you click it again. If the data isn't updated (I would guess sending timestamp to server and checking against last updated timestamp there, probably a 64 bit number at most), it sends back nothing.

The data itself is 5 ids for whatever items they're using, so let's assume they use a 32 bit integer (complete overkill currently) for each, plus another for some identification tag or checksum for the packet. That would be about 24 bytes at a time.

If sending about 24 bytes of data about every quarter of a second to a bunch of people is enough to kill the servers, then Muse has much more serious problems. I'm no network expert, but I suspect that a lot more information than that is going back and forth at a much higher rate for normal gameplay.


I appreciate the implied insult at the end though.

100

Feedback and Suggestions / Make Rangefinder left-click print ship name and range in chat

« on: October 26, 2016, 04:00:01 pm »

The rangefinder is almost universally regarded as a joke tool, completely useless, a Gibus equivalent, and actively harmful to your crew, since the spyglass is almost always better.

So why not make it easier and more intuitive to use for its primary purpose? Giving a target's range.


Similar to the spyglass, left-clicking with it should give useful information to your ship. However, instead of applying a marker revealing its position on the map and screen, it should tell the rest of your crew the name of the ship and its range.

Alternatively, and probably better both aesthetically and in preventing spam, make it so left-clicking a spotted ship makes the range of that ship visible to all crew for 3 seconds below the ship's name.

This would allow an engineer with a rangefinder (currently the least detrimental way to have one on a ship) to quickly switch it out, report the distance of an enemy, and quickly resume their duties in about a second. They would not have to report it over mic and would not even have to stop to say it in chat. As for the gunner, they might actually use some of the many range guides on this forum if the target's range is available to them more often.



Also, please remove the giant, blinding out-of-range 'X' that appears to gunners when someone is using a rangefinder. The weird circle is confusing enough without blinding the gunner as well, especially since it seems to be inconsistent when using range-altering ammo like lesmok.


Hopefully someone doesn't come around and disagree with my idea to improve communication on the grounds that people should just use communication.

101

Feedback and Suggestions / Make crew loadouts visible without having to go to another screen

« on: October 26, 2016, 03:37:48 pm »

Currently, the pilot of a ship can use the recommended loadout system to quickly check each crew member on their own ship to see a quick outline of their crew's kit. However, they can't do this for crew on other ships, and crew can't do it for eachother. Instead, everyone else must click on their player icon, view it there, then leave that screen to go back to the lobby screen, which feels ridiculous when there is a more streamlined method available.

So why not just have a similar feature for everyone else? Most of the UI already exists, you just have to remove the recommended loadout part.

This change would be a quality of life improvement, as it's less clicks and screen transitions for the same information, and may reduce lobby waiting time, as people will be able to process important information faster if it's more accessible and thus make their decisions quicker.

102

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: "That thing's operational!" - Atruejedi's Star Wars-themed thoughts on Alliance

« on: August 05, 2016, 06:25:07 pm »

Wish it had an index, given how long it is. Annoying to look through for points to re-read and make sure I read them correctly.

I generally agree, and will respond to the few points I find more iffy and that I have more to add to.


The addition of upgradable repair tools seems to be in response to keeping up with the raw damage output of multiple ships firing on one. To remove that system would require them to reduce the amount of spam a ship is taken, or reduce the pain of that spam significantly. Even with upgraded tools, it's hard to keep up with the raw pain of the boss ships already.

That said, I feel that the direction they've taken with upgrades in general is suspect, especially the 3 core repair tools.

Messing with the cooldowns as much as they did is a mistake in my opinion. I personally have been trying to get into a good rhythm and feel for the cooldowns, so messing with the pipe wrench and mallet cooldowns doesn't feel right. However I do think that it's fair to reduce the mallet's cooldown by a second or two, given how long it is and the potential harm it is capable of. Just not completely halving it.

The spanner's rebuild becomes much faster and the pipe wrench seems to be in a reasonable spot - though perhaps being too much of a "super spanner", given how its short cooldown encourages camping a part until it's fully repaired - but the mallet should've been further cemented in its role as the long cooldown, high repair, terrible rebuild tool, rather than turned into an upgrade of the pipe wrench. By that I mean it shouldn't get any rebuild bonuses at all, and instead should heal for more health instead, even if it would be overkill on most parts at that point. A even 9 second cooldown, 500 hp replenishing mallet would still be a fantastic tool, bringing high health ships from the brink of death, breathing life into balloons, and guaranteeing full repairs on every other component. A 7 second cooldown, 390 hp repair would also be great if your goal was reducing the cooldown.

The mallet's long cooldown itself, coupled with the highest overall rate of repair, is what gave engineers the ability to increase their effective rate of repair by having multiple simultaneous cooldowns and encouraged moving around to multiple components to achieve that higher simultaneous repair. It's also what let an engineer hit a part every once in a while, empty a clip from a nearby gun, then return to repairing with little loss in effective rate of repair. And at the same time, misuse of the mallet often lead to disaster, where using it on a tiny dent prevents you from being able to repair the huge burst you take immediately after. But that was always the nature of the tool.

That said, I didn't get an upgraded mallet to play with, so this may be mostly speculation.


As it currently is, the upgraded core repair tools overlap and overshadow the un-upgraded versions of their brothers, making it so spanners have higher rates of overall repair than an upgraded mallet and maxed out pipe wrenches are simply better than the stock spanner. The issue might lie in the fact that you are encouraged to max out one at a time to get the most overall efficiency, since the upgrades seem to approximately double the effectiveness of any of the tools, which is an entire problem on its own.

A way to prevent this might be to have all 3 of the core repair tools under the same upgrade: one upgrade upgrades all 3, meaning none of them become almost strictly better than the other.


Wow, that was a lot of stuff on repair tools. On to the other things.


I agree that the Shrike is awful to engineer on due to overuse of slowing stairs and feeling more cramped than a the gunner's nest on a Junker. On the other hand it's fairly good at rushing to objectives, quickly burning them down, and escaping, so it's not a terrible ship to pilot. In that role it is basically a Squid with heavy guns instead of a front gun. It could even be argued that the visibility issues mimic the Squid's horrendous right-side visibility as a balancing factor. Although the moving parts are a bit overkill.

That said, it gets no pots on it from the Traveler's theme, so overall it's completely unusable garbage.

Oh, and that thing on the Magnate appears to be a perpetual motion machine design, of which a rudimentary understanding of physics could tell you doesn't work and has broken any remaining feeling of realism I've tried to hold on to in this game. I didn't even notice how the plane's size made no sense after seeing that thing on the Magnate.

103

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Various suggestions I put together over the last few weeks

« on: July 31, 2016, 10:36:01 pm »

I figured the lack of cooldown icons on distant components and chem spray timers are a design choice, and I understand that communication helps resolve some of those issues. I just feel that more information is always better when striving for efficiency. I might be wrong though.

As for tutorials, I don't really think what I'm asking for should be in the current tutorial, there's enough information to take in as it is. It should be set aside in an advanced tutorial for people who want to improve further, or at least written in text somewhere in the tutorial section as a list of tips.

104

Feedback and Suggestions / Various suggestions I put together over the last few weeks

« on: July 31, 2016, 03:50:04 pm »

Hi. Haven't posted on a forum in a while, let alone this one.

I made a list of suggestions based on things I've noticed and some common problems.

UI:
Increase visibility of damaged component indicators, or give them priority over other UI elements
- I use those icons to monitor damage taken by components to determine if I need to run over and repair them or if they can wait. UI elements like the ship health indicator and reload timer on guns often will often obscure them.

Show timers for chemspray/extinguisher fire invuln effect
- Will help get a feeling for when chemspray needs to be reapplied, and how much time you have to do something else. Practice and experience can mitigate the need for this, but it's stil usefull information.

Show repair cooldown without needing to hug component
- Or at least show that something is under a repair cooldown. It's nice to know if the balloon engineer on a goldfish has just repaired the turning engines so you know you'll have to wait for cooldowns if you go there.

Add indicators for the heading of the ship to the compass at the top
- This will let a gunner know if the ship is turning greatly relative to where they are aiming, and will let some experienced gunners pull off shots in the turn more consistently.


Gameplay (I think):
Allow swapping of tool/ammunition order without leaving a match
- It's a pretty common problem, especially if you use spanner first, and it's annoying to have to rejoin a match because you forgot to check. While the recommended loadout system tries to change loadouts to your preference of order it very often fails, especially when switching from buff tools to repair and vice versa.


Communication:
Different voice icons for different voice chats in lobby
- It's impossible to tell if someone's talking in global or team chat, which can lead to awkwardly listening to half of a conversation.

Make clicking not interrupt voice commands and vice versa
- I want to be able to command "NEED HELP REPAIRING THE HULL" while not having to stop repairing the hull.

Tutorials:
More emphasis in tutorial on repairing other things during cooldown
- It makes me sad to see engineers waiting on hull near full health for a mallet cooldown when the engines are all red and the ship is turning like an overweight Galleon.

More emphasis on smart movement and odd repair angles in tutorial
- More people must know that you can repair main engine on pyra from below, and that you can leap over railing. The AI can do it sometimes, but many new engineers don't know about it.


Sound:
Fix stereo sound design (I don't know the term, but it's when the game makes a sound seem to originate from a specific direction)
- As it currently is, if I'm sideways to an engine, one ear sounds like I have it pressed against it and the other sounds like I'm 20 meters away. When messing around on a Spire, when I had engines on full throttle and faced forward, it sounded fine. When I turned 90 degrees starboard, the sound was a bit louder in my right speaker, but nearly silent in my left, despite how loud the engines were.

Be able to turn off lobby music without disabling battle music
- I feel like these should be separate. A lot of people listen for the battle music as a cue for danger, but some of those may listen to something else when waiting in lobbies.



In my opinion, the damaged component indicators and tool order swapping are probably the most important things on this list.

Let me know if I should format this list differently. I've been taking notes in a plaintext file.