Guns Of Icarus Online

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Moriarty on March 24, 2013, 11:04:20 am

Title: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 24, 2013, 11:04:20 am
The discrimination and class warfare directed against us by the tyrannical muse patchtocracy has got to END! We must stand and make our voices heard!

We might not want to admit it, even to ourselves but it has happened... We have become third class citizens, despised and universally reviled.  Eking out a meagre existence outside the Icarus meta.

Our class skills outmoded. The utility of our munitions lessened.

I like many of you have had to forsake the honourable profession, swallow my pride and don the ungainly role of the engineer.

The recent attacks on our livelihood patches have ruined our toys forced our hand.   

Brothers I fear for our survival...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Skrimskraw on March 24, 2013, 11:20:59 am
I agree, the gunner should be meta again.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Chango on March 24, 2013, 12:06:45 pm
I personally still like a gunner on a lot of my ships. There is still a need for multiple munitions, mostly due to range. Maybe gunners should get some sort of inert bonus, like 10% extra damage, to give them the boost much needed.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Phoebe on March 24, 2013, 12:09:32 pm
While the gunner is often discarded because people find a "Gungineer" more useful;-  one thing the Gunner has that the Engineer does not besides multiple amunition slots is their associated rank.

If I see a rank 5 engineer;- but don't know the person - I can't assume he's used all of the guns;- can fire a lumberjack;- knows what ammo to use for a gatling or is any good at leading a target - but if I see a rank 5 gunner I'm comfortable knowing this person has spent enough time at a primary gun to do some damage.

That doesn't take away the fact I agree the gunner could use some more distinction and provide just a tad extra in their field so they are more appreciated in their role; however.    I just add little lines here and there to make sure people realize things they didn't think about.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on March 24, 2013, 12:35:49 pm
I like a Gunner on every ship I Captain (except the Squid, where I'm happy with or without).. but I only ever want one.  A bit like how I only want one Pilot.

Gunners are useful, and a Captain that doesn't realise this probably doesn't fully understand the role of Gunner.  Or has had a succession of bad Gunners that can't compensate the sights for range/drift, don't use ammunition choices effectively, and want an Engineer to baby sit and repair their guns for them.


My previous suggestion still stands:
- give Gunners full zoomable/scoped, ranged sights on every gun
- give non-Gunners get very basic non-zoomable, non-ranged, notch and ring sights

If you want to add an extreme penalty for non-Gunners, add 5% to the jitter value for non-Gunners - but in that case you need to give Gunners a 5% repair penalty to match.  Perhaps the non-Gunner jitter penalty could apply to non-Light weapons only, and the Gunner repair penalty to non-guns only.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 24, 2013, 12:55:35 pm
I don't know if the issue can be corrected by changing relatively small numbers, to stay relevant in the current and foreseeable environment class might need retooling.

This is of course just my take on the situation; but ever since the patch made damage dependent on repair, gunners have actually become an active liability, detracting from overall performance of a given team.

I would back this statement up by saying look at the ducks (paddling) no gunners and I bet we'll see the gents change to Gungineers in the next cogs match as well. 

I suppose a goldfish could support a gunner but it would be just that 'supported', requiring the services of an understanding Engi who has time on their hands.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BdrLineAzn on March 24, 2013, 12:58:01 pm
I also feel that the Gunner class is out of love a little. But, as many others has stated, I like a Gunner on my ship. Reason being is that with the multiple ammo loadouts, if I have a really good gun, he or she will know how to maximise the dps on a gun or multiple of guns. Even if I may have a recently joined Gunner comes upon my ship and doesn't bring the optimal loadout, if the ammo is useful, they cam still do quite more damage then a single ammo Engineer.

Which I go on to my second point. As an Engineer myself, there may be hardly no time where I can get on a gun and start shooting. The majority of the time has me running around fixing different components. If I have time or an opportunity present itself, with the single ammo type, mostly I'm limited to one gun where I can increase the dps of it. Even as a Gungineer and spend more time around the weapons, with one ammo type, you can't out shoot the Gunner in dps.

All in all, we must shed new light on this Class as there are many new people who doesn't understand the importance of the Gunner. I may not have any ideas on how to improve the Gunner, but I agree that they should make a come back.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on March 24, 2013, 01:41:49 pm
I think someone's confusing the Cogs with the wider metagame..

The Cogs is a relatively unimportant part of the game with only a touching relevance to the game played by most of the players.  If one or two teams in the Cogs choose to experiment with all-Engineer crews, this is merely the hint of a slight problem for part of the player population.  It's not a doom-and-gloom-Gunners-have-ceased-to-have-a-purpose warning.

I'll hazard a guess that there were significantly more Gunners than Junkers on the team sheets.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 24, 2013, 02:21:24 pm
Oh? And how would you characterise it when Engies are generally better behind a gun (in my view anyway) than the gunning class or at the *very* least objectively as good.

It may not be as obvious as the Junker/Spire issue but it's disingenuous to make the comparison between the two problems in any case. I mean on what basis would you compare the lack of distinction between 2 of 3 playable classes to the rather large distinction between the ship designs. Apples and oranges.   
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on March 24, 2013, 04:14:21 pm
So here's why Gunners suck;

1. Engineers pick three below, gunners pick one
a) Buff Hammers provide a 30% bonus to damage.
b) Spanners rebuild the fastest.
c) Rubber Malletts can keep your gun at 100% health, critically important now that gun health relates to effective output.
d) Chem Spray almost completely removes the need for heatsink.

2. Gunners get three ammo types.
a) Most guns only ever need one ammo type regardless of situation.
b) Even if responsible for two guns, most guns share a common ammo type synergy.

3. Engineers are flexible, when they aren't shooting they can repair engines, buff the hull, ect.

4. Gunners are fundamentally dependent on engineers, and cannot operate a gun without adult supervision.  See Point 2.



Here are scenarios you can get away with a Gunner.

-Manticore or Carronade Goldfish. The Manticore appreciates heavy clip until point blank, when burst is valuable. The Carronade would benefit from heavy/lesmok at range and then charged, burst, or even lochnager closer.

Counterpoint: This same task can be achieved with two engineers each bringing a different ammo type, and a small amount of coordination. The benefit of this is the person on the gun doesn't have to be babysitted.


-Lower Deck Galleon with different guns on the left side than the right. Two different medium guns often requires preloading with two different ammo types.

Counterpoint: But usually there's a common ammo both guns like. The other person downstairs with you surely wouldn't appreciate having to keep rebuilding/repairing/extinguishing (pick two) the gunner's gun.



So why do people still play Gunner?

-Because if you play Gunner in a casual game, people will give you a gun. I do it too, because off a gun a Gunner is completely useless. But that doesn't mean they're more useful on a gun than an engineer.

-That's it. The above reason. That's it. That's the only good reason to play a Gunner now.



How should Gunner be fixed?

This isn't an RPG (outside of Burning Skies), we don't need static value bonuses some classes get over others. Here's my suggestions.

-Change the Gunner from 3 Ammo types and 1 Repair tool to 2 Ammo types and 2 Repair tools.

-Give the Gunner access to unique ammo types. Can you imagine how different the game would be if only Gunners got Lesmok or Heavy Clip?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 24, 2013, 09:29:25 pm
I like the idea of each class being distinguished only by their slots.  The big issue that everyone seems to be not noticing despite bringing it up repeatedly is that guns don't need multiple ammo types.

Read that again.

GUNS DON'T NEED MULTIPLE AMMO TYPES.  Anything broken needs multiple repair tools to fix it, but the same does not apply to guns and ammo.

The best way to fix this is to make guns work better with different types of ammo.  Why do so many light guns only work effectively with one or possibly two ammos?  Why do you need to be on a gun when the ammo finishes loading for it to count?  The metagame for someone playing gunner is fairly simple, look at the guns you'll be manning and bring the one or two ammos that you'll need for them.  It really just comes down to experienced captains just dictating the ammo everyone carries.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Morblitz on March 24, 2013, 11:29:13 pm


I like many of you have had to forsake the honourable profession, swallow my pride and don the ungainly role of the engineer.



I dunno, man. The engineer costumes are pretty boss.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Lord Dick Tim on March 25, 2013, 01:19:50 am
I agree with phoebe's and squash's post.  I see a gunner that's a higher level, I trust them more to hit a target then an equally skilled engineer.  I tend to value a good gunner over a good engineer anyways, rather having the best gunner and a mediocre engineer.
But the gungineer build is just something special, that 30% buff hammer loaded with charged rounds on a light flak?  Hmm...  Just to much awesome going on to ignore.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on March 25, 2013, 10:21:51 am
Ill chime in. First 30% buffed sounds wrong. Im not able to check right now but for as long as I can remember it was always 20-25%. Ill work off of Squash's post to get some points across.

Quote
So here's why Gunners suck;

1. Engineers pick three below, gunners pick one
a) Buff Hammers provide a 30% bonus to damage.
b) Spanners rebuild the fastest.
c) Rubber Malletts can keep your gun at 100% health, critically important now that gun health relates to effective output.
d) Chem Spray almost completely removes the need for heatsink.


As stated i think that 30% is wrong. If not, thats new...Either way your engie has to be off the gun to perform these buffs. So thats lost potential DPS. Then the buff lasts ~20 seconds. Depending on the gun, thats usually 1-2 clips before you spend however long buffing the thing again.

If his gun dies, He calls for repair and the engies come do it. Its also the job of the pilot to realize the gun is down and either evade for a renewed pass with a rebuilt gun or stick it out.

A good gunner knows when his gun needs repair. He doesnt need to be "babysat." Fire now is a joke for disabling guns unless you spray a flamethrower on their face for quite awhile. 9 times out of 10 that gunner can repair through a gun fire until a good point comes for the engies to put it out. I never request heatsink unless its a filler ammo for the particular layout.

Quote
2. Gunners get three ammo types.
a) Most guns only ever need one ammo type regardless of situation.
b) Even if responsible for two guns, most guns share a common ammo type synergy.

Every heavy gun benefits from 2-3 ammo types in varying situations. Light weapons not so much, but some do, and on say a Junker, its a layout choice of the pilot to make one ammo the go-to or to make his layout more versatile.


The role of a gunner is to keep a gun firing on the enemy. With retreating from a fight being very difficult in goio, you need a deterrent. You need DPS. You need a miraculous loch shot that kills your pursuer. This is your gunner's role. If you think that a "gungineer" can out perform a good gunner, you havent had a good gunner.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Skrimskraw on March 25, 2013, 11:20:13 am
or make ammo that does something else than pure damaging.

you could use the gunner to have both damage ammo and some sort of disable ammo. like ammo that explodes with glue and stops engines from running at 100%, maybe some ammo that negates the buffs.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on March 25, 2013, 11:37:52 am
is just something special, that 30% buff hammer loaded with charged rounds on a light flak?  Hmm...  Just to much awesome going on to ignore.
How many ship builds does that apply to? - definitely the most common Pyra builds and a few popular Junker builds, but much less common on Goldfish or Galleon builds.  And 50-50 on the Squid.

I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on March 25, 2013, 11:41:10 am
Quote
I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

My team still uses gunners in the Cogs.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on March 25, 2013, 11:56:00 am
Quote
I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

My team still uses gunners in the Cogs.

hello :)

Nah to weigh in on this, I agree that on some "light" ships (Squid and whatnot) a gunner's effectiveness is diminished... That being said, multiple ammo types allow me to use a heavy weapon much more effectively than switching engies everytime... what if the engie with burst is busy on the balloon, while you really need those guns and engines disabled...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on March 25, 2013, 01:19:42 pm
Gunners have been given a bad name by the default class being gunner. Every 1st time player joins a ship as a gunner without understanding the implication of the roll. While I appreciate the fact Muse has made the entire game accessible on initial purchase, I feel the title of gunner needs to be earned. By taking up the gunner slot you are saying "I am the type of person who can calculate shot drop, wind-age, and ship momentum in my head. I have studied each ammo type and know how to get the optimal damage output for each situation. I know what part of the enemy ship to attack with this weapon." When I find this not to be the case I am profoundly disappointed. This is doubly true when I have an engineer on board, who I know can shoot better than the gunner, but is tied to the hull because the gunner is not causing enough damage to the other ship.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 25, 2013, 01:22:48 pm
The arguments from Zill ignores the pre and post patch differences to the art of gunnery, almost as if there were none. In fact the argument presented could of been repeated verbatim pre-patch and not be out of place.

The new dynamic especially for the bigger ships is one of Gun-health + time on repair/rebuild vs Ammo options. The abilities of the buff hammer and chem spray (not such an issue with the new fire) are adequate substitutes in this rebalanced environment.

Now I admit the trade might be worth it on a manticore or cannonade and i confess i hadn't really thought about these options...Because pro tip, your gunners hate them, No seriously these are super boring to man and if you've chained you gunner to one make it up to them somehow.

You see your gunners love the heavy flak and the lumberjack, and generally speaking a single ammo type is enough (qwerty is of the opinion that ammo type is charged which is a constant source of amusement for me).

Rounding up our discussion so far, we can all agree that gunners on light guns have suffered. Unsurprisingly I agree and further argue that the same is true for half of the Heavy guns as well particularly on larger ships.

 
 




Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on March 25, 2013, 02:45:32 pm
The post patch meta, specifically arming times, hurt the gunner class by forcing captains to idiot proof their ships. My goldfish exclusively flies with Carronade or Hwacha because I can't count on having gunner who can hit at range, and going point blank is no longer an option. Also since the heavy flack is no longer as effective against armor, even if I have a skilled gunner giving them a high skill weapon will not improve our the ship's dammage output. I have had moderate success with a Lumberjack/Manticore Galleon in part because even if the gunner misses every Lumberjack shot, the top deck Gatling + Manticore is enough to put an attacking ship out of my misery.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: MasX on March 25, 2013, 04:18:56 pm
As long as you can shoot a gUN whats the problem
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on March 25, 2013, 04:39:08 pm
I think some of the old school gunners resent no longer being MVP's they were before the last patch. They probably also resent being treated like paste eaters by captains like me who have suffered one too many powder monkeys to really trust a gunner with mission critical tasks.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: -Muse- Cullen on March 25, 2013, 05:53:44 pm
While the gunner role gets an innate trust when it comes to being a high level, I feel that an actual bonus should be included with the role. Whenever I join a game, I never choose gunner because of how restricted the role is- his or her primary role is to shoot, and the secondary role is to keep their gun functional. If something gets destroyed, the gunner has to just sit around and wait, or feebly attempt to help out the ship with whatever repair tool they brought. The engineer's role is to keep everything functional, and secondary role is to use a gun whenever there is downtime.

Most of the time when I play gunner, I simply use a long-range ammo and a short-range ammo, like lesmok and greased. While it would be nice to have both of these, I always end up using one clip of lesmok as the distance is closed, then I stick with the second clip for the rest of the engagement. Having the extra ammo is nice, but most of the time, a gunner will sit on the main weapon of the ship(heavy gun of the spire, goldfish, front gun of any ship, really), and that main weapon will only really benefit from a particular type of ammo, like heavy, charged, or incendiary.

My point is that an experienced engineer can fill in the role of an experienced gunner, but no other classes can really feel at full strength in any other role. If the gunner received some sort of utility bonus that wouldn't break the game, like extra zoom levels on guns, increased move speed on the ship, or some other sweet candy, it would definitely be more of a draw to use the guns as a gunner instead of an engineer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 25, 2013, 05:59:14 pm
Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

nopenopenopenopenope

Something has gone horribly wrong if playing to win and playing for fun are in conflict.  A lot of people here are mentioning "gunner" as though they're referring to someone that's good at shooting, that's not the issue being brought up.  The issue is the actual role of gunner, the actual utility of carrying multiple ammo types versus being completely self-sufficient for gun repairs AND being able to really contribute to ship repairs the need arises.  Simply by bringing a buff hammer, a gungineer can buff his own gun in between reloads at zero cost to DPS, eventually giving himself a little boost once every few volleys (or once every volley in the case of the Manticore).  It's very simple to assign positions so that your crew aren't manning guns they don't have the ammo for.  Hell, even on ships that have heavy (why are we still saying medium?) guns you can still very easily get away with having one ammo type and make up for the lack of range utility (there's always vanilla) with gun uptime.  A great gunner won't aim any worse when he picks "Engineer" as his class, he'll just trade near-useless ammo slots for useful repair tools.

You can't dismiss what's going on in the Cogs just because you're not in it yourself.  Their meta is going to eventually have an effect on our meta.  Something's wrong with the current situation where guns only need one ammo all the time to work, they need to benefit more from having their ammo swapped out all the time in order for gunners to really shine as, well, gunners.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on March 25, 2013, 07:09:34 pm
We're averaging a patch a month at the moment, and the next scheduled patch is due next week or the week after.. game balance is yo-yoing as it is.

The Cogs might reflect high level strategy play for a very small minority of the player population, but I'll repeat - there is no evidence that the wider game is rejecting the Gunner role en masse. 99% of crews still contain one Gunner.  There's been a sight decline in the fascination that Russian crews had for Gunner Captains - but that was to be expected.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on March 25, 2013, 07:15:39 pm
The last patch has significantly fewer and less drastic balance changes. This may be in part due to Muse preparing for PAX and their Kickstarter announcement. But it could also be due to the game's meta getting closer to what the designers envisioned. I have been meaning to watch a COG's match to see if there is anything the upper tier guys are doing that I have missed out on, but on a whole I agree with Hubert Pickle. Top level crews running at pique efficiency is almost a different game than me messing about on Pub matches.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on March 25, 2013, 08:56:00 pm
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 28, 2013, 12:20:42 am
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on March 28, 2013, 12:30:04 am
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.

Well here's how I look at it. You can have another engineer if you would like to help you rebuild when things get critical, but what is there to stop another captain from following you down and just keep hammering you so that all your engies are busy? Your ship is essentially useless at that point in time, b/c you are not putting out any DPS. The moment your gungineer hops off the guns to help, is the moment your ship is doomed to die (IMO of course). The gunner role gives you extra ammo so that you can hit your enemy fast, and provide more DPS. As a side note, gunners are becoming more important for guns with arming time, if you get into a close quarters engagement (lesmok for long range, Heavy or Incendiary for short)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 28, 2013, 12:41:06 am
How can a brother gunner who seems to have an understanding of the game talk such nonsense, its enough to drive one into despair.

I am in despair.

Although at the same time i thank you for fighting the good fight and trying to salvage our good name!
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 28, 2013, 12:54:42 am
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.

Well here's how I look at it. You can have another engineer if you would like to help you rebuild when things get critical, but what is there to stop another captain from following you down and just keep hammering you so that all your engies are busy? Your ship is essentially useless at that point in time, b/c you are not putting out any DPS. The moment your gungineer hops off the guns to help, is the moment your ship is doomed to die (IMO of course). The gunner role gives you extra ammo so that you can hit your enemy fast, and provide more DPS. As a side note, gunners are becoming more important for guns with arming time, if you get into a close quarters engagement (lesmok for long range, Heavy or Incendiary for short)

Except in your situation, all that the engineer needs to do is keep gunning.  Nothing is forcing him to jump off and help with repairs, he just CAN if he doesn't have anything to shoot.  The only weapons with an arming time are the Lumberjack and Heavy Flak, and only three of the six ships available can even them; and even then those guns can work at near-optimal conditions with a single ammo type as three engineers on a ship with a heavy gun is just as viable as two engineers and a gunner.  There's a difference between someone whose job it is to shoot and someone who's taken the Gunner role mechanically.  Ammo switching just isn't as useful as the extra gun uptime and repairs you get from a gungineer most of the time.

Why are so many light guns only really good with one type of ammo?  Why isn't there enough of a difference between ammo types to make switching between them more worthwhile than just switching back to vanilla if the one you brought isn't useful at the moment?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on March 28, 2013, 12:58:13 am
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.

Well here's how I look at it. You can have another engineer if you would like to help you rebuild when things get critical, but what is there to stop another captain from following you down and just keep hammering you so that all your engies are busy? Your ship is essentially useless at that point in time, b/c you are not putting out any DPS. The moment your gungineer hops off the guns to help, is the moment your ship is doomed to die (IMO of course). The gunner role gives you extra ammo so that you can hit your enemy fast, and provide more DPS. As a side note, gunners are becoming more important for guns with arming time, if you get into a close quarters engagement (lesmok for long range, Heavy or Incendiary for short)

The idea for the third gungineer is not to leave the gun to repair the ship.  It's to have the proper tools to keep his own gun operational.  Something that has a much more direct relationship to DPS than ammo type currently.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on March 28, 2013, 01:11:53 am
Well its pretty obvious that we arent going to convince either side of the other's opinions.

I dont care what the updates have changed. It hasnt changed my opinion that unless you have a very specialized situation where only one ammo type is useful on the entire boat (Like a Squid build), a gunner will always be better suited for that last crew slot. The added variety in ammo can make a disable gun into both a disable and kill gun. It can get you first strike over an opponent, and give you an advantage when they get too close. I dont need to call an engineer repairing the engines up to the front gun cause he's got the proper ammo for a 3-5 second window of opportunity.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 28, 2013, 01:37:55 am
That having a gunner at all is controversial is an issue.  It should be indisputable that having one of every role is optimal, and that's just not how it is right now.  I don't know how you manage your crew, but on my ships everyone stays near their battlestations, my engineers aren't wandering off far from their guns or relying on each other to trade places on their guns for different situations.

It's just so situational.  Everyone can always use a full repair kit, it's situational when you can use different ammo types.  Proper planning can drastically reduce the needed ammo - carronades can get away with just having charged, burst on Manticores so long you fly with teammates so you're not trying to fight another Manticore in which case you bring heavy (the extra uptime and selfbuffing is a REAL help as you have time to buff EVERY shot).  I really look for excuses to use a gunner whenever possible but I'm responsible for all three of my crewmembers having fun and that often means actually winning those close matches, I hate having to tell someone that they need to switch roles.  If the light guns could benefit more from different ammos, then having even two gunners could be very competitive rather than the near death sentence it is now.

I think a lot of the problem is that there's very few ammo types that can work on any gun.  Ammo choice, as it is right now, is commonly dictated by the captain or just inferred when the gunner looks at the loadout.  There's one, two, possibly three ammos that work well with the guns they'll be using.  There's not a lot of room for variety, and ammo variety is the gunner's one strength.  It's not fun just taking what the captain tells you to take, you should be able to mix and match to your preference without impacting the captain's plans at all.  I should be able to say something like "take something for accuracy, hull damage, and disabling" and just let the gunner choose based on comfort and his own skill.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on March 28, 2013, 03:09:14 am
Zill, name one situation where you'd want different ammo for the same light gun.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 28, 2013, 06:05:51 am
I can think of a couple, the flamethrower can extend its range with lesmok and turn a bit better with a longer clip with greased.  Gatlings beneift from heavy and long range and greased at close.  Flaks like heavy clips for range and burst for close.  Mercuries can be a touch easier to handle with lesmoks, though charged is the bread and butter.  It's that having both doesn't provide a great benefit, it takes too long to switch ammos in a flamethrower to make use of their different reaches, a gatling will often strip the armor before there's a need to switch from heavy to greased (plus at closer range heavy clip can selectively disable enemy components while waiting for the armor to go back up), the light flak isn't that much better with heavy, it isn't hard to compensate for the drop to get that extra damage on a Merc even across the map.  When compared to the benefit of keeping those guns up and going more often AND having them buffed AND having the ability to have everyone repair in an emergency the extra ammo just doesn't seem to compare.

What I'm more interested in is how Zill's making a weapon change its purpose just by switching ammo.  I know incendiary rounds on a gatling can start some fires, but I haven't seen that used to great effect.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on March 28, 2013, 09:53:39 am
Zill, name one situation where you'd want different ammo for the same light gun.

Light Flak - Heavy and Burst/Charged/Greased (Many of my guys have different opinions on which is best. I like the burst for the extra shot.)
Carronade - Heavy, Greased
Flamer - Lesmok, Burst/Greased
Mortar - Greased, Lesmok
Gatling - Heavy, Greased/Burst (This on is a little bit of a stretch and usually not manned by my gunners.)
Artemis - Lesmok, Burst/Greased
Banshee - Heavy, Greased
Flare - jk

Quote
What I'm more interested in is how Zill's making a weapon change its purpose just by switching ammo.  I know incendiary rounds on a gatling can start some fires, but I haven't seen that used to great effect.

This is pretty much restricted to Heavy guns. Most if not all light weapon ammo swaps just make it more useful at different ranges. The Heavy Carronade and Hwacha benefit greatly with a varied ammo selection. Flak and Lumberjack do as well, mostly due to arming times.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on March 28, 2013, 05:11:02 pm
Oh, I thought you were referring to actually changing the role from disabling to killing and back again.  With those guns you're still just changing range, the effect is just more pronounced as using an inappropriate ammo at certain ranges can mean completely wiffing a volley.  A gunner is arguably more useful on those ships, but still a third engineer can function great on those ships as well by just taking the ammo that'll be most commonly used and relying on the improved uptime.  The Manticore in particular can do just fine with heavy clip and benefits GREATLY from engineer TLC as even the slightest bit of damage will prevent it from turning, not to mention the ability to buff every single volley or run off from the gun to do repairs during the reload.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on March 31, 2013, 08:50:34 am
This issue was canvassed in the last community chat which had participation from a number of people in this thread

*cough* Zill *cough*

Looks like the general consensus is with me.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on March 31, 2013, 09:08:12 am
This issue was canvassed in the last community chat which had participation from a number of people in this thread

*cough* Zill *cough*

Looks like the general consensus is with me.


I didnt feel like arguing in the stream. My boats will still always have a gunner on board.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on March 31, 2013, 12:32:28 pm
I'm with Zill - always take a Gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Tsal Vlaxitov on April 02, 2013, 01:20:26 pm
I almost exclusively play as a gunner and from my short experience with it, the guy who forces me to switch to engineer is the same guy who thinks its ok to stay in a galleon's broadside for the sake of shooting at another ship. Its either that or hes soo unaware of his surroundings that he fails to notice hes in a galleons broadside to begin with and needs several engineers to carry him through that handicap. This is no exception to higher ranked captains either as rank is clearly not skill gated in this game. Good pilots can easily get by with one engineer and that one engineer is either shooting or chilling half the time. Besides that, why wouldn't you want someone to focus on gunning and someone else to focus on fixing? That ridiculas term "gungineer" is an engineer who only guns and never fixes anything other than his gun most of the time and once again, the pilot who demands all engineers is too unaware to notice that. I do more fixing as a gunner than alot of "gungineers" I've seen in action.

Engineers might be better on paper but in their actual in game roles this is how its working out to my witness. That said I would love for there to be an undeniable advantage to having a a gunner over coordinating different ammo types between different engineers but really only to keep those pilots who would exclude me or at least moan about it from doing so.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on April 02, 2013, 01:27:42 pm
A Pyra can cope with two Gunners but gains very little for having the second.

A Galleon can do well with two Gunners, but the second is pointless with an all Hwacha broadside as that only needs one gunner to operate at 100% DPS.

For a Goldfish it's barely worthwhile as most of the effort is put into bringing the main gun into action and having a buffgineer assigned to help the Gunner on the forward gun has significant advantages.

But for the Junker and Squid, having a second Gunner is a liability that's likely to cost dearly.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 02, 2013, 01:33:06 pm
I almost exclusively play as a gunner and from my short experience with it, the guy who forces me to switch to engineer is the same guy who thinks its ok to stay in a galleon's broadside for the sake of shooting at another ship. Its either that or hes soo unaware of his surroundings that he fails to notice hes in a galleons broadside to begin with and needs several engineers to carry him through that handicap. This is no exception to higher ranked captains either as rank is clearly not skill gated in this game. Good pilots can easily get by with one engineer and that one engineer is either shooting or chilling half the time. Besides that, why wouldn't you want someone to focus on gunning and someone else to focus on fixing? That ridiculas term "gungineer" is an engineer who only guns and never fixes anything other than his gun most of the time and once again, the pilot who demands all engineers is too unaware to notice that. I do more fixing as a gunner than alot of "gungineers" I've seen in action.

Engineers might be better on paper but in their actual in game roles this is how its working out to my witness. That said I would love for there to be an undeniable advantage to having a a gunner over coordinating different ammo types between different engineers but really only to keep those pilots who would exclude me or at least moan about it from doing so.

You can get by with one engineer against a team of newcomers. Otherwise, two is a necessity. You should  try playing as an engineer more before you say things like this.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on April 02, 2013, 01:49:21 pm
If you can get away with two gunners or if your primary engineer is shooting most of the time it is because the other team doesn't see your ship as a threat. When the other team does see you as a threat two engineers are vital since one will be stuck to the hull and the other one will be trying to keep the 2ndary systems like engines and balloon operational. Having a dedicated gunner removes the question "should I start shooting?" from the engineers.

As for the third position gunner or engineer, it can be answered by a single question "Will I need more than one type of ammo to make this ship build work?" for the squid, blenderfish, and close range only pyramidions/junkers the answer is usually NO. When big guns (not Carronade) come into play, or if there is a mix of field guns and close range guns the answer becomes YES.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Tsal Vlaxitov on April 02, 2013, 01:56:28 pm
I almost exclusively play as a gunner and from my short experience with it, the guy who forces me to switch to engineer is the same guy who thinks its ok to stay in a galleon's broadside for the sake of shooting at another ship. Its either that or hes soo unaware of his surroundings that he fails to notice hes in a galleons broadside to begin with and needs several engineers to carry him through that handicap. This is no exception to higher ranked captains either as rank is clearly not skill gated in this game. Good pilots can easily get by with one engineer and that one engineer is either shooting or chilling half the time. Besides that, why wouldn't you want someone to focus on gunning and someone else to focus on fixing? That ridiculas term "gungineer" is an engineer who only guns and never fixes anything other than his gun most of the time and once again, the pilot who demands all engineers is too unaware to notice that. I do more fixing as a gunner than alot of "gungineers" I've seen in action.

Engineers might be better on paper but in their actual in game roles this is how its working out to my witness. That said I would love for there to be an undeniable advantage to having a a gunner over coordinating different ammo types between different engineers but really only to keep those pilots who would exclude me or at least moan about it from doing so.

You can get by with one engineer against a team of newcomers. Otherwise, two is a necessity. You should  try playing as an engineer more before you say things like this.

Yeah I do realize that which is why I said in my short experience. Maybe once you're pro 2 engineers is totally necissary and I do intend on ranking engineer up. Its just so far that in my short experience when I'm losing its because were being outflown an overwhelming majority of the time.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on April 02, 2013, 02:00:43 pm
Jeeze, what is with the plethora of ammo people are apparently bringing to these games? Isn't two per player enough?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 02, 2013, 02:35:57 pm
I almost exclusively play as a gunner and from my short experience with it, the guy who forces me to switch to engineer is the same guy who thinks its ok to stay in a galleon's broadside for the sake of shooting at another ship. Its either that or hes soo unaware of his surroundings that he fails to notice hes in a galleons broadside to begin with and needs several engineers to carry him through that handicap. This is no exception to higher ranked captains either as rank is clearly not skill gated in this game. Good pilots can easily get by with one engineer and that one engineer is either shooting or chilling half the time. Besides that, why wouldn't you want someone to focus on gunning and someone else to focus on fixing? That ridiculas term "gungineer" is an engineer who only guns and never fixes anything other than his gun most of the time and once again, the pilot who demands all engineers is too unaware to notice that. I do more fixing as a gunner than alot of "gungineers" I've seen in action.

Engineers might be better on paper but in their actual in game roles this is how its working out to my witness. That said I would love for there to be an undeniable advantage to having a a gunner over coordinating different ammo types between different engineers but really only to keep those pilots who would exclude me or at least moan about it from doing so.

This is why there being a gunner at all on a ship is so controversial.  Dedicated gunners often spend more time fixing their gun than switching ammos, more DPS is lost due to downtime or engines or balloons being knocked offline than what's gained from that single volley you get off at range before closing in at close.  The role "Gunner" has no bearing on whether you're the guy whose job it is to shoot all the time, even if I have three engineers one of those engineers is going to play exactly like a Gunner except he can rebuild his own gun if necessary and, if shit has really hit the fan, can help with repairs should everything be disabled at once from a Hwacha volley or tar cloud.  They are able to repair, rebuild, extinguish, and buff their own gun, making them much more independent and allowing the "real" engineers more time to repair more vital systems.

The only real use of a Gunner role comes from ships where that gunner is either going to be running to a bunch of different guns or will be on a heavy weapon like on a Goldfish, Spire, or Galleon.  Almost none of the light guns have a real benefit from multiple ammo types, and those that do don't benefit enough to justify the loss of uptime and emergency tankiness.  Now, as for actual people who shoot, you're right, there needs to be two people who can shoot at any point in time, but even for those arguing that the Gunner is perfectly fine won't be taking that second Gunner over a gungineer who switches off between shooting and repairs as necessary.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on April 02, 2013, 02:40:43 pm
and now we've reached full circle.... It's clear that both sides will not budge on their viewpoints... This just needs to be tested on the field of battle... I'll see you in the Cogs :)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: All Systems Go on April 03, 2013, 04:42:02 pm
This thread was an interesting read. As a pilot/captain, a few thoughts I'll share in case they're of interest.

* Getting two gunners makes me groan as much as having a second pilot. Three will make me quit the match if they won't change before it launches. But three engineers I'm content with, especially if they listen when I tell them what ammo to bring.
* A good gunner is awesome. But I've found most gunners can't really shoot, even with the Hwacha. As someone else mentioned, it comes down to that whole keeping ship momentums and stuff like that in their head.
* A good gunner on my quad-hwacha Galleon can be pretty devastating. They can disable most ships before they can really do damage, and if they slip over or under, switch to the other side's guns and take out those engines. Buuuut...
* I pug pretty much all the time, can't seem to get a consistent crew together. Most gunners suck. I'd rather have 3 engineers (but definitely a minimum of two), cause when a gunner can't do the above and disable a ship's gun, you really can't get by with 1 engineer holding the ship together. Stressful times, you really need two and ideally a third that can try to get a gun up quick.
* I have tried briefly and would like to try guns besides the hwacha (or hellhound on my Fish), but I can't count on having a gunner that can hit dependably or, honestly, even at all.

And lastly...
I'm not going to try another role any time soon, I think. If I did, I think I would want to try gunner. Mental math on trying to hit two moving objects, using the ideal ammo, that sort of thing's of more interest to me than just trying to figure out what to hit with a wrench first.
But there's just too many gunners already.

Fortunately, many will switch to engineer when I ask them to (though I feel kinda bad doing it). I myself, meanwhile, will be staying at the helm. Piloting in this game's interesting, at least : )
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 05, 2013, 10:36:50 am
and now we've reached full circle.... It's clear that both sides will not budge on their viewpoints... This just needs to be tested on the field of battle... I'll see you in the Cogs :)

Looks like the gents don't take gunners anymore either, if their last match is anything to go by (tho i did hear they had some people problems being Easter).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 10:40:18 am
and now we've reached full circle.... It's clear that both sides will not budge on their viewpoints... This just needs to be tested on the field of battle... I'll see you in the Cogs :)

Looks like the gents don't take gunners anymore either, if their last match is anything to go by (tho i did hear they had some people problems being Easter).

We also beat them Week 0 using gunners. Unfortunately it was not streamed due to daylight savings shenanigans. Nice try.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 05, 2013, 10:53:13 am
Oh yeah wish I'd seen that. But you know how it goes pics or it didn't happen.

My point here is just that one of the most long range and precise/heavy teams in the game seem to eschew the use of gunners.

Btw do you attribute the victory to your use of gunners? [legitimately curious]
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 11:02:40 am
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on April 05, 2013, 11:26:37 am
(http://i.imgur.com/2FshRfI.jpg)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 05, 2013, 11:33:53 am
Morbie? i thought he and the gents had parted ways or was this before that.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 11:51:00 am
Morbie? i thought he and the gents had parted ways or was this before that.

He parted ways after this match took place.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 05, 2013, 11:54:34 am
Yeah...Tho honestly i did hear it was because (among other more important things) he took a hard line on bringing a gunner  :P
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 12:07:08 pm
I wont speculate here. However his screenshot does show you his ammo at the bottom for the heavy carronade.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 05, 2013, 02:22:18 pm
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 04:08:17 pm
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.

Im not here to pick your loadouts for you or anyone else here. If you want to run 3 engineer's, be my guest. However, you cannot base the entirety of gunner's success/usefulness on certain matches that happen to sway in the favor of the team that went all engie. There are way more variables involved there that can sway wins one way or another.

I personally cant stand using gungineers. I tried it. I dont want him off the gun buffing. I want him on the gun, with ammo loaded, and firing on the enemy im pointing him at. Under that mindset, a gunner fills the role better.

That extra 25% damage over a few seconds can mean the difference between a kill or not. A kill is worth more to me than surviving a little longer, only to die because he's still shooting and my 3 engies are repairing or buffing things.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on April 05, 2013, 04:15:12 pm
What 25%?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 05, 2013, 04:20:12 pm
What 25%?

It was his example. Im assuming he meant charged rounds in a gun that uses them well.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on April 06, 2013, 05:16:50 am
The extra damage (whatever percentage) comes purely from having a second gun firing, over a gun not firing.

One ammunition optimised, buffed gun is less efficient than two guns firing at base damage.



(ok, the Goldfish is a possible exception)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 06, 2013, 05:55:47 pm
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.

Im not here to pick your loadouts for you or anyone else here. If you want to run 3 engineer's, be my guest. However, you cannot base the entirety of gunner's success/usefulness on certain matches that happen to sway in the favor of the team that went all engie. There are way more variables involved there that can sway wins one way or another.

I personally cant stand using gungineers. I tried it. I dont want him off the gun buffing. I want him on the gun, with ammo loaded, and firing on the enemy im pointing him at. Under that mindset, a gunner fills the role better.

That extra 25% damage over a few seconds can mean the difference between a kill or not. A kill is worth more to me than surviving a little longer, only to die because he's still shooting and my 3 engies are repairing or buffing things.

That's great that you find a gunner useful, but the issue is that the current meta at large tends to prefer three engineers and no gunners.  That's not something we want to stay around, we don't want there to not be changes to the gunner just because some people can kinda sorta see a slight advantage to having one over a gungineer.  Having some variety in the crew roles should give you a MAJOR advantage over those that have all gunners or all engineers and that currently isn't the case, and the meta reflects that.  Plenty of people have been comparing gunners and gungineers side by side and finding that gungineers are in general winning out, that they're doing so great in the Cogs (galleons nonwithstanding) is about as objective of proof we're going to get.  There needs to be some changes so that gunners aren't seen as something useful to only half of the competitive community.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on April 06, 2013, 07:37:02 pm
Here's how I look at this... You're going to play your way, I'm not going to sway this... I like my way so it's split 50/50.... I respect your opinion, but don't call me useless... There is no rule to say that you have to bring a gunner and some groups play well without needing them... for MNS, we will always run with gunners... It works for us
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 06, 2013, 08:13:53 pm
Except I don't want to play this way, it's simply what's currently effective.  I don't want it to be effective, and that this thread exists means a lot of people are unhappy that three engineers are so effective, it's something that should be a novelty setup like three gunners or a flame pyramidion.  And nowhere did I say that Shinkurex was useless, just that in my (and many other competitive players') experience someone that can shoot well is more useful to the captain as a gungineer than as a gunner.  The role doesn't change the players' skill or actual job on the ship at all.  Someone that's good with ammo switching is obviously going to be more useful a gunner than one that isn't, but there isn't enough emphasis on that skill in the game right now and that's the issue.

I'm not arguing that those who currently use gunners shouldn't, but that just because those people CAN use gunners doesn't mean there isn't a need to tweak the mechanics to make gunners more appealing to more than just half of the competitive community.  I think a lot of the problem has to do with the current penalties to ammo switching, as even before this thread was made gunners apparently were more in demand because of heatsink (a defensive, chemspray-like ammo) than actually being able to switch to the most effective ammunition to fit the situation.

Ammo right now is tailored to specific guns and there's an expectation that each player should only be on one gun (two on a Galleon), the result is that more often than not whoever's shooting isn't making use of all three ammo slots.  If the mechanics could be rebalanced a bit to encourage more ammo switching then the meta would probably start to favor the gunner over the gungineer.

Just to give an example, let's say a Pyramidion has two engineers and a gunner.  Both engineers are on repair because the ship's taking heavy fire, the front guns are a gatling and flak.  This SHOULD be the perfect situation for a gunner, strip off armor with the gatling and run over to the flak to smack their hull to distract the enemy crew off of your ship; however, the current penalty for leaving your gun during reload makes it so that the gunner can't really make use of his multiple ammo types and stay equipped for both guns, he might as well have just been a gungineer with heavy clip in that situation.  You CAN do the gun-swapping trick on a Galleon with double Hwachas and still make use of the Gunner's unique traits, but right now that's the only setup where that's possible and that's a damn shame.

Apparently the way reloading works right now is due to some UI limitation rather than any clear vision of how the Gunner should work, though I don't see why defaulting to vanillas is going to be any clearer than defaulting to what was last left in it.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 06, 2013, 08:46:37 pm
god damn edit timer

My point is that there's more to this than just telling those that have issues finding use for the gunner to suck it up because you can.  This isn't limited to just a handful of people who haven't really played the game yet, or those who aren't as skilled and can't handle a high skill ceiling.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 07, 2013, 12:53:43 am
An interesting thing to note is that in the Paddling vs. Gentlemen championship Cog game today, a match where heavy flaks and lumberjacks were used, there was not a single gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on April 07, 2013, 01:29:23 am
Forgive me for adding on to this, as I am tired. You are absolutely correct Sunderland... There was not a single gunner in that match. I think this may be tied into playing styles of the teams... I would like to point out that Corvus also when with all engies, and MNS went with gunners. Now before this gets twisted, I want everyone to be clear that This is purely my speculation, but there is a mentality you adopt when you click the Icon in the upper right. If you're running all engies, It seems as though one is more keen to sit back in a sniping duel than to get in quick and dirty. Where as with a gunner you want to get him within optimal effectiveness (There will always be exceptions to this rule (Polaris for instance))... This makes for more exciting games for spectators... Just from what I saw today, Muse and MNS brought gunners, which lead to 6 min matches.... Gents, and paddling brought all engies, and we had a 30 min match... With that said, I hold the Gents and the Paddling in the utmost respect, and hope the nonsense that I'm typing makes sense... Who knows... I'll prolly wake up in the morn and wonder what the heck I wrote :P

Also Helmic, You did not say that I was useless, I apologize if it came out that way...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Morblitz on April 07, 2013, 02:04:28 am
Sorry, Shinkurex. I respectfully disagree.

Our match went so long because both teams held their ground for an incredibly long (and tense) amount of time. As soon as we made a play and hit you from a different and more advantageous position, and got the first kill, the rest of the game lasted about as long as a standard match. There were reasons the match lasted as long as it did, and I don't believe it had anything to do with the fact that no one was a gunner. 

In fact, I believe it would have lasted even longer if we had gunners. My lumberjack, almost all the other guns, and the turning engines kept getting destroyed. If I was a gunner I would have had a really bad time.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on April 07, 2013, 08:25:27 am
Meh that's fine.... We'll See what Happens next week...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 07, 2013, 09:01:45 am
Shinkurex buddy you might be reading too much into the roles old boy.

Personally I'd LOVE to be a gunner (tho mainly for the prestige rather than the ammo). Infact i keep my engi level as low as possible in a form of protest figuring as long as the cogs features the Paddling and everyone has high levels my lvl3 engi will stick out and hopefully raise some questions.

On another note this thread is coming along nicely with vigorous discussion. However my biggest bugbear is that people seem to think the gunner class has some sort of advantage on heavy guns.

I'd consider this a misconception with 2 caveats:

-Firstly that manticore might sometimes want to use explosive rather than heavy in very specific circumstances; and

-Secondly, if your on one of the ships that tends to have a spare person like a goldfish then sure whatevs its hardly loosing you efficiency because you have a float who's prolly running around with a buff hammer and nothing much to do.   
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Typhi on April 11, 2013, 04:51:23 am
The solution is pretty simple, just bring back this stuff! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6QVxhmoAIyA#t=224s
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on April 11, 2013, 05:22:27 am
As a pilot, I can select more than one helm tool and have them be effective at the same time.  As an engineer, I can hammer then extinguish to combine the effects of my repair tools.

Why not grant the gunner the ability to combine ammo types?  This will require the further balance of ammo types (likely toning them down), but we still see changes to ships and the repair game too.  Additionally, make gunner-loaded ammo persistent between people manning the hardpoint.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 11, 2013, 09:48:56 am
I can see that just being a balance nightmare waiting to happen. You'd have to tone the ammo way down for that, and at that point it'll become useless for engineers to use them, and you'll have crazy OP combinations.

You don't select more than one tool, you use them in quick succession and that gives you the perception they are combined. Gunners don't have that particular luxury due to reloads, but swapping from ammo to ammo based on current needs its basically the same thing you're talking about, its just not instant.

Making gunner loaded-ammo persistent would break the reason for being a gunner, which is to man the guns. Then he just becomes a ammo supply depot who loads weapons and then runs off to repair things and anyone can hop on that gun and fire the desired rounds.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on April 13, 2013, 08:10:48 am
I agree with your last point, since it basically makes him the Gun Loader and not the Gunner.  However, with switching ammo loads, it seems apparent that that advantage is not enough to generally justify a Gunner rather than an Engineer.  Those were haphazard suggestions, of course, but I do think that the class is marginalized in the current build.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 13, 2013, 10:25:56 am
Well all this is coming from a guy who doesn't think gunners are useless or need buffing. I've been running one gunner for, well ever, and I value a good gunner over another engineer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squidslinger Gilder on April 16, 2013, 03:51:45 am
The problem isn't gunners, the problem is bad players hitting quick match as gunner or bad players refusing to play anything else besides gunner then refusing to listen. Or the dreaded, sitting on a turret shooting at clouds acting like someone with the attention span of a goldfish.

I vote for perks Gunners get with the guns. Like say, give gunners the ability to instantly disable guns with flame like the game used to have. Or just patch that back. Seriously, bring back the original flames!

For other guns this would be similar. Heavy flak would work as it originally did. Rocket carrosel would fire like it used to. Lumberjack would get minimum range reduced. Others would get accuracy buffs. Similar to heavy clip except maybe a mix between that and normal operation.

Course, could solve a lot of this by just returning the game to what it was before the nerf. But if not, giving gunners these abilities back would help make them more viable.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 06:06:56 am
I don't think anyone is arguing about quickjoiners, though.  We're talking about the same person using either three ammo types and one repair tool or one ammo type and three repair tools, quickjoiner or not the latter's versatility has made it nearly a standard for a good portion of experienced captains on ships without heavy weapons (and sometimes even with).  Passive Gunner-specific abilities would mean classes aren't defined entirely by their tools and I don't think it's worth deviating from the original concept for what may be a temporary problem.  Unless those changes to the guns make different ammo types much more useful than they are now, I don't see how going back to gunners being useful mainly for their ability to switch to heatsink ammo is really fixing the problem.

And, well, rolling back to a previous patch means that so and so patch is perfect.  It obviously wasn't, or else Muse wouldn't have felt a need to roll out balance patches.  It'd be better to continue adjusting based on the current patch than constantly roll back.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on April 16, 2013, 06:34:02 am
Welp, I'm going to have to eat crow here, we used a gunner in the last cogs match against Zill, it wans't for experimental sake, it was a necessity. Not all the time, not most of the times, just, sometimes, you need a gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 16, 2013, 10:36:23 am
Damnit Squash i thought we agreed to never EVER mention that....

Still for that specific situation i reluctantly agree the gunner added value. But the Way the value was added way weird and roundabout.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 16, 2013, 10:41:39 am
Quote
Not all the time, not most of the times, just, sometimes, you need a gunner.

That looks like it was painful to type.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on April 16, 2013, 04:30:15 pm
Quote
Not all the time, not most of the times, just, sometimes, you need a gunner.

That looks like it was painful to type.

In fairness I think it was a bit more painful from your side.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 16, 2013, 04:48:20 pm
In fairness I think it was a bit more painful from your side.

Ouch.  Pun intended.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on April 16, 2013, 04:55:23 pm
Quote
Not all the time, not most of the times, just, sometimes, you need a gunner.

That looks like it was painful to type.

In fairness I think it was a bit more painful from your side.

*stops and thinks*

*bursts out laughing*
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on April 17, 2013, 04:12:08 am
Well all this is coming from a guy who doesn't think gunners are useless or need buffing. I've been running one gunner for, well ever, and I value a good gunner over another engineer.
The advantage I find is that a gunner has generally more experience than an equivalent engineer with leading targets, projectile trajectory, and ammo types.  It's an advantage purely in an individual identifying themselves as a dedicated gunner. From a purely mechanics side I think the argument has already been closed.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sylas Firehammer on April 17, 2013, 03:27:31 pm
Well all this is coming from a guy who doesn't think gunners are useless or need buffing. I've been running one gunner for, well ever, and I value a good gunner over another engineer.
The advantage I find is that a gunner has generally more experience than an equivalent engineer with leading targets, projectile trajectory, and ammo types.  It's an advantage purely in an individual identifying themselves as a dedicated gunner. From a purely mechanics side I think the argument has already been closed.

I think that can be very true. Last night I played a match with a Lumberjack on Squash's crew and I realized I was really quite terrible at the arcing of my shots.

A high leveled gunner will have gottenmost of his achievements via doing his job, gunning. As an engineer gets their achievements repairing most of the time. So yes, that is a very good point.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 18, 2013, 01:08:23 am
lol, a high level anything gets most of their levels through very specific grinding.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 18, 2013, 10:29:37 am
While true, someone awhile back proved to me that you can get to ~lvl5 pilot and never touch the helm. Makes me cringe thinking about that.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on April 18, 2013, 11:27:05 am
Played with an engi like that today, lv5 and not quite getting the difference between the spanner and the mallet.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 18, 2013, 11:55:24 am
While true, someone awhile back proved to me that you can get to ~lvl5 pilot and never touch the helm. Makes me cringe thinking about that.

If you've ever seen Ergoproxy you know this to be true.  He ALWAYS goes pilot, whether or not there's already a pilot, and seems to have gotten to level 4 by leeching off other pilots or forcing one of his crew to fly for him while he sits on a gun.  Level 1 everything else and an utter nightmare to have on board.  Would really like to see those achievements fixed so that people like him aren't rewarded for stuff like that.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on April 18, 2013, 12:19:35 pm
It does say something about the community that such ranks can be reached without actually learning the roll. Mostly that there are enough newbie games that some one can get achievements even while operating at a sub optimal level. Last night I flew with a level 4 engineer who kept double teaming components with me that were on repair cool down, and tried to rebuild the hull with a buff kit.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on April 18, 2013, 01:38:47 pm
I feel like I've started this to go off-topic. If someone wants to make a post for levels then by all means, otherwise lets shift back toward gunners.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on April 18, 2013, 02:03:26 pm
Gunners get a bad name because of all the level 1 gunners who don't know the basics of the game. I fly the Pyramidion most of the time because it is the best way to mitigate the effect of a bad gunner. A goldfish with a bad gunner is almost completely ineffective, where as a Pyramidion is still decently effective. I can never rely on the lobby to give me a good gunner and thus I base most of my captaining decisions on the assumption the gunner doesn't know how to work theweapons.

My main argument is that gunner should not be the default class since it makes new player catch a lot for flack when they mid game join a ship that already has a gunner. Unfortunately Awkm disagrees with me and I don't think it is an argument I will be winning.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Helmic on April 18, 2013, 02:08:22 pm
As far as just reputation goes, I can't disagree, though I insist that there's a mechanical disadvantage as well that needs to be addressed, probably by just having a dickton of ammo types so that there's never just one or two ammos good for a gun.  I think awkm will eventually change his mind so long we don't let up and continue to provide clear reasons, or at least wait until the game makes having a second gunner much more viable.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on April 19, 2013, 01:31:28 am
lol, a high level anything gets most of their levels through very specific grinding.
Exactly.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on April 19, 2013, 04:28:01 am
My main argument is that gunner should not be the default class since it makes new player catch a lot for flack when they mid game join a ship that already has a gunner. Unfortunately Awkm disagrees with me and I don't think it is an argument I will be winning.

I think Eric is in a minority on this.  We've already persuaded him to change some of the default ship loadouts, and I agree with you that it would be best for new players to default to Engineer (spanner, mallet, extinguisher; spyglass; heavy clip).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Malarosa Agresti on May 06, 2013, 04:43:40 pm
Argument necromancy, hooray!

I'm definitely in the camp that thinks the Gunner needs increased utility so that having 1 or even 2 is the rule rather than the exception.

Gun mods still need some tweaking to make them a bit more user/noobie friendly, but this might be one of the rare balancing situations where a nerf would be better then a buff.  Maybe the Engie is too useful, rather than Gunners being too weak?

What if the Gunner was, like, 'tougher' then other classes.  Make other classes unable to use guns that are on fire, and give the gunner reduced penalties for handling damaged weapons.  This poorly conceived change that I literally just made up would have three positive effects.

1)  Buff the Gunner in a way that wouldn't necessitate major changes to the current ammo system.
2)  NERF the Engineer / Pilots trying to use guns, but only a little.  They're likely to have a way to extinguish fire and repair a gun quickly, so it's more of a speed bump in their ability to fire a gun, making a true Gunner more responsive and consistent in their offense.
3)  Buff fire, which is currently kinda blah.

Essentially the Engie would be forced to stop and fix his gun, while a Gunner could 'take the heat' and continue fighting at peak efficiency until the last moment.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on May 06, 2013, 04:54:16 pm
As it stands currently no class has intrinsic advantage in others, it's all about equipment allotment. It would be a shame to make one class the exception to that pattern, as it encourages skillful play and doesn't sacrifice it for RPG style benefits. I was certainly in the camp of 'gunners are useless' when this thread started, but I'm not anymore. We always take a gunner when we go into a match on a galleon now, the lumberjack isn't so versatile that it allows an engi-gunner.

There are certainly other situations where gunners are useful. The front gun of a goldfish will certainly always have a gunner, manticore-spires would be wise to bring them as well. I think it's safe to say every medium gun (excepting maybe the heavy carronade) would majorly benefit from a gunner. The problem is really that the same isn't true with light guns.

Or is it? The new junker popularity might of fixed that, as now typically on a junker two people are each responsible for two guns. If they're of different types then having a gunner would make a lot of sense. But yeah, useful and required are two different things. A ship can run just fine with three engineers, it's definitely the rarist class in play, or at least it should be. I think 1 gunner for every 2 ships is pretty typical of the current meta.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on May 07, 2013, 03:59:26 am
I think the strength of the manticore and the need to switch between heavy and other rounds has reduced the marginalization of gunners.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: JaceBoojah on May 13, 2013, 03:35:49 am
Gunner solution: take all ammo types away from non-gunners.
Think about it.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Kyren on May 13, 2013, 03:44:20 am
Gunner solution: take all ammo types away from non-gunners.
Think about it.

Very radical, even though it sounds good at the first moment. What makes me unconvinced is that we'd only go half of the way - take gunning functionality away from the Captain and Engineer, but leave the Engineer & Captain functionality to the gunner. (Meaning, Gunner has Engi & Captain Slot, Engi & Captain don't have a Gunner slot). Kind of unfair, but limiting the classes to only their respective slots would also take a lot of.. features away.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: LazerusKI on May 13, 2013, 04:28:17 am
i think its also situational and ship based.
on our pyra we like to have 2 gunners and 1 engi
while our spire has 2 engi and 1 gunner.

with our pyra i like to switch between longrange (lesmok, heavy) and closerange (burst) ammo.
also with the gunner i can use different guns without disadvantages. if our pyra is loaded with long-range guns on the front and close-range guns on the side, i dont need to use lesmok for the side weapons. i want something to bash the enemy there. with an engineer im fixed to one ammo type. the same goes for random-teams. some ships have a colorfull mix of weapons, if you cant communicate with them, you are forced to adapt to different situations.

but: i have also thought that there should be a passive bonus, engineer should have a better repair skill, gunner should have more damage and the pilot should have more movement, if they are in their specific roles.
i have also thought of switching my gunner to engineer because if our main-tactic goes well, i only need to use one gun with one ammo. Only if the situation changes a second ammo can be nice.

with a passive bonus you can still play a different position with your class (gungineer), but a gunner would be always better in dealing damage. a gunner could repair his own gun (and maybe a system next to him), but the engineer would be better for this.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on May 13, 2013, 08:03:57 am
Double gunners on a Pyra? That's not a very good idea. It leaves your balloon badly exposed to any carronades/lumberjacks the other team might have.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: LazerusKI on May 13, 2013, 08:51:10 am
so far it worked.
but as i said, i was thinking about a change and hope for some additional passive-advantages for the classes.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on May 13, 2013, 10:50:33 am
Gunner solution: take all ammo types away from non-gunners.
Think about it.

Very radical, even though it sounds good at the first moment. What makes me unconvinced is that we'd only go half of the way - take gunning functionality away from the Captain and Engineer, but leave the Engineer & Captain functionality to the gunner. (Meaning, Gunner has Engi & Captain Slot, Engi & Captain don't have a Gunner slot). Kind of unfair, but limiting the classes to only their respective slots would also take a lot of.. features away.

And if we went all the way, removing all the extra class slots from each class (ex. gunner has only gunner skills, ect.) then the gunner would suffer even more I think. Everything gets a lot less versatile, which for only 3 available classes isn't good.

so far it worked.
but as i said, i was thinking about a change and hope for some additional passive-advantages for the classes.

I don't think passive advantages would change anything. If each class gets their respective buff, than nothing really changes other than values that are currently balanced. You risk tossing those way out of balance, and still end up at square 1.


When you get a good gunner on your boat, you'll see just what they are capable of vs another engineer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Arthem White on May 13, 2013, 11:03:56 am
This may just be the silliest idea ever: Why not having a gunner skill that is actually a gun?

Something like a short range, raycast based blunderbuss with a long cooldown, that deals little damage, but gets a huge bonus if you are very very precise (as in hitting the subsystem itself dead on).

This way a gunner could contribute by slightly covering the ships blind spots. I understand blind spots are important and this shouldn't devalue them, so the damage should be low and balanced with the idea of needing hawkeye precision. For instance, hitting the balloon itself with this weapon wouldn't scratch it, but hitting the balloon repair system would deal significant damage.

Otherwise, a cool Gunner skill could be a bomb he/she could drop straight down overboard.

Another idea would be giving the Flare Gun (or a version of it) to the Gunner, in the form of a handheld flare gun. Mounting it on the ship seems a bit niche and it looks to me like it would make more sense that way.

I'm not saying any of these should be Gunner exclusive, just vanilla Gunner skills. By having other skills that don't directly relate to ammunition, that can be useful while guns aren't pointing the right way, Gunners would perhaps be more interesting to have on board.

I don't know, it could be fun. Bear with me if this has been said before or just sounds really stupid.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sgt. Spoon on May 13, 2013, 11:38:29 am
I don't know, it could be fun. Bear with me if this has been said before or just sounds really stupid.

Sadly yes. The problem with hand-held weapons is that it would need totally new mechanics where shots are calculated from the players actual position instead of the ship. It also falls into a similar category as the "no" stance on boarding, where the focus is trying to be directed at ship to ship combat instead of the actual crew. So it's not very likely to make it into the game. But hey, we're still always for suggestions, even though this particular one is unlikely to get implemented.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Arthem White on May 13, 2013, 11:42:01 am
I don't know, it could be fun. Bear with me if this has been said before or just sounds really stupid.

Sadly yes. The problem with hand-held weapons is that it would need totally new mechanics where shots are calculated from the players actual position instead of the ship. It also falls into a similar category as the "no" stance on boarding, where the focus is trying to be directed at ship to ship combat instead of the actual crew. So it's not very likely to make it into the game. But hey, we're still always for suggestions, even though this particular one is unlikely to get implemented.

I see, thank you!
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: JaceBoojah on May 13, 2013, 12:47:21 pm
Gunner solution: take all ammo types away from non-gunners.
Think about it.

Very radical, even though it sounds good at the first moment. What makes me unconvinced is that we'd only go half of the way - take gunning functionality away from the Captain and Engineer, but leave the Engineer & Captain functionality to the gunner. (Meaning, Gunner has Engi & Captain Slot, Engi & Captain don't have a Gunner slot). Kind of unfair, but limiting the classes to only their respective slots would also take a lot of.. features away.

And if we went all the way, removing all the extra class slots from each class (ex. gunner has only gunner skills, ect.) then the gunner would suffer even more I think. Everything gets a lot less versatile, which for only 3 available classes isn't good.

Right now the gunner has full gunner ability and 3 perks.
The gunner also has full piloting ability plus 1 perk.
The gunner can either buff, put out fires, or repair (with various speeds) limiting his ability to engineer.

Pilot and gunner tools are just perks while engineering tools are more necessary for the job.

It would take more that 2 and less than 3 gunners to do the job of one engineer. Lets say the gunner can do 40% of an engineers job.
Engineers can operate any gun. That is already 80% of the gunners job. (2 engineers could out gun 1 gunner even without tools).
Personally I think having multiple ammo types is only really good for the 2 of the 14 guns, or if you are going back and forth on different guns. Even then the extra ammo type will only give you around a 15% efficiency boost and only while the ammo is loaded.

In my opinion Gunners are 40% Engineers but Engineers are 90% Gunners.  That is why I think we should nerf the Engineer by taking away his ammo type (making him have 70% of the gunner's ability) instead of buffing the Gunner.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moo on May 13, 2013, 01:00:02 pm
Is that going far enough though? The engineer would only be slightly worse at gunning than present, and the gunner would still be significantly worse at fixing stuff.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: JaceBoojah on May 13, 2013, 01:16:55 pm
I don't think the goal is to make all classes bad at other classes jobs, just make the gunner a little more useful.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on May 13, 2013, 01:35:40 pm
I am not a fan of subtractive game design, taking away something the players have gotten used to will only create anger and discontent. I think Muse should add more guns that can make use of different ammo types, or add more ammo types that have really niche applications. Right now the engineer needs every one of his class items in order to function effectively, but the gunner rarely uses one, sometimes two of his class items.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: DMaximus on May 13, 2013, 02:12:23 pm
This may have been mentioned already, but a possible solution/addition that seems interesting to me might be to add some gunner class items that function similarly to pilot items. Things like a scope that provides some level of zoom to any gun or various kinds of contraptions that increase turning radius or speed in various directions (Like phoenix claw and hydrogen for guns). If they need some detriment they could do some DOT to the guns like most pilot items.

I envision it taking up one of your 3 ammo spots, so your load out would be something like Heavy, Greased, and STEAMPOWERTURNER3000. I'd avoid anything that directly changed the damage output of the gun itself or had similar effects to the ammo types, since stacking that with special ammo could be difficult to balance.

Any other class could still take them, but it's more likely you'd take them as a gunner since you have enough slots for both ammo and a gunning tool. It seems like a solution that makes the extra gunner slots more useful instead of just giving them an ability bonus or gunner-only items.

Anyway, that's just some random thoughts I've had on the subject.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on May 13, 2013, 02:45:05 pm
@ DMaximus
It was before my time, but I have read old threads about the "Reload spring" It was a gunner item that decreased reload time, but could be swapped out for a different ammo type right before the gun loaded. From what I could tell by the remarks, people thought this was incredibly over powered.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Arthem White on May 13, 2013, 02:48:30 pm
This may have been mentioned already, but a possible solution/addition that seems interesting to me might be to add some gunner class items that function similarly to pilot items. Things like a scope that provides some level of zoom to any gun or various kinds of contraptions that increase turning radius or speed in various directions (Like phoenix claw and hydrogen for guns). If they need some detriment they could do some DOT to the guns like most pilot items.

I envision it taking up one of your 3 ammo spots, so your load out would be something like Heavy, Greased, and STEAMPOWERTURNER3000. I'd avoid anything that directly changed the damage output of the gun itself or had similar effects to the ammo types, since stacking that with special ammo could be difficult to balance.

Any other class could still take them, but it's more likely you'd take them as a gunner since you have enough slots for both ammo and a gunning tool. It seems like a solution that makes the extra gunner slots more useful instead of just giving them an ability bonus or gunner-only items.

Anyway, that's just some random thoughts I've had on the subject.

awesome! I was thinking pretty much that.

The way I saw a possible item is:

Crank (placeholder name. Should have a name that represents the fact it draws power from the steering engine):
When activated, the gun you are manning turns 100% faster. For as long as it is being used and for three seconds afterwards, the steering engine of that side of the ship loses power (both if its a front or rear gun)

And just for fun:

Oven Mitts: Makes you able to shoot from a gun that is currently on fire.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on May 13, 2013, 05:32:15 pm
@ DMaximus
It was before my time, but I have read old threads about the "Reload spring" It was a gunner item that decreased reload time, but could be swapped out for a different ammo type right before the gun loaded. From what I could tell by the remarks, people thought this was incredibly over powered.

Heavy Duty Springs... Yeah, those were ridiculous. It was basically a free method of cutting your reload time down a lot. You'd shoot until you had one shot left, switch to springs, fire the last shot, and switch to your preferred ammo type as the reload ended. The DPS you could put out was insane.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Veyka on May 14, 2013, 08:49:39 am
I like the idea of more utility gunner only items that could go in gunner skills slots, as most guns are happy with 1 or 2 ammo types.

The ugly bug of balance is always around though, so would have to be dealt with carefully.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Toddler Cain on May 15, 2013, 03:49:32 pm
Hi. FIrst of I want to say that I'm really new to this game but I still want to verbalise some of my thoughts about changes to the gunners, please take them into consideration atleast.
1. Make the vanilla rounds a skill or take them away. This would give engineers 1 ammo to use instead of the 2 that they have now and leaving the gunners the same way they are. (The gunners would even become slithly buffed since the vanilla rounds won't be loaded when you first grab a gun.)
2. Buff the current ammos. Or rather making them all more niche.
3. Give more utility skills to gunners. You could even take away some of the guns, like the harpoon gun thingy, and make that into a skill instead. I don't think many people use the harpoon with it being so niche but as a special round you could load it, shoot the harpoon and then slowly reload some other ammo into the same gun, using that gun when they are hooked. Maybe we could even make that flare gun into a gunner skill.

If you combine the three sugestions we could have gunners with 1 long range ammo, 1 short range ammo and either an harpoon or a a flare to hold ships were they are or to be better to track ships. While engineers would be forced to take either long range ammo OR short range ammo. If the vanilla rounds are kept engineers could run them as well for some al around ammo. What do you guys think?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sammy B. T. on May 15, 2013, 05:27:19 pm
Suggestion one would actually increase the power of engineers on a lot of guns as their specialty ammo would always be loaded, yes? Engineers having to fire a clip of vanilla often times before they get to fire their special rounds is one of the weaknesses of an engineer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Chrinus on May 15, 2013, 07:18:04 pm
I like the idea of giving the gunner some niche utilities as stated above. Just to further discussion, I thought of the flare ammo mentioned and thought "Hmm what if we made a handheld flare gun equippable/usable outside of the gun (without the damge and fire stacks, obviously). Something like that might be the change we're looking for; a choice between a tool that can save a gun slot, or a 3rd ammo type. It also forces engineers to make a choice in their gunner slot as utility or destruction.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: dragonmere on May 17, 2013, 10:46:46 am
Not going to lie, I didn't read all 9 pages of this post, so this was probably mentioned somewhere in there.


Instead of the gunner holding 3 ammo types and 1 repair tool... Why not give the gunner 2 ammo types, and 2 repair tools? I cannot really think of a situation where a third ammo type is absolutely necessary or even overly beneficial. Two ammo types will get you through on the lumberjack just fine, and that is the most ammo-dependant weapon in my opinion.

With 2 repair tools, the decision of gunner/engineers would then come down to how many chem sprays/buff hammers you want on your ship. If default loadout was spanner/hammer, quick join new gunners wouldn't be the bane to a ships health as they are now. It would also be as easy to teach a new gunner at both crew tasks as it is to train an engineer. The basics of rebuilt/repair would be available to both crew classes.

If this was implemented, I can immediately think of several situations where I'd finally WANT a gunner, possibly two, on my ship. I may be missing something, but I don't think this would unbalance the game at all. Well, at least not as badly as gunners are unbalanced right now. It might actually give them a benefit, and I think they deserve the chance to shine.

Just my two cents.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moo on May 17, 2013, 10:57:46 am
You might as well keep the current gunner role then, and have the 2/2 as a gungineer role, which would probably be very popular...
Having the gunner and engineer roles different by only one tool would be odd, I think.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: dragonmere on May 17, 2013, 11:41:09 am
Agreed it would be odd. I was just looking for the simplest way to make the gunner class viable until ammo types are (hopefully!) balanced to become more necessary. As it stands, most good captains I've seen will instruct their gunner something along the lines of "Bring ammo x and ammo y, third one is your choice but you won't hardly be using it." If we only need max 2 types in the current game, why not give the gunner an actual ability to repair comparable to the engineers ability to gun?

This would be an easy way to bring crew lineups other than 2/3 or 3/3 engineers into the 'meta'. Almost any combination of crew members could be completely usable.

In my opinion, the "gungineer" class should be connected to (or outright be) the gunner, not engineer. Full engineers should be the unsung hero of the ship. Not the starring role.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Eleanor Thornholt on May 22, 2013, 11:13:22 pm
I read a lot of these posts and the idea of passive boosts doesn't seem bad. One thing that could be nice instead of passive boost items is constant boost for the class.
Example: Pilot (-5% angular drag), Engineer (+5% buff duration), Gunner (-5% recoil).

That would give the gunner a boost towards gunning that Gungineer CAN'T get.

Alternatively, debuffs towards other class roles.
Example: Pilot (-5% buff duration, +5% recoil), Engineer (+5% angular drag, +5% recoil), Gunner (+5% angular drag, -5% buff duration)

This would make the Gungineer less strong with gunning and wouldn't risk unbalancing the guns.

Please give me your point of view on this and keep in mind the examples are EXAMPLES.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on May 23, 2013, 10:35:42 am
Honestly, I think only the gunner should get that constant, passive boost if anyone.  The pilot one is unnecessary because piloting tools take care of it.  The engineering ability to better repair/buff at all is taken care of by the engineer's tools.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on May 23, 2013, 11:19:46 am
Here's an idea that might even satisfy awkm.

What if passive bonuses filled an ammo slot, so anyone could take a passive bonus but a gunner could take up to 3. Imagine taking faster gun rotation, bigger zoom, and burst rounds for an Artemis party.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Spud Nick on May 23, 2013, 11:35:22 am
What if only gunners could use ammo.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on May 23, 2013, 11:36:11 am
Here's an idea that might even satisfy awkm.

What if passive bonuses filled an ammo slot, so anyone could take a passive bonus but a gunner could take up to 3. Imagine taking faster gun rotation, bigger zoom, and burst rounds for an Artemis party.

Ammo already does this in a balanced way. I would highly doubt you could stack passive buffs just because doing so would toss gun balance out the window.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Eleanor Thornholt on May 23, 2013, 06:29:03 pm
Honestly, I think only the gunner should get that constant, passive boost if anyone.  The pilot one is unnecessary because piloting tools take care of it.  The engineering ability to better repair/buff at all is taken care of by the engineer's tools.

I actually prefered the debuffs over buffs since they don't affect balancing at all, they just give each class a better feel of their duties.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: -Muse- Cullen on May 23, 2013, 09:01:01 pm
We need to be careful about how this works... Currently, each role is similar in the sense that they all get two bonus tools to their respective skills. In order to keep that sort of thing, each role should get a benefit to its role, a passive. We should avoid making engineer/pilot less desirable, we should only make the Gunner more desirable. An increase to damage would definitely make it desirable as heck, but a small % wouldn't cause enough waves, and a large % would ruin balance. Perhaps...

What about a small buff to all aspects of each role? Gunners have 5% increase to rotation, ammo, reload, clipsize, recoil, and whatever else, while engies get a small increase to hp repaired, rebuilt, buffed, and pilots get a small increase to ship speed, turn, altitude change, etc? This would definitely make the gunner role viable to dedicated shooters.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Mill Wilkinson on May 24, 2013, 08:16:19 am
I am severely against passives, as it would only lead to people wanting to play just one role because of the passive that "suits their style" and other nonsense. I'd rather see that the gunner be lifted among the two others by other means. GoIO is not your basic RPG or shooter, and I am quite happy with the fact that equipment, and the amount of it, determines the quality of the class rather than some random numbers you can't affect.

But, I think we should discuss the option of having gunner-specific tools a bit more. It sounded an interesting proposal, but I believe some serious thought should be had before minting the idea fully.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Machiavelliest on May 25, 2013, 10:19:05 pm
What if loading heatsink into a gun that was on fire put it out?  That would keep gunners from being stuck with the "DAD my gun's on fire" vs "DAD my gun's broken" dilemma, plus aid in the extinguishing achievements that are annoying and force you to sacrifice your team's patience and effectiveness for an achievement.

It would keep the gunner from being so helpless at the gun, but not allow them to put out fires on non-gun components.  Sure, an engineer could bring it too, but they'd have to spend time loading the gun with the ammo, and couldn't extinguish non-gun parts, so it wouldn't make it so they could go spanner/hammer/buff and still fight fires.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Charlemagne Montigue on June 01, 2013, 09:54:21 pm
1. Give Gunners Priority over weapons.
2. Take away special ammo types from other classes.
3. Make Gunners shoot weapons more accurately than other classes. (a bigger modification than the rest)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moo on June 01, 2013, 09:57:53 pm
For 1: On a well-organized ship, there shouldn't really be competition for guns. A gunner, if available, would logically be the first choice to man a gun.
It would perhaps make the gunner role a more attractive idea to (certain) players, but I don't think it wouldn't make the gunners any more wanted by captains; in fact perhaps the opposite, if shots get missed due to gunners kicking engies off the guns "because they can"...

I think the other parts have already been discussed here or elsewhere.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Lovex Lazil on June 07, 2013, 07:49:16 am
Honestly fear as much as you like; I personally don't see the lack of actual gunners as a bad thing.

I find that although gunners are a third and class not welcomed most ships anymore due to the majority of light guns can be easily maned with heavy or lesmock ammo (depending on the gun).
A good gunner is hard to find and although a engineer can be a great gunner and a gunner can be a horrible engineer at best it is slightly biased and we're getting slowly cut out overtime.

But that's the risk of taking a gunner on board your ship myself primarily I love the Loch ammo and it's great I can bring Lesmock and Charged with me as well to not always destroy my guns. The gunner is the most weapon/ shooting flexible class and that's how I believe muse designed it.

Pilot/Engineer/Gunner are perfectly fine the way they are; but a solution would be to give gunners higher accurcy/recoil/something per level they gain. You can also do the same for engineers and pilots example being engineers do point .25 extra rebuild/ 5 repair per level. Pilot tool's do less damage per level etc etc etc.

I don't see the point in saying that the gunner class is underused and underplayed. I personally LOVE the gunner class right now what I HATE about playing a gunner is most captains who don't know me (so nearly every non falconeer) will ask me to go engineer and when I reply no they assume I'm a bad player/sportsman when I'm only playing the class I believe I play best and have the most fun with :3.

Moral of the story; Learn to switch it up with your guns so people want you to be a gunner <3
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on June 07, 2013, 08:03:51 am
Hey Lovex,

First of all, if you ever want to fly as a gunner outside of the falconeers, the MM have no problems with this. However, I do want to disagree with your suggestion, and that is based on the fact that if you increase base traits by lvls, the community will fragment (I guess this is becoming my favorite word :\)... I'm fairly certain that Muse wants to keep it to where a full crew of lvl 1's could still beat a lvl 11 crew.

Thanks!
Shink
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: timmymonsta on June 07, 2013, 08:11:57 am
I for one don't see why other captains hate gunners so much. I've seen my fair share of captains who will tell their gunners to go engineer and that only want an all engineer ship. Honestly I believe that without one gunner, you are severely crippling the effectiveness of your ship. Sure an engineer can have one specialty round with them, but for many guns you need more than one ammo type in order to be effective. Even for a simple gatling gun, sure heavy rounds will give you extra accuracy, but once your in closer range you have nothing you can do in order to increase your effectiveness. You need another ammo type such as burst or charged in order to do that extra bit of damage. Also from my standpoint, ships that use 3 engineers on them lose more often and get less kills than ships with a 2-1 team.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on June 07, 2013, 11:27:41 am
If you have captained with as many bad gunners as I have you would hate gunners as well. Two nights ago I flew with a gunner who messed up a reload on a hwacha fish. He gave the enemy team 30 seconds to do whatever they wanted with my ship. We lost a fully crewed 2v2 and inflicted no permahull damage in that encounter. 7 other people were adversely affected by his mistake. Credit where credit is due, the other team flew exceptionally well and we were probably screwed regardless. This, I think,  is why all engineer Pyramidions are so popular. A single paste eater can not cripple an entire ship.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 07, 2013, 11:55:59 am
The OP returns!

Due to various small changes (the wrench in particular) i think the game allows gunners a little more play (in the streamlined competitive sense) than it did when the thread started.

The need for a gunner is still very gun specific though, and I'm sure we can all reasonably agree that most guns don't *need* a gunner, we might argue about the existence and extent of any benefit having a gunner might give these guns, but the fact there is an argument at all shows the limited extent of any benefit.

This being said, shifts in the meta, particularly the emergence of the Mortarmidian (as far as i know a coining of the term) means we *might* see a lot more gunners than we used to, if the build catches on.

However despite the gains made by the class, if you were dead set on efficiency they'd still be a sometimes thing or a goldfish thing.

*be sure to read at least some of the thread so we don't go in circles
 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 07, 2013, 12:02:09 pm
Quote
Due to various small changes (the wrench in particular)

Uhm, what?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 07, 2013, 12:07:05 pm
Pipe wrench's rebuild value.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 07, 2013, 12:08:43 pm
It changed?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 07, 2013, 12:09:51 pm
since i started this thread sure, it was in the last patch or something.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Dev Bubbles on June 07, 2013, 12:12:54 pm
Pipe wrench rebuild value did not change.  Just FYI, but I do love my gunners!  :D
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 07, 2013, 12:16:00 pm
wow, that *is* news to me, could of sworn it was bumped from 3 to 4 or something. Oh well guess there goes a pro gunner point.

Oh and Bubbles good luck on the weekend!
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Dev Bubbles on June 07, 2013, 02:30:11 pm
Thank you!  I will need it, lol.  With the gunner discussion, I know there's a lot that's been said, and I know where the ducks stand on this, lol.  But, personally I think having a gunner on my ships with my builds is advantageous.  Perhaps that is because I am not the greatest pilot in the world, which I'm far from, but I do tend to fight in different ranges, and my ship loadouts usually will allow me to fight at multiple ranges in the same match, so having a gunner to me is advantageous.  And I've debated with Squash and Smollett a lot about my galleon build for example, but if my team coordinates well, which is a big if, hahaha, my build is viable and sensible in my humble opinion. 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Echoez on June 07, 2013, 03:07:51 pm
From a personal experience, I always want a gunner if I have mortars on my ship, they benefit the most of having multiple ammo types out of all the light guns. Mind you the only time my ship will have mortars is when I have a gunner I know I can trust on my ship.

Other than that, in my humble opinion, all heavy weapons benefit a lot from having multiple ammo types as well and I always want a gunner on a ship with a heavy gun, no matter if I know them or not.

Basically, I think gunners are fine, I don't mind having one gunner on my ship even if it runs Gat/Flak, I think the lack of just one more engineer doesn't do much harm and I want at least one guy to be focused on shooting at the enemy.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on June 07, 2013, 03:18:26 pm
There should be some one dedicated to shooting back but they need not be a gunner. Having a buff engie as your third engie gives a captain interesting options. A buffed balloon is almost as good as having helium and chutevent, a buffed hull can give you those extra few seconds of life when all hell is breaking loose, and buffed engines, will help you get out of a jam.

I concede that every gun can make use of two different types of ammo at varying ranges. However if you spend for 90% of the damage in the optimal zone for only 1 ammo type , is the utility of a gunner preferable to the utility of a buff engineer?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 07, 2013, 03:23:39 pm
What good is that buff engineer if all he is doing is shooting? He can't do both at the same time. Point being, if the third guy's job is to shoot things at your enemy, why not a gunner with multiple ammo rather than a guy with only two options, and only one being special.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Surette on June 07, 2013, 04:10:02 pm
Yeah, I'd prefer a gunner to a third buff engineer, though I'd be okay with either one.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on June 07, 2013, 05:18:00 pm
I spend a good deal of time not in range of the enemy or running away from the enemy with nobody shooting. The buff engie can use this time to prebuff components like the hull and balloon. At the start of combat final tapping prebuffed components doesn't take that much time. Considering how most ships are laid out two spanner/mallet/extinguisher are a must. That third slot can have equal or greater utility from a buff engineer or a gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Parkourwalrus on June 07, 2013, 07:04:27 pm
Honestly what surprises me is that no one brings buff hammers as gunner. i get taking wrench or mallet on a brawling ship, but on sniping ships it's just sad to see gunners sadly whacking at their merc/artemis/heavy flak.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 07, 2013, 07:31:59 pm
On a sniper build, the thing is that the gunner shouldn't be buffing. They should be shooting (that goes for any build, obviously). In addition, there's always a chance of a sniping enemy ship downing your gun, in which case the buff hammer is useless.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on June 07, 2013, 07:45:40 pm
Choice of engineering equipment for a gunner is very important. If your gun will be disabled a lot (Goldfish/Spire) bring a spanner. If the engineer assigned to watch your gun will also be shooting (Pyra/Junker/Galleon) bring a mallet or wrench. If the chances are high you will be running for your life (squid) bring a spanner or wrench. Back when flamethrowers disabled on one stack many gunners brought fire extinguisher or chem spray.

You should be shooting as much as possible, but when given the option between doing nothing and fixing a something it is best to lend a hand.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Jomdorr on June 08, 2013, 05:05:08 am
I agree with squash the gunner needs maybe some brand new bonus ammo clip that only they can have
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 08, 2013, 10:51:47 am
I agree with squash the gunner needs maybe some brand new bonus ammo clip that only they can have

This equates to the second and third ammo slots they already have.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on June 08, 2013, 06:28:36 pm
Well I think what he's referring to is when I suggested that Lesmok and Heavy be made gunner only ammunition, however I've since changed my opinion on gunners and now see them as valid situationally.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Serenum on June 12, 2013, 07:44:22 am
I think giving gunners a passive buff is the way to go, but I wouldn't give them anything that buffs damage, directly or indirecly, because that would either be too insignificant or too strong and ruin the game balance.
There is one thing that would make the gunners have a real advantage over engineers:

-give gunners more firing arc with all weapons, maybe a 20-25% more?

This would be something really really useful, that potentially allows for a much greater offensive capability but still depends on the gunner skill to be used effectively.
What do you think?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 12, 2013, 09:37:33 am
I think giving gunners a passive buff is the way to go, but I wouldn't give them anything that buffs damage, directly or indirecly, because that would either be too insignificant or too strong and ruin the game balance.
There is one thing that would make the gunners have a real advantage over engineers:

-give gunners more firing arc with all weapons, maybe a 20-25% more?

This would be something really really useful, that potentially allows for a much greater offensive capability but still depends on the gunner skill to be used effectively.
What do you think?

This too would indirectly increase the damage of guns because they can fire on you from more extreme angles. It would also break any chances of dodging in the game, leaving us less options when considering maneuverability. We learned this with when the artemis arc was buffed and became OP, and god forbid a gatling gun gets any more arc than it has already...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Parkourwalrus on June 12, 2013, 09:50:35 am
I'm not sure about this, but what about guns overheating and setting on fire. Then you could have a new gunnery tool that cools down the gun. Maybe just heatsink.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Serenum on June 12, 2013, 09:53:26 am
I think giving gunners a passive buff is the way to go, but I wouldn't give them anything that buffs damage, directly or indirecly, because that would either be too insignificant or too strong and ruin the game balance.
There is one thing that would make the gunners have a real advantage over engineers:

-give gunners more firing arc with all weapons, maybe a 20-25% more?

This would be something really really useful, that potentially allows for a much greater offensive capability but still depends on the gunner skill to be used effectively.
What do you think?

This too would indirectly increase the damage of guns because they can fire on you from more extreme angles. It would also break any chances of dodging in the game, leaving us less options when considering maneuverability. We learned this with when the artemis arc was buffed and became OP, and god forbid a gatling gun gets any more arc than it has already...

The buff could be something minor or only apply to vertical firing arc. I still think that a direct buff to damage or rate of fire would be far more dangerous for game balance.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Parkourwalrus on June 12, 2013, 09:58:10 am
I think giving gunners a passive buff is the way to go, but I wouldn't give them anything that buffs damage, directly or indirecly, because that would either be too insignificant or too strong and ruin the game balance.
There is one thing that would make the gunners have a real advantage over engineers:

-give gunners more firing arc with all weapons, maybe a 20-25% more?

This would be something really really useful, that potentially allows for a much greater offensive capability but still depends on the gunner skill to be used effectively.
What do you think?

This too would indirectly increase the damage of guns because they can fire on you from more extreme angles. It would also break any chances of dodging in the game, leaving us less options when considering maneuverability. We learned this with when the artemis arc was buffed and became OP, and god forbid a gatling gun gets any more arc than it has already...

The buff could be something minor or only apply to vertical firing arc. I still think that a direct buff to damage or rate of fire would be far more dangerous for game balance.

But wouldn't vertical arc just make carronades Op again? And make a manta ray with flares able to hover under a target mercilessly burning hull? and if you gave gunner a passive, then engie and pilot need one, and soon we are drowning under stat after stat, none of which help balance. If it doesn't snowball, though, passives wold be cool.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Veyka on June 12, 2013, 10:00:46 am
I would personally be very wary of giving any classes statistical bonuses (I can see nothing but balance issues arising), we have the tool limits to define each class, imo the best way to go about it would be to rejig the ammo system to make having multiple ammo types even more attractive (How you would do this, I don't know, but I am not a game designer :P)

The thing is though that you will most likely (baring a major change) need more than 1 gunner, at the moment a gunner is very viable (if not essential) on any ships with heavy guns, the only light gun I can think of that really likes two ammo types is the light mortar (flack is good with heavy and burst, but you can use heavy with a buffed gun to make up for the one less shot, with a bonus in terms of better accuracy).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 12, 2013, 10:02:33 am
I think giving gunners a passive buff is the way to go, but I wouldn't give them anything that buffs damage, directly or indirecly, because that would either be too insignificant or too strong and ruin the game balance.
There is one thing that would make the gunners have a real advantage over engineers:

-give gunners more firing arc with all weapons, maybe a 20-25% more?

This would be something really really useful, that potentially allows for a much greater offensive capability but still depends on the gunner skill to be used effectively.
What do you think?

This too would indirectly increase the damage of guns because they can fire on you from more extreme angles. It would also break any chances of dodging in the game, leaving us less options when considering maneuverability. We learned this with when the artemis arc was buffed and became OP, and god forbid a gatling gun gets any more arc than it has already...

The buff could be something minor or only apply to vertical firing arc. I still think that a direct buff to damage or rate of fire would be far more dangerous for game balance.

Oh I'm against any kind of class buffs regardless of what it does for the same reason you are. It throws balance out the window unless properly accounted for, which then makes the buffs a mute point.

I'm firmly on the side of gunners being 100% useful on my boat over a third engineer as is. The only thing I could think of is more ammo types, but every gun benefits from two or more in varying situations. I'll make my list again if you insist...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Chrinus on June 12, 2013, 10:49:35 am
I believe that passive boosts are not the way to go to help this class out. The classes are defined simply by the tool slots, and it should be kept that way. Perhaps mechanics are the issue here? I know the ammo system currently requires far too much coddling and wasted time.

There's no logic I can find as to why we need to babysit a weapon to put new ammo in. You should be able to load whatever ammo you want into the gun, let the reload begin, and walk off (the ammo IS technically in the hopper at this point, right?) to be useful somewhere else. Just like when you begin a reload state, you should be able to help do other things or fire other weapons. A small change like this will add great utility to a gunner (able to carry the ammo of multiple weapons at once) without even needing new tools, passive boosts, or anything else that breaks the pattern of class differentiation we have. Will it be enough? I'm not sure, but it's a step.

Also correct me if I'm wrong here, I remember the 'load em and run' actually being in the early game. If so, why was it removed?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: naufrago on June 12, 2013, 06:03:53 pm
Not sure if it's been suggested before, but maybe allow gunners (or everyone) to switch out ammo instantly, with maybe a 3 second cd before it can be fired again. Switching ammo wouldn't trigger a reload, in this case. Probably doesn't make a huge amount of sense from a lore perspective, but it would let gunners switch between ammo types a little more effectively. It would let them choose the most effective ammo more quickly, which could increase their desirability.

Alternatively, maybe let gunners choose which ammo gets loaded into a gun by default. By that I mean, gunner chooses an ammo type for a gun and reloads it. The 'normal' ammo on that gun for everyone else becomes the special ammo. When it reloads, it reloads with the ammo the gunner chose. Or, instead of replacing the normal ammo, the special ammo could become an option for anyone using it (1 would be normal ammo, 2 would be the special ammo someone else loaded into it, 3-5 would be whatever ammo you're carrying).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 12, 2013, 06:10:48 pm
Not sure if it's been suggested before, but maybe allow gunners (or everyone) to switch out ammo instantly, with maybe a 3 second cd before it can be fired again. Switching ammo wouldn't trigger a reload, in this case. Probably doesn't make a huge amount of sense from a lore perspective, but it would let gunners switch between ammo types a little more effectively. It would let them choose the most effective ammo more quickly, which could increase their desirability.

Ammo switching used to not start a reload, and that was really an unbalanced mess... Granted, that was due in no small part to Heavy Duty Springs, and there wasn't a three second delay or anything like that.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Parkourwalrus on June 12, 2013, 08:46:43 pm
Not sure if it's been suggested before, but maybe allow gunners (or everyone) to switch out ammo instantly, with maybe a 3 second cd before it can be fired again. Switching ammo wouldn't trigger a reload, in this case. Probably doesn't make a huge amount of sense from a lore perspective, but it would let gunners switch between ammo types a little more effectively. It would let them choose the most effective ammo more quickly, which could increase their desirability.

Alternatively, maybe let gunners choose which ammo gets loaded into a gun by default. By that I mean, gunner chooses an ammo type for a gun and reloads it. The 'normal' ammo on that gun for everyone else becomes the special ammo. When it reloads, it reloads with the ammo the gunner chose. Or, instead of replacing the normal ammo, the special ammo could become an option for anyone using it (1 would be normal ammo, 2 would be the special ammo someone else loaded into it, 3-5 would be whatever ammo you're carrying).

It wold be a mess if there was no choice for normal ammo. Lochanagar on a flamer/gat squid. When the engies brought heatsink because of banshees. Trolololololol...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sammy B. T. on June 13, 2013, 08:58:53 am

But wouldn't vertical arc just make carronades Op again?

When was the carronade OP?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on June 13, 2013, 09:01:05 am
When the carronade had a downward arc, it was fairly easy for a competent pilot to balloon lock you and stay out of arc of your weapons. This is still possible, but harder to accomplish
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sammy B. T. on June 13, 2013, 09:17:59 am
I can understand the contention that that fact makes it OP yet I disagree with it, however I will quite on this tangent as it off topic.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Seamus S on June 13, 2013, 02:27:53 pm
The problem with gunners isn't the gunners, it's the ammunition.  In the current game, the type of ~gun~ determines the damage type dealt to an enemy ship. A gun is simply a mechanism for delivering ammunition. The ~ammunition~ types themselves should determine the damage type. (Flechette, shatter, piercing, etc.)  This would make gunners FAR more valuable to a ship's crew because they could use one gun to strip armor, hurt hull, bust components, whatever.  Gunners are undervalued because of an inherent flaw in the GOI meta. Until that flaw is addressed, we will always have this issue.

Another thing that might boost gunner value would be a gunner tool that allows the gunner to shift the base firing arc of a weapon by like 10 degrees to the left or right. THey'd give up one ammo type in exchange for a much easier chance of getting multiple guns to bear on a single ship.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on June 13, 2013, 02:47:01 pm
The problem with gunners isn't the gunners, it's the ammunition.  In the current game, the type of ~gun~ determines the damage type dealt to an enemy ship. A gun is simply a mechanism for delivering ammunition. The ~ammunition~ types themselves should determine the damage type. (Flechette, shatter, piercing, etc.)  This would make gunners FAR more valuable to a ship's crew because they could use one gun to strip armor, hurt hull, bust components, whatever.  Gunners are undervalued because of an inherent flaw in the GOI meta. Until that flaw is addressed, we will always have this issue.

There was another thread that discussed something like this, and the more I thought about it, the more I shuddered. Imagine a gat/gat pyra, one loaded with piercing, one with explosive. or even a hwacha with piercing.... sounds like a nightmare to balance.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 13, 2013, 03:58:40 pm
Even worse... Imagine a double merc ship with a piercing merc and an explosive merc. That's gatflak from almost 3 kilometres away.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on June 13, 2013, 04:50:42 pm
Even worse... Imagine a double merc ship with a piercing merc and an explosive merc. That's gatflak from almost 3 kilometres away.
I may have wet myself a little.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on June 21, 2013, 02:54:54 am
The real buff to gunners will happen when guns really need to have more than one ammo type to operate optimally. 

Someone mentioned nerfing heavy clip in another thread, others have talked about adding more ammo types.  I'll add in buffing incendiary more and bringing back the old Lochnagar.  All of these together might make a gunner not just useful but essential.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 10:06:23 am
Every gun can currently benefit from 2 or more ammo.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on June 21, 2013, 10:21:04 am
Every gun benefits from 2 or more ammo types but but for many guns the benefit is slight.

If the ammo types were increased in quantity and changed in a way were switching between different ammo for different utility had a significant effect on the outcome of the battle to the point where having a gunner would give a significant advantage over a team who didn't then this whole thread could be closed.

Think of it like the pilot class. Every ship in GOI benefits from two or more helm skills but the benefit is so great that not taking a pilot into combat while certainly viable usually puts your ship at a significant disadvantage.

If ammo became as important and useful as helm tools every ship would use a gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 11:03:34 am
Quote
Think of it like the pilot class. Every ship in GOI benefits from two or more helm skills but the benefit is so great that not taking a pilot into combat while certainly viable usually puts your ship at a significant disadvantage.

So lets go with an example like, two hwachafish going at it, one has an engineer with heavy only, the other a gunner with heavy, burst, charged. I hope I don't need to explain how that puts the heavy only at a severe disadvantage.

Two gat/flak pyras. Lets say gunner on flak. Engie takes heavy. Gunner takes heavy, along with greased, charged, burst, ect. Lets go with burst, giving one extra flak shot with more aoe and no damage debuff. He's killing the other pyra in short range more efficiently than your engie will. And if that engie hops off to repair something, well then you have 0 dps, which is even worse. At range, the gunner still has heavy so he can equal that engie.

Gunners get kills more efficiently, which is quite a large advantage over someone lacking one.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moo on June 21, 2013, 11:07:48 am
But on the other side... If the hwacha gets destroyed or set on fire, an engie with only heavy clip could quickly deal with it himself, rather than a gunner struggling or another engie having to divert from the hull or elsewhere...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 11:20:05 am
Exactly. In addition, having an engineer means that you can buff the gun. If we compare a gunner with heavy and burst on a flak to an engineer with heavy and buff on the flak:

The engineer gets an extra 20% damage per shot, getting the equivalent of 4.8 shots by only firing 4.
The gunner gets one extra shot, and gets exactly 5 in terms of damage (from 5 fired). In addition, burst lowers the fire rate.

So the engineer is getting nearly as much damage as the gunner in less time, and he can do a considerably better job at repairing his gun.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 11:28:25 am
The real problem is that a buffed gun is more effective on most guns than 2 or three ammo types.  Buffed Heavy Gats -- why would you want another ammo type?  Buffed charged Mercs - Buffed Lesmok Mortars.

On a Goldfish, well, you should have the gun buffed AND have 2 ammo types, Lumberjack as well.  But on almost all light weapons, buffed is better than multiple ammo types.

And there is nothing more efficient for killing than buffed Gats and buffed Mortars.  One clip of each and only the Galleon will still be alive.  What gunner loadout with multiple ammo types will give you that?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Echoez on June 21, 2013, 11:33:04 am
I stand by my opinion that Gunners aren't useful on light guns as much as on Heavy ones cause of the light guns not realy needing more than one ammo type and the engineer's ability to buff his weapons.

Buffed flak 4 shots a Pyra with heavy clip and you will be much more accurate and faster than a gunner using burst on it.

On Heavy guns though and on ships like the Goldfish/Spire and Galleon, you have heavy guns, you want at least one to be firing at all times, so a guy will be on his gun all the time firing it, there, I see no point to not have the extra ammo types of a gunner on it since he won't be leaving it much to repair anything and if it goes down, your secondary engi can just help him out a bit.

If they have mercuries, then better pray, cause not even 4 engineers would save your gun anyway.

Against Hwachas, if your pilot is decent and didn't manage to bring a Hwacha fish in your face, then their volley won't instantly finish off your gun, so usually, jumping off to quickly whack it once mid-volley, is a good way to keep it from going down, then you just resume firing and gump off quickly again to bring it back to full.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moo on June 21, 2013, 11:35:22 am
The gunner could take the buffer in his tool slot. Then he'd be super-damaging. But super-stuck when his gun is damaged....
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 11:42:52 am
The act of buffing is what lowers the dps vs a gunner who simply swaps ammo during reloads to "buff" his gun.

While some guns allow the buff to happen during reload, most don't. That would mean you wait till reload is done, then buff, lowering dps. Then you risk missing the ammo swap, and get buffed vanilla rounds. Then you either use them, lowering your effectiveness, or reload again, then buff, further lowering dps.

Fire isn't the end of the world on guns right now, and is easily repairable by a pipe wrench during reloads till an engie has nothing better to do than put the fire out.

If youre taking a buff engie, then you rebuild that gun at the same rate as a gunner (pipe wrench) unless you make him forgo fire protection, so then your fire problem comes back, and you do what a gunner does and repair through till an engie gets there.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 11:47:30 am
Quote
The act of buffing is what lowers the dps vs a gunner who simply swaps ammo during reloads to "buff" his gun.

While some guns allow the buff to happen during reload, most don't. That would mean you wait till reload is done, then buff, lowering dps. Then you risk missing the ammo swap, and get buffed vanilla rounds. Then you either use them, lowering your effectiveness, or reload again, then buff, further lowering dps.

That's what pre-buffing is for.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 11:48:30 am
You can't pre-buff after the initial engagement.

And If I have a buff engie on board, your argument really falls on its face for pre-buffs. But that doesn't always happen of course.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 12:00:10 pm
Of course you can pre-buff after the initial engagement, before the next engagement.  And especially on flak and mortars that are waiting for the hull armor to come down anyway, buffing really doesn't take away any dps.

And the argument about getting vanilla rounds and all that is not logical at all, as we all are assuming here that the person doing what they are doing is doing it as perfectly as possible, or at least competently.  We are talking ideal cases here.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:10:11 pm
Quote
Of course you can pre-buff after the initial engagement, before the next engagement.  And especially on flak and mortars that are waiting for the hull armor to come down anyway, buffing really doesn't take away any dps

I'm talking about a singular engagement to the death. Of course it resets per engagement, but then so does everything else.

I also prefer the flak to assist with armor dps for one clip along with the gat to get armor down quicker. For a mortar, I haven't calculated it, but ~half of that clip can still kill an unarmored target. That's a matter of preference I guess and we perhaps won't ever agree there.

So then if we talk ideal situations:

You pre-buff your first clip. Buff runs out, ant you can't buff again in the reload time of the gun. Then you are firing your ammo with no buff, negating the buff dps argument. Where's the magic buff coming from? Staggered buff per reload? Does that even work?

Then your gun gets destroyed. Buff is gone. Are you rebuilding, then buffing, then firing?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 12:13:41 pm
You can't pre-buff after the initial engagement.

And If I have a buff engie on board, your argument really falls on its face for pre-buffs. But that doesn't always happen of course.

If they don't die from the first round of buffed flak shots, you won't need to have it buffed or using burst to finish them next time the hull goes down. Even so, buffing during reloads isn't hard, assuming the engineer has a clue of how long the reload lasts.

Another thing I forgot to mention: the buff gives you the extra damage at any range reachable by the flak. Burst only works close up.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 12:16:37 pm
Quote
You pre-buff your first clip. Buff runs out, ant you can't buff again in the reload time of the gun.

That's not an ideal situation. That's a situation where the engineer timed his buff terribly. You only buff the gun before the killing clip.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:18:58 pm
Nor does a gunner, yet he's got more ammo types to deal with the varying situations evolving during this engagement.

Honestly its hard to argue range advantage in a game where movement is so fluid and required. Especially on light flak unless you're referring to a different gun now.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:20:42 pm
Quote
You pre-buff your first clip. Buff runs out, ant you can't buff again in the reload time of the gun.

That's not an ideal situation. That's a situation where the engineer timed his buff terribly. You only buff the gun before the killing clip.


Well give me the ideal please. I never use 3 engies, and the few times I tried weren't better, even with buffing.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 12:23:48 pm
The real point here is that I still get one specialized ammo that works best on the particular gun and the buff.

And also, especially on my junker, I get an always buffed main engine and an always buffed hull along with my buffed gat and mortars.  I know this is not the case on every ship, especially the pyri. 

I'd say buffgungineers are marginally better on a pyri, but a lot better on a junker.  Goldfish with most medium/heavy weapons benefits from the gunner.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:27:32 pm
On a junker it's even worse, but I run opposing broadsides while it seems to be the norm for people to use the same guns on each side, thus you can use the same ammo. I like the flexibility, but that too is preference.

Which is why this argument will probably never go away. Sure, you can make a ship build that only needs one ammo to be effective (though all guns can still be better with 2). I don't, and prefer varying layouts with which a gunner can make ideal.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 12:37:01 pm
In the case stated above, with different guns on the side guns, then I think a gunner is better than a gungineer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:41:37 pm
Which is why I hate this argument. Too many people come into my games and call gunners COMPLETELY useless, which is not the case at all.

Each have pros and cons, with which we can argue all day about. I prefer the simplicity and flexibility of a gunner on my guns.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 12:48:32 pm
I have no problem running with a gunner on my ships.  The idea that a gunner is useless is unfounded.  However, I do think gunners could be buffed a bit.  Engis just have too much utility that you give up when you go gunner, and I don't think gunners get enough of a damage boost over engis to compensate for the loss of utility.

Now, all of this depends greatly on the load out of the ship, the ability of the crew and pilot, and what the other ship(s) you are running with is doing.  But on the whole, I think gungineers come out ahead of the gunner, but it isn't like the gunners are useless or a detriment.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 12:55:28 pm
I have no problem running with a gunner on my ships.  The idea that a gunner is useless is unfounded.  However, I do think gunners could be buffed a bit.  Engis just have too much utility that you give up when you go gunner, and I don't think gunners get enough of a damage boost over engis to compensate for the loss of utility.

Now, all of this depends greatly on the load out of the ship, the ability of the crew and pilot, and what the other ship(s) you are running with is doing.  But on the whole, I think gungineers come out ahead of the gunner, but it isn't like the gunners are useless or a detriment.

And this is why we will always disagree, because I see no need to buff gunners, as they perform their task better than an engineer playing gunner. The game is too fluid to accurately talk ideal situations because, even that ideal situation evolves, which is why I prefer the fluid ammo selections.

I'm not saying this is all the ammo we will ever need and that more can't come out, or that these current ones can't change, but I find the utility of 3 ammo types more useful to my dedicated gunner than more repair.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 01:18:04 pm
Remember, it's not just repair, the real item that puts the Engineer slightly above the gunner is the buff hammer, IMO.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 01:21:52 pm
In all cases or just some?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RomanKar on June 21, 2013, 01:27:45 pm
In all cases or just some?

In my case, on my junker and pyri, the buff hammer is the item that pushed me and my crew to preferring buff-gungineers to gunners.

 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on June 21, 2013, 01:28:00 pm
The gunner can adapt to different situations. Say on a Gatling, he can use heavy while the target is far away, then switch to Greased when a ship is up close, THEN switch to Incendiary whenever the need arises.

I think a Gunner works best when he needs to use more than one type of gun or is fighting different types of ships that require a different strategy .
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 01:34:01 pm
The gunner can adapt to different situations. Say on a Gatling, he can use heavy while the target is far away, then switch to Greased when a ship is up close, THEN switch to Incendiary whenever the need arises. 

That's the beauty of buffing. You don't even need to adapt. Whereas the boost from greased can only happen once you're close up, the buff works as long as you're in range. Same story as with the flak. Also, I'm pretty certain that buffing gives a higher DPS increase than greased (not to mention that it's more accurate because of heavy clip).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on June 21, 2013, 02:33:37 pm
Well in his example, his gatling can be used at max range, then increase dps when closer, and then set fires when he feels like it.

To be fair too, the gatling example is probably one of the best for buff vs ammo.

Don't you have to also throw repair in with buffing too, thus slowing your buff speed?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on June 21, 2013, 03:46:32 pm
Consider the Lumberjack and Heavy Flak. Say an engineer brings Lesmok rounds, if the enemy gets close, those rounds will hinder the guns effectiveness, where a Gunner could switch to something that lowers it's projectile speed so the round is in the air longer and had more time to arm it's secondary effect. Sure the Incendiary rounds don't have the -50% anymore, but it's still better than nothing.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 21, 2013, 03:48:18 pm
Oh sure, I agree 100% that a gunner is necessary on a heavy gun. I made that clear a few posts ago. This discussion is more about light guns.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on June 21, 2013, 03:58:28 pm
I guess I really like the variety of options I have when I have multiple rounds.

All about play style, right? You are an engineer after all.

This is why I love GoIO. "I don't feel like flying or shooting today... GUESS I'LL BEAT ON STUFF WITH A HAMMER" <3
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 22, 2013, 08:47:59 am
Oh sure, I agree 100% that a gunner is necessary on a heavy gun. I made that clear a few posts ago. This discussion is more about light guns.

I cant agree as a bona fide expert on all things heavy flak i can tell you this isnt true, and i imagine that's the case with a few of the others.

anyway that's not why i decided to post. I had an idea about loch shot. namely how to reintroduce it into the game and buff gunners in the process.

So for context loch shot does essentially 250% damage (it adds 150%) and that's kinda awesome. So awesome they had to nerf its utility and cripple it in other ways.

WHY? because it was an all the times thing

My idea would be to let it act like normal rounds (still only firing one at a time) but give you a finite number of shots with it, lets say 3.

Its prolly not worth it for an engi to take, but a gunner has free slots. 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on June 22, 2013, 08:58:05 am
Oh sure, I agree 100% that a gunner is necessary on a heavy gun. I made that clear a few posts ago. This discussion is more about light guns.

I cant agree as a bona fide expert on all things heavy flak i can tell you this isnt true, and i imagine that's the case with a few of the others.

Sorry, I should rephrase that. On a lone heavy gun (Spire or Goldfish) and on the second heavy gun set on a Galleon, you're much better off bringing a gunner. Obviously you've shown that an engi can shoot a flak perfectly well, but if you were firing one on a flakfish you'd get more out of it by being a gunner.

Quote

So for context loch shot does essentially 250% damage (it adds 150%) and that's kinda awesome. So awesome they had to nerf its utility and cripple it in other ways.

WHY? because it was an all the times thing

My idea would be to let it act like normal rounds (still only firing one at a time) but give you a finite number of shots with it, lets say 3.

Its prolly not worth it for an engi to take, but a gunner has free slots. 

Interesting idea, but I can't think of many guns that would benefit from that. The merc, the heavy carronade, and the heavy flak seem like the main ones.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on June 22, 2013, 09:05:21 am
Interesting idea, but I can't think of many guns that would benefit from that. The merc, the heavy carronade, and the heavy flak seem like the main ones.

My bad i should of read the context for your post. Anyway yeah it would prolly be limited to that gun selection but you know its loch so that cant come as a surprise.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on June 22, 2013, 12:28:35 pm
Well right now Loch really only makes sense on the heavy flak.  I'd love for it to make a comeback, starting with going back to it's previous iteration and moving from there.

If Loch were viable again for more guns, it would definitely make a gunner more valuable.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Shinkurex on June 22, 2013, 12:44:19 pm
Well right now Loch really only makes sense on the heavy flak.  I'd love for it to make a comeback, starting with going back to it's previous iteration and moving from there.

If Loch were viable again for more guns, it would definitely make a gunner more valuable.

Personally love loch on the heavy carronade IMHO
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on June 22, 2013, 01:46:30 pm
Ahh you are right sir. Excellent for that as well.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Spud Nick on August 03, 2013, 09:16:29 am
We could have all the guns run out of ammo and than have a gunner tool that would refill them.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 03, 2013, 11:28:29 am
duno I've heard the arguments that guns only need 1 ammo type and that gunners are being superseded by engineers. As I understand it, proponents of the philosophy look on the buff hammer as a multi tool for tweaking limitations with piloting tools and weapons.

I always crew with a gunner and always plan around him having three ammo types, because that's how I believe the game was intended to be played. Not because I'm a purist, but simply put if you start counting on unintended features you will find yourself relying on a set of skills that can be made redundant by the next update. I point to the death of dual sniper pyras, buffed flak fish, all artemis junkers as illustrations.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 04, 2013, 05:07:42 am
Much like cookies, other ammo types are a sometimes thing.

tl;dr

Engi OP - Shink to blame.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Surette on August 04, 2013, 08:46:22 am
Much like cookies, other ammo types are a sometimes thing.

tl;dr

Engi OP - Shink to blame.
I disagree. Cookies, like gunners, are an always things. When do I not want cookies?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 04, 2013, 09:13:46 am
Sometimes what you want isn't what you need.

I'll let the main man explain it, with a little help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH9IO6iMO78 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH9IO6iMO78)

Just replace cookie with gunner etc...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 04, 2013, 10:03:12 am
Keeping with the food based metaphors - sometimes you glug down an energy drink when what you really need is a balanced diet.  |O>

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 04, 2013, 10:06:59 am
Engineers are less like energy drinks, and more like some kind of protein/vitamin pills. They might not have the same draw as food, but they give you everything you need more efficiently.

(except for piloting, but that's debatable on some ships)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: naufrago on August 04, 2013, 02:43:51 pm
Engineers are less like energy drinks, and more like some kind of protein/vitamin pills. They might not have the same draw as food, but they give you everything you need more efficiently.

(except for piloting, but that's debatable on some ships)

And like most vitamins, too much can kill you. And without any fat, you'll die. And too much protein can give you kidney stones.

Yay, metaphors!
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: FailCtrl on August 10, 2013, 03:22:04 pm
It's simple we kill... uhm I mean buff the ammo types. Make sure the ammo types really make a difference at different ranges/guns/targets etc. That would bring up the need to change ammo drastically. Say there is an ammo type that bring up the range of a weapon to long instead of medium and medium instead of short with reduction of dps = usefull on long ranges bad at short and then an ammo that does the opposite.

Conclusion: Make the ammo types more different, maybe one can increase how much you can turn your cannon? and buff the effects on them while changing (not lowering) some of the side effects to gain dps when using the right ammo at the right range/target/gun
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 11, 2013, 08:28:31 am
I think we're at a good place with ammo generally, but your right insofar as something needs to be done about the 'weaker' ammo types - the worst of which are Heatsink (good for flares) and Incendiary which is largely useless (tho i will concede to Shink it is fun on a carronade).





 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on August 11, 2013, 08:45:47 am
I think we're at a good place with ammo generally, but your right insofar as something needs to be done about the 'weaker' ammo types - the worst of which are Heatsink (good for flares) and Incendiary which is largely useless (tho i will concede to Shink it is fun on a carronade).

Heatsink is a functional ammunition, and does at least go some way towards making two Gunner crews viable.  It's the Gunner's version of chem spray.

Incendiary is also useful with the Gatling.  Just something else to throw into the mix when the enemy has checked your loadout, seen no flamers or banshees and assumes there will be no fire problems.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 11, 2013, 09:05:05 am
you don't think your wasting your time with them? After all if you were an engi you could buff your gat and put out your own fires.

It just seems as if we have to contort ourselves to find a use for them. I'd also be tempted to put greased rounds in this category as well - my chats with the gat/mortar crowd suggest they've bailed on it in favor of lesmok and a buff hammer.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on August 11, 2013, 09:24:52 am
It's important that there is variety in the tools available.  It's a good thing hat some players think some tools are less useful than others.  It's what supports a wider range of game styles, so we don't all end up with cookie cutter FOTM builds.

What does it matter that greased rounds have fallen from favour now? - I'm sure they'll be popular again if you wait a while.

Heatsink clip might not be something you think useful - perhaps someone else does. I generally expect my Gunner to carry it, because no Gunner should ask for their gun to be extinguished twice.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 11, 2013, 09:29:56 am
Why would you want your gunner loading heatsink when they can load an ammo type that boosts damage output while they repair their gun? Fire isn't enough of a threat to guns anymore for heatsink to be worth it at all.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on August 11, 2013, 10:04:58 am
Why would you want your gunner loading heatsink when they can load an ammo type that boosts damage output while they repair their gun? Fire isn't enough of a threat to guns anymore for heatsink to be worth it at all.

I'll often put the noob on guns in a PUG.  If they're struggling to balance repairs with damage output I want an easy option to suggest to them when up against a flamer-heavy opponent.  It's probably a holdover and I haven't adjusted to the many changes Eric has made to fire damage.  But it is the easy option when you've an inexperienced crew.  And I'm sure fire damage will be adjusted at least once more before the end of the year.  It doesn't seem to go five minutes without tinkering to the mechanics of it.

I'm certainly opposed to any suggestion that heatsink is useless and should be disposed of for something with more universal cookie-cutter appeal - which appears to be Moriarty's shout (and yours Sunderland?).  There should be weaker and stronger tools, some that only work with one or two weapons and some that work with all.  Perhaps even some that until you really think about it don't appear to work at all, or only work synergistically with other crew members tool choices.  More tools and greater diversity of tools encourages experimentation.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 11, 2013, 10:23:46 am
Why would you want your gunner loading heatsink when they can load an ammo type that boosts damage output while they repair their gun? Fire isn't enough of a threat to guns anymore for heatsink to be worth it at all.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the 3 engie concept - but I have a feeling that the recent changes to chemspray and fire ext have something to do with its popularity. And with an engie even if you buff the guns you still only have 1 ammo type.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 11, 2013, 10:38:04 am
I'm certainly opposed to any suggestion that heatsink is useless and should be disposed of for something with more universal cookie-cutter appeal - which appears to be Moriarty's shout (and yours Sunderland?).

I think it should be made more viable in some way, but not by making any changes to ammo itself. Fire just needs to be made better for disabling guns, since as it stands it's very rare to see 8-stack fires on them. Back when fire disabled in one stack (I'm not really advocating a return to those mechanics, but maybe a reduction in the number of required stacks is in order), heatsink alone was enough to justify the use of gunners.

Why would you want your gunner loading heatsink when they can load an ammo type that boosts damage output while they repair their gun? Fire isn't enough of a threat to guns anymore for heatsink to be worth it at all.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the 3 engie concept - but I have a feeling that the recent changes to chemspray and fire ext have something to do with its popularity. And with an engie even if you buff the guns you still only have 1 ammo type.

I wasn't talking about three engineer setups there, but a one gunner setup where the gunner has, say, heavy-greased-heatsink on the gatling. You could load heatsink to stop your gun being damaged a bit, but you'l have way more of a benefit from just repairing through it and loading, in this case, greased rounds or heavy (depending on the range).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 11, 2013, 10:47:00 am
I wasn't talking about three engineer setups there, but a one gunner setup
ahh ok  - but heatsink for example makes a good mid range round for the lumberjack with the added plus that it has extra rounds.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 12, 2013, 07:55:08 am
I'm certainly opposed to any suggestion that heatsink is useless and should be disposed of for something with more universal cookie-cutter appeal - which appears to be Moriarty's shout (and yours Sunderland?).  There should be weaker and stronger tools, some that only work with one or two weapons and some that work with all.  Perhaps even some that until you really think about it don't appear to work at all, or only work synergistically with other crew members tool choices.  More tools and greater diversity of tools encourages experimentation.

Universal cookie-cutter appeal : Is it fashionable to have obviously broken things taking up space or something? Tools need to be functional, and competitive with the other tools otherwise they never get chosen for the job.

Lets run through some of the ammunition in question:

Heatsink
Flare Gun use excluded, Heatsink is uselessas things stand - Though i remember the days when it was quite useful - all I'm saying is atm it sucks, and taking it is a mistake...and you should feel bad.

Incendiary
Same story - though you shouldn't feel bad for taking it, after all you've already decided your not playing to win - and all the power to you!

Greased
You me and everyone else wants it to work, especially for the light mortar...only you never really need it and it comes off kinda gimmicky - but man it's fun to fire.

Now I believe eventually Muse (awkm) will get around to giving each ammo a useful roll - its just that atm there is no reason to take any of the abovementioned ammo. 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on August 12, 2013, 08:33:57 am
What I'd like to see are a dozen or more tools of varying utility for every profession.  Because every so often a seemingly minor change in an update has the entire tool dynamic on it's head because someone realises that a little regarded too that's been ignored for months suddenly gives a huge advantage.  Back when the Lumberjack first had it's arming time added there was a sudden scramble to find ammunitions that slowed the projectile.  Heatsink was suddenly FOTM with lumberjack gunners.  Who knows what the next patch will bring.  There needs to be the diversity of tools beyond the cookie cutter appeal, and beyond the absolute number-crunching of the <1% of players who play competitively.

Moriarty, some of the ammunition types you've listed have usefulness beyond the numbers.  The psychological effects of even small fire stacks are significant when you're playing in the PUGs and that can make incendiary a viable choice for a gatling.  The advantages of greased rounds on the mortar at close range aren't just down to the absolute damage numbers - because it's not how much damage you can do in a second that counts.

And amongst the PUGs, a Captain is not always wanting to choose the absolute optimum loadout.  Sometimes you're spending twenty-plus matches just working with the optimum loadout dictated by your current active achievements.  Because you've had the same achievements running for too long and you'd like to get onto the next one.  Flying a suboptimal weapon choice then has you looking for optimal ammunition that might not be used that often in high-level play.

If you only play high level matches and never chase down an achievement, ignore all of the above.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 12, 2013, 09:17:20 am
All of this is assuming you are using a gunner, not 3 engineers.

Quote
Heatsink
Flare Gun use excluded, Heatsink is uselessas things stand - Though i remember the days when it was quite useful - all I'm saying is atm it sucks, and taking it is a mistake...and you should feel bad.

Any gun with an arming time will appreciate the benefits it provides at shorter ranges.

Quote
Incendiary
Same story - though you shouldn't feel bad for taking it, after all you've already decided your not playing to win - and all the power to you!

Flamethrowers, carronades, and gatling to a lesser degree, since the gunner typically isn't on gat. Oh, Mines like it too.

 
Quote
Greased
You me and everyone else wants it to work, especially for the light mortar...only you never really need it and it comes off kinda gimmicky - but man it's fun to fire.

Depending on the range you plan to engage at, gatling and mortar love greased. Also fun on a LJ.

I don't particularly care what the "new meta" is. If you have 3 engies, sure I can see potential merit in your argument. With a gunner, no.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 12, 2013, 09:38:11 am
I would like to point out just in-case it was any doubt, when I used the word "you" I meant it as 'you the reader', inclusive language and all that, and was not intending to single out Mr Pickle.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 12, 2013, 09:54:03 am
Normally you put forth a good argument Zill but i think you struck out here.

Heatsink for arming time you have to know that's not the best solution

Incendiary for carronades and mines - Sure if your playing PUBs and want to have some fun - otherwise this is madness

Greased for LJ is just weird, I can see the light mortar argument but I think we'll see a shift away from the light mortar gunner thus proving me right.

Now you might have noticed I've given you no solid arguments just basically 'your wrong' - Unfortunately I'm conflicted as you play the Raft this Saturday so I wouldn't want to help correct any defective opinions you may or may not hold :P
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 12, 2013, 09:59:05 am
It's all rather opinionated anyway, be it ammo type usefulness or taking gunners. You come from all engineer crews, which have a totally different mindset then that of one who uses gunners. Calling ammo useless because you'd never think to take it with an all engie crew is fine, as long as you state that. Otherwise, it just confuses people.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 12, 2013, 10:07:42 am
I don't want to get into to much of a back and forth as I've posted way to much. but we run a gunner on the Lucky Duck. We decided it was a rare situation where the gunner had the utility over the engi as to be effective the position *needed* two ammo types.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 12, 2013, 10:45:33 am
Quote
I don't want to get into to much of a back and forth as I've posted way to much.

Every time I see this thread with new posts, I die a little on the inside....

I know thy pain.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 12, 2013, 11:00:48 am
I could post my opinion (again), but as you said, this thread keeps on going full circle.

All I'll say is that I've changed my mind about what a fire-against-guns buff would do to help gunners. Chem spray fills the role once taken by heatsink, and it does it better, too.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sammy B. T. on August 12, 2013, 12:44:42 pm
I use greased for my light mortar on the top deck of my Junker for a myriad of reasons.

1. The other gun on top is a carronade which does fantastic with greased
2. It has the highest DPS
3. I've trained someone to the point where Lesmok is just weird for them
4. I don't time the mortar side in most engagements so I just want as much damage and as quick of damage as possible.


I will say as the game progresses I find myself using more and more ammo types. It used to be i had everyone bring heavy. Now I run heavy, burst, and greased.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 12, 2013, 02:25:50 pm
I could post my opinion (again), but as you said, this thread keeps on going full circle.

All I'll say is that I've changed my mind about what a fire-against-guns buff would do to help gunners. Chem spray fills the role once taken by heatsink, and it does it better, too.
at the cost of 2 ammo slots on a 3 engie crew
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 12, 2013, 02:28:46 pm
I could post my opinion (again), but as you said, this thread keeps on going full circle.

All I'll say is that I've changed my mind about what a fire-against-guns buff would do to help gunners. Chem spray fills the role once taken by heatsink, and it does it better, too.
at the cost of 2 ammo slots on a 3 engie crew

Oh dear, this thread is looping again.

I think the value of the buff hammer over an extra ammo type or two has been explained multiple times. I don't think anybody's going to be convinced by the other side's argument here, so I don't really want to discuss it again...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 12, 2013, 04:12:16 pm
I think the value of the buff hammer over an extra ammo type or two has been explained multiple times.

No the point is I can only speak for me and not you.  I don't value a single, static unchanging style of play.

I've seen 3 crew fads in my time in this game, and when the magic element in the 3 engie loadout gets nerfed, and it will, someone will sit down with a damage spreadsheet and work out another.

I value it even less when you have low level players latching on to this because "that's how you win", who don't realise it's simply gaming the game because they have no idea about what the game is about - the gunner has 3 slots by design - and come nerf time they'll be left groping about.

The latest nerf to the mercury is in part caused by the 3 engie buff crews in competitive matches, yet the fallout spills into general play, so I value the buff strategy even less.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 12, 2013, 04:19:27 pm
Quote
The latest nerf to the mercury is in part caused by the 3 engie buff crews in competitive matches, yet the fallout spills into general play, so I value the buff strategy even less.

It's not solely because of that at all. Muse dislikes the ease of sitting across the map and merc'ing people to pieces. While we as more experienced players know that it's not the best tactic and can work around it, I'm guessing a lot of new players have taken a liking to double merc pyra's and just pelting away at other players who don't know the counter.

This patch was very much anti-long-range.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 12, 2013, 04:39:13 pm
Doesn't long range describe competitive play currently? I understood from the Dev app discussion that the reduction in range of charged ammo was a particular concern.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 12, 2013, 05:48:01 pm
They don't balance the game based entirely on competitive play. It's been said before though I can't remember where.

Charged wasn't changed to my knowledge.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 12, 2013, 06:00:20 pm
As Zill said, there is no real link between dual mercs and buff engineers. So the difference this patch makes to the viability of buff engis: none whatsoever.

It's hard to describe the three engineer setup as a fad. This isn't something that popped up a couple of months ago or whatever. Three engis have been viable (I would say superior, but let's not get back into that discussion) for almost six months. That's 60% of GoIO's post-release lifetime. In that time, nothing has been changed to reduce the effectiveness of the setup. So no, it's not a fad.

Even if it was, "it's gonna get nerfed eventually" isn't much of reason not to use something.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on August 13, 2013, 03:25:28 am
Hey guys......

Why are we still talking about this?

The beauty of this game is that different people can play this differently. 
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 13, 2013, 03:31:09 am
A single buff engie as I remember was the "norm" with the flak fish which was around January, not 3 buff engies, which will get nerfed, when 3BE rews impact enough on gameplay, just like the heavy flak.

And I wasn't referring to dual mercs when I mentioned sniping in competitive matches.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 13, 2013, 09:15:13 am
Wait, who said three buff engineers? I don't run three buff engineers. Most people don't. I only know one guy who does.

And as Smollett said, this argument will keep on going and going and getting nowhere...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Calico Jack on August 13, 2013, 01:21:10 pm
N Sunderland - I agree *extends hand*
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Lord Fontelroy on August 21, 2013, 12:23:00 pm
They need to make the gunner better, so there's a reason to be one. Like overall quicker reload times, better zooming, or something of that nature.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Surette on August 21, 2013, 01:14:32 pm
There already is a reason to be one. If you're using one ammo type on a heavy gun (and even some light guns, like the mortar), you're really limiting their effectiveness.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 21, 2013, 01:39:08 pm
I agree about heavy guns, but that only applies to three ships (though I do find that the three four engi build is better for the Spire, but let's please not get into that). And I know the mortar's often brought up as an example of a light gun that needs multiple ammo types, but buffed vanilla (never forget the power of vanilla rounds) gives close enough DPS to greased to the point where there isn't really a difference, and it comes without the lowered projectile speed. Plus you can use the buff with lesmok at longer ranges.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 21, 2013, 01:40:12 pm
Can we please stop this thread....We all know what's going to happen, again...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on August 21, 2013, 01:43:00 pm
I think gunners will have a bigger place in the game as more guns and ammo types become available, requiring more focus on diversity rather than simplicity.

I'd also better trust a level 8 gunner to a level 13 engineer as my main gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on August 21, 2013, 01:49:14 pm
Can we please stop this thread....We all know what's going to happen, again...

I know... I'm sorry... I just don't like the misconception that the mortar needs multiple ammo types any more than other light guns...

Ok, I'm done now. I won't post in this thread anymore. Finished.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Imagine on August 21, 2013, 02:33:37 pm
Can we please stop this thread....We all know what's going to happen, again...

I know... I'm sorry... I just don't like the misconception that the mortar needs multiple ammo types any more than other light guns...

Ok, I'm done now. I won't post in this thread anymore. Finished.
Kinda like the misconception that gunners aren't necessary, eh?

;)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 22, 2013, 03:30:30 am
bet the thread keeps going until adventure mode.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Echoez on August 22, 2013, 09:15:00 am
bet the thread keeps going until adventure mode.

Unfortunately, as long as the only gun that absolutely requires a gunner is the Lumberjack, nothing will change and gunners will remain underused. Which is a sad fact and I think is the source of many of the imbalances in this game that having 3 engineers creates.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 22, 2013, 09:23:29 am
bet the thread keeps going until adventure mode.

Only you can let me lock this and sticky it for reference. This horse has been to the glue factory about twenty times.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 22, 2013, 09:25:52 am
bet the thread keeps going until adventure mode.

Only you can let me lock this and sticky it for reference. This horse has been to the glue factory about twenty times.

My dear Zill, surely we can all agree this is an "evolving discussion".
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on August 22, 2013, 09:27:49 am
I'll let Sunderland answer that.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Pickle on August 22, 2013, 09:29:49 am
Three engie builds really aren't that common in the game, they're extremely rare.  So the problem isn't really that great.  The thread can be closed as low priority.

(ignoring the irrelevance that is "competitive play")
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Echoez on August 26, 2013, 11:39:34 am
Three engie builds really aren't that common in the game, they're extremely rare.  So the problem isn't really that great.  The thread can be closed as low priority.

(ignoring the irrelevance that is "competitive play")

Quite the opposite I might say, I see way too many 3Engi builds outside of competitive, people that learn how to abuse the current engineer class will simply do so and they don't have to be competitive players, so I would hardly call it an irrelevance or a low priority.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Moriarty on August 27, 2013, 03:16:18 am
Don't take it to heart Echoez, Pickle has been decrying the irrelevance of "competitive play" for as long as there has been competitive play! Much in the same way gilder goes on about the squid.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on September 13, 2013, 10:34:10 am
On class specific perks to improve the effectiveness, and therefore, viability of a gunner:

How about the ability to active reload?
An example would be the Gears of War series, where you can attempt to time a perfect second push of the reload button for a faster reload, but if you miss the gun jams and the reload takes longer.

As demonstrated in this video by YaNkDeEz11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=475HlWJQrwk

Particularly noted was the lack of effectiveness on light gun ships, so if you were to apply this perk to only light guns it would prevent OP Manticore abuse but increase desirability for a gunner on say a squid.
Still too OP a suggestion? Maybe nerf this a bit so that the active reload only works if the previous rounds fired were of the same munition type, i.e. you can't active reload if you want to change to a different type of munition.
Still too OP a suggestion? Perhaps make it load a smaller clip size as well?
Still too OP a suggestion? Don't allow to chain active reloads?
Still too OP a suggestion? Make the succeeding reload time longer?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Mr.Mouse on September 23, 2013, 09:32:23 am
Mabe remove vanilla ammo from guns? Move it to loadout? All other ammo has disadvantages. So gungineer forsed to use only one ammo, ammo that he selected in loadout.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on September 23, 2013, 11:38:27 am
I think it's worth saying, this last patch was a significant gunner buff. It's still early days but it's certainly both the community's popular and informed opinion that the Hades likes gunners, as it does well with lesmok, but needs a secondary ammo that slows shots for dealing with arm time. The same can we said for the new light flak with heavy clip and a secondary ammo for closer range. The carronade is also a more articulate weapon which should let it benefit from ammo diversity even more than before.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Echoez on September 23, 2013, 11:49:07 am
Eh, the most carronade centric ship was the Goldfish (aka Blenderfish) which was nerfed in various ways in 1.3.2, Eric did us the honor of going as far as nerfing Chute Vent itself to further lower its effectiveness, other than that, the Heavy carronade always benefited a lot more from different ammo types even back at 1.2 when Loch was still at 250% damage instead of 225% that it is now, it also did less damage to your gun which means gunners had an easier time repairing it, not anymore (plus very skill based cause it has no turning, which seperated the good from the bads)

Hades doesn't need gunners, Incediary is bad choice for the large clip it bears, Heatsink is still faily bad and Greased doesn't reduce arming range that much, none of them actually do. it's around 30-35 meter reduction max.

Not sure why the Light Flak needed a 300 meter arming range (it's too much IMO, 150-175 meters would be much better), lol, that makes it a pretty bad choice if anything for a multitude of reasons other than using a gunner for a light finisher is a bad idea since you have him sitting there and doing nothing till the armor is down.

/rant

Gunners still not that viable, still selectable but very niche, but not worth it most of the time and with the current Banshee and Hades, you need engineers more than ever. Opinion, of course.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Squash on September 23, 2013, 12:03:18 pm
I don't think I agree with you on the first three chunks, but you're certainly right about new fire abundance needing engineers, that's a really good point.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: geggis on September 23, 2013, 12:11:24 pm
Hmm, there's a certain elegance to Mouse's suggestion. If you were to run with that, would there be a 'standard/vanilla' ammo type? No real trade-offs but no specific strengths either, like the wrench for a gunner.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on September 23, 2013, 01:39:35 pm
Mouse's proposal would work great to decrease the power of the gungineer for mid to high experience level games, however it would make life even more frustrating for new players. Imagine every time you jump on a gun you start  reload cycle unless you already prepped that gun before battle. Also the entire ship will start yelling at you for deloading the optimal ammo and forcing who ever was assigned to that gun to reload.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on September 23, 2013, 02:46:12 pm
Just make it so that jumping on a gun loaded with a Gunners ammo stays loaded. It's supposed to do that already, right?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on September 23, 2013, 03:30:53 pm
That only applies to the Ai if I remember right. And its only for one clip. If a player hops on a gun loaded with an ammo they don't have, the gun will auto reload.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Zenark on September 23, 2013, 03:58:04 pm
Well then that should be implemented to increase the value of a Gunner. A gunner can load in a clip of whatever ammo he has and that clip stays in the gun unless it's manually reloaded or the clip is used. This means the Gunner could go around the ship and load each gun with specialized ammo. One could sacrifice their third ammo type for their primary gun in order to use that third ammo for his engineer buddies.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on September 23, 2013, 04:09:25 pm
Then engies could just take three different ammo types and do the same thing. You indirectly buff both and you're back to square one.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: geggis on September 24, 2013, 04:53:25 am
Getting a single gunner to load the optimal ammo into each gun while the engineers focus on their job is more manageable than getting three engineers to load ammo types in specific guns at specific times though -- one slip up there and you've got a broken ship or sub-optimal fire power. I'm sure you could manage it with the right crew and captain and enough practice but generally speaking that's asking a lot more of your engineers than letting a gunner do what they're supposed to be cut out for. I'm with Zenark in that guns should stay loaded with whatever ammo's in them unless emptied manually (I actually thought it did this anyway).

I really like the idea of the gunner being the master of ammo, the most flexible on any gun. At present that quality is there but it's not prominent enough in the same way as engineering is to an engineer. I love gunning as a gunner but going engie is always the safer bet given that most guns fare well with standard ammo and even better with one alternative. If engineers had only a single ammo type to choose from (vanilla or special type) that would suddenly make the risk/reward dynamics of choosing an engie or gunner a lot more interesting. Two gunners would be much more viable and hell, pilot gunners might be an option too.

My point is: at present gunners sacrifice more because they have to choose a repair item to even have the capacity to fix stuff (and even then they sacrifice rebuild/repair speed depending on what they go for). Engineers on the other hand get vanilla ammo and an alt with a full complement of engineering tools. Yes they loose two ammo types, but they don't loose the ability to gun like a gunner loses the ability to engineer sufficiently.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on September 24, 2013, 11:38:47 am
Getting a single gunner to load the optimal ammo into each gun while the engineers focus on their job is more manageable than getting three engineers to load ammo types in specific guns at specific times though -- one slip up there and you've got a broken ship or sub-optimal fire power. I'm sure you could manage it with the right crew and captain and enough practice but generally speaking that's asking a lot more of your engineers than letting a gunner do what they're supposed to be cut out for.

Actually it is pretty standard practice to let engineers preload ammo on the guns they will be using at the start of the match, and in the down time between encounters. There are slipups in the heat of battle where an engineer can not stay on a gun through its reload cycle so I configure my ship such that the gunner is working the gun that needs specialty ammo the most, and the engineers get the guns that are OK with vanilla. 

Also asking a gunner to swap guns in the heat of battle to load some one else's gun is not a good idea because you loose the DPS you the gunner would have put out he was moving.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on September 24, 2013, 03:44:13 pm
Has anyone considered fixing the reload mechanic? As in, the gunner only needs to start the reload process with custom ammo, then the gun will finish loading the custom ammo by itself. It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

For example, one gunner can now easily manage a broadside of a galleon or front of a pyramidion, without being a slave to reload cycles and the need to babysit the guns to make sure the proper ammo gets loaded.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: N-Sunderland on September 24, 2013, 03:53:31 pm
I swore I wouldn't post here again, but too bad.

Has anyone considered fixing the reload mechanic? As in, the gunner only needs to start the reload process with custom ammo, then the gun will finish loading the custom ammo by itself. It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

For example, one gunner can now easily manage a broadside of a galleon or front of a pyramidion, without being a slave to reload cycles and the need to babysit the guns to make sure the proper ammo gets loaded.

The problem lies here:

Quote
It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

That sounds great on paper, but in reality... What else does the gunner have to do? They can handle minor repairs, but that's about it. And on a lot of ships, the only thing the gunner has to repair is their own gun.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Captain Smollett on September 24, 2013, 04:36:02 pm
I actually think it could boost the gunner quite a bit if they could load special ammo for themselves and others without having to wait through the animation. 

This way a gunner could get an entire ships weaponry ready in moments; freeing up engineers for much more valuable tasks and pitch in a maintenance hand themeslves while running between guns.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Morblitz on September 25, 2013, 03:14:32 am
That's something I've always been unsure about.
Is waiting out the animation - whereby if you leave the gun halfway through the reload it defaults to the previous ammo - part of the intended design or is it a bug?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: geggis on September 25, 2013, 08:15:30 am
I actually think it could boost the gunner quite a bit if they could load special ammo for themselves and others without having to wait through the animation. 

This way a gunner could get an entire ships weaponry ready in moments; freeing up engineers for much more valuable tasks and pitch in a maintenance hand themeslves while running between guns.

Agreed. It's more intuitive that way too. I thought it worked like that for a long time and that it was other gunners or engies dispensing the ammo but... obviously not. Sitting on a gun till that last pip of reload time disappears just to ensure a specific ammo type is loaded diminishes the role of a gunner because they've got to sit there waiting for a timer when they could be loading other guns, fixing stuff or y'know, gunning. By allowing unattended reloads you're giving the gunner a lot more to think about and juggle, much like the engineer.

Make standard/vanilla rounds an ammo type so engineers have to choose them or a specialised round (this echoes the gunner's choice of going mallet, wrench, spanner or riskier tools), and allow gunners to reload ammo unattended and I'm convinced you'll see much more diverse and realistically viable crew compositions as well as more interesting (and intuitive) play for gunners.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on September 26, 2013, 02:47:20 pm
I swore I wouldn't post here again, but too bad.

Has anyone considered fixing the reload mechanic? As in, the gunner only needs to start the reload process with custom ammo, then the gun will finish loading the custom ammo by itself. It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

For example, one gunner can now easily manage a broadside of a galleon or front of a pyramidion, without being a slave to reload cycles and the need to babysit the guns to make sure the proper ammo gets loaded.

The problem lies here:

Quote
It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

That sounds great on paper, but in reality... What else does the gunner have to do? They can handle minor repairs, but that's about it. And on a lot of ships, the only thing the gunner has to repair is their own gun.

Minor repairs? A gunner with a mallet can repair just as well as an engineer with a mallet.. As for doing other stuff, there's usually another gun nearby that needs shooting while its gungineer is away on repairs, and a component that may need repairing. The only truly isolated gun I can thing of is the top gun on a mobula, all the other guns have a component or second gun next to them.

In short, I'm not saying unattended reloads will make the gunners better than engineers, but they will bring them closer to being equal, which IMO is a good thing.

P.S. Geggis, I think that may be a good idea if all the players talked to each other and knew what they were doing, but there is a LOT of potential for abuse, confusion, etc. If I were muse, I'd leave it out of the game.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: geggis on September 30, 2013, 04:52:27 am
Hi Omni, not sure what suggestion you were referring to, making standard/vanilla rounds an ammo type or unattended reloading? I don't think either of those are any more open to abuse than current systems are really, unless I'm forgetting something.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on September 30, 2013, 04:03:36 pm
Oops. sorry for not being clear :( There's really no way that I can see to abuse unattended reloads, but the whole crew having different, inherently incompatible ammo types would be a nightmare of everyone reloading every time they get on a a gun, during the time they need to be shooting most.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: HamsterIV on September 30, 2013, 04:38:28 pm
Unattended reloads would make engineers more powerful not gunners. Gunners don't have anything better to do than sit on their gun for the reload sequence.  Engineers could be fixing and buffing stuff. If unattended reloads became a thing both the Engineer and Gunner classes would gain the same amount of time to do non reload things. The engineer could use that time more effectively because they have more tools for that aspect of the game.

Unless your ship spawns in the middle of an active fight there is plenty of time to preload all the necessary ammo under the current system.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on September 30, 2013, 08:43:47 pm
Unattended reloads would make engineers more powerful not gunners. Gunners don't have anything better to do than sit on their gun for the reload sequence.  Engineers could be fixing and buffing stuff. If unattended reloads became a thing both the Engineer and Gunner classes would gain the same amount of time to do non reload things. The engineer could use that time more effectively because they have more tools for that aspect of the game.

Unless your ship spawns in the middle of an active fight there is plenty of time to preload all the necessary ammo under the current system.

Guns are usually grouped together, and in a fight a gunner needs to switch between guns pretty rapidly so the engineers have more time to repair essential components. Basically, unattended reloads give the gunner the ability to run between weapons and use his ammo types on more guns more effectively.

However, I can see where you're coming from about engineers being more useful off the guns. The problem is that engineers are bad at switching guns, while gunners are good (multiple ammo types that help alleviate range/accuracy/rate of fire problems). "Attended reloads" are still annoying and the game would be more fun for everyone if they became unattended.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Koali on February 19, 2015, 05:05:50 pm
We could just ask Muse to pull a VALVe and give the gunners better hats, or perhaps gunner hats with particle effects...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: KitKatKitty on February 20, 2015, 01:30:58 pm
We could just ask Muse to pull a VALVe and give the gunners better hats, or perhaps gunner hats with particle effects...

I'm all for new hats! Always! But what we should more focus on are the testing ammos Muse had been working on that would give gunners privileges based on those special ammos, instead of the stamina. Have an ammo that allows the gun 5% extra arc or slightly faster reload ammo. That way it would actually be important for a gunner to have more than 1 ammo per gun.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Xylo Wenchbane on March 19, 2015, 08:21:42 am
Hey guys I'll start off and admit I read up to page 10 and then thought that maybe what we're dealing with isn't simply a mechanics issue but possibly a social issue too..

The Engineer should be the default class players get. That way when they quickjoin a match they can learn the basics of how to play, using and switching tools, getting accustomed to the "slang" used for certain ship fits/weapons/etc. and also the priority of repairs on a ship. Then the next step is the gunner to learn the finer points of using weapons, seeing what they're effective against and at what ranges, how the ships speed and momentum affect bullets and what effect the ammo types provide. Then the last step is the Pilots which dictate ship positioning and in the case of a captain pilot the overall strategy of the boat and guidance for the crew.

So let's start out with the pilot class. I'll provide two examples of what I see;
First point is the tool under the piloting category that the pilot will almost never use because it isn't useful for them and they will almost exclusively be on the helm steering the platform. I'm talking about the spyglass, it naturally grew as a responsibility for the other crew to spot and mark enemies so the gunner can get to work promptly dismantling them.
The next point relates to how I've seen some of the Russian crews of yore manage their ships. The gunner would generally be the captain playing the game a la time crisis (Think arcade "on-rails" shooter) and this was surprisingly funny and effective.

The Pilot's responsibility whether they're captain or not is to provide the window for the gunner to deal damage with the hull mounted guns. Now the gunner should be glued to the main gun or moving between guns.

Next the Engineer. Which I have some experience with. Mainly keeping the ship in running order so the gunner doesn't suddenly lose arc because the balloon popped or one of the turning engines got blown and caused  the ship to spin out and ultimately lose the gunners arcs.

The engineer spots for the gunner and pilots to position and battle enemy vessels. The engineer gets all their usual role tools they also get the one ammo type this is where I will propose a change. While having two assigned to different components of the ship generally one will have enough down time during buff/chem cycles to don another weapon and possibly prepare for a bifecta, or even if the main engineer gets time a trifecta, this helps immensely with damage output.

Now what if we provide an item that would similarly be useless for the gunner to use since he's always gonna be planted on a gun which provides a little bit of convenience for the engineers and helmsman. Give them a flintlockesque pistol the gungineers could use to slow down opposing crews (not ships) movement speed and possibly interrupt certain mounted actions. This provides the convenience of covering blindspots (somewhat) and affecting enemy crews minimally enough to have an effect while not making the gunner useless and reinforcing their role as the heavy weapons that hurt.

The item could cause a noticeable but not completely debilitating affect on crews movement speed (Since engineers mostly move around to pilots who rarely move around) It could have a small interrupt effect on mounted crews (gunners and helmsman and any gungineers) Give it one shot then a slight reload this way it's not an auto spam and if you have two it's likely to interrupt some steering/chem/buff cycles. The worst that could happen is 2 engineers and the pilots use it simultaneously which  makes the ship vulnerable to being outmaneuvered and having cycles miss or out of tune slightly. The aiming shouldn't be super accurate but also not a massive spread so that you'll get a hit'n'miss from mediumish distances and maybe a more profound effect up close.

I'm against scaling passive boosts since that can easily spiral out of control and make it more frustrating for newer players to join and doing arbitrary cuts on classes right now doesn't seem to be good. The only other thing I would recommend is shuffling who can use what ammo but I'm not sure that's a super idea either.

It's just a small idea but let me know what you guys think.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sarabelle Marlowe on March 19, 2015, 09:32:19 pm
I admit it does feel somewhat biased as far as the need for a gunner. But then that depends very much on what ship you happen to be on with what guns. There are guns that excel with one ammo type, but then there are others that do with many types...this is where having a gunner can make a decent ship into a more efficient one.

When maxing out gunner, I fully admit that I had help. As in, I play most with my fiance, Alistair, whom of which favors pilot. This was a huge advantage. We would work together, he comparing ship builds and I working with him on plays. And with us working together, it made it so that even ships where three engis are seen more often (like squid) he insisted that I stay gunner to utilize every gun he brought. We have done some crazy stunts working together, and I got my max levels with this class. As a result, I got good enough to the point that others request me staying gunner. The downside is that Alistair doesn't like playing without me gunning for him since we have such good synergy together.

While not a very satisfying reply, I suggest to a gunner, if you can, buddy up with a pilot. Play together long enough and you'd be surprised what you can accomplish.

Also, I like the idea of more hats. Hats are awesome.

But even better would be more ammo types. More ammo types means more need for them and more need means a gunner is a must. I'm all kinds of alright with this.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Xylo Wenchbane on March 20, 2015, 07:40:54 am
I admit it does feel somewhat biased as far as the need for a gunner. But then that depends very much on what ship you happen to be on with what guns. There are guns that excel with one ammo type, but then there are others that do with many types...this is where having a gunner can make a decent ship into a more efficient one.

When maxing out gunner, I fully admit that I had help. As in, I play most with my fiance, Alistair, whom of which favors pilot. This was a huge advantage. We would work together, he comparing ship builds and I working with him on plays. And with us working together, it made it so that even ships where three engis are seen more often (like squid) he insisted that I stay gunner to utilize every gun he brought. We have done some crazy stunts working together, and I got my max levels with this class. As a result, I got good enough to the point that others request me staying gunner. The downside is that Alistair doesn't like playing without me gunning for him since we have such good synergy together.

While not a very satisfying reply, I suggest to a gunner, if you can, buddy up with a pilot. Play together long enough and you'd be surprised what you can accomplish.

Also, I like the idea of more hats. Hats are awesome.

But even better would be more ammo types. More ammo types means more need for them and more need means a gunner is a must. I'm all kinds of alright with this.

I see your point with how you work in a team with Hubby, but more ammo doesn't mean more demand for the class if all classes have access to it. It just means Heavy and Burst round for engineers will change to the "Ammo of the month" Instead if you shuffle ammo between classes or provide something else to fill that single slot it should bring gunners back into competitive perspective.

Gotta love drunk posting. Also just gonna salute you because the cider tells me too...
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sarabelle Marlowe on March 20, 2015, 03:50:50 pm

I see your point with how you work in a team with Hubby, but more ammo doesn't mean more demand for the class if all classes have access to it. It just means Heavy and Burst round for engineers will change to the "Ammo of the month" Instead if you shuffle ammo between classes or provide something else to fill that single slot it should bring gunners back into competitive perspective.

Gotta love drunk posting. Also just gonna salute you because the cider tells me too...

While yes, in some cases this would be the point with a gun that excels in one ammo type, there are plenty now that are. My argument is more with that there are guns now that do best when there are more on hand. (whatcha, heavy flak, ect). It's vital to have a gunner with these types. By having more ammo types to choose from, that opens up more guns that are more efficient by having multiple ammo types. At least, that's the theory.

Or more guns to choose from, but we saw what happend with that recently.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 20, 2015, 04:07:03 pm
The issue is that there's no reason to bring a gunner when you could have a spanner mallet buff engi on almost all guns. There are only two guns that are often better with gunners: lumberjack and mines. For every other gun a buff engi will significantly outperform a gunner. It's less efficient to have more ammo types when you could do 20% extra damage and have much higher repair power.

+20% damage is better than any single ammo type and it's the meta. More ammo types won't fix the gunner problem because a buff engi will almost always outperform them.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: DJ Logicalia on March 20, 2015, 04:07:48 pm
Bottom line is, the top competitive teams regularly use gunners. That speaks volumes in its self
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 20, 2015, 04:21:39 pm
Bottom line is, the top competitive teams regularly use gunners. That speaks volumes in its self

Who what when? I've see gunners on fish and hades which is just silly. When paired against an equal ship with a spanner mallet buff the gunner will fail. The Ryders are just very good, I haven't seen many others risk it against a challenge.

The entire point of ammos is changing the effectiveness at a given range. +20% damage, +25% rebuild, and +200% repair is a big bonus at any range.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Dementio on March 20, 2015, 07:26:19 pm
Bottom line is, the top competitive teams regularly use gunners. That speaks volumes in its self
The entire point of ammos is changing the effectiveness at a given range.

I thought it was about changing gun behaviour to adapt to different situations? As well as make the gunner operate multiple guns with optimal ammo instead of having to fall back to the default one.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on March 20, 2015, 07:30:17 pm
Bottom line is, the top competitive teams regularly use gunners. That speaks volumes in its self
The entire point of ammos is changing the effectiveness at a given range.

I thought it was about changing gun behaviour to adapt to different situations? As well as make the gunner operate multiple guns with optimal ammo instead of having to fall back to the default one.
incendiary rounds dont really effect range, but they can add fire damage to any weapon
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 20, 2015, 07:45:42 pm
The main point of ammos is changing effectiveness at a range. Besides heatsink I can't think of a situation where you'd bring two ammos for the same range (I don't count incendiary). There is generally one most effective ammo for your engagements.

As for gunners using multiple guns, some guns are particularly more effective with one ammo like burst for artemis. But +20% damage with extra repair power is generally better than a damage increasing ammo. Gunners are for utility and gungineers are for efficiency.

Incendiary reduces range by 30% making it most effective as an armtime reducing ammo. It doesn't add fire damage, it adds +20% fire chance to both primary and secondary damage. It can be effective on carronades, but it's main use is for armtime reduction because it greatly reduces dps. It's best on the mine.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on March 20, 2015, 07:49:08 pm
this is what i get for sticking my nose in a big debate, i can never remember all the numbers, but it can put fire damage onto a gun, if not then i couldn't set fires on a ship with a gatling loaded with incendiary
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 20, 2015, 08:08:54 pm
It doesn't add fire  "damage", it increases ignition chance. So for example on the gat it causes each shot to have a 40% chance to start a fire. The big problem is that it decreases rate of fire by 30% and clip size by 25%. So while the gat is putting fires on components it's doing significantly less damage. Incendiary is the least used ammo I see and I'd only ever use it on mine or lumberfish. It can be used on heavy flak for reducing arm time and heavy carronade when aimed at components (not balloon).
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on March 25, 2015, 09:08:27 am
Imho incendiary rounds need a buff, they don't cause enough fire.

Oh also about the blenderfish gunner thing - what does more damage +20% from a buff hammer or +30% from charged rounds? If it still takes 2 shots to pop a balloon with heavy-clip when its buffed what's the point of buffing it?

yfw switching ammo to charged rounds close range is better than a buff engi
(http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/star-trek-mind-blown.gif)

I'd also like to postulate that the additional repair power of an engineer is irrelevant in a blenderfish duel when you are counter-sniping each others gun, as the reality is more of a mind game about timing your shots/rebuilds/reloads against their shots/rebuilds/reloads also get ready for the bombshell - heat-sink gives you three shots and can still disable their front gun at a notimpressivebutreasonable distance - the enemy gunner thinks you've emptied your clip, rebuilds their gun and BOOM THIRD SHOT MOFO GGMLG 360 NOSCOPE DIDN'T NEED TO AIM BECAUSE NOT EVEN HEAVYCLIP.

and about the gunner hades thing - we usedtoalot/nowonlysometimes fly hades pyramidions - hades pyramidions are different from junkers in that you can't just turn the short range side because you don't have one - so having ammo for multiple ranges is pretty important - the hades would be pre-buffed by the balloon side engineer.

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Kamoba on March 25, 2015, 09:52:33 am
I personally (when not flying competitively) like having a gunner on my ship for a few reasons, like Geo mentioned, the various ammos in various guns can give the upper hand in different situation, you can perform different tasks with one gun, example heavy clip Gatling cab disable well and most importantly, because so many people preach that engineers are better than gunners having one gunner on my ship means I can help someone level up the class which many do not want. Making for happy crew.

Although today was funny, I met one chap who wanted to go gunner on my gat art pyra, I gave him a recommended loadout to give him more optimal ammo, and his response: "What's the point in using heavy if I'm only going to be using greased" me: "Very well of you're only going to be using greased, you may as well.go buff engineer then."

But I rarely take triple engineer outside of competitive, give people the chance to level up gunner in the hopes one day, I will be given the same opportunity. ;)

Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 25, 2015, 12:40:12 pm
In a blender fish duel the battle is usually won but not over by the time you get into charged ranged. Having a spanner mallet buff means you can have more buffs when you enter combat and more repair power especially for the armor and front gun. For rebuilding you need the front gun rebuilt or peached as fast as possible taking up as little main engi time as possible. The dps difference between charged and buffed is negligible- under 2%. The benefit of having heavy clip buffed is the extra armor damage. Charged and heatsink are good but the extra repair and buff is generally more useful.

The assumption with taking hades pyra is that you will be engaging outside of hades arm time and kill them before getting into arm time. Having spanner mallet buff means entering combat with more buffs and dealing more damage at optimal hades ranges. It also gives you the benefit of having an extra spanner mallet. The dps of buffed is a bit over 7% more than greased. Two buff hammers on a pyra means both top and bottom deck will be buffed before combat. Disables are a real threat so rebuilding a gun to full health as fast as possible is vital.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Replaceable on March 25, 2015, 04:42:50 pm
But that assumes the situation will always be at optimum.
What if you're not.

You'll lose.

#scouts #be prepared
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 25, 2015, 05:25:01 pm
I'm assuming you're discussing bringing a gunner on the hades pyra. If you don't think that every engagement will start in lesmok hades range, then hades pyra is not the best choice. Having a spanner mallet buff guarantees buffed engines, hull, balloon and guns before most engagements begin. Remember, we're only talking about a 30 meter difference with greased. That can be made up with the extra buffs and repairs, or don't bring a hades pyra.

I am saying that spanner mallet buff is more efficient on the hades pyra during the engagements it's best at.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Replaceable on March 25, 2015, 06:17:02 pm
I am saying that spanner mallet buff is more efficient on the hades pyra during the engagements it's best at.

This is true. But unless you can win that engagement fast enough then you will be out of the optimum engagement area. And you want be as good. Meaning a gunner is more versatile.

I'm in the train of thought that you cannot always force an engagement to be best for you. Especially as the best teams know where you ship is best and will try and avoid this at all costs. An obvious example would be not charging down a sniper mobula, or choosing to brawl in the canyons with a metamidion/blenderfish team. Therefore a gunner makes you more versatile even though at any split second a buff engineer can be more efficient. But for overall efficiency given how the tide of a battle can turn, a gunner is still, in my eyes- more efficient. But: there is nothing wrong with buffing yourself for one situation- just I'd rather be as well prepared as possible for all, than super prepared for one- and less so so for all.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 26, 2015, 10:00:10 am
Hades is optimal for engaging at long range. So I think that being significantly more efficient at 150+ is generally always better than the ability to engage at 120-150. Arguably the engine and hull buffs alone make up for the 30 meters. The argument is that the option of greased is safer, but I think that a fully buffed pyra is safer for what it's designed for. We're only talking about 30 meters at the loss of bottom deck buffs and the spanner mallet.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: c-ponter on March 26, 2015, 10:31:00 am
One argument I see a lot for buffgineer on pyra is the bottom deck buffs, but if you pre-buff at the start of the match it only takes say 10secs to quickly run a buff run of the bottom deck and 99% of the time you will have that 10s warning before close range (or at least you would on most maps I would consider bringing a Hades front  pyra)
Obviously this won't be AS efficient as having 2 buff hammers, but you will still have the duration of the buffs tor that engagement, and how often does an engagement go on so long buffs run out AND you have time to re-buff instead of rebuilding anyway?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 26, 2015, 11:37:07 am
Yes, the wrench buff can buff the engines, hull, balloon, and guns but that takes time and often you need rebuffs asap. So the hades can buff top and the other buffs bottom. The extra spanner mallet allows better repairs on balloon and helping tank bottom deck much more efficiently.

I just don't think it's worth 30 meters.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on March 26, 2015, 07:46:00 pm
yeah of course because if they surprise you and manage to get inside arming time you can just turn the short range side

OH WAIT IT'S NOT A JUNKER.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 26, 2015, 08:17:20 pm
If they surprise you and get in arm range you're dead regardless. Hades pyra only works if you start engagements at lesmok range. Any competent opponent that surprises you will kill you regardless of your 30 meters.

It's 30 meters.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on March 26, 2015, 10:36:36 pm
It's 30 meters.

(http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/styles/creative_review_large/public/creative_review/tmp/tesco2.jpg?itok=m3Z7yEti)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Replaceable on March 27, 2015, 06:23:06 pm
It's 30 meters.

(http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/styles/creative_review_large/public/creative_review/tmp/tesco2.jpg?itok=m3Z7yEti)

Best forum post of all time.

Geo won.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 27, 2015, 07:22:12 pm
Yep. Swabbies don't need common sense. Be a gunner.

It's a ludicrous argument that -25% engines, -30% hull, -20% damage, -20% rebuild and -48% repair is worth an emergency oh shit we fucked up at least there's that 30 meters left ammo.

If you don't start the engagement at lesmok range against a competent opponent then you will lose. Having a gunner means you'll lose more but still think that 30 meters might make all the difference. Hint: you won't break their armor and kill them.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on March 28, 2015, 12:36:16 am
Quote
Having a gunner means you'll lose more but still think that 30 meters might make all the difference. Hint: you won't break their armor and kill them.

My favourite part is every time it did, and how I know 30 meters makes all the difference.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on March 28, 2015, 12:43:35 am
Because they weren't dead already. Greased is a niche roll that shouldn't be necessary with a fully buffed ship. One of the main uses of greased is to increase dps at ranges that are not difficult to hit at. The dps of buff is 7% higher.

Run the numbers and the extra output of buffed engines and damage from gun buffs makes an emergency range unnecessary. If you start an engagement with gat mortar inside gat range then you lose.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: The Sky Wolf on April 18, 2015, 03:01:38 am
Wow, Squash! That was so well put! I'd like to think of a way to buff gunner without some unexplained.. magical.. cliche MMO stat boost.. But if gunners could reload 7-10% faster, and turn their turret 7-10% faster, would that be enough to make a huge difference?

What if.. Muse kept the stat boost a secret?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 10:36:30 am
Simply adding a reload boost is not a balanced fix because it would affect each gun differently. Rof would also have to be increased by the same amount to keep a balanced time to empty clip / reload ratio. 10% bonus to rof and reload would be somewhat fair. Increasing turning speed doesn't do much and again it affects each gun differently so it's not balanced. Either a damage bonus and/or increased rof + reload.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 11:41:44 am
To be clear, I think gunners should have an extra tool slot. The only way gunners can compete with a buff engi is with a dps bonus. In the absence of passive dps bonuses, the best simple option is providing an extra tool slot. A wrench buff gunner could significantly outperform a wrench buff chem engi in some situations.

Then again I think gunners are reasonably balanced. They're for beginners then you grow up with more responsibilities. Engineers always have a job. It's a lot more complex and fun. Gunners are inefficient and lazy.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on April 18, 2015, 12:51:15 pm
+1 for either removing vanilla ammo, or giving gunners second repair tool.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Sammy B. T. on April 18, 2015, 01:03:31 pm
it is so weird seeing this thread keep getting necro-ed. Its like an artifact. Its amazing to see how some things never change but some things have super changed.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: The Sky Wolf on April 18, 2015, 01:06:58 pm
There's 2 types of items we use. Wieldable items, and Icon items.


#1. Wieldable items - These are items that you can actually hold to help your team with (Examples: Spyglass, Rangefinder, Spanner, Rubber Mallet, etc)

#2. Icon items - These are items that are never seen, and only you can use them while mounting a specific object like a gun or the helm. (Examples: Kerosene, Moonshine, Greased rounds, Burst rounds, etc)



The Pilot utility belt contains both iconic items for his specific job, and wieldable items that other classes can use.
The Gunner utility belt contains iconic items for his specific job, but no wieldable items that other classes can use.
The Engineer utility belt contains wieldable items that other classes can use, but no iconic items specifically for himself to use.


The gunner needs some wieldable items to make himself more useful, as he only really needs 2 ammo slots 90% of the time, and the engineer could possibly use some iconic items to boost engines possibly.




Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on April 18, 2015, 02:04:14 pm
There's 2 types of items we use. Wieldable items, and Icon items.


#1. Wieldable items - These are items that you can actually hold to help your team with (Examples: Spyglass, Rangefinder, Spanner, Rubber Mallet, etc)

#2. Icon items - These are items that are never seen, and only you can use them while mounting a specific object like a gun or the helm. (Examples: Kerosene, Moonshine, Greased rounds, Burst rounds, etc)



The Pilot utility belt contains both iconic items for his specific job, and wieldable items that other classes can use.
The Gunner utility belt contains iconic items for his specific job, but no wieldable items that other classes can use.
The Engineer utility belt contains wieldable items that other classes can use, but no iconic items specifically for himself to use.


The gunner needs some wieldable items to make himself more useful, as he only really needs 2 ammo slots 90% of the time, and the engineer could possibly use some iconic items to boost engines possibly.

This is the reason muse hasn't already done this - giving the gunner wield-able items "breaks the design paradigm" of gunners only having iconic items. One of the devs said this in one of the many clones of this thread a few months back.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: The Sky Wolf on April 18, 2015, 04:11:37 pm
I wasn't playing this game a few months back, I just came back from a year long break. Now I know currently their paradigm is set towards the Pilot having both item types, and then the Gunner & Engineer each having one item type and being total opposites. It's all very well thought out, but still I believe it could be engineered a little bit better to help the gunner role become just a tad more useful than he is right now.

 I believe adding 1 new wieldable item for the gunner, and 1 new iconic item for the engineer would compliment both classes and balance the roles a little more while still keeping the paradigm in place... Because dat Gungineer... is taking that gunner's place more and more.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 06:04:44 pm
I don't think wieldable vs iconic item types is the way to look at it. All items are wieldable in the appropriate medium (besides spyglass and range finder). Engineer items work in the player medium, gunner items work in the gun medium, and pilot items work in the helm medium. Spyglass and range finder are the only exceptions.

Each class has 3 of their own items and 1 of the other class items. All items are usable in the appropriate medium. None are purely iconic. The thing is that gunner items are relatively less useful on most guns when compared to engineer and pilot items. As pilot, if I only need one pilot item then I'll be a spanner mallet buff engi (I regularly do this on spire).

Gunners have a place: mine and sometimes lumber. They're balanced when compared to main engineers because they are marginally better at shooting "main" guns (gat carro hwatcha etc). They're balanced compared to buff engineers because those require much higher skill. Beginners start off as gunners then they graduate their responsibilities. Gunners have a place: special guns and replacement of main engineers. Their role doesn't need to be expanded to compete with the higher skill of buff engi. Being a gunner is lazy.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Koali on April 18, 2015, 07:57:59 pm
Quote
Being a Gunner is lazy.

That's mean.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on April 18, 2015, 08:05:48 pm
seriously dude, its a matter of taste. Not everyone wants to be the guy having to fix things. And it makes sense to have a crew member dedicated to doing damage, versus 3 only occasionally doing damage
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 08:24:05 pm
Everyone has to fix things. At least 2 of the 3 crew will shoot guns (besides possibly blender/lumber fish). No matter what you will have a dedicated gunner, but they may not be the niche gunner class.

Being more effective than a gunner requires a buff engineer. This requires much higher skill. While a gunner has 2 jobs (wrench and spyglass), a buff engi has 4 jobs. The added complexity requires added skill. I find being an engineer a lot more fun because it's more complex and efficient.

Being an inefficient liability isn't fun. I say gunners are lazy because having a simple job at the cost of being a major liability is categorically lazy. Choosing to be an inefficient liability over an efficient asset is lazy.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on April 18, 2015, 08:38:02 pm
Again, there is a difference in taste. As a gunner, I've shot down triple engie crew that were doing exactly as you've said. I get everyone has to repair in certain situations. Its a rather different kind of efficiency. Someone who prefers an efficient kill, over someone who prefers to zip around. I'm not saying engineering isn't fun, it is in its own way, but i find it a tad more stressful. There's also plenty of people who are excellent engineers, and horrible gunners, and vice versa. There are far more guns then the mine launcher and lumberjack that have several ammo types that they are suited for. The heavy flak, the hades, the mercury to name a few. I've used multiple ammo types in each of them, each effectively.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 09:01:58 pm
Being the main gungineer is the same job as gunner but offers a huge increase in both offensive and defensive power. It requires more responsibilities which helps you increase skill. I hope that everyone wants practice to improve skill. That's one of the two main reasons people play games.

Efficient gungineers outperform gunners on all other guns including h flak, hades, and merc. Buffed regular ammo is overall better than any other ammo type in terms of dps. Gungineers have significantly better repair power and can buff more components to give your ship a vital advantage

A gunner may outperform an inefficient buff engi, but can't outperform an efficient one. The only possible exceptions are mine and lumber, but even then the advantage may go to the buffs. Again, I think gunners should have 2 engi tool slots because they are currently a very niche roll.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on April 18, 2015, 09:11:39 pm
Do you honestly think dps is the only reason we bring various ammos? I've used lesmok and charged rounds in the merc, to great effect. There's only 4 guns the require no skill in the game, the gat, and the carronades, and the flamer. As for the heavy flak, lesmok and loch are both used. There isn't a point in buffing a loch shot from a heavy flak, because that will kill any ship stripped from armor except the galleon. And i dont believe that buffing it will one shot a galleon. As for the artemis, i've used lesmok and busrt rounds, with lesmok a artemis can compete with merc range, assuming the merc isn't using lesmok. The flamer can use greased, lesmok, and burst effectively at various ranges. And no matter what you say, there will always be people who prefer to be a gunner then a engie. It won't matter how sound your logic is, people do not run on logic alone.

I will agree that the gunner should possibly get another tool slot, give a gunner a pipe wrench and a buff hammer, then they can start pumping out some serious damage. But I do not believe muse will do this, as it would break the balance.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on April 18, 2015, 09:27:28 pm
ITT: Blackened Pies is bored of running around in circles chem-spraying  and is jealous of the gunner shooting stuff and having fun.

gunner envy much
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 09:38:03 pm
Lesmok shouldn't be used on merc. Damage can be repaired faster than it's dealt with the exception of medium guns and engines. The merc has more than enough range and accuracy (2250m). Using lesmok encourages you not to practice. If you really need lesmok then might as well be spanner mallet buff lesmok because then you can actually deal damage faster than it's repaired.

Lesmok isn't necessary on the heavy flak for the same reason. If you really plan on using a lot of lesmok then you're much better off being spanner mallet buff lesmok. If it gets damaged then you're screwed with only a wrench to repair. Gunners don't belong on artemis and it's not a main gun. The flamer is a special case and yes gunners are useful on it. I don't count the flame as a real weapon.

@Geo 
My crew work instead of standing around being useless. During combat gungineers and gunners do the same thing except gungineers have extra responsibilities during reload. It also discourages the bad habit that gunners have of sitting on guns. The only thing worse than sitting on a reload is not spotting- which is often the consequence of sitting on the gun. Everyone being engineers make them more equal: which they are except when one of them is privileged to be lazy. Being gunner encourages bad engineering habits.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on April 18, 2015, 09:40:26 pm
Make'm work harder then,  my crew can do that shit by themselves while I stand around being useless ;)

stay jelly
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: GeoRmr on April 18, 2015, 09:47:01 pm
Meanwhile the engineers are busy repairing...

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/486698014741919848/3BD58FFB8A820C3209C1A1B736B25F8720005097/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/486698014795634927/6CC072498232EC418B42FF6A1905CF3FE14F4A61/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/470923637849393076/6365F923A670ABB6D211AB6D5517F41CCA59304D/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/470923637849399048/C929105DEA7F84A103CCD27A4D045849AFEC6DC1/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/470923545428798165/D00607A76D1CCFB2B5AC928D8279DFB44670F931/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/470923637849406382/DB571335656B972E32574FCAE92C2A55C475C94C/)

(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/470923637850009622/D21E50CC0EFBD78359D6E5B022B14A8F74571254/)
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on April 18, 2015, 09:53:07 pm
I dont use lesmok on those guns because it makes it easier, i get extra range out of it. And even if their engies can repair it faster, it still keeps them busy and not shooting at me. And again, some people get no pleasure out of engineering. There are plenty of guns whose reload time does not allow to go and fix something, because the gunner needs to make sure he has the right ammo loaded. The hwacha is a very good gun for engies, because of its long reload. The gatling however, has a relatively quick one, therefore not allowing an effective fix, and assuring the proper ammo is loaded. Personally I'd rather have a gunner who can focus on his job, then a gungineer who has the extra responsibilities and therefore extra distractions. And there are plenty of scrub engies who just stand around and don't fix things, just like the scrub gunners who can't learn how to lead a shot in 3 dimensions
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 10:14:47 pm
All guns have a long enough reload to chem, buff, and repair. Gunners often sit on guns while they reload which is a huge risk if they don't notice it's damaged. Everyone needs to get off guns every reload no matter what. This is an essential habit. Being a gungineer builds good habits while being a gunner builds bad habits.

Everyone likes to shoot guns and many would like the turn on the main gun. Being solely a gunner makes players feel overly privileged (see above). With all engineers it's easy to swap around positions to give everyone turns if they want. This builds useful skills and a better environment for all.

Gunners are fine for scrubs. Tougher fights require the transition from second main engineers to buff engineers and gunners to gungineers. It's the graduation of responsibility that's present in games that grow in difficulty.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Carn on April 18, 2015, 10:22:02 pm
The way you worded it made it seem as though you should be able to fix something else during the reload. EVERY good gunner fixes his gun if needed during reload. As for over privileged gunners, I've rotated with crewmates as to who is gunner and who is an engie. We never squabbled about it. As for who gets to be gunner, its a simple matter of who was there first. If I land as a second gunner on a ship, I always let the guy who was there first be gunner. A good gunner develops good habits. They aren't the same as an engie's but they are not bad. A gunner can develop bad habits, but so can engies and pilots. And if so many of these tougher fights require a triple engie crew, why do so many clans successfully field crews that have a gunner in the competitive scene?
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Riggatto on April 18, 2015, 10:26:01 pm
The way you speak makes me think you think it is bad that some people take gunners. They aren't hurting you.   If you don't want them, don't take them. I would say your (or anyone else's) job to say what way people should run their ship.

Edit:  Carn ninjad me, but I stand by my statement
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 18, 2015, 10:47:09 pm
If you're against a good opponent with 3 engi and 2 buffs while you have a gunner then you need to switch or you will fail. Practicing with 3 engi prepares you for this. Gunners don't always hurt when compared to a main engi or an ineffective buff engi. Gunners do hurt when compared to a good player with spanner mallet buff. It's math.

You need to make sure that there's nothing to fix every reload. If you're an engineer then you chem/repair and if you're a buff engi then you chem/repair and buff. Sure a good gunner may not develop bad habits, but they might not be prepared for when they need to switch to a buff engi. It's not difficult and I regularly teach brand new players who quickly develop the skills.

I've observed two main reasons why clans bring gunners in competitive. They're either against another clan who's bringing a gunner or they're well practiced with a gunner. They also might not perceive that they're against a particularly tough fight. This is no credence that gunners are viable against a good buff engi. Math
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 19, 2015, 02:59:36 am
Quote from: Koali
Quote
Being a Gunner is lazy.

That's mean.

Koali is right, and it's the wrong word.

I don't think that gunners are as balanced as they should be and gun buffs are too easy. Gunners need 2 engineer tools to compete and gun buffs last too long. Gun buffs should be more difficult to maintain and disable should be better against them.

Currently the math doesn't make sense to be a gunner. It isn't viable compared to a buff engi. Give gunners two tools and decrease gun buffs, that's been my stance.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Xylo Wenchbane on April 23, 2015, 08:15:58 am
Has anyone tried mentioning having say a limit on specific ammo types? Say I dunno 300-400 rounds per ammo slot. Gunners would clearly have the bigger advantage here.
You could also limit the ship but give it more along the lines of 600 or so per gun on board.

Metamidion ran out of gat? Guess you can start doing broadsides from the portside. Mobulas would work interestingly. I think the Squids and Goldfish would suffer most with this suggestion.

Sounds pretty basic but it could help flesh out gunners more and provide more opportunities to learn how different ammo works for newer players.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: c-ponter on April 23, 2015, 09:01:56 am
Has anyone tried mentioning having say a limit on specific ammo types? Say I dunno 300-400 rounds per ammo slot. Gunners would clearly have the bigger advantage here.
You could also limit the ship but give it more along the lines of 600 or so per gun on board.

Metamidion ran out of gat? Guess you can start doing broadsides from the portside. Mobulas would work interestingly. I think the Squids and Goldfish would suffer most with this suggestion.

Sounds pretty basic but it could help flesh out gunners more and provide more opportunities to learn how different ammo works for newer players.
interesting idea but I don't think it would work because you would need different ammo amounts for different guns eg flamethrower carries 350 rounds per mag, and 2 flamethrower mags won't get you anywhere, whereas 600 rounds on a heavy flak will easily last the whole game.
Then like you said a pyra relies heavily on its front guns, take away one of those and it is practically useless.
overall I think it would require a lot more effort than the final pay out would be worth.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: BlackenedPies on April 23, 2015, 09:08:34 am
Unless default ammo count was also limited it would hurt gunners more than buff engi who have a major dps advantage. It would hurt ranged guns the most like hades and lumber which rely on lesmok. Each ammo generally serves a specific purpose and has no substitute.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Koali on April 23, 2015, 09:14:56 am
Alright, Moriarty, I lent you my ears. Can I have them back now? I have to go to school.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Omniraptor on April 23, 2015, 04:06:32 pm
Maybe in a future mod, but limited ammo would not fit in vanilla goio.
Title: Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
Post by: Koali on April 23, 2015, 05:56:55 pm
I think limiting ammo would be a pretty bad idea. If you use all of it, you have no way of fighting besides ramming. And Moonshine rams hurt both parties. I'm more in favor of nerfing gun buffs, and/or giving classes their own specific stat boosts separate from item slots.