Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: MightyKeb on July 29, 2015, 08:58:39 am
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I think it's about time that we've discussed the current Hwacha. I personally think it was a damn fine gun that was overshadowed a little bit by heavy clip heavy carro up until this buff, which not only solved that problem but created another- that being guaranteed 2-3 component snipes with burst rounds every 12 seconds and the occassional midrange complete disables of ships like pyras and junkers. It's easily the best heavy weapon in the game at the moment.
Regarding pyramidion, I stand by the idea that it would be in a good place if atleast one of the nerfs were reverted, but I'm conflicted as to which. 700 hull would definitely fit with the theme of the ship, but at the same time, there are only 3 "Dogfightey" ships in the game: Squid, Goldfish and Pyramidion in comparison to Spire, Mobula, Junker and Galleon, which all promote firepower and battlefield presence (Exceptions can be made for Junker). Pyramidion fits much less so in this classification after the acceleration nerf and I think it would be beneficial for the game to return it instead.
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The hwatcha jitter reduction should be reduced from -30% to at least -20%. Heavy clip also needs to be addressed. Currently it's -70% jitter -25% clip and I think both should be changed. Jitter can be increased to around 80-90% and clip size should be -20%. A clip size change would only affect the hwatcha and gat with 1 extra hwatcha shot and 4 extra gat. The issue with hwatcha is how overly effective burst is while the use of heavy clip is severely limited.
I think the pyra needs a speed or acceleration change. Increasing the hull health would make it more tanky but wouldn't make it any better. Pyra was my most flown ship that clearly needed a nerf and I think the hull nerf was good. What wasn't good was giving it the speed of a galleon (30.35 vs 30.02 m/s and 2.25 vs 2.10 m/s2). A charging pyra is not scary anymore and increasing hull health wouldn't change that. It needs at least some of its old acceleration back. Another option is giving it speed to rely on sprints. Keep the hull change speed or accel.
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Everyone knows that Hwatcha is overpowered in this patch. It was good even before the patch, nowadays it's just so much stronger you see nothing else. Revert back the jitter change, it was not necessary even with the heavy clip nerf. It's almost unnecessary to use the heavy clip for shorter than 800m ranges depending on the target you're firing at because it will most likely break more parts if you fire with burst and hit some, compared to using heavy and hitting all.
Pyramidion is awful to use. Acceleration nerf hit it so hard because Pyramidion already was slow. Sure, you can gat mortar down anyone still, but trying to use it against players who even have the slightest idea about how ships work just focus you because they know that they can take you down with 4 buffed mortar shots, which I think is just ridiculous.
So because of those changes we have a ship that's really fragile AND really slow, which compared to ships like Junker, which is slow but has hull armor to make up for it, or Mobula, which has weak hull but vertical mobility to use to it's advantage, doesn't really add up. Before you could use Pyramidion for ambushing, but since now it's really slow and dies to the slightest focus fire in an instant that use is really overshadowed by most other ships in the game.
Disclaimer, I think Pyra was really good before but one of the reasons why people flew it also was because carronade was too strong, now that's been dealt with can't we look at Pyramidion again, since other ships has been buffed and Pyramidion has only gotten nerfs
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The Hwacha was only buffed, because it would have been pretty bad in mid to long range with the current heavy clip and why would this gun have so much range as it does when there is no way of making use of it? What I would like to see is some sort of abstract arming time or some extreme case of projectile expansion, so that in close range the AoE is much less and you have to actually aim at the visible components and in long range with heavy clip it is much easier to destroy the visible components.
I found the Pyramidion to have always been bad, they only nerfed it because Gatling and Mortar ruled the skies and they still do, even though nowadays the disable Meta is preferred. And if you ask me, a charging Pyramidion was never really scary, because you can beat it up from a mile away. I would like to immitate Skrim here and say that the Pyramidion is at its best when it ambushes people, because it can do that better than any other ship, next to Goldfish and Squid, while keeping its front two guns (mostly Gatling and Mortar) in perfect arc, making for persistent damage output.
A real nerf to the Pyramidion is a nerf to the light guns, not to the ship. Gatling and Mortar can kill a Galleon in one clip respectively and the light Carronade used to be able to destroy the balloon in one clip.
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True, nerfing light guns would nerf the pyra. But that would go across all ships then.
The thing is, pyras gat mort game was good not only because of the gat mort, it had much more factors to it.
The ram which actualy protects it from damage when ramming. It also protects the guns from being disabled at times.
And the ease of management made it easy to abuse pilot tools with.
When they announced that you can now shoot trough your own ship, that was a major buff to the pyra as it was the only ship with prevelant blockage for its gun when aiming up angles.
And now with stamina, you can bypass the speed nerfs with kyrosine/Pheonix claw+Stamina.
Pyra had alot going for it, The nerf that we have now has actualy slapped it straight so that it cant willy nilly do anything without fear.
I think the nerfs should stay, but encourage greatly to press on with pyra despite nerfs. I mean, is(Or was) a pilot good if he no longer can fly something nerfed?
Cus the pyra still does what it did.
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I mean, is a pilot good if he no longer can fly something nerfed?
The problem is that you are effectively inferior when fighting against equally good pilots who use ships that arent really nerfed- Ships you counter have a better chance against you and ships that counter you will effortlessly farm kills off of you.
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The Hwacha's Achilles heal was always its slow reload rate. The Gunner Stamina has helped reduce that, and since gunners get stamina back for breaking components the Hwacha becomes even more powerful. Even if we reverted the Hwacha back to its old stats, the Gunner Stamina mechanic still makes it a more desirable weapon.
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The Hwacha's Achilles heal was always its slow reload rate. The Gunner Stamina has helped reduce that, and since gunners get stamina back for breaking components the Hwacha becomes even more powerful. Even if we reverted the Hwacha back to its old stats, the Gunner Stamina mechanic still makes it a more desirable weapon.
At the same time, Burst is really the only viable round for hwacha atm so even in that aspect a buff engi can be preferable.
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It's clear to me that the pyra needs something whether that be acceleration, speed, or something else. I think the hull and maneuverability are fine. Stamina doesn't replace the acceleration loss and using it for speed leaves you vulnerable in combat when other pilots have extra options with their stamina. Does anyone know the old accel?
Fully draining gunner stamina can reduce a hwatcha reload by 1.6 seconds max and destroying 4 components fills it up by 1/3. Gunner stamina regenerates the slowest and the best use for it is the arcs- which the hwatcha can greatly benefit from. Otherwise you're much better off with the power of spanner mallet buff burst.
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Some random heavy clip heavy carronade nerf thread
My suggestion is still to give heavy a 95% spread reduction instead of 100%.
Response
After I ran some calculations it doesn't seem like any change to the way heavy clip jitter reduction works will do the trick. I mean, it might do the trick but it will ruin other weapons that use it.
95% reduced jitter will mean a maximum jitter angle of 0.2 degrees on the heavy carronade when applied heavy - giving you a maximum spread of 1.5m at maximum range. due to the way that aoe secondary damage type works, and decreases linearly after the point of half the radius, at maximum range, with extreme end cases, you will be doing 86.7% of the damage on average at the center point of impact - which is still able to one shot destroy a heavy gun.
In addition to the still quite devastating damage, the carronade's heavy gun kill radius will be be increased from 2m to about 2.6m on average(so it actually makes it better).
(I am intentionally not talking about balloon killing and only the component destroying - more commonly heavy weapon destroying because only the aoe damage of the carronade, the shatter damage will get affected. Due to a spread at maximum range of 1.5m, any balloon will still be fully vulnerable to it, with slight exceptions with the pyramidion's balloon in various angles, that might cause some armor hits.)
Now for this change to be actually effective in the sense of taking away the carronade's extreme ability to snipe guns and or balloons with heavy clip, one will be forced to decrease jitter by 70-80%.
Right now with the proposed 95%, not only that it doesn't do the trick, it is already starting to ruin the hwacha with heavyclip - you will have 6.25m of spread at maximum range, and with only 7m of aoe radius and the way aoe damage behaves, you are starting to lose quite a bit of damage. Decreasing the spread even more is simply not an option because it will ruin everything that uses heavyclip. Concentrate on the carronade, it is the problem, not the ammo type.
in-game nerf
- Heavy Clip now reduces recoil by 95% (was 100%)
Response
While gatling and banshee are affected by it, they are affected in a very minor way. The only one suffering from the 95% is hwacha, and possibly minotaur which was already harder to shoot but I can't calculate by how much because I don't have the jitter stat for it.
The point is, 95% doesn't do much and in most cases makes the carronades even easier to snipe with. To get an actual effect you will have to drop it even further which in return will make other weapons namely hwacha, minotaur and arguably banshee suffer too, and the nerf is supposed to affect carronades and not other guns which were completely fine before.
That is why going down the road of heavyclip changes is completely senseless and damaging rather than benefiting.
in-game nerf
- Heavy Clip
-- Reduced jitter reduction to -70% (from -100%)
>>*Facepalm*
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-Burst rounds + 30% jitter (no this won't break artemis, 130% of 0 is still 0)
-Reduced turning speed on the hwacha
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Burst increasing jitter would affect the light flak because burst is the most potent mid-long ammo. Reducing turning speed would only be a slight nerf to not using gunner stamina. Even with a quite slow turning speed the long reload would allow sufficient time to turn with the possible exception of buffing during reload. I think the best option for hwatcha is reverting back to near the old jitter value and fixing heavy clip.
Another option for heavy clip is adding a burst radius bonus ex +20% which would have a slight benefit on banshee and light flak. Of course the simplest option is to increase the jitter reduction closer to 90% and possibly reduce clip reduction from 25 to 20%. I like heavy clip not fully eliminating jitter which can have a positive effect on guns like light carro.
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As far as the pyra goes, I will state what I and other old vets have been saying for a long time: make it the old charging vanguard it once was. It should be much, much faster with very little ability to turn. We are talking slower than a galleon. I remember the days when if you let a junker or a squid behind you, you were dead. That was it's weakness and balance. I'm not sure why it evolved to the way it is, but it used to be a beefy, tankier little rhino that would kill you if it hit, but if you were smart and could juke it then it was in big trouble.
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As far as the pyra goes, I will state what I and other old vets have been saying for a long time: make it the old charging vanguard it once was. It should be much, much faster with very little ability to turn. We are talking slower than a galleon. I remember the days when if you let a junker or a squid behind you, you were dead. That was it's weakness and balance. I'm not sure why it evolved to the way it is, but it used to be a beefy, tankier little rhino that would kill you if it hit, but if you were smart and could juke it then it was in big trouble.
This, PLEASE
Either that, or paper mache fighterplane Pyra.
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Lot of the words you all write point to the original Pyra from 1.1. Where it could turn and was a decent fighter. The thing could keep turning pace with squids/Fish when it used tools. Well, they could still out turn it but the Pyra would turn fast enough to make sure they couldn't just sit on it's blindside firing away. People charged with it but honestly it wasn't a strong rammer. They just did it because it had a pointy end. Hull HP wasn't super. Back then I called it the "multirole fighter" of GOIO. Which it literally was.
If you keep it weak and up it's speed but don't address it's turn rate, you've still got a problem because good pilots won't be scared of extra speed. Making it turn a little better, now you've got something to worry about. Which if you consider it's huge blindside, is something Muse forgot. The Pyra has the biggest blindside yet no real way to counter it. This worked under flying turrets gameplay where ships couldn't get close. But now you've got better CQC. It just can't function.
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The problem with increasing turn speed is that the ship becomes the goto ship for every pilot who does not like thinking ahead and anticipating enemy moves... Which means every less experienced pilot...
Also due to the amount of out-dated information saying how "good" the pyra is, there are still many players who use it under the now false information that it is good...
Personally I don't know what should be done with it.. In a balanced match of players who know their salt, its one of the absolute weakest choices, meaning its unbalanced.. But in a lobby of less salted players, it manages to get wins due to the easy "point and shoot" play style...
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Assuming 20m spread to be acceptable:
Hwacha - 285m
Old Hwacha - 190m
Heavy clip Hwacha - 952m
Nerfed burst Hwacha (+ 30% spread) - 220m
Light flak - 1176m (1000m range limit)
Light flak + 30% - 905m
With burst Hwacha getting 1.6 times the rockets of heavy assuming a linear effect of allowed misses to be equally effective:
Burst Hwacha - 342m
Old burst Hwacha - 228m
Heavy Clip Hwacha - 714m
Nerfed Burst Hwacha - 263m
Calculating as: range = (Acceptable spread x 360)/(2 x pi x jitter). 20m is roughly the largest diameter circle that fits on the side of a galleon.
Giving burst a spread nerf would dial it back towards where it was before (+50% would be equal), i don't think the effect on light flak would really be that bad - it would just mean swapping to charged for that range (+8% damage per clip rather than +20% and unloads slightly faster than burst). It won't make heavy clip any better but I'm not sure that's needed.
For a different approach what about nerfing the explosive damage on the hwacha, currently it can one clip junker, pyra and mobula (with squid and spire too assuming a small amount of gattling etc hull damage) using unbuffed burst rounds. Maybe it shouldn't be as good at killing, moving it out of the Heavy Flaks area a bit.
Some numbers for pyra:
Linear Acceleration average: 3.94
Pyra: 2.25 (6th)
Linear Speed Average: 32.8
Pyra: 30.35 (3rd)
Angular Acceleration Average: 11.2
Pyra: 6.25 (5th)
Angular Speed Average: 13.5
Pyra: 11 (6th)
Vertical Acceleration Average: 3.79
Pyra: 2.75 (6th)
IMO its top speed is actually too fast, if you account for the much easier kerosene usage it enjoys its on par with the goldfish. I would favor giving it better linear acceleration at the expense of speed which would help both charging ambushes and dogfighting.
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Assuming 20m spread to be acceptable:
The distance in height between the light gun and heavy guns on the galleon is 7m and its about the same from the heavy guns to the bottom so it would be more like 15m.
Anyways, I have a piece of code I wrote to calculate the average maximum effective ranges of weapons such as hwacha against different components taking into account their hitbox sizes and the damage falloff of the aoe when the projectiles hit farther away. I'll just run the old and new hwacha with the current heavy(70% jitter) and burst being tested vs the destruction of a heavy gun to find the maximum effective range and leave it here:
average maximum effective ranges-
old hwacha-
burst:246m
buff burst:269m
heavy:515m
buff heavy:565m
current hwacha-
burst:369m
buff burst:403m
heavy:773m
buff heavy:847m
also just for the sake of the proposed burst jitter increase of +30%-
new hwacha with proposed burst rounds: 283m
I semi-like this suggestion, not because of the light flak because I just use heatsink on the light flak and normal when not in range for those 200m of difference. I don't really like it because it is again, addressing an issue with a gun through a change of an ammo type - Which is a wrong way of thinking about it in my opinion.
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The problem with increasing turn speed is that the ship becomes the goto ship for every pilot who does not like thinking ahead and anticipating enemy moves... Which means every less experienced pilot...
Personally I don't know what should be done with it.. In a balanced match of players who know their salt, its one of the absolute weakest choices, meaning its unbalanced.. But in a lobby of less salted players, it manages to get wins due to the easy "point and shoot" play style...
It doesn't need to be much. Awhile back Muse did a half a degree speed up in dev app and while it was still slow, it was enough to make it bearable. Point is, you'd be surprised how minor they need to tweak the Pyra to give it the turn rate boost it needs to counter it's shitty health.
As far as mental ability of pilots. The ship is already so weak that it just gets outclassed no matter how much mental prepwork a pilot does. The only position left to it becomes a support ship of some kind. The problem is with the Pyra that it is so damn slow it can't do that well because the moment someone sees it, it'll be focused on and killed.
Lets look at all the ships that can be support ships and see why they can excel in that role:
Squid - Fast, light armor, and quick hitting. A harasser. Can go beyond support but only with pilot skill and build.
Spire - Slow and an easy target, but makes up for weakness with firepower.
Galleon - Very slow, big target, but massive firepower and hull HP to counter focus fire.
Mobula - Slow, great vertical, high fire power. Great sniping platform that can also handle CQC in a pinch.
Goldfish - Fast, easy to repair and crew. Very dependent on forward gun staying up at all times.
Junker - Jack of all trades, can handle sniping or CQC to support an ally well. Lacks any speed to intercept. Has absolute insane armor due to gun point hitboxes.
The Pyra for over a year has been an attacker. Support roles were never a strong suit except for it's original days. It just lacks the flexibility. If you are going support and want total flexibility, you want Junker or Mob. If you want speed and the ability to change up roles on the fly, you take Squid. Firepower/sniper, take Spire/Galleon/Mob.
Right now say the Pyra goes sniper support on the side...it'll have maybe one engagement before it is focused on hard. Just no way it can dish out the ranged damage to do anything before foes are in it's face. Now say the pilot uses tools to shift ship orientation to address the oncoming attacker...the attacker only has to evade once and get in the Pyra's massive blindspot. There it'll likely be able to unload a whole clip into the Pyra before it can get it's gun arcs back on.
So evasion options...everything it has is tool based. In that situation. Gunning engines might work for a moment. But under sustained fire and with slow movement, how long will those engines last? Armor is going to drop before it breaks. Similar situation with Claw. Now Hydro, there is an option. But vertical is so slow that unless it is buffed, it won't do you much good. Chute is an option but again, so slow it won't buy you much time. Either way, vertical tools leave the vessel too weakened for more evasions so the ship just folds up.
You just run out of options too fast with the Pyra. You can say, plan ahead or think better till you're blue in the face. It isn't going to mean squat when the vessel is just outclassed by everything now.
If the ship is tuned for beginner players to prevent them from overusing it, you get a vessel that is a laughingstock which experienced players run circles around. No one really takes Pyras seriously anymore either way. However, if you tune it for experienced, you'll suddenly have experienced players thinking about loadouts and builds more as even in novice hands, it has the potential to be a threat.
Which is what it all comes down to...is the Pyra a threat right now? Answer is no.
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Which is what it all comes down to...is the Pyra a threat right now? Answer is no.
Even the current Pyramidion could be a thread, just like every other ship in the game can also not be a threat. The Galleon is just as bad of as the Pyramidion, if not worse, it can't even fly towards its allies without losing arc.
Not saying the Pyramidion couldn't use a slight buff, but still.
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I don't really like it because it is again, addressing an issue with a gun through a change of an ammo type - Which is a wrong way of thinking about it in my opinion.
Considering how this started thats probably a good point (although I like the heavy clip change if only because it gives me an excuse for loch heavy carronade and -100% looked silly in some cases).
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I don't really like it because it is again, addressing an issue with a gun through a change of an ammo type - Which is a wrong way of thinking about it in my opinion.
Considering how this started thats probably a good point (although I like the heavy clip change if only because it gives me an excuse for loch heavy carronade and -100% looked silly in some cases).
I think it would've been better all along for the Heavy Carronade to reduce it's Fletchette damage to a point where it leaves the balloon at 5-10% hp so you had Heavy Clip for disables and keeping ships literally still in the air or Charged/Loch for damage and two shotting balloons. Light Carronade would also have to be affected by this aswell.
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I think it would've been better all along for the Heavy Carronade to reduce it's Fletchette damage to a point where it leaves the balloon at 5-10% hp so you had Heavy Clip for disables and keeping ships literally still in the air or Charged/Loch for damage and two shotting balloons. Light Carronade would also have to be affected by this aswell.
Noooo leave my carronade alone ;_;
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I think it would've been better all along for the Heavy Carronade to reduce it's Fletchette damage to a point where it leaves the balloon at 5-10% hp so you had Heavy Clip for disables and keeping ships literally still in the air or Charged/Loch for damage and two shotting balloons. Light Carronade would also have to be affected by this aswell.
Noooo leave my carronade alone ;_;
I believe it's already nerfed to this point (Excluding Heavy Carro, I think Ive seen it two shot balloons still but I cant tell because literally every fish is hwacha now thanks to muse) Mine is just a slight damage buff compared to what we have + reverting heavy.
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It needed a down arc reduction and the shatter damage was way too much. It didn't need the up arc nerf and the new reload seems a bit too long. It still does 1.5x the dps of light carro to balloon but the jitter increase was silly.
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I think it would've been better all along for the Heavy Carronade to reduce it's Fletchette damage to a point where it leaves the balloon at 5-10% hp so you had Heavy Clip for disables and keeping ships literally still in the air or Charged/Loch for damage and two shotting balloons. Light Carronade would also have to be affected by this aswell.
Noooo leave my carronade alone ;_;
I believe it's already nerfed to this point (Excluding Heavy Carro, I think Ive seen it two shot balloons still but I cant tell because literally every fish is hwacha now thanks to muse) Mine is just a slight damage buff compared to what we have + reverting heavy.
A few things I like to correct you on
Heavy carro has always been able to two-shot a balloon without any damage buffs either from ammunition or the buff tool providing the balloon catches all the shots from its shotgun spread.
That's what heavy clip did. Tighten its spread, effectively increases its useful range. Also concentrates the shots into a small area so you can take out guns and engines with it.
Lochnagar allowed you to one shot a balloon. Yes.. In one shot. Not two, one. At maximum range. What made this particularly scary was the game mechanic where any damage done that exceeded the health of component flowed over onto the armour and hull without any damage modifiers. Loch a badly damaged balloon and pretty much strip off all the armour covering the hull as well.
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I still don't know how I would like my pyra. Its top speed is decent enough to remain unchanged. But I agree that one of its two major nerfs need to be reverted. Either make it a slow turner but back to its old tanky state. Or lighten up its hull HP but give it more agility and acceleration.
That or have its stats fine tuned. It should be its own ship, not share similar abilities in tanking or turning of those of a squid or galleon.
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I don't know how much difference it would make, so educate me if it's irrelevant, but give a hefty nerf to the hwacha's explosive/piercing damage. I know it's not really high, but make it a little more specialised to the disable role might be a suitable nerf without removing the satisfaction of the feed spam when you blast a ship at point blank.
After all, a good hwacha blast can hurt the hull more than I think it should, additionally, the fact that it can kill is too much in my opinion.
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I would gladly fly a pyra with 550 hull but not with 2.25 m/s2.
The hwatcha used to be balanced in terms of damage because heavy clip was necessary for range and burst was only good up close. Now since the jitter was reduced by 1/3 burst is the only effective ammo and it's damn good. Rather than decreasing damage it should be reverted back to near the old jitter. As much as I love the new buff burst it's too powerful. Because I'm biased I think the jitter should be increased to 5.
Reducing the explosive damage wouldn't hurt balance much. A small 10-20% reduction might help. One clip of burst deals 948 dmg if every shot hits hull.
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The hwatcha used to be balanced in terms of damage because heavy clip was necessary for range and burst was only good up close. Now since the jitter was reduced by 1/3 burst is the only effective ammo and it's damn good. Rather than decreasing damage it should be reverted back to near the old jitter. As much as I love the new buff burst it's too powerful. Because I'm biased I think the jitter should be increased to 5.
Reducing the explosive damage wouldn't hurt balance much. A small 10-20% reduction might help. One clip of burst deals 948 dmg if every shot hits hull.
Personally, I'm all for hitting the explosive damage pretty heavily. Considering how effective the weapon is at ship-wide disables, if used by a gunner worth his weight in salt, I feel it's still a viable option if reduced almost entirely to a support role. Keep its shatter damage stupidly high, I say, let em break all the things, just remove its ability to kill. I feel doing so would put it on par with some of the other heavy guns, in that it is a situational weapon, not a spam weapon. After all, the others all have very specialised roles; why should one be more versatile and commendable in all the fields it is used in?
Breaking everything, pulling engis away from their cycles, or the hull, can spell death for a ship. Giving the source of that the power to one-clip most ships up close (especially considering said ship is likely slowed due to having only just repaired engines, so closing the gap is easy) is broken, I think. It feels that the only viable counter for the hwacha at present is to stay out of the way or snipe it out before it unleashes a payload of screen-shaking despair.
I don't feel the current hwacha is broken in terms of the game. We've all fought enough quad hwacha galleons to know how deal with it, but the fact that everything else is so niche makes me feel like something isn't being looked at right in terms of its stats.
I don't know. I guess I'd prefer it to be less of a dumb weapon. It feels dumb in comparison to the other heavy guns, wherein you aim for the general area of a ship you want to make stop working, and can unleash on a downed hull for a kill.
Again, I could be very wrong. I'm still new to the community and a lower-mid-level player. I could be overlooking a massive downside besides the huge reload time, so feel free to correct me. I'm just brainstorming possible nerfs that won't do to the hwacha what happened to the minotaur.
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The hwatcha used to be balanced in terms of damage because heavy clip was necessary for range and burst was only good up close. Now since the jitter was reduced by 1/3 burst is the only effective ammo and it's damn good. Rather than decreasing damage it should be reverted back to near the old jitter. As much as I love the new buff burst it's too powerful. Because I'm biased I think the jitter should be increased to 5.
Reducing the explosive damage wouldn't hurt balance much. A small 10-20% reduction might help. One clip of burst deals 948 dmg if every shot hits hull.
Personally, I'm all for hitting the explosive damage pretty heavily. Considering how effective the weapon is at ship-wide disables, if used by a gunner worth his weight in salt, I feel it's still a viable option if reduced almost entirely to a support role. Keep its shatter damage stupidly high, I say, let em break all the things, just remove its ability to kill. I feel doing so would put it on par with some of the other heavy guns, in that it is a situational weapon, not a spam weapon. After all, the others all have very specialised roles; why should one be more versatile and commendable in all the fields it is used in?
Breaking everything, pulling engis away from their cycles, or the hull, can spell death for a ship. Giving the source of that the power to one-clip most ships up close (especially considering said ship is likely slowed due to having only just repaired engines, so closing the gap is easy) is broken, I think. It feels that the only viable counter for the hwacha at present is to stay out of the way or snipe it out before it unleashes a payload of screen-shaking despair.
I don't feel the current hwacha is broken in terms of the game. We've all fought enough quad hwacha galleons to know how deal with it, but the fact that everything else is so niche makes me feel like something isn't being looked at right in terms of its stats.
I don't know. I guess I'd prefer it to be less of a dumb weapon. It feels dumb in comparison to the other heavy guns, wherein you aim for the general area of a ship you want to make stop working, and can unleash on a downed hull for a kill.
Again, I could be very wrong. I'm still new to the community and a lower-mid-level player. I could be overlooking a massive downside besides the huge reload time, so feel free to correct me. I'm just brainstorming possible nerfs that won't do to the hwacha what happened to the minotaur.
I actually agree with this.
In its current state Hwacha is over used, and more so than before..
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For a starting point - Buffed burst hwacha currently destroys the armor or hull of a spire with 21/24 shots maybe reducing the explosive damage to make this 25 or more shots would be a good starting point for thinking about the balance in numbers.
Another thought - How about reducing the rate of fire:
-Biggest impact on using burst rounds
-Maybe makes greased a real consideration (see my every other post for opinions on how ammo choices/variety should be)
-Allows for more partial evasion
-Allows for armor rebuilds to cancel some shots more often - effectively a nerf to hull damage
-Raises skill level somewhat
-Reduces the proportion of time spend waiting for reload
-Nerfs DPS overall
The downside to nerfing the kill potential on the hwacha would be that there would then be no viable novice galleon or goldfish builds, which are all rather painful to crew already. I would say in that case the spire should replace the goldfish in the novice ship selections, IMO it is easier to use already (200 extra hull health be praised).
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For a starting point - Buffed burst hwacha currently destroys the armor or hull of a spire with 21/24 shots maybe reducing the explosive damage to make this 25 or more shots would be a good starting point for thinking about the balance in numbers.
Another thought - How about reducing the rate of fire:
-Biggest impact on using burst rounds
-Maybe makes greased a real consideration (see my every other post for opinions on how ammo choices/variety should be)
-Allows for more partial evasion
-Allows for armor rebuilds to cancel some shots more often - effectively a nerf to hull damage
-Raises skill level somewhat
-Reduces the proportion of time spend waiting for reload
-Nerfs DPS overall
The downside to nerfing the kill potential on the hwacha would be that there would then be no viable novice galleon or goldfish builds, which are all rather painful to crew already. I would say in that case the spire should replace the goldfish in the novice ship selections, IMO it is easier to use already (200 extra hull health be praised).
Perhaps a small arming time could help, too? Due to the jitter, would it not mean that, if there were a small arming time, pincushioning a ship with the entire clip would be virtually impossible?
There's also the idea of hitting the arcs with a small reduction too. Doing so would increase the chance of evasion even for the more cumbersome ships and increase hydro/chute's usefulness when timed correctly.
However, I do like your idea of a reduced fire rate. Although, it would be sad to see, as, despite the simplicity, I still find a lot of fun in letting loose a completely overkill stream of rockets. The gun feels powerful to use. Nice for the ADHD-addled mind such as my own.
Lastly, your point about a lack of novice builds for ships based around heavy gun placements is pretty viable. Making the hwacha a gun you have to think about would probably just increase the amount of people reliant on the standard metamidion, as it'd be one of the only builds with a simple set of instructions on the box. I know I started welded to my metamidion back when I played in the novice matchmaker. However, there has to be a better way of making a novice-friendly heavy gun without breaking one of them.
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....Guys, just bring back the old jitter and heavy clip and find another fix for the heavy carronade if you think it needs to be fixed. The old hwacha was just like the new flamer - It only really did damage to whatever you exposed to it unless you got up close. And I personally found out fun that way, it stopped you from fighting back but you still had some options depending on the situation. Nowadays it entirely stops you from doing anything at medium.
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I think what made the pyra strong and used by many players was that it was it was good enough at everything. Exactly as Gilders said, a multirole fighter. You load it up as an assault ship or stick in ranged weapons and it would perform well at both those roles. Can't turn or move as fast as a squid but fast enough. Not as durable as a galleon, but durable enough. It's blindside is still pretty large and is often the best way at dealing with them, but it really should be up to the player to learn to flank or at least redesign maps with more paths to encourage more flanking gameplay. Not just resort to quad hwatcha galleons.
But yeah... choose. Either a slow tanky ship or a glass dagger ship.
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Old hwatcha was balanced but it could be argued the explosive damage was a bit high. If it's decided to reduce explosive then I'd say no more than -20%. The arcs weren't a problem before because they're only 20 degrees up and down. In contrast the gat has 25 degrees up, and with gunner stamina hwatcha vertical arcs are increased to 28 degrees- light carro has 30 degrees up.
The issue with current hwatcha is the range of burst ammo and the uselessness of heavy clip. Heavy clip hwatcha was balanced and burst was only close range. I used to use buff burst at around 400m max now it's 700m.
To me the pyra speed was it's offense and defense. It wasn't good at range but worked because it's easy. A slow tanky pyra would be just as easy to kill just slightly longer and an extra 150-200 isn't a big bonus. I'd much rather fly a pyra with 550 hull than with 2.25 m/s2. Glass dagger not slow average