Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Newbluud on March 15, 2016, 04:49:54 pm
-
Prefacing this by saying that I'm not actually a fan of the nerf hammer approach to game balance. I'd be much more interested in seeing a change to other ships, weapons, tools or mechanics in order to open more creative ways to counter, instead of a straight statistical downgrade to the titular ship.
That being said, such a downgrade wouldn't necessarily be unwelcome given how absolutely, painfully, tear-jerkingly bored I am of losing against and easily winning with the Mobula, especially the infamous Hades-double-art Mobula that I affectionately refer to as "cancermob" as opposed to metamob. I think, at this stage, we are all aware that the OP-ness (hue) of the Mob is really limited to that single build, which dominates competitive and mid-level lobbies alike. Other builds are powerful but simply not as well-rounded. With a low skill floor once the pilot and crew have the very basics of game knowledge down and some rather cheesy benefits making it formidable against the best pilots, the Mobula is just too great a dominating force at present, as the pyra has been in the past.
I guess one notable thing about the proposed nerf that will soon be patched into the game is how it will hamper the Mobula's ability to easily transition between long/mid range weaponry to short-range weaponry once an enemy finally gets around that wall of hades/art fire. I like that at least, but the price is too high. It basically cuts down the build possibilities, filtering all possible interesting combinations down to the boring, monotonous, overused tripe that has made me stop watching competitive almost entirely - unless I am told prior to a match that there are less than two Mobulas.
So, ramble aside, post some ideas just for the sake of conversation. Of the numerous people I have spoken to about the Mobula, no two people have suggested the same changes.
-
Ive thought about this alot. I love the mobula. I like how open and big it is. And how it must be compartmentalized to crew. That said, the worsed nerf I would give it is turning speed reduction, lower its up and down buoyancy, something on the movement side of things. To change gun arcs to me defeats the benefit of the mobula at all. Heck even add another ramp or something to it so the engies take longer getting to the hull and balloon.
-
Ive thought about this alot. I love the mobula. I like how open and big it is. And how it must be compartmentalized to crew. That said, the worsed nerf I would give it is turning speed reduction, lower its up and down buoyancy, something on the movement side of things. To change gun arcs to me defeats the benefit of the mobula at all. Heck even add another ramp or something to it so the engies take longer getting to the hull and balloon.
I wish were not so cynical and could love the mob like you do. I don't even find metamob fun to fly anymore, in any capacity. In the majority of situations, unless I'm up against a better pilot in the same ship, I'm pretty much signing myself up for the same match over and over again. Stay high, rain hell, slowly grind them out as they steadily lose the ability to maintain repairs against three weapons, all while they are completely incapable of turning the favour of the engagement because they are engine and weapon locked by arts. It's not fun for my enemy and it's not fun for me. As for my crew? Well, that's for them to decide. Seen as I crew more often than I pilot, I can say that I find any position aside from gunner on said ship boring, because it's just so samey. Hades is only fun because I am learning how to get to a respectable level on it for competitive use, so I still find landing lots of shots satisfying. However, I'm sure that charm will die once I get to that level.
Defeating the benefit of the Mob might not be such a terrible thing. The benefit of controlling distance and being powerful both short and long range is a little ridiculous in my book. Pressuring engineers off of guns is the most effective way to deal with them, but can only be accomplished through enough shots before the inevitable sniping of all your components.
I always thought the verticals were a bit bloody stupid. In a realism sense, moving at the speed it does would probably shift it out from the crew's feet and have them hurtle down towards it and break their legs once the movement is over. In a game sense, also a bit stupid. It gives the mobula yet another easy way to avoid what would be certain death to any other ship and open up a committed brawler to an ally or regain advantage.
-
The verticals are stupid, coupled with how the balloon works. People say the pyra nerf helped the mob turn into a cancer ship, and forget the fact that carronade and flamer were nerfed in the same patch cycle.
Artimii also need a look at. They're incredibly easy to disable with, and function well at any range. I'd like their hull damage to be taken down.
-
The simplest nerf is hull. The mobula is resistant to disable due to its spread out components, and resistant to kill due to its underside balloon and high maneuverability. Some shots inevitably hit balloon and when armor goes down the mob can use its maneuverability to dodge. At range the hull engi can often stick on the upper gun while the armor takes damage because they can continue to shoot and when armor breaks the pilot will dodge. The simplest nerf is reducing the hull health of mob to around 550 like current pyra. Pyra is all hull and can't dodge while the mobula has an underbelly shield and can dodge. 700 hull is too much for the current mob
-
- Drop the vertical acceleration from 7.5 to 5 (where squid is next best at 4)
- Drop its balloon health from 1200 to 1000
- Add an arming time to the artemis but give it slightly faster turning, probably 150m arming range, in line with the hades and light flak
- Restore the light carronade as a close range disabling alternative, as far as I know the only problem with it was the (horrible) carronade + flamer pyra which died with the flamer and pyra nerfs
- Add +x% arming time to burst rounds which will suit the upcoming H.flak changes and maybe even prompt other ammo choices on artemis in some situations
-
I felt like those gravity changes should have hurt the mob a lot, but I guess those are gone now...
-
I felt like those gravity changes should have hurt the mob a lot, but I guess those are gone now...
They also hurt everything else substantially more. If I was informed correctly, relative to other ships, this was a buff to mob's vulnerability to blending as it fell slower than ships like the galleon and spire, although faster than it does currently. In a sense, whilst this was huge buff to blenders, it indirectly made the mob outshine its peers on yet another level.
-
i always thought the vertical mobility was kinda weird for the mobula (but i think the mobula is weird already for reasons i may or may not get into below) and in terms of game mechanics its absolutely disgustingly strong. if you get through a withering trek through artemis shooting out your guns and the engie camping the hull so the hades doesnt take you out before yo get there. if you get through ALL of that, it can do one MORE thing nobody else can do to escape any other ship.
consider two things about this movement:
1stly, its teh fastest in that direction int eh game wich means unless you have chute vent and hydrogen: its gone
secondly with one exception all the balloon popping weapons are pretty damn intimate, so not only do you have to get in on the mobula under fire but you also have to get just a little bit farther, and the closer you get the more accurate all their shots are getting. meaning yoru carronade/flamer/banshee is destroyed for most of the fight. you almost certainly havnt done enough damage to their balloon to stop them from shooting up like a cork. so if you thought you had them on the ropes, by the time you get back to them, their hades has rained death down on you and probably a gat and a mortar have too, just for fun.
the lumberjack is therefore the only decent weapon for taking the mobula down a peg without running a gauntlet. the mubula will shoot it out in one 10 rocket salvo even if you are on pub matches, its just too damn big, and it takes forever to fix when it gets knocked out, much longer than it takes the artemis to reload... its also one of the trickiest guns to use, and even thogh ive practiced my little heart out, its still hard to line u shots on the mobula because its so flat, and height is the axis that is hardest as everyone who has ever played a spire and wondered why nobody was missing you can attest. nobody is getting it lined up perfectly except its going WIDE...
here's how i would nerf the mobula:
1 make the rise/fall acceleration a lot less. it allows a real opportunity if you can get to them to actually kill them without an unparalleled instant escape trick
2 increase the reload time on the artemis. its always been too good, a good hand with that puppy can disable a ship better than a hwacha, and its often reloaded in time to get your hits in on the hull too. two (or if you are a real jerk, 3) of the little bastards can strip your armor faster than you can repair it, and drop you without pausing to change guns. its decent explosive damage is also perfectly able and willing to blow you apart. its the workhorse shatter weapon at range just as the gatling is the piercing workhorse: if you want it done right, theres no other weapon to take. if someone wants to take the mobula as it is now and slap a merc up top (or on the sides) as it stands leave the arcs the way they are. let people use them like they have been, the only real overpowered build is concerned with the double disable/hull killer rockets.
what this does:
it releases some of the pressure on the heavy weapon disable/reload issues that are causing the galleon and the spire such grief. most of the time its a hwacha or an artemis disabling your heavy weapon these days. a hwacha is rough, but at least you know a heavy weapon is SUPPOSED to be a brutal hit. a light gun knocking out all four of your guns is just absurd.
id advocate as i did in my other post, which was huge sorry, that these changes be put in one before the other separated by some weeks. give us time to see if one change will give us the balance we want, and maybe the other wont be required (or an overcorrection)
-
oh the other thing about the mobula that is weird is that its center of gravity seems like it should be above the balloon, which always makes me think it should flip over...
-
If the Mobula loses vertical mobility, I would buff the turning acceleration. Because of those engine positions, that ship should be spinning like a tornado, "360NoScopebula".
The biggest nerfs I can actually thing of is not tampering with the number stuff, but rather the "physical" components and their positions:
Removing one single gun slot. Anyone of them gone is going to do the job better than whatever Muse is trying to do with those gun arcs changes. #SomethingDoesntWorkMobula
Remove both top wing guns and you reduced it to Pyramidion sniping capabilities, or a more risky Junker. Ending up with the reputation of unbeatable brawling instead of master at multiranging like there is no tomorrow. If need be, add a tunnel connecting the hull and balloon hallways, but then numbers must be nerfed too, as that would allow regular buffs on balloon and armor, now that would be OP. #YearOfBrawlMob #NerfGatMortar
Place the engines even further away from the crew. I usually pilot these ships, but when I do actually crew on a Mobula, I just can't find the time to repair the engines, it takes so much time. With even more distance from the guns to the engines, and it is stuck on the horizontal plane. When that Mobula brawls against quicker ships, it will buy the quicker ships some more time, as the Mobula needs to burn engines to keep arcs going, but eventually the crew has to leave said guns to repair engines. #LionGunOP
-
What if they just turned all the guns inwards. Wouldnt that make it easier to get out of flank arcs? Would also make it stupid powerfuk at long range but its already that.
-
I actually had "removing the top two guns" as one of my list of ideas to re-build the meta. (Along with adding another light gun to the Galleon, and fixing the Spire.)
The Mobula's guns slots give it Junker versatility, without the need to turn, and with Squid verticality.
-
Being too hard to kill is the most fundamental issue with a ship that is supposed to be an evasive sniper or "paper cannon".
I'm surprized no one has talked about how small the Hull profile of the Mobula is unless you are directly above or beside it. Combined with 600 Armor, it usually takes 2 Gatling clips to strip it. For a ship that is difficult to disable, has good maneuverability and tons of firepower, this is nonsense. Mobula Armor should really be in the 400-500 range.
-
I wouldn't, I'd just un-nerf all the other ships and revert some of the changes that have lead to the Mobula being so dominant.
Bring back heavy-clip heavy carronade (perhaps with a drastic reduction to shatter damage to prevent the old component sniping fun "problem") fix the pyramidion so the natural gatling carronade hard counter is playable and all will be well.
do it like this:
Roll back the game to February 2015
Add stamina and adjust gun arcs accordingly
Add current minotaur
Reduce shatter damage of the heavy carronade so it's slightly less effective and can't snipe components
Reduce range of the heavy carronade.
Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch
-
Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch
I lol'ed.
-
Being too hard to kill is the most fundamental issue with a ship that is supposed to be an evasive sniper or "paper cannon".
I'm surprized no one has talked about how small the Hull profile of the Mobula is unless you are directly above or beside it. Combined with 600 Armor, it usually takes 2 Gatling clips to strip it. For a ship that is difficult to disable, has good maneuverability and tons of firepower, this is nonsense. Mobula Armor should really be in the 400-500 range.
That's what I tried to mention (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,7473.msg126155.html#msg126155). I think it's more balanced to reduce hull than armor, but either would help. The mobula is naturally resistant to disable and kill, and the high maneuverability further increases its kill resistance. Reducing maneuvering makes it less fun to fly and is more difficult to balance. The easiest nerf is reducing armor or hull. I prefer hull because when I fly mob I feel the armor is fair but my hull is too much. Hull damage isn't punishing enough with the balloon belly and good maneuvers
-
I wouldn't, I'd just un-nerf all the other ships and revert some of the changes that have lead to the Mobula being so dominant.
Bring back heavy-clip heavy carronade (perhaps with a drastic reduction to shatter damage to prevent the old component sniping fun "problem") fix the pyramidion so the natural gatling carronade hard counter is playable and all will be well.
do it like this:
Roll back the game to February 2015
Add stamina and adjust gun arcs accordingly
Add current minotaur
Reduce shatter damage of the heavy carronade so it's slightly less effective and can't snipe components
Reduce range of the heavy carronade.
Then nerf the pyra again for no reason because it's cool to do that every patch
This. I've asked why they never consider buffing in a fireside way back. Long story short, Eric is against buffing. Something about it being too hard, and leading to continual power creep (instead of continual nerf creep?!). He prefers nerfing. Basically this has lead to nearly everything being reduced to water gun status in guns, and painfully stressful to fly in ships. We don't need to nerf mobula (much), we need to buff a lot of guns and a lot of ships to be...drum roll please...FUN.
-
This. I've asked why they never consider buffing in a fireside way back. Long story short, Eric is against buffing. Something about it being too hard, and leading to continual power creep (instead of continual nerf creep?!). He prefers nerfing. Basically this has lead to nearly everything being reduced to water gun status in guns, and painfully stressful to fly in ships. We don't need to nerf mobula (much), we need to buff a lot of guns and a lot of ships to be...drum roll please...FUN.
It's not like they're ever going to be happy with balance anyway - it seems like as soon as one strategy become dominant it is nerfed to all hell, but ultimately players are always going to keep finding a preferred strategy. If this endless (and somewhat pointless) circle of, brawling meta sniping meta brawling meta sniping meta brawling meta sniping meta, must continue - then I feel the changes should be less drastic, more frequent, and the retention (or increase of) fun should be the most important thing on their agenda.
- Yes - I agree, and as I have said before: it feels like with every balance patch released, muse is just removing more fun from the game. This is in pursuit of, well who knows what? Like the spire nerf currently in the devapp, possibly based only on statistics. These unnecessary, continual, and out of touch nerfs, don't lead anywhere good:
One ship with only one type of gun (sadly this is the only way the game will ever be """balanced"""" to muses satisfaction)
Or possibly - a meta where the flare gun is dominant.
Post Scriptum
Power creep? How the fuck is power creep relevant at all in balancing a game like GOI? Power creep is only relevant in physical trading card games where designers have to keep printing better cards to make people buy them and old cards become too weak (solution is left to the players that choose which sets of cards they use - the designers don't even give a shit about the power creep). In this game
at any point you can just tweak the numbers of the old stuff to make them competitive again, or for that matter just nerf the new things that are too strong...
When something is too strong in a game you have 2 choices - nerf it so it's inline with everything else, or buff everything else with possible balance breaking consequences.
When something is too weak in a game you have 2 choices - buff it so it's inline with everything else, or nerf everything else with possible balance breaking consequences.
If you pick nerf in both situations then there is something wrong.
[spoiler](Hint to muse - The idea is you pick the option that requires the fewest number of changes)[/spoiler]
-
I said it before and ill say it again.
I feel like all ships are balanced minus spire and pyra which need armor and accelation buffs.
I dont feel like mobula is op. Its tough but the damn things sucks as soon as you shoot at it.
My opinion.
-
I said it before and ill say it again.
I feel like all ships are balanced minus spire and pyra which need armor and accelation buffs.
I dont feel like mobula is op. Its tough but the damn things sucks as soon as you shoot at it.
My opinion.
Pyra and Spire need attention way more than the Mobula, and I said myself that I'd prefer to see changes to other things to shake up this boring-as-hell current meta rather than a straight up numerical nerf to the Mobula.
In all honesty, it's just the one Mobula build that infests the game like a fungus between an old dude's toes that I feel is overpowered. Disable enough to lock down a ship entirely, power enough to kill quickly, very specific approach angles that might provide an advantage, but the dumb-as-fuck verticals might as well make that favourable engage a coin flip as to whether you will kill the ship in time.
My biggest problem with it, however, is how painfully unfun it is at this stage. I know that is subjective and I can't hide my biases here. I'm just so bloody sick of seeing them. When 75% of the ships in a single match are Mobulas and Mobulas make up just over 14% of the available choices, with infinitely more if you narrow those Mobs down to the overused meta build, then you kind of see where the power is sitting. And considering how seeing three quarters of the ships in a game being the same thing with only tiny variations is not even remotely surprising, it kind of shows how polarised the metagame has become.
In its current state, that single Mobula build is overpowered, but likely as a result of aggressive nerfs to everything else in the past.
-
Mobula nerf in dev app is pointless and a waste of time.
The only thing I would change to mobula, is possibly a tweak in its hull numbers to lower it a bit, so it becomes a scary thing to loose armour, if the vertical Dodge fails, so would the mobula, but in this current state the mobula has ample tanking abilities to be able to afford mistakes...
The balance changes needed compared to the ones proposed are vastly different...
Small tweaks to everything.. And rather than screw the hwacha to a newbie crews worst fucking nightmare, I'd rather see a state on the thing changed...
Balance changes over gameplay changes...
Mobula OP?
Nerf it's perma-hull a little (Little!)
Pyramidion UP?
Buff it's perma-hull or turning speed a little (Little!)
Hwacha OP?
Nerf it's jitter reduction a bit. (Or just revert all the changes to heavy ammo, Carronades and hwacha!)
Heavy flak Under Used?
Realise that it is the Hwacha dominance that's killing the use of Flak! Why use flak when you can use "LION GUN, FUCK YEAH!")
Also I agree with Newbluud..
Matches these days fall into three types..
Vets using what ship and weapons they want against other vets of a like mind. (Rare, hard to find lobbies, but the most fun.)
Vets stacking the fuck out of the game either with custom no scramble lobbies or switching sides with new pilots, using Mobula, unless someone takes a squid then they go squid. (I won't name the clan who do those, but they might want to watch the fucking salt and shit talk they throw at people when they stomp a level five flying with 7 novice players, fuckers.)
Mixed lobbies of vets and newbies, the vets hard countering any chance they get and a lot of rematch votes, if there happens to be three vet ships in a 2v2 lobby it often turns into games of " pass the newbie, suck up the loss." This lobby you see mostly Pyramidions from the newbies (because the guides are all outdated now, pyra is no longer a great ship.) Or they use Hwachafish.
It's the stacking vets which is why I play less often. I will rant about them, I will hate the specific fuckers who do it, for one reason, their salt and shit talk. It is not skill to win a fucking stomp.
#endofrant.
-
Newbluud, to answer your first post or question, I believe this is not a proper or valid reason to nerf a ship. I'm personally sick of quad hwacha galleons and double gat hwacha spires for example, but I don't think they are op. They are however very frustrating. Now I bet everyone can jump in here and start enlightening us on how quad hwacha galleons are easy to fight and are no big deal, but that's not the case I see everytime I play the game lately. Yes, you won't see these kind of galleons in comeptetive, but outside competitive I had to fight a lot of them and usually we have a lot of troubles with them, since not all of us play all our matches stacked with all 45 level clanmates while rolling with metabuilds. So in this case, I usually have to deal with not experienced crewmates or even worse, the ones who can't possibly bother using any kind of communication IN A MULTIPLAYER HEAVILY TEAMWORK BASED PVP GAME! Even I as 45 pilot had problems with quad hwacha galleons quite a few times, because, you know, I have low level crew and poor ally and we're fighting mid to high level enemy team, but oh no that's not enough that we are underdog by far, enemy also decides to bring quad hwacha galleon in KotH JUST IN CASE right? I have to cringe everytime when obviously superior team feels the need to make already unbalanced lobby even worse by taking very strong builds that their skilled crew can easily manage, while low level team are pretty much stuck with gatlings and flamethrowers in order to get at least few hits before they get annihilated.
So considering all that, my opinion is that this game is unbalanced only because matches and lobbies themselves are unbalanced. I never felt, even in competitive matches, that any of the ships or builds are op. You can always find ship and build that can deal with whatever enemy has. The rest is up to piloting, positioning, coordination and your crew abilities.
I agree with Geo and Byron, trying to balance things with non stop nerfs is what broke and consumed fun of a lot of games for me. It's just not the right way. In this case, I don't think that we should try to nerf the ship just because of that one powerfull builld or even just weapon. How come mobula was not OP when pyra dominated skies? So with pyra out of the picture mob is suddenly OP? We nerf mobuula, then what? Squid is OP? Nerf squid, then fish is OP? And so on. Do you see where this is going? Everyone who has played at least couple of online games knows by now that there is always one or few builds, classes, ships, weapons or whatever that are considered "the best". That's how it is and always will be, because you will never balance ships or weapons or whatever to the point that they would all be absolutely equal. How could you? What could exactly determine how effective or powerfull is particular ship in comparison to others. There is just no way to balance stuff to the point that everyone would be happy. There will always be people who will complain about something. Let's say someone loves spire and wants to fly it non stop, but they are getting wrecked by mobula. Does that mean that mobula is op or just that spire is simply not a good solution against mobula, just like all other ships are not the best solution in every match and every situation. Even "op mobula" is weak against squid for example if squid knows what they are doing. So these ships that are effective in a lot of situations and maps are op? How about they are balanced and fun, while other ships that are barely used anywhere are "underpowered" and needs buff, so they would get used too? Or do we want to nerf everything so at the end we will have lobbies of icarus not because of deciding what ships would be more effective in certain match, but instead which one would suck lees because we nerfed everything?
So in short, what I'm trying to say here is that in my opinion we need more buffs than nerfs and that when it comes to balancing of the game, tha main issue I see are not ships or weapons themselves, but the fact that majority of matches are simply not balanced at all, which is a result of a lot of factors that I won't go into now, because some of them were already discussed and others are just not my expertise and it's not a topic for this thread.
-
Thanks for the input, Mean, but I feel you're trailing off on a point that I actually address in that first post. The title of the thread is misleading, but it keeps the conversation centered where it should be. If you read what I have said, you'll note that I am in favour of buffing other ships and playstyles to combat the over-saturation and ridiculous versatility of the metamob build. I also never acted as if the metamob is unkillable. The problem is, it's a direct upgrade from so many other builds. Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win. That is a problem.
I also hate stacks, but that is not what this thread is about. I also feel that more balanced lobbies would highlight the strength of the metamob even more, assuming balance is settled at mid to high level. At a lower level, blitz-centric ships seem to be extremely powerful because newer pilots do not know how to avoid getting caught out.
Let me state again, because I've seen several people TL;DR the shit out of me and argue against a statistical nerf I never called for: I feel the best nerf to the Mobula is a buff to other ships.
-
Mobula is OP, considering it does everything that the Junker does better.
When one ship is *the* best long-range ship in the game, without question, and better than all but 2 close-range, maybe you should give balance a look?
To the post above, Mobula wasn't OP when Pyra was dominant, because Pyramideon sniping was viable, and because neither Carronade nor Flamer hadn't been nerfed. It was still a very powerful ship that got taken to Hephaestus finals--definitely high-tier, but it had competition. Now, it's a safe choice for basically any team comp. There is no place where you go "no, taking a mob is a bad idea."
The Pyra's nerf made "head on killship" style play pretty damn hard. The Mobula laughs at Hwatchafish, but it much weaker to gat-mortar, and the Pyra back then could keep it in arcs effectively. It can't do that anymore.
Can you say that about any other ship in the game?
Other ships need buffs. Heavy Weapons need buffs. The game's balance is fucked, yo. But you can only evaluate a ship's power in the context of the meta, and in this meta, the Mob is definitely OP.
-
How would I nerf the mobula? Well if I have to nerf rather than buff other underused parts and ships I'd add two big hull strips that wrap around the balloon on the edges so that you can gat / mortar or gat / banshee or hades / flak or hades / art that son of a biscuit more effectively from below.
The problem with the mob is that a smart pilot has way to many ways to kill you while avoiding getting killed themselves. Cant use a heavy carro because double light carro or carro mine counters it due to mob vertical mobility, and mob will usually kill you before you effectively blend it. Cant hwacha or art it because of wide separation of components. Cant meta it because good luck getting on top of a top tier mobula pilot so your gunner has a shot at the hull. Even if you could they have three light guns, you have at best two (or three if you are a junker but good luck being in position first), gg hasta-la-pasta.
So what we need is an interesting way to make a mobula easier to kill. We could decrease its hull. That will work. We could change the layout of the guns or reduce the number of guns. Both of these are options but they take away interesting viable strategies. I like the idea of reducing the viability of the balloon, better vertical mobility but don't scratch that thing or you can kiss that advantage goodbye, but that makes it an odd exception.
The question I ask is, was the mobula ever intended to be borderline invulnerable when it is above you? If not, then give me some way to kill that thing from beneath.
-
Thanks for the input, Mean, but I feel you're trailing off on a point that I actually address in that first post. The title of the thread is misleading, but it keeps the conversation centered where it should be. If you read what I have said, you'll note that I am in favour of buffing other ships and playstyles to combat the over-saturation and ridiculous versatility of the metamob build. I also never acted as if the metamob is unkillable. The problem is, it's a direct upgrade from so many other builds. Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win. That is a problem.
I also hate stacks, but that is not what this thread is about. I also feel that more balanced lobbies would highlight the strength of the metamob even more, assuming balance is settled at mid to high level. At a lower level, blitz-centric ships seem to be extremely powerful because newer pilots do not know how to avoid getting caught out.
Let me state again, because I've seen several people TL;DR the shit out of me and argue against a statistical nerf I never called for: I feel the best nerf to the Mobula is a buff to other ships.
Yeah, sorry I could have worded and formulated my post better. Only first sentence was meant to you directly, the rest was just talking in general, because I know people usually ask for nerfs, not for buffs. And even in first sentence I just wanted to say that I disagree with that particular idea in general, not with your entire post.
"Two pilots with equal skill with crews of equal skill; whichever is using the metamob is going to win" I'm not sure I'd go that far with this. This depends on a lot of factors. If this is 1v1 fight, then yes, usually mobula should win, but not alway by far (I'll give one example below). 2v2 is however totally different situation and is also what game is arguably balanced around, so the result would differ a lot. Let's take one example: "2v2, red team with 2x meta mobula, blue team with 1x meta mobula + 1x kill squid - both team equally skilled, map:canyon ambush." I'd say blue team will have advantage, even tho they have only one OP mobula on their side. Squid will make all the difference there. Mobula sure has ability to fight at all ranges, but it's not equally effective at all ranges. It can't possibly track and effectively damage and kill squid in close combat, while squid can do that, unless squid does something wrong. that's just one example. Metamob could struggle in duel at dawn as well, or especially in paritan. No one, no matter how skilled pilot you are, you won't convince me that you can fly mobula with same effectivness as you can in maps like fjords or dunes for example. Even if you don't hit any buildings by accident, you just don't have the same amount of space to dodge and escape as you have in other maps. The map itself restricts your effectivness. Not to mention the fact that as a metamobula you don't benefit from taking cover and waiting for ambush in paritan as some other ships and builds would.
So, the only scenario where I would definetly agree that metamobula would probably always win in 1v1 equal fight is open long range engagements. All other scenarios immediately drop effectivness of mobula, some more then others. Of course I'm not saying it would suck in all other scenarios, it's still strong in many of them, but I'm saying that in many of those scenarios there are other ships that can perform as effective as mobula or even better. So, if we agree to that, then we can say that metamobula is only OP in open long range engagements. But now, is it really? I mean, is it really Op if it's the best ship for long range engagements? Or is that just the fact that it was maybe suppose to be just that and that someone has to fill that role. If there would be no mobula, then that would be galleon. If not galleon, then spire or whatever. Someone has to be. I doubt anyone could possibly balance two different ships to be exactly equally effective in same situation.
I don't know, maybe it's just me and my perception or definition of what OP means to me, but I think gamers today in general are jumping to conclusions way to fast and are in general way more competitive and agrressive and can't take a loss or being beaten by others (not talking about you, Newbluud, of course, just in general what we can see in online games). Take for example any fps game out there. "OP gun here, OP gun there". Everything that kills you is OP. Maybe it's a fact that there are so many very young players in gaming today. I think 20 years ago there weren't so many kiddies that even had PC, let alone play these games and communities were a little bit different. Today, you're born and your first gift is cellphone and few years after that here you go, PC. Anyway, I'm getting of topic here, I just don't feel what some poeple are saying, not jsut about mobula, but in general. I think game is fairly balanced atm and biggest issue are lobbies like I mentioned in ym first post.
Mobula is OP, considering it does everything that the Junker does better.
When one ship is *the* best long-range ship in the game, without question, and better than all but 2 close-range, maybe you should give balance a look?
To the post above, Mobula wasn't OP when Pyra was dominant, because Pyramideon sniping was viable, and because neither Carronade nor Flamer hadn't been nerfed. It was still a very powerful ship that got taken to Hephaestus finals--definitely high-tier, but it had competition. Now, it's a safe choice for basically any team comp. There is no place where you go "no, taking a mob is a bad idea."
The Pyra's nerf made "head on killship" style play pretty damn hard. The Mobula laughs at Hwatchafish, but it much weaker to gat-mortar, and the Pyra back then could keep it in arcs effectively. It can't do that anymore.
Can you say that about any other ship in the game?
Other ships need buffs. Heavy Weapons need buffs. The game's balance is fucked, yo. But you can only evaluate a ship's power in the context of the meta, and in this meta, the Mob is definitely OP.
Again, just because performs well in many situations doesn't necessarily means it's OP, not in a sense that you should go and nerf it. Remember, pyramidion was also considered OP and what's with it now? Are you sure you want to ask for nerfs again? Mobula is fine, buff other ships. You said it yourself, pyra can't keep up anymore. Yes, but pyra can't keep up with a lot of ships anymore, which means it's pyras' problem, not mobulas'. Give pyra some speed back and it will be good close range ship again and effective against mobula and others hips as well.
-
I'd get a Lumberfish and keep it out of the range of the Artemis...one balloon pop and those guns can't hit you :V
Otherwise, I'd reduce the turning speed. Only one of those engines (the one on top) actually is in a spot to grab air, the two turners have this thing called a Mobula infront of them, making for terrible airflow, meaning they'd have to work harder to turn the ship.
And then I'd [redacted]
-
The Mobula works in the same space as the Spire. It brings 3+ guns on a forward facing target, but its repair points are far enough away from the guns that the crew is forced to decide between repairing and shooting. It is superior to the Spire in that the Mobula's horizontal profile vs the Spire's vertical profile is not as vulnerable to long range high damage shot drop weapons (hadies, lumberjack, flacks).
If I were to nerf the Mobula I would increase the damage output of long range non shot drop weapons like the banshee. I would also move the repair points further away from the guns. The effect would be to increase both the frequency that components catch fire at range and how long gungineers are spending engineering instead of gunning.
-
The Mobula works in the same space as the Spire. It brings 3+ guns on a forward facing target, but its repair points are far enough away from the guns that the crew is forced to decide between repairing and shooting. It is superior to the Spire in that the Mobula's horizontal profile vs the Spire's vertical profile is not as vulnerable to long range high damage shot drop weapons (hadies, lumberjack, flacks).
If I were to nerf the Mobula I would increase the damage output of long range non shot drop weapons like the banshee. I would also move the repair points further away from the guns. The effect would be to increase both the frequency that components catch fire at range and how long gungineers are spending engineering instead of gunning.
I like this one. Probably because I like the banshee.
-
Banshee is already borderline more useful than the flamethrower at setting fires, buffing the explosive damage instead would make it contest the Mortar, and mortar is already an insanely powerful option and would be overpowered if not for it's arc and range related weaknesses. I'd be down with an accuracy buff though, make it useful mid-long range. A banshee does 400 balloon damage per clip excluding fire stacks (Which is what you get when the enemy's balloon is chemmed). Stack 3 of them and you get a whopping 1200 damage, that'll leave the enemy balloon at 250 HP if the balloon is malleted during the proccess, this is excluding the fire stack attribute of banshee. This is even excluding buffed greased triple banshee (1498.8 damage to balloon per clip!)
This means 3 banshees combined is effectively the closest you can get to a Lumberjack with light guns. Buffing the accuracy of banshee's accuracy would buff some of the builds that heavily rely on it for long range aswell as opening up a new option for the current long range meta.
Otherwise, I'd just lean towards nerfing the Mobula's hull to 550. I feel that having a moderately durable armor/balloon is very important for mobula and allows the Do I repair - Do I shoot decision making mechanic to be smooth on mobula. Overnerfing the armor would ruin it as the hull engi has to run back to the component every 2 seconds everytime something sneezes on it, which prevents it from getting the trifectas it needs unless the engagement is perfect. Why bring a mobula at all then? I would not nerf it's armor below 500. It's also going to make it easier to tank with if you lower the hull too much, same with making it too hard to tank with higher than 600 armor due to the increased rebuild time but being able to win against almost anything so long as you dont get a particularly bad engagement.
On the other hand, 550 hull value is a very important and understated threshold in hull values. One burst artemis clip does 550 damage, one unbuffed clip of greased banshee does 540 damage. Kill squids will one clip it, other meta mobs will most likely have enough shots to disable it's guns and melt it's hull at the same time, Lumber Flak galleons and other heavy flak ships will insta kill it, double lumber galleon will chip damage it so hard it'll be at 50% after the first armor break, and while the Mobula itself is weak to rams at the moment, it will be weak to gentle breeze rams now, which I think is fair considering that you'll be so disabled that'll be the best you can do if you head on a mob. We already have a glass cannon that tanks with low armor (Spire), so might aswell make something on the opposite end of the spectrum. Again, this breaks the threshold of "Too much armor", which means it can't actually tank well when it's armor goes down because now it's comparatively harder for an engi to get the armor back in time before all it's hull health is depleted, but unlike a straight buff to the armor that doesnt mean it'll win every engage so long as the armor's up, it's still the same mob. Just relies solely on pilot dodging now, which means more balloon/engine tool burning, and burning these tools earlier. And if there's anything I know about mobula verticals, it's that it's not an infinite advantage - It's gone as soon as you burn the balloon. So overall, not only does this change make it fragile in it's originally intended way, but forces the mobula to adapt to the change by being more cautious in times of armor break, thus putting more pressure on itself to expend resources with which it'll hamper it's ability to get back into the fight with.
-
The amount of perks you gain by taking mobula is too much as for me:
+ Small hull size compared to balloon (Difficult to hit, just like junker. Additionally it's vertical movement will make you hit gatling shots very difficult in comparison to other ships)
+ Range control ability (forward facing guns can shoot while you change your distance to target)
+ Great dodge potential (vertical mobility)
+ Great vertical movement (buffed balloon with stamina equals free hydrogen)
+ Quadfecta is possible
+ Decent durability (can't say the same about pyramidion which is supposed to be front line fighter and mobula should be theoretically glass cannon)
+ 2 secondary guns on wings (makes it possible to use at different range)
+ Components spread across the entire ship makes it invulnerable to heavy disables (no matter direction. even if hwacha attacking from rear the best outcome is to disable only one side of the ship. If you wanna do something serious to it you need very good gunner while against other ships pretty average will be more than enough)
+ Wide ship (Usually ramming mobula from front will leave you very exposed and will actually only help mobula)
+ Ship doesn't even require buffs to be strong, and most of the times even in competitive matches it isn't buffed at all.
Let's compare it to Pyramidion now:
+ Always 2 guns shooting target no matter disabling potential (but requires to be in range of said guns, and disables are still effective from rear or sides)
~ Always someone has time to repair engines (but it means dualfecta for most of the times)
~ Average range control (you still have only 2 guns on front so you have to chose if you wanna be artillery or brawler)
Those last two have their drawbacks, while on mobula it's pure benefit. That's all I can think of that will benefit me from taking pyramidion. Literally all I can think of.
Is there anyone who still wants to argue that Mobula isn't OP? It was like this since the beginning, but back then at least carronades worked.
How I would nerf it? By buffing carronade back again, or move hull to back of the ship where baloon is. The only mobula that we have problem with is that meta cancer, because it's difficult to approach. Brawlmobs are fine, I think.
-
The amount of perks you gain by taking mobula is too much as for me:
+ Small hull size compared to balloon (Difficult to hit, just like junker. Additionally it's vertical movement will make you hit gatling shots very difficult in comparison to other ships)
+ Range control ability (forward facing guns can shoot while you change your distance to target)
+ Great dodge potential (vertical mobility)
+ Great vertical movement (buffed balloon with stamina equals free hydrogen)
+ Quadfecta is possible
+ Decent durability (can't say the same about pyramidion which is supposed to be front line fighter and mobula should be theoretically glass cannon)
+ 2 secondary guns on wings (makes it possible to use at different range)
+ Components spread across the entire ship makes it invulnerable to heavy disables (no matter direction. even if hwacha attacking from rear the best outcome is to disable only one side of the ship. If you wanna do something serious to it you need very good gunner while against other ships pretty average will be more than enough)
+ Wide ship (Usually ramming mobula from front will leave you very exposed and will actually only help mobula)
+ Ship doesn't even require buffs to be strong, and most of the times even in competitive matches it isn't buffed at all.
Let's compare it to Pyramidion now:
+ Always 2 guns shooting target no matter disabling potential (but requires to be in range of said guns, and disables are still effective from rear or sides)
~ Always someone has time to repair engines (but it means dualfecta for most of the times)
~ Average range control (you still have only 2 guns on front so you have to chose if you wanna be artillery or brawler)
Those last two have their drawbacks, while on mobula it's pure benefit. That's all I can think of that will benefit me from taking pyramidion. Literally all I can think of.
Is there anyone who still wants to argue that Mobula isn't OP? It was like this since the beginning, but back then at least carronades worked.
How I would nerf it? By buffing carronade back again, or move hull to back of the ship where baloon is. The only mobula that we have problem with is that meta cancer, because it's difficult to approach. Brawlmobs are fine, I think.
I will argue :P Sorry Guras, but first you list all the "strengths" of mobula and then you say that "cancer mobula" is problem and brawlbula is fine. Does that list of "strenghts" not apply for all mobulas, just for meta? I mean, brawl mobula also benefits from slim hull, from great vertical mobility and so on. So, that's why I'm saying it's not so much of a problem with ship itself. It might seem so to a lot of people, but it's other ships that need buffing and maybe some weapons like you mentioned carronade. It's unreasonable to compare pyramidion to mobula in order to show how inferior pyra is, because pyramidion is pretty much inferior to any other ship in the game. It's similar with spire. You don't see spire in competitive not because there are mobulas there, but because spire is weak against most other ships as well or at least it's very risky pick and usually isn't worth the effort and doesn't seem to provide more benefit to the team than it's costing them.
I get a feeling that people are trying to nerf mobula only because they don't like meta mob and think it's too easy to play with and win with it. Well then nerf artemis if that's the problem. It's very powerful gun on every ship, not just mobula. It has good arcs, decent clip, fairly easy to shoot, has all ranges with no arming time, has good disable power and fair explosive damage, it combines well with most other weapons etc...
You say it's difficult to approach them. Well of course, as it should be. Sniper ship of any kind should be difficult to approach with close range ships. If you're in open map you will have hard time approaching any sniping ship, not just mobula. If you're in short range map with a lot of cover, you can approach it same as brawl mobula. Even easier than brawl mobula if you are not spotted. If you're thinking of sniper vs sniper then it is what it is, like I said, someone has to fill the role of being best sniper ship and it happens to be mobula. But if we're taking metamobula then even that is not true. For pure sniping galleon is probably good candidate to beat mobula. With lumberjack and mercury you can easily outrange those artemises. And even in max artemis range it's not very easy to disable components, so mob can have trouble disabling galleons' guns before galleons locks mobula down with lumberjack. If they land few lumberjack shots you can put mobula down enough (even if they have drogue chute) that they won't have artemises in arcs.
-
I get a feeling that people are trying to nerf mobula only because they don't like meta mob and think it's too easy to play with and win with it. Well then nerf artemis if that's the problem. It's very powerful gun on every ship, not just mobula. It has good arcs, decent clip, fairly easy to shoot, has all ranges with no arming time, has good disable power and fair explosive damage, it combines well with most other weapons etc...
People want to nerf the mobula because it's the best ship in the game. There's rarely a situation for me that I should bring another ship over a mobula for the easiest win. I don't bring other ships because they're better, I bring them to keep it interesting. And I never bring meta mob and rarely bring even one artemis
Keep in mind that artemis is the least potent explosive gun dealing only 62% of the hull dps of banshee. I don't bring artemis because they kill slowly and why disable them when you can kill them. The mobula is the best ship for this because it's resistant to being disabled and killed. For reference my two most common builds are buffed charged merc top with left lesmok flak gat, and right heavy clip flare banshee; buffed greased hades (I can preload lesmok), left greased banshee gat, right heatsink/burst/greased flame/flare flak. Both are kitted for max kill dps and make full use of the spanner mallet buff engi top
-
You say it's difficult to approach them. Well of course, as it should be. Sniper ship of any kind should be difficult to approach with close range ships. If you're in open map you will have hard time approaching any sniping ship, not just mobula.
Actually, this is untrue. When you charge a mobula, the Mobula backs away until it disables and strips you enough that you have to retreat. When you do decide to retreat and/or take cover before you approach, the mob can always move in and finish you off. This is not a trait of every sniper ship, junker is easier to charge because they cant control distance like the mob, galleon is easier to disable on approach, and spire is just easier to straight up kill and disable on approach. It's just a matter of fact that Mobula is the best ship to abuse Hades/Arts with, and this forum is looking for a way to reduce it's effectiveness without reducing Mobula's effectiveness in general so that other builds can be run, and without nerfing the guns so other ships who can't abuse the combination as effectively can still somewhat use them.
-
Heavy Clip can not be restored until a falloff damage is introduced. In my mind, falloff damage would solve a ton of balance problems. All guns could have their ranges and velocities increased and recoil decreased. Heavy clip could be reverted to its laser missile glory. Guns that are OP at all ranges could be nudged [NUDGED MUSE NUDGED!] back at further ranges without just making them hard to hit with (no fun). Artemis, Manticore, and Hades in particular. Maybe Mercury. Gatling for sure (after it is given a couple hundred more meters of range and less jitter). This would nerf the Mobula in a meaningful way without taking away its 'gun platform' aspect.
As far as a direct nerf to the Mobula, I would give it two more engines on the top deck behind the wing guns without changing the turning ability. These engines would obviously be harder to keep well repaired while still keeping all guns in arc. This would give it the same problems as the Squid. Then reduce the vertical speed somewhat.
-
You say it's difficult to approach them. Well of course, as it should be. Sniper ship of any kind should be difficult to approach with close range ships. If you're in open map you will have hard time approaching any sniping ship, not just mobula.
Actually, this is untrue. When you charge a mobula, the Mobula backs away until it disables and strips you enough that you have to retreat. When you do decide to retreat and/or take cover before you approach, the mob can always move in and finish you off. This is not a trait of every sniper ship, junker is easier to charge because they cant control distance like the mob, galleon is easier to disable on approach, and spire is just easier to straight up kill and disable on approach. It's just a matter of fact that Mobula is the best ship to abuse Hades/Arts with, and this forum is looking for a way to reduce it's effectiveness without reducing Mobula's effectiveness in general so that other builds can be run, and without nerfing the guns so other ships who can't abuse the combination as effectively can still somewhat use them.
Why would you charge sniping ship in the first place if they see you coming? Like I said, if they see you coming, it doesn't matter if it's mobula or galleon or even spire, you won't reach that ship safely if it's sniper ship vs close range ship. It shouldn't, otherwise that galleon or spire is doing extremely poor job. In close range maps, it's not hard to approach mobula and you should have not hard time flanking them if you get good positions and coordination. If you flank mobula in close range situation it can only dodge vertically and it can't do it forever of course. If you happen to have carronade you will even strip them of that dodge. Which leaves them with dodging horizontally. How many ships can successfully dodge horizontally? None, it rarely works if enemy gets good engagement. Every ship in the game tries to dodge vertically for the most part, except maybe for galleon because it would not help much. Dodging horizontally in close range maps is mostly not very effective at all anyway. In open maps you can "dodge" by reversing and buy quite some time with that, because you have a lot of space behind you, in close range maps it won't help you that much, because if it's close range engagement, it means the enemy ship is already close to you and they are faster than you can reverse.
Besides, you can't expect to approach mobula from their front side and expect to kill them easily. Of course they will have a good chance to kill or disable you, It's a freaking killing machine with five front guns. You approach them from flank or behind and the results are a lot different. Old pyra certainly didn't have any problem with annihilating ships that were trying to dodge horizontally and it only needed that little bit of speed and hull that now it doesn't have. It was not as sturdy and fast as goldfish or tanky as squid, but it still didn't have problem killing mob that tried to run from it. I think everyone can realize that whatever the range, you don't want to approach mobula with their front side facing you. Just like you won't approach galleon with their broadside facing you and expect to have a good day. Also another point about mobula being able to reverse while junker and galleons can't.... Galleons and junkers are a lot more resistent to flanking than mobula, since they have side guns and can easily turn and shoot wherever the enemy ship is coming from, while mobula will take a while to turn. That is a very important and good advantage in close range maps for galleon and junker.
I find it funny that we have mobula for such a long time now and builds haven't change all that much and no one seemed to be bothered by mob before. But recently a lot of people started flying mobula, so BOOM, It's OP now all of sudden :)
Well guys, after mobula gets nerfed, guess what will happen. Yeah, another ship will take it's place and will be "the best ship in the game". So what we accomplish? Nothing, we enter neverending circle of nerfing, oops "balancing" which consume fun out of game patch after patch. Like I said already, just because it works well, doesn't mean it's op. In every game, let's take fps for example because it's easy one, you will find the most popular and most used weapon. Does that necessary mean it's op? No, not always, it can mean that people found a weapon that is overall good and easy to use and they use it, because you know, a lot of people today play to win. They will use a weapon that they might not actually like the most, but they really want to win.
So again, I'm all for nerfing mob by buffing other ships or weapons like carronade, not by directly nerfing the ship. Not just mobula. I'm talking about mobula here of course because the topic is about mobula, if you wanted to nerf spire for example I would defend spire. Buff other ships.
-
It is not hard to charge a Mobula. If you charge directly at them, then of course you won't get very far.
I like how Guras doesn't even try to hide his bias against Mobula. I will let the fact that he tries to compare it to what is said to be the weakest ship in the game, slide.
It is not invulnerable to disable, from the five guns it has, you only need to destroy three or even less if anything already damaged its armor or balloon. It depends on the skill of your gunner to decide what guns he should destroy. Destroying the engines when you behind it is also not that hard.
The wings and tail are armor, so if you engage it from something that is not the front, not even I have trouble breaking that armor.
The Mobula can't repair engines as reliable as most ships, because you need all three or at least two crewmembers to do it.
It cannot tank, if the armor is down it will be down for very long.
It is extremely vulnerable to focus fire, as that will often mean a lot of damage on armor and balloon, because of the AoE of Hades and Banshees, and without the balloon it has nothing going for it.
Also, it's balloon and hull are so close together, AoE will most likely always hit both. Hades and Banshee damaging balloon when hitting hull, explosive guns continuing to damage the hull when hitting the balloon.
It cannot do anything about something behind it.
It is so slow, it literally cannot escape. Going up and down is buying time, not an escape.
Paired with horrendous turning acceleration, it cannot chase and must rely on magical Artemis disables on enemy engines, if they are not behind cover already. The good thing about that, I have to admit, is that it makes Phoenix Claw completely obsolete so there is less damage on the engines. Some people have yet to think about that.
Bad turning and lack of engineer coorperation also makes it extremely vulnerable to mines.
About the buff thing, I want to say that you phrased that incorrectly and even then it isn't something that only goes for the Mobula. Ships become better with buff, the Mobula included. They are all already strong, so are the guns, buffs only make sure you need a little bit less of something to do whatever you want to do. Increasing speed, potential dps and overall survivability. The Mobula is actually the only ship left out of that, as most of the time it is the only ship without buff on anything. Some people do run a third engineer to at least buff the Hades/Gatling and for a little bit before combat begins the engines, but more often than not it is the only ship that doesn't allow people to make it better. The fact that its vertical mobility is so strong does counter the lack of buff rather well, but then again, the engines are so bad that even with buff it may still be worse than most other ships without. That also seems to be a fitting explanation why there is so much Mallet/Spanner on the Mobula balloon, without that, what has it going for it? And buffs on the armor are a no-go, as optimal repairs and fire management are the only real ways to go for.
-
Double post, but you know how it is.
The more I actually think about it, the more I see the Mobula as the most balanced (= Mobula OP, obviously). It's weaknesses are so insanely large, that it shifts the meta mindset about the game and has to be approached differently, from enemy ship as well as from when you are piloting and crewing it yourself. Has anybody actually thought about how it's turning acceleration is worse than even the Galleon's, yet people can fly this ship successfully without the assistance of buff? Imagine a lack of buff or phoenix claw on any other ship, except maybe the Squid with the best horizontal mobility, that would be blasphemy! Five guns or not, they are forward facing. The Goldfish, Spire and Pyramidion all have forward facing guns as well and can buff their armor and theoretically use their much higher in comparision speed to fly past their enemy, if they needed to dodge for a second. Yet, these ships still use the claw.
The one thing that saves it's lack of turning might just be the fact that the guns arcs are tilted. turning all the guns straight forward doesn't sound like a bad idea after all. But that will also be another buff to the Squid and Hwacha, and who doesn't want that.
There recently has been a discussion about the Mobula on some twitch chat, in somebody mentioned that the Mobula is always the primary target. I agree on that, but it can't be about the guns, a lot of ships can do trifecta and on some ships it's even stronger (Galleon with OP Lumberjack and instant kill Flak). And some guns are even more dangerous as they do their job much quicker and more effectively than Hades/double Artemis, which are Hwacha, Heavy Carronade and Gat/Mortar. I don't think I responded to that at all back then, but now I would say, it is the primary target, because in focus fire, it dies the quickest. Sure, Hydrogen once is nice, but how often can the Mobula use hydrogen before the balloon is dead or until it and its enemies are on max altitude? Also, if there is focus fire and the Mobula uses hydrogen or chute vent to dodge, the enemy will chase it vertically, which means the Mobula's ally will have to follow the enemy vertically as well, wether that works out for said ally depends on the situation.
As the Mobula is a ship that reacts slowly, it cannot afford to start regreting choices, once it commits to a choice, it has commited, there is no turning back. The one strength it has, the vertical mobility, is the one thing that keeps it in the air, literally too! With the lack of use for the Phoenix Claw, it can indirectly buff that strength with getting two vertical mobility tools or just one with the addition of Drouge Chute. The gravity thing that once was may make the Mobula more rammable against Blenderfish, but allows it to shoot the enemy Lumberjack for even longer.
I want that all the other ships follow the example of the Mobula and get changed appropriately. More diversity in vertical and forward/backwards accelerations as well as top speeds would be a start. Buff ships in ways that they can afford to not take something and still be a good pick.
-
Lol
You do realize that the mobula can back up almost as quickly as some ships can go forward right?
Oh, and once you do close, the vertical acceleration and speed of the mobula let it run circles around any other ship in the game. Squid included. You shouldn't be turning much in a close range engagement, mobulas simply don't need to.
Hull isn't that important in a mob actually, the balloon is life tho. Speaking of which:
Balloon Blocking!
The mobula is the only ship in the game that can effectively balloon block AND fire all guns at the same time. That I don't like.
TL;DR reduce both the vertical acceleration and speed. The Mobula has alot of inherent advantages. It doesn't need the vertical mobility it has.
-
The Mobula's acceleration is 4.25m/s². Goldfish 3.50, Junker 4.3, Squid 6.66 an Spire 4.5. A lot of ships that do get behind the Mobula, have enough speed to counter the Mobula's attempt to back up. The Goldfish may not have the speed, but it does have the Hwacha to reduce the speed to 0 or a Carronade to reduce the gun arcs to 0.
Vertical acceleration doesn't mean an enemy is not behind you anymore. I have tried a lot of stuff against a lot of Squids that got behind me, trust me on that one, they glue to me like my own face. Even when a Goldfish doesn't have the base acceleration to keep up with the Mobula backing up, it often has buffed engines, which the Mobula cannot afford and even without that, it does have the top speed, which it will reach shortly. The vertical acceleration only saves me, because said Squids are so close, even a Pyramidion could dodge a bunch of those Banshees with one Hydrogen. Trust me on that one too, but a little less, I dodged a Mobula's Artemis and Mortar shots with a Pyramidion. If other ships get changes on vertical acceleration for more diversity, you would have your vertical acceleration nerf in a different suit.
On the balloon blocking thing I mostly agree with you. But then again, this mostly applies to when using a Gatling after the Mobula has already build up vertical distance and when said Gatling tries to shoot at 100m from the worst possible angle so the spread will either miss the ship compltely or hit only the balloon. Balloon blocking Hades in a Mobula I found to be very frustrating, the AoE still hits the armor and then now even the balloon engineer has to leave the gun to fix something.
-
You do realize that the mobula can back up almost as quickly as some ships can go forward right?
After accounting for the need to turn slightly sideways to maintain equal numbers of guns a junker advances slower than the mobula can retreat.
TL;DR reduce both the vertical acceleration and speed. The Mobula has alot of inherent advantages. It doesn't need the vertical mobility it has.
Along those lines, swapping the top speeds of the mobula and junker would add another way to try counter it in a similar manner to the squid.
-
Buffing other things to nerf the mobula is too complicated and will have side effects. Daniel you say the mob's weaknesses are so insanely large but the truth is the other ships have more/worse weaknesses and the mobula is the least vulnerable ship in the game. When I had my mobula epiphany a year ago I suddenly wasn't scared of anything except multiple fire (hades-banshees). The mob is simply the strongest ship in the game and now more players are realizing it
(insert long paragraph about turning, damage, repairs etc)
Unless other ships need buffs it's too complicated to buff them according to the mobula. Take junker for example. Junker can't fight mob at range because it's too vulnerable to disable. I can't think of a reasonable buff that would let junker fight mob at range. Junker can fight mobs up close by burning in low. This can be used to great effect but if the mob has a single carro then it's too hard for the junker. Buffing junker will only make it better at brawling with mob and against everything the junker is already good at. It won't make nearly as much difference to fighting a mob as fighting other ships. Unnecessary consequences are caused
One more example: fish. I've always said mobs are good against fish and this was as true before the carro nerf after hwatcha buff. For me a hwatcha fish stands no chance against a ranged or brawl mob and the only thing a blenderfish can do is ram into something hard. Before the mob is popped they hydro, then drogue, then immediately hydro. Without terrain a fish can't fight a mob. How do you buff fish to balance mob? Buffing the fish will only make it better against ships it's already good against, and buffing heavy guns will only make them better against ships they're already good against!
Buffs to nerf the mobula doesn't make sense. If a ship needs a buff, buff it. If a ship needs a nerf then the answer isn't to buff everything else. The mob has no natural weakness greater than other ships and it has the most advantages over other ships. If you're gonna buff things to nerf the mob then what will you buff and how will it not adversely effect others?
-
For me a hwatcha fish stands no chance against a ranged or brawl mob
This is the only part of your post that I don't entirely agree on.. hwachafish can fight fairly well (approach as you would with a junker, potentially weakens their position vs your ally, obvious advantage when directly above mobula, increased if their mobility is reduced), though the mobula can make slight specialisations to increase its survivability.
You shouldn't be turning much in a close range engagement, mobulas simply don't need to.
Mobulas do need to turn at close range, that's part of their weakness at close range. You can see this by some quick analysis on the relevant gun arcs and the distance between the guns, if not by experience. Note the high top speed and slow angular acceleration, which means..
-
You do realize that the mobula can back up almost as quickly as some ships can go forward right?
Did you make that up? Mobulas' top speed is among the worst in the game (only junker is slower) and acceleration is not THAT important, because you never run from enemy without using kerosine or moonshine, so since every pilot uses those it's easy to hit top speed where mobula will start losing against pretty much every ship, not to mention that if mobula tries to run in anything but open space, it can get stuck or bump the terrain a lot easier and it can't get around cover as easy as others ships can, since it has terrible turning speed. Acceleration only comes into play in close range engagement and even there it only really helps if you see enemy coming. If they don't approach you head on, as they shouldn't, then acceleration or top speed won't help you much. There is a reason why every ship in game dodges vertically mostly. Only scenario where top speed and acceleration really helps usually is when you start running from fight (like when your ally dies and you decide to disengage), in which mobula is terrible and usually can't escape this way. So it's actually other ships who benefit from acceleration and top speed more.
Oh, and once you do close, the vertical acceleration and speed of the mobula let it run circles around any other ship in the game.
You can't dodge forever. You can hydro, but so can enemy, the difference is that after that hydro, you can lower altitude faster than other ships and that's only dodge you will usually get before you damage your balloon. If you do the opposite and first dodge down with stamina for example, enemy can still follow you down, especially with healthy, buffed balloon and stamina, after that you can hydro and they can hydro as well. It's just buying time essentially. Sometimes it will save your life, but not always, especially if you get flanked and enemy hurt your balloon in the process. That's all part of turning their strenghts against them. You have plenty of ways to hurt their balloon and thus making them pretty much stuck and unable to properly dodge. Carronade can still do the job, no matter how people cry about it (even though i very much agree it didn't need that nerf). You don't actually have to kill balloon, which you can easily do with lochnagar if you want, but you just have to heavily damage it and they won't be able to dodge.
Squid included.
Squid can't keep up? Please, did you even watch any squids in competitive? I've seen plenty dancing with mob and killing them sooner or later.
You shouldn't be turning much in a close range engagement, mobulas simply don't need to.
Haha, can you please read and think about what you just said?
Hull isn't that important in a mob actually, the balloon is life tho. Speaking of which:
Balloon is life? Well, yes it's pretty much impossible to miss it with any gun, hurt it and there won't be so much life anymore, simple yeah?
Hull might not be top priority on mobula indeed, but if your armor is down, you're very susceptible to get insta killed by rams, heavy flaks, or even suiciding if you dodge into the terrain. Like I already said, you can't dodge forever and if your balloon is not healthy it's even harder to succesfully dodge.
While hull is slim, balloon is huge. Which means once it's broken it's easy to land all the shots that will go straight to the hull. But you already know that.
TL;DR reduce both the vertical acceleration and speed. The Mobula has alot of inherent advantages. It doesn't need the vertical mobility it has.
Take that away and it's not mobula anymore, it's a fat spire. That's like suggesting to take two engines away from squid or one side of guns from junker. Vertical mobility is the most defining "characteristic" of mobula. Why would you want to take away what makes ships unique? And of course it needs that speed. it doesn't have horizontal speed like I already mentioned above, it's clumsy at moving around terrain, it has terrible turning speed, so what's left? Yeah, that's right, vertical mobility.
I very much agree with Daniel that mobula is most balanced ship in the game. It has unique design, it has strenghts and weaknesses, it provides many different possible builds, crew combos and strategies. That for me means it's well balanced. If a ship is only useful with one build or only in one situation or against one type of enemy, then that is IMO not balanced and it's boring and something needs to be done with that ship. Everyone should strive to make muse buff other ships so they are more like mobula, diverse and provide more possible and effective builds and roles that ship can do.
-
Five light guns in the same direction is the defining characteristic of the Mobula.
The vertical mobility is a stupid, nonsensical oversight.
-
Vertical mobility was always a defining characteristic of the mobula.
Source (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1604.msg28469.html#msg28469)
New ship, the Mobula - an more advanced attack ship with 5 front facing gun and no guns on side or back. It has good vertical movement, but it is more difficult to repair in the heat of battle.
-
If we apply logic in order to nerf the vertical mobility, then I will argue with the same logic to buff its turning speed. Remember that the Pyramidion got nerfed, because its turning speed was so high it could keep gat/mortar arcs on everything, apply logic to the Mobula and this is what you get.
Five guns facing the same direction means nothing, if you just flat out die, the Spire has already taught us that. Nerfing vertical mobility is going to do exactly what people think will happen with Muse's nerf decision: It will stick to long range Hades and double Artemis, because it won't have the means of survival in any other scenario. I am honestly more in favor of removing the Mobula than kill its one chance and keep it in the game.
-
The Mobula is strong right now because balloon-popping is weak. A slight carro, heavy clip, fire, or gravity buff would dramatically make the Mobula weaker (as much, if not moreso than the junker).
Mobulas do well because they are good against Hwacha and Artemis spam (due to well-protected components). Give alternatives, and the Mobula will seem more in-line.
-
This thread is got heated up as much as LION GUN OP.
But yea. Mobility, Survivability, Firepower - all ships should have two of those and lack one.
Mobula is designed to have its signature vertical Mobility and large Firepower, so let's keep it that way. But IMHO, it really should be easier to kill at close range if you get the drop on it. Turns out it's harder than expected in practice. This is because, as Pies and I have mentioned, Hull is hard to hit and 600 Armor is quite a lot (in the range of vanguard ships - Pyra, Junker, Galleon). If it becomes more susceptible to damage, then I'd agree that the Mobula actually has a striking weakness to be a balanced ship.
@Jamini: The problem with balloon-popping is that the Mobula, unlike a Galleon or Spire, can maneuver its way out of the blend. A well timed hydro will save it from grounding out, even though Balloon might be lost in the process. Whenever it manages to get arcs, it will disable your guns and start gaining the upper hand. This is the experience I've had while developing a blendersquid build with Kamoba for months.
-
@Jamini: The problem with balloon-popping is that the Mobula, unlike a Galleon or Spire, can maneuver its way out of the blend. A well timed hydro will save it from grounding out, even though Balloon might be lost in the process. Whenever it manages to get arcs, it will disable your guns and start gaining the upper hand. This is the experience I've had while developing a blendersquid build with Kamoba for months.
Mobulas also drop like a stone due to their vertical acceleration without drogue chute. This also doesn't take into account that a mobula virtually requires an on-point, buffless, engineering team in order to stay repaired due to its structure. (Or a three-engineer setup to get engine buffs). Let's not mention that Mobula armor is often slow to be repaired due to the layout of the ship (Especially with newer players crewing).
The real issue isn't the Mobula. It's the fact that balloon-popping setups are both nerfed and heavily out of vogue right now. If heavy clip and carronades were stronger, the Mobula would be as it was when I started flying it: A long range, difficult ship to crew that is best used as a sniper platform.
If I were to nerf the mobula, I would keep the hull armor high, but reduce the hull health. Reward crews that can keep the armor up, especially in sniper matches, but punish those that allow an kill-ship to get too close.
-
The mobula's balloon is underneath which makes it resistant to being popped. Sammy thought experiment: if the balloon was suspended above would the mob be OP? I'd say no
-
Mobulas also drop like a stone due to their vertical acceleration without drogue chute. This also doesn't take into account that a mobula virtually requires an on-point, buffless, engineering team in order to stay repaired due to its structure. (Or a three-engineer setup to get engine buffs). Let's not mention that Mobula armor is often slow to be repaired due to the layout of the ship (Especially with newer players crewing).
I generally dislike going into a chain of arguments but I had to correct some things. The Mobula's vertical acceleration has nothing to do with how fast it drops. Many pilots have beaten attempts at blending the Mobula with Blenderfish or Blendersquid. I have intentionally paid attention to and analyzed this situation many times. Even Dementio the Ryder Mobula man himself will tell you blending is not the way to go.
The Lumberjack can reasonably bombard the Mobula's Balloon and does pose a threat with its sheer DPS. However, the Mobula can also reasonably disable it, especially a control Mob running Merc instead of Hades. Basically all I'm saying is this: for a ship that can easily hydro its way out of many bad situations, it's just bit too tanky IMO.
-
The only thing that works really well at blending a Mobula is another Mobula. You get under it, drop their balloon with carro, then let them fall on you as you push up. Pretty funny.
-
Here to weigh in:
Nerf vertical mobility. I don't care if it's in the "lore," it makes no logical sense, and doesn't help that the Mobula is already difficult to hit when moving at all vertically. It's just overkill right now to the point of imbalance.
Leave gun arcs as they were a month ago. There is no problem with gun arcs.
Tune its turning speed if you must. I'm fine with that, that makes more sense.
Someone called it a Fat Spire above. What's wrong with that?
P.S. Let's define ship roles more clearly. See my subjective number suggestions for the Mobula and other ships here:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,7462.0.html
-
There's plenty of room to reduce its vertical acceleration a bit without changing its position as the best vertical ship, currently it has at least double that of everything but the squid. Reducing it to somewhere between its current self and the squid might actually be a good use of muse's preferred blind testing.
-
I very much agree with Daniel that mobula is most balanced ship in the game. It has unique design, it has strenghts and weaknesses, it provides many different possible builds, crew combos and strategies. That for me means it's well balanced.
I don't wanna keep repeating the same things but I want to make sure people aren't mislead. All ships provide many different builds, crew combos, and strategies. All ships have unique designs and strengths and weaknesses. The mob's unique design of having an underbelly balloon is strictly an advantage - same with its thin profile and spread out components. This doesn't mean it's well balanced. Take the junker for example which performs a similar role that's worse in practically every way except more armor. This doesn't necessarily mean the junker isn't balanced compared to the other ships, it just means the mob is better
If a ship is only useful with one build or only in one situation or against one type of enemy, then that is IMO not balanced and it's boring and something needs to be done with that ship.
The fact that the mob is good against everything doesn't mean it's balanced and that's not how games work. The test is to put the other ships excluding mob up against eachother and see if they're balanced. The truth is that they're relatively balanced to eachother with the possible exception of pyra, but today I flew a mortar-gat pyra against a vet kill squid to prove a point and barely scratched the hull under my buffed armor. No ship is "only useful with one build or one situation", but the mob is good in all. There's no other ship where you can simply swap out loadouts and fight anything without worry. Mobula is the least risky ship to bring (which is ok but it's OP!!)
Everyone should strive to make muse buff other ships so they are more like mobula, diverse and provide more possible and effective builds and roles that ship can do.
Again, how would you propose that muse buff the other ships and keep balance? Saying that the mobula is balanced and all the other ships aren't isn't how balance works. Mob has an advantageous design with an underside balloon and thin spread out profile, great stats with excellent maneuvering and good armor/hull, and nearly the best possible light gun setup. This puts it steps above the other ships and is why it's not balanced. It's fine to have a good easy jack of all trades ship and that's why I only want to touch the hull value!
I can't imagine how you'd buff the other ships to balance the mob so you need to explain it. I'm a numbers guy with over 2700 hours so I'll understand it if you can describe it
-
I can't imagine how you'd buff the other ships to balance the mob so you need to explain it. I'm a numbers guy with over 2700 hours so I'll understand it if you can describe it
I imagined something about increasing the gaps. The Mobula does have an unnecessary large amount of vertical acceleration, while all the other ships are almost identical to each other, so increase all of them in proportions with the Squid only so far behind the Mobula or even better than it. Vertical top speeds are pretty much identical, but I imagine a Galleon could have a higher top speed than a Squid.
Horozintal top speed is rather fine in terms of gaps, but you barely feel the difference unless you are fighting a Squid with something slower than a Goldfish. Horizontal acceleration plays a big part for almost all engagements, so even if I do want that to also show more diversity, it may kill the slow accelerating ships.
Turning stats are alright, I think.
Thing is, when everything is in intervals of 1m/s(²) away from something else, pure design is the only thing left to judge a ships viability, something that hurts the Spire the most. You can see it in the Meta, the ships outside these intervals profit the most from a lot of things, Mobula with its high vertical mobility, but really low turning speed, Squid and Goldfish with their high speed stats in all horizontal directions. Everything else is just kind of mixed together and so the ship's very design is looked at (Junker being easily disabled, Spire stuff, Galleon forced to rely on guns). Armor and hull are factors as well. And nobody forget about the guns either, but I believe the guns matter on a deeper and much more competitive level and ship balance shouldn't revolve around them too much.
All the ships are unique by design, but if all their stats are so similar, there can only be so many left to be considered as good, or even the best.
-
The mob has much higher vertical accel than every other ship, so if it's too much why not reduce it instead of increasing all others? It might be difficult to maintain balance because +20% for a fish means more than +20% to a galleon, and it would also effect balloon poppers. I happen to think junker vertical is a bit low and the answer isn't to nerf everything else. Maybe vertical accels should be raised as a whole, but just because of the mob isn't a good enough reason
-
P.S. Let's define ship roles more clearly. See my subjective number suggestions for the Mobula and other ships here:
Nerfing the signature strength of the mobula (vertical lift) would do the opposite of defining ship roles more clearly.
If we want more defined ship roles, then gaps in other forms of manuverability/mass/armor values would need to be expanded to match the current strength of the mobula.
Think about the following:
Mobula - Kept roughly the same. Reduced hull permahealth (to reward hitting the hull at long range, and punish mobulas that get into brawls/get rammed)
Spire - Boosted armor, dramatic turning acceleration buff. (Turns spires into fantastic close-range turrets)
Squid - Bring squid permahealth down and acceleration/speed up, closer to release squid. (Uncatchable, fragile speedster/flanker)
Pyra - Dramatic forward acceleration, slightly boosted armor, turning and vertical acceleration even worse than current. (The pyra excels at spearing/charging enemies, but needs to plan ahead to get that ram)
Junker - Mostly unchanged. (Junker manuverability is in a good place for their role)
Goldfish - Mostly Unchanged. (Goldfish manuverability is in a good place for their role)
Galleon - Mostly unchanged. Further top speed increase, acceleration remains very poor. (The Galleon would be the fastest, heaviest ship, but the absolute slowest to get there. Anyone unfortunate enough to be rammed by a galleon should be in for a world of hurt.)
This would solidify each ship in a specific role by giving them one or two things they excel at (minus the goldfish and junker... which are both jack of all trades ships by design), and would give most ships maps/areas where they can excel.
-
P.S. Let's define ship roles more clearly. See my subjective number suggestions for the Mobula and other ships here:
Nerfing the signature strength of the mobula (vertical lift) would do the opposite of defining ship roles more clearly.
If we want more defined ship roles, then gaps in other forms of manuverability/mass/armor values would need to be expanded to match the current strength of the mobula.
Think about the following:
...
This would solidify each ship in a specific role by giving them one or two things they excel at (minus the goldfish and junker... which are both jack of all trades ships by design), and would give most ships maps/areas where they can excel.
I totally agree. Still think that the mob should have vertical engines to which can be disabled but everything you've got here is a great idea.
-
I don't wanna keep repeating the same things but I want to make sure people aren't mislead. All ships provide many different builds, crew combos, and strategies. All ships have unique designs and strengths and weaknesses. The mob's unique design of having an underbelly balloon is strictly an advantage - same with its thin profile and spread out components. This doesn't mean it's well balanced. Take the junker for example which performs a similar role that's worse in practically every way except more armor. This doesn't necessarily mean the junker isn't balanced compared to the other ships, it just means the mob is better
With that logic we can say that pyra having balloon protected by armor is strictly advantage (which it is and I don't mind it). Also we could say that junker and galleon having guns on both side is strictly advantage, since if they get one side disabled, they can turn and shoot again with other guns. They are also a lot more resiliant to getting flanked like I already mentioned in one of my posts. Or that galleon can carry FOUR heavy guns! Yes, that's all advantage, but you make it sound like it's a bad thing. That's exactly what I like about ships, they have different qualities about them. But everyone picks on stuff that mobula does better than other ships in order to prove their points, but they forget about what other ships do better than mobula (chasing enemy, being faster to engage and disengage, easier to repair, easier to keep chem spray up, easier to keep buffs up, easier to tank, easier to get to the components, easier to maneuver around terrain, easier to track target, easier to catch up with ally or follow, strong rams, more resistant to rams, easier to hide, having privilige of heavy guns etc.. Talking about heavy guns, I think they are big deal. Seriously, mobula doesn't have an access to OP lion gun or lumberjack, which is arguably also OP, but of course who would say that at this time? Maybe next year when they nerf all the ships and people might start using lumberjack more and learn how to shoot it and then we will ses topics on forum "OMG lj OP!" It's not a problem now of course, because you rarely see lumberjack, let alone with a gunner who can handle it, just like metamobula was not a big deal a while ago, but it is now, when more people fly it. The difference is, I actually believe that lumberjack is closer to being OP than mobula.
I'm a bit confused about what you're saying about balloon, you have to explain that a bit more. In your post above you said that mobulas's balloon is underneath so it's resistant to being popped. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Carronade can hit balloon even if you're a bit above mobula, especially with stamina. Lumberjack definetly shouldn't have a problem and the rest of the guns that are decent also have great arcs like banshee, flamers and hades.
The fact that the mob is good against everything doesn't mean it's balanced and that's not how games work. The test is to put the other ships excluding mob up against eachother and see if they're balanced. The truth is that they're relatively balanced to eachother with the possible exception of pyra, but today I flew a mortar-gat pyra against a vet kill squid to prove a point and barely scratched the hull under my buffed armor. No ship is "only useful with one build or one situation", but the mob is good in all. There's no other ship where you can simply swap out loadouts and fight anything without worry. Mobula is the least risky ship to bring (which is ok but it's OP!!)
I have a hard time believing that people think mobula is best against all ships and possibly that it's the only ship in game that is good against all ships. Let's take an example here and say we're flying mobula without artemises, just for the sake of argument, since it looks like you and some other people believe that mobula itself is OP and it's not due to that particular build like OP mentioned, hades+double arty. How many ships in the game wouldn't handle mobula without artmemises? So, let's see then how OP mobula would handle other ships if we take artemises away from it.
- Squid would obviously stand a very good chance, it can even handle meta mob.
- Goldfish if it's fighting close range has a very solid chance to handle mobula, without artemises even a lot more so.
Hwacha in short range is still very good against mobula, no one will tell me otherwise, sorry. If I can hit and disable at least two guns on mobula with hwacha and I'm seriously bad gunner, no exaggerating, then I just won't be convinced otherwise, sorry, anyone can try to convince me, but good luck :P And even two disable guns on mobula is good enough to put them in position where they they need to dodge and likely use pilot tools and damage their balloon and engines, while goldfish can press on and continue attack.
Carronade fish can still do good job at blending mobula, it's just not as easy mode as it was, it requires a tiny bit more of thinking ahead.
- Junker should not have much of a problem, metajunker should actually have quite an easy time if fighting at range because mobula will have hard time hitting that slim hull without artemises. Merc on mobula could help, but I can't see that being nearly enough. In close range junker has a very good chance against mobula, we've seen enough of that I believe.
- Galleon should annihilate mobula at long range. Galleon is even strong against metamobula at long ranges and I described why I think so in one of my previous posts.
- Spire I believe, would have pretty good chance against no arty mob at both ranges. Lumberjack spire with hades, flak or arty support or the spire you see everywhere now - hwacha+double gat+banshe would be very strong in close engagement, like it is against all ships.
- We obviously won't talk about pyra, but ofc pyra would also stand a chance, but not at long range.
Of course I'm not saying mobula would suck in these situations, I'm saying that both, mobula and any enemy ship would have good chances of taking out each other. In case if anyone would agree to that, then that would mean arty is OP, not mobula itself. And arty can't be OP just on mobula, but not on the other ships. If it's OP, it's OP on everything. I personally still don't really care about metamobula and don't think it's OP, but I wouldn't oppose to artemis nerf in order to nerf metamobula or just because of gun itself.
Again, how would you propose that muse buff the other ships and keep balance? Saying that the mobula is balanced and all the other ships aren't isn't how balance works. Mob has an advantageous design with an underside balloon and thin spread out profile, great stats with excellent maneuvering and good armor/hull, and nearly the best possible light gun setup. This puts it steps above the other ships and is why it's not balanced. It's fine to have a good easy jack of all trades ship and that's why I only want to touch the hull value!
I can't imagine how you'd buff the other ships to balance the mob so you need to explain it. I'm a numbers guy with over 2700 hours so I'll understand it if you can describe it
Heh, well I'm the opposite of numbers guy and I'm not very good at coming up with balancing changes, it's not my job to balance game after all. I just don't like to see nerfs, unless it's seriously obvious that something is OP, which I can't see for mobula. But in general I don't like nerfs. Probably because I've seen plenty games that were ruined because of it and stopped being fun. And often developers tend to go too far and actually totally break whatever they are nerfing.
But, Jamini above seem to have pretty good idea of what could be done. I especially like spire turnings buff, I'm not sure about buffing armor though. I also agree on galleon top speed buff and I also very much like squid idea. I would just like to add that junker needs better vertical acceleration, which you already said yourself and I support the idea.. So, these could be good start. Sorry, can't give you better examples, like I said, I'm not much into balancing.
-
But everyone picks on stuff that mobula does better than other ships in order to prove their points, but they forget about what other ships do better than mobula (chasing enemy,
Mobs are easily one of the best pursuit ships. If you're chasing someone, what is better. Being fast or having 5 guns?
being faster to engage and disengage,
The Mobula is a front facer. Like all ships with primarily front guns it is fast to engage and disengage as it can go directly forward or back to keep shooting.
easier to repair
Kinda but it has high enough armor and hull combined with a very difficult hit box that it doesn't take too much.
easier to keep chem spray up,
Yes because flamers are such the rage.
easier to keep buffs up,
Not terribly hard. Never had an issue with double buff on the mobula. Maybe the engines will get ignored a bit.
easier to tank
While there is a bit of a delay between order to tank and start of tanking its hardly worse then most ships save maybe the junker.
easier to get to the components,
Spread out components are a huge plus, not a minus. Junker probably has the most accessible components but I hardly ever thanked the Muse gods for their accesibility after a hwatcha or artemis barage.
easier to maneuver around terrain,
Unless you know you can go up.
easier to track target,
Again this is where front engages excel over side engages and I'd say a mobula has an easier time tracking targets.
easier to catch up with ally or follow,
Perhaps but again, guns are better than speed and voice chat is even better.
strong rams, more resistant to rams,
Because rams are such a huge part of the meta
easier to hide,
Unless again this is an airship game and going up over cover is an option
having privilige of heavy guns etc.. Talking about heavy guns, I think they are big deal. Seriously, mobula doesn't have an access to OP lion gun or lumberjack, which is arguably also OP, but of course who would say that at this time?
Nah light guns are generally better than heavy guns alone as heavy guns almost entirely need another gun to support their role.
Maybe next year when they nerf all the ships and people might start using lumberjack more and learn how to shoot it and then we will ses topics on forum "OMG lj OP!" It's not a problem now of course, because you rarely see lumberjack, let alone with a gunner who can handle it, just like metamobula was not a big deal a while ago, but it is now, when more people fly it. The difference is, I actually believe that lumberjack is closer to being OP than mobula.
Maybe I am just old but there have been plenty of complaints about the Lumberjack but there are plenty of counters...like a mobula.
I'm a bit confused about what you're saying about balloon, you have to explain that a bit more. In your post above you said that mobulas's balloon is underneath so it's resistant to being popped. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Carronade has better down arcs than up arcs so even if you're a bit above mobula you can still hit balloon, especially with stamina. Lumberjack definetly shouldn't have a problem and the rest of the guns that are decent also have great arcs like banshee, flamers and hades.
Did something change. Carronades are like the opposite of dogs, they can't look down like at all. However the advantage of the lower balloon being is defensive. When faced with a blender on almost every ship you're dealt with the issue of not being able to shoot the enemy even if you're guns are faced the right way. Thats because on every ship the balloon is this huge thing several meters above your ships and most relevant guns for dealing with a blender can't shoot up well. The Mobula's balloon reverses this and while true its not a great turner, if it can face the right way it can respond fire on the mobula, a wholly unique trait that flies in the face that on paper blenders should be great against mobulas.
Also the lower balloon makes it much stronger against those overpower lumberjacks especially if the mobula happens to have mercury or artemis (but what are the odds of that happening?)
I have a hard time believing that people think mobula is best against all ships and possibly that it's the only ship in game that is good against all ships. Let's take an example here and say we're flying mobula without artemises, just for the sake of argument, since it looks like you and some other people believe that mobula itself is OP and it's not due to that particular build like OP mentioned, hades+double arty. How many ships in the game wouldn't handle mobula without artmemises? So, let's see then how OP mobula would handle other ships if we take artemises away from it.
But why? Guns aren't created equal in regards to ship usage and placement. The heavy flak is one of the greatest weapons in the game but you sure as hell wouldn't put it on a goldfish. Even the artemis is a poor gun for the front of a squid. Trying to blame the prominence of the mobula on the artemis is ignoring a lot of factors
Heh, well I'm the opposite of numbers guy and I'm not very good at coming up with balancing changes, it's not my job to balance game after all. I just don't like to see nerfs, unless it's seriously obvious that something is OP, which I can't see for mobula. But in general I don't like nerfs. Probably because I've seen plenty games that were ruined because of it and stopped being fun. And often developers tend to go too far and actually totally break whatever they are nerfing.
Long time members of this game have seen nothing but nerfs for balancing of this game and yet there is still a huge call for nerfing the mobula.
But, Jamini above seem to have pretty good idea of what could be done. I especially like spire turnings buff, I'm not sure about buffing armor though. I also agree on galleon top speed buff and I also very much like squid idea. I would just like to add that junker needs better vertical acceleration, which you already said yourself and I support the idea.. So, these could be good start. Sorry, can't give you better examples, like I said, I'm not much into balancing.
Yet what you are proposing is far more balancing. Changing every ship to match the mobula is hard enough and then you'd have issues of other ships against the others.
-
...................
I couldn't possibly imagine you could put so much BS in a single post. I stopped reading after about fifth quote, since you clearly are not even trying to make reasonable arguments. You pretty much replied for the sake of replying and it seems that it's very important to you that you prove me wrong. Better luck next time.
-
...................
I couldn't possibly imagine you could put so much BS in a single post. I stopped reading after about fifth quote, since you clearly are not even trying to make reasonable arguments. You pretty much replied for the sake of replying and it seems that it's very important to you that you prove me wrong. Better luck next time.
How are you going to prove him wrong when you don't even respect him enough to read the whole post? By definition, you're not making a reasonable argument while calling him out on not doing the same.
-
...................
I couldn't possibly imagine you could put so much BS in a single post. I stopped reading after about fifth quote, since you clearly are not even trying to make reasonable arguments. You pretty much replied for the sake of replying and it seems that it's very important to you that you prove me wrong. Better luck next time.
How are you going to prove him wrong when you don't even respect him enough to read the whole post? By definition, you're not making a reasonable argument while calling him out on not doing the same.
I have no intention of proving him wrong, because I don't care what he thinks of my opinion and I don't feel the need to prove him wrong. I care what others think, because they show genuine interest on this topic and they bring up some interesting points. I had a nice discussion with them, but I honestly didn't agree with them with certain points, so I replied and shared my opinions. I was being 100% honest with my opinions. Sammy however don't seem to wish to provide any serious points to the discussion.
-
I have no intention of proving him wrong, because I don't care...
What a glorious example of why the Mob is fine as it is.
Meanie-Butt, if you don't read someone's post simply because you don't agree with their position, then why the hell should anyone read any of yours?
Addendum: I'm aware Meanie-Butt doesn't speak for everyone who shares a position similar to his.
-
The defining feature of the Mobula is the five forward facing guns, not the vertical maneuverability. That is a lesser feature. When guns fire more slowly with reduced range and more limited arcs every patch, vertical movement becomes overpowered. This image shows how it has become harder to keep a vertical target in range.
(http://i.imgur.com/R0P1u6C.jpg)
The reason the Mobula has 'become' overpowered is because guns have a lot harder time shooting it. The Mobula vertical is the only thing that has not changed in the equation. Ships have gotten slower, meaning it is easier to keep them in horizontal arc (buff to Mobula). If they are far away, you simply have to turn a bit to keep a fast moving ship in arc. A small amount of angular movement translates to a very large horizontal movement at anything but close distance. There is no limit to how far you can turn. Vertical is different, as you have no vertical angular movement other than the gun. It is a very limited in how far it can turn. The only way to keep a fast target in arc is to move your own ship.
The solutions are as follows:
Give guns their range, arcs, and velocity back (and fix the angular momentum issue (https://youtu.be/n_fY_On2H5Y))
or
Increase all ships' vertical speed.
or
Reduce Mobula vertical speed.
-
I have no intention of proving him wrong, because I don't care...
What a glorious example of why the Mob is fine as it is.
Meanie-Butt, if you don't read someone's post simply because you don't agree with their position, then why the hell should anyone read any of yours?
Addendum: I'm aware Meanie-Butt doesn't speak for everyone who shares a position similar to his.
Haha, did you miss all my posts in this thread? I continued discussion with those that wished, Sammy is only exception, because I don't believe he was being serious here.
Also, what position?
I have read your post now, Sammy and maybe it wasn't all shit. I guess you did put a little bit of effort, so I will reply to you and I apologize for being an asshole and overreacting, even though I still don't believe you genuinely tried to make a serious conversation and here is why:
Example of one of the things you said: "because flamers are such rage" - I'm not sure what exactly you meant by this, it was definetly sarcasm but I'm not sure if you meant to say "because flamers are such a problem?" or soemthign like that or maybe it was a typo and you meant to say "because flamers have such a range"? In any case, I simply can't take you seriously here. I don't believe you think chem sprays are useless and I bet you wouldn't play competitive matches without chem sprays or extinguishers if you saw enemy taking fire based weapons. Would you? If you would not, that means that your reply was simply not honest or serious and thus I got an impression that you are probably not interested in making valid points and seriously discuss topic, but instead you replied to me just for the sake of replying and trying to "prove me wrong". Again, that's the impression I got. this was just one example about your... well silly reply, there were more. But I think you get the point. I hope.
However some of the things you said actually sound valid enough, so I'll reply.
Mobs are easily one of the best pursuit ships. If you're chasing someone, what is better. Being fast or having 5 guns?
Yes, mobula has front guns, but in one of my previous posts I mentioned that some of the ships like goldfish, squid, pyra , spire, even junker sometimes can escape with manuevering around terrain, they can easily do that while mobula can't always. Imagine paritan rumble and mobula chasing squid. Yes, you can go over building, but come on, you can't or don't always want to do that. There are a lot of situations that you won't do that, for example: you don't have enough of balloon, ally of enemy ship you're chasing is above and is waiting you with hwacha or whatever, enemy ship that you're chasing is flying low on purpose,s o you going over the building will be extremely time consuming and you will lose target or just wouldn't be able to catch up. That's why I also thought that another one of your responses was silly - the one where you said "Unless you know you can go up." and then again "Unless again this is an airship game and going up over cover is an option." I will assume that your strategy doesn't involve going up and fly through everything in every situation, am I correct?
The Mobula is a front facer. Like all ships with primarily front guns it is fast to engage and disengage as it can go directly forward or back to keep shooting.
I was thinking in situations like when your ally dies and you can just boost right through enemy to get behind them and keep going and by the time they turn you can get nice distance and escape. Mobula can rarely do that succesfully. No way near as easy as goldfish or squid for example. Yes, I know you are gonna say, "but mob has front guns". Before mobula turn around and start shooting, squid can be behind hard cover easily. And if you don't have artemises, you won't even disable them even if you do turn in time.
Kinda but it has high enough armor and hull combined with a very difficult hit box that it doesn't take too much.
Doesn't matter, the fact is that mobula has one of the harder layouts for engineers and that's all I tried to say.
Not terribly hard. Never had an issue with double buff on the mobula. Maybe the engines will get ignored a bit.
Yes, of course, if you take two buffers then of course it's not that hard, but you won't take two buffers. I was trying to point out that if you take one buffer, which is pretty common, then it's harder to keep components buffed in comparison to pyramidion for example. One buffer can easily keep most of pyra buffed. One buffer on mobula will seriously hurt mobulas effectivness if he would try to buff as much components as he would on pyra.
While there is a bit of a delay between order to tank and start of tanking its hardly worse then most ships save maybe the junker.
How many times you see mobula tanking? Almost never, because it's not worth it, because it's either main engi brings armor up in time or you die. In other ships like squid or pyra or fish or spire and even galleon and junker you can easily get at least two guys on armor in a matter of 2 seconds. For mobula it's just not worth it. You either keep firing and try to kill them before they kill you or you try to dodge if you can.
Spread out components are a huge plus, not a minus. Junker probably has the most accessible components but I hardly ever thanked the Muse gods for their accesibility after a hwatcha or artemis barage.
I'm talking from engineering perspective adn survavibility. Engineers will spend more time to repair components because it takes more time to reach them.
Again this is where front engages excel over side engages and I'd say a mobula has an easier time tracking targets.
By tracking I meant what I already said above, it's hard to track and chase your target with mobula through lots of terrain (parritan, duel, canyons....) Also, due to terrible turnings it's hard to track and keep fast ships in arcs.
Perhaps but again, guns are better than speed and voice chat is even better.
By catching up with ally I meant if you seperate due to scouting, flanking, setting ambush etc... If ally gets in trouble you might have a bit harder time getting there in time than some other ships would have in certain maps.
Because rams are such a huge part of the meta
Really?
Nah light guns are generally better than heavy guns alone as heavy guns almost entirely need another gun to support their role.
Purely subjective. How many light guns are there that don't need support of another gun? Lumberjack alone can lock down any ship and eventually kill it if you let them shoot it. If mobula loses ballon in long range engagement in open and there is no ally to support, mobula won't recover if that lumberjack gunner knows what's up. Once artemises are out of arcs....
Did something change. Carronades are like the opposite of dogs, they can't look down like at all. However the advantage of the lower balloon being is defensive. When faced with a blender on almost every ship you're dealt with the issue of not being able to shoot the enemy even if you're guns are faced the right way. Thats because on every ship the balloon is this huge thing several meters above your ships and most relevant guns for dealing with a blender can't shoot up well. The Mobula's balloon reverses this and while true its not a great turner, if it can face the right way it can respond fire on the mobula, a wholly unique trait that flies in the face that on paper blenders should be great against mobulas.
I had a brainfart there and messed up arcs for carronade, but I corrected myself long before your post came up :) Doesn't make a difference anyway, like I said, you can still blend mobula even if you're little above it.
But why? Guns aren't created equal in regards to ship usage and placement. The heavy flak is one of the greatest weapons in the game but you sure as hell wouldn't put it on a goldfish. Even the artemis is a poor gun for the front of a squid. Trying to blame the prominence of the mobula on the artemis is ignoring a lot of factors
You can't just look at the numbers and say "flak is the greatest weapon". No weapon is most powerful in all situations.
I compared mobula with artemises (who by many is considered OP) to a mobula without artmeises to show how much it would make a difference and that people could maybe figure it out if they actually think mobula is OP due to arties or it's just ship itself that is OP.
-
You guys are starting to post quotewalls of text so high even a Mobula can't buffhydro over them.
Stop it.
-
I agree with richard. That said I will talk about some points mean mentioned- The difference between rebuilding two components close together, and rebuilding one component far apart from others is freaking huge. You can just sprint over with stamina and get to rebuilding (which incidentally gives stamina back so you can sprint away). Rebuilding takes up the vast majority of the time. A junker can be completely crippled by hwacha or artemis spam from the front but a mobula just sort of shrugs and keeps going.
Blending a mobula is more difficult than other ships because the mobula's balloon is lower than its guns. That means that unlike nearly other ship, you can't just hover above its gun arcs and keep shooting their balloon. You have to take fire from the mobula's own guns.
-
Why even nerf the Mob? Just buff the other ships again. Man this is stupid. Same qq nerf talk, not even going to read it all. Smartest post was right off the bat, this was a result of the Pyra nerf. Which is what the story always is. Nerf one thing, another takes it's place. This is why Muse has never been able to balance the game properly because the first reaction is always to nerf. If they really wanted to shake up the meta and get anywhere close to balancing, they'd stop endlessly nerfing and just put each ship and gun like it was in it's top form. Then adjust. It'll take time but it'll be worth it. The current one at a time nerf machine is the reason threads like this exist.
-
The mob was good even before the pyra nerf. People just started gravitating to the Mob after the go-to ship to win with was nerfed
-
Man this is stupid. Same qq nerf talk, not even going to read it all.
You should probably read OP properly. Title is to keep conversation centered, but my belief is to buff other things rather than hit the Mob in its stats.