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1

General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 18, 2016, 06:31:26 pm »

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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 18, 2016, 04:29:46 pm »

...................

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.

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The Lounge / Re: Prove you're oldfag

« on: March 18, 2016, 03:39:49 pm »

There were 4000 people online...

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 18, 2016, 03:37:59 pm »

...................

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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 18, 2016, 02:20:10 pm »

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 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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 17, 2016, 01:45:14 pm »

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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 16, 2016, 07:17:50 pm »

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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 16, 2016, 05:27:20 pm »

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 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.

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General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 16, 2016, 12:20:53 pm »

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.

10

General Discussion / Re: How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 16, 2016, 10:01:27 am »

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.

11

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make ships easier to get around in

« on: March 08, 2016, 01:01:42 pm »

Rubberbanding used to be so much worse. Ships are very smooth to run around on at this point. Every ship has an optimized path for you to reach every component that's within your jurisdiction as an engi. The main engi has one bit, and the other engi has another bit. These routes are very smooth. I'm honestly not sure which parts are roundabout at all

Haven't noticed any improvements myself aside from pyramidion. Mobula corridors and heavy gun on fish or spire are still major pain in the ass and very easy to get stuck there.

12

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ship Cosmetics Wishlist

« on: March 06, 2016, 08:48:17 am »

I would like to change skin/theme for UI and icons and stuff, but if that's too much to ask for then just different main menu background would be very cool. I want some sci-fi looking skin with fancy blue/white/black combo style.

13

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Make Gunners A Relevant Choice

« on: March 03, 2016, 08:06:57 am »

These make sense from a mechanical point of view. Unless you are taking individual bullets apart, no mechanical change should increase the damage of the ammo. However, adjusting stops can increase arcs. Tuning mechanics can make things turn and load faster. Tightening loose bolts can make it hold together longer under stress.

Gunner Focus would:

1. Increase damage.

I'm a bit confused here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you say it doesn't make sense that buff would increase weapon (ammo) damage, but on the other hand it makes sense that "gunner focus" would increase damage? Why? How would someone who is mentally focused on shooting a gun able to inflict more damage? Gun does or should do same damage no matter if guy shooting is fully concentrated or drunk. As long as he hits the target it should do the same damage.

Some of your suggestions are not bad, but I'm not sure the changes are really needed. This whole idea that gunner is underpowered seems it's just matter of opinion and some say it is underpowered and others it's not. I personally think gunners are fine. They are relevant and good enough to have one on almost every ship, which seems perfectly fine for me. Unless you're wishing for 2x gunner + 1x engineer combo to be ideal.

It's really just a matter of preferences, each class has it's own strengths. Engineers won't be able to reload faster and get extra arcs and ammo types, while gunners won't carry buff kits or whatever seems to be a problem for people here. So it's matter of preference like I said, you decide what "bonuses" you would like for each ship or match. Some people will prefer buffed guns, while other will prefer benefits of gunner over buffer. Which makes sense to me. But maybe It's just that I'm not concerned about things making sense on a realistic level, like for example why can gunners turn guns out of arcs or why can pilots turn ship faster using their muscles. As long as gameplay is fun and balanced (which I think it is if we're talking about gunners) it's good for me. I can see why some people would be bothered by such things, but certainly not in this game. It's a pvp game about shooting airships for flaks sake.

14

General Discussion / Re: A probably pointless experiment

« on: February 02, 2016, 12:05:44 pm »

What do I do to get on your block list, you buttlicker?

15

Community Events / Re: New Sunday Community Skirmish Rewards

« on: January 14, 2016, 06:56:44 am »

so SCS Rewards - I definitely don't see a downside to the titles, I don't think they'd be detrimental in any way.  perhaps though, the implementation could be tweaked for better appeal.  maybe an additional title for the 2nd place team would be a decent addition?

Titles aren't detrimental and they could even help advertise SCS. The issue I have, which was poorly stated, is that I wish the participation title sounded cooler. I hope that people will use the new title, but in my opinion "Skirmisher" isn't attractive enough for players to change from their current unlockable ones. If people are happy and want to use the title of Skirmisher then there's no issue

A title for second/third place would be good, and so would one for the organizers/casters/refs, but first there should be a better participation title. Suggestions can be taken and voted on using the forum system or by the SCS organizers (blind vote please). By brainstorming together I'm sure we can come up with good titles that players will gladly replace their old ones for, and help draw interest from prospective teams

While I agree that title "Skirmisher" doesn't sound anything special (which is just your and mine opinion and many players might like it), it does sound fitting. But I wouldn't even give them that to be honest. I don't agree with you that titles or any kind of rewards should be given just for participation. That doesn't make sense to me and it doesn't do anything towards motivating teams to sign up for event more than once and even then, they don't have to play seriously, because they just need to participate. Signing up and getting in a lobby is not really an accomplishment that should be rewarded.

You know, there are a lot of CAs that didn't apply because they have such a good heart and want to help people, they signed up to get a badge and maybe also for yellow name.