Messages

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 06:51:34 pm »

@Echoez; Yeah, that indeed sums it up rather well. Better, in fact, than I did, as I got carried away on interesting side-orders.

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 06:03:53 pm »

That's a rather blanket generalization though. I've been known to have my crew take something sub-optimal if they're up for it because I've wanted some silly achievement (like "harpoon 30 ships"), but that doesn't mean I'm bad for the game or that I'm a bad captain: point of fact, we won one of those harpoon matches because I could out-pilot the enemy captains such that our Harpoon/Flamer Mobula was always out of their gun arcs.

Oh, I don't want to generalize, I know that there are those players who decidedly are as good as they appear - and probably even better than me! Bit I don't consider their ranks to be more than a supposition that they are. As I have wrote, show me flight hours and then I'll bow down.

I have done one single game to earn achievements; being a pilot then, I let achievement greed dictate my ship, the guns that were on it and what I should do to earn them (like, firing a gun or repairing for a pilot). Turns out it was the worst game in my career. We got blown out of the skies, barely registering a kill. I personnally did apologies to my teammates of fortunes for the sabotage I did - and that gave me something like 4 achievements. They tasted sour to me.

Ramming, Lochnager Flak, Buffed + Charged Flak, and enough rapid Greased Mortars can effectively 1-shot (defined as, say, 5 seconds or less) an enemy ship. I personally have seen this happen numerous times, and done it myself numerous times. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Are thet really one-shots (from a single gun, on a full-health ship) or finishing shots, or multi-fire ambushes?

Any time, my good man. I like to think that while we all badger each other, the GoI community is a decent one. Gentlemen argue with each other all the time, but that doesn't mean we have to act like savages while we're at it. 

Sir, consider yourself saluted.

@Captain Smollett - Okay; You are a vet. 

3

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 05:37:57 pm »

Well i dont think you have seen any competetive match at all. And no it is not about achievment farming. It is about experience and actual skill.
Youre only 4 4 3. So shouldnt be to long i think that u left novice matches. And a pub will never utilize longrange to its fullest.
Pub games are totally different from actual highlvl / competetive games. The thing why ppl barely use med weapons besides the hcarro are their relative high skillminimum to utilize.
Watch some paddling or gents matches and then see what good gunners can do with a medium weapon.
The reason u barely see this in normal games is the fact that not many pubs can time their shot.
Pub is mainly brawl based game. Seen any sniper galleon pilot rly park his galleon getting assisted by his ally? Probably not.


And another part is. We probably have played the game way longer than you. We might know what a gun can rly do and we might also see it doing it in several more situations.

I have the game since it is out, and I got "Guns of Icarus" (whitout the "online") before that. I hate achievement farmers because they are often tyrannical, egoistical or just positively nefarious to a good game. I played enough to see that many of these "achievers" are in fact hardly competent folks who just happen to jump in with the right crew. And if you have any experience you'll know it too.

There is no achievement farmer here that I will recognized as more "experienced" than me, unless he gives me flight hours, and many of these numbers that you cannot see on other's profile, and I'll tell you if you are either experienced or an achievement farmer, no offense. It's useless to try and impress me with achievements. Maybe when I started up the game, but not now.

I have played what you described as a "high-level" game, and got tired real quick of being taken for a noob because I don't chase acheivements (they really come naturally in my case). When they do take me on their ship, they often end up adding me to their Friend bank, when I'm not ending up directing the crew over the mike. But even in these game I have never seen as much casual "one-shots" as I saw on these board. The playing level must be much more higher on forums, I gather...

@The Djinn; If I was correct, you are, in return, quite elegant in admitting it. Thank you, sir.

@Sprayer; Yes, looks like I was wrong; The Field Gun has no arming time.

4

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 05:18:56 pm »

Shots miss occasionally, yes. But 80% accuracy is pretty easy on a Heavy Flak within, say, Gatling range. The more important issue is that medium guns take time to fire off a full clip...and a skilled pilot won't just sit and let you empty an entire clip on his ship if he has any recourse. So we can either assume that each gun is functioning under optimal conditions, or that neither is functioning under optimal conditions, in which case you might only get 50-75% of that light gun's clip actually on target (or actually on the portion of the ship you wish to damage).

In my experience though? Good gunners are reliable at putting heavy gun fire on-target. 80% isn't that far off the mark at moderate range.

A heavy flak at gatling range won't always arm. Maybe, if you've got greased or heatsinks. And, most gunners I know have less than 80% accuracy, meaning some lost shots here and there. A Hwacha is especially un-precise, even with the heavy clip and at short range, there always will be some rockets off the map - furthermore when mounted on a Galleon.

Yep. And by firing early, aiming for engines, and reversing, you can keep that distance up for quite some time, even on very tight maps like Paritan Rumble.

Why do always assume a dumb opposition? Let's make the crews equals for comparison's sake. In most normal battles, Galleon or Spires only got a few shots a long range, shots that the other ship has a good chance to dodge or soak by the time you reload. When you finished reloading, most opponent will already have chosen their range.

So while you scalpel away I'll tear into your guns and engines with Heavy Clip on a Hwacha at a range you can't match with damn good accuracy, then disable all your components facing me with Burst at close range.

You do that again. If your gun is castrated by my shatter shots, you can't do what you wrote.

The odds are, the gatling will disable the Hwacha first, except at long range, when it's superfluous, since the gat hasn't the reach, it can't fire anyway. When it can, the fact that it acts as a tracer, has a large clip, reloads in less than 3rd the time the Hwacha does and also has a superior firing angle, makes that it trumps the Hwachas in a disarm duel.

Also, that Gat tactic is alarmingly ineffective, as even with Charged rounds the Gatling has the second worst DPS against the hull in the game. By a pretty huge margin. Use it to shred armor, reload it, and shred their armor again once it's back up. It's a far more effective use of the Gat then the pitiful 13 DPS that Charged rounds do to the perma-Hull.

Except for the Medium-slot ships and the Squid, all the other ships have at least two overlapping light guns, like I said in my post. I never said that gats alone can do it all - but the fact that they put off the hull make that ship damn fragile to about any other light gun that may overlap it.

The fact that within a 2-3 second window you can strip a ship of most of its guns + engines is well worth the 14 second reload time. Hwachas sow chaos and give you time to get more advantageous positions...and they do it VERY quickly. You then swing guns to bring other weapons into arc while it reloads. You're severely underestimating the power of the weapon as mid-close range disabler: nothing else really compares at that range.

Like I've wrote, the Hwacha's reload time is long enough that I can repair any weapon that it may have damaged during its course, even from scratch. If the engineer's at the hull, and on the balloon, you just won't kill that ship with a single hwacha. It's impossible, unless your target isn't crewed.

Beg pardon?

Hwacha DPS to components: 232 + burst to nearby components.
Gatling DPS to components: 77

The Hwacha is the clear winner here.

 

Nah, sorry, I contest that. Either your numbers are wrong, or you assume that every missile you fire with the Hwacha will hit the same component at the same time. Won't happen.

I would hazard a guess you are not up against decent pilots/gunners then, and they probably aren't running Heavy Clip. A well run Hwacha ship can disable your engines or guns from almost double the Gatling's maximum range, and easily have Burst rounds loaded by the time you close the distance, which gives you a firing window of a few seconds before you lose half of your ship's components.

The Hwacha's loading time is long enough for all that damage to be gone, even with an average crew, when it's time to fire it again. And if the Hwacha's got better range, the Gat has more firing angle. And all the other advantages, except as what the Hwacha really is; Enforcing an area of denial.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 04:49:57 pm »

See? You dont take the argument of experienced players.

What makes "u" think that?

The medium guns are mostly sniper weapons. There is nth comparing with that range and dmg. If you ever see what a hflak can do with a unarmored hull u see how good it is.
A lumberjack takes balloons for breakfasts.
Sure u need good gunners on them. Thats why u barely see them. Or at least used to their real potential.

A good hwacha gunner will take out ur whole ship in one volley.
A hcarro will twoshot ur balloon and kill ur hull rly fast if u hit right with it.

Funny, that, the sheer amount of weapons 'n' gunners who casually "one-shots" ships around here. Apart for some early game ambushes, I rarely see any ship being "one-shotted" in a fight... must be because all the 80% accuracy gunners are here instead of on the game. In fact, nearly all the "one-shot" kills I ever saw were on these boards.

Don't think that because I am no achievment farmer I have no experience with the game. That would suspiciously sounds like a challenge, sir.

But as u will not take our arguments go ahead and do whatever u want.
Or watch some competetive matches and see what good players can do with heavy guns.

They can do the very same thing they do with the light ones - destroy ennemy ships.

6

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please, Remove Profle's Leave Count

« on: October 23, 2013, 04:19:37 pm »

You should mail that in to Muse then. I've left several matches during spectating and have not been given a match leave.

Same here. I only get a Leave when I play (I often spectate and always leave those matches at some points).

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 03:52:01 pm »

Assuming we're talking DPS against favorable components, the most effective Heavy Gun against a given component often outdamages the most effective light gun against that component (in terms of Damage-per-Second).

Balloon: 173 (Heavy Carronade) vs. 158 (Light Carronade)
Hull: 158 (Heavy Flak) vs 158 (Mortar)
Guns/Engines: 232 (Lumberjack Heavy Mortar) vs 112 (Mercury Field Gun)
Armor: 48 (Heavy Carronade) vs 60 (Gatling)

As you can see from these numbers (which are pretty accurate by my friend's calculations...others can confirm, I hope), against everything but Armor the Medium guns are superior, whether because of raw damage or (in the case of the Flak vs Mortar tie) because of range.

Assuming these numbers are right (I don't contest them), the Medium weapons are even worse than I thought. Because, you see, unless a gunner has an accuracy around 80% (like everybody on this board, I am sure), most people miss a few shots. Well, a few missed shot on a typical light gun isn't too bad - the rate of fire, large magazine or quicker reload can compensate for that. You can even use the first few shots as tracers.

Largely untrue. Open battlefields and below-average opponents make these weapons easier to use, but skilled opponents or close-quarters fighting just requires a bit more knowledge and ability with those weapons. It doesn't suddenly make them bad.

Largely, but not totally. The lumberjack and heavy flak only arm after some distance (like the Field gun), and if they're mounted on a Spire or Galleon, your adversary chooses the range most of the time.

...A Goldfish is really damn good at blending balloons, boss. A touch of Chute Vent completely negates any advantage the Squid may have in vertical movement to follow the target, and the Heavy Carronade loses basically nothing over the Light Carronade for keeping an opponent pinned or shredding their armor. The greater health and armor allows you to survive more attempts to have someone force you off your target, and also allows you more leeway to actually physically pin your target to the ground. It has different strengths, but it's far from "playing Squid."

Tools are another matter - the Squid pilot can pack a Chute Vent too. I prefer the light carronade to the heavier version, even if it one of the less awkward medium to use; More magazine capacity, more angle, for about the same damage on balloon - it only is less effective against the decks.

Gatlings are terrible at disabling ships compared to a Hwacha: they deal 77 dps to ship components, and their scatter makes it difficult to focus on a single component: it takes over 4 seconds of concentrated fire to take out a single engine. The Hwacha, meanwhile, does 118 dps to ships with a large burst radius. In that 4 seconds you can take out three engines, or all the guns on a Galleon's broadside, or all of a Junker's broadside plus an engine...and so forth. There's no comparing the two for ship disabling.

A Gatling with heavies at short range is a scalpel; I have successfully disarmed all the guns on all types of ship, many times. It is fast, precise, has a large clip and is especially good at busting guns. Engines? I don't know that much, since when a ship's guns are disabled I switch to charged and finish the hull.

When firing a Whacha, even slowly, you do not "cut" like with the heavy-clipped gat; you "spray", even with the heavies, being about as precise as a katana in surgery. And you better do it right the first time, because the reload... man, the reload... Maybe they're better against engines though, even if that, once again, makes them of any use as long as you can direct your ship to the said engines - which again largely excludes 2 out of the three ships who can mount one.

Additionally, a Heavy Clip Hwacha has incredible precision at ranges greater than a gatling's, and can also damage components near the target area. Finally, the Hwacha deals nearly x5 the Gatling's damage to a ship's hull. The only place the gatling wins is in damage to armor.

And at components, too. And besides, a ship without armor is a ship on its way to a shortened career, as often light guns are paired. The Hwachas don't do that much damage; their edge is, they do that damage pretty much everywhere; If your opponent has even an average engineer, he can undo all damage to the hull 'n' balloon while the gunners fix their guns and - oops, you've got to reload. If the oppo is armed with a gat in range, then you'd better get off the gun and prepare yourself to repair. I have faced many Hwachas with my ol' gats, and most of the time I fire before they do, silencing them. Long range? Bah! An average pilot can see the very visible, dispersed shots coming and somehow negate like half of them, the rest being easily repaired while he's positionning the ship by the time you reload, as two third of the ship that mount these guns are slowpokes.

This I'll grant you. A few more options for Heavy Weapons would be rather nice.

Ah. I knew we would agree on something, sooner or later. ;-)
Thanks for your input, bud.

8

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 23, 2013, 09:01:44 am »

Buffed hull makes no difference how much damage needs to be done to the permahull to destroy a ship to my knowledge.
The Buffed Charged Flak also oneshots Mobula, Spire and Junker (last one even with only either buff or charged).
A Lochnager Flak oneshots all ships but Galleon and Goldfish, if it is also buffed, it even oneshots Goldfish.

Yeah. Well, "one-shot" is a misnommer. The real gold is DPS (reload included), or time needed to kill. And in terms of DPS, a light weapon generally does as much damage as a medium one (if not more) in a given amount of time - except that a missed shot costs a lot more on a medium. Sure, they're more spectacular too.

Specific condition for Lumberjack? A gunner who has some experience with it and you can effectively use it at 1000m, a gunner who regularly uses it and you can effectively use it on up to 2000m. Other than that, the enemy has to stay further away than 176m or 165m (Greased/Heatsink or Incendiary) which, considering the nature of the gun, shouldn't be a problem as long as the pilot is able enough to point his broadside at the enemy before the enemy is already on the approach for the ram. Only the Mercury and Typhoon have comparable ranged effectiveness, the Mercury does not strips hulls even half as fast as the LJ, the Typhoon is a Medium weapon.

I'll admit that the generally longer range of medium weapon makes them deadly in the hands of a great gunner. And with a great pilot at the wheel. And in a open battlefield. And versus a below-average opponent.

Heavy Carronade needs two shots to take down bloons, as long as the bloon is not clapped with a mallet in between those shots. If the Carro is buffed, even the clap won't help the victim. It also has greater range than the light carronade. The light carronade might still be better though, comparing the goldfish with heavy carro to pyramidion, the pyra would have two light carros which would take as long to pop bloons as one heavy one and deal some damage to armor on top. comparing the blenderfish to squid, the squid can way more easily stay out of gunarcs of enemy ships whilst getting its front gun to shoot the enemy quicker.
The use of the Hellhound on the Spire is... arguable to say the least.
The Hellhound on the galleon would only be compareable to Barking Dog on Junker I assume.... but I won't dare to do that comparison here.

A wise decision. Carronades are at their best when you have a vertical movement advantage over your opponent - to shoot at the balloon, then to get back at the fast-descending target. For this reason, the heavy ones are only usable as a main armement on a Goldfish "playing Squid" (a task at which the Squid, with a lighter carronade, is better). I agree that carronades usually suck as a defensive armement on the slower vessels.

Manticore: Disable entire ships in about two seconds is useless? That is a powerful ability in my opinion. Coordinate with teammate to use the time in which one enemy is entirely helpless. (for example, goldfish disables one enemy, then uses sidemounted gatling to help strip the other enemy whilst the captain on the first ship can't do anything but look)

Now that's a defensive weaponnery. The Hwachas are good to impose an area of denial, but their lack of precision, loading time and relatively low concentrated damage makes them ill-suited to the finishing role. And yet they're still the best thing to mount on a Galleon, given their ease of use in a hurry, unless you have a clear enough horizon to play bang-bang with two gunners and heavy flak/Lumberjack.

To disable a ship - and to finish it, you must certainly be familiar with the heavy- then charged-clipped Gatling, IMO a much better weapon.

I give you that, the medium weapons don't excel among all the weapons in the game. Don't think of the weapon categories as Medium>Light, think of them as equals with different uses. After all, you don't compare all explosive weapons to all piercing weapons either.

You are right - but they are not an alternative to light weapons. A medium weapon slot cannot accomodate a lighter one. And because of this, I would like having more hoice, more polyvalency out of them. Imagine how the Goldfish and Spires would be good with more choices.

9

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captains can assign Main Engy title (+minute buff)

« on: October 23, 2013, 08:25:00 am »

The point of the game is to communicate with other people. Call me a ludite but I would rather type "#### you will be main, bring burst" than drag an icon over their name and assume we both know what that means. Also I try and give every crew member and opportunity to shoot. Sometimes the person responsible for the hull changes depending on range and engagement type.

This.

Being a bit OT here, this is, IMO, the right thing to do - maybe not as faultproof as a regular, experienced crew, but that's part of the fun. Usually, when commanding, I keep my suggestions to the minimum, at least for the first game. At the second one, the crew already has a better idea what to do and what to bring, and it's a better time to "make council", especially if things went bad.

I don't like achievement- or victory-obsessed commanders who tyrannically demands that you change role and dictates all of your tools. That's not what fun sounds like to me. In those cases, I leave politely.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captains can assign Main Engy title (+minute buff)

« on: October 22, 2013, 08:38:01 am »

I think the new features like seeing the various players' getup in the lobby (how could we live without that?), plus the chat box makes it easy to assign roles. You just need to use the mic to get your shipmates to look at the box sometimes.

If there is a bad side to this, is the fact that I now (from my own will) fill the holes rather than going for "achievement gear" when embarking. It's hardly a bad side (if like me achievements don't matter that much); for the rest, strategically, it works to my advantage so far...

*Touches wood*

11

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Join Lobby -> Game starts instantly

« on: October 22, 2013, 08:27:12 am »

How about appearing in a new "dock box" when first selecting a match? The first thing I do when appearing in a pre-match lobby is to click anywhere in the spectator box.

Yet it happened to me a few times. What other players do, is abandon the match, get the right loadout, then re-connect. Sounds feasable if in the pre-combat startgame, but I wouldn't try it for my questionnable connection.

12

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 19, 2013, 04:29:18 pm »

A Heavy Flamerthrower of kinds or even a Napalm gun would add to the brawling arsenal of heavy guns with lots of utility and a sort of jack of all trades but master of none, could also have an interesting mechanic, utilizing liquid gasoline so you have an arc'ed stream of fire to aim with istead of the gas based light flamer.

(...) Or even  lightning based tesla gun, they even have models ready for these that are not used.

Terrific ideas.
+1

13

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 19, 2013, 08:58:50 am »

@Piemanlives; Yeah, that one's heavy. Or the ones you can see on the battleship hulks layering the ground. Looks like a 18-20" bore on that beast. That's grade "A" bang-bang machinery for sure. 

The medium flak is so much more powerful than the light flak.  A buffed charged shot from a heavy flak one shots a pyramidion.  You need every last shot of a buffed light flak to make a pyra kill.

But not a Pyramidion with a buffed hull. Or any other kind of ship, excepting maybe an ill-crewed Spire. The perfect conditions you wrote usually only happen as the result of an ambush at startgame. Buff and load the little Flak the same way, in the same conditions, and you'll have similar results (it packs quite a punch too), as you wrote.

Nothing compares in the game to the raw power of the lumberjack.  Find a gunner that can land every shot and prepare to have a hard time keeping anyone in your lobby after the matches end.

I agree - but it requires "that gunner", not some engineer who happens to pass by, like for a Light gun. The real edge here is the gunner's quality, more than the gun's. A great engineer, too, is quite the boon. Great gunners can indeed make good use of any weapons, Medium ones included. But as I wrote, they require more specific conditions, that you are not entirely sure to have if you don't sign in with your own full crew.

These weapons are hard to use granted, but they're made up for by sheer brute force.  There is absolutely nothing more satisfying in GOI than one shotting an enemy ship with a long range heavy flak round.  It's like shooting a game winning three point shot in basketball that you know is going in as it leaves your fingers and spending the next few seconds basking in glory as it slowly sinks in between the rim and swooshes through the net.

Aye !!!
But nonetheless, I just wish there was more choices and polyvalency in Medium weapons still.

14

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Medium Weapons, Anyone?

« on: October 19, 2013, 01:06:20 am »

I cant agree with you on this.
Besides the carronade every medium weapon is a stronger aquivalent to its little brother.
THe hwacha can disable a whole ship when you have an experienced player on it. The artemis needs much longer to disable a even certain components with its 4 rockets.
The hflak will nearly instakill an unarmored ship while a light flak will take much longer.

Longer? In terms of seconds of firing? I'd take the light flak in a fight, since it can fire 4 projectiles by the time the heavy one fires two. And if one of those two shot miss (like between hull and balloon), you just given extra time to the other ship's engineer, whereas it is of little consequence with light flak. Granted, prceise firing with little Flak requires Heavies, but if the target's close enough you'll hit with anything in there.

The lumberjack doesnt even have a light aquivalent.

Yet there's two mortarlike guns among Light weapons, both a lot easier to use than Lumbering Jack. One in broadside position on a moving galleon is all but useless - The projectiles are not fast enough, and if they are, then the ennemy is too close for the shots to arm, or to have an AoE damage. To be the one-shotter that it can be, Jack requires a stationnary ship, a solid gunner, an engineer to buff it up once the range is found, the Pilot for spotting the shots, time, and an almost willing target - near perfect conditions that are rarely met in combat.

15

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Huddle mode for voice chat in game lobbies.

« on: October 18, 2013, 10:20:55 am »

Just brainstorming here, but what about a "War Room" that would be accessed with a button beside the ship's name in the lobby, that one can join as long as he is on the crew. It would lead to something like the "create crew" screen, and cut all outside vox until one gets back to the lobby.

And since we can dream, why not make the "War Room" an actual virtual place, a salon or workshop where avatars would be free to "interact" as if on the deck of a ship?     IMO that would also be a good place to test out connections.