Messages

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Hellmouth double flamer, Hurricane double Gatling

« on: June 26, 2013, 07:50:23 pm »

It's not that it's not a cool idea, it's just that the way piercing weapons currently work would force the weapon to not have piercing rounds for balancing reasons.  An automatic heavy weapon's a cool idea, though.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Custom Sized Crews - Adventure Mode

« on: May 11, 2013, 02:24:24 pm »

Crew size isn't really adjustable with how the ships are designed.  They are meant to be manned by four people or AI, even one less will result in a painful death.  I imagine larger ships exclusive to Adventure Mode would be the same.  I wouldn't want to see soloing incentivized either, mechanically speaking the game is an incredibly dull rail shooter or flight sim.  That is most definitely not the game's strong point, it should be making every effort to have you in as complete a crew as possible.

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Q&A / Re: The Tip Jar, a collection of community tips

« on: May 09, 2013, 04:15:21 pm »

If no one else is calling targets, call targets.  Even if your teammates aren't saying anything, you can still take control of the situation.  Even if you think you suck, your leadership is better than no leadership.  You can get away with just telling your allies to group up and taking out the weakest/nearest target.  If someone isn't listening, call them out and make sure to tell them to press C to use captain chat or K to use team chat, you'd be surprised how often that'll get them talking.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: My list of problems/anomalies/suggestions.

« on: May 09, 2013, 03:56:57 pm »

...

It brings it to the attention of the entire team, and it lets them have the list in a place where they can find it instead of searching through the forum every time.

Or search through that email's inbox.  Copypaste exists for a reason, I doubt the extra convenience on their end means as much as our ability to give the yay or nay.  Wouldn't want them to implement something from this list that we all passionately hated.

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Gameplay / Re: GUNS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

« on: May 09, 2013, 11:55:13 am »

I disagree.  I tested this specifically by hanging out in an opponent's flame range to see if I could disable it before he set my stuff on fire.  My gunner had disconnected, and we sat in it for a good two clips from the flamethrower.  The highest I saw was a 9-level on the balloon, and that's after stationary firing for two clips, which means you need about 20s of sustained fire to get a flame-disable.

The point of a flamethrower isn't to get quick disables, though.  The idea is that you're hovering somewhere above your enemy or are otherwise parked in their blindspot, which is pretty easy to do against Galleons, Pyramidions, and formerly the Junker, raining down a single gun that disables the entire ship at once while taking out the balloon and seriously threatening the hull, hopefully overwhelming the engineers should they have been unlucky enough to not bring chemspray.  I don't know about you, but last patch it was pretty easy to get at least a full clip of flamethrower into an enemy as the gun has a very arc, it doesn't need a primary slot to function and it doesn't need a very long burst to force the enemy to either start wandering away from the hull or balloon or start sacrificing components.

Now, in my experience those level 8 fires will come up a LOT faster than what you're describing, my guess is someone on your ship had chemspray and you told your crew you were going into their fire.  20 seconds is more than enough time for components to start breaking under a flamethrower, I have no idea how your balloon managed to survive that long with an apparently slowly building level 9 fire when lower level fires will outstrip an engineer's ability to repair.  Was that other ship ONLY firing a single flamethrower at you and not giving you anything else to worry about?  If the ONLY thing you have to worry about is a single light gun (that isn't an Artemis) a ship full of engineers will generally be able to outrepair it.

You don't need a level 8 fire to disable a gun.  A level 4 fire is more than enough to give pretty severe damage and turning penalties even on light guns, a level 1 fire will screw up Hwacha volleys almost to the point of uselessness.  That's damage that happens immediately after a gunner repairs.  Chemspray or heatsink will provide a hard counter certainly, but if all you have is a regular extinguisher you're still going to have to deal with your gun never being at 100% and dealing full damage.  This is without aiming for your gun in particular, the engines and balloon and hull are taking fire too.

I made a LOT of use of the flamethrower last patch and the only reason I don't use it now is because the Artemis sacrifices the balloon killing ability (balloons are extra weak to fire) to be able to disable everything on a ship at long range without the need for another gun to force the ship to let some fires burn.

6

The Pit / Re: Inappropriate Ship Name

« on: May 08, 2013, 02:01:15 pm »

Those would probably get banned.

And that's terrible.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Captains to be able to kick players off of ships.

« on: May 08, 2013, 01:37:55 pm »

The fear is that people will start kicking new crewmembers instead of trying to teach them the basics.  The reality is that anyone who wants to be a dick simply takes advantage of the fact that they can act with impunity.  This creates problems because it's very easy for someone that wants to be a dick to use any variety of excuse to avoid trouble, one of the more convenient ones being that they don't speak English (except when they feel like taunting you in English).  And since non-English speakers tend to be silent, it's hard to know that they're not intentionally being douchebags and really just don't know that taking the front gun and not shooting is a bad thing.  It's very hard to gauge someone's intent and so outside moderation is pretty ineffective.

It makes me wonder how Adventure Mode will turn out if the stakes for each battle are raised.  The only reason the game currently can get away with not having any self-moderating tools is because battles themselves are pretty meaningless, stats aren't publicly visible or commonly shared.  If resources or ship upgrades are on the line one person being a dick is going to do a lot more damage than wasting ten minutes of your time.

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Gameplay / Re: GUNS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

« on: May 07, 2013, 12:30:46 am »

2) Reducing the stacks of fire needed to kick someone off a gun.  Yes I remember what fire used to be like, and though I didn't really have a problem with it then I understand peoples concerns regarding its affects on fun factor for new players. That being said, I have never seen a level 8 fire on a gun since 1.14, so, maybe that much fire stack for a gun ejection is a bit high.

Level 8 fires are the norm if you're using a flamethrower.  You don't see level 8 fires because no one uses flamethrowers.  I liked how flamethrowers worked last patch, they weren't primary weapons but their large arc made them excellent defensive and trifecta weapons.  If their damage is increased somewhat on top of the artemis nerf (artemis can do everything the flamethrower does except pop the balloon and faster) then lowering the number of fire stacks required to disable a gun shouldn't be necessary.

9

The Lounge / Re: Shoot better!

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:41:52 am »

Cohesion.
When I say go engineer, you go engineer.

Pretty much.  An all-pilot team that communicates and cooperates is going to win versus just about any other ship that isn't working together.  I just don't bother with games like that anymore, if someone starts arguing about wanting to stay on the wrong gun or refuses to take an appropriate loadout or refuses to repair because htey're the gunner and its not their job then they're on their own.  You just can't win without all four people on a ship pulling their weight.

Aside from that obvious fact, though, pilot skill's probably the most significant part of any ship.  Nothing else the crew does will matter if the guns aren't pointed at the enemy and the ship is sitting on an enemy Galleon's broadside.  Bad gunners are pretty frustrating too, but you can make up for them somewhat with ramming and lots of "encouragement" until they finally get on the right gun and stay there.  It's bad engineers that drive me nuts, there's no avoiding all enemy fire and an inattentive engineer will just completely wreck the pilot's ability to do anything.  You can't ram without a hull, the gunners can't get in arc without the engines and balloon, someone else will have to do the engineer's job meaning firepower is being sacrificed... it's why I usually have the highest level player go main engineer in pickup games.

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Gameplay / Re: SHIPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

« on: May 06, 2013, 12:09:25 am »

Certainly possible to do that with an Artemis but you don't need much of anything working to ram a Spire, particularly one whose captain has decided to man a gun.

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Gameplay / Re: SHIPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

« on: May 05, 2013, 11:44:37 pm »

The top right gun is meant for the pilot to use, Helmic.

Or the engineer, a Spire that isn't turning in melee is a dead spire.  Certainly possible to do that with an Artemis but you don't need much of anything working to ram a Spire, particularly one whose captain has decided to man a gun.

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Gameplay / Re: Artemis Rocket Launcher

« on: May 05, 2013, 11:40:58 pm »

You have to remember that the Artemis hasn't been wreaking havoc for very long, and its possible there may be a counter that hasn't been discovered just yet.  No reason to get worked up about Muse not commenting just yet.

But there aren't any guns that can beat the Artemis. It destroys enemy guns before they have a chance to even come into range, and with its huge AoE with burst you can keep them down all day. The only reliable counter to the Artemis I've found after a good deal of playing is another Artemis.

I don't entirely disagree, but it's better to test it out for a day or two to see if anything does emerge.  You have to give it a little time to see if the meta can react.  It's not like Muse is intentionally letting everyone suffer because they hate us.

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Gameplay / Re: SHIPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

« on: May 05, 2013, 11:22:17 pm »

It's really hard to ram with a Pyra now, even if the resulting ram doesn't result in seizures.  The low turning speed and the penalties to turning and acceleration make it very difficult to get up to ramming speed without help from an item, which in turn makes the turning speed issue worse.  This makes it very easy to repeatedly miss an enemy that's aware of you, I don't find myself landing rams except by surprise or against newer captains.

The Junker's manueverability has been absurdly buffed as well, before it was somewhat difficult to keep it in trifecta but now its incredibly easy to outrotate and outrun ships, particularly the Pyra.  Even if the Artemis gets nerfed, it'll still probably be very strong.    It has no blindspots, high armor, and high manueverability.  The turning speed feels pretty silly, to be honest.  The turning speed felt OK on a Pyra as it made it feel like the "fighter" ship (since the Goldfish has no close range kill guns), on a Junker you've got a broadsider which makes you feel like you're on a propeller on a helicopter.  I'll have to see where it goes after the Artemis is dealt with, but even before the patch the Junker was an excellent Pyra slayer with its larger trifecta and higher armor.

Spires still feel incredibly weak, they can trifecta too now but their armor still sucks which constantly pulls that third crewmember off of a gun and their low mass now makes them even more of a Pyra's bitch.  I think the lower left gun on the Spire should have been the one to be turned, it's closer to the hull and so it'd be easier for the hull engineer to babysit the fragile little thing.

And as for these threads themselves, it's a bit hard to talk about the guns and ships separately.  They're so very much intertwined, a gun's effectiveness depends entirely on where it is on a ship and how well that ship can get the gun in arc.  It makes more sense to have the maps separate but even those will favor certain ships and loadouts, possibly to the point of causing issues (like merc Pyras and lumberjack Galleons on Dunes).

14

Gameplay / Re: Artemis Rocket Launcher

« on: May 05, 2013, 11:06:15 pm »

While there are a couple of neutral messages and some in denial that the weapon is too powerful at this moment;- the vast majority of this thread seems to agree that the weapon has been overtuned.

There's been discussions about weapons but in none of them was there an almost unanimous vote between veterans players agreeing with a certain balance and we have 4 pages of higher profile players voicing their thoughts on this issue - it's obviously a very current and active subject; and not just something off the side that can be dealt with at a much later stage.

So as close as Muse is with the community and as forward as they've been in almost everything they do it both dissapoints me and suprises me that they have yet to really respond to or participate in this particular debate.

I took a squid - not even a junker - with an artemis on the front in some games;- and I've had some people literally pissed off about the weapon feeling they couldn't do anything against it and when you reach a certain point where a weapon starts really frustrating people it's just time to re-evaluate balance changes.

I don't get a kick out of people blaming a gun for my victories;- I want to be recognized for other things than a mistake in balancing.

Either way just wanted to participate and add my name to the list and put a quick question mark in here why there hasn't been a response yet from Eric.

You have to remember that the Artemis hasn't been wreaking havoc for very long, and its possible there may be a counter that hasn't been discovered just yet.  No reason to get worked up about Muse not commenting just yet.

I think the biggest problem with the Artemis is that there isn't a real vision of what it should be doing.  As it works right now it's an all-around weapon that does everything very well except for outright killing (it doesn't need to be if the enemy's disabled) and armor piercing (thanks to the high arcs of both weapons its a snap to have it firing with one or two gatlings).  There needs to be a better idea of what the gun should do before there's any more fiddling with it.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Battle of Trafalgar esque sky battles and other suggestions

« on: May 05, 2013, 07:31:56 pm »

That depends entirely on where AM takes Muse.  I think it is very possible for GoI to take off like fucking crazy if they handle AM right, though it's going to be hard because of their previous slip-ups with major bugs and the fact that they're basically changing the genre of an already-existing game.