Messages

31

Gameplay / Heavy duty weaponry

« on: July 23, 2014, 03:00:40 am »

So, I don't even remember how long ago was the Hades introduced and to be quite honest, I haven't been playing much myself other than the Sky League lately, so please judge me not.

I remember the introduction of the hades as something pretty cool, the meta shifted, new and interesting loadouts popped out and overall, there was something fresh to play with. I also remember my disapointment that said weapon wasn't a heavy one.

How long has it been since a new Heavy gun was introduced? What was the last one? Lumberjack? That was before I even started playing if I remember correctly. I've been away for like what, over 6 months, I come back for SKy League, absolutely nothing has changed and I do remember asking Muse specificaly in one of their streams last summer when can we at least expect a new heavy gun, I got an answer of like 3-4 months. I've been gone for half a year and there's still nothing

So, I'm gonna ask again in a way, when can we finally expect a new heavy gun? What are your guys' thoughts on it and what would you expect to see?


Personaly I'm sad there's no flame artillery yet in the form of a mid range gasoline flamer or anti air auto-cannons, I want my Pom-Poms Muse, when am I getting them? :3

(PS: if a mod could move this to general discussion please cause I just noticed I put it in the wrong forum section.. work's internet is kinda slow, sorry!)

32

Gameplay / Re: Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

« on: July 23, 2014, 02:18:17 am »

TL;DR: Pyra/Junker are fine, other ships just don't have enough upside - buffs/radical changes to ships give more real changes than nerfs of what we have.

Stop talking wisdom redria

33

Gameplay / Re: Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

« on: July 22, 2014, 02:18:32 pm »

Uh, every other ship in the game brings something different, countering said things is not a matter of ship vs ship arguments only since this is a team game.

 The Pyra will never be as fast and nimble as a Squid

 It will not be as fast as the Goldfish nor have it's tremendous hull power with a fast rebuilt armor, it also doesn't have a heavy gun.

 The Junker will always outmanuver a Pyra at close range and it's also a better sniper since it can starfe while firing thanks its broadside guns, it also turns way faster than a Pyra could dream of turning. Its armor hitbox is only its tiny frame which makes it very resistant to anti-armor guns

 It will never match the sheer firepower of a Galleon

 It also doesn't have the awesome dodging abilities of a Mobula in open spaces, or 5 guns on the front.

 The Spire is still bad, we do not talk about the Spire.


See, the Pyra is a jack of all trades but master of none, it's a medium ship, it's effective and easy to run, but it's not better at specific roles than any other ship, it's not a spectacular ship by any margin, it's just effective.

I agree its easy to run, but that doesn't make it better, it's still a lawn dart, a heavy one at that.

34

Gameplay / Re: Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

« on: July 22, 2014, 03:10:57 am »

With claw nothing can "run circles" around you, and the engine layout (for turning - the important engines) is the same as Junker, Galleon, Goldfish, Spire. If you've got someone on your butt you're going to have problems regardless of what you're playing.

The ships that should be able to, can, Squids and Junkers will circle a Pyra for more than enough time than they need to disable or kill it, even with Claw, your turn accel is still slow as hell.

No, the engine layout is not the same, you can shoot the Pyra's ass and hit all 3 engines no problem by not even aimming for them, try doing the same at the Junker's turning engines and your shots will start going inbetween them, Goldfish also has its engines seperated and can deal with such threads way more easily thanks to always having 2 engineers on board to repair, the Pyra only ever has one down there or it loses effective firepower, the Spire's engines are all way more spread out.

I've got nothing on the Galleon, but that ship is the easiest to disable anyway, doesn't negate the Pyra's weakness.

With only the galleon being tankier than the pyra I think you're wrong in that as well - it thrives on brawling and is fantastic.

I never said it's a bad brawler?.. I said it's side guns are a horrible choice for an extended close up fight.

The side guns are underestimated - a well coordinated team can shoot it just as well as you would the side + front guns on a junker. If you accept that as the junker meta, you should accept a pyra can shoot 2 guns constantly in a 270 degree arc. A good gunner will know when to jump down, it takes all of 2 seconds - shorter time than it takes to run from front gun to bottom gun on a junker, same as top guns to balloon in junker. For example I served on a Rydr ship with 2 long range guns on the front and meta on the sides...people rushed it thinking for an easy kill only to have their armor half gone by the time they got there and a mortar gat staring them in the face. Similarly - it works well with ramming if you're good at predicting that.

No they aren't underestimated, they are simply not as viable as the front guns thanks to the ship design, the Pyra is shit at turning, so the side guns aren't as useful cause it can't realy use them up close to circle anyone for extended time, they are good for longer range engages or very short usage, or if you want, utility weapons like the flare. Also people rushing a frontal sniper Pyra aren't the best examples to discuss balance around, you could win those engages if you ran sniper side / brawler front as well with no difference at all, so your argument there is kinda moot IMO.

Thats one thing that I forgot to touch on - at any point noone on the ship is more than 1-2 seconds from hull. This is ridiculous! This is basically if you took a junker and cut out the entire middle front deck, and put the balloon next to the hull - a bit of an exaggeration, but from balloon -> hull it is very easy to get down.

The thing is, the Pyramidion is a massive armor hitbox, most of the ship, even around the balloon is armor, which means even if it has 650 armor points, they can easily get stripped cause gatlings and hades will rarely miss a Pyra's armor, which makes it considerably less tanky than it seems to be, plus its perma is low enough so after its armor is down, the hull wil probably die as well 90% of the time, so it makes sense that you would want a lot of people close to the hull at all times, but ifyou take people off of guns to start rebuilding, you are already losing.

35

Gameplay / Re: Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

« on: July 21, 2014, 01:00:33 pm »

I find its component layout to be both a blessing and a curse personaly.. you are overestimating its capabilities..

Especially that 3-engine deck, an artemis will keep you locked down forever the moment anyone even as much as shoots 2 missiles at your back, your 'easily repeaired' engines that are so close together ain't such a boon anymore now that a guy can shoot a missile with no effort and keep you immobile forever right? I know it ain't cause I was doing it in the last tourney I played.

The hull isn't rebuilt easily after it's down and the Pyra gets easily destroyed after it's hull is down since it's a massive box of a ship that you would have to be blind to miss.

The side guns on a Pyra are also pretty much useless if not for super long range (ah the good old days of 1.2 Mercury Fests) or just some utility, since the ship is so unweildy, brawling with these guns is akward, nevermind that their elevevation is different and getting a gunner to go from upper deck to low and then back up takes forever.


The Pyra is simply a silly lawn dart, it's unweildy, stronk and easy to repair cause it's straight forward in all regards, point nose at enemy and guns blazing, thanks to being super slow to turn Junkers can circle around them all day as well and they are very easy to snipe out of the sky thanks to their massive structure.

We can talk all day, but honestly I think the ship is pretty solid, with nothing spectacular about it aside form the armored balloon.

36

Gameplay / Re: Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

« on: July 21, 2014, 11:40:52 am »

It's a vanguard ship, it should be easy to repair.

Squids shouldn't, Galleons also shouldn't to counter-balance their firepower, Goldfishes are the easy to keep up considering you have 2 free engineers most of the time, Junkers are hard to keep together cause they are much more rewarding than a Pyra.

Pyramidion is mostly fine, I doupt it needs any changes, it's just popular cause it has a low skill floor, so people can pick it up more easily than other ships, this doesn't make it any better or unbalanced.

37

Gameplay / Re: It's The Clawwwwwww!

« on: July 18, 2014, 02:05:01 am »

However, I do think that there is some merit to the critique that Phoenix Claw is over-represented in the typical selection of a pilot's tools. To address this, instead of nerfing claw I would consider de-nerfing some of the other tools, particularly the balloon tools.

Agreed, I find myself that Hydro is too slow sometimes and the damage it does is barely worth it, that and Vent will always be faster thanks to gravity as well, either speed up Hydro by a long shot or reduce the damage it does to the balloon, would go a long way. Though I think both vertical movement tools need to be faster instead of doing less damage.

Also, instead of nerfing Phoenix, why not take this idea about a tool that damages armor to make even sharper turns? Would be something like the Moonshine equivalent of pheonix claw.

38

Gameplay / Re: Countering Blender Goldfish

« on: July 15, 2014, 06:43:01 am »

I think that ended up being two thoughts in one, being above a carro's arc means you can get their shots to hit your hull instead of balloon, minimizing damage taken.

Minimizing damage taken to the balloon, if they are face hugging you, they might as well start shooting for your hull at that point. It should be noted that giving them your balloon ain't a bad choice sometimes, be careful what you let a Heavy carronade shoot at, before you regret that armor loss and inevitable death by their ally's explosives.

Hi there!

In my games today we encountered a heavy carronade goldfish with a really good pilot and gunner. Obviously resulting in permanently dead balloons and everything.

It got quite frustrating so we tried different tactics to try and counter it. Last attempt was artemis junker , but i think being on paritian meant that it didnt really work out.

Im wondering if there are any good tips or strategies i should know that help me counter those incredibly annoying ship setups? It doesnt suffer from lacking damage on the small carronades, can literally oneshot your baloon and does enough damage to even get dangerous on the hull.

You counter a Blenderfish the same way you counter any Heavy weapon bearing ship, disable its gun and you turn the whole ship into dead weight. Using Artemis was a good idea on your part since it's easier to use than a Mercury and disables pretty reliably, but the Junker is carronade bait, I'd avoid it unless you and your crew are pretty experienced.

You can also counter with a small carronade Pyramidion, since your gun is a much smaller target, the light carronade will make quick work of their larger gun and then procceed to maul their balloon. The Pyra's balloon cage will protect your balloon from the front as well, for the most part. Make sure you carry Drogue Chute as well, they buffed that thing so much after the carronade nerf it's a sin not to have it on your ship if the enemies have a ship that focuses entirely on carronades.

As a tip, if you are shooting at the Blenderfish and they start blending you, pop Drogue in and tell your crew to keep shooting at it till its dead first, forget about repairs, if you take people off of guns to repair, you already lost the fight, you can't out-repair the carronade's damage output, focus on keeping gun arcs on the ship and shoot at it till it explodes, repair afterwards.

If you let a Blenderfish close in within effective range without trouble expect to get demolished, I mean, it's a shotgun, that's what it does, not much else can be said, your ally should also help if you get ambushed/closed on, communicate with your ally if you hope to counter blenders effectively.

39

General Discussion / Re: No Noob is Good Noob

« on: July 14, 2014, 01:48:25 am »

I'll quote the Soldier from TF2, all newbie engineers should be called 'Grease Monkeys' now.

40

Gameplay / Re: Major and Minor Playstyles

« on: April 24, 2014, 03:09:35 pm »

		Aggressive
		|
Control	-	-----+-----	-	Killing
		|
		Passive

I for one welcome our new Axis quadrant overlords.

But yes, this seems like the best way to classify weapons.

41

Gameplay / Re: Major and Minor Playstyles

« on: April 24, 2014, 02:23:11 pm »

TL;DR: Games are science. Let's think too hard.

Noted.

You can not categorize weapons by the same way you categorize playstyles as the playstyles themselves are a result of different weapon combinations as well as ship combinations.

Weapons are either focused on destroying the enemy ship or disabling it and most guns are adequate in doing both in some way or an other. You could categorize them in a way by the time it takes for the gun to accomplish its primary role, but you would still end up with combined categories.

e.g.

Carronades can easily be classified as a Control weapon, but their short range means you will have to be agressive and get yourself close in to deal with whatever problems you are dealing with, so you end up with a Agressive Control weapon.

The Hades on the other hand, due to its projectile nature and lack of power to strip armor in one go by itself, is definately a Reactive weapon that doesn't promote overly agressive playstyle as you want to keep some distance, but it still lights things on fire, which gives it some controlling power, its primary fire damage while not too effective, is still good against balloons as well.

The only weapons I can think of being purely agressive are pure explosive guns like the light Mortar and Flak, whose only purpose is to finish the enemy ship as they don't do much damage to anything else other than a naked blimp. The Heavy Flak would probably be the Passive Agressive weapon I guess

Basically, Passive Control, Agressive Control and pure Agression weapons.

42

Gameplay / Re: Realism has had it's fun...

« on: March 28, 2014, 04:22:19 pm »

Piloting, however, is mostly about macro: you have to know the game state, your opponents gun arcs, and your opponents *strategy,* and you have to be planning and executing the counter-strategy before they've even really started to act.

That's being a tactician, not a pilot, I do accept the fact that you have to assume the position of the 'commander' which also includes tactical decisions, but the actual piloting part lacks a great deal. Positioning is not a piloting skill, it's simple tactics and strategy that has nothing to do with how good you actually are at steering the vessel you are piloting. What is being asked for here is to make the piloting bit better.

43

Gameplay / Re: Realism has had it's fun...

« on: March 24, 2014, 06:31:09 pm »

Pilot and engineering skill sets and cooperation now have to catch up.

There's a problem with your argument there, a gunner's aimming skill can keep getting better and better until they become a ballistics genious or something.

Pilots are extremely limited by what their ships can do and Engineers are even more limited by repair times and their tools. AKA, navigation is limited by the physical capabilities of the ship and engineer play is purely number and cicle based, something that after one point, you can't get any better at. Weapons are only and I repeat, ONLY limited by their effective range, once within effective range, the weapon will do as good as the gunner can do with no limits.

This game is simply more of a turret gunner's game now than a pilot's game and engineer play was never something extremely exciting anyway (at least for me it wasn't, never found it interesting, I just did it when I wanted something more relaxed).

Tools like Claw/Hydro/Chute aren't fast enough and ships by themselves don't realy have large enough differences in speed unless you take the complete opposites in the spectrum, for example the Goldfish is faster than a Pyra, but it is irrelevant when the Pyra can easily keep up with you for more than enough time to finish you off if you make a run for it for example, the supposedly agile ships can't even manuver enough to avoid shots when you move in the enemy gun's sweet spot, there are just too many limitations.

If you ask me, aside from the fact that the ships don't feel as fun to fly anymore than to gun on them, I will heavily blame the extreme focus people on both Pubs and Competitive have on the TDM gamemode. Curse it to hell and all the way back, it is the primary reason that the meta has stagnated so much to this stationary sniper mode (at least when I was playing). TL;DR : TDM is boring, Objectives force confrontations and encourage movement and mobility, there is also that magical point clock ticking to discourage people from camping forever.




PS: You know what else I miss? Good ol' bugged Kerozene. Which honestly felt much of a medium between the purely speed or turning focused Moonshine and Phoenix, which allowed more diversity in pilot builds without having to sacrifice ALL your mobility or ALL your utility.

44

Gameplay / Re: Goldfish 1.3.3

« on: March 21, 2014, 09:05:37 pm »

Psst, rumor has it a close range heavy weapon is being heavily considered... maybe not in the immediate future, but gossip has certainly started.

Hopefully Autocannons, though I'm not gonna get excited over 'rumors'

45

Gameplay / Re: Goldfish 1.3.3

« on: March 21, 2014, 08:57:00 pm »

Echoez, Why did you resurrect a thread that you don't wan't to be part of a discussion in? Why even bother commenting if you don't care about the game anymore?

Because I was actually heavily invested before and I kinda spend money on it, so I check it periodically to see if anything has gotten better/changed, if you don't mind of course. Also I was the one I started this thread if you didn't notice, lol.