Messages

106

Gameplay / Re: Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.

« on: August 16, 2013, 10:00:42 pm »

The max range on the flak is greater than 1km. Once they get close you use ammo that slows the projectile, thus lowering the arming time. Even within the arming time, you still do 50% damage. So get the hull down and pelt away, avoid the situation to begin with by killing them as they charge your gun lines, or turn your short side early.

Yes, the distance is 1008m, I stand corrected. I even bothered testing to see whether the rounds shoot further but they don't.  Lesmok range can be longer than normal range, but  the gun should not be balanced around lesmok, but lesmok around the gun. So what if people get a giant range extension with lesmok or their rounds become easier to aim? They trade that off with less damage or by lacking other properties. Having a flak cannon by itself reaching across the field isn't even threatening provided your crew keeps your hull armor up. If anything, I would be much more worried about the fieldgun or a heavy long range piercing gun I'm suggesting than something that only does good damage when the hull is down.

No offence, but there is nothing wrong with a galleon in a 2v2 fight. And Im fully aware the other ships can use a gun like that, but the point is a galleon can take four, and shoot two at the same time. It'll only lead to galleons sitting in the open, gunning down people with that flavor of heavy gun and a flak. Not to say they won't ever come out with one, but its my opinion that we don't need it given the options we have available (which is always growing.)

That should be their choice to make. If they want to hang in the air like that, that is fine. It's not even unbalanced in itself. And we come back to:

I didn't miss any points. And use the flare gun to deal with clouds. Hell, the clouds move too, so there is always going to be gaps that you can use. I know how balance works, and I truly want a totally balanced goio. Besides not agreeing with the heavy flak arming times and I guess thinking the merc changes are bad, I don't know what you are trying to get at here balance wise.

You missed the point again, eventhough you say you don't, you still miss the point. My point was that it wasn't the guns themselves that force a playstyle that the players people use right now. The Galleon will still be equipped with flak and LJ regardless of how badly you nerve those specific weapons because they will always keep their purpose. Their purpose is giving the Galleon means over distance. Because thanks to its most rotten acceleration and requirement to turn the broadside towards the target, the Galleon cannot move. If people wanted to play brawler with almost any ship they will rapidly find out that they can get bursted down rather easily from a distance. Even now with fieldguns; and if fieldguns is not an option, two chainguns and a mortar launcher will get a Galleon down before it is able to turn its broadside. Any player will confirm this to you. And rather than nerfing the weapons themselves, it would be better to give people means to get closer. Smoke screens can work. I know how a flare gun works but this is something you can balance. Maybe we can give ship shields that they can place in a weapon slot that will prevent rounds from reaching the ship. There's tons of ways you can solve the same problem and at the same time fix the actual problem rather than patch it a little with a damage nerf.

107

Gameplay / Re: Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.

« on: August 16, 2013, 02:34:32 pm »

[There is a very good reason for that arming time, and that is so short range brawlers can get in that bubble and survive. You make the choice to have great long range guns, at the cost of the very weak damage you'll do within that arming.

Great long range? 1000m isn't that long. And with a full second you already cover something like 500m before reaching arming time. For a gun that has a very specific purpose and doesn't do much damage when the hull is up, 1 second is just too long.

Adding any kind of full-on heavy piercing weapon will just result in galleons with it and heavy flak for broadsides. I honestly don't think we ever need to see a heavy piercing gun. Flechette does decently, and maybe a heavy fire weapon will come around which is also good vs hull armor. Beyond that though, there is a reason the port side of a galleon has that light mount.

I do not see how this is a problem, it would turn the Galleon into a little bit less of a joke in 2v2 fights. Not only Galleons, but spires and goldfishes have use for a gun like this. Next to fire, it's the only type not represented by heavy weaponry.

We already know what made mercs strong, and that was the accuracy at max ranges far beyond that of any other gun. This lead to people using that to chip away at boats until they just died from the dps. Now you have to really dial in the arcs of your mercs, and the drop at longer ranges is enough to make accurate shooting much harder, yet someone will always get hurt/die if they charge into a long range gun line straight on. That just makes sense else long range wouldn't be viable to use at all.

I always look at gun's effective range vs its max range. If your max is 3km but you cant hit anything accurately till 1.5km, then go with that 1.5km. With the merc changes, their effective range surely went down, both for just hitting the hull for dps, followed by even lower ranges for precise component disables.

You missed the point. Think about this for a second: How would they chip away at a ship they cannot see? You have to be really careful with how you think about balance, there's only a few games who'm have gotten it well and nearly all of them do the least things with the damage of their playable entities. If you want, you could pull up the change list between Guilty Gear XX Accent Core and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R. The latter is a rebalance, but rather than tuning damage alone, they changed the properties of some moves to allow characters to deal better with disadvantageous situations. Being outranged is such a disadvantageous situation and dealing with it without touching the weapons that seem overpowered may balance everything a lot better than just damage tuning or projectile tuning.

108

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Heavy Flak Cannon

« on: August 16, 2013, 09:02:35 am »

You could have the ability to deploy 2 smoke screens for one flare launched. That way the flare launcher can still decide to move, but gives the melee an ability to make him guess for which smoke cloud he should aim with his flare gun.

109

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Heavy Flak Cannon

« on: August 16, 2013, 08:02:26 am »

You'd be lucky or have a skilled gunner to be hitting shots at 2500 with flak. The shells should explode before then. The old flak was able to do that. It was a fantastic long range killing weapon.

Trouble is for range killing you are better off with Lumberjack. If you have a good gunner who knows the ranges they can pummel a ship hard with jacks. Since it also has some shatter, you not only are keeping the balloon down but damaging everything.

Refer to the Sky Torpedo threads. That is basically what myself and others were thinking up for a heavy gun that can do piercing. But we modified that idea and turned it into something with Impact damage. Remember impact does everything plus knocks a ship off course.

Kinda funny that some of the community has gone so anti ranged battle but we keep getting things like arming timers or set distances for ranged guns yet no major nerfs to them. Doubt some would be happy until all ranged guns are done away with and ships just dance around hugging each other in the air. Which really isn't the problem. Want to stop the ranged battles? Change flares so they aren't godlike in seeing through everything, return certain ships to their 1.1 abilities, and give back some of the good gun functionality that have been tossed out. Bring back Flak and Flamethrowers to 1.1. Variable range killing power and gun mounts that instantly become unusable when on fire.

My perception was wrong, after 1000 meters the round simply explodes. I therefore in that thread already said they should change the range to 2000 meters.

And I'm not really picking sides in the ranged vs melee fight. Some people prefer ranged play and some prefer melee. Both of them can provide entertaining fights as long as they have the means to force a fight in their respective range. Ranged vessels have this by means of flare gun, while melee vessels have to rely on pure speed alone; which is kind of silly. I also think that long range killing power should be adequate rather than being damage nerfed. If you're going to have range fights, might as well have them quick rather than having a waiting game. At the same time, I keep saying, make it so that melee vessels at least have a way to get close without taking fire (such as smoke screens).

110

Gameplay / Re: Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.

« on: August 16, 2013, 04:50:44 am »

Aha, I just saw the tiling thing. The Mortar's aiming system is off. Well, easy to fix this issue with flak, just increase the detonation range(to 2000m). If they want a different firing arc they can still use Lesmok.

Maybe it's also an idea to revert back to the previous lesmok and try to figure out what makes the fieldguns as strong as they are. From what I've seen is that it's very hard to get close to ships when they employ fieldguns. Aside from a bumrush, there aren't many options due to flares and open distance.

The other guns have an effective range that is less than 1000 meters giving fieldguns a very distinct advantage. Being that the fieldguns are sniper rifles firing relatively normal bullets, a range of 3000 is excessive to begin with. Maybe impose an effective range of 1000 and have damage drop off after that rather than changing the amount of shots available.

Secondly, pilots need ways to get close against ranged fighters, even in organized fights. Maybe it's an idea to put a smoke gun in the game that can facilitate in creating smoke screens for ships to fly behind?

111

Gameplay / Re: Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.

« on: August 15, 2013, 08:52:41 pm »

I am going to join an earlier poster in saying that my crews with charged rounds have had no issue hitting at 2000+ range. Some crews can even do this while I'm circling around with the Galleon, so the issue definitely isn't in hitting the flak cannon. And with charged rounds, it still does a lot of damage at those ranges. I'd much rather focus on getting a heavy gun that accompanies the flak in that it takes care of armor. That way we can leave the fieldgun as it is for the Spire and outfit the Galleon with some proper ranged weaponry.

The arming time of 1 second is ridiculous however, it means that together with the mortar with arming time of 0.8 seconds, I have a huge blind spot on my Galleon that I can't even turn away when they get close enough(as they just bounce me back by hitting my balloon). This again could be fixed by having a heavy piercing weapon so that the small mount can be used for shotguns or other self defense weaponry.

112

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Heavy Flak Cannon

« on: August 15, 2013, 07:49:06 pm »

What gun would I have to use to replace the heavy flak cannon that shoots at 2500 range and can kill an unarmored ship in 2 shots? Even without lesmok the flak is still great and with charged ammo it hurts a LOT. If you have 2 of these guns next to eachother on the galleon, any ship with the hull armor down can be instantly killed, given that your gunners can aim. If they should fix anything, I'd be more interested in a heavy gun that does mid-long range piercing damage(like the fieldgun).

113

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Tutorials NOT optional

« on: August 15, 2013, 07:37:58 pm »

I haven't seen a lot of players who jumped straight into the game without checking the tutorials. However, the tutorial teaches so little that the gap between new players and completely new players is huge. I had to be informed by another player that damage types are more effective against certain parts of the ship than others. I had to come to the site to actually check the numbers. I also had to figure out that I could change the weaponry on my ship. And at the same time that the default loadouts were really bad. I had to learn ammo types from other players, what to repair, tricks on buffing, tricks with reloading, actually combat flight, the list goes on and on and on. The gap between tutorial and common knowledge is just too big.

114

General Discussion / Re: My issues with this game.

« on: August 15, 2013, 07:30:24 pm »

I see what you mean, I just hate having to yell, if it really is a bad sport it just gives them in their mind a reason to continue disobeying orders or even attack me back. I just don't want to wind up getting too angry and get hoist by my own petard. If worse comes to worse I find a new lobby after the game is finished since I don't want to rage quit.

If you check the context of that vid, the gunner that went off at PBG has posted on the vid and explained himself a bit. It turns out that PBG didn't communicate and picked gunner despite people telling him in the lobby not too. So I suppose while the captain was flaming his teammate for readying, the gunner turned his attention to PBG. And to be honest, that was hilarious.

Furthermore, you getting angry, forceful or abusive isn't going to make people that listen to you stop listening. Especially when they know they are not the target. The people who were not listening, now have a reason that they don't listen. Does this matter? No, because they have shown that they didn't need a reason to ignore you to begin with. Nothing has changed and if you point it out to them, you will see how weak their fragile minds really are. Yes, this is dota experience; at the same time in dota, if people were new, I didn't really care for that, as long as they were sincere... Now the guy in mid with a ganker not ganking, that gets my attention; and while the newb was going 0-13 I kept going at our mid the full game until he finally snapped.

If I want anyone to take anything away from this, I wish wholeheartedly to prevent Guns of Icarus going down the same path. Once the game fills up with people that are in it for themselves, shit will hit the fan and the guy raging at PBG will become a distant memory of when things were better.

115

General Discussion / Re: My issues with this game.

« on: August 14, 2013, 11:50:03 am »

A captain is a captain, he can run his ship how he wants. Some are nice and communicative, others are not. While some take the "hard arse" route and see yelling cursing a an appropriate reprimand, go right ahead.

But just remember, if everything blows right up in your face don't expect people to sympathise with you or see it as
(entirely) the crews fault. This captain learned that the hard way.

I'm personally encourage the nice route and try my best to educate new players if they are willing to learn. And if I do get a bad crew and the nice route doesn't work, people won't see their actions being justified by a mean captain.

Which captain? The only captain that was communicating was friendly and humble. The other is a gunner and was being a dick. You seem to misinterpret where rage kicks in, for me at least. When I ask people to do stuff and they are giving me a bad attitude, they get a vocal correction, which is a relatively normal one. Only when the player proceeds to not care and not listen to what I say I start becoming angry and it's only in his direction; other crewmembers are relatively safe.

Let me reiterate: I don't care if people are new, bad, good, etc. My number 1 priority is that they LISTEN, if they do as they are told I don't have to look at my own ship and that means I can focus on doing MY job. When I do MY job, my fellow captain(s) can do their jobs and we can win. Even if we lose, it is not as big of a deal than when you lose because someone is screwing around.

116

Q&A / Re: Beginning with the Galleon

« on: August 14, 2013, 02:21:36 am »

The fieldgun has such little rotation that I have to adjust the ship almost every 2 shots.  And it's nice that some people can consistently hit the LJ at 2km and beyond. Yet, I haven't been able to do so and the repercussions of misjudging distance are far worse than the flak cannons. The weapons are just not feasible for this.

Artemis doesn't work, I've switched left side to chaingun to combine with the heavy flak/hwacha at close range. The Artemis' reach was nice though...

And parking the Galleon isn't something you really want to do. Because after your teammate dies, they will be heading straight for you. And the acceleration on the Galleon is very poor.

117

General Discussion / Re: My issues with this game.

« on: August 13, 2013, 02:20:57 pm »

2. Relocate — Leave the problem player behind by moving to a new lobby. You can invite other players in the match to a party and take the whole gang to a new match in crew formation, leaving the troll alone in the cold.

"Move to new lobby" does not equate to "leave the game you are playing thus ruining everyone's game."

No, it doesn't equate to it, but it does include it. The alternative is as suggested that you leave from within the lobby. What can I say, my patience has limits and my limits tend to be fairly high. People are leaving, and the way it is formulated, you endorse it.

I didn't say it wasn't nice. I said it causes more problems for you than it will ever fix.

Unfortunately, I don't see a bigger problem than someone ruining my game while I'm trying to have a fun time. Especially in the context of this game. So I would like examples of problems it creates.

I'd love to hear about the means you expect Muse to give to you to force people to listen to you, while you also say people who don't listen simply never will. We both know not everyone is a team player, and there is no means of forcing them into that, so no tool exists that will ever net that result.

It has been said too many times before, just make em walk the plank, so a new crew member has the option of taking his place. It's the easiest solution and it has worked for thousands of years. Otherwise allow us to muppet stamp people, where they get flagged for other users. There's also the banlist that can help us avoid playing with those who cannot be trusted. If the taste of victory, a friendly captain, or ability to waylay all responsibility for a loss, isn't enough incentive for players to listen to their captain; then nothing really is.

Make friends who listen. They want to have fun just as badly as you do. Ignore the troll. If they specifically target you and break the rules, report them. It has been this way since beta and no personal experience of mine, be it before and after I became a CA, has made me think we need any form of forced teamwork.

Nothing is really forced, but the problem here is that not listening doesn't really have any form of consequence; that voids the captain's role completely. And when it happens, the captain can just as well drop whatever he's doing and go watch a certain type of movie until the round is over.

118

General Discussion / Re: My issues with this game.

« on: August 13, 2013, 10:47:07 am »

He's not telling you to leave during the match.

http://gunsoficarus.com/faq/#troll noting point 2.

Raging at your crew also causes more problems then it fixes. I'm all for clear orders (ask any of my clanmates), but you are fully aware that not everybody on the internet is going to listen, and that reason can be one of many. (Ex. language barrier, age, no mic, no interest in team-play, ect.)

Goio is unique in that it really requires teamwork to be successful. This includes taking orders from others, and that in itself is a very tall order. If you plan to be a good captain, you have to make people want to listen to you. You do not just immediately have that right, nor can we force it onto anybody.

Raging at my crew happens when the other means of manipulation have been exhausted and when frustration kicks in. You are telling me it's not nice for me to ruin their experience while they are ruining mine. GoIO is not unique, DotA and spinoffs requires the same degree of teamwork, and we all know where that has lead people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFNZx4iQWw . Granted, in those games you are not permitted to leave...

I'd love to be a good captain, I think everyone in the role has the same goal as I do. But that means that I am responsible for my ship and that I feel responsible when things go wrong. If my crew members are set on not listening to me, my hands are tied. I haven't met a single person who has claimed to me that they could make people who don't listen listen. That is the issue here, I cannot do anything about this and you/Muse is refusing to give me means to do so.

119

General Discussion / Re: My issues with this game.

« on: August 13, 2013, 10:15:57 am »

Yes, as a player it's annoying with crew and captains leaving midgames. But we can't simply force teamwork, only encourage it. As in any other game with a chain of command, it's not against the rules not to work with your teammates. You have power to choose the ship, kick people off the helm and communicate with fellow captains, but having the team cooperate is up to the captain and crew themselves.

And you don't see a correlation between captains/players leaving and players being disobedient? In almost every other game where there is or isn't a chain of command in a team, there's an excessive amount of flaming going on because people don't listen to eachother and because a leader isn't appointed at the start of the game. Make no mistake, this is where this game is headed once it gains popularity.

I know I can rage pretty damn hard and some people cave in under this pressure and do start to listen, others don't even understand me or just think it is funny. If I have no tools to deal with these people, you are recommending that I leave the game and try my luck elsewhere, while the (often only) disobedient player is the cause of the problem. So lets recap on that: 1 player is disobedient, I leave, which means that my ship remains without a captain, so I ruin the game for my crew because of that disobedient player. Then because I left my ship, and my ship basically hangs in the air, it means that my team is down a player, so now I ruined the game for 2 + 4*(teamsize - 1) players. My opponents were expecting a good game and didn't expect me to leave, that's a game ruined for teamsize players. So by me leaving, I ruin the game quite extensively; and yet, this is the only AND RECOMMENDED action to deal with crewmembers that don't listen. I cannot even prevent these players from following me or joining my ship, so everytime they join my boat, I have to leave. Do you honestly think this is fair?

120

Q&A / Re: Beginning with the Galleon

« on: August 13, 2013, 04:13:14 am »

The lumberjack doesn't really work on longer rangers due to its arc however. Even with lesmok or heavy clip that thing has a very bad arc which makes it unsuitable for the ranges that the flak cannon can reach. Next to that of course is the fact that it happens, more often than it should, that you hear crewmates complaining they can't hit any targets because the ship is on the move. Lets ignore the fact that I've been a CPMA player and that I had to deal with stuff worse than a moving galleon, for arguments sake... When I get on any gun and I try to hit someone, I will use my first volley to get a firing vector. When that confirms me a hit, I know where to aim to hit the opposing ship. I do not explicitly use the crosshair, I'm not using any real form of math. I just guess. When you're doing this, it doesn't matter what your ship is doing given your captain is consistent; and circling the battlefield is by its definition a consistent motion. Now if these people cannot hit the flak at long range (and are unable to figure out how to with their own brainpower), how do you expect them to hit a lumberjack at the same range?

The lumberjack can of course be used to replace the carronade in case opponents don't come close enough to you. So if I were going to be using it, it would be on the right side of my ship to support the hwacha.

So with that out of the way, for me, flak on the left side is the way to go. The problem with the latest changes is however, that the fieldgun has become completely useless. That leaves me with no means to do piercing damage over long range. So I've put on replacements. I'm now using the artemis to aid the flaks, but I'm not yet sure about a good rear gun. As of now that means over long range I only do explosive damage and that means my ship has to land more hits to get a kill. However, I'm going to test with incendiary rounds tonight to see if that gives me means to disable armor(and get a faster kill).

As for what I previously stated, a gunner CAN and SHOULD solo the guns when the ship is in direct combat. The reload times are big enough for the gunner to run between guns and keep both of them firing a constant volley of rounds. This leaves you with two engineers(rather than just one) to repair the weaponry and ship functions. That in turn allows the pilot's perks to be  used such as phoenix claw and tar. When equipped with hwacha and carronade, you can fire the carronade, reload it with special rounds, fire it again, then switch to hwacha and select your special rounds right before it is reloaded. Then fire the special rounds and go back to the carronade. Even if the gunner cannot load the special ammo, it's not really a big deal as the benefits of having two active engineers outweighs the benefit of special ammo types.

When not in combat mode however, you're in long range mode, which means all left side guns should be manned allowing all guns to shoot special rounds. When this is executed successfully, you can snipe ships from outside the fights, which is great. And since you're outside fights, you don't have to worry about any unrepairable damage either.