Messages

571

General Discussion / Re: Ship Scrambling and Other Upcoming Features

« on: November 18, 2013, 05:26:32 pm »

I feel like this discussion isn't going anywhere. We already know muse's opinion (they will roll out position swap and wait for results). Their immediate course of action is already determined, and nobody seems to have anything against it. The scramble thing is a hazy possibility at best, so can we stop talking about it and focus on the other stuff? Maybe start a new, appropriately named thread? I know this one is named scrambling "and other stuff", but I'd rather have a thread dedicated to each individual change than one big one with conflicting conversations.

572

General Discussion / Re: Ship Scrambling and Other Upcoming Features

« on: November 17, 2013, 09:33:59 pm »

Personally, I think most team stacks are not malicious. I suggest rolling out the "ship swap" feature first and seeing whether the issue resolves- ship and crew swap is perfectly voluntary and most people seem to have no problem with it, and it serves mostly the same purpose as mandatory ship scrambling, which is controversial and maybe not a good idea.

Since the community at large is pretty cooperative/nice and most stacked matches (in my experience) don't "unstack" because it's too difficult to get everyone to move while preserving crew composition. Once switching sides becomes a matter of two mouse clicks, I think people will be much more willing to move around.

Implement the switching mechanic first, wait on the more drastic scramble mechanic. However, if it's still a big problem after switching gets implemented, then maybe mandatory scrambling is in order.

573

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Fog Goggles! Get them Now!

« on: November 15, 2013, 12:16:30 am »

I actually really like this idea, it would enable more stealthy sneaky gameplay. I'm imagining an awesome scenario where my squid stalks an oblivious pyramidion and gets into carronade range without the pya having a clue it's there

574

Q&A / Re: Turning Faster

« on: October 16, 2013, 08:33:08 pm »

At this point I would file a feature request for individual engine controls, because otherwise you can't be sure of which way of turning is which.

A pleasant side effect would be having the top engine running in reverse and bottom engines forward, letting you do backflips.

575

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please Make Gunners Useful

« on: October 11, 2013, 03:15:40 am »

I request this thread be locked because it's not going anywhere the other thread hasn't been. We really don't need two of these.

576

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please Make Gunners Useful

« on: October 10, 2013, 01:12:35 pm »

There is less debate about medium guns- those ships (galleon, goldfish, spire) pretty much always have a gunner, because you need projectile speed mods (incendiary/heatsink) to get around arming time restrictions at close range on the heavy flack and lumberjack, while heavy shotguns benefit a lot from switching between lochnagar/incendiary/heavy/charged, in order of usefulness. Hwachas also require a heavy clip at anything but point-blank range, though an engineer can easily just load vanilla rounds at close range with little loss, so they don't lose out as much by not having a gunner. A hwachafish is still fully viable with 3 engineers, but a blenderfish is hurt by not having a gunner.

That being said, most popular ships (ones with no medium guns) really don't need a gunner that much, because enough damage/range versatility is provided simply by being engineer and taking either a close-range (greased or incendiary) or a long-ranged (heavy or lesmok) tool, and then switching to vanilla ammo when the tool becomes less useful. Exceptions include rare weapons such as the artemis which only really benefits from burst, the banshee only really benefits from greased, etc.

Engineers simply bring more to the table, between buffing components (including weapons, giving the benefits of charged rounds), extinguishing, and repairing. In a close-range light-gun ship that's guaranteed to be taking lots of damage, a gunner simply can't keep up with repairs and their fancy ammo types are useless if the rest of the ship is broken.

p.s. we already have an epic thread about this. https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=410

577

Guides / Re: Engineer Teamwork: An Effective Guide to a Loving Relationship

« on: October 10, 2013, 12:17:36 am »

It's been over six months since OP has been active, and this guide is now in the official webiste's novice deck page. http://gunsoficarus.com/novice-deck/#guides (note that the #guides anchor link doesn't work, someone from muse should fix that).

Anyway, I think it's high time a CA updated the orignal guide. I could draft and post a revised version here if you want.

578

Gameplay / Re: The Spire.

« on: October 09, 2013, 11:43:13 pm »

My problem with the spire is that it can't actually use all its strong sides well in combat.

Things the spire is good at:

• Turning
• Vertical movement
• Sniping/concentrated fire. It's pretty easy to set up and maintain a light-light-medium gun trifecta because of good turning speed and slim horizontal profile (unlikely to crash into anything).

Now, here is what it's actually bad at:

• Brawling and horizontal dodging because it's so slow and squishy and can't maneuver while firing.
• Vertical dodging because it has a HUGE vertical profile.
• Sniping because it can't strafe or backpedal quickly, so it's really easy for an enemy to take out its guns.

All of that being said, I think it's already a good mid-range killer, because pretty much anyything disintegrates under sustained fire from two magma cannons and a heavy flak. The problem is that outside of that annulus, the magma cannons' projectile drop becomes unworkable, and inside it the bullets/shells don't arm for full damage. This can be compensated by taking either greased or lesmok, but those tools only shift the already narrow effective range, not widen it. As long as the spire has a (possibly disabler) buddy that can stop enemies from ramming it, the spire can kick ass, but I agree that it's helpless when alone. Too bad good (disabler) buddies are so rare..

579

General Discussion / Re: Rape Jokes

« on: October 09, 2013, 03:10:52 am »

I've noticed this problem a few times, once even from a duck What are we supposed to do about it? Just call people out verbally? Report them?

Simply calling these rape jokes out seems to be the best option, better to be called a 'killjoy' or 'humorless' than potentially remind someone of a really horrible experience when they just want to blow up airships and have fun.

If the person agrees to stop dropping r-word, everything is peachy, but if they say something like 'it's just a joke' or 'grow a thicker skin', do we report them or what? Frankly, I feel that a game lobby might not be the best place to educate someone about rape culture and why it's bad...

580

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Measurement Units

« on: October 01, 2013, 03:36:40 pm »

Bump. I second the reload times and burst radii for the guns.

581

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Harpoon terrain hooking

« on: October 01, 2013, 03:20:09 pm »

YES! This game needs a grappling hook mechanic.

582

General Discussion / Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

« on: September 30, 2013, 08:43:47 pm »

Unattended reloads would make engineers more powerful not gunners. Gunners don't have anything better to do than sit on their gun for the reload sequence.  Engineers could be fixing and buffing stuff. If unattended reloads became a thing both the Engineer and Gunner classes would gain the same amount of time to do non reload things. The engineer could use that time more effectively because they have more tools for that aspect of the game.

Unless your ship spawns in the middle of an active fight there is plenty of time to preload all the necessary ammo under the current system.

Guns are usually grouped together, and in a fight a gunner needs to switch between guns pretty rapidly so the engineers have more time to repair essential components. Basically, unattended reloads give the gunner the ability to run between weapons and use his ammo types on more guns more effectively.

However, I can see where you're coming from about engineers being more useful off the guns. The problem is that engineers are bad at switching guns, while gunners are good (multiple ammo types that help alleviate range/accuracy/rate of fire problems). "Attended reloads" are still annoying and the game would be more fun for everyone if they became unattended.

583

General Discussion / Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

« on: September 30, 2013, 04:03:36 pm »

Oops. sorry for not being clear There's really no way that I can see to abuse unattended reloads, but the whole crew having different, inherently incompatible ammo types would be a nightmare of everyone reloading every time they get on a a gun, during the time they need to be shooting most.

584

General Discussion / Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

« on: September 26, 2013, 02:47:20 pm »

I swore I wouldn't post here again, but too bad.

Has anyone considered fixing the reload mechanic? As in, the gunner only needs to start the reload process with custom ammo, then the gun will finish loading the custom ammo by itself. It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

For example, one gunner can now easily manage a broadside of a galleon or front of a pyramidion, without being a slave to reload cycles and the need to babysit the guns to make sure the proper ammo gets loaded.

The problem lies here:

It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

That sounds great on paper, but in reality... What else does the gunner have to do? They can handle minor repairs, but that's about it. And on a lot of ships, the only thing the gunner has to repair is their own gun.

Minor repairs? A gunner with a mallet can repair just as well as an engineer with a mallet.. As for doing other stuff, there's usually another gun nearby that needs shooting while its gungineer is away on repairs, and a component that may need repairing. The only truly isolated gun I can thing of is the top gun on a mobula, all the other guns have a component or second gun next to them.

In short, I'm not saying unattended reloads will make the gunners better than engineers, but they will bring them closer to being equal, which IMO is a good thing.

P.S. Geggis, I think that may be a good idea if all the players talked to each other and knew what they were doing, but there is a LOT of potential for abuse, confusion, etc. If I were muse, I'd leave it out of the game.

585

Q&A / Re: Reload speed: Wilson's Notes vs. Real time

« on: September 25, 2013, 05:43:19 pm »

There is a number of seconds for reload in the dmg matrix on the mainsite.

Except that you shouldn't trust those numbers. The majority of them are wrong.

This. You can't know the amount of frustration I get just searching for which value is the right one, so I can add to the Wiki (which by the way, is in great need of active contributors).

I plan to get around to it on the weekend...