Messages

196

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: New ship idea: Dragonfly

« on: May 25, 2014, 02:03:55 pm »

yeah i myself was thinking of a ship with 3 light guns pointed on either side and how it could be different from any of the current ships that rely on broadsiding like the galleon or junker, while still being fun to use and fight against. Note My idea of how a ship set up like that should work IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM YOURS.

First i understand with how you could make there be no blindsides by using 6 light guns but i think that is a bad idea as it makes the ship very frustrating to fight and counter. Plus it the light guns themselves would not overlap 360 divided by 6 is 60 degrees per light gun to cover which is the largest radius for the light guns to have so you cant fire them together. I think it would be best to have the 3 light guns be bearing 90 and 270 on the ship respectively to give it ( if you don't understand bearing 0/360 is the front of the ship 90 is to the right 180 is behind 270 is to the left, just like a compass only referencing the sides of the ship instead of north south east and west, ex bearing 75 would be pointing right and slightly forward)

I do not like the idea a a feeble and fragile broadsider ship either as it would get shredded by sniper ships before it could get close, so making the ship durable like a galleon would be better, in my opinion.

To further distinguish it from its broadside counterparts which are both slow making this ship fast and heavy gives it its own unique playstyle of a ship that can truck along at a very good pace and hit like a truck when it rams something, but does not have guns on the front to soften the target before ramming (I'm not talking very fast like squid fast here but faster than galleon or junker and perhaps with amazing acceleration for its weight to emphasize this aspect).

since light weapons are harder to disable than heavy and already have better arks of fire it would be hard to get out of this ships broadside when you are in it, and since it is a ramming ship the front could potentially be dangerous as well. Two ways to mitigate these issues and stop the ship from being over powered would be to move the main engine form the back and to give the ship atrocious turning.  Moving the main engine underneath the front of the ship with a little ramp down for the crew to repair it makes it visible when the ship is trucking right at you so some well placed shots could destroy it and their ability to ram and kill you while also making the ship more unique by having it protected if you got behind the ship so it can still run away at a good pace if it cant get the turning engines working to bring it guns to bear. As for giving it atrocious turning well as previously mentioned light guns are harder to keep disabled due to quick rebuild times and having 3 on each side makes it damn near impossible to stop all of them from shooting so giving the ship itself very bad ability to turn helps ships stay in its small blind spots and get the kill against it.

TLDNR: HOW I IMAGINE A SHIP LIKE THIS SHOULD WORK

Features:
guns are bearing 80, 90, 100 and ,260, 270, 280 giving it blindsides in the front and back and hopefully reducing the merc issue.
Main engine is below and on front part of the ship making it protected if a ship gets behind it, but can be destroyed by ships infront of it ie. the ones its trying to ram.
large narrow target making it harder to hit when coming at you but easy to snipe if its trying to broadside

Advantages:
+durable
+fast and heavy so great for ramming
+great acceleration
+very destructive broadsides

Disadvantages
-very poor turning
-blind sides infront and behind
-balloon, turning engines, main engine, and hull are far apart from each other on such a long ship.
-very poor vertical performance giving other ships another way to get out of its broadside arcs.

How i think it should look:
giving it an Asian influence like the goldfish and having the metal ramming part on the front of the balloon look like metal dragon head would be cool.

197

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The role of an Engineer

« on: May 24, 2014, 11:11:16 am »

I found the fun from the engineer role comes from when the ship crew actually works as a team and the pilot tells you long before hes actually burning the component to get enhanced performance and gives you time to shout back if thats a bad idea.

 ex " Im gona use hydrogen to get us out of here!" mean while an enemy flamer is pointed straight at your balloon "NO captain well reenact the hindenburg!".

There are plenty of small things to the repairing of the ship that take a lot of situational awareness to get right as well. learning routes around the ship to minimize the time between cool downs and anticipating what component is going to break next, and prioritizing what to fix when everything is broken.

Engineers also have thousands of little tricks that can be performed depending on the situation. Ex when the pilot is burning kerosene to zip past an enemy ship with the intention of turning around to put your ship on their rear, repairing the outermost turning engine as you pass the ship will speed up the turn. Pre-building is another example when you hit a component till it only has one hit before being rebuilt but then waiting till after the enemy hits you with a destructive volley so that you can get the most time out of the component before the enemy breaks it again.

If you could not tell I completely disagree with you that pilot skills should go to the engineer, pilot is in control of the ship and its movement. Sure his skills damage components but that is why he is supposed to work with the engineers to keep everything in good condition, it just doesn't make sense to give those skills to other people cause then you would be left with a pilot who has no idea why his ship is doing what its doing.

"WHY THE HELL IS THIS THING GOING UP! I CANT STOP IT!" "Oh thats cause i put hydrogen in the balloon, i saw that galleon was way above us and all." " YOU IDIOT YOUR PUTTING US RIGHT INFRONT OF HIS GUNS!" " well jeeze hes above all our gun arcs i was just trying to help." "WERE ALL GONA DIE! AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" <Loud explosions as galleon fires full volley, and they die>

The engineering job isnt about shooting its about management and situational awareness, which a lot of people including myself like, if you don't find that interesting stick to the other classes, and if your every forced engineer... hey at least you get to sit on the guns when not taking damage.

198

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer.

« on: May 23, 2014, 05:37:59 pm »

It highly depends on exactly what you're trying to do and must be evaluated on a case by case basis for each tool.  Some will be easy.  Some will be hard.  But overall the ideas skew towards the hard.

The quote taken is an answer to a specific case.

Also we don't know if ammo will solve it.  We also don't know if "substantial" changes will solve it.  Each solution will bring ups and downs and they all need to be evaluated objectively.  We can't go in with any assumption regarding any solution, only a goal and timeline of when the tests can happen.

I've already given more than my fair share of cents in the Ammo discussion, even a couple ideas, I still stand behind my idea for a reloading tool for the gunners (if you want to read into the details go to the ammo discussion pages 3, 4, and 5 have comments form me about it). Its simple does not affect too many mechanics and no touches to the UI so it should not be much harder to implement than any new form of ammo.

I unfortunately cant think of any tools that could work similarly with the gunner just sitting on the and selecting it except maybe increasing the weapons armour and health which could also be achieved from ammo if it were programmed to, or perhaps a weapon that locks the aim in place for a few seconds when activated but reduces all recoil to 0 like heavy clip but can be used with any ammo type.

The game is by no means broken in my opinion, I love the fact that 3 engineers, or 2 engineers and a buffer can be a completely viable build, and i hope the game still allows that in the future. However I would also like to see 1 engineer and 2 gunners being a viable build on sniper ships or something which is not the case currently.

More ammo types seems like a good idea to me, especially if they are highly powerful but specialized, but i would also like to see a tool or two for the gunner to differentiate them more from the engineers when behind the gun. Just having ammo can usually be used by the engineers and ammo types that damage the gun do kinda support engineers more as they can repair faster (as others have already mentioned).

199

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 21, 2014, 06:09:31 pm »

RE: Instant/Passive Effects

Yeah, it fits in the overall design paradigm of when what skills are used when.  However, the other thing to note is that while it is a Gunner item, it behaves differently from ammo.  Now, something that's in the same class of items (the Gunner slots) doesn't do the same thing as the others.  So far, the only exception are the two Spotting tools... they're Pilot tools but are used while running around.

In the case of an instant/passive gunner skill that is activated while on a gun, the item doesn't force a reload.  Having this item activated will also produce a strange interaction with reload.  Under the current reload mechanics, you will reload to whatever ammo you have selected.  However, I won't necessarily have an ammo selected now.  What do I reload?  It would make sense to reload whatever was previously in the gun if I have that ammo... but how do I know what was in the gun?  You can see where this goes.  Not that we can't solve the issue, it's already steepening the uphill battle that we're trying to fight in making choosing Gunners more desirable than Gungineers.

A lot of the difficult issues end up being clarity of behavior and how to tell players what is going on in a way that is clean (UI) and intuitive.  Intuitive and clean usually mean as simple as possible.


Just to make it clear, I'm not shutting anything down outright.  I want to let everyone know all the considerations that need to be taken into account before things are set into motion, and then to steer the feedback into a direction that is more immediately actionable.  There are numerous good ideas so far that I'm working into this big change.

So my previous example for the "auto loader" does not run into a lot of these problems, selecting it would force a reload and having it selected would just start another reload. I'm not the only one to suggest something like this either, but my favorite part about it is its simple with no affects except when the gun is reloading.
Anyway enough about that there are plenty who agree with me( just look at the number of suggestions for something that does this effect, I can't clam it as my own idea anymore ) and those that don't as i would argue that there may be some builds that would take the third ammo choice over faster reloads but I cannot think of any so i have to agree that it would likely become a mandatory gunner tool.


I find it really hard to come up with new ammo types that would be useful in very specific situations but ill give it another try.

How about Flash power Clip:
drastically reduce range by -70% or something, arming time is reduced by 80%, rotation speed of the gun is doubled, reduced damage by -35% ( basic idea for this ammo would be if you were fighting point blank, it allows weapons with arming times to still be very effective)


As for previously mentioned ammo i like the idea of some sort of acidic ammo that does more damage on each subsequent hit, and i also love the idea for ammo type that adjust the arcs, even if one adjusts it right and another adjusts it left, it would make gunners ability to carry three ammo types very nice. 

200

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 11:40:19 pm »

Crafeksterty I get the feeling you didn't read all of my post, i was not talking about bringing those ammo types back i was talking about getting an additional tool, sure it would be mandatory for gunners but so is some form of fire protection for the engineers.

Except fire protection ISN'T mandatory, it's just almost always needed on at least 1 engineer. Unless the enemy team has a lot of fire, you could get away with just a single chem spray. A reload tool like you suggest would be absolutely necessary ALL the time. That's not the kind of thing I'd want.

Correction it is ALWAYS NEEDED on at least one engineer unless you want to go down in a fiery blaze.
 Sure every gunner would take this tool, but i can see engineers passing it up for an additional ammo type because they have to be running around and cant sit on the gun to see any use out of it. This thread is about giving ideas that will buff the gunner and there is my idea! I'm not proposing some god item here, it pretty much makes reloading for gunners more interactive and more efficient, and it seems small enough in scope to be easy to implement and take out if its no fun.

Sorry to come off as aggressive but i feel you misquoted and misunderstood me,
we ARE allowed to have differing opinions.

201

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 10:23:12 pm »

 Crafeksterty I get the feeling you didn't read all of my post, i was not talking about bringing those ammo types back i was talking about getting an additional tool, sure it would be mandatory for gunners but so is some form of fire protection for the engineers.

202

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: utility gunner tools

« on: May 20, 2014, 07:02:06 pm »

Like i said coolant clip would have to also be combat effective to see any use, like if it was only -10% range or bullet speed and extinguished all fires on every reload I can see it getting some use as it then has decent damage and abilities on its own.

203

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 20, 2014, 06:53:38 pm »

Here is my two cents on the Normal ammo being a selection, For one I am extremely against some form of crummy scavenger ammo becoming the default OR the idea of having no ammo in the guns when a ship spawns as it leaves you too vulnerable if the enemy is in your spawn point and you would get steam rolled without being able to fight back. But would it be possible to have it so that the weapons wait before they decide their ammo like as soon as an someone jumps on the gun the ammo in their first slot is the one selected as if it was there all along.

Ex: ship spawns, engineer with greased runs over to gun gets on, immediately starts shooting greased rounds at the birds cause they looked at him funny. Eventually they re-spawn gunner carrying heavy, lesmok, and charged runs over to gun, gets on, it now has heavy in it, if he wanted lesmok he has to reload and switch to lesmok, but heavy is in the gun if he needs to shoot it immediately.

In this system I also feel it would be best if the last ammo that was loaded into it so if the gunner left the weapon to load itself it would have put heavy back into the gun.



Now for a new Idea!
I heard that there used to be ammo types that loaded faster than others but that it could be exploited so you could use the faster reload time to load in a better ammo type... WHY IS THIS CONSIDERED AN EXPLOIT! Why not make it a feature?!

hear me out on a tool for gunners that hopefully would not require much work. Call it a "reload crank" "Auto loader" whatever does not matter right now, but it would be selected exactly like the other gunner tools by sitting on a gun and selecting it to have its effect no new UIs or Models or anything just its little grey picture at the bottom of the screen. While it is selected the gun reloads 35% faster or something it would take some tweaking and math to get it to a fair and balanced point, If the gunner left the tool active when the reload was complete it starts another reload, meaning the gunner just wasted time adding in a form of risk reward for the use of this tool. That also separates the good gunners from the great gunners, as a great one switches to this tool immediately as the reload starts and waits till the last second to switch to his ammo type maximizing DPS.

This way with the current system an engineer could take this tool but be confined to only using regular ammo, while a gunner can still use specialized ammos with this tool. This increases reload without being some magical passive as it would be a very active skill the gunners perform sitting on the gun rather than twiddling their thumbs, staying true to the spirit of GOI.

One problem I see is both these ideas cant be implemented together... UNLESS! the reload crank tool thingy becomes a gunner exclusive tool to stop engineers or pilots from buggering up the game by jumping on guns without any form of ammo. Hell if that happened certain sniper ship builds might be taking 2 gunners simply for the variety and speed they can dish out pain over the engineers.

204

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 05:39:01 pm »

Explosive ammo: adds a small explosion on impact which carries the secondary damage type of the weapon, -5% fire rate, and -10% damage ( idea would be for weapons that don't normally have explosions to get them such as the chain gun or carronade so it makes it easier for them to break components since their secondary damage is shatter and they fire multiple inaccurate shots).

Delayed ammo: increases the range of the projectiles but not the speed at which they travel, -25% clip size, +15% weapon damage, -10% fire rate, +10% arming time

Metal Slug ammo: removes the secondary damage and adds it to the primary, -20% projectile speed, -15% projectile lift

Unstable ammo: reverse of the slug ammo removes primary damage and converts it to the secondary damage type, +10% projectile speed, +20% explosive AOE, -20% clip size, -15% fire rate.

not sure if these last 2 could be done or if they'd even be balanced, but hey just an idea .

P.S. Honestly i feel it would only be fair that the person who thought of the idea for a weapon type should at least get a say it what it is going to be called, Yes that means id probably try to have it named after myself or my avatar cause I am vain like that 

205

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas

« on: May 19, 2014, 03:20:07 pm »

You forgot my Swarm ammo idea!

Swarm Ammo: -30% projectile speed, + 1000% fire rate, -40% clip size, -10% damage, weapon breaks after it fires the full clip. (like lochnager for fast firing weapons)

Some type of clip that sacrifices damage for durability would also be nice, could even come in 3 different flavours, one for long range, one for short range, and one that makes the weapon useless but makes it so durable it should be able to stay alive till your in its effective range and can load up another ammo type.

Also note that the numbers i give are pulled completely out of thin air to be used as examples. I'm sure there are better ways to mathematically get the effect for the ammo types I suggest.

P.S. if you do use any of these ideas can the name of the clip be based off the name of the player who thought of the idea such as a "Sir Notinham Clip" or a " Caprontos Clip"?

206

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Crazy weapon Idea! Why not mix defense with offense?

« on: May 19, 2014, 02:08:44 pm »

As for the Sonic weapons ability to stop incoming projectiles I think the cone is better than any form of  barrier as it would not be able to protect the whole ship easily, which is kinda the point. Nothing would be more frustrating than shooting at a ship and having some force field stop your bullets in their tracks. While if your firing at the balloon of an enemy ship and a stream of power keeps shooting up from the hull to block the incoming shots it will still be frustrating as your not getting the kill but you'd have to give credit where credit is due as that would take a skilled gunner.
 
To further stop it from being an impenetrable force a long reload time could be given to the gun so even if the gunner can intercept every single one of your shots he cant do it forever even if he times his reloads with yours. That would also give a ship that has one of these on top of them and has broken all their components a chance to repair and fight back as the weapon reloads.

207

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: utility gunner tools

« on: May 19, 2014, 01:53:34 pm »

I think you have pretty much covered all the utility options ammo could bring there aren't much more mechanics that could be altered by ammo except increasing the weapons armour which could possibly come in 3 different types:
two that increase durability at a cost or reduced damage, one for ranged combat, one for up close, and one that pretty much locks down the weapon but doubles its health and armour or something so you can make sure the gun will stay up till you get into effective range.

and sorry to poke holes in your ideas but the coolant clip would be kinda useless because gunners get kicked off their guns at 8 stacks of fire. So that one would also have to be combat effective to ever see any use over heatsink.

208

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Gunner Tool: Addons

« on: May 19, 2014, 01:13:35 pm »

Hmm One way the addons could work would be like a buff tool no additional buttons or anything then just switch to the tool before you get on the gun (make it look like a power drill or something so it makes sense that your drilling in the addon, and have that for every addon so there is less work used on models for everything) whack the weapon 4 times and voila. I know I know that still requires a new UI and mechanics but its a thought for how it can be implemented without gumming up the UI while the gunners sitting on his gun, or adding in more buttons to be pushing.

As for crazy ammo types here is some more i thought of

Dropper ammo: adds a drop of like 15 m/s to all projectiles shot, 50% less arming time, +10% more damage ( i thought of this due to the dropping mines discussion but figured a new ammo type could get the job done and may be useful for other weapons due to the damage increase and less arming time)

Rocketry ammo: 20% chance of adding a fire stack on the enemy and +60% projectile speed, however every shot adds a fire stack on the weapon your using (I was thinking of having the chem spray stop the fire stacks but since this is a range ammo type its be to easy to keep the weapon chemed and then you would just have a super powerful lesmok. So have the fire stacks added from this ignore chem spray immunity and that may also have the extinguisher become more useful as a niche tool.)

Flat ammo: reduce accuracy, projectiles travel -15% slower, +20% damage increase

shredder ammo: -30% clip reduction, +20% faster fire rate, +20%  damage increase, every round deals 10 damage to the weapon.

( Im just pulling these numbers out of thin air and not putting thought into the actual math its more the ideas and the roles that id like to see in the new ammo types)

209

General Discussion / Re: What is your soundtrack for GoIO?

« on: May 18, 2014, 08:38:31 pm »

the music from bastion. I've got the soundtrack for it as well as the game but it is also on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9E9BE081F2BA083A

210

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Crazy weapon Idea! Why not mix defense with offense?

« on: May 18, 2014, 06:46:16 pm »

I do like the idea of the electro net, but the only way i can think of it being fun or effective would be to either give it like 70 degrees rotation either direction for good coverage, a very fast reload so there are short intervals between each net being launched, or have a clip of like 4 to 6 nets that you can fire out with a very long reload time so you can form a wall to give yourself a breather to repair while the enemy blasts through it. Another problem i see with setting up nets is it would only be good for snipers or ships that sit still as trying to move at full speed and launch the nets to use as cover doesn't seem very feasible even if they did carry the ships momentum. Though i can see it being used to just deny another ship from ramming you by launching nets in front of them to slow and damage them before they hit you.

As for the offensive capabilities of the of the "sonic gun" i figured it would be like getting hit by a sandstorm that also chips away at the armour of the ship and more significantly at the perma hull if the armour is down. That way a ship suffering from its effects can keep most things running if they have good engineers and the gunner can fire back, but if the armour goes down the damage to the hull could not be ignored so as engineers scrambled to get the armour back the other components might fail due to the damage to the whole ship. This makes the weapon itself unable to disable or kill but paired with another weapon it would overcome most crews, and if given 50 to 60 degrees rotation in either direction it could be used in a lot of bifecta weapon setups.