Topics

1

Feedback and Suggestions / MOVED: Can't verify my email

« on: May 11, 2014, 11:13:29 am »

Hello. As this was more of a game issue/bug report, the topic has been moved to Bugs and Game Issues.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=4004.0

2

Feedback and Suggestions / A new piloting tool: Ship Stabilizer

« on: May 03, 2014, 06:27:36 am »

Hey there, got a small inspiration when playing another game (Space Engineers) where you have spaceships that have "dampeners" that stabilize your ship.


General idea: You have a mechanic - a piloting tool that occupies one slot - that you can use to have the ship automatically stabilize itself using the engine and the insert/release gas to the balloon mechanics. If it was possible, the piloting tool could use hydrogen and kerosene/moonshine (if the pilot had chosen them) to stabilize the ship sooner, and the stabilizer would do damage to the balloon and the engines as long as the ship is still moving. After the ship has stopped moving, the downside of the stabilizer is that you effectively cannot move any more.

Target audience: Sniper ships and other ships that benefit from relocating and then trying to stabilize the ship asap. This would add versatility to ship/pilot builds if it was considered powerful enough.

Pros: There isn't a piloting tool like this in the game currently. This would be a viable and hopefully not too good piloting tool for long range builds.

Cons: I'm not sure if the idea itself is enough to warrant picking it over a combo such as claw/kerosene or moonshine/hydro or tar.

Potential modifications: Maybe there could be an added bonus, such as the balloon and guns taking 25% decreased damage from enemy fire to make this a "sniper" or a "turret" tool? Remember that the stabilizer tries to stabilize the ship and combat any momentum - you couldn't effectively start or keep moving the ship with this buff on. The ship (hull+hull armor) would go down just as fast as before, but you would be a stronger disabler and supporter in long range battles due to added durability to guns and the balloon.


Any comments?

3

The Gallery / Guns of Icarus -themed songs

« on: May 02, 2014, 05:38:45 am »

Hey,

quickly skimmed through the first few dozen threads and some pages and didn't see a thread dedicated to Guns of Icarus songs (I did notice the Cello thread, don't worry). I thought it could be fun to either make our own songs or edit existing ones to fit the Guns of Icarus theme.

I'll start. Here's the Irish Rovers' version of  "Drunken Sailor", which has now become "Drunken Swabbie". There are many other versions of the original song, but I believe this one has been going around in the lobbies the most. If I had musical talent, I could sing the new version too, but alas, I'll save your ears.

Oh, and if you like the song itself, do look these guys up on Spotify, Youtube, music stores, whatever. They've got dozens of good songs!

Enjoy!

Video / song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgoczbY99OA

Old and new lyrics side by side:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19676292/GoIO/DrunkenSwabbie.htm

4

Feedback and Suggestions / Suggestion: Tutorial message & tutorial mode improvements

« on: April 08, 2014, 12:21:19 pm »

Hello,

I think both the tutorial mode (where you shoot at target dummies) and the tutorial messages (the ones you can toggle off, that say for instance "Press E to mount the Whirlwind Gatling Gun") could use some improving.

Some things are easier to code, some things are harder to code. Improving existing tutorials should be easy, adding new ones is hard. I will try to compile all suggestions we get in this thread in the OP, so the devs can maybe get some ideas from here. Better tutorials give us all more experienced people to play with, and the newcomers a better introduction to the world of Guns of Icarus Online.

I'll start:

Tutorial message suggestions

• The weapon tutorial texts could say which components the gun is effective against. Example: "Press E to mount the Whirlwind Gatling Gun. This weapon is very effective against ship components and hull armor. <optional>Effective hits are indicated by large hit markers.</optional>
• There could be tutorial messages about the King of the Hill and Crazy King game modes that appear at the start of the match.
• Improved engineering tutorial messages. Explain the difference between a spanner and a mallet, have a tutorial message for repair cooldown, and maybe explain what buffing/spraying a component does.

Tutorial mode suggestions

• It could be a good idea to have you be able to shoot at live ships - stationary, moving, and/or firing - in the tutorial. This may be easier to implement once piloting AI is finished.
• If a player has not finished all tutorials, it could be an idea to add a confirmation box "You have not completed all the tutorials yet. Completing the tutorials helps you understand game mechanics and because of that, improves your chances of winning a live game." that shows up when you click on "Play". This confirmation box could possibly be toggled off from the options, like the tutorial messages.

Go on, add your own!

5

The Lounge / Strange news stories

« on: April 07, 2014, 11:34:54 am »

Hey,

I read a strange news story earlier today from my Facebook feed. It was about how a news site that was supposedly pro-Russian reported a news story about Finland's and Russia's relations; the news site was called "fake", and the news story "nonsense".

The site in question is Finnbay, which advertises itself as an online publication which enjoys anonymity of writers (much like The Economist) and does its best to provide a neutral and factual standpoint. They, of course, weren't too happy about being called a fake site by none other the Finnish-Russian ambassador.

The site has since written two other articles, one of them directly confronting the Finnish-Russian ambassador, asking for an apology, and the other about the integrity of Finnbay.

However, a lot of damage has already been done. A lot of Finnish news sites have talked about the story, and so far I haven't seen practically any of them thoroughly investigate or comment on the site's neutrality. However, as the stories include the ambassador's accusations and sometimes even an expert's analysis on "information war" between Russia and Finland, the overall look is that the news site is regarded as a fake site, and this is reflected in the user comments below these articles.

Furthermore, since there has been a lot of controversy around Russian medias and a lot of western countries, Finland included, sometimes like to think rather highly of themselves when it comes to press freedom and neutrality, Finnbay's retorts seem very targeted, and could in my imagination cause a lot of awkwardness if Finnish government / news agency officials were forced to thoroughly reply to them.




Articles in question from Finnbay:

http://www.finnbay.com/russia-foreign-cabinet-finland-hands-tight-to-cooperate-with-russia/

http://www.finnbay.com/finnbay-pledges-finnish-ambassador-in-russia-to-revise-his-accusations/#prettyPhoto

http://www.finnbay.com/letter-from-finnbay-regarding-its-authority/

An article from the government-funded news agency of Finland, Yle (in English):

http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnbays_english-language_news_reporting_under_scrutiny/7177044



Have you come across such news stories? What do you think of these ones?

6

Gameplay / Concerning Player Retention and Realism

« on: April 05, 2014, 03:16:34 pm »

There's some people here saying more realism is more fun, some saying less realism is more fun, and people talking about how these things relate to player retention. I'll try to chip in. And yeah, I usually end up writing long-winded posts. For those with less time and/or interest, there's a tl;dr in the end. And no, you most definitely don't need to quote the whole post or reply to all points if you want to comment!

Also, if you wish to argue with the tl;dr instead of the actual post, please feel free to. However, it can be a good idea to read the whole post before doing so if you have time.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ    This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to warn you about an incoming wall of text! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Foreword and why I am actually writing this much stuff

I believe one of the biggest questions Muse's staff has been trying to answer is exactly this one; why have there been problems with player retention, what steps and/or other incidents could have caused possible declines and/or increases, and what can we do to remedy the possible problems with player retention?

Now, bear with me here; I'm by no means a seasoned expert on this. However, I am currently majoring in relevant subject(s) (my major is possibly the least clearly defined at our university) - I've studied computer science, marketing, behavioral psychology, corporate and team level cooperation and business administration, for instance. I have also worked for 2 years at a gaming company, though my assignment was more with customer communication and team synergy (although claiming that the latter was an actual responsibility of mine may be stretching it) than product development. I've also played games since I was like 6, much like some others here.  As such, I may be able to provide some more food for thought. I am not trying to derail the thread, although a lot of this post doesn't directly concern realism but player retention. People have been talking about both up to this point, though.

People gaining and losing interest in any game may have also something to do with other gaming titles that have popped up. Are there games similar enough to GoIO that might have an effect on GoIO? To give an example, has Dota 2 caused a change in LoL player retetion, and if so, has the change been brief or consistent? Has the opposite happened? Were there patches that caused a surge from one game to another? Possibly, but investigating questions like takes a lot of time. Personally I haven't seen many games like GoIO, so it might be fair to treat it as more or less a niche.  Despite this, popular titles that pop up will have some gamers spending time on them instead of their old games, even if the games are very different. There have been some GoIO players i know playing a lot of Titanfall recently, for instance.

There are also obviously a lot of other things that can affect a game's "overall popularity", many of which have been discussed in this thread. Basically, even though suggesting possible causation between two different things can sometimes be reasonably accurate, one should be careful when making broad assumptions. And finally, I'm writing this post to give my thoughts on the issue, and in a best case scenario, talk through these posts to you, the others, and maybe even the devs about something that may not have been talked about too much as of late. No, not everyone will like reading a wall of text. That's why there's a tl;dr.

I know there's a lot of people on the internet nowadays that can't be bothered to read much more than a few sentences (and to be fair I have a feeling that there are even people who have skipped the post up to this point and will just scroll to the end after reading this), but I hope I can reach at least a few people regardless of that. I've done my best to keep the post coherent through formatting.

Some reasons why I think some people, especially new players, prefer other games to GoIO

Game features and the learning curve, new players vs vets. Has the lack of matchmaking been detrimental to the game in terms of player retention? In many other online games I've played, I've stood a bigger chance against experienced opponents. In games like Counter-Strike,I can pick up a weapon and one-shot an enemy regardless of his skill. I can get the money to buy a weapon like this in a few minutes, even if my team is losing. Counter-Strike only recently introduced matchmaking and in my eyes has done extremely well so far without it, mainly because of this. Also in DOTA 2, one well placed spell can be either practically or literally the end of an enemy hero, regardless of skill. Not so in Guns of Icarus. I started playing this game with a couple of friends, I'm the only one of the 5 who stayed as an active player. The others still like to play if we get the whole gang going, mainly because there is a very large gap between the expected or required and the actual amount of teamwork that takes place within "pick-up-crews", especially with low level players.

Basically, as a new player, I was essentially completely powerless against people who used teamwork, as I didn't know how the game mechanics worked yet, much less how to utilize our strengths together as a crew or even a team of ships. I could ask people how things work, but this would basically only work in game if there was a helpful player in my crew as I rarely had time to type in match chat, nor did I expect people to reply through it. Novice games balance things out as far as player experience goes, but as there are in my experience very, very rarely experienced people (CAs or teachers) in there, it's "the blind leading the blind" to quote NoWuffo, another forum user and a CA. People are sometimes eager to get into "real matches" partly because of this, partly because there are often very few novice matches around, partly because they want to play with "good people" for one reason or another, and partly because you cannot customize ship loadouts in novice matches.  There may be other factors, but I consider these the most important ones.

Remember that a lot of low level players, especially from non-english-speaking countries, are not only inexperienced with the game but may also have some trouble being efficient teamplayers if they don't understand the communication that takes place in the lobby or in game, or if they cannot get a grasp of basic game mechanics in a relatively short amount of time. Also, getting a grasp of more advanced game mechanics is all but impossible if you can't communicate in or read English. That being said, most people playing this game do speak English, and there are no localization of descriptions, quick voice commands, or even tutorials unlike in most MOBAs, at least not at this time. I hear a Russian translation is on its way, though.

When talking about low level players vs. experienced players and the lack of matchmaking, Thomas actually went into a lot of detail and argued thoroughly on why he thinks his test results and arguments for implementing matchmaking are relevant here, more power to him. On a side note, I stole some of the formatting since I thought it was good. Anyone who is willing to do his best to prove he has an idea or an argument that is not too far-fetched can be a big help in my eyes. I read through the thread, and was not overly surprised at the results, having been on the journey from a newbie to a relatively experienced GoIO player within a few months.

What about the community? Would it have been possible to retain more players with a different kind of community in place? We have the CA system, developers who actively take part in community events and talk to the community, and a lot of friendly people in the community. Do we have our arguments and "bad apples"? Most definitely. Are they vocal enough and sufficiently great in numbers to stain the community? In my opinion, not really. Also, a lot of the issues that cause arguments can be dealt with in a civil manner on the forums. I believe we are in a very good place when it comes to the community on average.

In relation to this, the current lobby system divides people in two. Some people want the games to start quicker, some enjoy the socialization that takes place in lobbies. Muse have likely done everything in their power to both keep the game relatively social and introduce mechanics that keep the game from "dying out" (i.e. matchmaking). How will it turn out? Will we gain or lose more players with future changes? What about the general friendliness or  Time will tell, but these are all issues that are thoroughly discussed not only by the devs but also by the community, also in this very thread.


Comparing teamwork, solo performance, and the learning curve of GoIO to MOBAs, a widely popular genre of games with matchmaking
 
To elaborate on the expected and actual teamwork, I will once again reference MOBAs, which is arguably one of the most wide-spread online gaming genres of our generation. For anyone who isn't familiar with these games or their history and wishes to read an article on it, try this (MOBA, DOTA, ARTS: A brief introduction to gaming's biggest, most impenetrable genre). Having played more MOBA matches than Guns of Icarus matches (some 2500-3000+ vs 1800), I'll try to compare them to a certain degree. Now, know that I've played 1500+ matches of both games/genres, and I know these games cannot be directly compared in many respects. However, as they both are games where you can either play individually or exercise teamwork, and one genre is wildly popular, it can be entertaining to think of the similarities vs. differences. So, as far as some general differences go;

• In a MOBA, a single player has a far bigger chance of making the game go one way or another, especially when talking about inexperienced players. Because of the so-called "snowballing" effect (getting a good start helps you do well later) new players can stumble across this and get a feeling of immense satisfaction as they see their team win more or less "thanks to him". Kills, deaths, and kill assists are all tracked and visible throughout the match.
  • (Unlike the performance chart in GoIO which you can see for a few seconds if you play through the whole match. The performance charts are on top of that individual, so you have no idea how well you did overall, no good way to compare yourself to others. Not to mention you don't get gunner performance reviews as an engineer or vice versa.)
• There is matchmaking in most MOBAs, which makes games start relatively quickly and without much hassle, and which does its best to put experienced people against other experienced people and vice versa. It is possible for the match making system to relatively quickly calibrate your perceived skill, so "natural talents" or other games' veterans don't go through hundreds of "noob-stomps" as they progress through the system, unless they take certain steps to try to ensure that they do. Also, having thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of players doesn't exactly hurt the chances of there being more people with skill level equal to yours. The initial size of the playerbase has often been a concern when talking about matchmaking.
• While there are bots you can play with and against, the AI is activated in non-bot matches in only one instance I am aware of; a player leaving a novice (limited heroes) match in DOTA 2. In other cases, other steps are taken to try to balance the match if one team has a quitter/quitters. If the quitter(s) don't come back, players can even leave the game as they please without receiving a penalty, as the game may become a lot less interesting and fun at that point. Matchmaking stats will be recorded though, to prevent abuse.
• Due to the bigger playerbase, there are also more tournaments, more people streaming the game, more people talking about it, etc. You may think "So what? Yeah they're big." but a thing like this is like free marketing; you can reach millions of people with an expensive advertising campaign and have a lot of them buy the game, but you an also reach millions of people with active streamers and popular ESports events and tournaments, and that can have an effect not completely unlike having a constant, very expensive marketing campaign going on.
• In turn, in my experience bigger communities are on average less friendly. This has not prevented many games from being long-term hits, though. LoL, DOTA, Counter-strike, need I say more?
• Most MOBAs are free to play, which makes it relatively low-risk to try them out as a new player. However, they also usually have large enough player bases and development teams/companies to support the free-to-play model well, and the MOBA genre was already relatively popular and well-established before F2P became a widespread thing.
• While there are progression systems in both MOBAs (such as levels, masteries, runes, etc.) and in Guns of Icarus (class levels through achievements), the Guns of Icarus progression system could (and has) been improved a bit. A sense of progression is usually a pretty good incentive for players to keep on playing. A lot of new people still ask "how do I level up" in the game, too. Maybe you could have a small text "Number of achievements required to level up your class: x" in the performance sheet?

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ    This is Alarma, the OWB - Official Warning Butterfly. She is here to tell you that the wall of text she warned you about will continue! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

7

Gameplay / A bug or intentional? Echidna Light Flak Cannon!

« on: April 01, 2014, 02:44:51 pm »

Hey there,

I noticed a strange kill earlier today when playing around with the light flak against a friend of mine, and tried to reproduce it in sandbox with the same friend. After a while and destroying my friend's heavy engine and aiming at it with the light flak, we got it. The results were.. surprising. Whoever is behind this, this is awesome

Posting a video since it might be kinda hard to stumble upon this, just in case it's a bug and going to be fixed soon! I know the light flak wasn't exactly the best weapon after the nerf but.. damn..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oA9RhWHBT0

(Description: Greased rounds and Lochnagar shot with the Light Flak.. something surprising has come up. Video length 1:50.)

8

Gameplay / 1.3.5 flamer weirdness explained in 15 minutes

« on: March 31, 2014, 10:27:31 am »

...or so I hope. I know it is an ambitious goal, but hopefully these videos will help clear up at least some of the confusion as to why and how the flamer isn't working as it should. It will be fixed in the next patch, though.


Here's the first video. Free cake included!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RJ61ZFTOYc

Second video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFFXwSLcqSE

This video is a little longer, since there are tests on the hull and engine destroying capabilities of the flamer with different ammo types. There are quick links to each of the tests and for the conclusion during the first 20 seconds if you don't want to watch the whole thing.

In short; flamer particles travel through components, there are 2 separate hull hitboxes, and greased rounds are superior to heavy clip in terms of pure dps (and due to rof/clip size, very likely also in terms of fires started).

9

Gameplay / GoIO Q&A and Announcements from Friday dev chat

« on: March 28, 2014, 10:16:09 pm »

Hey there everyone! As some of you may know, the developers hold weekly Twitch sessions every Friday at 3 pm EST (9 pm CET., search online for a time zone converter to find out your local time) in which you can talk to them about game mechanics, plans for the future, harpoons, boarding, sky whales, and whether they prefer boxers or briefs. No, but seriously, you can ask them pretty much anything - there are also some.. less game related questions towards the end.

This is a reincarnation of the first thread that has been unstickied, as the first thread had too few placeholders. In this thread, the actual discussion will take place from the 2nd page. Here is a link to the original thread, in case someone is interested.

You can see the Twitch stream at http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus - you can open the page in the background on Friday and it will automatically start playing when the stream comes online. The chat on the right side is used for talking to the devs - you need a Twitch account to send messages.

You can also view the past dev chats from the video archive at http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus/profile/pastBroadcasts - and from now on, I'll do my best to keep this forum thread updated with most relevant announcements and answers from the developers.

Let's get started on last week's chat, March 21st. The first announcement is the saddest, but also the most important one.


Announcement: A valued member of the community, TimmyB, has recently passed away due to brain cancer. There is a tournament coming up in his honor, and people are encouraged to donate to the American Cancer Society in his name. https://donate.cancer.org/index?campaign=legacy&dn=mem&fn=Timothy&ln=Blumer

Announcement: After PAX there will be a significant update. UI changes, a new header, a new community - this is all something that should be coming in April. Nice stuff incoming.

Question: How will player performance be measured in matchmaking?
Answer: Player performance will be measured with Glicko 2, a well-known and often used system. If a player is up against a highly rated player, likelihood of loss is increased, so the points he loses and his opponent gains are low. However, if the lower ranked player wins, the opposite happens. Furthermore, as there was discussion on how Glicko 2's win/loss based functionality works in team games, the devs assured that there are several balance factors that can be adjusted that have to do with point distribution.

Question: How does matchmaking work with ratings? Are people with similar ratings put together, will it try to balance the average team ratings, or are the ratings ignored when formung matches?
Answer: So far the matchmaking tests have not included any ratings functionality. Only the core functions and mechanics have been tested. The balancing functionality will be added later.

Question: There was talk about a child's play charity tournament, and how people have reacted negatively towards it.
Answer: The devs have worked together with Child's Play, but haven't signed up for the tournament process yet. There may be problems on their end.

Question: What does awkm do?
Answer: awkm is the systems and combat game designer and is mainly responsible with how the in game mechanics such as weapon functionality work. He will also be the person you can flame (pun intended) if flamers go from being broken in a bad way to being broken in an even worse way.

Question: Can we expect some weapons with unique mechanics like temporary engine disabling?
Answer: No, probably not - at least in the near future.

Question: The UI in the dev app has problems. What gives?
Answer: The UI was unfinished. We kind of broke it. It wasn't the focus of testing though, this is not going to be its end state.

Question: The harpoon. (It doesn't work properly)
Answer: A harpoon fix has been designed. It is a matter of implementation.

Question: There are problems with clouds and the functionality of captain's spot.
Answer: Clouds are tricky. Their hitboxes don't perfectly match with the graphics, and it's hard to fix. When the grey fog rolls in, it means you're in the cloud proper. We will look into this.

Question: People can join the ship as a 2nd gunner or a 2nd pilot which causes problems. Is there a fix incoming?
Answer: Matchmaking will fix this.

Question: Apparently there were 3 tiers of guns before: light, medium and heavy. The current weapons with "heavy" in their names are considered "medium" by some, including the GoIO wiki. Any plans on bringing the actual heavy weapons back?
Answer: Heavy weapons won't appear in skirmish. They would have been the size of a ship, soooo...

Question: Could you improve the social lists so you could flag people or add comments, or organize the lists somehow?
Answer: There will at least be functionality to make finding your clan easier, possibly also other improvements, in the future.

Question: Kitty decals for ship balloons!
Answer: Ship cosmetic customization is on its way!

Bonus information: Matt's favorite screwup in Guns of Icarus was the day they accidentally removed global chat.

Alright, that concludes the dev chat for 21st March! We'll be back next week, remember to tune in if you have time!


Hey there, time for the Q&A and announcements from this Friday's (March 28th) dev chat. A lot of questions this time!

Announcement: It can be a good idea to ask questions that were already answered before, and it definitely isn't frowned upon. Especially now that we have this thread. However, please avoid asking questions already posted here. Unless, maybe, they're about sky whales.

Announcement: Saturday, April 5th is probably the next date for testing matchmaking. Those of you who participated in the last test, there were problems. There have been a lot of improvements and fixes. It is awesome now.

Announcement: Please send bugs to feedback@musegames.com !

Question: Skywhales!
Answer: We put it in the last patch man! You gotta look closer man~. There is a skywhale constantly behind your character. Unfortunately, when you turn, it will still be behind you..

Question: Boarding.
Answer: No. (Refer to the FAQ)

Question: Could there be a button on the UI to direct people to the forums?
Answer: Yes, it's coming in the new UI, probably after PAX. We will also have links in the footer, etc. Modern UI design!

Question: ETA on the harpoon fix?
Answer: As soon as possible. However, the harpoon needs to make a comeback. When it makes a comeback, it's gonna be stupidly awesome.

Question: Harpoon mouseover text says it deals massive damage to hulls.
Answer: I (awkm) will fix that.

Question: How is the clan in-game system coming along?
Answer: It's coming along really well. A lot of the server side functionality exists, we are finalizing the UI and the user flow. We try to make it part of your social profile, and the latest test version I (awkm) saw looks really good. You can also chat with your clanmates with the new clan functionality. You will be able to see a lit of available clans, and click to apply to them. Recruiters can invite people to the clan, etc. For all the current clans, we will try to make sure that no clan tags get stolen with the new clan system.

Question: Are clans going to get voice or text chat?
Answer: Just text chat. With large clans, voice chat for everyone would not be a good idea.

Question: Any more details on the clan system? Maybe a way to advertise the clan in game?
Answer: If you are a good clan, you can get commendations (thumbs up) from players. There will also be leaderboards in the game. Basically, you win a lot of competitive games? You're on top of the leaderboard, and people will be able to apply to the clans through leaderboards. We will keep an eye on potential thumbs up abuse. There will not be an option to upload a clan logo - nor a ship decal - for various reasons. There will be an option to put links to teamspeak, clan pages, rules, etc. in the clan information page though. Let us know if you have more ideas.

Question: Will there be prerequisites to make a clan?
Answer: No. However, if you do not get five players to join the clan within five days, the clan will dissolve.

Question: How do you plan on contacting current clans that may not be active?
Answer: Probably by E-mail. We have peoples' E-mail addresses due to the registration system. We will also try to find the members manually if needed. We will do everything we can to ensure everyone gets their clan. Also, if the clan leader or the whole clan goes AWOL, we will probably uphold the leader's status or hold the clan in the database for an unspecified amount of days, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Question: Can you be in multiple clans?
Answer: No. It would make things confusing.

Question: Is there any way that Muse could ever make or moderate a subreddit?
Answer: There is already a subreddit, but it is not actively moderated by Muse. Awkm may have moderator privileges on it. It is currently not a high priority and it can be difficult to keep track of all places where our players post, but we may look into it in the future if needed.

Comment: Thanks for handling the steam comments well, especially negative ones. Too many devs are trying to censor them nowadays.
Answer: Yeah, we've seen that happen real time. Yeah, it's strange that there are developers that censor their customers' opinions. We accept and embrace criticism, and communicating even with the trolls can actually be good PR.

Question: Any word on how ship customization is coming?
Answer: Ship customization should be coming after PAX. For ship customization, you will get a figurehead to choose from, ship themes, etc. The royal and militant themes are currently being worked on. A lot of different decals are being worked on.

Question: Can you fix the weird lag issues with "ghost projectiles" and warping around the ship, or not being able to repair/buff components?
Answer: E-mail us with information. feedback@musegames.com

Question: Can we get the option to choose a different ship name depending on the layout, and possibly different costumes for different engineering/gunner/pilot loadouts?
Answer: That is a good idea. We will definitely take a look at it.

Question: What is on the ideas board? Can you share a picture of it?
Answer: There's a LOT of stuff there. It would take ages to tell you everything. No pictures, sorry! Examples: Adding iron sights for the zoom function of every gun, make chat names hyperlink-style, crew composition on hud.

Question: Balance. Is it a balance issue if some layouts (gat+mortar etc.) get used very often? Will the balance patches keep rolling in at the same pace?
Answer: Yes, it's definitely a balance issue. When it comes to usage percentages, they do not always mean that one gun/setup is clearly superior. We are trying to bring the light flak back in the game for instance. The balance changes will be slowing down, because there were a lot more balance issues in the beginning which were hard to test because there weren't enough players to test the numbers with. Today, there are a lot of different viable builds, and there are only a couple of "overused" builds. Viability is our goal. We're still working on gunner/engineer balance and such though.

Question: The opening title of the GoIO title is low quality.
Answer: It is already on the ideas board!

Question: Are we ever going to get those new ammo types that were in the dev app?
Answer: They are technically still there. We will re-activate them in the dev app at some point. We are trying to make the gunner more viable. Special, situational ammo types could help this.

Question: Will there be an option to control the brightness in game? Clouds and flares are exceptionally annoying.
Answer: It's complicated because of how our lightning system works. We are definitely going to take a look at it, and the spot outlines definitely need some work, regardless of what happens with the lightning system.

Question: Ladders, sometimes people get stuck. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We've looked at ladders on several occasions, and we will do it again. Send in reports and evidence of the bugs if you can. Latency may be to blame in some cases, that would be harder to fix.

Question: Can we change the color of our in-game hud, such as crosshairs and stuff?
Answer: That's on the ideas board already.

Question: Some of the collision boxes in game exceed the actual collision boxes in game when walking around guns. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We will take a look at it. It should be on the ideas board.

Question: Will we get dark maps, where we could use flares to see stuff?
Answer: We are getting towards that in co-op etc. It's not night time yet, but there will definitely be different lightning designs.

Question: Can the rangefinder be useful some day? Maybe it could highlight the components your gun is effective against?
Answer: An interesting idea. It should currently do what it's supposed to do. If you want to give feedback on what you would like it to do, feel free to share your ideas!

Question: A map that takes place in a lightning storm?
Answer: Lightning actually got shown off during some of the dev games. The audio for it will be worked on later this week, and lightning is already in co-op.

Question: A mermaid or a fairy figure head?
Answer: I cannot comment on any on that. We will be suprised together.

Dev comment: On co-op/adventure mode (re-check stream!): Two to three weeks ago, playing the co-op test build was painful. It's gotten a lot better. Right now, specifically we're trying to fine-tune the difficulty on certain things, especially considering there will be first-timers trying it out at PAX. Testing takes time since we need to play the same level over and over and over again.

Question: For the end of game information, can there be two performance sheets, one for engineering, one for gunning?
Answer: We're slowly starting to take a look at the end game screen after/along with matchmaking. We'll need to rework a lot of stuff. We have plans!

Question: Are you guys planning on promoting the sky league somehow?
Answer: We did some steam announcements and such before. We will definitely be talking about it on the Facebook page and such if we get to join the Sky League tomorrow on Saturday.

Question: Is there an easy way to access patch notes?
Answer: In the forums under News and Announcements (on the child board called Release Notes), there's a stack of patch notes.

Question: Any chance of a windowed full screen option?
Answer: I can't comment. I don't know.

Question: Could we as players be able to vote to increased or decrease the current lobby size if needed?
Answer: We're trying to roll out matchmaking, so there will be a timer until the match starts in the lobby, players will be able to vote to extend the timer to a certain extent, the match won't start if you don't have all captains when it reaches zero, etc.

Question: If you could have any ship or gun in the game what would it be? You don't have to care about balance.
awkm: It's sort of already in there. Not in the dev app though. We fixed the flamethrower. If you do the math, the flamethrower will be insane. It is just.. unbelievably crazy right now. It is awesome. It is exactly what the math says it should be. I like that a lot. Unfortunately I will have to change it. That makes me sad.
Bubbles: I would like a tesla gun. We also had a beam cannon, the "god lamp", which was really satisfying as you could just carve up a ship.
Keyvias: Red Alert 2, the Soviet flak guns that just fire in the air. Long range, balloon shredding craziness.
awkm: I just want an airstrike button.
Bubbles again: It's not really a gun, but a skill; the kamikaze skill. I activate the skill, I cannot turn it off, and I have 5 or 10 seconds to charge into enemy territory, then I will explode. If I hit a ship, it would do massive damage.

Question: Any ideas for making the engineer's job more complex? It seems their job is relatively simple compared to the pilots' and gunners' jobs. There is currently no way to separate a good engineer from a great engineer.
Answer: This might be a problem with healer classes in general. What is your playstyle as an engineer? How can we add preventative engineering mechanics, aside from chem spray? We currently only have reactive engineering regarding hull damage, so we could try to add preventative to that. In the first prototype we tested, there were a lot more status effects. It was really, really hard to play. We needed to simplify a lot of things, since it was really hard to keep up with what was happening on the ship. Currently, a good engineer mainly needs to prioritize, and evaluating that is hard.

Dev comment: Aprils fools idea: We will put in a costume called ghost, and people will have to find a way to activate it.

Question: Will there ever be changes to the squid's movement system? Now it drives like a tank, which makes it hard to circle around the enemies at high speed.
Answer: Strange, since I (awkm) seem to be able to circle around enemies. It is tank like since you are in the air - there is drift. Think about lowering the throttle, even putting it in reverse, for quick turns. If you go full throttle, you will steer like a tank, this is intended.

Question: In Wilson's notes, the reload speeds are very strange.
Answer: Strange. There have been strange things with Wilson's notes, we will definitely add it to the bugs list.

Question: Rough sales figures of Guns of Icarus online?
Answer: We are doing reasonably well. 333,000 copies sold.

Question: Can we expect a third paint slot for costumes, maybe something for pants? What about goggles?
Answer: Goggles has been talked about and it is being looked into. Costumes? Not so sure.

Question: Will we ever get a "healing" gun?
Answer: There was an idea of a "repair arm", but how would you dock next to a friendly ship, how would it work? We really did not want a "healing beam".

Question: Carronade AoE - is it working? Do burst rounds affect carronades?
Answer: We will try to fix it. If Watchmaker says it's not affected, it's not affected. (i.e. no AoE) The animation of the gatling is irrelevant, the raycast weapons function irrelevant of projectile animations.

Question: What is next for Muse?
Answer: We have coop going, and that's really exciting. Every once in a while, we will take a break from Guns of Icarus Online. We will sometimes work on hamsters. (Hamsterdam!)

Suggestion: There should be a GoIO mmo.
Answer: This will -kind of- be the idea of the adventure mode.

<continues in the next post>

10

Gameplay / GoIO Q&A and Announcements from Friday dev chats (OUTDATED)

« on: March 27, 2014, 02:04:51 pm »

Hey there everyone! As some of you may know, the developers hold weekly Twitch sessions every Friday at 3 pm EST (9 pm CET., search online for a time zone converter to find out your local time) in which you can talk to them about game mechanics, plans for the future, harpoons, boarding, sky whales, and whether they prefer boxers or briefs. No, but seriously, you can ask them pretty much anything - there are also some.. less game related questions towards the end.

You can see the Twitch stream at http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus - you can open the page in the background on Friday and it will automatically start playing when the stream comes online. The chat on the right side is used for talking to the devs - you need a Twitch account to send messages.

You can also view the past dev chats from the video archive at http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus/profile/pastBroadcasts - and from now on, I'll do my best to keep this forum thread updated with most relevant announcements and answers from the developers.

Let's get started on last week's chat. The first announcement is the saddest, but also the most important one.


Announcement: A valued member of the community, TimmyB, has recently passed away due to brain cancer. There is a tournament coming up in his honor, and people are encouraged to donate to the American Cancer Society in his name. https://donate.cancer.org/index?campaign=legacy&dn=mem&fn=Timothy&ln=Blumer

Announcement: After PAX there will be a significant update. UI changes, a new header, a new community - this is all something that should be coming in April. Nice stuff incoming.

Question: How will player performance be measured in matchmaking?
Answer: Player performance will be measured with Glicko 2, a well-known and often used system. If a player is up against a highly rated player, likelihood of loss is increased, so the points he loses and his opponent gains are low. However, if the lower ranked player wins, the opposite happens. Furthermore, as there was discussion on how Glicko 2's win/loss based functionality works in team games, the devs assured that there are several balance factors that can be adjusted that have to do with point distribution.

Question: How does matchmaking work with ratings? Are people with similar ratings put together, will it try to balance the average team ratings, or are the ratings ignored when formung matches?
Answer: So far the matchmaking tests have not included any ratings functionality. Only the core functions and mechanics have been tested. The balancing functionality will be added later.

Question: There was talk about a child's play charity tournament, and how people have reacted negatively towards it.
Answer: The devs have worked together with Child's Play, but haven't signed up for the tournament process yet. There may be problems on their end.

Question: What does awkm do?
Answer: awkm is the systems and combat game designer and is mainly responsible with how the in game mechanics such as weapon functionality work. He will also be the person you can flame (pun intended) if flamers go from being broken in a bad way to being broken in an even worse way.

Question: Can we expect some weapons with unique mechanics like temporary engine disabling?
Answer: No, probably not - at least in the near future.

Question: The UI in the dev app has problems. What gives?
Answer: The UI was unfinished. We kind of broke it. It wasn't the focus of testing though, this is not going to be its end state.

Question: The harpoon. (It doesn't work properly)
Answer: A harpoon fix has been designed. It is a matter of implementation.

Question: There are problems with clouds and the functionality of captain's spot.
Answer: Clouds are tricky. Their hitboxes don't perfectly match with the graphics, and it's hard to fix. When the grey fog rolls in, it means you're in the cloud proper. We will look into this.

Question: People can join the ship as a 2nd gunner or a 2nd pilot which causes problems. Is there a fix incoming?
Answer: Matchmaking will fix this.

Question: Apparently there were 3 tiers of guns before: light, medium and heavy. The current weapons with "heavy" in their names are considered "medium" by some, including the GoIO wiki. Any plans on bringing the actual heavy weapons back?
Answer: Heavy weapons won't appear in skirmish. They would have been the size of a ship, soooo...

Question: Could you improve the social lists so you could flag people or add comments, or organize the lists somehow?
Answer: There will at least be functionality to make finding your clan easier, possibly also other improvements, in the future.

Question: Kitty decals for ship balloons!
Answer: Ship cosmetic customization is on its way!

Bonus information: Matt's favorite screwup in Guns of Icarus was the day they accidentally removed global chat.

Alright, that concludes the dev chat for 21th March! We'll be back next week, remember to tune in if you have time!


Hey there, time for the Q&A and announcements from this Friday's (March 28th) dev chat. A lot of questions this time!

Announcement: It can be a good idea to ask questions that were already answered before, and it definitely isn't frowned upon. Especially now that we have this thread. However, please avoid asking questions already posted here. Unless, maybe, they're about sky whales.

Announcement: Saturday, April 5th is probably the next date for testing matchmaking. Those of you who participated in the last test, there were problems. There have been a lot of improvements and fixes. It is awesome now.

Announcement: Please send bugs to feedback@musegames.com !

Question: Skywhales!
Answer: We put it in the last patch man! You gotta look closer man~. There is a skywhale constantly behind your character. Unfortunately, when you turn, it will still be behind you..

Question: Boarding.
Answer: No. (Refer to the FAQ)

Question: Could there be a button on the UI to direct people to the forums?
Answer: Yes, it's coming in the new UI, probably after PAX. We will also have links in the footer, etc. Modern UI design!

Question: ETA on the harpoon fix?
Answer: As soon as possible. However, the harpoon needs to make a comeback. When it makes a comeback, it's gonna be stupidly awesome.

Question: Harpoon mouseover text says it deals massive damage to hulls.
Answer: I (awkm) will fix that.

Question: How is the clan in-game system coming along?
Answer: It's coming along really well. A lot of the server side functionality exists, we are finalizing the UI and the user flow. We try to make it part of your social profile, and the latest test version I (awkm) saw looks really good. You can also chat with your clanmates with the new clan functionality. You will be able to see a lit of available clans, and click to apply to them. Recruiters can invite people to the clan, etc. For all the current clans, we will try to make sure that no clan tags get stolen with the new clan system.

Question: Are clans going to get voice or text chat?
Answer: Just text chat. With large clans, voice chat for everyone would not be a good idea.

Question: Any more details on the clan system? Maybe a way to advertise the clan in game?
Answer: If you are a good clan, you can get commendations (thumbs up) from players. There will also be leaderboards in the game. Basically, you win a lot of competitive games? You're on top of the leaderboard, and people will be able to apply to the clans through leaderboards. We will keep an eye on potential thumbs up abuse. There will not be an option to upload a clan logo - nor a ship decal - for various reasons. There will be an option to put links to teamspeak, clan pages, rules, etc. in the clan information page though. Let us know if you have more ideas.

Question: Will there be prerequisites to make a clan?
Answer: No. However, if you do not get five players to join the clan within five days, the clan will dissolve.

Question: How do you plan on contacting current clans that may not be active?
Answer: Probably by E-mail. We have peoples' E-mail addresses due to the registration system. We will also try to find the members manually if needed. We will do everything we can to ensure everyone gets their clan. Also, if the clan leader or the whole clan goes AWOL, we will probably uphold the leader's status or hold the clan in the database for an unspecified amount of days, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Question: Can you be in multiple clans?
Answer: No. It would make things confusing.

Question: Is there any way that Muse could ever make or moderate a subreddit?
Answer: There is already a subreddit, but it is not actively moderated by Muse. Awkm may have moderator privileges on it. It is currently not a high priority and it can be difficult to keep track of all places where our players post, but we may look into it in the future if needed.

Comment: Thanks for handling the steam comments well, especially negative ones. Too many devs are trying to censor them nowadays.
Answer: Yeah, we've seen that happen real time. Yeah, it's strange that there are developers that censor their customers' opinions. We accept and embrace criticism, and communicating even with the trolls can actually be good PR.

Question: Any word on how ship customization is coming?
Answer: Ship customization should be coming after PAX. For ship customization, you will get a figurehead to choose from, ship themes, etc. The royal and militant themes are currently being worked on. A lot of different decals are being worked on.

Question: Can you fix the weird lag issues with "ghost projectiles" and warping around the ship, or not being able to repair/buff components?
Answer: E-mail us with information. feedback@musegames.com

Question: Can we get the option to choose a different ship name depending on the layout, and possibly different costumes for different engineering/gunner/pilot loadouts?
Answer: That is a good idea. We will definitely take a look at it.

Question: What is on the ideas board? Can you share a picture of it?
Answer: There's a LOT of stuff there. It would take ages to tell you everything. No pictures, sorry! Examples: Adding iron sights for the zoom function of every gun, make chat names hyperlink-style, crew composition on hud.

Question: Balance. Is it a balance issue if some layouts (gat+mortar etc.) get used very often? Will the balance patches keep rolling in at the same pace?
Answer: Yes, it's definitely a balance issue. When it comes to usage percentages, they do not always mean that one gun/setup is clearly superior. We are trying to bring the light flak back in the game for instance. The balance changes will be slowing down, because there were a lot more balance issues in the beginning which were hard to test because there weren't enough players to test the numbers with. Today, there are a lot of different viable builds, and there are only a couple of "overused" builds. Viability is our goal. We're still working on gunner/engineer balance and such though.

Question: The opening title of the GoIO title is low quality.
Answer: It is already on the ideas board!

Question: Are we ever going to get those new ammo types that were in the dev app?
Answer: They are technically still there. We will re-activate them in the dev app at some point. We are trying to make the gunner more viable. Special, situational ammo types could help this.

Question: Will there be an option to control the brightness in game? Clouds and flares are exceptionally annoying.
Answer: It's complicated because of how our lightning system works. We are definitely going to take a look at it, and the spot outlines definitely need some work, regardless of what happens with the lightning system.

Question: Ladders, sometimes people get stuck. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We've looked at ladders on several occasions, and we will do it again. Send in reports and evidence of the bugs if you can. Latency may be to blame in some cases, that would be harder to fix.

Question: Can we change the color of our in-game hud, such as crosshairs and stuff?
Answer: That's on the ideas board already.

Question: Some of the collision boxes in game exceed the actual collision boxes in game when walking around guns. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We will take a look at it. It should be on the ideas board.

Question: Will we get dark maps, where we could use flares to see stuff?
Answer: We are getting towards that in co-op etc. It's not night time yet, but there will definitely be different lightning designs.

Question: Can the rangefinder be useful some day? Maybe it could highlight the components your gun is effective against?
Answer: An interesting idea. It should currently do what it's supposed to do. If you want to give feedback on what you would like it to do, feel free to share your ideas!

Question: A map that takes place in a lightning storm?
Answer: Lightning actually got shown off during some of the dev games. The audio for it will be worked on later this week, and lightning is already in co-op.

Question: A mermaid or a fairy figure head?
Answer: I cannot comment on any on that. We will be suprised together.

Dev comment: On co-op/adventure mode (re-check stream!): Two to three weeks ago, playing the co-op test build was painful. It's gotten a lot better. Right now, specifically we're trying to fine-tune the difficulty on certain things, especially considering there will be first-timers trying it out at PAX. Testing takes time since we need to play the same level over and over and over again.

Question: For the end of game information, can there be two performance sheets, one for engineering, one for gunning?
Answer: We're slowly starting to take a look at the end game screen after/along with matchmaking. We'll need to rework a lot of stuff. We have plans!

Question: Are you guys planning on promoting the sky league somehow?
Answer: We did some steam announcements and such before. We will definitely be talking about it on the Facebook page and such if we get to join the Sky League tomorrow on Saturday.

Question: Is there an easy way to access patch notes?
Answer: In the forums under News and Announcements (on the child board called Release Notes), there's a stack of patch notes.

Question: Any chance of a windowed full screen option?
Answer: I can't comment. I don't know.

Question: Could we as players be able to vote to increased or decrease the current lobby size if needed?
Answer: We're trying to roll out matchmaking, so there will be a timer until the match starts in the lobby, players will be able to vote to extend the timer to a certain extent, the match won't start if you don't have all captains when it reaches zero, etc.

Question: If you could have any ship or gun in the game what would it be? You don't have to care about balance.
awkm: It's sort of already in there. Not in the dev app though. We fixed the flamethrower. If you do the math, the flamethrower will be insane. It is just.. unbelievably crazy right now. It is awesome. It is exactly what the math says it should be. I like that a lot. Unfortunately I will have to change it. That makes me sad.
Bubbles: I would like a tesla gun. We also had a beam cannon, the "god lamp", which was really satisfying as you could just carve up a ship.
Keyvias: Red Alert 2, the Soviet flak guns that just fire in the air. Long range, balloon shredding craziness.
awkm: I just want an airstrike button.
Bubbles again: It's not really a gun, but a skill; the kamikaze skill. I activate the skill, I cannot turn it off, and I have 5 or 10 seconds to charge into enemy territory, then I will explode. If I hit a ship, it would do massive damage.

Question: Any ideas for making the engineer's job more complex? It seems their job is relatively simple compared to the pilots' and gunners' jobs. There is currently no way to separate a good engineer from a great engineer.
Answer: This might be a problem with healer classes in general. What is your playstyle as an engineer? How can we add preventative engineering mechanics, aside from chem spray? We currently only have reactive engineering regarding hull damage, so we could try to add preventative to that. In the first prototype we tested, there were a lot more status effects. It was really, really hard to play. We needed to simplify a lot of things, since it was really hard to keep up with what was happening on the ship. Currently, a good engineer mainly needs to prioritize, and evaluating that is hard.

Dev comment: Aprils fools idea: We will put in a costume called ghost, and people will have to find a way to activate it.

Question: Will there ever be changes to the squid's movement system? Now it drives like a tank, which makes it hard to circle around the enemies at high speed.
Answer: Strange, since I (awkm) seem to be able to circle around enemies. It is tank like since you are in the air - there is drift. Think about lowering the throttle, even putting it in reverse, for quick turns. If you go full throttle, you will steer like a tank, this is intended.

Question: In Wilson's notes, the reload speeds are very strange.
Answer: Strange. There have been strange things with Wilson's notes, we will definitely add it to the bugs list.

Question: Rough sales figures of Guns of Icarus online?
Answer: We are doing reasonably well. 333,000 copies sold.

Question: Can we expect a third paint slot for costumes, maybe something for pants? What about goggles?
Answer: Goggles has been talked about and it is being looked into. Costumes? Not so sure.

Question: Will we ever get a "healing" gun?
Answer: There was an idea of a "repair arm", but how would you dock next to a friendly ship, how would it work? We really did not want a "healing beam".

Question: Carronade AoE - is it working? Do burst rounds affect carronades?
Answer: We will try to fix it. If Watchmaker says it's not affected, it's not affected. (i.e. no AoE) The animation of the gatling is irrelevant, the raycast weapons function irrelevant of projectile animations.

11

Guides / How to play and win King of the Hill / Crazy King

« on: March 26, 2014, 07:25:27 am »

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This is Navi, the PLB - Pro-Learning Butterfly. She is here to help you out with a guide to King of the Hill! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

No but seriously, these guides are meant to be in-depth guides for both the Crazy King and King of the Hill game modes. Following these instructions - well, at least the simpler ones, and when you get experience, the advanced ones - will increase your chances of winning by a lot compared to just playing the game mode as you would a deathmatch. Actually, playing these game modes as you would play deathmatch only works if you accidentally capture the point (and the enemy does not capture it back) or if you have an ally who focuses on capturing and holding the point. Don't be the guy who gets yelled at for ignoring the capture point(s)!

If you want to comment on these guides, add to them, or correct me, feel free to post! This is my first guide so I can really use the feedback. I will check back here regularly.

There is a TL;DR (Too long; didn't read) version of both basic information guides if you are in a hurry or just don't feel like reading a wall of text.

King of the Hill, basic information:

The game mode is about capturing and holding the point that is in the middle of the map. You can easily locate it by opening your map (M) and finding the little rotating cross (red, white, or blue, depending on who controls it). This is the only thing in this game mode that gets you points - you do not get any points for killing enemies. You need 600 points to win. When you control the capture point, you get one point per second.

You can only capture or neutralize the point if your team is the only team with ships inside the point's capture range. The capture range extends roughly 100m away from the balloon and all the way to the ground below the balloon. This is important; if you are too high above the point, i.e. above the balloon, it doesn't matter how close to the center of the map you are; you will not be able to interact with the point. Capturing - or neutralizing - the point takes 20 seconds in King of the Hill, regardless of how many ships are on the point. If your team is trying to capture the point back from the enemy, it takes in total 40 seconds to do it. If the other team enters the point during the capture/neutralization process, the process will be interrupted but not cancelled, i.e. the little capture icon on the top of the screen that fills or empties as you cap/decap the point will continue from where it was once one of the teams moves off the point. Think of this as a tug of war and you get the general idea.

You can see how many enemy or friendly ships are on the point by looking at the capture icon in the top middle part of the screen. Currently the capture point icon only shows how many defenders are on the point if it is being controlled by one of the teams, or how many ships of the attacking team about to capture a neutral point are on the point. You have to look closely at the little sphere to see if the point is being captured if it is neutral, as you can not see from the number whether the point is being blocked or not. This may sound a little complicated, but you will get the hang of it.

Furthermore, you can see if the point changes states in the top left of the screen - where you can also see the kills, the destroyed components, and the rebuilt components. The possible changes in state that you can see are the following:
1) Contesting. This means the captured point is being contested by the attacking team - not necessarily being neutralized if there are defenders.
2) Capturing. This means that the neutral point is being captured by one of the teams.
2) Blocked. This means that the other team has blocked the attackers' capturing process.
4) Captured. This means that one of the teams has captured the point.
The capture point balloon will switch colors to red, blue, or white when the capture or neutralization process is complete.

Fighting for the point is very important, but you need to pick your battles to ensure you won't be at a disadvantage. If your enemy has a lot of killing power (maybe several gat+mortar pyramidions or something similar), you need to be especially careful when entering the point. Make sure your ally is not dead, or far away from the point. Try to enter the point together so you either have the advantage over the enemy or are at least on equal footing. Sometimes going in 1v2 - or even 1v3 - is a good idea, but this is covered in the advanced part of the guide.

TL;DR:

These are the main points when it comes to basics:
- You don't get any points for kills, only for capturing and holding the point, so don't hunt for kills only.
- You can only capture, block, or neutralize the point if you are close enough to the balloon. The capture "cylinder" is roughly 100 meters to the each side of the capture point balloon and reaches the ground. If you are above the capture point balloon, you cannot neutralize, capture or defend the point.
- You need to be aware of where your teammate and where the enemies are in order to attack and defend the point properly. In addition, you can use the capture point icon that fills and empties as the point is being captured/neutralized on the top of the screen to your advantage, even though it's hard to make out what it is saying at times.

King of the Hill, advanced guide:

Ok, so you think you're ready for the advanced stuff? Beware, these tactics - unlike the ones in the basic information - can actually backfire, but if executed properly, they can give you a major advantage.

First of all, suicide rushing the point. Did you just die, and do you expect your ally to die shortly as well? Your survival instinct may tell you to wait until your ally respawns so you can attack together. However, if you can calculate your odds of reaching the point in time and surviving / being able to disable your enemy until your ally respawns and gets there, you just might be able to block the enemy from neutralizing or even capturing the point.

There are many variables you need to take into account when considering this option. Do you have a durable ship? Do you have a reliable crew, especially a reliable main engineer? Can you disable the enemy guns quickly to stop them from killing you instantly? If the situation calls for it, can you get your crew to quickly switch to tanking mode and do the "spanner dance" around the hull and if needed, have one guy on the balloon? If the answer is yes, well, better brace yourself and tell your crew what's about to happen. Some may be scared (main engineer), others may even question your judgement (anyone, really). But there is always the occasional crew member that goes "Hell yeah! Let's give em hell!" (usually this is the powder monkey).


You need to be prepared for this and quickly tell your crew that they may need to start focusing on repairs instead of shooting. You, as a pilot, can also help repairing stuff. This is especially true on the junker, the pyramidion, and the galleon, and to a lesser extent the spire. These all have easy to reach balloons and/or hulls, and you can help your crew rebuild or repair them as needed. Consider bringing a spanner! The best ship for tanking in a situation like this is the galleon (well, the squid is also really good, but you need 4 people with spanners on the hull for that tactic to work really well). You would be amazed at how long a galleon or a squid lasts under enemy fire if you have 3-4 people whacking spanners and the occasional mallet when a component is rebuilt.

Oh yeah, and forget extinguishers and chem sprays when the hull is going down rapidly. The fire stacks will not be the main problem if the hull goes down in seconds. However, chem spraying the balloon may actually be a good idea if you have the time, if the enemy has reliable fire weapons. This is because balloons take amplified damage from fire.

Okay, so there goes the tanking part. Have fun! Now for the other tactical moves.

Second, luring the enemy off the point. This is pretty simple. You initiate on the enemy, have them spot you (maybe have your gunners fire a few rounds at the enemy from a distance) and hope that they will take the bait and chase you down. Meanwhile, your ally captures the point uncontested or the enemy stops capturing the point because they chase you. You may need to repair things, but you rarely need to go in tanking mode if you keep your distance and just keep shooting at them. If you just go to tanking mode and back off, they may realize what you're trying to do and ignore you, which is less likely if you're trying to kill them. Medium range weapons such as hades and/or flak guns, maybe hwacha or even a lumberjack if you have a good gunner and a good pilot, are all worth considering. All of them do a good job at aggrevating the enemy from afar.

Third, ramming people off the point. If you are almost done capturing a point, but the enemy manages to block it, you can bump them off the point with a well placed ram. Be careful though, since a missed ram might have the opposite effect! If you want to try an even higher risk move, you can try to "reverse-teabag" someone above the point by using hydrogen when you're below them! If your balloon is buffed this is even more effective. However, this only works when the enemy is roughly at the balloon level, since you can't bump others up very much.

Fourth, letting enemy rush to the point in order to get the upper hand. This is a little tricky, and should only be applied if the enemy is not close to capturing the point but you expect them to reach it quickly. You basically wait in the shadows for the enemy to reach the point and go low as they usually do, then attack from behind and/or above and crush them to the ground. This works especially well in Labyrinth but not so well in Desert Scrap, because in Desert Scrap a lot of ships will be spotted as soon as they spawn because of the open areas and daylight. Also, if you want to do this, you should consider a ship with a lot of suppressing/killing power, like a gat/mortar or a carro/flamer pyramidion. If you can engage a ship from behind or/and above with one of these builds, you definitely have the upper hand.

Finally, some tactical info about the maps.
In Labyrinth, the globe in the middle is a very dangerous place to be in. If you can ram the enemy inside the globe or pop their balloon when they are above it, they will have a very hard time fighting back. Yes, they will block the point, but they will likely die quickly since they cannot escape, especially if you can keep their balloon down. Furthermore, ramming people against the globe on the outside works well too, if you time it properly they will not only be pushed back and take damage from the globe but also down.
On Desert Scrap, you can use the sandstorms to your advantage either by placing mines in them or disabling the enemy engines when they are forced to move through the sandstorm.
Furthermore, in both Labyrinth and Desert Scrap, it's recommended to equip kerosene - or if you have good engineers, even moonshine - to reach the point as quickly as possible. In the Labyrinth, you can use hydrogen to rise above the buildings so you can beeline to the point. Just remember to turn it off in time so you can get down in the "capture cylinder" as soon as possible.


Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ This guide was brought to yo by Navi, the PLB - Pro-Learning Butterfly! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

12

General Discussion / Crazy achievements

« on: March 24, 2014, 10:01:00 am »

Hey there,

I've been hearing about some crazy achievements that used to be in the game, like having gunners extinguish fires and so on. I thought it could be fun to come up with some crazy achievements of our own. If you have completed some of these achievements, feel free to tell us! No one tell Bubbles about this thread so they don't actually get implemented though!

Oh, and please no Mr./Mrs. Buzzkills here telling how to abuse the mechanics and get the achievements without effort.

Here goes:

-Destroy 5 ships using lochnagar flamer shots.
-Destroy 10 Galleon hull armor using harpoons. (1/10 here!)
-Destroy 5 ships with flares. (1/5!)

and my personal favorite, a complicated one:

-Special group achievement: For this achievement, your name and character equipment will be randomized and unchangeable, your match count set to 0, your levels set to 1, and your keyboard switched to Japanese layout, making you only able to type in kanji. You will not be able to use voice chat or join Asian lobbies. Together with at least one friend working on the same achievement, enter a level 10+ captain's ship in a lobby, be pilots as the match starting counter begins and ends, and win the match.

The stage is yours

13

Gameplay / Hull buffing effect and increased rebuild time

« on: March 23, 2014, 02:04:32 pm »

Hey there,

buffing or not buffing the hull of a ship sometimes causes arguments. Sometimes the pilot is screaming "don't buff the hull", especially on a squid, sometimes followed by a player (who may or may not be high level) asking "what, why?". The reason, of course, is that buffing a ship's hull not only increases its armor value by 30% but also increases its rebuild time.

Since a lot of players don't know about this mechanic, I've decided to film a little video showing this in action. As the video quite clearly shows how the mechanic is working, this thread can mainly be used to discuss whether or not this is a mechanic that should be in the game for balance purposes, and the thread's primary aim (from my point of view) is to raise awareness since I've met a lot of players, both low and high level, who aren't aware of this mechanic.

Cheers,

Schwerbelastung

http://youtu.be/aG3LIaOo_8Y