Topics

1

General Discussion / How would YOU nerf the Mobula?

« on: March 15, 2016, 04:49:54 pm »

Prefacing this by saying that I'm not actually a fan of the nerf hammer approach to game balance. I'd be much more interested in seeing a change to other ships, weapons, tools or mechanics in order to open more creative ways to counter, instead of a straight statistical downgrade to the titular ship.

That being said, such a downgrade wouldn't necessarily be unwelcome given how absolutely, painfully, tear-jerkingly bored I am of losing against and easily winning with the Mobula, especially the infamous Hades-double-art Mobula that I affectionately refer to as "cancermob" as opposed to metamob. I think, at this stage, we are all aware that the OP-ness (hue) of the Mob is really limited to that single build, which dominates competitive and mid-level lobbies alike. Other builds are powerful but simply not as well-rounded. With a low skill floor once the pilot and crew have the very basics of game knowledge down and some rather cheesy benefits making it formidable against the best pilots, the Mobula is just too great a dominating force at present, as the pyra has been in the past.

I guess one notable thing about the proposed nerf that will soon be patched into the game is how it will hamper the Mobula's ability to easily transition between long/mid range weaponry to short-range weaponry once an enemy finally gets around that wall of hades/art fire. I like that at least, but the price is too high. It basically cuts down the build possibilities, filtering all possible interesting combinations down to the boring, monotonous, overused tripe that has made me stop watching competitive almost entirely - unless I am told prior to a match that there are less than two Mobulas.

So, ramble aside, post some ideas just for the sake of conversation. Of the numerous people I have spoken to about the Mobula, no two people have suggested the same changes.

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Tip Box

« on: March 03, 2016, 01:59:06 pm »

With the amount of complaining people do about players not knowing some very basic stuff, I have to ask why these things are not in the tip box?

What we have there currently is a small handful of very basic tips and a bunch of """"""funny"""""" little jokes that were charming for all of two days before I started feeling that they left the tip box completely wasted. Why have it in the first place when it is full of irrelevant stuff? And wouldn't said stuff mean that anything actually beneficial there would be disregarded because people assume it's just full of fluff?

The tip box should be highlighted more, perhaps with loading screen tips as well, using relevant information that actually helps novices.

"Burst ammunition only effects the AoE of weapons with an AoE stat to begin with."
"More damage per shot does not necessarily mean more damage overall."
"Choosing buff hammer limits your ability to repair/rebuild components."
"No matter how good a crew member you are, things will break and you will need the equipment to deal with that."
"The rangefinder was a troll item added to the game to act as a handicap for players by taking away a coveted tool slot."
"Engineers are capable of gunning and gunners are capable of helping with repairs outside of the guns."
"Having more than one gunner on your ship gives you lots of ammunition choices, but there won't be enough guns to make use of all that ammo!"
"A gunner is not always needed on a ship. Some guns only need one ammunition type."
"Check the damage types on weapons before you equip them. Having a ship only able to do one thing may be a handicap to your team."
"Readying up first is not always a good thing. Most of the time, your enemy is planning and deciding loadouts carefully, while you are not doing your homework."
"There is no ammunition that works well on every single gun. Check the ship your pilot is flying to see if you are bringing the right ammunition Captains may suggest a loadout for you to use."
"Mallet is very strong at repairing undestroyed components, spanner is very strong at rebuilding destroyed components and the pipe wrench is average at both. When choosing three tools, think carefully about what you can contribute to the crew."
"Not bringing a fire tool is often fatal. Many guns cause fires and some can stack a very large amount of fires very quickly."

Just a few suggestions off the top of my head. I'm sure we can come up with infinitely more.

Just to clarify, I have seen this thread before, but could not find it. I note that it no longer receives new posts, which irritates me because I see this as quite a prominent issue that was discussed and left unresolved. We know that new players find it so difficult to grasp simple concepts to us, and the tip box might prevent us having to teach the same lessons over and over again. In its current state, all I see is a waste of screen space during matchmaker waits.

3

Feedback and Suggestions / Build Pros and Cons List

« on: February 20, 2016, 12:22:05 pm »

I'm sure you've all seen it, someone who sees any tutorial text and switches to TL;DR mode on it, who picks the guns that sound or look the coolest, who brings ships to the game that can barely do anything, or have a build that can but fly it in such a way that it won't work, simply because they don't know what it is supposed to do.

I have a simple suggestion that might help. When someone selects their loadout, the game should read which guns they have and what damage multipliers they have, then feedback into a pros and cons list. A simple, clear, concise way of telling someone what their ship does. This text could be coloured red and green to ensure it stands out.

An example.

All flak spire.

Pros:
- Extreme killing power once the armour is stripped.

Cons:
- Extremely weak at stripping armour.
- Extremely weak at disabling engines and weapons.
- Extremely weak at disabling balloon.
- Extremely weak at enemy crew disruption.

This would give a very clear readout to the would-be captain that his love for the echidna and typhon come at a very heavy price. Naturally, this kind of system would not be 100% accurate, as people can fly and target things in particular ways to make a singular role ship quite versatile.

Another example:

Goldish: 1. Carronade 2. Banshee 3. Gatling

Pros:
- Extremely strong at disabling balloon.
- Strong at enemy crew disruption.
- Moderate at stripping armour.
- Moderate killing power once armour is stripped.
- Moderate at disabling engines and weapons.

If moderate is listed as yellow, then suddenly you have a better looking mix of yellow and green instead of one green amongst a scary amount of red. All in all, a more effective ship in the eyes of someone programmed to look for simple solutions in what is, at first glance, quite a complicated meta-game.

It may also be possible, with a bit of fine tuning, to calculate potential bi/trifectas and add some kind of multiplier to determine the potential the ship has for different stats. So two gats on either side of a fish would contribute less to the armour stripping score than two gats in slots one and two on a mobula.

Different guns would add to values depending on their dps potential. For example, one banshee might move you up to "relatively weak balloon disable" but three might move you up to "strong balloon disable". Obviously guns don't stack infinitely, as putting three carros on a blenderfish is not really the optimal solution to all your balloon killing needs, but it would provide a nice, simplistic view of what a pilot is making their ship good for and might, if we're lucky, lessen the amount of virtually unusable builds taken by first-timers or I-play-my-way types.

Obviously, this is quite throwaway for more experienced players, but I feel this would still give newer players the feeling of freedom they get from designing their own ship, whilst giving a very basic evaluation of what they have come up with, without the frustration of not understanding why their ship isn't contributing.

Thoughts? Feel free to critique, defecate on or expand on this idea.

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General Discussion / Dumb Pub Stuff

« on: November 24, 2015, 12:23:48 pm »

Thread dedicated to stupid ideas executed in pub servers that either had an amusing result or worked far better than it had any right to. Or ideas for people to try in order to mix up some of the samey grinds you find travelling lobby to lobby.

While casually pubbing with several members of Clan Clan, we wound up in a 4v4 on Sepulcher. Given my reluctance to drop my double gat rammidion and avoid spending time playing lumberjack whack-a-mole from the back of the map, SteamyNoodle opted to take a heatsink flakfish and shadow me, coupling my strip with his flak to kill our four galleon enemies. Each engagement went very quickly, strip, two heatsink flaks into downed hull, a nasty moonshine ram from yours truly, then the final flak crushing the galleon in record time.

Our two allies served as little more than hwacha sponges for us while we singled out enemy after enemy, consistently wiping the team. Between us we had ~10 of the necessary killing blows to end the match, and the only kills by our allies taking more conventional builds were usually cleaning up a ship that was to go down to our fish-pyra combo within thirty seconds anyway.

Fun match, somewhat absurd, works well if you need to compensate for an inebriated and over-aggressive pyramidion ally.

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Q&A / Piloting Consistency

« on: September 22, 2015, 01:21:44 pm »

Going to preface this by saying that even at my best, I've got nothing on most competitive pilots and don't expect to. The biggest dream I have with piloting is to be a substitute for T.Pr if all our pilots are otherwise engaged.

Even so, here we go.

I like to read up on guides and practice my piloting in pub games, because I feel, despite usually having a slight level advantage over other players that play pub and don't engage in vet lobbies/any form of competitive, it's very hit or miss whether I'll be an asset or a dead weight to my team. I feel I contribute most as a squid, but have done my best to avoid specialising too heavily and being pinned to just the one ship. That being said, I find that my piloting on a good day is way, way too far from my piloting on a bad day.

I understand that you can't win them all, and often you'll find yourself just not in the flow of it. Be it poor work with your ally or poor work with your crew, this happens. However, it can't just be coincidence that I can carry as a kill squid vs enemies of equal experience in some games, then proceed to do nothing except fail to support my ally or feed the enemy points in the next. It's incredibly frustrating when I know I can stomp some enemies I'm facing, but proceed to get eaten alive anyway. It's taking away my motivation to do anything except stay safe in my main engi role.

I guess the question that all that waffle is leading up to is: How do you remain as consistent as you can in piloting? Is it just a matter of more experience, or is there any kind of mindset I should adjust to in order to prevent dropping from 900 matches to 15 in terms of ability?

Don't expect this to be a long thread, but any kind of advice would be nice and it might help some people with the same issue.

6

Feedback and Suggestions / Sound Design of Icarus

« on: September 13, 2015, 05:40:18 pm »

So me and Keb had been discussing the immersion of the game and sound design - something I am super into - and we began talking over how every single ship sounds the same despite the enormous differences in their structure. Whilst, yes, the ships use the same models for their engines for the most part, I feel that it'd just give each one a bit more personality if they had a unique aspect to their design.

A galleon sporting a huge, rumbling behemoth of a sound, letting the crew know that they are flying a monster that can devour lesser ships. This is the capitol ship in your skirmish; make it tell everyone that fact.

A squid, with the quad light engines, sound more akin to a four-stroke motorbike, with obviously a bit more beef added, to embody that fast, agile and probably extremely annoying mosquito.

A junker, with engines that backfire and sound tinny and broken, a surefire way to hammer home what it is; flying trash. Plus, the ship's slow as molasses so it'd work well.

The mobula should be quieter, with a smooth, pretty sound to its engines. Remember, the ship was built for a princess!

To top it off, sound would play a larger part in the game. Maps with poor visibility can have you listening out for engines. With this, you'd not just sniff out a nondescript threat by hearing it first, you'd actually know which ship might be about to jump your bones.

Whilst I doubt it would ever be implemented, I thought it'd be a fun discussion to have. Also, add any other additions to sound design you think might add to the immersion of what is already an immersive game.

7

General Discussion / First Times

« on: July 17, 2015, 01:59:42 pm »

Today has been a day of firsts for me.

To expand, it has been my first time using the mine launcher and the lumberjack, both to - varying - degrees of success.

However, I got my first ever lumberjack balloon pop today, and I have to say that the satisfaction was palpable. Seeing that distant spire suddenly begin an unwitting descent was hella satisfying. I genuinely felt like a more versatile player. Three consecutive shots in quick succession. It's probably nothing special to many of you here, but to me, that was a lifetime achievement. I felt happy enough to fly to whatever country that spire's pilot was from and give them a hug for being such a whopping big target.

So I guess this thread is for casting back to those nostalgic early days, and talking about first experiences with different aspects of the game.

How was your first time getting a double gun drop on a galleon with burst artemis? Did you feel like screaming some less eloquent form of "fornicate with oneself" with a big, excrement-eating grin?

What about the first time you ate shit from a galleons broadside? Or the first time you were on the business end of a loch flak? Did your brain take a little while to process just what the hell happened?

Let's talk about our firsts, shall we?

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General Discussion / Dealing with Salt

« on: July 14, 2015, 03:45:43 pm »

So, I still really love this game and, at this stage, I believe I am in it for the long haul. Huzzah! You're stuck with me.

However, I still have something I need to shake as I am worried about excluding myself from the community because of it - that thing is salt.

I can take a loss pretty well, most of the time, especially if it was a good fight and the teams were relatively even. The issue I start to get is when I have a specific thing I can blame the loss on, such as a lousy team mate or crew member. Not in terms of experience, of course, in terms of deliberately not listening or refusing advice that is pretty simple to follow (stop prioritising the wrong repairs/avoid shooting them with a gatling gun when we're trying to tank two ships' worth of incoming fire/stop charging into a meatgrind, etc.) 

It's a terrible display of sportsmanship to start pointing fingers however, unless you're giving constructive criticism, which I try to do in the areas I feel I am somewhat informed about this game. However, letting go of my pride is hard, especially when I know exactly why my loss occurred and it was no fault of my own. I get mad and it's frankly immature of me.

I guess my question is, since you're all human like me (I hope); how do you handle the inevitable rage in a game that relies so heavily on good chemistry between you and other players? I've not slipped up yet, but I don't want to make enemies by resorting to CoD-levels of expletives after those terrible matches.

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Q&A / Mine-laying Ships

« on: June 17, 2015, 06:05:28 am »

So, after rocking sniper loadouts (artemis + merc pyra, art/merc/art mobula) for a while, as well as the occasional game as a carronade fish/metamidion, I decided to try something new.

I rocked a squid on KotH paritan and proceeded to get my world rocked by a munker. Now, while we still won the game, we spent a huge majority of it getting blown into church spires, buildings and rubble. Needless to say, I was pretty salty.

We tried out a mine-laying squid of our own on the same map recently, after seeing just how effective area denial can be, but wound up posing virtually no threat to the metamidion duo opposing us. Not only did we miss with most of our mines, it seemed like the only people hitting our mines was us.

I'm not the highest level, but ain't the worst pilot either (I will admit that I'm not so hot on the squid). I felt like the mines had an AoE trigger that was wrecking us. Is that true?

Also, general tips/tricks for a mine-centric ship build. Which ship to fly? What loadouts for crew/pilot? What other guns are needed to synergise with mine launchers?

And how do I make sure I don't skim mines on the side of the ship where I am blind as pilot? (Specific to squid)

Just help me not be scrub pls.