"Artemis - Mercury" Role swap.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I don't see this changing much besides it making an artemis required to do a merc's job, while making the merc a further bane by disabling everything in one shot. Good gunners will only need 1 shot to annoyingly disable rows of components.

Sure, art is harder to shoot, but toss lesmok in there for the faster missle, you get 3 rounds instead of 2 from merc, and net more damage than a merc with 3 hits. Then toss in burst at short range and yea, no. That's a terrible thought. You would have to nerf it's turning arc to that of a merc to balance it out.

The only time I liked penetration was when awkm made it so "heavy" components took 2 shots. Otherwise, you just get a dedicated boat disabling everything on anything that doesn't also have the same loadout, and a kill boat, which here would just be 2 or more artemis'.

[Echoez]

I don't see this changing much besides it making an artemis required to do a merc's job, while making the merc a further bane by disabling everything in one shot. Good gunners will only need 1 shot to annoyingly disable rows of components.

Broadsides are easily disabled now that it has two shots, a good gunner can disable a whole broadside in one go if he is good, with the penetration you might do damage somewhere else, but you won't be getting a broadside if you are charging them, if the enemy let you get a good shot on them from any other angle, their fault and should be punished. Dedicating a ship to doing just that will be a massive hit to your DPS. Also the Mercury is already being used as an approaching weapon.

Sure, art is harder to shoot, but toss lesmok in there for the faster missle, you get 3 rounds instead of 2 from merc, and net more damage than a merc with 3 hits. Then toss in burst at short range and yea, no. That's a terrible thought. You would have to nerf it's turning arc to that of a merc to balance it out.

You either didn't read the change log, in which case I'm realy mad at you, or I don't even know..

So, the equation for the total damage the Mercury does on armor with Charged rounds, which is what most people use when armor breaking with it: (75*1.5+300*0.2)*1.3 = 224.25 * 2 = 448.5 total damage with its 2 rounds.

And that is with a range of 3000 meters and an easy to shoot gun.

Now the changed Artemis on Lesmok as you said: (35*1.5+85*0.2) = 69.5 * 3 = 208.5

With Burst rounds: 347.5

(Do keep in mind that the current Mercury with normal ammo deals 345 damage to armor with its 2 rounds)

At 1500 meters with a harder weapon to shoot and need to make more shots count.

So you were saying something? I think this is a pretty fine number for something that fires at these long ranges, despite the arc and it retains a lil' bit disabling power.

The only time I liked penetration was when awkm made it so "heavy" components took 2 shots. Otherwise, you just get a dedicated boat disabling everything on anything that doesn't also have the same loadout, and a kill boat, which here would just be 2 or more artemis'.

Except a single shot Mercury with penetration and no armor piercing is useless against any boat without Heavy guns, and ships with heavy guns are now punished less cause it only has one shot that needs to be landed else you need to wait for a reload, the penetration is there to make up for that a bit. It no longer destroys both armor and components, you can not fully disable a Galleon's broadside in one magazine but you still have a weapon that has a massive role in approaching ships with heavy guns, can potentialy take out multiple engines and is still good at fending off enemy ships with heavy guns.

The only other change I could think of that didn't include penetration is lowering the Piercing further down to 10, basically what a single gatling bullet would do, take out the penetration and leave the 2 shots instead of 1.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Broadsides are easily disabled now that it has two shots, a good gunner can disable a whole broadside in one go if he is good, with the penetration you might do damage somewhere else, but you won't be getting a broadside if you are charging them, if the enemy let you get a good shot on them from any other angle, their fault and should be punished. Dedicating a ship to doing just that will be a massive hit to your DPS. Also the Mercury is already being used as an approaching weapon.

True, and they don't penetrate to the other broadside, also disabling that one as well, with which your idea would accomplish on one shot. If I charged to get in closer, you could take out a full broadside, and potentially a turning engine with one shot. If you have two mercs, well then that's everything except main engine, hull and balloon. Sure, that's not doing much to my hull, but a ship with half hull armor and one gun to shoot is far more useful than one at full health, and no guns at all.

Im not going to bother quoting your math. You assume I prefer charged in my mercs, which I don't. Also, you aren't hitting much of anything (even less so accurately and consistently) with a merc at 3km out and charged rounds.

You also don't account for reload speed which adds more DoT to the artemis.

And even if the math still makes an artemis less effective than current mercs doing the same armor strip job, that isn't my point. You simply make mercs a highly accurate and long range hwacha, and make artemis the new long range armor stripper. I don't get the reasoning behind swapping the roles of two guns when you should just tweak the current guns.

Has the current merc wronged you in some way that facilitates the change? It isn't something that is unbeatable by any stretch.

[Captain Smollett]

So, the equation for the total damage the Mercury does on armor with Charged rounds, which is what most people use when armor breaking with it: (75*1.5+300*0.2)*1.3 = 224.25 * 2 = 448.5 total damage with its 2 rounds.

And that is with a range of 3000 meters and an easy to shoot gun.

Now the changed Artemis on Lesmok as you said: (35*1.5+85*0.2) = 69.5 * 3 = 208.5

With Burst rounds: 347.5

(Do keep in mind that the current Mercury with normal ammo deals 345 damage to armor with its 2 rounds)

At 1500 meters with a harder weapon to shoot and need to make more shots count.

So you were saying something? I think this is a pretty fine number for something that fires at these long ranges, despite the arc and it retains a lil' bit disabling power.

I see you have in fact done the math.  Both of these guns would be incredibly weak.  The Artemis would give you about half the dps of the mercury with almost no disable and the Mercury would be useless with only one shot and virtually no armor damage.  I suppose people might still take a trifecta Artemis but your intentions are obviously to nerf the long game away.

If that's your intention wouldn't it just be easier to change merc range to 1000 M and call it a day.

[Chrinus]

Sooo you're saying it's better to have a long range hwacha that also cripples your armor? I really fail to see the argument here besides exploiting a gun that's exceptional at two roles. I remain unconvinced that keeping a weapon that ruins armor AND components without any real skill required is not something that needs attention and change.

I'm pretty sure the numbers can be tweaked to rebalance the game and see no 'dps issue' considering this capability. Let us sit on the idea that numbers are malleable and the mechanics themselves are what's being discussed here.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Then just make it so engines and heavy guns require 2 merc shots to destroy them? That hurts the galleon counter a bit, but you'll see more goldies.

[Echoez]

Then just make it so engines and heavy guns require 2 merc shots to destroy them? That hurts the galleon counter a bit, but you'll see more goldies.

Well, I don't mind that, you can make the Merc require 2 shots to take out a heavy gun, it would need to do at least 80%+ of the gun's total health as damage to it in order to keep it from being repaired up unless you miss the second one. That was my main concern with making the Merc requiring 2 shots to destroy, the repairs that could potentialy make it so it needs 3, but I see it's doable after looking into it a bit.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Yea awkm did it on the final day of the dev app with merc changes in there. He referred to it as the "double tap."

He still had penetration in there, and the fire rate was crazy fast. It wasn't ideal yet so he scrapped it for the patch.

Anyway, two hits to take out a "heavy" component seems like a fair trade so long as the gun is still damaged after repair. It still lowers the component's effectiveness even if you cant manage the 2nd hit, yet takes out the "luck" shots.

[N-Sunderland]

Am I the only one who finds the merc's disabling perfectly balanced as it is?

[RearAdmiralZill]

Minus merc vs goldfish, I do.

Any long range goldfish will just get it's front gun sniped out by a merc, by which is its only really way to make damage happen. It's something I've seen and felt a lot lately.

[Echoez]

I see you have in fact done the math.  Both of these guns would be incredibly weak.  The Artemis would give you about half the dps of the mercury with almost no disable and the Mercury would be useless with only one shot and virtually no armor damage.  I suppose people might still take a trifecta Artemis but your intentions are obviously to nerf the long game away.

If that's your intention wouldn't it just be easier to change merc range to 1000 M and call it a day.

Come on Smollett, you know that's not true, Artemis would still knock out unattended components in 3 shots, while the Mercury would be still a very good counter to Heavy guns and engines just without the ridiculous piercing as well.

And I think you also know how silly lowering the range of the Mercury to just 1000 meters sounds

What I'm trying to do is reward pin point accuracy with the Mercury more and take out the absolutely ludicrous damage it does to armor, hopefully enabling shorter range ships an easier time in open maps (which are the vast majority in this game) while not completely giving up on a longer ranged armor piercer and it allows for more positioning options cause the Artemis will have a much more limited range.

Does it nerf the long game? Yes and I personaly think that it's a good thing to do that, considering how powerful all the long range guns are and how they slow down the game a lot.


also Zill makes a good point about the Goldfish's gun and the current Merc and let's not forget the Spire falls in the same category.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Spire at least has another light gun to use, which is usually also a merc, so less useless than a goldfish.

Nerfing the long game isn't what we need. Brawling isn't some sick puppy of a thing that cant hold its own. It does however get heavy in terms of the tactics involved over "turn ship" and "shoot that guy" so that's a big underlying factor. Just because games take long doesn't mean its broken. In fact that's a good sign. If long range only battles were short, we'd have a much larger problem. Yea a lot of long range guns are heavy hitting, but you aren't hitting with them consistently at 1.5km. The only one that comes close is merc, which only takes away armor and disables those larger guns, which balances that. If you let yourself get whittled into swiss cheese trying to outrange mercs, that's not a gun issue but one of tactics.

Opinion of course.

[Echoez]

Spire at least has another light gun to use, which is usually also a merc, so less useless than a goldfish.

Nerfing the long game isn't what we need. Brawling isn't some sick puppy of a thing that cant hold its own. It does however get heavy in terms of the tactics involved over "turn ship" and "shoot that guy" so that's a big underlying factor. Just because games take long doesn't mean its broken. In fact that's a good sign. If long range only battles were short, we'd have a much larger problem. Yea a lot of long range guns are heavy hitting, but you aren't hitting with them consistently at 1.5km. The only one that comes close is merc, which only takes away armor and disables those larger guns, which balances that. If you let yourself get whittled into swiss cheese trying to outrange mercs, that's not a gun issue but one of tactics.

Opinion of course.

It is a gun that does too much with little to no downsides. It restricts positioning by a large margin and makes approaching too difficult, plus the only counter to it is to find cover and then hope you get the jump on them, sure, I won't be sitting there trying to out-merc you with my close range loadout, but it is litteraly the only gun that forces enemies to cover unless you have something to overpower the damage it does, then you just hope you get the jump on the enemy before they soften you up considerably with their Merc sides. Doesn't seem like all that many more tactics if you ask me, it just forces a situation in which you either find cover and hope you get a jump, or just get demolished cause usually it's not 1-2 Merc, it's 3+ and they can easily chip away at your permahull. Correct me if I am wrong, of all people I'm willing to be proven wrong on this hopefully.

Even the Lumberjack doesn't force such a situation.. and it is a heavy gun for pete's sake.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Well, in the 3v3 tourny, the Ducks damn near beat Polaris while using mainly brawl ships. Granted, they lost 7-6, but I don't attribute that loss to the mercs.

Doesn't seem like all that many more tactics if you ask me, it just forces a situation in which you either find cover and hope you get a jump, or just get demolished cause usually it's not 1-2 Merc, it's 3+ and they can easily chip away at your permahull.

Our tactic of splitting up and keeping their focus on one ship worked out in the end. The way I think of it, is in fact that the positioning is so important. You want them shooting at the tanky target. You want to give them the lowest profile when you do charge them. You want to be really high or low in comparison to them. The merc's weakness is its arc. You can literally force a merc team out of position if you give them a nice enough target. That's a big tradeoff to me.

If they don't focus a target, they wont do enough to stop the charge. Once you're in short range, all bets are off with the merc.

Charging blindly into a gun-line should never work though, even with mercs.

Even the Lumberjack doesn't force such a situation.. and it is a heavy gun for pete's sake.

A well shot LJ should force a situation. It forces you high to negate the balloon going down, but that is its best arc, so that's potentially worse.

I think we're at a point though where our opinions are firmly entrenched. At least I feel close to that point.

[Echoez]

I'm not saying it can't be countered at all by tactics, I'm saying that you can not deny it is a broken gun, it does destroy components in one shot and pierces through armor as well, of course superior tactics can still overpower it, but it doesn't change the fact that it needs to be looked at.

The LJ can force a situation if well shot, but it can be easily disabled by a well shot Mercury (We all hate Sunderland.. ), while the Mercury can't be as easily disabled. Which is why I think it shouldn't be allowed such power at range.

the reasoning is pretty basic, by making the Mercury a disable-only gun, you now have to choose between piercing and disabling, while right now, you can have both on one gun which you can bring twice, hence why I think a gun that can be abused like this should be tended to, since Gat/Flak is limited in that you have to bring both guns to do the job, well, I think long ranged guns should be bound by the same law.