Balloon Buffing

[Kyren]

A buff to the balloons resilience would be great, similar to the hull. I'm playing my Goldfish with a carronade since the flak nerf, and this would make popping balloons a lot more interesting. Might be a much better solution than just sending both your engineers up there with spanners, and give you a lot more time for countermeasures!

[Helmic]

A buff to the balloons resilience would be great, similar to the hull. I'm playing my Goldfish with a carronade since the flak nerf, and this would make popping balloons a lot more interesting. Might be a much better solution than just sending both your engineers up there with spanners, and give you a lot more time for countermeasures!

It sounds like a good idea, but it's unintuitive.  Buffed engines should move you faster, buffed hull should be tougher, buffed weapons should give you more pew pew, and a buffed balloon should do balloon shit.  Is there another solution that keeps that "common sense" setup while making carronades not such horrible bastards?

[HamsterIV]

It sounds like a good idea, but it's unintuitive.  Buffed engines should move you faster, buffed hull should be tougher, buffed weapons should give you more pew pew, and a buffed balloon should do balloon shit.  Is there another solution that keeps that "common sense" setup while making carronades not such horrible bastards?

That depends on how you view the balloon. I played the original Guns of Icarus. The balloon and rigging were the two components you had to keep up to prevent your untimely demise.  You could ignore the cargo and engines indefinitely if you were focused on survival. I view the hull as the rigging and the balloon as the balloon. Both are required to prevent you from dying.

[Helmic]

It sounds like a good idea, but it's unintuitive.  Buffed engines should move you faster, buffed hull should be tougher, buffed weapons should give you more pew pew, and a buffed balloon should do balloon shit.  Is there another solution that keeps that "common sense" setup while making carronades not such horrible bastards?

That depends on how you view the balloon. I played the original Guns of Icarus. The balloon and rigging were the two components you had to keep up to prevent your untimely demise.  You could ignore the cargo and engines indefinitely if you were focused on survival. I view the hull as the rigging and the balloon as the balloon. Both are required to prevent you from dying.

Yeah, but the hull does nothing other than not die.  The balloon can make you die in the indirect "Captain, why are we descending all of a sudden" sense, it seems sort of odd that its ability to float wouldn't be the one being buffed.  I definitely like the HP idea but I want to hold out a bit longer for something that'll keep the current logic.

[N-Sunderland]

All right, time to bring this topic back.

I still think there's a major problem with the balloon buff. Even when you make a small altitude adjustment with it, it's incredibly easy to overshoot a target. If we look at the other buffs:

There is no downside to a hull buff.
There is no downside to a gun buff.
There is no downside to an engine buff (the extra manoeuvrability is much easier to control than a balloon buff).

As a result of this, the balloon buff is the only buff that can be genuinely detrimental to leave running (apart from a buff on only one of the turnings, but that's irrelevant).


All this is because of how the buff reduces vertical drag, which makes it hard to slow the ship down once it starts rising. Having the buff increase vertical acceleration instead would provide the extra rising/falling speed without being detrimental.


TL;DR: Buff the balloon buff.

[Captain Smollett]

Hmmm, good idea.  I've kind of enjoyed the challenge of trying to learn to deal with the balloon buff mechanics as they stand since they're pretty darn tricky but really useful if used correctly.

Your idea would be just as useful but well, much more useful since it would involve more precision.

Good idea.

[Zenark]

You could make it immune to the negative effects of the pilot's tools. Still get the rise from Hydrogen, same drop as Chute Vent, just no damage to the balloon.

Or perhaps make it so that a damaged balloon still handles like a fully repaired one.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

You could make it immune to the negative effects of the pilot's tools.

Giggidy...*falls over in euphoria*

[Phores]

You could make it immune to the negative effects of the pilot's tools. Still get the rise from Hydrogen, same drop as Chute Vent, just no damage to the balloon.

Or perhaps make it so that a damaged balloon still handles like a fully repaired one.

Good ballance there, only issue I see with it is it requires tools that aren't always used. Could counter it with a heal over time, counters ballon damaging tools whilst still having a use for those without it.

Overall the balloon buff really need some thinking about, as is the time to buff is just too high to have the time for in combat and the duration is too short to throw up pre-combat. It's the only non-gun buff that has to be applied in combat, even a reduced effect with increased duration would be good (and fit more with the general feel of the buff hammer being longer term smaller boosts rather than the pilot being short term high intensity boosts)

[Captain Smollett]

Well, don't forget about the magic of the prebuff. Buffs can be done 90% of the way and finished with one hit when you need them. With a well coordinated crew I can often get a buff in the middle of combat.

And while I continue to play devils advocate, you should have seen the old balloon buff. It was like 20 seconds of buffing for 5 seconds of effect; we've come a long way.

[N-Sunderland]

Agreed. The old balloon buff was the most pointless thing in GoIO history next to the old hwacha.

[James T. Kirk]

Did the old Manticore not have Shatter Damage or something?

[N-Sunderland]

It did, but there were a few things that limited its effectiveness. For example, engine and gun rebuilds used to be considerably shorter.