Author Topic: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE  (Read 272703 times)

Offline awkm

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #165 on: October 30, 2013, 11:57:38 pm »
@Churrosaur

That's only because I increased the muzzle speed on the gat by a crap ton.



If your post does not have any suggestion on how the game can be tweaked for the better given its current changes, then I have to ask you to please redirect your messages to the appropriate board or thread. 

Here are things that I find helpful:

- You have read and understand the aims of this round of changes
- You have played several matches with a particular aim in mind
- You come back and describe your aim, what you experienced, and how that what you would have preferred given the aims of this round's changes.  Exact changes aren't necessary, even a feeling or a type of strategy is fine.  In fact, descriptions of the perfect scenario are better than exact changes.
- You keep an open mind and understand that I am listening to you
- You keep an open mind to your fellow players and are courteous and professional

Keep in mind that your thoughts are valid and I do take everything under consideration.  This is a give and take.  I can't get everything I want because I listen.  You can't get everything you want because well... it's my game :)  But seriously, I do take this very seriously so help me out.  Please.

Offline N-Sunderland

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #166 on: October 31, 2013, 12:01:58 am »
@Zill: The issue I see with the current arming distance is that it allows the gun to be used up close anyways. 150 is really small, and if you load greased it's only 120, allowing it to be brawly. That makes the gun a bit too versatile, seeing as it can also hit from 1000+m out.

Fire stacks on the other hand I'm unsure about. I've always felt that chem spray was a great counter to the Hades, so if chem gets "fixed" (I still prefer it over the extinguisher on my hull, but that's not a discussion for this thread) we could see the fire stacks issue being handled.

Offline Spud Nick

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #167 on: October 31, 2013, 12:04:54 am »
The fact that disable builds are more useful now after this patch is a big step in the right direction. In higher lvl  play disabling was not as important because you could just simply kill your target.

Offline Piemanlives

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #168 on: October 31, 2013, 12:05:22 am »
I'm probably gonna have to stick this in here again, but seriously, for those of you who do not like the changes in this patch, then you should seriously get on board with the Dev App, seriously it's much easier to catch, discuss, and/or change these things while still in development. I also haven't had a chance to play around since the patch came out, I've been rather busy but I'll take a look at it this weekend if I can.

Offline RearAdmiralZill

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #169 on: October 31, 2013, 12:09:17 am »
@Sunder: Yea I can see the merit in the arming time increase. I usually have an engie on a hades and just use vanilla for the "short" engage. Id still want to keep it under that of light flak. And as we saw with the carronade range changes that 50m really does make an impact.

Offline The Djinn

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #170 on: October 31, 2013, 12:19:06 am »
I'm probably gonna have to stick this in here again, but seriously, for those of you who do not like the changes in this patch, then you should seriously get on board with the Dev App, seriously it's much easier to catch, discuss, and/or change these things while still in development.

I'm finding myself quite satisfied with much of this patch and I still got on board with the Dev App, as this eruption of opinion made me want to get a bit more involved.  :)

Anyway...

Opinions from today's gameplay
Mortar still feels fine, even with the severe reductions to clip and range. The new hitboxes are SO much more reliable: it's amazing.

Two major concerns. The first is the Gatling: I like the new shorter range, but I didn't actually feel threatened by the gun. There were a few times today that I feel we really should have had our armor torn to pieces, and ended up just fine. I do think it needs a RoF increase or a damage increase, but I do, after today's experimenting, like the fact that it's strictly a close-range weapon currently.

I'm very concerned, however, by one side effect of the hitbox change. It seems that gun hitboxes are blocking line of sight for marking enemy ships. I found it almost impossible to mark enemy ships from the front gun of the junker, as the larger gun hitbox appeared to be interfering with what appeared to be a clean line of sight. Is this just some glitch on my end, or have others discovered this issue as well? It's really inconvenient, and severely messes up the flow of the game, as I can no longer easily mark a ship between reloads: I actually have to move a decent distance to avoid having the gun hitbox "block" my line of sight even though the target ship is completely visible to me.

Offline Nidh

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #171 on: October 31, 2013, 12:26:50 am »
So I flew a Pyramidion today using double Artemis front and Gat-Mortar side. On approach, I was able to successfully disable a traditional Gat-Mortar Pyramidion and close into range rather easily. From there, setting up a trifecta with the gat-mortar-artemis was difficult, but not impossible, and I had a lot of fun with the challenge. The Artemis was able to keep the enemy ship partially disabled which allowed for my main engineer to quickly take a short break and unleash the mortar as the hull armor went down. Timing and coordination was critical, as well as positioning. It was hard to take down the other Pyramidion, but it was FUN. I felt like this was an actual brawl and not just stomping out a lesser experienced pilot in a matter of seconds. The other Pyra learned to combat this style after a couple rounds, and started using different strategies to which I also had to adapt to, neither of which were cut-and-dry winning strategies, so many possibilities and options were put on the table for the other team. This I feel is an awesome outcome of the new patch.

Offline Lochiel

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #172 on: October 31, 2013, 01:07:42 am »
I found it almost impossible to mark enemy ships from the front gun of the junker, as the larger gun hitbox appeared to be interfering with what appeared to be a clean line of sight.[/color] Is this just some glitch on my end, or have others discovered this issue as well?

It does seem to be worse. I've always had an issue marking ships, even ones that were out of the clouds and in the clear. However, if the hitboxes for weapons and especially the balloon can block LOS for marking then it would probably explain what I've seen. Now that gat tracers are fixed (woot! Go Muse!) I think this is going to be my new pet peeve that drives me crazy.

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #173 on: October 31, 2013, 01:47:24 am »
hey can someone please post the usage and win % of each ship please?  i would love to see the stats on this

Offline Piemanlives

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #174 on: October 31, 2013, 01:53:33 am »
hey can someone please post the usage and win % of each ship please?  i would love to see the stats on this

I don't know anything, but is this an actual stat we can look at?

Offline -Mad Maverick-

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #175 on: October 31, 2013, 02:50:17 am »
hey can someone please post the usage and win % of each ship please?  i would love to see the stats on this

I don't know anything, but is this an actual stat we can look at?

I hope so otherwise what are we basing our decisions of what is "over used" off of?

Offline Echoez

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #176 on: October 31, 2013, 02:56:18 am »
I'm very concerned, however, by one side effect of the hitbox change. It seems that gun hitboxes are blocking line of sight for marking enemy ships. I found it almost impossible to mark enemy ships from the front gun of the junker, as the larger gun hitbox appeared to be interfering with what appeared to be a clean line of sight. Is this just some glitch on my end, or have others discovered this issue as well?

Nope, you're not the only one, I've had major troubles spotting as well due to gun hitboxes being too big, like, Galleon with no cloud cover out in the open and couldn't spot it bad. Isn't there a way to just make your own ship's hitboxes not block your line of sight, or to be blunt your spyglass's "shots" :P

As for the Galting, what I suspected in my first few games was actually correct and I got a feel for it first hand after playing Hull engi on a Junker as well, I could EASILY keep the armor up with a Spanner, no need to even use the Mallet against the current Gatling, it's seriously THAT bad.

I suggest, like the others, that its RoF be increased soon as well as a slight boost to damage, like 0.5 more damage or something.

The Light Carronade felt okay on my Junker for the fights I played, but mind you that 'okay' for me means meh for most, it's not that good and I feel the need to nerf it further than the range it had in 1.2 severely hampers its ability to be used offensively, on a Junker it's fine cause if they are close, they are probably the ones that came to you so range isn't as much of a factor there, but for its offensive use, every single meter counts, same goes for the Heavy Carronade, I'd like to see both of these weapons' ranges be adjusted back to their original values in 1.2, 350 and 450 respectively.

Also, since its been brought up, reduced rebuild times for anything but light guns is something I'd prefer jumping into a bottomless pit to avoid seeing. Disabling a Galleon's guns is a primary way of brawly teams to close distance a bit more safely, every second counts and the Galleon seriously DOESN'T need more help than it already got, please reconsider of even thinking about doing that, the weakness of any heavy gun bearing ship has always been disabling its easy target of a gun, anything that substracts from that weakness is a no-no in my book.

Offline Thomas

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #177 on: October 31, 2013, 04:51:01 am »
The gat works fine, although it could use a better rate of fire (RoF). It really comes down how fast Muse wants the armor to be shredded by the gun.

For disabling weapons, the time it takes to rebuild components could be cut down a little. A good shot can keep the ship more or less disabled completely. Waiting for them to rebuild it, then slapping it down again. A good pilot can avoid a lot of disables of course, flying low to let the balloon soak up shots, using items to create sudden movements forward, backwards, up/down to dodge them, flying high above to stay out of the artemis arc, etc.

Offline Spud Nick

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #178 on: October 31, 2013, 05:33:00 am »
I thought rebuild times were increased awhile back because it was to easy to rebuild them after a disable.

Offline geggis

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Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE
« Reply #179 on: October 31, 2013, 07:12:57 am »
I managed to jump on the gatling last night for the first time since the patch and I've got to say, it feels a lot better with the new muzzle flash and tighter firing cone (presumably that's to do with the way raycast weapons are handled now?). It just seems tighter and punchier. As for whether it is or not, I'm not sure because I didn't get to test many ammo types with it. The bigger clip definitely opens up a bunch of possibilities with regards to ammo. Of all the changes suggested for this gun I'd be happy with increased RoF because knowing how it feels now that would make it even more satisfying, especially with the bigger clip. And besides, that's kind of what gatlings should be all about.

As for the engagement distances/range cuts I'm really liking the paradigm shift. (I'm not sure whether this belongs in this thread or the pilot thread to be honest.) I've been playing with/against a very well crewed Valiant sniper Spire the last couple of nights. I was part of their crew, I played against them as crew on other ships with different builds, captains and approaches, and as a captain on my own Mobula with randoms and with friends. What I've quickly realised (and I suspected as much when I read the changes) is that you really have to be inventive and use everything at your disposal to close the distance between you and the sniper. I'm sure this has always been the case against good snipers anyway but the closer brawling changes coupled with the Spire buffs really highlights how (much more) important your approach is now. It was pretty much a case of 'stay out of the sight of the Spire' because they were that good at popping ships out the sky. (Now to face a well crewed Galleon...)

On Paritan Rumble it reminded me of good ol' The Sentinel on the Spectrum, avoiding the deadly gaze of the sentinel (the Spire) watching over the map by keeping low but working your way slowly towards it to deal the killer blow. That's Paritan Rumble. On Battle of the Dunes however, there isn't so much obvious cover so we had to start moving along the dunes, amidst the wreckages and through the moving clouds, and risking the cover of sandstorms. We had to be opportunistic but careful and sly. Telling our teammate to 'avoid the Spire: you'll die if it sees you' and them learning the hard way meant that they started trying the same tactics. There was something incredibly satisfying about traversing the map out of sight only to park ourselves inside a sandstorm directly behind both enemy ships to lay waste to them. They didn't see us coming. One of the best moments I've had with GoIO so far without a doubt.

The thing is, while this quality may not be a direct result of the patch (the Spire was still a pretty solid sniper before) -- and I'm sure many here already do stuff like this for higher level play -- the range cuts are going to seriously highlight it for pub games and compel more players to utilise more of what's on offer -- different ships, gun loadouts, ranges, arcs, ammo types, the environment, altitude, teammates, communication, timing.

I can also vouch for the sighting difficulties.

While I do love the Hades cannon, in the hands of my gunner before the patch it was pretty devastating so now coupled with its increased piercing damage and projectile speed, and its range flexibility (greased or indendiary for short, lesmok for long) it might very well become the go-to gun for a lot of different builds. Having said this, my gunner's very good with it so I've no idea how effective it is in the hands of others on different ships.
« Last Edit: October 31, 2013, 07:15:30 am by geggis »