Played as a Junker last night. Artemis Front, and both right side slots. Gat mortar left side.
Problem is, there was absolutely 0 reason for me to go in and use my close range side. Every time I tried it, I found it too 'sloppy'. There is no good way to hold yourselves within ~450m of an enemy for the ~20-30sec it takes to strip armor now. So any time an enemy would engage, I would simply back out and snipe. Played the entire match in reverse. Actually found the Artemis to be a better weapon as we escaped from the closer encounters.
To me that's a problem. If my ship has a mid/long range side, and a close range side, the benefit of getting in close to use the close range side should be a quicker kill, correct? It's not there. No reason whatsoever to try and use actual piloting skill to 'get in there' and get a kill. Just sit back and snipe snipe snipe.
The way the expanding hit boxes on shots appear to work, combined with new gun hit boxes, the amount of disabling was too damn high. 2-4 components per clip of greased artemis. It was nearly as effective as the time Artemis got 'buffed' for 5 days.
Finally CA THomas jumped in on the other side and gave us a good run for our money on a gat/mortar/flame (?) pyramidion. Problem is, I seriously don't think his WEAPONS took down our armor. There was not a single time where our armor dropped and I felt like it was due exclusively to his shooting. Not once.
What did? Ramming. Constant ramming. Ramming from the pyramidion, and ramming from his junker ally. The match before that, I witnessed a goldfish ramming, excessively. I've seen galleon rams being used extensively too. Without a clear way to take down the hull armor at a close range, it appears ramming randomly is now the best option. I thought constant ramming was a bad thing, bad enough to take down a huge chunk of Pyra health and mass last patch?
And as far as making engagements last longer, and giving the defeated a sense of 'deserving' to have died; nope. First few matches last night I took Sniper Spire. 1 clip of merc, 2 clips of artemis, 1 clip of heavy flak, all at the same time, the enemy is down. They don't know what happened, and they never had a chance to react. This is of course, assuming the same level of competition where players used to be able to strip armor and health with 1 pass of gat/mortar. Same problem, different range.
These are all problems with what awkm said the aim of balance is, in my opinion. There was no requirement of ship positioning, no teamwork, no defined roles of long/medium/short. Just snipe sniper snipe, get engaged close quarters-nothing happens, snipe snipe snipe, get rammed.
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They're recorded, but afaik, never released because that sort of stuff really doesn't have anything to do with us.
We're the QA team. It does have to do with us. We need all the information possible to help make informed decisions.