Harpoon gun discussion

[Serenum]

I recently got the achivement for killing 4 harpooned ships and it was a pain in the arse.
I've never  been a fan of that gun, I tried using it with a couple of builds and I've always found it lacking. But grinding for this achivement made me realize just how bad it was.

Now I've heard in the past that the harpoon is supposed to simulate perfecty the effect of a rope tying the two ships together, but I think it goes beyond that. The harpoon takes away all control from your ship.
With this achivement I went for a ramming Pyramidion armed with harpoon and mortar on the front guns. Each time I harpooned something that was in front of me the ship would start turning to the opposite direction.
Then I would find myself with the enemy on my right, pulling me to the right. You'd think that this would make turning the ship to the right easier since there is a whole ship pulling you in that direction. No, it made it IMPOSSIBILE.
I had to turn all the way to the left, with the harpoon rope cutting through my ship like it wasn't there and after doing an almost full 360° turn I was able to have the enemy ship in front of me again, for a brief moment before this hellspawn of a gun decided that SOMEHOW having a rope between me and my target in front of me was preventing me from going foward, towards said ship, and insted pulled me to the left again.
I had to resort to firing the harpoon at the last second just before killing the enemy ship.

Now, putting my rant aside, I think the harpoon gun is useless. Right now it's a joke weapon and any constructive way of using it requires a disproportionate amount of effort. In public games it's virtually non-existent, aside from the occasional joke build.
Is this right? Is the harpoon supposed to be a joke weapon, that no one would ever use seriously?

Oh and please don't start posting things like "I can use the harpoon, here's how". Allright, some of you might be able to put it to good use. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that it requires disproportionate effort to manage that and I'm arguing that it's so counter intuitive and hard to use that it's basically non-existent in any given match, which I think proves it's a flawed weapon, regardless of exceptions.

[Echoez]

>Rope that ties ships together
>There is no boarding
>Why tie ships together?


It's useless and should remain useless or completely removed from the game. I don't want anything that could potentialy be good enough to take away all horizontal control of my ship and giving me nothing to retaliate or take rid of it with, currently if the harpoon worked correctly I'm assuming it would be something like a Carronade that restricts you vertical movement by taking out the balloon, but instead of vertical, the harpoon would restrict horizontal movements, which is bullshit in itself and should never be a thing. I can rebuild a balloon, I can't de-harpoon my ship.

No, leave it or get rid of it and all achievements related to it.

[Squash]

Old harpoon (pre-mass adjusting patch)

[5:00 - 06:15] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=X7bDT4IUTr4#t=300

[02:25 - end] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dMF_1929eus#t=146

Stick around for my favorite line of commentary ever at 09:27.


Last week:

[30:48 - end] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWmt_AdfxRQ#t=1849


My opinion:
The harpoon is exactly as useful as the players are imaginative.

[Serenum]

Old harpoon (pre-mass adjusting patch)

[5:00 - 06:15] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=X7bDT4IUTr4#t=300

[02:25 - end] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dMF_1929eus#t=146

Stick around for my favorite line of commentary ever at 09:27.


Last week:

[30:48 - end] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWmt_AdfxRQ#t=1849


My opinion:
The harpoon is exactly as useful as the players are imaginative.

You did exactly what I asked not to.
You present exceptions and try to justify the current state of a useless, underused and straight out counter productive weapon with them.
This doesn't work.

[Crafeksterty]

I wonder, we really need to see what other uses the harpoon gun can be used for. I mean it is appaling.

But, what if it combats flachette? I wanna harpoon a goldfish and have him blend me down. How much trouble will he be in? etc (Or how much trouble i will be in)

[Echoez]

Old harpoon (pre-mass adjusting patch)

[5:00 - 06:15] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=X7bDT4IUTr4#t=300

Perfect display of why this gun should never be a thing again, restriction of horizontal movement with no chance to retaliate or recover on a very easy to shoot gun, it would never be justified even on a hard to shoot gun cause it has nothing to be countered with.

My opinion:
The harpoon is exactly as useful as the players are imaginative.

If the Paddling uses it, it must be viable. Sure. Just like you guys justified the Heavy Flak back in 1.2? Because you were the only ones using it back then as well, but it was totally fine, right.

Nothing personal by the way, your wording is just kind of weird, so I hope you were expecting weird answers.


EDIT: the recent match was good for laughs though, good work there. lol

[Echoez]

By the way, since I can't edit it anymore, I'm sorry for over-reacting a bit in advance.

[HamsterIV]

The harpoon was never useful, but before the mass patch it was fun. Aside from ramming it was the one means to move an enemy ship against its will. I used to mount one on the back of a squid, make a high speed pass, tag the target, and fly at the nearest piece of level geometry. If we did it right the enemy ship would be catapulted into the level geometry get Velcroed and die. Most of the time we would get shot on the way in, get shot on the way out, miss the harpoon, crash into the other ship, crash into the terrain, or pull the other ship into us as we crashed into the terrain.

The harpoon is still somewhat useful on the back of a galleon for pulling those pesky squids into an unintended ram. It is mainly a joke weapon you pull out to give yourself a handicap in games where people are complaining about "stacked teams." It sucks that you are "forced" to use it in order to level up, but that is another discussion entirely.

[zlater75@hotmail.com]

i'm not sure yet how it works as i haven't even used it but on the other end it seems like the harpoon ship is the victim more or less too using it they also get a leash on themselves.

so what would be interesting is if the place the harpoon hits would lose damage progressively until it breaks the part (balloon, hull, engine, gun) and when that is rebuilt the harpoon disappears.
a retractable to 50% of line would also be good with a less restriction of harpooned movement. But not sure if either is possible. Or even if they already exist. 

[Queso]

Reworks for harpoon mechanics are in the pipes. However it's not exactly high priority as nothing about the harpoon is game-breaking at the moment.

[zlater75@hotmail.com]

  Great. Thank you Queso.

[Captain Smollett]

When they get the new harpoon right it should actually be very good.

How I hope and imagine it will work is like this:

It will be a close range armor breaker with utility.  So it will do less armor breaking than lets say a gattling with shorter range however it should give the gunner a lot of control over the enemy ship. 

Speculation has it that the tow strength will be increased and that the gunner will control when it reels with an alternate fire.  Currently the gunner can exert also some control on the enemy ship simply by turning the gun and by detaching and reattaching the harpoon so overall it should capable of preserving positional advantage as well as creating some.

These two abilities combined should give the harpoon versatile, practical and overall enjoyable use on the battlefield.

[Echoez]

Curious Smollett, since mass is in effect right now, which ship could even use such a gun effectively other than a Galleon?

The Squid is too light to make it work even if you go full speed, Junker is light as well as slow and doesn't like ramming, Pyra will sacrifice too much firepower, Goldfish.. well that doesn't need explaining, Spire/Mobula are way too fragile for them to attach a ship onto themselves. Consider that the enemy ship can also drag you as well.

That is implying that the harpoon will still force you to point the side of which is it on at the enemy, so a harpoon on the side of a Pyra for example would force the Pyra's side towards the enemy ship at all times which would be a massive problem for the ship using it (except of course the heaviest ship in the game!), else I can see it being horribly broken, like, attaching my Blenderfish up your rear without you being able to turn broken.

All in all, I think a buffed harpoon would just be one more thing to make Galleons even more powerful as the usage of such a weapon is of almost no use to any other ship due to design.

[zlater75@hotmail.com]

just thinking.. the deattaching cooldown/reload should be longer than the cooldown for when an enemy ship rebuilds targeted partand detaching the harpoon. It shouldn't be too fast to reload. enough time to let a ship turn 90 degrees with phoenix claw at least.
Would moonshine break the line? Or give the harpoon damage?

[Captain Smollett]

Curious Smollett, since mass is in effect right now, which ship could even use such a gun effectively other than a Galleon?

The Squid is too light to make it work even if you go full speed, Junker is light as well as slow and doesn't like ramming, Pyra will sacrifice too much firepower, Goldfish.. well that doesn't need explaining, Spire/Mobula are way too fragile for them to attach a ship onto themselves. Consider that the enemy ship can also drag you as well.

That is implying that the harpoon will still force you to point the side of which is it on at the enemy, so a harpoon on the side of a Pyra for example would force the Pyra's side towards the enemy ship at all times which would be a massive problem for the ship using it (except of course the heaviest ship in the game!), else I can see it being horribly broken, like, attaching my Blenderfish up your rear without you being able to turn broken.

All in all, I think a buffed harpoon would just be one more thing to make Galleons even more powerful as the usage of such a weapon is of almost no use to any other ship due to design.

Moving things with the harpoon doesn't have nearly as much to do with mass as it does with thrust since everything is suspended in air.

Speaking from the perspective and recollection of the former glorious harpoon, it was always good on the front gun of a Junker and rear gun of a Squid and of course excellent on a Galleon.  Should the armor piercing modifier be properly buffed putting one on the front of the Pyra should yield excellent results as it reels you slowly into its mortar with repeated harpoon shots.  It should also be quite good on a mobula, which if you look at the stats, isn't nearly as fragile as people think (though it really does hate rams, vertical acceleration usually makes them a non issue though).