Buff the Junker

[Lord Dick Tim]

I really do love the Junker, and I can see where adjusting it even a little could break the game with its sheer damage potential.  But against a junker, I'd just field two pyramidions with mercs on the side and chain flak on the front.  That'll likely be one of the most heavily used combinations on the cogs, if not the winning one.
I wouldnt use the Junker in this role, even though it's more then capable of being a sniper platform and still have close range ability.  It wouldnt survive the need to get to close range, and it wouldnt survive the long range combat. 

At brass tacs, I doubt anyone who is truly trying to compete is going to field a Junker.  I hope I am completely wrong and the cogs turns into Junker fight club.

[Dev Bubbles]

Alright alright, thanks for pointing out that I'm an idiot.  I was going on over 24hrs without sleep.  So the galleon, my favorite ship, the one I take into battle everyday, does have 3 port side guns.  Hmmm!  Hahaha.  It's true, pyra can get 3 guns, but I would still argue that the junker is much easier, given that it's pretty easy to turn.  Pyra takes more coordination to get 3 guns on a ship in my opinion.  But what do I know, I'm not the greatest combat pilot around. 
I agree that pyra takes more coordination, but I still contend that it's easier on new players, or the new players may need to learn not to equip flak or even hwacha on front, or if hwacha, bring heavy.  But I guess both ships are good.  I definitely wouldn't recommend a new player bringing squid, junker, spire, or galleon into battle. 

[Captain Smollett]

Fun fact: The Junker was the first ship to be overpowered in GoIO
The more you know~

The leading reason why I am extremely unwilling to touch the Junker.  I've been both absolutely dominated by the Junker as well completely obliterating them in my own play in the past few weeks.  It's not the type of ship I like to fly but nor is the Galleon or Spire.

awkm thanks as always for being active on the forums.  I completely agree with you and I think the last thing that I or anyone wants is the Junker or any other ship to be OP like the Junker apparently used to be.   I'd ideally like all the ships in the game to be competitive which is why it's so great we're all talking about this.

Greetings everyone!  Making a guest appearance on the forum  
And I want to just chime in from my own point of view, as a player (an average pilot).
On the junker, I'm a bit torn, as I feel that in certain situations, it's pretty awesome.  And if I'm not totally retarded, it's the 1 ship that can get 3 guns on a target at the same time.   But the slowness of speed does limit it in mid to short range combat. 

On the pyra, I'm unofficially making a claim that it is the easiest ship for new players, so I'm not surprised at all that it is more in use at the moment. 

Thanks Bubbles for chiming in!  I think this has been stated already but I spent a good chunk of time playing a game with helmic today where my entire goal was to spend the match with 3 guns on target.  It used to be something I did a lot in 1.13 with the flamethrower that I had sort of let go by the wayside once flamers were nerfed.  Today I realised it's a lot easier than I recall.  Also I do think there's more to the Pyras frequency than just being one of the easiest ships to use (which it surely is) that keeps vets and new players alike flying Pyras.

The Galleon dies in 40 seconds
The Goldfish dies in 25 seconds
The Pyramidion dies in 25 seconds
The Junker dies in 15 seconds
The spire dies in 10 seconds
The Squid dies in 10 seconds

Correction

For continuous Medium Flak damage at range against full armor and full health, no skills, and no one repairing:

Junker takes 35 seconds to kill. 
Goldfish 28 seconds just to put it into perspective.

Therefore, the numbers you have come up with are not correct.  There is no way that constant armor repair + increased damage can be less than these numbers.  I can only conclude that there were unexpected variables in your tests (e.g. other ships firing upon your junker).

These were numbers taken from 1.13 when explosive damage had a .5 multiplyer to armor.  Arrow was just using these numbers since he had them on hand.  Using heavy flak was a really convenient way to measure durability before since it broke armor and hull.  Now heavy flak barely scratches armor and doesn't make a fair comparison when showing a ship that has a lot of armor to one that doesn't.  A comparison on dps with a light flak and gattling would surely shed light on the fragility of the junker compared to other ships like the goldfish.  A goldfish has 1100 hull and 400 armor.  It takes two clips of light flak hitting a goldfish without armor to kill it.  But the armor gets rebuilt in 4 seconds or less, so it normally takes many more tries than that.  A Junker hull drops in one clip of gattling if most of the shots land and just a tiny bit into the second clip if they don't.  After that, 3 shots of light flak is all that is needed to hit, in a much longer rebuild window.  I've never seen any of my gunners have problems taking down a Junker once it's hull drops the first time at close range and at most a Junker gets two hull drops at mid range. 

[HamsterIV]

The way I crew a junker it is very hard to get three guns on target. The Bowsprit gun is a very long walk from the turning engines and balloon. Also the guns with the wides turn radius are pretty low damage output. I tend to ask my gunner to switch between the below deck side guns and the front gun depending on what has shot. I have one engineer bouncing between the hull and balloon while the other shoots from the top side guns. The only way I can get a trifecta is to dispatch my main engineer to the component furthest away from my balloon an turning engines. This is an unacceptable risk against all but the noobies of enemies.

The Pyrammidion has two slots dedicated to gunning and a gun so close to the hull that the primary engineer can get a few shots in without getting dangerously far away from his primary duty.

To me the junker's two main strength is versatility and field of fire. Having five gun slots means it can have a long range and a shot range side. The Galleon can do this too, but the galleon has medium weapons with notoriously poor fields of fire. The galleon also has a much bigger profile. Making it easier for blender fish and squids to camp their balloon weak spot. The junker has less powerful weaponry but a smaller profile and a better field of fire to counter nippy squids and blender fish.

Also the pyramidion has a very large blind side which can be exploited by the Spaceman Maneuver:
http://gunsoficarus.com/community/forumarchive/discussion/527/the-evolution-of-squid-maneuvers/

Using the Spaceman Maneuver against a junker will most likely get your tail shot off as the gunners jump to the other side.

[awkm]

These were numbers taken from 1.13 when explosive damage had a .5 multiplyer to armor.  Arrow was just using these numbers since he had them on hand.  Using heavy flak was a really convenient way to measure durability before since it broke armor and hull.  Now heavy flak barely scratches armor and doesn't make a fair comparison when showing a ship that has a lot of armor to one that doesn't.  A comparison on dps with a light flak and gattling would surely shed light on the fragility of the junker compared to other ships like the goldfish.  A goldfish has 1100 hull and 400 armor.  It takes two clips of light flak hitting a goldfish without armor to kill it.  But the armor gets rebuilt in 4 seconds or less, so it normally takes many more tries than that.  A Junker hull drops in one clip of gattling if most of the shots land and just a tiny bit into the second clip if they don't.  After that, 3 shots of light flak is all that is needed to hit, in a much longer rebuild window.  I've never seen any of my gunners have problems taking down a Junker once it's hull drops the first time at close range and at most a Junker gets two hull drops at mid range. 

The times even with the old multiplier against armor are still massively incorrect.  The Junker still out tanks the Goldfish.

Don't forget that rebuilding is easily augmented by the # of people rebuilding the component.  If two people with small wrench rebuild the armor, it'll be up in no time at all.  These are intricacies in balance vs. strategy (player coordination/skill) that are implicitly built into the designs of ships.  You know that the armor will take longer to rebuild... so what are you going to do about it?

[Squash]

Hey Junker Captain, I've got a suggestion for you:



Get your crap off the freaking stairs, there aren't even handrails, you're a floating OSHA magnet.

[Captain Smollett]

These were numbers taken from 1.13 when explosive damage had a .5 multiplyer to armor.  Arrow was just using these numbers since he had them on hand.  Using heavy flak was a really convenient way to measure durability before since it broke armor and hull.  Now heavy flak barely scratches armor and doesn't make a fair comparison when showing a ship that has a lot of armor to one that doesn't.  A comparison on dps with a light flak and gattling would surely shed light on the fragility of the junker compared to other ships like the goldfish.  A goldfish has 1100 hull and 400 armor.  It takes two clips of light flak hitting a goldfish without armor to kill it.  But the armor gets rebuilt in 4 seconds or less, so it normally takes many more tries than that.  A Junker hull drops in one clip of gattling if most of the shots land and just a tiny bit into the second clip if they don't.  After that, 3 shots of light flak is all that is needed to hit, in a much longer rebuild window.  I've never seen any of my gunners have problems taking down a Junker once it's hull drops the first time at close range and at most a Junker gets two hull drops at mid range. 

The times even with the old multiplier against armor are still massively incorrect.  The Junker still out tanks the Goldfish.

I think Arrow's measurements were correct and sort of showed the hidden tankiness of a goldfish.  A goldfish's armor can always rebuild before a heavy Flak finishes reloading with one engineer working on it; a Junker's cannot.  Arrow's numbers took into account that the Goldfish would get multiple rebuilds while the Junker would not be able to get it's armor up before the gun reloaded after the armor broke.  This  is why in practice the Goldfish is still one of the most difficult ships to kill in the game.  It may have wimpy armor and is very susceptible to focused fire, however in practice it's speed and agility often can get it to dodge a few shots just long enough for the armor to come back.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in my opinion, regardless of the numbers (awkm is probably right about them since he made them all) the Junker doesn't feel like a tank.  It just seems sort of slow and squishy.  Obviously just an opinion, and more of a gut feeling based on far too many hours of game play.

[Captain Smollett]

Hey Junker Captain, I've got a suggestion for you:



Get your crap off the freaking stairs, there aren't even handrails, you're a floating OSHA magnet.

Ok this is pretty great btw.  Salute for this.

[HamsterIV]

Don't forget that rebuilding is easily augmented by the # of people rebuilding the component.  If two people with small wrench rebuild the armor, it'll be up in no time at all.  These are intricacies in balance vs. strategy (player coordination/skill) that are implicitly built into the designs of ships.  You know that the armor will take longer to rebuild... so what are you going to do about it?

Most of us just don't field the junker or take her out as a bit of a joke. The Galleon is better at tanking and broad side fighting. The Pyramidion is better at three weapon focus at close range. The rest of the ships have completely different rolls to play. The only place the junker shines in my eyes is dealing with a squid who is very good at taking advantage of blind spots. Even then, the huge balloon is a liability.

I like the fact that the junker is sort of a pariah of the fleet. It makes any victory scored with her that much sweeter.

[Mr Arrow Captl Fello]

Eric,
I feel like I need to defend my position here…I do have fairly extensive spreadsheets where I have utilized the numbers you have given us (for damage) and taken actual stop watch measurements of hull rebuild times, and gun load / unload times, Amongst a ridiculous array of “flight tests”

Unfortunately, I also feel if I share those here with you, we may see additional hidden tweaks to the game…not to mention that my latest spreadsheets prove that some of the published damage values are incorrect
And yes, even the ones I shared with you go second by second looking at ideal repair (no missed mallet/spanner blows) vs ideal firing (no missed shots)

if you would like we can take this offline (via PM's)

-Mr Arrow
First mate to Captain Smollett
and indeed a Capital Fellow