Gunners new Toy

[Spud Nick]

What if the guns ran out of ammo and you needed a tool to refil them.

[The Sky Wolf]

Gunners would be more useful if they were to introduce boarding so that the Gunners could carry ammo + 1 or 2 small firearms. It would be so...so...so... badass. It's never too late to change your mind about Boarding, Muse!


---edit---

What if the guns ran out of ammo and you needed a tool to refil them.

The same question could go for the ship's guns.

[The Djinn]

The same question could go for the ship's guns.

Then we'd add a mandatory tool that would, by necessity, occupy the gunner slot of almost every class. That's not cool with me.

[Spud Nick]

What if only one guy had the tool and had to run around the ship refilling ammo. Assuming you don't have a gunner.

[The Djinn]

What if only one guy had the tool and had to run around the ship refilling ammo. Assuming you don't have a gunner.

Sounds like a pretty boring job to me, as well as one that basically kills the Junker, Spire, and any ship where two guns with the same firing arc don't share a deck and/or easy path from gun to gun.

[Wundsalz]

I do not like the idea proposed in the OP. I think haveing static guns only is a core concept of goi, which shouldn't be touched.
Better approaches to make the gunner a more viable option have been discussee before. Among these:
- reduce the ammotypes non-gunners can bring to one by making normal clips a choice like any other ammo type
- alter the effect of the buff hammer on guns, so it doesn't increase their damage
- passive gunner items
- ammo stacking combining and increasing the ammunitions effect

[Zyankalium]

What about the idea of some new Tools... and change the buffhammer effect on Guns.

Different Gunner Tools for different buffs on guns. (a tool for damagebonus, a tool to shorten the reload time, etc.)
The right Gunner Tool Buff could negate the drawback of an Ammunitiontype.

And the Egnineer bufhammer effect would make the buff last longer.

[The Sky Wolf]

The same question could go for the ship's guns.

Then we'd add a mandatory tool that would, by necessity, occupy the gunner slot of almost every class. That's not cool with me.

Yeah, we know.

[Tamath]

I'd be excited for new tools but as others have mentioned it could cause a lot of balancing headaches.

What if something simpler and more elegant was introduced, like... Only Gunners are able to buff guns? All classes can still use the tool, but Gunners can only buff guns with it and Engineers only non-gun parts (balloon, hull, engines).

Of course, that means the gunner would be unable to repair as his one tool slot is taken up by the buff tool. It does introduce a new set of interesting decisions, however: Do I stick with three engineers so all my men are able to repair, or do I want to have access to the higher dps that other ships with 2 engineers and 1 gunner will be packing?

Gungineers would be upset, yes, but nothing's stopping them from continuing to gungineer - being able to shoot a gun with a complimentary ammo type while having the ability to repair, put out fires and buff non-gun parts keeps them being overwhelmingly useful without having it all.

[SirNotlag]

I think the best way to increase the gunners effectiveness would be to give them the passive tools. that way they have a new tool type that other classes can still dip into.

Some examples being;
reload crank: while the gunner is sitting on the gun it reloads 20% faster

padded gloves: reduce recoil by 10%

Magnification goggles: the zoom function on all weapons is doubled

weapon lubrication: weapons rotation speed increased by 15%

necklace of the steel heart: while sitting on the gun its armour is increased by 30% so it is harder to disable.

rabbits foot: its so lucky that when sitting on a weapon it has a 50% chance of stopping a fire stack from being placed on the gun.

ring of the protector: increases the ability to repair weapons by adding 1 to rebuilding them and 25% to keeping them maintained regardless of tool used.

these are some examples i just came up with but i figure they would be a good addition because a devote engineer could take something like the ring of the protector so his ability to maintain the ship as a whole is increased cause he can get the guns working faster. 

[SirNotlag]

I'd be excited for new tools but as others have mentioned it could cause a lot of balancing headaches.

What if something simpler and more elegant was introduced, like... Only Gunners are able to buff guns? All classes can still use the tool, but Gunners can only buff guns with it and Engineers only non-gun parts (balloon, hull, engines).

Of course, that means the gunner would be unable to repair as his one tool slot is taken up by the buff tool. It does introduce a new set of interesting decisions, however: Do I stick with three engineers so all my men are able to repair, or do I want to have access to the higher dps that other ships with 2 engineers and 1 gunner will be packing?

Gungineers would be upset, yes, but nothing's stopping them from continuing to gungineer - being able to shoot a gun with a complimentary ammo type while having the ability to repair, put out fires and buff non-gun parts keeps them being overwhelmingly useful without having it all.

the problem I find with continually nerfing things is it not only throws balance issues up again but it also makes the game more frustrating to older players and sometimes newer ones too. A better idea would be to come up with a new tool lets say a "charger" which works exactly like the buff tool but is exclusive to weapons and takes up a gunners tool slot rather than an engineering one.

[redria]

Passive items are not going to be a thing. Ever. "Why?" you ask?

Because no other class has passive items!

With the exception of hydrogen/chute vent/impact bumpers, pilot and engineering tools must be actively used in order to have their bonuses take effect. That means you can only use one at a time as opposed to passive items where you could be using all of your items at once.

The only "passive" items I can see coming into effect would be a hot tool like the 3 piloting tools already in play. Example:
Delimiter - Temporarily removes factory safety limits on a gun for a boost in damage
-Once activated, this tool remains active for 2 seconds
-Each shot fired while the tool is active deals +50% damage
-Deals 150 damage per second to the gun
-Does not unload previously loaded ammo types

Any other actively passive item is just begging to be abused.

[SirNotlag]

Passive items are not going to be a thing. Ever. "Why?" you ask?

Because no other class has passive items!

With the exception of hydrogen/chute vent/impact bumpers, pilot and engineering tools must be actively used in order to have their bonuses take effect. That means you can only use one at a time as opposed to passive items where you could be using all of your items at once.

The only "passive" items I can see coming into effect would be a hot tool like the 3 piloting tools already in play. Example:
Delimiter - Temporarily removes factory safety limits on a gun for a boost in damage
-Once activated, this tool remains active for 2 seconds
-Each shot fired while the tool is active deals +50% damage
-Deals 150 damage per second to the gun
-Does not unload previously loaded ammo types

Any other actively passive item is just begging to be abused.

See now there is an idea!

I may not agree with you on passive items as its not hard to balance things like that, taking into account the fact they would always be active but you'd have to select them over the very useful ammo types so you could only ever have three of them as a gunner and then you'd be stuck using regular rounds the entire game.

I just figure it would allow the gunner to utilize all 3 of his tool slots. For example a gunner on a goldfish with a hwatcha takes heavy clip and burst rounds and his third ammo is just for putting in the side guns, but I have played games like this as the gunner where i never touch anything but the hull and my front gun, leaving the side guns for the engineers. So that third ammo type is just a waste of space for me, a passive tool would help out my gunning but i can't take 2 passive tools because that now causes me to loose out on the effectiveness of the hwatcha.

Your tool ideas would also work in this case cause now i can fire up that tool which burns up the gun for extra fire power or faster reloads rather than the waste of space third ammo type.

[Caprontos]

Passive items are not going to be a thing. Ever. "Why?" you ask?

Because no other class has passive items!

I think gunner tools should just all work like the engi buff hammer, only one gunner buff allowed at a time (can stack on a engi buff though) (to many buffs allowed sounds bad to me)..

Then it can be balanced the same way the buff hammer is currently balanced.. (ie raise/lower buff time or raise/lower buff duration.. etc).



Another thing that could be considered with ammo is.. make it so ammo adds a secondary effect that only effects the reload after it was used... Like heatsink makes the gun not get firestacks 50% of the time for the next reload only..

I assume ideas like this could be found for most ammo types.. like small dmg boost from charged, or small range boost for lesmonk.. etc.. So if you use ammos in different orders, it will benefit you in some way..

Though that idea could be a lot of balance problems haha.. .. but a thought :S..