1.3.6 Harpoon Changes

[Dementio]

I would like the ship that shoots the harpoon to be more stable compared to the ship that gets hit by the harpoon, if that is possible or a tool that lets me achieve something like that, like for example a tool suggested here https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3960.0.html, if that is possible. Moonshine can only do so much...
Of course there should be some limits, less the squid reels in a galleon without any trouble (although that would be funny and create an interesting gameplay to some extent).

[GeoRmr]

I would like to see this effect with the addition of 'anchor' pilot tool. Anchor could also be used to prevent ships ramming off your gun arcs and possibly in combination with impact bumpers.

[Crafeksterty]

Imagine taking it all the way back to 10,000n, but with the 5 second duration/8 second reload the DevApp has now. It would barely do anything. It would not be 'ape'. So, tell me HOW making the force weaker than it is now, but stronger than it was, with the same exact duration would make it 'ape'. Tell me how setting weaker multiple harpoons is more 'ape' than setting multiple stronger harpoons. You make zero sense on this.

It wont ape at first, but at first wont do anything much. Constant pulling and constant use may result in Spiral behaviour.

Having weaker harpoons is going to make it Mundane and less desirable to use because it effect does not do/Last enough.
The first intro to this current harpoon on the dev app was actually weaker. And, it didnt do enough Even with multiple harpoons, it did little, but the idea was there.
The reason this wont help much as a balance is because BOTH ships are getting the effect. A pilot with harpoons of your suggestion will be out of control eventualy.
A harpoon with strong effects but a short duration is much easier to manage and take control of. Simply upping the muzzle speed, and you gurantee a harpoon to hit, thus expecting the effect to happen much more often. But not as often as constant because of the reload.

Setting multiple Strong harpoons is pretty rediculous, but sacrifices alot of the actual offence power.
Multiple weaker harpoons... simply wont do much. and thus not really worth taking. But lets say its consentrated. Where the pilot uses moonshine and stuff to stabelize himself. You managed to spiral the other ship, but you no longer have engines because it took its time and maybe spiraled a bit yourself. OFcourse i dont know this, but the behaviour sounds similar to the previous harpoon than how this harpoon works now.

I would like the ship that shoots the harpoon to be more stable compared to the ship that gets hit by the harpoon

Yeah! Right now we can only battle the weight with moonshine/Kyrosine. But moonshine does not cover all directions. Is there a way to simply take a bit force pull away from the dealing side?

[Richard LeMoon]

Simply put, I think you are wrong. Since we have not tested it, which I am asking for, you just have speculation in the wind. That is not worth anything.

[Dementio]

Incase you want to have a glimpse of how multiple harpoons perform, I have a little of experience of how it performed before the patch. I used to do double harpoon on mobula bottom deck.
Compared to when I had only 1 harpoon as the top middle gun, the two harpoons (assumed hit approximately at the same time) made my ship much more controlable. In contrast, I did not understand what was happening on the harpooned ship.
Of course I did not have full control over my ship, but since I was moving myself, I could at least move to where I wanted to move to (even without moonshine, but some kerosene to help out) and the harpooned ship was forced to move with me (even up and down). It was nice.

This does not work with the current harpoon, of course, since you cannot even control your ship with backwards moonshine and if you pay a little attention on just the right ship, you will notice that the harpoon makes you spin even if you have moonshine activated.
The force that the current harpoon has (270 000N, if I am not mistaken) is enough to have the harpoon do what you want it to do (the duration is arguable, I personally believe it's a bit too short, especially if I want to make use of it in a bit longer range, but because of high reload I have to wait forever to shoot again incase of miss -> high risk, high reward?), but its physics won't allow you to keep control of your own ship. This makes 2 harpoons redundant and the use of just 1 harpoon questionable.

[GeoRmr]

I have seen the new harpoon do some amazing things and am happy with it. Today that aft harpoon on your galleon Daniel, catching my lumberfish and pulling me inside of arming range before aft ramming me into the terrain, and yesterday I successfully managed to pull a pyramidion to its swift demise into a cluster of mines.

[Dementio]

Nobody expect harpoon on galleon backside.

[Richard LeMoon]

I have also used the harpoon on the back of a galleon quite successfully shooting it myself as the pilot. Engines out, enemy parked behind us. Fired the harpoon into the side of the ship, spinning them away from us and pulling us together for a substantial ram leaving just enough time to get back to the helm and activate bumpers. The inertia of the Galleon caused several impacts, and killed the other ship...

All the while, I was thinking it was stupid that something like that should work. That a single shot from a small gun can effectively disable and kill an entire ship while yours does not even have working engines is ridiculous. What I did was gross abuse of mechanics, and should not have been possible.

[Dementio]

Why shouldn't it have been possible? What should the harpoon have done if not what it was supposed to? Set fire?
What happened was no abuse of mechanics, but instead the use of a gun that aligned one ship with the enemy and making use of the mass that the galleon possesses in order to ram kill, which the galleon might actually be best at. The enemy should not have been behind the galleon, since that is not the galleon's blind spot.

I find it quite nice that there IS a gun that has the power to move ships around that can no longer use their engines because they are broken (another reason why I like mines: They just push the enemy around!).

And your statement seems rather wrong, it was not the harpoon that killed the enemy ship rather it was your ship. The harpoon just gave you the opportunity to do so, which might not have been possible with any other ship (squids are not the best ramkillers and nobody complains about harpoon front pyra, but about harpoon back galleon?).

[Richard LeMoon]

One small gun had more power than four large, and two small engines. At that range, even if we would have both had fully functional engines and kicked in moonshine directly towards each other, that would not have happened. That means the harpoon has much more acceleration and speed than the combined engines of two large ships. In addition, it works like a magnet, removing any bounce that happens with typical rams where ships hit, drift apart, then have to accelerate towards each other again. AND it controls the enemy ship.

It should not have all those abilities at the ridiculously high power it has now. Since we are talking 'utility' guns, I see this as the equivalent of having a flare hit set everything on the other ship on fire with ten stack. Complete, instant disable.

Honestly, I could see the current harpoon mechanics on a large gun, with more damage, but not in a small gun. I actually suggested a new heavy gun based on this very thought.

[Dementio]

The harpoon is pretty powerful, yes, but it's just as risky.
If you use it in close range, you will face a ship ramming you. A galleon can handle the damage and maybe a junkers armor too, but if your armor is low on health or gun in total you will have to face a bit of permanent damage and you cannot escape it yourself. If you hit the enemy wrong then they can still shoot while ramming you, not so good.
If you miss in long range, you will be faced with a rather long reload time. However punishing that is depends on the scenario (you wanna pull the enemy away from your ally or pull them back into the fight to kill them in a 2v1?).

I mean, fine, go 5 harpoon mobula so the enemy can't move, but you can't move either and you might kill yourself in the process.

The harpoon works only so good, man, don't make it worse. If we were to (e.g.) half the force the harpoon currently applies will not be a solution, it would still overpower most ships engines.

The harpoon is an utility gun in not that it disables ships, but in that it changes engagement (at least that's what I think the harpoon is supposed to do). And it fails miserably at that, with the exception of certain scenarios (galleon back seems to be reliable enough).
I have a harpoon that is good for ramming ships or forcing ships to ram me in close range (even though there are better and more secure ways to kill ships in close range), but is really bad at everything else.

I will be honest here, I want a harpoon that allows me to pull ships back into battle incase the enemy wants to escape, which is not possible because physics.
I want a harpoon that allows me to force long range ships to go into medium/close range, which is not possible since the duration last for 5 seconds and that doesn't work for most of the time, I have not tested that reliably though.
I don't want a gun that makes me play bumper karts in mid-air.


What do you think the harpoon is supposed to do? If the force of that gun were to be reduced so much that half of the ship can simply move away from it, then I don't see the point of having the harpoon in the game. Or we are going back to the old harpoon, which negates every effort that has been put into this gun to make this gun better.
And if it takes too long for the harpoon effect to kick in, it might just be too risky to use and people would think if another ship or gun combination choice wouldn't be better instead.

What do you want the harpoon to do? Fish some birds?



Btw, that new heavy gun sounds nice.

[Crafeksterty]

They did say they wanted to go back to the Harpoon when they focus on it. Right now it isnt a big focus, the harpoon that we have now is good enough for the meantime instead of the old harpoon.

So we want to enhance what this harpoon can do because it is actualy usable.
But does it do what we want it to do? Not really. On some ships bringing harpoon is detrimental.

For now, the muzzle speed is what does the trick in this situation of the harpoon. People dont rely on it because it is a difficult shot. But imagine being able to rely on the harpoon hitting every time? You would make for some game changing builds, specialy if you proove it

[Richard LeMoon]

Getting really tired of people saying what it would do, when it has never been tested. 100,000n was tested, yes, but with a 16s or so reload time. It was deemed not strong enough by the few people that tested it for a few matches (the same people that were so wrong about the flamethrower). I said it was strong enough, but needed a shorter reload to see the full effect. Stronger it went, along with a shorter reload. The shorter reload was deemed too powerful, so it was made longer again, while the force just continued to go up. The reload time should never have been tested in DevApp until the force felt right. It just made it annoying to test.

What is with the aversion to testing this?

[Crafeksterty]

When 100.000 was tested, it wasnt strong enough for the duration because of the reload. Not the duration, but the reload.

Turn down the reload to the same as the duration you pretty much have constant harpooning. Which you do not want.
Which in turn results to previous harpoon.

We can test this, but the test is then going on a completely different direction. The effect and use is going to change, along with the priority of it.
Right now were fine tuning this harpoon for better use. And this harpoon is good, just needs fine tuning.

[Richard LeMoon]

I can honestly say I have no idea what you just said, and am starting to wonder if we are even talking about the same thing.


5 second duration, which it has now in DevApp.

8 second reload, which it also has. Maybe to 9 or 10 if it seems too trolly.

Higher velocity, which it also has.

100,000n, or 1/2 what it is now. Maybe even up to 150k.

And I do not agree at all that the current harpoon is good. I know exactly what we were testing and trying to do, because I helped test it.  Hell, I just looked through the original conversation, and everyone agreed with me about a lower reload for the 100k force. That feedback was ignored and the force was just cranked up and up.