Author Topic: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas  (Read 224613 times)

Offline Milevan Faent

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #30 on: May 20, 2014, 12:30:28 pm »
So, to throw in my half a cent (because I'm cheap like that), here's an idea that includes experimental math!

I remember a time in dev app where there were two special ammo types that basically were Charged ammo, but favoring either primary or secondary damage (depending on which one was loaded). Now, while this was niche ammo, it was too similar to Charged IMO, and basically had no purpose. Charged was better in every case, especially as both types damaged the gun.

So, here's a much improved version of the original concept, that takes it in a totally different direction.

Instead of increasing the damage of the gun, this ammo modifies the modifiers. There are two options available to go with here, so I'm gonna cover them both.

Option 1: The damage modifiers for primary and secondary damage are all increased by 0.2 (to throw out a theoretical number for the sake of example). Not sure what the negative effects could be, but they'd probably be similar to Charged. No direct effect on the damage the gun actually deals though.

The Effect:



The damage is clearly more all-around than what you get with Charged. This makes it good for guns that aren't really all that accurate, as it can give them the ability to deal damage to more than just the 1 thing they're good at in situations where they can't keep focused on that one thing. A Gatling on a squid comes to mind. While it might be capable of taking down the hull armor completely if you hit with most of the shots, on a ship that moves so fast, it's relatively easy to miss the hull and hit everything else instead. With this ammo, while it's still bad to be missing the armor, at least you're still doing something effective. And while Charged could make you more effective in general as well, this makes your gun better at the things it's bad at as well as the thing it's good at, increasing the number of viable targets the gun can hit without sacrificing viability. Though obviously charged is still better in situations where the gun is more likely to be successfully used in it's primary role only (like a Metamydion).

Option 2: The ammo affects only primary or secondary damage (effectively it's split into two like the original concept that inspired this), perhaps with the modifier for the improved damage increasing by 0.3 instead of 0.2. Probably reduces the modifier for the other damage by a small amount, like 0.1.

The Effect:



With this version, I think the modifier would have to be a bit higher than the other because of the lack of increased damage on the second type, but this could result in OP weapon setups, thus the suggestion that the non-primary type take a penalty (if a small one). As you see in this example, now Artemis does NO damage to the Hull with it's secondary damage, and very little against balloons and armor, though it's primary damage is significant overall (if still lower than Charged in the Hull damage).

Either option really provides a powerful tool really. I'll let you guys discuss it from this point on though.

Another idea along a similar thought process is an ammo that doubles the armor/health of the gun, but reduces the modifiers by a significant amount (0.3, maybe even 0.5).
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 12:32:57 pm by Milevan Faent »

Offline awkm

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #31 on: May 20, 2014, 01:13:53 pm »
Another idea that was emailed to me:

Instead of going more niche and extreme, make an ammo that is pretty general with smaller buffs.  This may make it more attractive for an Engineer to take a more general ammo than specializing in one thing or another when it's not really their job too.  This may mean the existing ammo needs a healthy push into one niche or another to make it work.  The idea is interesting is because it takes the opposite approach.  Gunner = Specializes in situational damage dealing.  Engineer = Specializes in situational repairs.

RE: Normal Ammo

Interesting idea.  Although it's kind of troublesome that all guns will be unloaded and you have to sit there and load everything in before a match.  Guns like flare would be hideous to load at the start of the match.  Basically what this may collapse to is racing towards each other, trying to load each gun (maybe even choosing guns that reload the fastest), and whoever loads their guns first wins.  It almost sounds like a Western quick draw shootout at high-noon.  I like the concept but I worry about how it'll affect the phases of combat.  It's pretty dramatic.  If there was a way for guns to be loaded when you start... guns are loaded randomly with the collective ammo that everyone has brought?  I hate randomization but the captain choosing what ammo each gun takes based on the collective ammo of his/her crew would increase an already painfully long Readying time and make it excruciating—definitely don't want to do that.

RE: Loading gun at last second

We've actually jumped back and forth between this.  While the interaction is totally weird as it is now, we felt that it was less punishing and allowed players a degree of freedom to react.  Reloading and locking the type of ammo means that if the combat situation changed with those 4-12s would mean you'd be really screwed... especially if ammo became more niche.  It's a huge risk.  Being able to switch ammo at the last second mitigates some of the risk; some of the risk still lies in the fact that the gun is reloaded (unusable) but at least you can recover and respond in a more meaningful way than not being able to use your gun because it has an ammo that doesn't work for the current situation.

This issue was one of the biggest decision issues we wrestled with.  We're still willing to look at it again, though.  This change would be required if we decided to have guns unloaded at the start of a match.  This means the first thing that everyone does is:
- Pilot starts steering and setting up position
- Engineers buff or load ammo
- Gunners load ammo, but since they have more variety and don't have buffing responsibilities it'll likely be up to gunners.

So what it should be at the beginning/recoup phase:

- Pilot steers
- Engineers buff the ship
- Gunners load ammo

RE: buff hammer

Can definitely look into this as well.

RE: the ideas so far

I really appreciate the feedback and your ideas.  There definitely a lot of crazy ideas out there... some you may think are totally jokes may actually be rather interesting.







The timing of when these changes drop will be... 'interesting'.  It's like asking if I want to fight 20 five year olds or if I want to fight one five year old that is 20 ft tall.  It definitely seems like highlighting the gunner means I have to nerf some engineer stuff too.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 01:19:46 pm by awkm »

Offline B'Elanna

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #32 on: May 20, 2014, 01:55:41 pm »
It definitely seems like highlighting the gunner means I have to nerf some engineer stuff too.


Offline Myroc

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #33 on: May 20, 2014, 02:18:00 pm »
Regarding the reloading issue when using default ammo, I propose the following solution: At the start of the round, and any time a gun reloads on its own without anyone manning it, it loads Scavenged Ammo, which has a -20% Damage Penalty and a -20% penalty to clip size*. It would encourage staying on the guns more to catch reloads as your firepower will suffer otherwise. You'll still have to reload at the start of the round, but I don't think that is really an issue. You have plenty of time to reload all your guns before engaging any enemies (bar on Duel at Dawn, at least, but it shouldn't be too great of an issue).

*Really, this could be any penalties you want, but the point is that it would be inferior to all other ammo types.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 02:20:08 pm by Myroc »

Offline awkm

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #34 on: May 20, 2014, 02:31:12 pm »
RE: Engineer Nerfing

Don't worry.  There are some really cool tools coming down the way that'll make it awesome.

RE: Scavenge Ammo

Hmm...  interesting.  Could work.  Although maybe just forcing guns to stick to what ammo you reload with forever may be better....  Yeah it'll be riskier in general.

Offline Wundsalz

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #35 on: May 20, 2014, 03:07:37 pm »
Ammo alteration request for greased rounds: reduce the projectile life-time instead of decreasing the projectile velocity. Currently the main purpose of greased rounds is a DPS icrease. On top of that it reduces the arming distance for ballistic weapons. This renders incendiary and heatsink ammo, which can be used to reduce the arming time as well almost useless.

Some remarks regarding the problems of the current ammunition system:
Currently there are different reasons to pick a certain ammunition type:
- higher DPS(clip)
- higher DPS(reload)
- higher damage per clip (to reach interesting thresholds)
- improve the weapons aim
- allow usage out of its normal field of operation
- increase the ignition chance per time.
Here's a spreadsheet which show recommended ammunition types for each gun along with a loadout recommendation for each gun.
It illustrates one of the major problems of the Gunner role: Most guns do not require multiple ammunition choices. Normal + X is usually sufficient to operate a gun efficiently. I doubt adding or altering ammunition types will change this significantly as the criterium for choosing these weapons ammunition is usually dps optimization which can be done by exactly one ammo type.

The Loadout-Recommendation-table shows that buff-engineers can outperform gunners more significantly and often in the usage of guns than the other way around. I'm talking about the pure damage output here - the engineers increased maintenance efficiency isn't even considered. The reason for this is the buff hammer which can optimize the damage output of guns and is de-facto restricted to engineers. Actually the plain 20% buff itself outperforms most ammunition types in most guns when it comes to DPS optimization. The fact that the ammo-dps boost and the buff-hammer-dps boost stack allows a buff-engineer to de-class gunners in performance with any weapon which is used to inflict a lot of damage in brief time-frames.
Nerf that god damn thing already! Remove the damage buff effect and replace it with something else (maybe an HP boost)!

In general I think all ammunition types could use a bit more of their positive effects and a bit less of their negative effects.

I do like the idea of adding normal rounds to the choice-pool for all players. This would make Gunners way more attractive for some weapons which currently run quite fine with Normal rounds + one other ammo type (e.g. mine launchers, Hades).
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 03:25:49 pm by Wundsalz »

Offline Crafeksterty

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #36 on: May 20, 2014, 03:30:21 pm »
There are some things i disagree with the spreadsheet, like heavy being detrimental on Gattling gun, when that is the clip to have maximum dps on maximum range, along with the gattling could aswell disable components very well.

But it is true that ammo is what makes the gunner have a hard time standing with the other classes.

That is why we want to come up with a change to ammo, and new ammo that makes you want more ammo types.
Increasing the positives is one way, but the positives is also something the engineer will abuse constantly, so lets give some detrimentals that make the user not want to use it constantly. Thats why i suggest a small overhaul to the current ammo where charge does more damage, but damages itself and fires slower and fires even slower when damaged. Greased fires quicker, but it does less damage. So it does more damage per reload basis. Incindiary actualy deal higher chance of fire damage and be usefull. etc etc.

The only ammo where you want different ammo are, Heavy Clip, Lochnagar, Lesmok. Between these 3 they are VASTLY different.
So lets give that vast of diffrence in charged, greased, incindiary and heatsink. Burst is pretty well in the middle ground of good.

And would help for an extra or two NEW ammo that are as different as heavy clip and yadda yadda are.

Offline awkm

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #37 on: May 20, 2014, 03:50:08 pm »
RE: Current Ammo Overhaul

Yeah, this is on the table too.  I'll take feedback on those as well.

Offline geggis

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #38 on: May 20, 2014, 04:09:21 pm »
The first I heard of the vanilla/normal rounds idea was in September last year from Mr. Mouse (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,410.msg42470.html#msg42470) and it just sounded so elegant to me and mechanically consistent. At present gunners sacrifice more because they have to choose a repair item to even have the capacity to fix stuff (and even then they sacrifice rebuild/repair speed and the ability to fight fire depending on what they go for). Engineers on the other hand get standard ammo and an alt with a full complement of engineering tools. Yes, they loose two ammo types being an engineer, but they don't loose the ability to gun like a gunner loses the ability to fix things efficiently.

The biggest problem with the vanilla/normal rounds idea is indeed working out how (p)reloading guns should work. Scavenged Ammo sounds like a good way of sidestepping the whole reloading issue as it means the default ammo isn't desirable and encourages all crew to exercise caution when jumping on, and perhaps more importantly, off a gun. The ammo icon could be a broken bullet or something and the gun have really dull sounds. If gunners suddenly become the loaders or ammo carriers then that pushes them into a really interesting and unique space where they could very well be multi-tasking like engineers do. Engineers alternatively, in the role of gunning, would have to be specialised or roll vanilla like a gunner has to with engineering tools (pipe wrench). It sounds excellent to me.

As for new rounds...

I've always wanted to see something that allows guns to turn beyond their default arcs. Perhaps damaging them in the process when they do. I'm not sure how bullets can influence the mechanics of the turntable the gun is mounted on but... hey, it sounds good to me.

Penetrating/ghost rounds that go through components? Could be handy against Galleons head on and other long ships. I'll leave negative effects to you awkm -- that's a science and I'm no scientist! :-)
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 04:12:11 pm by geggis »

Offline awkm

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #39 on: May 20, 2014, 06:04:08 pm »
There was some brief discussion between me and the Lead Engineer, Watchmaker, and we're so far leaning towards looking at the Buff Hammer's effects on guns.  Buffing damage outright, or the amount of the damage buff, will need to be looked at.  We think that this will solve a lot of issues so those of you who brought up Buff Hammer, great observation.  The next step then would be to look at the current set of ammo and introduce a few new ones in the effort to push things into niches.

RE: vanilla

Again, the vanilla rounds is good idea theoretically... it just introduces a lot of weird behaviors.  Even if the guns are loaded with Scavenged rounds, a lot of people will be up in arms about it.  Basically you just start each match nerfed.  It's pretty detrimental to new players.

RE: penetration

This existed before.  The Field Gun was able to do it for a short period of time in Dev App... it was severely OP.  The functionality is still there but making it into an ammo for all guns seems risky to me.  We'd have to be smart and limit the penetration power based on muzzle speed and so forth, Field Gun being one of the most effective cases here.  Ideally, I'd prefer if it were linked to a particular weapon.

RE: Impact... sort of

I don't mind weapons dealing Impact damage, what I don't want is that knockback given to all weapons.  If were ever the case, it'd have to be cleverly limited based on some variable like muzzle speed or explosive damage etc...  But same as above, I'd like it if it were linked to a gun.




You can always change my mind though :P  Giving guns super unique functionality, and potentially abusable functionality, just feels dangerous.

Offline SirNotlag

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #40 on: May 20, 2014, 06:53:38 pm »
Here is my two cents on the Normal ammo being a selection, For one I am extremely against some form of crummy scavenger ammo becoming the default OR the idea of having no ammo in the guns when a ship spawns as it leaves you too vulnerable if the enemy is in your spawn point and you would get steam rolled without being able to fight back. But would it be possible to have it so that the weapons wait before they decide their ammo like as soon as an someone jumps on the gun the ammo in their first slot is the one selected as if it was there all along.

Ex: ship spawns, engineer with greased runs over to gun gets on, immediately starts shooting greased rounds at the birds cause they looked at him funny. Eventually they re-spawn gunner carrying heavy, lesmok, and charged runs over to gun, gets on, it now has heavy in it, if he wanted lesmok he has to reload and switch to lesmok, but heavy is in the gun if he needs to shoot it immediately.

In this system I also feel it would be best if the last ammo that was loaded into it so if the gunner left the weapon to load itself it would have put heavy back into the gun.



Now for a new Idea!
I heard that there used to be ammo types that loaded faster than others but that it could be exploited so you could use the faster reload time to load in a better ammo type... WHY IS THIS CONSIDERED AN EXPLOIT! Why not make it a feature?!

hear me out on a tool for gunners that hopefully would not require much work. Call it a "reload crank" "Auto loader" whatever does not matter right now, but it would be selected exactly like the other gunner tools by sitting on a gun and selecting it to have its effect no new UIs or Models or anything just its little grey picture at the bottom of the screen. While it is selected the gun reloads 35% faster or something it would take some tweaking and math to get it to a fair and balanced point, If the gunner left the tool active when the reload was complete it starts another reload, meaning the gunner just wasted time adding in a form of risk reward for the use of this tool. That also separates the good gunners from the great gunners, as a great one switches to this tool immediately as the reload starts and waits till the last second to switch to his ammo type maximizing DPS.

This way with the current system an engineer could take this tool but be confined to only using regular ammo, while a gunner can still use specialized ammos with this tool. This increases reload without being some magical passive as it would be a very active skill the gunners perform sitting on the gun rather than twiddling their thumbs, staying true to the spirit of GOI.

One problem I see is both these ideas cant be implemented together... UNLESS! the reload crank tool thingy becomes a gunner exclusive tool to stop engineers or pilots from buggering up the game by jumping on guns without any form of ammo. Hell if that happened certain sniper ship builds might be taking 2 gunners simply for the variety and speed they can dish out pain over the engineers.


Offline macmacnick

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #41 on: May 20, 2014, 07:43:38 pm »
What about the 'spring clip' thing that existed for a bit in the dev app? +200% ammunition capacity,  ≈50% damage, gun unloads all rounds almost instantly upon fire, with 50%-75% more spread than usual, and once the clip is emptied, the gun breaks? (the mine launcher in the dev app was fun, 2 mines, once they deployed, they exploded as they were inside of one another, kind-of like you'd be launching an explosive that is timed to detonate in midair, was glorious, but had to rebuild. Plus the flamer was a wall of fire. All that it needs is the extra minus, such as -50% projectile speed (range) so that it would be truly close quarters, high risk, high reward.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 07:45:33 pm by macmacnick »

Offline Milevan Faent

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #42 on: May 20, 2014, 07:44:42 pm »
What about the 'spring clip' thing that existed for a bit in the dev app? +200% ammunition capacity,  ≈50% damage, gun unloads all rounds almost instantly upon fire, with 50%-75% more spread than usual, and once the clip is emptied, the gun breaks? (the mine launcher in the dev app was fun, 2 mines, once they deployed, they exploded as they were inside of one another, kind-of like you'd be launching an explosive that is timed to detonate in midair, was glorious, but had to rebuild. Plus the flamer was a wall of fire.

It's already back on dev app for testing.

Offline Stuboi

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #43 on: May 20, 2014, 08:01:25 pm »
Freeze ammo: Ammo designed to hamper and dismantle the use of weapons and engines rather than destroying it. To be used as a supporting ammo type to frustrate enemies.

- Reduces the rate of fire, firing angle and velocity of the target guns
- Reduces the speed and manoeuvrability of the ship for a period of time.
- Targets hit by freeze ammo cannot be set alight for a short period of time.
- Increased amount of time to repair ship parts affected by Freeze ammo for a short period of time.
- Freeze ammo causes a moderate drop in ammo damage of the user.

Smoke bombs: Passive capsule which can be sent hurtling towards an opponent setting off smoke screen on impact, blinding the pilot and crew onboard for a short period of time.

- 1 shot capsule
- No damage
- Long reload
- Short to Mid range.

Offline Goldenglade

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Re: Call for Gunner Ammo Ideas
« Reply #44 on: May 20, 2014, 08:08:33 pm »
we could always just make weapon jams a common thing for non-gunners.