Author Topic: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!  (Read 281123 times)

Offline Pickle

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #15 on: March 25, 2013, 11:37:52 am »
is just something special, that 30% buff hammer loaded with charged rounds on a light flak?  Hmm...  Just to much awesome going on to ignore.
How many ship builds does that apply to? - definitely the most common Pyra builds and a few popular Junker builds, but much less common on Goldfish or Galleon builds.  And 50-50 on the Squid.

I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

Offline RearAdmiralZill

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #16 on: March 25, 2013, 11:41:10 am »
Quote
I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

My team still uses gunners in the Cogs.

Offline Shinkurex

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #17 on: March 25, 2013, 11:56:00 am »
Quote
I have to declare a strong interest in pick-up games and only a limited interest in The Cogs.  The Gunner is not an endangered species in pick-up games - quite the opposite, the biggest problem is restricting PUG crews to just one of them.  But that one Gunner is valued very highly by a lot of PUG Captains, myself included.  Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

My team still uses gunners in the Cogs.

hello :)

Nah to weigh in on this, I agree that on some "light" ships (Squid and whatnot) a gunner's effectiveness is diminished... That being said, multiple ammo types allow me to use a heavy weapon much more effectively than switching engies everytime... what if the engie with burst is busy on the balloon, while you really need those guns and engines disabled...

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #18 on: March 25, 2013, 01:19:42 pm »
Gunners have been given a bad name by the default class being gunner. Every 1st time player joins a ship as a gunner without understanding the implication of the roll. While I appreciate the fact Muse has made the entire game accessible on initial purchase, I feel the title of gunner needs to be earned. By taking up the gunner slot you are saying "I am the type of person who can calculate shot drop, wind-age, and ship momentum in my head. I have studied each ammo type and know how to get the optimal damage output for each situation. I know what part of the enemy ship to attack with this weapon." When I find this not to be the case I am profoundly disappointed. This is doubly true when I have an engineer on board, who I know can shoot better than the gunner, but is tied to the hull because the gunner is not causing enough damage to the other ship.

Offline Moriarty

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #19 on: March 25, 2013, 01:22:48 pm »
The arguments from Zill ignores the pre and post patch differences to the art of gunnery, almost as if there were none. In fact the argument presented could of been repeated verbatim pre-patch and not be out of place.

The new dynamic especially for the bigger ships is one of Gun-health + time on repair/rebuild vs Ammo options. The abilities of the buff hammer and chem spray (not such an issue with the new fire) are adequate substitutes in this rebalanced environment.

Now I admit the trade might be worth it on a manticore or cannonade and i confess i hadn't really thought about these options...Because pro tip, your gunners hate them, No seriously these are super boring to man and if you've chained you gunner to one make it up to them somehow.

You see your gunners love the heavy flak and the lumberjack, and generally speaking a single ammo type is enough (qwerty is of the opinion that ammo type is charged which is a constant source of amusement for me).

Rounding up our discussion so far, we can all agree that gunners on light guns have suffered. Unsurprisingly I agree and further argue that the same is true for half of the Heavy guns as well particularly on larger ships.

 
 




« Last Edit: March 25, 2013, 01:40:04 pm by Moriarty »

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #20 on: March 25, 2013, 02:45:32 pm »
The post patch meta, specifically arming times, hurt the gunner class by forcing captains to idiot proof their ships. My goldfish exclusively flies with Carronade or Hwacha because I can't count on having gunner who can hit at range, and going point blank is no longer an option. Also since the heavy flack is no longer as effective against armor, even if I have a skilled gunner giving them a high skill weapon will not improve our the ship's dammage output. I have had moderate success with a Lumberjack/Manticore Galleon in part because even if the gunner misses every Lumberjack shot, the top deck Gatling + Manticore is enough to put an attacking ship out of my misery.

Offline MasX

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #21 on: March 25, 2013, 04:18:56 pm »
As long as you can shoot a gUN whats the problem

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #22 on: March 25, 2013, 04:39:08 pm »
I think some of the old school gunners resent no longer being MVP's they were before the last patch. They probably also resent being treated like paste eaters by captains like me who have suffered one too many powder monkeys to really trust a gunner with mission critical tasks.

Offline -Muse- Cullen

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #23 on: March 25, 2013, 05:53:44 pm »
While the gunner role gets an innate trust when it comes to being a high level, I feel that an actual bonus should be included with the role. Whenever I join a game, I never choose gunner because of how restricted the role is- his or her primary role is to shoot, and the secondary role is to keep their gun functional. If something gets destroyed, the gunner has to just sit around and wait, or feebly attempt to help out the ship with whatever repair tool they brought. The engineer's role is to keep everything functional, and secondary role is to use a gun whenever there is downtime.

Most of the time when I play gunner, I simply use a long-range ammo and a short-range ammo, like lesmok and greased. While it would be nice to have both of these, I always end up using one clip of lesmok as the distance is closed, then I stick with the second clip for the rest of the engagement. Having the extra ammo is nice, but most of the time, a gunner will sit on the main weapon of the ship(heavy gun of the spire, goldfish, front gun of any ship, really), and that main weapon will only really benefit from a particular type of ammo, like heavy, charged, or incendiary.

My point is that an experienced engineer can fill in the role of an experienced gunner, but no other classes can really feel at full strength in any other role. If the gunner received some sort of utility bonus that wouldn't break the game, like extra zoom levels on guns, increased move speed on the ship, or some other sweet candy, it would definitely be more of a draw to use the guns as a gunner instead of an engineer.

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #24 on: March 25, 2013, 05:59:14 pm »
Because we're not running balls-to-the-wall hyper-efficient crew builds for competitive play, we're just the 99% just having fun.. ..

nopenopenopenopenope

Something has gone horribly wrong if playing to win and playing for fun are in conflict.  A lot of people here are mentioning "gunner" as though they're referring to someone that's good at shooting, that's not the issue being brought up.  The issue is the actual role of gunner, the actual utility of carrying multiple ammo types versus being completely self-sufficient for gun repairs AND being able to really contribute to ship repairs the need arises.  Simply by bringing a buff hammer, a gungineer can buff his own gun in between reloads at zero cost to DPS, eventually giving himself a little boost once every few volleys (or once every volley in the case of the Manticore).  It's very simple to assign positions so that your crew aren't manning guns they don't have the ammo for.  Hell, even on ships that have heavy (why are we still saying medium?) guns you can still very easily get away with having one ammo type and make up for the lack of range utility (there's always vanilla) with gun uptime.  A great gunner won't aim any worse when he picks "Engineer" as his class, he'll just trade near-useless ammo slots for useful repair tools.

You can't dismiss what's going on in the Cogs just because you're not in it yourself.  Their meta is going to eventually have an effect on our meta.  Something's wrong with the current situation where guns only need one ammo all the time to work, they need to benefit more from having their ammo swapped out all the time in order for gunners to really shine as, well, gunners.

Offline Pickle

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #25 on: March 25, 2013, 07:09:34 pm »
We're averaging a patch a month at the moment, and the next scheduled patch is due next week or the week after.. game balance is yo-yoing as it is.

The Cogs might reflect high level strategy play for a very small minority of the player population, but I'll repeat - there is no evidence that the wider game is rejecting the Gunner role en masse. 99% of crews still contain one Gunner.  There's been a sight decline in the fascination that Russian crews had for Gunner Captains - but that was to be expected.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #26 on: March 25, 2013, 07:15:39 pm »
The last patch has significantly fewer and less drastic balance changes. This may be in part due to Muse preparing for PAX and their Kickstarter announcement. But it could also be due to the game's meta getting closer to what the designers envisioned. I have been meaning to watch a COG's match to see if there is anything the upper tier guys are doing that I have missed out on, but on a whole I agree with Hubert Pickle. Top level crews running at pique efficiency is almost a different game than me messing about on Pub matches.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2013, 07:18:19 pm by HamsterIV »

Offline Squash

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #27 on: March 25, 2013, 08:56:00 pm »
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #28 on: March 28, 2013, 12:20:42 am »
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.

Offline Shinkurex

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #29 on: March 28, 2013, 12:30:04 am »
But hold on, saying "most ships still use a gunner" isn't relevant. The fact is gunners are strictly worse than engineers in almost every scenario. The only time I'd ever consider a gunner more valuable than an engineer is MAYBE on the front of a Manticore Goldfish. MAYBE.

The truth.  A lot of people want to BE gunner, but not a lot of people WANT gunners.  There's plenty of reason to shoot, not a lot of reason to switch out ammo compared to the need to maintain their own gun and help out with repairs.

Well here's how I look at it. You can have another engineer if you would like to help you rebuild when things get critical, but what is there to stop another captain from following you down and just keep hammering you so that all your engies are busy? Your ship is essentially useless at that point in time, b/c you are not putting out any DPS. The moment your gungineer hops off the guns to help, is the moment your ship is doomed to die (IMO of course). The gunner role gives you extra ammo so that you can hit your enemy fast, and provide more DPS. As a side note, gunners are becoming more important for guns with arming time, if you get into a close quarters engagement (lesmok for long range, Heavy or Incendiary for short)