Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

[Captain Smollett]

Every gun benefits from 2 or more ammo types but but for many guns the benefit is slight.

If the ammo types were increased in quantity and changed in a way were switching between different ammo for different utility had a significant effect on the outcome of the battle to the point where having a gunner would give a significant advantage over a team who didn't then this whole thread could be closed.

Think of it like the pilot class. Every ship in GOI benefits from two or more helm skills but the benefit is so great that not taking a pilot into combat while certainly viable usually puts your ship at a significant disadvantage.

If ammo became as important and useful as helm tools every ship would use a gunner.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Think of it like the pilot class. Every ship in GOI benefits from two or more helm skills but the benefit is so great that not taking a pilot into combat while certainly viable usually puts your ship at a significant disadvantage.

So lets go with an example like, two hwachafish going at it, one has an engineer with heavy only, the other a gunner with heavy, burst, charged. I hope I don't need to explain how that puts the heavy only at a severe disadvantage.

Two gat/flak pyras. Lets say gunner on flak. Engie takes heavy. Gunner takes heavy, along with greased, charged, burst, ect. Lets go with burst, giving one extra flak shot with more aoe and no damage debuff. He's killing the other pyra in short range more efficiently than your engie will. And if that engie hops off to repair something, well then you have 0 dps, which is even worse. At range, the gunner still has heavy so he can equal that engie.

Gunners get kills more efficiently, which is quite a large advantage over someone lacking one.

[Moo]

But on the other side... If the hwacha gets destroyed or set on fire, an engie with only heavy clip could quickly deal with it himself, rather than a gunner struggling or another engie having to divert from the hull or elsewhere...

[N-Sunderland]

Exactly. In addition, having an engineer means that you can buff the gun. If we compare a gunner with heavy and burst on a flak to an engineer with heavy and buff on the flak:

The engineer gets an extra 20% damage per shot, getting the equivalent of 4.8 shots by only firing 4.
The gunner gets one extra shot, and gets exactly 5 in terms of damage (from 5 fired). In addition, burst lowers the fire rate.

So the engineer is getting nearly as much damage as the gunner in less time, and he can do a considerably better job at repairing his gun.

[RomanKar]

The real problem is that a buffed gun is more effective on most guns than 2 or three ammo types.  Buffed Heavy Gats -- why would you want another ammo type?  Buffed charged Mercs - Buffed Lesmok Mortars.

On a Goldfish, well, you should have the gun buffed AND have 2 ammo types, Lumberjack as well.  But on almost all light weapons, buffed is better than multiple ammo types.

And there is nothing more efficient for killing than buffed Gats and buffed Mortars.  One clip of each and only the Galleon will still be alive.  What gunner loadout with multiple ammo types will give you that?

[Echoez]

I stand by my opinion that Gunners aren't useful on light guns as much as on Heavy ones cause of the light guns not realy needing more than one ammo type and the engineer's ability to buff his weapons.

Buffed flak 4 shots a Pyra with heavy clip and you will be much more accurate and faster than a gunner using burst on it.

On Heavy guns though and on ships like the Goldfish/Spire and Galleon, you have heavy guns, you want at least one to be firing at all times, so a guy will be on his gun all the time firing it, there, I see no point to not have the extra ammo types of a gunner on it since he won't be leaving it much to repair anything and if it goes down, your secondary engi can just help him out a bit.

If they have mercuries, then better pray, cause not even 4 engineers would save your gun anyway.

Against Hwachas, if your pilot is decent and didn't manage to bring a Hwacha fish in your face, then their volley won't instantly finish off your gun, so usually, jumping off to quickly whack it once mid-volley, is a good way to keep it from going down, then you just resume firing and gump off quickly again to bring it back to full.

[Moo]

The gunner could take the buffer in his tool slot. Then he'd be super-damaging. But super-stuck when his gun is damaged....

[RearAdmiralZill]

The act of buffing is what lowers the dps vs a gunner who simply swaps ammo during reloads to "buff" his gun.

While some guns allow the buff to happen during reload, most don't. That would mean you wait till reload is done, then buff, lowering dps. Then you risk missing the ammo swap, and get buffed vanilla rounds. Then you either use them, lowering your effectiveness, or reload again, then buff, further lowering dps.

Fire isn't the end of the world on guns right now, and is easily repairable by a pipe wrench during reloads till an engie has nothing better to do than put the fire out.

If youre taking a buff engie, then you rebuild that gun at the same rate as a gunner (pipe wrench) unless you make him forgo fire protection, so then your fire problem comes back, and you do what a gunner does and repair through till an engie gets there.

[N-Sunderland]

The act of buffing is what lowers the dps vs a gunner who simply swaps ammo during reloads to "buff" his gun.

While some guns allow the buff to happen during reload, most don't. That would mean you wait till reload is done, then buff, lowering dps. Then you risk missing the ammo swap, and get buffed vanilla rounds. Then you either use them, lowering your effectiveness, or reload again, then buff, further lowering dps.

That's what pre-buffing is for.

[RearAdmiralZill]

You can't pre-buff after the initial engagement.

And If I have a buff engie on board, your argument really falls on its face for pre-buffs. But that doesn't always happen of course.

[RomanKar]

Of course you can pre-buff after the initial engagement, before the next engagement.  And especially on flak and mortars that are waiting for the hull armor to come down anyway, buffing really doesn't take away any dps.

And the argument about getting vanilla rounds and all that is not logical at all, as we all are assuming here that the person doing what they are doing is doing it as perfectly as possible, or at least competently.  We are talking ideal cases here.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Of course you can pre-buff after the initial engagement, before the next engagement.  And especially on flak and mortars that are waiting for the hull armor to come down anyway, buffing really doesn't take away any dps

I'm talking about a singular engagement to the death. Of course it resets per engagement, but then so does everything else.

I also prefer the flak to assist with armor dps for one clip along with the gat to get armor down quicker. For a mortar, I haven't calculated it, but ~half of that clip can still kill an unarmored target. That's a matter of preference I guess and we perhaps won't ever agree there.

So then if we talk ideal situations:

You pre-buff your first clip. Buff runs out, ant you can't buff again in the reload time of the gun. Then you are firing your ammo with no buff, negating the buff dps argument. Where's the magic buff coming from? Staggered buff per reload? Does that even work?

Then your gun gets destroyed. Buff is gone. Are you rebuilding, then buffing, then firing?

[N-Sunderland]

You can't pre-buff after the initial engagement.

And If I have a buff engie on board, your argument really falls on its face for pre-buffs. But that doesn't always happen of course.

If they don't die from the first round of buffed flak shots, you won't need to have it buffed or using burst to finish them next time the hull goes down. Even so, buffing during reloads isn't hard, assuming the engineer has a clue of how long the reload lasts.

Another thing I forgot to mention: the buff gives you the extra damage at any range reachable by the flak. Burst only works close up.

[N-Sunderland]

You pre-buff your first clip. Buff runs out, ant you can't buff again in the reload time of the gun.

That's not an ideal situation. That's a situation where the engineer timed his buff terribly. You only buff the gun before the killing clip.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Nor does a gunner, yet he's got more ammo types to deal with the varying situations evolving during this engagement.

Honestly its hard to argue range advantage in a game where movement is so fluid and required. Especially on light flak unless you're referring to a different gun now.