Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!

[Moriarty]

Don't take it to heart Echoez, Pickle has been decrying the irrelevance of "competitive play" for as long as there has been competitive play! Much in the same way gilder goes on about the squid.

[GeoRmr]

On class specific perks to improve the effectiveness, and therefore, viability of a gunner:

How about the ability to active reload?
An example would be the Gears of War series, where you can attempt to time a perfect second push of the reload button for a faster reload, but if you miss the gun jams and the reload takes longer.

As demonstrated in this video by YaNkDeEz11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=475HlWJQrwk

Particularly noted was the lack of effectiveness on light gun ships, so if you were to apply this perk to only light guns it would prevent OP Manticore abuse but increase desirability for a gunner on say a squid.
Still too OP a suggestion? Maybe nerf this a bit so that the active reload only works if the previous rounds fired were of the same munition type, i.e. you can't active reload if you want to change to a different type of munition.
Still too OP a suggestion? Perhaps make it load a smaller clip size as well?
Still too OP a suggestion? Don't allow to chain active reloads?
Still too OP a suggestion? Make the succeeding reload time longer?

[Mr.Mouse]

Mabe remove vanilla ammo from guns? Move it to loadout? All other ammo has disadvantages. So gungineer forsed to use only one ammo, ammo that he selected in loadout.

[Squash]

I think it's worth saying, this last patch was a significant gunner buff. It's still early days but it's certainly both the community's popular and informed opinion that the Hades likes gunners, as it does well with lesmok, but needs a secondary ammo that slows shots for dealing with arm time. The same can we said for the new light flak with heavy clip and a secondary ammo for closer range. The carronade is also a more articulate weapon which should let it benefit from ammo diversity even more than before.

[Echoez]

Eh, the most carronade centric ship was the Goldfish (aka Blenderfish) which was nerfed in various ways in 1.3.2, Eric did us the honor of going as far as nerfing Chute Vent itself to further lower its effectiveness, other than that, the Heavy carronade always benefited a lot more from different ammo types even back at 1.2 when Loch was still at 250% damage instead of 225% that it is now, it also did less damage to your gun which means gunners had an easier time repairing it, not anymore (plus very skill based cause it has no turning, which seperated the good from the bads)

Hades doesn't need gunners, Incediary is bad choice for the large clip it bears, Heatsink is still faily bad and Greased doesn't reduce arming range that much, none of them actually do. it's around 30-35 meter reduction max.

Not sure why the Light Flak needed a 300 meter arming range (it's too much IMO, 150-175 meters would be much better), lol, that makes it a pretty bad choice if anything for a multitude of reasons other than using a gunner for a light finisher is a bad idea since you have him sitting there and doing nothing till the armor is down.

/rant

Gunners still not that viable, still selectable but very niche, but not worth it most of the time and with the current Banshee and Hades, you need engineers more than ever. Opinion, of course.

[Squash]

I don't think I agree with you on the first three chunks, but you're certainly right about new fire abundance needing engineers, that's a really good point.

[geggis]

Hmm, there's a certain elegance to Mouse's suggestion. If you were to run with that, would there be a 'standard/vanilla' ammo type? No real trade-offs but no specific strengths either, like the wrench for a gunner.

[HamsterIV]

Mouse's proposal would work great to decrease the power of the gungineer for mid to high experience level games, however it would make life even more frustrating for new players. Imagine every time you jump on a gun you start  reload cycle unless you already prepped that gun before battle. Also the entire ship will start yelling at you for deloading the optimal ammo and forcing who ever was assigned to that gun to reload.

[Zenark]

Just make it so that jumping on a gun loaded with a Gunners ammo stays loaded. It's supposed to do that already, right?

[RearAdmiralZill]

That only applies to the Ai if I remember right. And its only for one clip. If a player hops on a gun loaded with an ammo they don't have, the gun will auto reload.

[Zenark]

Well then that should be implemented to increase the value of a Gunner. A gunner can load in a clip of whatever ammo he has and that clip stays in the gun unless it's manually reloaded or the clip is used. This means the Gunner could go around the ship and load each gun with specialized ammo. One could sacrifice their third ammo type for their primary gun in order to use that third ammo for his engineer buddies.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Then engies could just take three different ammo types and do the same thing. You indirectly buff both and you're back to square one.

[geggis]

Getting a single gunner to load the optimal ammo into each gun while the engineers focus on their job is more manageable than getting three engineers to load ammo types in specific guns at specific times though -- one slip up there and you've got a broken ship or sub-optimal fire power. I'm sure you could manage it with the right crew and captain and enough practice but generally speaking that's asking a lot more of your engineers than letting a gunner do what they're supposed to be cut out for. I'm with Zenark in that guns should stay loaded with whatever ammo's in them unless emptied manually (I actually thought it did this anyway).

I really like the idea of the gunner being the master of ammo, the most flexible on any gun. At present that quality is there but it's not prominent enough in the same way as engineering is to an engineer. I love gunning as a gunner but going engie is always the safer bet given that most guns fare well with standard ammo and even better with one alternative. If engineers had only a single ammo type to choose from (vanilla or special type) that would suddenly make the risk/reward dynamics of choosing an engie or gunner a lot more interesting. Two gunners would be much more viable and hell, pilot gunners might be an option too.

My point is: 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 depending on what they go for). Engineers on the other hand get vanilla ammo and an alt with a full complement of engineering tools. Yes they loose two ammo types, but they don't loose the ability to gun like a gunner loses the ability to engineer sufficiently.

[HamsterIV]

Getting a single gunner to load the optimal ammo into each gun while the engineers focus on their job is more manageable than getting three engineers to load ammo types in specific guns at specific times though -- one slip up there and you've got a broken ship or sub-optimal fire power. I'm sure you could manage it with the right crew and captain and enough practice but generally speaking that's asking a lot more of your engineers than letting a gunner do what they're supposed to be cut out for.

Actually it is pretty standard practice to let engineers preload ammo on the guns they will be using at the start of the match, and in the down time between encounters. There are slipups in the heat of battle where an engineer can not stay on a gun through its reload cycle so I configure my ship such that the gunner is working the gun that needs specialty ammo the most, and the engineers get the guns that are OK with vanilla. 

Also asking a gunner to swap guns in the heat of battle to load some one else's gun is not a good idea because you loose the DPS you the gunner would have put out he was moving.

[Omniraptor]

Has anyone considered fixing the reload mechanic? As in, the gunner only needs to start the reload process with custom ammo, then the gun will finish loading the custom ammo by itself. It's simple and makes gunners able to do other stuff while the gun reloads, without influencing anyone else.

For example, one gunner can now easily manage a broadside of a galleon or front of a pyramidion, without being a slave to reload cycles and the need to babysit the guns to make sure the proper ammo gets loaded.