Author Topic: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!  (Read 281325 times)

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #60 on: April 05, 2013, 02:22:18 pm »
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.

Offline RearAdmiralZill

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #61 on: April 05, 2013, 04:08:17 pm »
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.

Im not here to pick your loadouts for you or anyone else here. If you want to run 3 engineer's, be my guest. However, you cannot base the entirety of gunner's success/usefulness on certain matches that happen to sway in the favor of the team that went all engie. There are way more variables involved there that can sway wins one way or another.

I personally cant stand using gungineers. I tried it. I dont want him off the gun buffing. I want him on the gun, with ammo loaded, and firing on the enemy im pointing him at. Under that mindset, a gunner fills the role better.

That extra 25% damage over a few seconds can mean the difference between a kill or not. A kill is worth more to me than surviving a little longer, only to die because he's still shooting and my 3 engies are repairing or buffing things.

Offline Squash

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #62 on: April 05, 2013, 04:15:12 pm »
What 25%?

Offline RearAdmiralZill

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #63 on: April 05, 2013, 04:20:12 pm »
What 25%?

It was his example. Im assuming he meant charged rounds in a gun that uses them well.

Offline Pickle

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #64 on: April 06, 2013, 05:16:50 am »
The extra damage (whatever percentage) comes purely from having a second gun firing, over a gun not firing.

One ammunition optimised, buffed gun is less efficient than two guns firing at base damage.



(ok, the Goldfish is a possible exception)

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #65 on: April 06, 2013, 05:55:47 pm »
I had a screenshot of the win, though knowing my luck i deleted it during cleanup.

I know what you meant, but basing it off singular matches isnt an accurate way to show, in this case, gunners arent useful.

I dont base our victory entirely on the fact we had gunners, but it did help in the grand strategy that resulted in a win. That round we had a blenderfish and my pyra, which had a carronade and flak on front. For the blender, i can only assume he had heavy for "long" range and charged/loch for up close. Then for me, my gunner was on front carronade with heavy for "long" range and greased for the quick dps. I forget his third ammo, but i let him choose for himself.

The issue isn't that gunners aren't at all useful, the issue is that they're less useful than a gungineer on many ships.  In the example you gave, the only ship running three engineers is a Galleon, arguably THE ship that benefits from at least one gunner.  That those competing in the Cogs are having so much success rolling three engineers as the norm rather than as some specialty build is indicative of a problem with the current meta, not having a gunner should be a much more distinct disadvantage than merely not being able to hit for an extra 25% damage for these few seconds while losing out on a LOT of repair ability and overall damage from improved uptime and buffs.  That they are currently so prevalent in the meta and beating ships that do run gunners rather than struggling to keep up is not a good thing.  Gunners don't have to be a lot worse than gungineers to fall into disuse.

Im not here to pick your loadouts for you or anyone else here. If you want to run 3 engineer's, be my guest. However, you cannot base the entirety of gunner's success/usefulness on certain matches that happen to sway in the favor of the team that went all engie. There are way more variables involved there that can sway wins one way or another.

I personally cant stand using gungineers. I tried it. I dont want him off the gun buffing. I want him on the gun, with ammo loaded, and firing on the enemy im pointing him at. Under that mindset, a gunner fills the role better.

That extra 25% damage over a few seconds can mean the difference between a kill or not. A kill is worth more to me than surviving a little longer, only to die because he's still shooting and my 3 engies are repairing or buffing things.

That's great that you find a gunner useful, but the issue is that the current meta at large tends to prefer three engineers and no gunners.  That's not something we want to stay around, we don't want there to not be changes to the gunner just because some people can kinda sorta see a slight advantage to having one over a gungineer.  Having some variety in the crew roles should give you a MAJOR advantage over those that have all gunners or all engineers and that currently isn't the case, and the meta reflects that.  Plenty of people have been comparing gunners and gungineers side by side and finding that gungineers are in general winning out, that they're doing so great in the Cogs (galleons nonwithstanding) is about as objective of proof we're going to get.  There needs to be some changes so that gunners aren't seen as something useful to only half of the competitive community.

Offline Shinkurex

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #66 on: April 06, 2013, 07:37:02 pm »
Here's how I look at this... You're going to play your way, I'm not going to sway this... I like my way so it's split 50/50.... I respect your opinion, but don't call me useless... There is no rule to say that you have to bring a gunner and some groups play well without needing them... for MNS, we will always run with gunners... It works for us

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #67 on: April 06, 2013, 08:13:53 pm »
Except I don't want to play this way, it's simply what's currently effective.  I don't want it to be effective, and that this thread exists means a lot of people are unhappy that three engineers are so effective, it's something that should be a novelty setup like three gunners or a flame pyramidion.  And nowhere did I say that Shinkurex was useless, just that in my (and many other competitive players') experience someone that can shoot well is more useful to the captain as a gungineer than as a gunner.  The role doesn't change the players' skill or actual job on the ship at all.  Someone that's good with ammo switching is obviously going to be more useful a gunner than one that isn't, but there isn't enough emphasis on that skill in the game right now and that's the issue.

I'm not arguing that those who currently use gunners shouldn't, but that just because those people CAN use gunners doesn't mean there isn't a need to tweak the mechanics to make gunners more appealing to more than just half of the competitive community.  I think a lot of the problem has to do with the current penalties to ammo switching, as even before this thread was made gunners apparently were more in demand because of heatsink (a defensive, chemspray-like ammo) than actually being able to switch to the most effective ammunition to fit the situation.

Ammo right now is tailored to specific guns and there's an expectation that each player should only be on one gun (two on a Galleon), the result is that more often than not whoever's shooting isn't making use of all three ammo slots.  If the mechanics could be rebalanced a bit to encourage more ammo switching then the meta would probably start to favor the gunner over the gungineer.

Just to give an example, let's say a Pyramidion has two engineers and a gunner.  Both engineers are on repair because the ship's taking heavy fire, the front guns are a gatling and flak.  This SHOULD be the perfect situation for a gunner, strip off armor with the gatling and run over to the flak to smack their hull to distract the enemy crew off of your ship; however, the current penalty for leaving your gun during reload makes it so that the gunner can't really make use of his multiple ammo types and stay equipped for both guns, he might as well have just been a gungineer with heavy clip in that situation.  You CAN do the gun-swapping trick on a Galleon with double Hwachas and still make use of the Gunner's unique traits, but right now that's the only setup where that's possible and that's a damn shame.

Apparently the way reloading works right now is due to some UI limitation rather than any clear vision of how the Gunner should work, though I don't see why defaulting to vanillas is going to be any clearer than defaulting to what was last left in it.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 08:23:59 pm by Helmic »

Offline Helmic

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #68 on: April 06, 2013, 08:46:37 pm »
god damn edit timer

My point is that there's more to this than just telling those that have issues finding use for the gunner to suck it up because you can.  This isn't limited to just a handful of people who haven't really played the game yet, or those who aren't as skilled and can't handle a high skill ceiling.

Offline N-Sunderland

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #69 on: April 07, 2013, 12:53:43 am »
An interesting thing to note is that in the Paddling vs. Gentlemen championship Cog game today, a match where heavy flaks and lumberjacks were used, there was not a single gunner.

Offline Shinkurex

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #70 on: April 07, 2013, 01:29:23 am »
Forgive me for adding on to this, as I am tired. You are absolutely correct Sunderland... There was not a single gunner in that match. I think this may be tied into playing styles of the teams... I would like to point out that Corvus also when with all engies, and MNS went with gunners. Now before this gets twisted, I want everyone to be clear that This is purely my speculation, but there is a mentality you adopt when you click the Icon in the upper right. If you're running all engies, It seems as though one is more keen to sit back in a sniping duel than to get in quick and dirty. Where as with a gunner you want to get him within optimal effectiveness (There will always be exceptions to this rule (Polaris for instance))... This makes for more exciting games for spectators... Just from what I saw today, Muse and MNS brought gunners, which lead to 6 min matches.... Gents, and paddling brought all engies, and we had a 30 min match... With that said, I hold the Gents and the Paddling in the utmost respect, and hope the nonsense that I'm typing makes sense... Who knows... I'll prolly wake up in the morn and wonder what the heck I wrote :P

Also Helmic, You did not say that I was useless, I apologize if it came out that way...

Offline Morblitz

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #71 on: April 07, 2013, 02:04:28 am »
Sorry, Shinkurex. I respectfully disagree.

Our match went so long because both teams held their ground for an incredibly long (and tense) amount of time. As soon as we made a play and hit you from a different and more advantageous position, and got the first kill, the rest of the game lasted about as long as a standard match. There were reasons the match lasted as long as it did, and I don't believe it had anything to do with the fact that no one was a gunner. 

In fact, I believe it would have lasted even longer if we had gunners. My lumberjack, almost all the other guns, and the turning engines kept getting destroyed. If I was a gunner I would have had a really bad time.

Offline Shinkurex

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #72 on: April 07, 2013, 08:25:27 am »
Meh that's fine.... We'll See what Happens next week...

Offline Moriarty

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #73 on: April 07, 2013, 09:01:45 am »
Shinkurex buddy you might be reading too much into the roles old boy.

Personally I'd LOVE to be a gunner (tho mainly for the prestige rather than the ammo). Infact i keep my engi level as low as possible in a form of protest figuring as long as the cogs features the Paddling and everyone has high levels my lvl3 engi will stick out and hopefully raise some questions.

On another note this thread is coming along nicely with vigorous discussion. However my biggest bugbear is that people seem to think the gunner class has some sort of advantage on heavy guns.

I'd consider this a misconception with 2 caveats:

-Firstly that manticore might sometimes want to use explosive rather than heavy in very specific circumstances; and

-Secondly, if your on one of the ships that tends to have a spare person like a goldfish then sure whatevs its hardly loosing you efficiency because you have a float who's prolly running around with a buff hammer and nothing much to do.   

Offline Typhi

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Re: Fellow Ex-Gunners Of Icarus Lend Me Your Ears!
« Reply #74 on: April 11, 2013, 04:51:23 am »
The solution is pretty simple, just bring back this stuff! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6QVxhmoAIyA#t=224s