Balance ideas for Pyramidion and Junker

[Queso]

I feel the lack of junkers is just a current meta shift. If that is the case, then it's just the sign of a healthy meta. If we never see junkers again, then we might have an issue. Take the squid as an example of an unbalanced ship. We don't see it in competitive, which means it's probably more a balance issue than simply being out of the meta.

I'll show you competitive squids! (once tar is ok to use again)

[Dutch Vanya]

I would like to see a squid win a match without a flamethrower or carroande.

Gatling gun + forward momentum

[RearAdmiralZill]

Must I break out Vods?

[-Mad Maverick-]

wait we are talking about nerfing the pyra again?  why aren't we buffing other ships or creating new ships?

[RearAdmiralZill]

We could fix phoenix claw, and solve about every movement based issue with ships right now.

Currently, one can pretty much leave claw on for quite awhile with little consequence.

As such, faster ships cant make use of their advantage since claw negates the weakness in other ships. It's most noticeable on pyras and junkers.

This is my belief on why people dislike pyra right now.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4423.0.html

And the means of fixing it.

[-Mad Maverick-]

I wouldn't mind seeing the pyra be given an even worse turning radius but given a buff in speed and mass.... make it the lawn dart it was always meant to be

- said maverick to the surprise of no one

[pandatopia]

As an engie I have to say the pyra is OP because it is too easy to repair. If you compare it to any other ship, it only requires 1.2 engies (yea, 1 main engie and 1/5th of a brain of the top engie), if that, to be at 100% sprayed and full rebuild potential. It also only has 1 part that is "hard to get to" which is the back left gun, which in 99% of pyras is a flare and isn't necessary to be up in the heat of combat.

Junker requires 3 fairly coordinated people to spray, 1 hwacha will instantly disable everything, back turning engines are critical and also the furthest away to repair/rebuild, also removing your gungineer from side guns. All in all you really have to strike a balance between tank and dps. For the pyra, its front guns shooting at all times, gungineer hits balloon once while reloading, main deck is fully repairing all the time. So tanky.

Galleons are huge and sucks for the top deck - balloon, hull, main engine are all 2-3 seconds away from each other, and your main engie has to watch balloon and hull (pilot can help with balloon, but ugh), and you lose your main engie on guns once you start taking hits.

Mobulas are...well you all know how mobulas are. Requires division of labor, and even with pilot on top gun you require a lot of running around for the top deck gunner/gungineer. Also if you ever start taking hits you're basically dead anyway.

Even goldfish are harder to repair - the main engine is way back there, and a general spread of back engie and front engie still requires a 2-3 second delay between side engines and balloon (when climbing up). Only salvation is the good hull placement. Hull drops so fast hull engie will face a sophie's choice whenever the balloon goes down.

Squids too! Everyone knows the back left engine is so neglected, the ramp to the hull will glitch out if you lag even slightly, getting you stuck on the side pipes where even a split second delay means your hull is down. Front gunner has to jump down and run around to hit hull, requiring 3 seconds again.

On pyras repairing is a joke and 100% spray uptime requires no effort, allowing you to go full offense without sacrificing any tankiness.

The layout is just too good. Having a wall behind the upstairs railing so they can't jump down (have to use ladder), and blocking off the main engine from below are ways to make it a bit tougher to use than its current layout.

EDIT: actually I thought of a better solution.

Place the balloon downstairs, way in the back above the back right engine. This might seem like a boon but, if it isn't hittable from below, will require a roundabout circuit for the downstairs engie, and you will be forced to drop a gunner from the top to come down once critical components start taking damage, limiting its full offensive potential.

[Echoez]

It's a vanguard ship, it should be easy to repair.

Squids shouldn't, Galleons also shouldn't to counter-balance their firepower, Goldfishes are the easy to keep up considering you have 2 free engineers most of the time, Junkers are hard to keep together cause they are much more rewarding than a Pyra.

Pyramidion is mostly fine, I doupt it needs any changes, it's just popular cause it has a low skill floor, so people can pick it up more easily than other ships, this doesn't make it any better or unbalanced.

[Frogger]

The frustrating thing about pyramidion balance is that at lower levels of play, they seem OP, but at the higher levels their weaknesses are really apparent and easily exploited by thoughtful opponents. My knee jerk reaction to calls for the pyra to be nerfed or somehow otherwise "balanced" is: no way!

[pandatopia]

I don't understand what is a vanguard ship.

I think these designations are pretty meaningless; at the end of the day ships are shooting and killing each other and that's it. I mean the squid is a "scout" ship or whatever, but what is its role in a meta that just them floundering and getting blown out of the sky?

The pyra is exceptional at both killing and staying alive, and suffers no tradeoffs for doing both at the same time.

2 engies on a pyra are much better at staying alive than 2 on a goldfish. For one, the hull stays up long enough so the main deck can repair something else, and the other reason being the balloon engie is only a spin away from getting on the guns again. That isn't even taking into account pyra's exceptional ramming power.

I would say it takes an exceptional junker pilot to disable/outmaneuver a pyra to the point where its 3 guns > pyra's 2 guns + ram. Also, as soon as you take damage you've lost a gun - while on a pyra, you never lose a gun unless the balloon is down, and even then that just puts you on par with any other ship.

Similarly, 2 light guns > 2 medium guns when it comes to self sufficient killing potential...counterintuitive as that seems. You need a gat strip or  hades melt or something on the light gun on a galleon to kill a pyra before it has outmaneuvered you and is now raining gat + mortar down on you from above.

The mob and spire are so flimsy that frankly you could have everyone on a pyra on hull repairing and just ram them to death.

On the contrary, I find that most high level pilots seem to fly the pyra better than the other ships, simply because it is so good in good hands.

Again the problem isn't its overabundance of firepower or tankiness, it's its ability to maintain firepower and tankiness at all times during an engagement thanks to an amazing component layout.

[Echoez]

I find its component layout to be both a blessing and a curse personaly.. you are overestimating its capabilities..

Especially that 3-engine deck, an artemis will keep you locked down forever the moment anyone even as much as shoots 2 missiles at your back, your 'easily repeaired' engines that are so close together ain't such a boon anymore now that a guy can shoot a missile with no effort and keep you immobile forever right? I know it ain't cause I was doing it in the last tourney I played.

The hull isn't rebuilt easily after it's down and the Pyra gets easily destroyed after it's hull is down since it's a massive box of a ship that you would have to be blind to miss.

The side guns on a Pyra are also pretty much useless if not for super long range (ah the good old days of 1.2 Mercury Fests) or just some utility, since the ship is so unweildy, brawling with these guns is akward, nevermind that their elevevation is different and getting a gunner to go from upper deck to low and then back up takes forever.


The Pyra is simply a silly lawn dart, it's unweildy, stronk and easy to repair cause it's straight forward in all regards, point nose at enemy and guns blazing, thanks to being super slow to turn Junkers can circle around them all day as well and they are very easy to snipe out of the sky thanks to their massive structure.

We can talk all day, but honestly I think the ship is pretty solid, with nothing spectacular about it aside form the armored balloon.

[sparklerfish]

I like how easy the pyramidion is to engineer on so new players can get the basics down and enjoy playing while they learn without screwing everything up royally.  I'm not much of a pilot, but when I have a crew of new players I take comfort in flying a pyra and knowing that things will probably be sort of okay.  I think it's important to have a ship that's easier for new people to cut their teeth on before moving on to something more challenging to engineer on.

I also like the idea of buffing other ships rather than nerfing the pyra.  Adding more sweet spots, making squid/goldfish engines more accessible, etc.

[pandatopia]

Every point you brought up vs the pyra is more prominent on other ships.

With claw nothing can "run circles" around you, and the engine layout (for turning - the important engines) is the same as Junker, Galleon, Goldfish, Spire. If you've got someone on your butt you're going to have problems regardless of what you're playing.

With only the galleon being tankier than the pyra I think you're wrong in that as well - it thrives on brawling and is fantastic.

The side guns are underestimated - a well coordinated team can shoot it just as well as you would the side + front guns on a junker. If you accept that as the junker meta, you should accept a pyra can shoot 2 guns constantly in a 270 degree arc. A good gunner will know when to jump down, it takes all of 2 seconds - shorter time than it takes to run from front gun to bottom gun on a junker, same as top guns to balloon in junker. For example I served on a Rydr ship with 2 long range guns on the front and meta on the sides...people rushed it thinking for an easy kill only to have their armor half gone by the time they got there and a mortar gat staring them in the face. Similarly - it works well with ramming if you're good at predicting that.

Thats one thing that I forgot to touch on - at any point noone on the ship is more than 1-2 seconds from hull. This is ridiculous! This is basically if you took a junker and cut out the entire middle front deck, and put the balloon next to the hull - a bit of an exaggeration, but from balloon -> hull it is very easy to get down.

[Dementio]

If you have to put somebody from the top guns to bottom deck of the pyramidion, then the pyramidion is losing in whatever fight it is in. It can't even safe itself from any danger since only 1 of the top guns shoots at most and engines are going to be ignored since the hull is being tanked.
In this scenario the pyramidion is trying to buy time, probably for the ally to do what he needs to do.
It's big armor takes a while to be rebuild and often times won't be rebuild before the hull itself goes down (which is on par with the mobula's hull health and only better than the junker's).
A pyramidion is low on accelerations, making it hard to dodge when the time comes.

Of course a pyra could keep up with everything circling it by merely using phoenix claw, but it doesn't mean it is going to win the fight.
If a (meta-)junker circles a pyra, the junker usually wins because of higher armor. The pyramidion is damaging it's engines with phoenix claw, which will show effect in time, in an effort to keep the hull up. There will be no extra damage through ramming, because the pyra is turning.
If a squid circles a pyramidion, it could dodge the possible mortar by using superior vertical movement. Similar with the goldfish.

Pyramidion rams are only so effective, because the enemy's armor usually goes down due to the gatling or at least it is damaged and then the rams finishes it. Every ship can ram, the own armor just has to stay up.

Side guns of pyramidions could be used, but it is the pilot's own fault for not using them, if he needs them. And a beacon flare is not so bad to have there.


The pyramidion is like the pipe wrench. Every other ship in the game either has at least 3 guns shooting at the same time, even in close range, or the superior manouverbility to make up for the lack of firepower by simply not being hit.
How is the pyramidion better than any of these? That was a sarcistic question, because it isn't better, it's just not the worst. And I honestly believe this is the only strength the pyramidion has.

[Echoez]

With claw nothing can "run circles" around you, and the engine layout (for turning - the important engines) is the same as Junker, Galleon, Goldfish, Spire. If you've got someone on your butt you're going to have problems regardless of what you're playing.

The ships that should be able to, can, Squids and Junkers will circle a Pyra for more than enough time than they need to disable or kill it, even with Claw, your turn accel is still slow as hell.

No, the engine layout is not the same, you can shoot the Pyra's ass and hit all 3 engines no problem by not even aimming for them, try doing the same at the Junker's turning engines and your shots will start going inbetween them, Goldfish also has its engines seperated and can deal with such threads way more easily thanks to always having 2 engineers on board to repair, the Pyra only ever has one down there or it loses effective firepower, the Spire's engines are all way more spread out.

I've got nothing on the Galleon, but that ship is the easiest to disable anyway, doesn't negate the Pyra's weakness.

With only the galleon being tankier than the pyra I think you're wrong in that as well - it thrives on brawling and is fantastic.

I never said it's a bad brawler?.. I said it's side guns are a horrible choice for an extended close up fight.

The side guns are underestimated - a well coordinated team can shoot it just as well as you would the side + front guns on a junker. If you accept that as the junker meta, you should accept a pyra can shoot 2 guns constantly in a 270 degree arc. A good gunner will know when to jump down, it takes all of 2 seconds - shorter time than it takes to run from front gun to bottom gun on a junker, same as top guns to balloon in junker. For example I served on a Rydr ship with 2 long range guns on the front and meta on the sides...people rushed it thinking for an easy kill only to have their armor half gone by the time they got there and a mortar gat staring them in the face. Similarly - it works well with ramming if you're good at predicting that.

No they aren't underestimated, they are simply not as viable as the front guns thanks to the ship design, the Pyra is shit at turning, so the side guns aren't as useful cause it can't realy use them up close to circle anyone for extended time, they are good for longer range engages or very short usage, or if you want, utility weapons like the flare. Also people rushing a frontal sniper Pyra aren't the best examples to discuss balance around, you could win those engages if you ran sniper side / brawler front as well with no difference at all, so your argument there is kinda moot IMO.

Thats one thing that I forgot to touch on - at any point noone on the ship is more than 1-2 seconds from hull. This is ridiculous! This is basically if you took a junker and cut out the entire middle front deck, and put the balloon next to the hull - a bit of an exaggeration, but from balloon -> hull it is very easy to get down.

The thing is, the Pyramidion is a massive armor hitbox, most of the ship, even around the balloon is armor, which means even if it has 650 armor points, they can easily get stripped cause gatlings and hades will rarely miss a Pyra's armor, which makes it considerably less tanky than it seems to be, plus its perma is low enough so after its armor is down, the hull wil probably die as well 90% of the time, so it makes sense that you would want a lot of people close to the hull at all times, but ifyou take people off of guns to start rebuilding, you are already losing.