Gunner Improvements 2.0

[Mezhu]

There are a few discrepancies between spreadsheet and ingame descriptions

[GeoRmr]

*sigh*

I hold the same stance as I always have, and can no longer be bothered to continue repeating myself in vain.

I can only hope that these proposed changes will not be pushed into production, and that when they are (which of-course they will be, as it seems all proposed changes end up being released regardless of community opinion.) they don't break the game as much as I know that they will. I will continue to play and enjoy your game as much as possible until that time.

If you can be bothered, I implore that you carefully re-read my post (along with the other correspondence between awkm and myself in the thread) and take it earnestly into consideration.
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4125.0.html

I wish you the best of luck,
A rather pessimistic gunner.

_{I think I'm going to miss burst rounds, and I can only wonder at why you're nerfing lesmok again; I hear that one renowned gunner left the game the first time you decided to nerf the viability of lesmok in the heavy flak.}

[N-Sunderland]

These changes will not necessarily all go into production. That is why they're being tested. You should test them yourself before providing feedback, otherwise you're doing very little to improve the situation.

[GeoRmr]

These changes will not necessarily all go into production. That is why they're being tested. You should test them yourself before providing feedback, otherwise you're doing very little to improve the situation.

I know, I have given up on providing feedback. I enjoy how you assume I haven't looked at the changes personally.

[Milevan Faent]

So, asking for some clarification: Armored Clip has an increased chance of creating fires? or an increased chance of catching on fire? And is Greased Rounds suppose to have a reduced chance of causing fires? Or a reduced chance of catching fire?

Edit: Also, what is the actual damage on the Mercury in the Dev App? I want to make sure I have the right numbers, since all I have is a rather old excel file with numbers in it supposedly from 1.3.5. Also found an embarrassing typo: Proximity Ckip XD

[Milevan Faent]

Stupid forum locking my posts so I can't keep editing them, forcing a double post :/ So, I've done some thinking. Proximity is OP because it basically makes it VERY hard to miss with most weapons, yes? What about making it so it increasing arming time, making said weapons worse in close-range combat? Not only would this provide a potential fix, it also fixes the self-destructing mines of "i want to kill myself with my own mines pls" caused by Proxy, assuming the increased arming time causes the mines to move far enough away (and I hope it does, as that is really why I mention this potential tweak).

[Wundsalz]

Edit: Also, what is the actual damage on the Mercury in the Dev App? I want to make sure I have the right numbers, since all I have is a rather old excel file with numbers in it supposedly from 1.3.5. Also found an embarrassing typo: Proximity Ckip XD

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nren7iup46pn38f/Hq1BTC1AAs

[Mezhu]

Maybe lesmok would be more appealing if it had a damage modifier based on distance traveled/maximum potential lesmok range

e.g. -25...+35% damage depending on range;
-25% at point-blank,
+5% at maximum non-lesmok range
+35% at maximum lesmok range

That way it would reward super-long range accurate aiming but would punish gunners for using lesmok just to land an easier shot at ranges where normal would also work. Numbers are kinda random. Makes lesmok less viable for mid-range combat but I'm guessing another ammo can play the mid-range combat role with a lesser muzzle speed increase.

[Milevan Faent]

Edit: Also, what is the actual damage on the Mercury in the Dev App? I want to make sure I have the right numbers, since all I have is a rather old excel file with numbers in it supposedly from 1.3.5. Also found an embarrassing typo: Proximity Ckip XD

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nren7iup46pn38f/Hq1BTC1AAs

Thanks. Looks like Mercury is still the same. This makes me very happy.

[Erheller]

The Dev App spreadheet is actually inaccurate. Awkm said a couple weeks ago that it wasn't accurate and I haven't had the time (read: too lazy) to look into possible issues. I've changed the file name to indicate that it's inaccurate and may lead to incorrect conclusions.

That being said, I don't think Mercury damage got changed.

[Crafeksterty]

I just want to add that we need more conflict of choice between these ammo types.

For example, there not much need for injection if we have greased. Or vice versa. I would combine the forces to add up to one ammo.
Or have injection instead of greased.

I would go away with burst or Proximity, so that there is one. This way, we have one ammo type that does one specific thing.

I would take away charge and let Dense slugs and Dragon ash stay for the sake of conflict of choice.

Take away the drawbacks of Heavy clip to better fit versus Dense slugs

[From here, we have gotten rid off 3 ammo to not be way to abundant with ammo types]


Now, we can add 1 or 2 incredibly niche ammo type much like the Lesmok/Heavy clip/Lochnagar.

Stealth shot:

Removes all graphical effects, including tracers, projectiles, and particles.
-30% damage.
-10% velocity

seems nice, or...

Smoke Ammo
The explosion of the gun lasts for 3 seconds longer on direct hits as well as it stays with the enemy ships momentum.
-50% recoil -30% Clip

I even mentioned it before in "Call to arms for gunner ideas" topic

Im suggesting Straight up replacing greased with injection, Burst with Proximity, Charged with Lungs and Dragon.

Cus #realtalk ammo like greased and burst and charged and 2 others or 1 are very close to being default ammo like.
Having more specific ammo may make more gunner slots more desirable. As ive stated in the Design Paradigm, Game balance, and Gunner vs Engineer topic.

I still think there is a lot to be done.

The direction you are going with the ammo is Right.
But needs to be more right. If you want gunners, then the ammo needs to be specific enough to force the player to also use Default.
If we have a selection of Ammo that are all very niche, we may have 2 gunner on some ship builds. Or ships actualy utilising Default ammo.
Even gunners dont use default ammo because they have choices, but the overall aspect of having these choices is still not as helpfull to builds.

To break the wood of this subject, you must make players want to use default. Which is equal to punching THRU the wood, not at the wood.

[awkm]

Thanks for the feedback, here are some direct responses:

RE: Buff

The times and strength haven't been balanced.  The time and strength can easily be changed to suit the objectives.

In regards to it building too strong of an offensive (Buffed Hwacha + Proximity, or Buffed Carronade being the examples), there are some new Engineer tools that are still being tested internally that were designed to combat the added strength of ammo.

Increasing reload speeds across the board might be interesting to try, but the easier would just be to decrease Reload Buff modifier as others have already suggested.

RE: Brand new mechanics over new ammo

As I've said many times, new mechanics are not happening until new ammo tests are proven to be a failure.  That's not the case yet.  If failure is where we end up, new mechanics will be investigated.  However, this will not happen for at least another several months as our Engineering Team is booked with building Co-Op functionality.  With that said, new ammo probably won't drop until for a while as well.

RE: Armor Clip

Increased chance of catching fire.  Wording is inconsistent, I'll make a pass later.  Just let me know where these issues are and I will take a look.

Regarding nerfs, I'll take a look.

RE: Proximity Clip

The way Proximity works is that it has a ProximityTrigger value that interacts with the weapon's AoE like this:

Proximity Detonation Distance = ProximityTrigger * AoE size

So if ProximityTrigger is less than 1.0, then it will trigger within the weapon's AoE distance and also cause damage (because it's within AoE distance).  However, the original goal was to make it easier for shoot projectile weapons at long range so an additional ModifyAreaOfEffect is added.

Proximity Detonation  Distance = ProximityTrigger * ( AoE size * ModifyAreaOfEffect )

With the additional ModifyAreaOfEffect (300% in the current state) it'll be easier to hit with projectile weapons and still deal damage.  This is also why damage is nerfed by 50%.

An interesting side effect of large AoE and Proximity Detonation is that weapons can attack multiple ships at once fairly reliably if flying in tight formation.  Might be especially good on Capture Point maps.

Arming time can be added to it to ensure mines work properly.  I'll test and see what happens.  Mines steal a bunch of different values to use for itself so can be some weird behaviors as people already know.

Again, all values can change if deemed unfit.

RE: Charged

I'll take a look and see how to make it stand out more and balance it against Lochnagar.  However, it's looking like Charged may not make the cut in light of the new additions.

Bonus arc?  I really don't want to be too generous with bonus arcs... especially on a weapon that increases DPS.

RE: Heatsink

Yes, there's a lot of stuff going on.  One possibility is to remove its arc related properties and put those into another ammo.  I'll need to think a little more on that one and see if it's actually interesting to dilute ammo to that degree.

RE: Greased

In general, the arc increases need to be decreased.  Too generous with arcs.

[Dementio]

An interesting side effect of large AoE and Proximity Detonation is that weapons can attack multiple ships at once fairly reliably if flying in tight formation.  Might be especially good on Capture Point maps.

This sounds like you want to make ships viable to be a one-man army, if not even encouraged to go 3v1. I believe a tight formation requires a similar amount of communication, to stay as tight as it is, as it takes for a team to break such a formation up.
With proximity clip, I would just load a hwacha with it, shoot at the 2 enemy ships constantly disabling the both of them and have my ally beat them up without them having a chance to really do something, other than vertical dodging which only works for so long.

I would rather have such a mechanic apply to burst round's AoE effect. Increased AoE AND easier to hit, what more could one ask for? But that's just my subjective view on the matter...

[Milevan Faent]

Alright, so this is just number crunching, and it may not necessarily be RIGHT, but it may bring about some useful data, so I figured I'd share some math I did when I was questioning the effectiveness of some of the ammo.

Charged is being looked at as a potential problem ammo right now as I understand it, since Slugs and Ash look more impressive. However, there is actually a major flaw with Charged that may not have been noticed: it is genuinely the worst ammo in this version of the dev app by far. What is the primary purpose of Charged? To increase all of the damage of a gun. However, let's look at 3 of the ammo types that also mess with the damage of the gun for comparison, using the Banshee as the base.



In this, it shows that not only is Charged outclassed by Dragon Ash, but even GREASED, the DPS clip, is outclassing it. It also happens to be outclassing the OTHER DPC clip in this case, but that's besides the point. Perhaps instead of my previously mentioned idea (which I still think may warrant looking in to), you might try to make Charged into a high DPC clip, with only decent DPS (and certainly poor compared to Greased or even Default). This gives it a niche that no other clip can fill. Then the more specialized ammo like Ash and Slugs can focus on specialised DPC, combined with a handful of modifiers that basically create an option that meets in the middle between extreme DPS and extreme DPC. This does bring to light however the problem of Greased outshining the "high damage" clips though, so that may want to be looked in to as well. Greased should be the mid-ranged DPS clip regardless, as Injection will definitely fill the far more risky but incredibly effective close-ranged DPS clip.

[Milevan Faent]

Just to throw this out there, as I figured I'd do some experimental math. Instead of how Charged works right now, how about removing the clip reduction? This puts Charged at the highest DPC of any clip. However, this makes it OP you say? Of course, that's why you also reduce the RoF by 50% instead of 30%. Now using that previous example the Banshee has a RoF of 1 shot/sec, for a DPS of only 65.25, vs the 100+ DPS for Greased and even Ash, however the DPC now stands at an amazing 522. Perhaps reductions in rotation speed can also be considered, or something else to act as a serious enough downside to make this not be an auto-pick. The biggest advantage however is on low-clip high damage guns. Depending on the type of gun, Greased, Ash, or Slugs are actually a far better choice. This is an especially BAD choice for a brawler though, simply because you don't have that kind of time in a brawling situation most of the time. Yes, you hit really hard, but you hit slow enough to make other weapons a better option for brawling, like Greased or Injection.

Well, that's my feedback on the situation with Charged at least.