Transferring damage from balloon and other destroyed components to the hull.

[Sammy B. T.]

This is not a long thought out idea so bear with me. I've been thinking again about the carronade and various proposed fixes that wouldn't start another tired conversation about the gun that is completely overpowered or underpowered based on the situation when I realized I may be looking at the wrong side of the equation. So I began thinkning about potential buffs to defense against carronades like armored balloons, increasing upward arcs of gats and mortars and so on. However this idea struck me earlier today and I wanted to get the community's thoughts.

The Question

What if damage to a downed balloon did not transfer to hull or had a reduced transfer to hull.

Now as I am sure you are all aware, when the balloon is downed all damage done to the hit marker of the balloon gets counted as a damage to the armor and hull. What if this didn't happen, either entirely or partially. Quick, to the conjecture corner!

The potentially good
1. Balloon popping would still be a useful zoning technique.
2. Balloon blocking would be a bit more awesome
3. Ships like the every ship other than pyramidion wouldn't be hard countered by the existence of a carronade in the match

The potentially bad
1. This could be a bit of a nerf to carronades and lumberjacks
2. But where does the damage go?



For me though when I am in combat and I lose my balloon, I'm not thinkning of the really crappy fact that I am now falling out of the fight and that my ally is all alone. Instead, I am focused on selfish fears, that I am now super vulnerable to gat mortars. Surely zoning in of itself should be a useful advantage. It already sucks to not have a working balloon on an airship, can't that be enough?

My proposal, and this may be a better idea for dev app testing, is try a few things

No damage transference
Reduces by X% damage transference
Different damage multipliers for shots hitting a downed balloon.

[Nidh]

I think this is a good idea, at the very least I think it should be tested. Zoning is such a huge advantage already, not to mention how long it takes to fully repair the balloon and enter the fight again.

[Alistair MacBain]

I am fine with a damage reduction for damage transfer but taking it away completly i see alot of "abuse". (abuse is maybe the wrong word but i assume you will understand what i mean)
By taking away the damage transfer completly you will have ships like junker that survive for ages cause your unable to hit their hull.
Or a mobula with a dead balloon where you hit the enemy but youre aoe goes in the balloon alone taking away a big proportion of the damage just because you didnt hit an extremely hard to hit target.
And for me these days i am not concerned about the bigger hitbox but on the inability to assist my ally. But ok ive flown with the thralls recently and we value balloons much higher than any other team ive flown with.

[Replaceable]

I think a reduction would be cool. Removing it completely would be bad. *cough* Junker *cough*

Balloon pop does the following.

• Remove you from the fight, leaving your ally 2v1
• More vunerable to hull hits.
• And the potential to leave you grinding up against the floor. Letting you die slowly and frustratingly.

Oh and the Carronade can disable components really easily.
And the heavy carronade is actually quite effective vs. hull armour.

The Carronade does a lot. Maybe too much...

[Crafeksterty]

Yeah, the junker comes to mind, his hull is already small, the baloon is its weakness.
All other ships dont exactly have the baloon as its main focus point of damage so this change doesnt exactly help much.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Balloon pop does the following.
•Remove you from the fight, leaving your ally 2v1
•More vunerable to hull hits.
•And the potential to leave you grinding up against the floor. Letting you die slowly and frustratingly.

Unless im missing patch notes that recent buffed carronades, then:
-It makes it a 1v1 more often than 2v1. The window of popping a balloon, then changing over to their ally is quite small.
-True. Pretty much the point of it, as it has to go through balloon before it can even touch hull, something things like gat/mortar don't have to do.
-Depends on position relative to the ground. The time variable of grinding someone into the ground is varied immensely.

And im not picking on your post, you just happened to put nice points up that let me explain the other side of the coin.

I think you would disproportionately buff some ships while nerfing carronades as a whole, for, what reason? To buff junkers? They don't exactly need it.

[Watchmaker]

Just a historical note: we added the damage transfer mechanic back in beta, because prior to that shooting a destroyed component produced no damage and led to very strange results.  Your destroyed balloon was effectively a shield that blocked all damage from above; the Goldfish could ram with impunity because a destroyed front gun blocked all other damage from the front.

Basically, removing transfer is not likely to happen, at least not without other major revisions to address these issues that led to its original introduction.

[redria]

What if you took the lowest damage modifier between balloon-armor or balloon-hull and applied that to the damage being done to the armor or hull?

So Carronade destroys the balloon. Normally a gatling shooting the balloon would have piercing modifier on armor and the damage would be dealt to the armor. The change would be that the gatling instead has a modifier as if it were shooting the balloon, but it still deals damage to the armor.

A Carronade hitting a dead balloon would have a modifier as if it were shooting the armor (since it deals less damage to armor) and deals the damage to the armor.

Basically you can still aim at the balloon, but it gives you the lowest possible damage modifier between the balloon and what you are actually damaging.

This could also be applied to other components?

[GeoRmr]

Stopping damage transfer makes the junker and mobula ridiculously op.

[RearAdmiralZill]

A Carronade hitting a dead balloon would have a modifier as if it were shooting the armor (since it deals less damage to armor) and deals the damage to the armor.

This is already true. A carronade shooting a dead balloon doesn't get balloon modifiers on armor.

So Carronade destroys the balloon. Normally a gatling shooting the balloon would have piercing modifier on armor and the damage would be dealt to the armor. The change would be that the gatling instead has a modifier as if it were shooting the balloon, but it still deals damage to the armor.

This is the main question I suppose, which still takes me back to if this were a feature, you're buffing ships disproportionately. A big reason for taking out a balloon is so that you get the increased hitbox to hit armor/hull. A junker already has a tiny profile. Then to add onto that special modifiers so that it gets a balloon shield in essence, further delaying the already slow kill that balloon popping weapons provide.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I like the idea of hull taking reduced damage. Not completely removing it but make it take a little longer to kill a ship by just shooting at balloons. The same working for hardpoints might make kills harder to get. Junker alone would be even more of a pain as it is so easy to hit hardpoints instead of armor on that ship.

[Dementio]

You could also just decrease the modifiers of flachette/shatter vs armor so it takes longer to destroy armor with carronades, which they are not intended to do anyway.

[RearAdmiralZill]

You could also just decrease the modifiers of flachette/shatter vs armor so it takes longer to destroy armor with carronades, which they are not intended to do anyway.

And further making gatling the only short ranged gun that can break armor in any amount of time worth using. No thanks.

[nhbearit]

Well, to be fair, the entire point of the gatling is to be a short range armor stripper. It's the only thing the gun is good at. If it wasn't the best in that role it would be a pretty useless gun.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Correct. Gatling is just fine. But for heavy guns especially, they have 0 piercing options. Flechette is their only real "armor stripper". Flechette has been the runner up to piercing, as it were. The modifier was already lowered the last time it was modified (and justifiably). I don't think lowering it more will keep balance.