"What's wrong with the Pyramidion? What's wrong with the Hwacha?" - Awkm

[Dutch Vanya]

If they were willing to change ships, and they might be open to it in a very minor way, I'd recommend just putting something directly in the back of the ship between the engines. Like some big barrels or crates, preventing players from doing a full circuit and potentially stopping them from hitting the top engine from underneath. Now it doesn't need the nerfs as much because it's harder to keep everything repaired. The change itself wouldn't require too much extra effort either, which is a nice bonus.

I always thought that would have been a good way to nerf the pyramidion too.

[Urz]

Making the Pyramidion harder to repair would have detrimental effects outside of a pure balance perspective.

The Pyramidion is the most accessible ship for new players. One of the qualities which makes it effective in low-level lobbies is it's simple crew setup and repair circuits. As a "learning ship" I think it's a great design, and many of us (myself included) cut our teeth keeping Pyramidions in the air. By complicating the main repair circuit you are increasing the amount of time it's going to take for a new player to run it effectively, further widening the gap in power between noob and veteran ships.

From the perspective of an experienced player, main engineer on Pyra is one of the most repetitive positions in the game. By making that repair circuit less efficient and more tedious, you're also making the game less enjoyable for the person assigned to it.

[Arturo Sanchez]

If they were willing to change ships, and they might be open to it in a very minor way, I'd recommend just putting something directly in the back of the ship between the engines. Like some big barrels or crates, preventing players from doing a full circuit and potentially stopping them from hitting the top engine from underneath. Now it doesn't need the nerfs as much because it's harder to keep everything repaired. The change itself wouldn't require too much extra effort either, which is a nice bonus.

knowing muse, they'll add those changes and won't undo the nerfs.

[Richard LeMoon]

I'm pretty sure Muse won't be changing ship models anytime soon, as such, this is not a serious solution. Even if they were willing to put in the work to basically make a new ship, there are definitely other ships for them to work on. Say, the Mobula, or the Spire, or even just by making a new ship. You've been playing this game for a while Richard, you should try to come up with something Muse could actually do. While I can't speak for anyone else here, I'd certainly be interested in what you think would be a workable solution.

There is nothing that can be done with numbers. No workable solution. The Pyra, as it is, is still the most used ship with the best win/loss ratio. It has two forward facing guns and plenty of gun pairs that work amazingly well (golden pairs). It has two free crew members most of the time. It is easy to get to all key components with the last crew member. It is a small target.

You have to change some of those aspects to be able to make the Pyra better without making it better than the other ships. Which, given its record, it still is. You have to trade something to get the nimble turning and high speed lawn dart back. So, what aspects can we change just using numbers?

Let's look at some of those aspects.

The golden pairs problem.

This can be fixed in two 'just numbers' ways. Nerf the guns or tie up a crew member to keep them off a full time gun. They tried nerfing the guns (people cried). This also effects all the rest of the ships and detracts fun from the entire game. Not a good option. The other option is to make it harder to keep two guns on a single target. We will look at those in the next point.

The idle crew problem.

Idle engineers make great gunners. On the Pyra, you have one engineer whose sole purpose is to fire a gun... oh, and fix that balloon thing two steps behind you once in a while. Let the other engineer fix the everything. Except now they can't. The hull is so thin that it needs two babysitters to survive the most feeble attacks. They are now trying tying up a crew member through lower hull health (people are crying more) to try to reduce firepower. This makes the Pyra a gunslinger. Shoot first or die fast. It is a one trick pony. It also increase the NOT FUN aspect.

The lawn dart problem.

They are compensating for small size and great assault firepower by slowing the ship down and making it easy to flank against (tears nonstop). This makes it a gunslinger in a wheelchair with one blind eye. Shoot first and hope no one ever comes from any direction other than your front. The NOT FUN needle goes through the roof on this one. You HAVE to position your ship correctly on first contact. You HAVE to fire first. And you HAVE TO hope no one breaks your armor. You have to do all of this because there is no escape if you do any of those wrong.


Are any of these decisions wrong? Not from a balance standpoint. Since it is already statistically the best ship, and it has been nerfed accordingly, what people are asking for is not balance. They are asking to make it a more FUN ship. They are asking for it to be more than a blind gunslinger riding a one trick pony.

So, let's recap the story so far. I remember a time when an entire team would quit the instant they saw a double metamidian on the other team. Back then, it was FUN to fly them. They were fast, nimble, easy, and deadly. That is why I never once in my entire time playing this game took one. Easy is not fun to me. So I found creative ways to beat them using tiny arc crosses with odd guns on little used ships. The game was 'Guns of Howtobeatametamidian' if you did not simply take one.

Fast forward to today. The Pyra is more balanced with other ships (yet still wins more), and is taken much less (though still the most) and is now NOT FUN to fly. To make it more fun to fly would make it overpowered again and the skies would be full of them again. This is the Pyramidian Paradox. It is too good at the one thing it does well.


Given that any buff to the numbers will only increase the Pyra's overall win rate and use, and any debuf would make it even more dismal to fly or ruin other ships, nothing can be done there. You are either going to make it more overpowered, or less fun. The only option left is to change the ship so that the numbers can be changed to make flying it fun again without making it more overpowered.

[Daft Loon]

How about moving the armor repair point up to the top in the mirror spot to the balloon and angling one of the side guns slightly forwards to give the bottom deck engineer something more to do.

[Fynx]

I really like the idea of increasing max speed wildly, while acceleration remains the same.

It might be the fun aspect you're talking about and it's still a one trick pony, not really overpowered because this would make a pyra truly a ramming / ambush ship. You hit the enemy or you hit the wall.

[BlackenedPies]

I don't think a huge speed increase with low acceleration would help. Most ships can out maneuver and dodge charging pyras and when that happens the pyra is now useless. Its got a ton of forward momentum and the enemy isn't forwards. I'd say it could be similar to goldfish speed but not with the current acceleration. In most situations the pyra isn't at full speed.

2.50 is a good (low) acceleration that I'd like to revert to. If we want to give it more speed then cap it at 40 like fish and reduce hull to 500 because 550 OP.

[Arturo Sanchez]

To fix the golden pair would be to do what the spire does and make the  guns face outwards at a slight angle making bifecta possible but awkward. I assume changing the angle the gun faces by default counts as changing the numbers.

Idle crew... frankly as a gungi I clip into the balloon and face forward so I can hit the balloon and still be ready for hull break and killing shot. 1 step would be to fix that obvious exploit. Another might be to lower the engine hp of the turning. So sustained kero/moon lawn darting will destroy your ability to turn adequately, justifying the increased top speed too as both a buff and a nerf. Plus it still keeps its default turning ability, it just loses it more with sustained tool use (frankly I do wish it would have a smidge more turning ability to fully balance out).


Also I just had a really dumb match showcasing several issues.
1. Hwacha's ability to simply stamina spam and kill.
2. AI's ability to rebuild to recover from a hwacha being garbage resulting in spam hwacha as an actual kill tactic (seriously poor dementio-not that anyone cries when it happens to me).

But to stay on topic, what if the old reload time of the hwacha was restored? The really REEEALLY long one that took a million years to get ready. With stamina it becomes a minor nerf (hwacha shouldn't be able to shoot as fast as it can anyway...its too much shatter and explosive in such short intervals).

Will link the video once the video is ready. All I did was put front gun to arc and watched myself win and I made a bazzilion errors like kero reversing into a mountain where I thought at the angle I was in I would just clip the edge. A fatal error in a real match. As well as lose track of the target like... twice and average reaction time lag of about 3 seconds.

[Dementio]

2. AI's ability to rebuild to recover from a hwacha being garbage resulting in spam hwacha as an actual kill tactic (seriously poor dementio-not that anyone cries when it happens to me).

To be fair, some Gatling was always shooting at my Squid armor too and if it wasn't your AI shooting when you didn't have front gun arcs, then it was your ally. And neither did I bring hydrogen or chute vent to dodge multiple Hwachas, so I died even quicker after only one Hwacha. AND there was one time where my AI decided to not fix the armor at all and mid range Hwacha had an easy time. (And our ally was double Gatling Pyra, because he didn't believe in AI Mortar, come on)

[Arturo Sanchez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy9O1vFidwY

AI was set to repair pretty much the whole match.

You only got gat after your engines get taken out (and when the junker remembered you existed and noticed you couldn't dodge-strangely had little to no killing ability for gat carrot). AI script will prioritise hull over engines. So even if you set to repair, AI will constantly stop what its doing to tap the hull.

Thus I didn't have to do much but point the hwacha towards you. First volley would definitely destroy your engines and either break your hull or near break it. By the time it reloads, you'd have prolly 2 engines ready only to go out again and then take more hull dmg in earnest. third volley you would just die. As shown in the video.

If they aren't gonna fix the AI, definitely increase the reload time to similar as before to make it viable to survive a volley. Because as it is, even a novice can just play in pub, point that hwacha and spam other ships to death. While old hwacha fish made full use of the gat hwacha combo as the reload time forced a need for maintained pressure while the gun reloaded. Shortening the reload time fixed the  major complaints about that.

But now that stamina exist, the reload is now too fast.

[Hilary Briss]

How about moving the armor repair point up to the top in the mirror spot to the balloon and angling one of the side guns slightly forwards to give the bottom deck engineer something more to do.

Have thought of this also. For a Good engineer keeping the Pyramidion up is no real fear, the better the pilot the easier the ride. Maybe put the Hull where the stern engine bay is. But you have to actually be upstairs to repair the hull. Or you could also place a Critical Valve somewhere on the ship. The *Wink Wink Critical Valve*  Is more of a D-buff as the main engineer has 2 major components with distance. There Could be a Front bumper arrangement that needs the extra repair on the left of helm. This would also remove pilot from helm on those moments, whilst rebuilding.

Early having a scotch having a read.

[BlackenedPies]

To fix the golden pair would be to do what the spire does and make the  guns face outwards at a slight angle making bifecta possible but awkward. I assume changing the angle the gun faces by default counts as changing the numbers.

Yes. Make it real!




Golden pairs aren't the problem. Everything except squid and fish outgun pyra. Pyra is faster than everything except squid and fish.

1. Hwacha's ability to simply stamina spam and kill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy9O1vFidwY

Hwatcha spam hwawtcha fish has always been a thing with rams. It's the same hwatcha longer range. Hwatcha isn't worse now Daniel, for the majority it's better.

Your gunner did a great job Max. Stamina doesn't make much difference in terms of dps because you can only reduce a reload by 1.6 seconds and it regenerates slowly. A full stamina reload increases dps by 9% while buff increases it 16.7%. Stamina can be amazing if you need arcs like your gunner did. He saved stamina for the arcs which was great for when you weren't burning.

Sitting and spamming hwatcha isn't viable because you can only disable. Ram and hwatcha works because you have control and can do armor/hul/balloon damage. Terrain is perfect for rams but a missed ram can be fatal. Rams are big bumps for control. Hwatcha spam + ram spam works, hwatcha alone doesn't.

And neither did I bring hydrogen or chute vent to dodge multiple Hwachas

It's hard to fight a fish without vertical and I didn't see the tar being effective. Use more tools Max and please don't bring spyglass.

[Arturo Sanchez]

It was an AI match.

Its my AI crew pilot load out. If skele randomly dced (which is kinda likely these days as many have suffered it after the patch), I would be flying blind.

I usually bring bumpers instead of spy glass. Which is my pubbing loadout because for some reason it doesn't process that a flying airship that floats with balloons needs the balloon to be fixed when it gets hurt with vertical tools or else we can't rise or fall or even eat dirt from the pop from some lucky balloon ram.

[Richard LeMoon]

Golden pairs aren't the problem. Everything except squid and fish outgun pyra. Pyra is faster than everything except squid and fish.

On the Pyra, they are since they are in the assault position. On first contact, Pyra outguns everything but Mobula. I don't count the Spire, as it is easy to gat out the main gun. After the initial contact, if both ships survive, the Pyra outguns everything on second reload. It is only after ships start passing one another and turning that the Pyra becomes outclassed.

It is a bell curve. The longer a Pyra is in battle, the less viable it becomes. For other ships, the longer they are in battle, the more viable they can become.


And no, Max. Changing the angle of the guns is not a numbers only change. That is changing the model. 'Changing the numbers' is going into a database and changing the fields.

Guns: Damage A type + amount. Damage B type + amount. Reload. Clip size. Gun HP. Time between shots. Fire causing. Arc limits. Turning speed. Velocity. Drop/lift. Range. etc

Ships: Mass. Turning power. Acceleration. Top speed. Lift power. Drag (vert, horiz, turning), Hull HP. Armor HP.


Things that are not numbers: Gun placement and hit boxes (where you can fix/mount them from). Engine placement and hit boxes. Hull/balloon fix point placement and hit boxes. Hull designation (what is hull on your ship that enemies can shoot). Balloon designation.

All these things require changing the model and exporting to the game.

[Extirminator]

As someone who poked around in code I can tell you that they are not a model change. Each model has assigned points in space that serve as the slot of the gun. Rotation of the gun can then be separately assigned.