The new Minotaur

[Richard LeMoon]

#minotriggered

[BlackenedPies]

Unless someone can correct me, moonshine reduces the effects to 1/10: 1/3 that of kero. Minotaur shooting the front of a moonshine pyra has very little effect and that's the best ship against. The only ship that's vulnerable to taur despite using moonshine is fish.

Getting hit by double taur on galleon sure is annoying but it's not effective besides the damage. The reload is 10 seconds. If you wanna reduce the force then ok but then it'll only be effective against not using tools. It would be a heavy merc with some push.

I don't have a clear idea on balance anymore since all the changes but it's not unbalanced now. People haven't been complaining about the damage so I don't get what's wrong. Yes it's annoying because it's annoying in principal. The complaints are that it's viable and exists.

[BlackenedPies]

I think it's a psychological bias (cue Logicalia). Heavy guns are powerful. Lumberjack shuts down your balloon and hwatcha disables everything. Heavy clip minotaur bumps you 3 times every 20 seconds. As the player with the most Minotaur experience the push isn't unbalanced. You'd rather see your balloon or everything broken instead of being pushed around. Again no one's complaining about the damage so I don't see a problem.

Of course I'd prefer it be a projectile instead of an invisible shotgun, and it's a bit too easy to shoot, but these complaints about it being viable are just that: complaints about being viable. The minotaur works now and people don't like it. You don't bring spire against hades double art or you'll have a bad time. Same with the Minotaur. When do you bring taur over lumber or hwatcha.

[MightyKeb]

I think one thing people don't like about it vs the other heavy weapons is the fact that when you start getting Lumberjacked and Hwacha'd it's a bit of a team effort to deal with them as you rely on your engineers to overcome the challenges they present by crippling a certain part of your ship while your pilot attempts to stop it by either being evasive or going offensive on the said ship. With minotaur, it's always been up to the pilot. You get pushed around every 20 seconds and your crew cant do anything other than watch you rage. The shatter and piercing damage it does addresses this problem partially now as it gives the engineers something to repair constantly, but the fact remains that minotaur affects horizontal ship positioning aggressively (as opposed to hwacha affecting it passively by reducing or removing your ability to control it, aggressively just means it actively forces you in one direction) and as long as the crew doesn't have a component, tool or anything that can help the situation like they can with a hwacha or lumberjack, minotaur will continously be complained about.

[Richard LeMoon]

Blackenedpies, if you have to bring moonshine to counter any ship that has a mino on it only illustrates how broken it is. It is the only gun that requires a pilot tool. Every other gun can simply be outflown.

As for timing, I tell my gunners to shoot sporadically, firing a couple shots as fast at they can, wait a few seconds and fire again, then wait five seconds to fire the last shot. Mix it up every time. That easily messes up pilots that know how to deal with perfectly timed shots. It can't be countered with tools.

[MightyKeb]

What if - borrowing from the fact that lumberjack and carronade force you to go downwards and gives you control over everything else - instead of mino pushing ships about, it would simply reduce your momentum in the directio you're going and eventually push you backwards? Ie, same push effect, but doesnt turn you around, hit a sideways pyramidion and it bounces away from you sideways, hit one charging forwards, it stops it and if its not charging forward pushes it directly backwards. That way your gunners still get to keep arcs + it becomes much more reliable when used in conjunction with arming time weapons. But considering you can be shot back, either the push force or the firing rate has to be increased even more for it to be functional in any sort of high level gameplay.

[Elazul]

I don't really see how bringing moonshine or kerosene to counter minotaur is any different from bringing droge chute to counter caronade or lumberjack, or bringing chemspray to counter flamethrower.

I've seen this same kind of anti crowd control campaigning in other games and it always baffles me. Multiplayer games with no crowd control just devolve into boring dps races of who can get the first shot in.

[Richard LeMoon]

I don't bring chute to counter poppers most of the time. As long as you know what to expect (go down), it is not hard to build a plan around that. You are still in control of your ship for the most part. Mino is different. Your ship's reaction to being hit are random based on where you get hit, taking away the ability to predict or compensate. The enemy gunner takes control of your ship. That is why people rage about it.

[nhbearit]

I wouldn't say it has control of my ship. I do. Even if it bumps me around.. meh. I'll deal with it, I know how to get my ship pointed the way I want it. With that said, honestly, I don't think anyone who brings the Mino solely for the push effect is too serious about it. It'll push an enemy a little bit out of arc, sure, but that's not what I need a gun to be able to do. Particularly not a heavy weapon. While the push effect is a nice little bonus to help deal with a charging enemy, what matters is really the damage. So, as long as a Mino gunner is mistakenly aiming for my balloon, I'll deal with it and be glad it's not any other heavy weapon.

[nhbearit]

I played one game this evening. Then I had to take a break out of frustration. I flew a mid-range junker with a level 1 Pyramidian ally (who tried his darnedest, but was a level 2 engineer... sigh). Our opposition was a Hwatcha Goldfish and a Galleon with minotaurs. Everyone on the Galleon crew was under level 10, yet they dominated the match. My crew consisted of a normal friend I play with often and two novices (level 2 and 7, I believe). Those novices ragequit five minutes into the game because 'I wasn't giving them angles' because of constant minotaur hits. We proceeded to get wrecked to the tune of 4 to 1 until two solid players joined me and we brought the game back to 4 to 4. But we ultimately lost. Why? The minotaur. The @#%@# minotaur, which I already hated, but now I hate even more because it drove away my noob crew and put me at a supreme disadvantage for more than half the match. "Why, Atruejedi! Why didn't you use pilot tools to counter the bounce?" I was asked. I did. I used tons of kerosene, and I tried to time it properly. But it didn't matter. "But why fly a junker at all, then, Atruejedi? They are prime minotaur targets!" Do you want me to fly a more complex ship with people brand new to the game? No, thanks. The novices didn't repair dependably and the AI crew wasn't much better. The match went on for 40 or so minutes as my ally ran from place to place as I begged him to stay alive (he died 4 times by the end with zero kills) and tried to kill the enemy ships. I did destroy four of them, but the minotaurs made my life hell.

Is anyone familiar with Team Fortress 2? Minotaurs are like the items in that game that take control away from the player, and NO ONE ENJOYS THAT. Valve completely nerfed the baseball bat that immobilized players because of the outrage. How is the minotaur not suffering the same backlash? People love USING it, but no one enjoys fighting AGAINST it. It's the most rage-inducing weapon in the game, first an all-too-weak-yet-evil weapon, and now an extremely effective and therefore even more annoying weapon!

THE RAGE IS REAL.

Wait...
Waitaminute..
I was in that match
What you say isn't entirely true.

You were in a junker that had a gat/flak side I believe. Very little disable. I think you only had a front artemis. The reason the match took so long was that the galleon wasn't really doing anything. Certainly not "dominating." So ya, it took a hwachafish I think 15-20 minutes to get 3 kills.. Then we almost exclusively targeted your junker. And Kudos to you and your crew, it just wouldn't die.. at all.. like, damn, you had some good engies over there. Our pilot made a couple mistakes, and when you were able to capitalize on them, you got a couple kills on us. After we went down (and reliable hwachas stopped disabling you) is when you were able to kill the galleon. After the 50ish minute mark (the match took about 55 mins btw) we decided to switch back to the pyra to just get a kill and end it. which happened. And again, they had a damn good engie.. Fehnril? something along those lines (If you see this let me know). So ya, it took a good long while, but considering the two heavy hitters were a hwachafish and a gat/flak junker, I'm not too concerned.

[Nijay]

As a new player it took me  like half the match to realize I was being hit by a minotaur from a Galleon while flying a Pyrmidion but once I did it was not very relevant. It was kind of a neat trick to keep me from diving straight at them but simply alternations and combinations of reverse-turning, going up and down, and some pilot skills were enough to minimize the mino hits - just like dodging any shots.

I equipped my spire with a minotaur and we got a compliment on using it from our allied captain, but that thing is hard to shoot. I was trying to use range finder but I still had to get a lot off feedback on arc adjustments because it was my first time on the spire and first time with a mino on a ship. I probably limited our gunner to 20%-30% accuracy at <600m. And I found other crews wouldn't even shoot it and preferred the rocket launcher and hades as we could not use an artemis effectively either. My idea was to have a long range support ship and it seemed to work to some noobish degree. But I did notice that even at close range with more hits the damage was pretty low. We were definitely carried in any match I brought that ship to.

Those are the only times I've seen a minotaur in action, only one ship I've been up against ever had it. That's probably why new players get so frustrated, if you don't know what it is it's easy to get frustrated.  I am more frustrated going up against cannonade on a goldfish that stomps you into the ground and hwatcha spam in general. Maybe that's because I see that kind of stuff and don't see minos in action.

[BlackenedPies]

Great feedback Nijay. Keep in mind you need to use heavy clip ammo at anything over 300m to be effective. It has five pellets and you want all of them to hit the same place and ideally the armor/components which does the most damage. Most of the players I encounter aren't using heavy clip.

On paper it's pretty easy to shoot. It shoots straight at 550 m/s. The problem is that it's hard to see the projectile. The rangefinder is for testing purposes and has little use in game. The feature telling you where to aim is broken. I recommend binding your map close by and using that. Each square is 500m or about a second of travel time.

On spire it truly shines against fish. One shot can destroy a heavy gun and the long profile of fish makes them vulnerable to being pushed. Banshees pair well with it and your gunner will want heavy clip, greased (close range), and heatsink/lochnagar. Lochnagar does big damage but you have to stay off and repair it until it's at full health (because of long reload).

[Helios.]

that is the kind of feedback about a weapon that is useful and specific, so applause for nijay

its true that the mino is not that useful against ships that are relatively short in profile, but not ineffective by any means.

the galleon is very vulnerable to mino attack due to its large blind spots, and by virtue of the fact that presenting those weapons shows its longest profile, making it fairly easy to turn around wich careful aim. that said its heavy so you have to hit it a few times to make it move much.

the goldfish is easy to shift around because its long and light, as you said, its easy to push around.

the junker is kinda useless to push around because it spins so quickly and it has so few blind spots. by the time you repoad chances are it has already returned fire, and tried to dismantle the mino cannon

squid: good work if you can get it, but good luck. It's so light it WILL move, but it spins quickly, so can correct and avoid your arc long before you reload, in my experience anyway

mobula is pretty vulnerable because its longest profile is presented when it turns its weapons on you, so pushing it out of arc is easier at this time, its kinda heavy though, and if you arent using heavy, you will miss too much to get it to move far enough to be safe.

spire: its worth using for sniping out parts, but its not going to spin... almost at all

the pyra is fun to kick around, it has huge blindspots and a long profile, but its moderately heavy. worth  a concerted effort to keep it from charging you down.

[BlackenedPies]

To note: goldfish and spire weigh the same at 150 tons and mobula and junker weigh nearly the same with mobula at 125 and junker 120. Squid 95, pyra 200, and galleon 320.

http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Airships

[Spud Nick]

Is there any numbers for armor damage? I heard that lochnagar mino can brake the armor of a squid, goldfish, and spire with one shot. I have also seen loch mino brake heavy guns in one shot. Is Heavy clip still useful for braking heavy guns? or is loch more useful with the narrow spread? Greased still seems to be the best ammo for the mino at close range.

If I want to push ships out of gun arcs what is the best ammo to use? If I want to brake guns with the shatter damage what is the best ammo to use? If I just wamt to brake armor what is the best ammo to use?