Hwacha as a long range disable is a bit of a joke, the bullets are coming in so slowly you can lift above them or drop below them without even using chute vent or hydrogen. Even at closer ranges a well timed chute vent when you see the first hwacha shell leave the gun will get you out of most of the damage.
You are also comparing guns that have spread and bloom to a gun that is just 100% accurate on the same spot every time. The only other gun that compares is the scylla and that weapons projectiles are so slow and short range the comparison is once again a little bit out of place.
The only gun that even compares to a lumberjack is a merc light field gun, and it has 2 shells and a slower fire rate. It's funny that one of the sniper weapons actually feels like a sniper, the merc, while the other sniping option just feels like a god finger.
None of the weapons you mentioned accomplish their roles missing half a clip, except the flamer and carronade. Comparing the LJ to the carronade and flamer is like comparing a shotgun to a 30-30 and saying they're the same.
Also Sammy, sorry but that's a load, both your junker and pyri in the second game were trying to rush us because tehpao was making jokes in lobby about the lumber. They gave up half way through the game and decided to try and hide inside the wreckage. And then just quit after that second game.
Also awkm 115 armor damage every following shot from a lumber, and once it pops your balloon the first time that is at least 4 shots hitting your hull. so ~ 460 damage to hull armor, when you say 30% it sounds nice but that's spin control. Oh well just like every other game it's gonna be sniper hard camps v brawlers. At least in most other games there is cover almost everywhere so you can approach without having to try to cover a Kilometer in the open.
Oh well I have been over ruled like I knew I would, my compliments to the Swarm.
Heavier ships like Galleon and pyramidion I know don't have enought vertical acceleration bo be able to lift out of the Hawacha without hydro or chute vent even at long range, especialy if they have good gunners that can lead you well (when you are lumberjacking your ship has to be relatively slow moving, and even more moving very predictably, so your gunner can compensate), hitting is not that hard (ussualy you fire entire clip of hawacha in 1 burst, if you broke hawacha barrage into say 6 bursts you could always hit with most of the clip). Lumberjack has smiilar spread to Typhoon (the major diffirence being that with typhoon you shoot directly at the recticle and clearly see the deviation, while with lumberjack you don't) - at ablut 1-1.2KM range gunners typicaly switch to heavy clip, becouse it makes lumberjack incredibly accurate (lumberjack does not have muc longer range with heavy clip, and without it the spread can be an issue). At about 800M range hawacha with heavy clip has small enough spread to be able to destroy heavy weapons (so there abouts - just short of maximim range with heavy clip) - witch is something I've gotten good at lateley: destroying heavy guns on slow moving ships with hawacha (I've only recently started doing more gunning), likevise light flak nad gatling have almost no spread and are incredibly easy to hit -(gatling and carrorade are easy to hit becouse they are mechanicaly not a balistic weapon). Carrorade parcticaly auto hits (is it in crosshairs when you fire? - litraly how it works, less spread = more damage => heavy clip is your friend when using carrorade as well).
Not all weapons are meant to destroy ships - gatling can destroy a heavy gun with 25-30% of the clip (you can take out both the hull armor and heavy gun with the same clip on enemy Goldfish - but you need heavy clip). Banshee can't realy do shit on it's own, but it's job it to cause mayhem by setting stuff on fire. Artemis still can dissable components if only half a clip (even full clip will do next to nothing to permahull - it primary purpose is component dissable). And a single hit with flaregun will add 15 stacks of fire witch will force at least one engineer to deal with the fire and severe baloon damage (that is if closest enginner has chem spray instead of extinguisher otherwise it can be less). --And then there is a light mortat that can still miss half a clip and destroy the permahull of everything not goldfish or galleon).
While merc has lower rate of fire and less shells than lumberjack, it can accomplish anything with thse shots (except baloon and permahull damage - altho there were times at start of the year and untill about the time of Claiming of The Fjords tournament [seems like ages ago, with all the changes] when Mercs were kind of broken and you could kill a squid with 3 or maybe 5 hits [witch took no skill at long range]).
I personaly am a brawler, and still be running flamer/gat combo if famer could kick dunners of their gun instantly (i'm running gat/mortar or gat/flak combo ussualy) - AND is till think both merc and lumberjack are balanced fine.
@ nikolai that's 100 shatter damage per shell against engines and guns. The large AOE makes it easy to tag the components along with the balloon on a pyramidion or a goldfish. That may not kill in one shot but it does screw with the gun.
Also the numbers don't seem to calculate correctly I have to run some tests to double check but, today I was paying close attention while fighting a LumberFish and the shots after the balloon popped were taking about a quarter of the midions Armor a shot. I need to do a controlled environment test just to be sure.
LJ AoE literaly deals 0 (ZERO)! damage to components like engines and guns (it's flachete damage witch has 0 modifier - any number multiplied by zero is zero).
midion? If you are reffering to pyra thant you got something wrong - I have been repairing thru LJ barages many times, even on COGS and I can tell you 1 LJ shot does not take a quater of Pyramidion's armor, it in fact takes a consistent LJ barage that hits 5/6 shots on average to become an issue. Taking out Goldfishe's Armor is much easier even With LJ.