SHIPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2

[Captain Smollett]

  And Lumberjacks... are just too weak to use on anything. 

Wait is my sarcasm detector broken or is he being serious?  Except for the temporarily op Artemis. There isn't a gun in the game better than the Lumberjack

[N-Sunderland]

Wait is my sarcasm detector broken?

You might need to get it checked out

[RaptorSystems]

Just would like to refocus the discussion on ships and not guns. That is all.

[Nidh]

So I played a match with a hwachafish, and it may be my inexperience with the Goldfish, but even when using a chain gun on one side, we were unable to kill anything 1v1. My ally was on the other side of the map doing who knows what, and the other enemy ship was nowhere to be found, so I was stuck facing down a junker, who we disabled quite easily, but that was about it. Switching back and forth between the chain gun and hwacha after taking down armor, even using the phoenix claw, we were locked in a standstill for ages. I don't have a problem with teamwork, but it would be nice if I could kill something on my own. Idk, I haven't flown a Goldfish very often, but from my experience it seems underpowered.

[Lord Dick Tim]

You'll need to apply a judicious amount of ramming, side gun use and proper ammo rotations to see the Goldfish armed with a Hwacha become a murder machine.
In the right position, and time the attacks correctly, it's not too hard to ram an enemy ship, break their armor, and then fire a hwacha blast right down their throat at point blank range. 
I've seen this work to pop a ship that was hard to kill on a few occasions, though it comes at the sacrifice of your own ships health.  Just gotta keep using the goldfish's superior maneuvering and get into a position to do the maximum amount of damage to overwhelm the ability to repair it.  Sometimes that just means breaking the armor and shaving some of the total health down each time before retreating, then doing it again.

[Nidh]

But should that be the way it is? I mean, the Goldfish isn't designed to ram, and I certainly don't want to risk unnecessary damage to my ship.

Or maybe I'm trying to make the Goldfish into something it's not.

[Shinkurex]

I'd like to say that the goldfish is one of my better ships that I fly. what type of ammo is your gunner bringing into the match, and is he using them? It's funny, but I've stuck two flare guns on my side mounts, so that I can get those 15 stacks of fire going, and causing their engineers to panic... it's pretty effective

[Nidh]

Charged and Burst, then the third is optional, but if we need long-range disable I'll suggest heavy.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Don't forget heavy for the long range engagements.

[Nidh]

but if we need long-range disable I'll suggest heavy.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Yup that's what I get for glancing through posts...

[Nidh]

lol, so i guess i'll play around with a few more builds, maybe a flamer on the right? or is the flare better?

[Shinkurex]

I like the flare, as some engies decide to take chemspray over fire extinguishers....

[N-Sunderland]

I like having a left side flare on the Goldfish. It's a nice asset to have, and when it hits it'll be really punishing, especially against chem spray engis.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

A single hit with flare is 15 stacks of fire and that does 38DPS (8+2*the number of stacks) fire damage per second - before baloon modifiers. I have no idea about the baloon health or fire modifiers, but 10 seconds of 15 stacks nearly destroys the whole baloon (witch doesen't quite add up to listed 1200 baloon health).