#CommunityPatch – Burst Ammo Balance (Hwatcha?)

[BlackenedPies]

This is a follow up and successor to the #AmmotudeAdjustment - BURST ammunition proposals thread. The proposals come from participants in the Skype group, and users on the forum

Players indicated they don’t agree with removing the +20% clip effect of burst ammo, which would stop its use in every gun except Artemis and Hwatcha – the two guns which were the main subject of the proposed burst nerf. The increased clip gives it use on guns which only marginally benefit from increased AoE, including Hflak, Lflak, and Lumberjack

There’s a couple options: reduce AoE (which only significantly affects Artemis and Hwatcha), or directly nerf Artemis and/or Hwatcha. The Burst AoE value would need to be +30% or lower to have a noticeable effect

Hwatcha AoE is 14m and Artemis 2.5m. Along with the upcoming heavy clip change (removing the -25% clip reduction), it may make sense to look at balancing the Hwatcha. Options for this include increasing jitter or reducing the burst radius. Increasing jitter reduces effect burst range, and reduced burst radius affects both burst and heavy clip. Balancing Artemis is more tricky as there's only one main ammo for it, but one option is simply reducing damage

What do you think? Should burst ammo be changed, or is the underlying issue the Artemis and Hwatcha? What stats would you change?

[Solidusbucket]

I wrote a long response but it came out like shit.

Let me try again.

Reduce artemis damage so it doesn't destroy light guns in one hit.

Hwatcha is unbalanced only because the skill / coordination required to get a full ship disable is far, far less than the skill / coordination required to do proper pre-building / repairing / hull camping on the receiving end of a hwatcha's volley in order to respond and change the course of the engagement.

New players will simply paddle with one oar. A communitive captain with a decent crew that listens with say fuck the paddles and make lemonade.. . or something.

 

[Daft Loon]

I'd like to see both hwacha and artemis lose some rate of fire to ensure that the existing downside of burst rounds shows more strongly.

A slight nerf of burst rounds to -20% rate of fire could be used to compound with this.

The other side of this is what could be done to make other ammo types useful on these guns, currently I can only see plausible uses for heavyclip hwacha and heatsink artemis, greased hwacha would be fun if it was an alternate option to burst.

[BlackenedPies]

Reduce artemis damage so it doesn't destroy light guns in one hit.

Hwatcha is unbalanced only because the skill / coordination required to get a full ship disable is far, far less than the skill / coordination required to do proper pre-building / repairing / hull camping on the receiving end of a hwatcha's volley in order to respond and change the course of the engagement.

Reducing artemis shatter damage from 120 to 90 means each shot deals 201 component damage (from 261) - just enough to break a light gun (200 HP, heavy gun 425 HP). With burst ammo, anything further than 1.9m away wouldn't be destroyed (AoE damage decays after 50% of the burst radius). 80 shatter damage means 181 component damage, and 85 shatter is 191 etc.

Does anyone else think artemis damage should be nerfed?

Do you, Solidus, think Hwatcha is fine as-is for vet players?

[BlackenedPies]

I'd like to see both hwacha and artemis lose some rate of fire to ensure that the existing downside of burst rounds shows more strongly.

A slight nerf of burst rounds to -20% rate of fire could be used to compound with this.

The other side of this is what could be done to make other ammo types useful on these guns, currently I can only see plausible uses for heavyclip hwacha and heatsink artemis, greased hwacha would be fun if it was an alternate option to burst.

Artemis RoF is .63 shots / sec with 7 second reload. What do you think about .55 / sec or 8 sec reload?

Heatsink artemis could become more viable if artemis rotation speed was reduced, perhaps from 25 to 20 deg/s horz, and would relegate burst artemis as a longer range gun

[Solidusbucket]

Do you, Solidus, think Hwatcha is fine as-is for vet players?

From an SCS standpoint, yes. It does its job and can be countered with good crew / ship coordination. It can be countered in numerous ways and its effects mitigated.

From vet lobby standpoint this is also true.

Anything else it kinda sucks being on the receiving end unless the gunner is using lesmok or shooting the balloon or something.

But yea, I think its a fine gun.

[BlackenedPies]

From an SCS standpoint, yes. It does its job and can be countered with good crew / ship coordination. It can be countered in numerous ways and its effects mitigated.

From vet lobby standpoint this is also true.

Anything else it kinda sucks being on the receiving end unless the gunner is using lesmok or shooting the balloon or something.

But yea, I think its a fine gun.

If heavy clip was made more effective, what do you think about reducing burst hwatcha range by increasing jitter, for example from 4 degrees to 5?

[Solidusbucket]

From an SCS standpoint, yes. It does its job and can be countered with good crew / ship coordination. It can be countered in numerous ways and its effects mitigated.

From vet lobby standpoint this is also true.

Anything else it kinda sucks being on the receiving end unless the gunner is using lesmok or shooting the balloon or something.

But yea, I think its a fine gun.

If heavy clip was made more effective, what do you think about reducing burst hwatcha range by increasing jitter, for example from 4 degrees to 5?

Yes.

[Richard LeMoon]

I feel that the reduction to 4 is what made Burst ubiquitous in hwacha.

[Dementio]

Players indicated they don’t agree with removing the +20% clip effect of burst ammo, which would stop its use in every gun except Artemis and Hwatcha – the two guns which were the main subject of the proposed burst nerf. The increased clip gives it use on guns which only marginally benefit from increased AoE, including Hflak, Lflak, and Lumberjack

Burst's primary thing is it's AoE, but it's not ammo type's fault that only Artemis and Hwacha gain the most profit from it. Seriously, barely any other gun comes close to Artemis' AoE and Hwacha's AoE radius is just out of the ordinary, more so than the Mobula's vertical acceleration was. Increased clip size is just an added bonus for additional disables for Artemis and extra armor/hull damage for Hwacha, because it already destroys everything with half its clip. I would be interested to see Burst Rounds to come with a clip size reduction so an Artemis would have only 3 shots, but then people would probably switch to other ammo types and neglect Burst on everything except Hwacha.

If you want more clip size then there is Heatsink and Greased, but I understand that these have similar disadvantages to one another, so I would rather Muse implement a new ammo type specifically with more clip size without featuring a flat damage reduction. An ammo type that would reward skillful Artemis sniping when more AoE is not needed if you can direct hit components anyway and gives other guns more total damage the longer the engagement lasts which would be good against ships and pilots that can dodge well for example.

You could remove Burst's AoE completely and leave the clip size as is, you will still see it on Artemis, Hwacha and Heavy Flak. Split the AoE and clip size increase into two ammo types and you create the result that you want: More potential ammo types for one gun.