give gatling heavy carronade arcs, gunner now mandatory on gat
People have been telling me that lochnagar gat does benefit from buff hammer. The more insane the DPS is, the more benefit. It's a percentage buff.
Gunner is a niche class that you can't run more than one of because having a gunner is so detrimental to your survival and potential output. The only time I really want the ammo cart with legs anymore is when I have guns that benefit significantly from increased turning arcs, meaning heavy guns and merc. I'm not even sure if lesmok gat on metamidion is worthwhile over a buff engie if you have a good crew. Good players are already at a point where they can use Hades without lesmok, so the only ammo they need in it is greased. Nothing else compares. Previously I thought gunner was worthwhile in spite of that because of the various different ranged ammos, but now I think of that as a nice bonus when I need to have one for turning arcs.
It's part of why I worry about the philosophy of "make all ammos balanced compared to normal", and wanted buffs to other ammo types that were underperforming rather than nerfs to the top ammo types. The fact there's a close-range pub meta together with greased being above the power curve of the other ammos, basically meaning you only need greased to keep up with other ship loadouts, is why gunner is seen as so pointless to have. None of the other ammos hold a candle to greased within its range, why would you ever sacrifice an extra buff hammer or spanner-mallet for a weak alternative ammo?
With the current trend of making everything comparable to normal, what I fear will happen is that no ammo will be above the power level of normal, so people just use normal. Engineers can already take one niche ammo with them, if normal is the top of the power curve then they'll forgo having more niche ammos in favor of extra repair/buff power. Gunner would then be entirely put in the niche of "only bring for arcs" at the highest level of play, and even in just higher level pub crews.
On the other hand, if the ammos all have powerful niches that put them significantly above normal for their roles, and have uses that don't overlap, you see more reason to take multiple ammo types to capitalize on having more ranges of engagement and more versatile and multipurpose weapons. For example, heatsink and charged in Merc. One is for damage, the other for disable, so even without the benefit of arc manipulation it's worthwhile to take a gunner simply so they can switch from raw damage to having more disabling shots when you or they decide disabling is going to be what they focus on at that moment. And both are above the power level of normal in the Merc, but they're specialized in different directions.
The fact that this is one of the few examples of such an interaction is more interesting when you consider that both get disproportionate, unintended benefits compared to the listed stats on the ammos, which is what puts them both above the power level of normal on that gun.
Ammo type variety encourages use of a gunner when they are more powerful than the default and have specialized uses that make them significantly worthwhile to use over a generalist munition. It's why I wanted other ammos buffed as opposed to current potent ammos nerfed.
...
Also, incendiary has its places. In carronades it's the best ammo for harass and pressuring due to it actually starting lots of fires. In gats, incend gat is usable on goldfish sides due to timing of armor break with hwacha reload making raw DPS not necessary.
