+- Discovery Gaming Community (https://discoverygc.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Discovery Development (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=7)
+--- Forum: Discovery Mod General Discussion (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=37)
+--- Thread: Fix Gunboat Turrets (/showthread.php?tid=166882)
Fix Gunboat Turrets - TLI-Inferno - 12-26-2018
So, while other classes have steadily received buffs, Gunboats have received massive nerfs.
The justification for this is: "Gunboats are OP. 3 Skilled gunboats can take out a battleship."
3 Skilled ANYTHING can take out a battleship.
2 Skilled bombers can take out a battleship.
2 Skilled cruisers can absolutely annihilate any battleship, no matter how OP the ship, guns, and pilot.
The recent changes to gunboats which have ruined them are:
The addition of spread to their primary turrets, causing them to be less accurate than even gatling turrets.
The reduction of damage of Gunboat Cerberus Turrets from 6,000 to 3,000, making them weaker even than Gunboat Solaris turrets. That's insane. They're way slower AND way weaker, all while still having comparable energy efficiency to gunboat primaries.
I'll start with primaries. Remove their spread. Don't nerf them in any other way after removing their spread. Leave them as they were before. They were not OP. Gunboats are intended to function as the intermediary between fighters and capitals. They're supposed to be strong. Their primaries are a meant to be a well-balanced weapon that is effective against snubs, albeit less effective than solaris, while having extra damage so that they won't be completely defenseless against larger ships. With their spread, a gunboat intending to serve its originally intended purpose as anti-snub must equip a full loadout of solaris, making it completely defenseless against capitals. The way they are right now, a cruiser with a balanced loadout can annihilate two gunboats at once while still being more effective than a gunboat against fighters and battleships at the same time.
Next, let's talk about the Cerberus. Restore its damage to 6,000, restore its energy cost to 20,000, and turn it into a Heavy Gunboat Turret.
Replace the weaker Cerberus with a new "Gunboat Claymore", which would have the following stats:
Hull DMG: 4,000 / Shield DMG: 2,000 / Refire: 1.00 / Energy Cost: 10,000 / Speed: 900 m/s / Range: 1,170m
This will put its DPS on par with the strongest Primary Gunboat Turrets, while having a lower energy cost; however it will be much slower in comparison.
If you're afraid that everyone will use gunboats, let's take a look at the past. Let's go back to 4.86. Before gunboats were savagely nerfed. Before LF guns were buffed. Before HF guns were buffed. Before transport guns were buffed. Before battlecruisers were massively buffed. Before battleships and cruisers got scidata guns. Even with everything else being weaker than it is now, and gunboats being stronger than they are now, gunboats were still the least frequently used class in large group battles.
It's not OP for 3 fighters to take on a BS, so why is it "OP" for 3 gunboats to take on a BS?
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Tenacity - 12-26-2018
Cerberus fires two projectiles, so technically it does do 6k per shot. The listed 3k is only for one of the dual projectiles.
I do agree that no primaries should have spread, that's one of the things that makes nomad hybrid gunboat turrets so much more powerful than any others (the ones the wild/scorpion gunboats use) - they do a little less dps, but have no spread, so they're hyper accurate against snubs.
Other than that, I think the greatest shortcoming of gunboats is versatility right now. They lack a lot of options compared to larger (or smaller) ships:
-No gunboat has more than 2 heavy turret hardpoints
-Gunboat pulses are heavy turrets rather than light turrets like they are on cruisers, battlecruisers, or battleships. This combined with the above point means you basically have to choose an anti-shield vs anti-hull loadout rather than an anti-cap vs anti-snub loadout. This severely limits gunboat effectiveness and versatility compared to other ship classes; but it stems pretty much entirely from the fact that nobody on the dev/balance team seems to want gunboats to ever be capable of fighting other caps, while at the same time not allowing them to be enough of a deterrent against fighters to be effective anti-snub platforms.
-Gunboats have the least variety of turret types of any capital class: they have fewer missile types, they have no mortars, they have absolutely no sci data / codename turrets, they're pretty much limited to solaris, primary, razor, pulse, and 3 underpowered missile turrets.
-The gunboat shield split, which only really exists for freighters and gunboats now (no other caps really have to make this choice) effectively ruins the entire ship class when it comes to shield 'choice'. There is no choice: a shield with 16k drain per second when the heaviest gunboat only has 60k regen means you're losing nearly 30% of your power core just for a shield that only has 50k more capacity. It's an asinine tradeoff. No decent gunboat pilot uses anything but the light (100k / 10k drain) shield now, whereas this dilemma doesnt exist for cruisers, battlecruisers, or really even battleships (yes there are dread shields, but its not the same kind of balance issue).
I'd like to see these changes made:
1. Make gunboat pulses light/normal turrets, rather than heavy. This keeps consistency across all cap classes.
2. Change gunboat type balance to incorporate different numbers of heavy turrets. Light gunboats/gunships should have the current 4 light / 2 heavy turret setup. Medium gunboats should have a 4 light / 3 heavy setup. Heavy gunboats should have a 4 light / 4 heavy setup.
3. Add at least a couple additional heavy turret options to differentiate gunboat roles:
--"Mini Mortar", to go inline with the light mortar / battlecruiser mortar / mortar / heavy mortar series, designed as a long range anti-cap weapon.
--Some kind of 'shotgun' anti-snub turret that takes a heavy slot, fires multiple projectiles with each pull of the trigger, and spreads, much like other shotgun/scattergun weapon types in the game.
--Something akin to the hellfire rocket system used by bombers, but upscaled for gunboat use; ideally anti-cap, but high risk/high reward with a large spread and short range.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - DarkTails - 12-26-2018
Battleship and Battlecruiser pulse turrets go on their primary turret slots. It severely limits your primary dps if you go with a full pulse set-up. Gunboats and cruiser have it easy when it comes to their pulse loadouts compared to their heavy counterparts, as those ships still retain the bulk of their firepower. Battlecruiser and Battleship heavies and secondaries will only get you so far. The anti-cap weapons you reference are all in the heavyslots as missile form. Having more than two heavy slots makes any gunboat have the capacity for all roles. There's a missile for each job in the gunboat department. If you want to take out a capitalship with two gunboats, one will have pulses and the other anti-cap missiles.
No "gunboat mortar" exists because it would make the gunboat wipe all snubcraft from the field unless devs got creative with the balance magic plugin. Giving heavy gunboats four heavy slots gives them capacity to fight any situation or be entirely trolly.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Antonio - 12-26-2018
(12-26-2018, 05:20 AM)TLI-Inferno Wrote: The addition of spread to their primary turrets, causing them to be less accurate than even gatling turrets.
The reduction of damage of Gunboat Cerberus Turrets from 6,000 to 3,000, making them weaker even than Gunboat Solaris turrets. That's insane. They're way slower AND way weaker, all while still having comparable energy efficiency to gunboat primaries.
I'll start with primaries. Remove their spread. Don't nerf them in any other way after removing their spread. Leave them as they were before. They were not OP. Gunboats are intended to function as the intermediary between fighters and capitals. They're supposed to be strong. Their primaries are a meant to be a well-balanced weapon that is effective against snubs, albeit less effective than solaris, while having extra damage so that they won't be completely defenseless against larger ships. With their spread, a gunboat intending to serve its originally intended purpose as anti-snub must equip a full loadout of solaris, making it completely defenseless against capitals. The way they are right now, a cruiser with a balanced loadout can annihilate two gunboats at once while still being more effective than a gunboat against fighters and battleships at the same time.
"Recent" nerf for primary turrets is misleading unless you just woke up from the grave, they've had spread for at least 3-4 years. You also missed a change where they got buffed (more dps and power consumption, but since gunboat prims used to draw 0 power it was a flat buff). Cerberuses do 6k damage, as explained above. Making them a heavy slot would nerf them unnecessarily, they're nothing special as a prim slot.
You're saying a cruiser with a balanced loadout (I assume prims, pulses and a mortar) can "annihilate" 2 gunboats while the reality is that just 1 gunboat with an anti-cap loadout will annihilate the cruiser. It requires skill and patience, but there's very little the cruiser can do. Two gunboats with pulses and cerbs will always annihilate the cruiser, even if the cruiser has solarises.
Gunboats are still the most versatile class in the game. They got nerfed, no one's denying that, but so what? They're still devastating and very hard to deal with reliably except by throwing many snubs at them. That's their main weakness and if it didn't exist, gunboats would dominate all fights indiscriminately. You don't have to take my word for it, take my actions.
And many more. It's a fact that gunboats are still the most valuable class in the game. Reasons why they aren't popular have nothing to do with strength or usefulness, it's because of the following:
1. Flying style is repetitive, tedious and punishing - by far the biggest reason why almost no one flies them. Against capital ships you're constantly circling around them, keeping max range of your guns, trying to not get too close. It takes a long time because of low damage compared to other cap classes, which after a fight or two becomes a chore. Against snubs it's better because you feel you have a bigger impact, but that also becomes repetitive when you realise you're just there to provide area of denial for your own snubs which you depend on because you can't finish enemies off reliably. That's fine strength and importance-wise, but it's not fun.
2. Hard to master - they're very easy to learn, but mastering stuff like perfectly managing range on the fastest-paced cap class will naturally draw people away from it. One mistake can mean an instakill or all your regens gone, and it can happen in a split second. I've no doubt you haven't mastered them or this thread wouldn't exist in the first place.
3. Lack of guns - gunboats have the least amount of gun variance of all classes. Even battlecruisers have sci data codes or stuff like the apocalypse missile that does 1 million damage.
If they need any change it's because of how boring they are, not because of balance issues. How to make them fun? For one, making prim slot pulses to bring back pulse/razor loadouts. Razors in their current nerfed state are nothing to be afraid of, and those loadouts were fun to use back in the day. Also introduction of at least a few new guns, some of which @Tenacity mentioned, including scientific data guns. Make the annihilator usable on all gunboats, not just heavy ones, with nerfed stats accordingly. Why not make a heavy slot cerb or generic prim while keeping regular cerbs and prims, or make regular slot pulses while keeping heavy slot pulses? New guns aren't hard to make, and they'd help diversify loadouts a lot.
(12-26-2018, 05:20 AM)TLI-Inferno Wrote: The justification for this is: "Gunboats are OP. 3 Skilled gunboats can take out a battleship."
Source?
tl;dr Gunboats are still the most versatile class in the game. They need a change because they're not fun to fly, not because they aren't strong.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Lythrilux - 12-26-2018
The shield changes to gunboats are one of the worst balance changes ever applied to the mod.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - eigos - 12-26-2018
I'm looking for people who want to help co-create and balance sci-data gunboat weaponry, in a calm and constructive manner. People skilled in PvP with extensive experience in gunboats, caps and snubs are welcome to join me in Discord to discuss the best approach to designing those. I already have one unique model for the first turret (one of my own designs) and I expect to start making more in the future.
With the damage types plugin, the spread factor and a general overhaul of the 3 gunboat classes, I am sure we can come up with good stuff that can be both fun and balanced.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Reddy - 12-26-2018
i do wish gunboats were more fun, right now they are ok. i don't like the spread and shotgun change to cerbs, cerb razor loadout isn't viable anymore because of it.
pulses being on primary slots as antonio said would bring pulse razor loadouts, sound fun.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Tenacity - 12-26-2018
(12-26-2018, 02:11 PM)eigos Wrote: I'm looking for people who want to help co-create and balance sci-data gunboat weaponry, in a calm and constructive manner. People skilled in PvP with extensive experience in gunboats, caps and snubs are welcome to join me in Discord to discuss the best approach to designing those. I already have one unique model for the first turret (one of my own designs) and I expect to start making more in the future.
With the damage types plugin, the spread factor and a general overhaul of the 3 gunboat classes, I am sure we can come up with good stuff that can be both fun and balanced.
I've been bringing up ideas for sci data / code gunboat turrets on various discord channels for a while now, I'd be happy to join in - but I'm just an idea man, modding disco is a bit beyond me.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - eigos - 12-26-2018
eigos #4005 on discord, a chatroom can be created on this topic there.
RE: Fix Gunboat Turrets - Titan* - 12-26-2018
afaik you are not balance dev and its mostly up to balance devs right? Why do you even bother when there is no one that can implement these stuff. I made that mistkae once better to not waste time