Basic Description: Gunner is the offensive Capital ship class user. It normally(when skill is maxed) multifires two weapons, have large weapon holds, and have a skill that specifically boosts the effectiveness of missiles. Gunner has enhanced range gained through Overloaders and Augmenters, yet it does not match a Sniper's Range. It also has increased speed. In a sense, it is the jack of all trades, master of none. And it will pound you with missiles and damage your ship systems without sacrificing DPS!


Main Top #1: Missiles

Secondary Topic #1: Missile Movement and Damage Coding
Missiles should not be slow and ponderous Armor Piercing Clones. That encourages spamming the missiles at point blank. No, all missiles should use the same exact code as a Kinetic Missile, requiring the missile to move faster to do more damage. It means one could potentially spam them as before, but the effectiveness of this tactic would be vastly reduced.

An experienced Gunner will attempt to use missiles to parry with other long range players, since missiles do blow up if they get close enough to an enemy, whether the missiles can't see the enemy or not. It will just be a problem since stealthy players can, well, become stealthy, and the missile will have trouble going to the enemy.

Next, missiles should not be the majority of the DPS from the average Gunner. They should, for the most part, have a major damage tone down. Of course I said most. Some ships, specific Gunner only/locked content would be dedicated missile spewing monsters, would use much more powerful missiles. The problem is such ships would also sacrifice nearly all the normal Gun based, like the class namesake, DPS.

Secondary Topic #2: How would players obtain missiles
Missiles should come from Missile Generators, which would have a maximum storage amount. The most basic(and therefore least efficient) would be bought from the Gunner base in Lyceum. More advanced versions would be found as Boss Loot, Mission Reward, and BP Built. Depending upon the ones the Gunner builds, the Storage Limit, Production Speed, Missile Damage, and Missile Special Effects can be upgraded. The last one is more of an addition since the basic missiles have no debuff ability.

Current Missile Factories would still exist, and their missiles WOULD hit harder, but in the long run, Generators are ideal. In fact, the best generators would surpass normal missile crate missiles. But the primary advantage that the Generators provide is that all Debuff ability from missiles would fall under Generators.


Main Topic #2: It's called Gunner class, not Missiler class

Secondary Topic #1: Gunner class subskills
Calculated, a Gunner, a Sniper, a SD, and a Berserker, whom all use the same weapon, when tallied up, the Gunner is vastly weaker than the other Zerk and Sniper, Damage wise. It is stronger than SD, though. The Zerk has ~4100 damage, the Sniper around 6000, the Gunner in the area of 1500, and the SD at 720. The Gunner's damage actually includes its own Destruction. Of course, this does not include the ROF, and therefore the DPS is not shown. If a FC was added(Selen slaves, MF Bots), then its own damage is roughly double the Gunner's damage at 2955(just the slaves; the FC not shooting at all)

So, the Gunner should have roughly +100% damage applied within its subskills. I suggest a total of +50% damage inside the Big Guns skill. The catch? The Gunner will only gain this massive +50% damage from being in a Capital Ship. Using a Heavy Fighter, a Light Fighter, or adum forbid, a Freighter, and the Gunner will not get any damage bonus other than its +100% Multifire from the class skill.

Secondary Topic #2: Rail Guns and Artillery
Rail Guns are projectile weapons with good damage, nearly or full tracking turret wise, little or no tracking bullet wise, and very high speed projectiles. Artillery are weapons that require a form of Ammunition to determine its damage, range, bullet tracking, and if it has any special effects or not.

Both would be considered specialist weapons. Mission rewards.

Secondary Topic #3: What is with Gunners and Mining guns?
Gunners would have no damage bonus for mining weapons; that bonus removed with the suggested change for the +50% damage from Big Guns. However, Gunner would have access to very powerful and easily the best mining lasers, mining magcannons, and mining pulse guns.


Main Topic #3: "Aggressive" Capital Ships
A hybrid of a Heavy Fighter and a Capital. Basically, a Heavy Fighter tagged as a Capital Ship.

These "Hybrids" can take the models/graphics already in game from a few Heavy Fighters. Texture/Size is different. Personally, the size should be bigger than current HF's like rosy/zebra/wave, yet smaller than a dread/PBF/BS.

Class locked Ships/BP loot can be added as needed, but a T13, T16, T19, T20, and T21 types would exist. Dreads would be seen as Fleet Focus(includes FC) ships.


Main Topic #4: Special Effects

Secondary Topic #1: Debuffs
Gunners would have access to Gunner-locked Aura Gens that come in two flavors. These do not provide a field, merely take the slot. The first group changes the gunner's debuff from the default destruction to one of a various other kinds of debuffs. Unequipping any equipped gunner aura resets debuff back to default destruction.

Secondary Topic #2: Weapon Effects
The other flavor changes the default effect, which is none, for effects like Splash and Chain. They still take the Aura Gen slot, though. They would allow the Gunner to massively increase its effectiveness in situations with large swarms of enemies, without actually increasing his damage against the target he targeted.



Content Change #1: Pumpkins
Keep some Pumpkin Capital AI's in w3 wild space. Increase the droprates on the gear. Make them drop both offensive and defensive capital gear, and have them also have a low chance of single use Jack O Lantern versions of the gear, which would require several and other stuff.

Content Change #2: Mastodon
Built from an Ada Fading, Damage, and Shield Module, plus some Powercores from Zebra, Panther, and Rhino. And an Ada Sheet or so. A Capital ship of the same model and texture as Emp, but smaller size. Designed to be one of the missile spewing monsters, and therefore lacks weapon slots. Missile Generator rapidly produces surgical damage missiles.

Content Change #3: Interdictor Frigate
An Interdiction Frigate thats renamed and missing the Aura Generator, it is locked to Fleet Focus 10, as promised by a previous Developer. Basically, it an EFDestroyer thats T10. Would cost only 100m at Beta Antares.

Yes.
./Doubleplussigned

/signed

If this goes in exactly as Church stated, I would resub.

/signed and signed

Like all suggestions, there are good parts and bad parts. A gunner without missiles should never do as much damage as a gunner with missiles. It only makes sense.

Missiles have to remain ammo, and the best ones should be produced at a base. I agree that there should be factories for crappy ones, but the best ones should be harder to build than that. Regardless of what it is called, what it IS is the only class in the game with missile bonuses. If it does not USE those missiles, missiles might as well not exist at all. Savvy?

Just get out Cyggles.

Gunner has the possibility of being a VERY versatile class that supports using a combination of weapons and missiles like Church said, or also be able to be a missile launching monster, also as Church said. This way, those who like to play Gunner as a bulkier ship that spans missiles is still feasible.

No.

Missiles are designed to have a variety of speeds. The issue arises out of two bits of code that exist, but haven't been implemented: Min/Max firing distance and inheritable tweaks from launchers (i.e. a launcher can impart a tweak on a missile; make it faster, more robust etc etc). Min/Max firing distance alone allows the prevention of missile spam, and will be used to alter the class.




Currently the issue with PvP missiles is that both players & AI use the same missile templates. This will have to be changed, otherwise AI will gain a massive damage boost with any changes (esp. to radar). Separating out AI & Player usable missiles is the first step to revamping the class, in my opinion (and as such, has a large line underlining it for me).




Until 20, the gunner class is not a MFing class. This renders a problem in your design, because any +damage that increases viability of weapons doubles immediately when skill 20 is hit.




No. Never going to happen. Missile generators are AI only, or specifically available on unique player hulls (Zeus Throne). The entire basis of missiles is their production, tradability and consumption.




That +100% instantly becomes 200% on obtaining 20 in a sub-skill. Balancing the growth of a character in the class from 100 -> 1000 is part of the design issues we face.




Since this has come up, again, and you're being obnoxious in another thread, there's three issues right there that show that you've little idea about the coding issues surrounding rail guns:

Turrets are difficult to do on Capital ships - either we have to fudge a 360o laser or you have a missleshotgun that will launch from a forward firing position. "Turrets" simply don't exist like you imagine. Another dev is working on special items that might produce results to "fudge" a different firing placement, but we don't have code for separate turret positions. I would love it if turret spots existed, life would be a lot easier.

Tracking is a function of missileshotguns only, and the more speed you apply to a bullet, the less able the engine is to correct for vector change. What happens in tests is that the bullet flies 10k/s... misses... then spends it's life (because it has 99% tracking, remember?) attempting to hit the player. Hilarity ensues as said bullet zooms past a thousand times (you will note that torpedoes still have this issue, although it is nothing like as bad as it once was). If we attempt to do this via using a laser, we hit the problem that, in SS, lasers don't actually "fire a beam" ~ the beam is merely a graphic, and has nothing to do with the contact / damage applied, this is calculated / applied via a different mechanic.(Literally - when you press the spacebar, the engine calc's range / hit / damage and the graphic is applied afterwards).

Weapons cannot have ammunition, otherwise they become (you guessed it) missile launchers.

And yes, I went through more than a few iterations of weapons the first time around trying to solve these issues.

Enough of pretending you know what to do here code wise, please. Suggestions are great, the self-delusion that you know how to code a solution, less so.




More weapons is something I'm happy with.



The issue here is balancing. Either a ship is useful (or semi useful) for all classes, or it has to be locked. With the bonuses that apply to capital ships (esp. in hull terms), these ships would have to be class locked. So, essentially, you're asking for 5 class locked ships.

You also have the issue of aug slots: with only two, no-one will use them, with three the ships will have to have fairly useless base stats, which merely penalises lower levels.




Not possible with the way auras work. Damage type / debuffs aren't (currently) an aura code option, neither is changing the debuff via weapons.

Nor is changing the colour of weapons via auras possible, and shows a distinct lack of awareness of how the code works. Hint: graphics + colours are set via the weapons code, and cannot change "on the fly". As stated earlier, graphics are applied after everything else for lasers, and as such, simply don't work like you imagine.




No.

They're holiday specials.




Mastodon is another (six now) ship suggestion ~ a UZ capital ship might have some traction.

Interdiction Frigates have been fixed, aura-less and quite safe since last time I left. No idea why they weren't made available. Oh, and they're T11, not 10.


Here endeth the lesson: I will be engaging in discussions over Gunners, and getting things moving on them (with endless admin debates), however, huge reams of text that are largely based on a mis-understanding of the code isn't the solution.

We all know the issues people, let's make it happen: feedback will be #1 priority, I feel.

"We all know the issues, let's make it happen" - so...what do you want to happen? You want people to make feedback on what? Why can't the devs lay out some ideas for Gunner so people can form better suggestions?

I think that the ships, or at least ships of the variety Church was talking about are completely necessary. We need two different types of ships, those that cater to the only playstyle that Gunners use now, which are Heavy Fighters, and then we need a sort of faster, more combat based EFDread.

Also, I had made a suggestion regarding Gunner MF'ing before, but it got deleted after an admin decided to delete the ~12 page topic because I bumped it. Anyway, my idea was to not only increase damage, but make the Gunner skill give +10% multifire so that the damage increase would not be so dramatic once it hits 20, and so that lowbies have a reason to get a decent level in Gunner.

Thanks for finally giving yourself a forum presence again by the way, I thought you were gone.

There's a thread in the Admin forum right now: I'll post outlines when we've agreed on some fundamentals.



Given the new leveling system, and the fact that it takes level 400-500 to have even 13/13 - 11/10/0 in Class skills, there's a lot of merit to this. MFing will most likely drop drastically in sub-class requirements, and is on the table for discussion.



Thank-you. I've been learning the new engine & running through a low leveled char to get a decent hold on the new leveling / balance for lowbies ~ Z axis rocks btw, for making things.

Would your vision for Gunner by any chance allow for the Heavy Fighter-like ships?

Ideally, I'd very much like to see the Reaver+ be tagged as a Capital Ship. Maybe some weight could be added to it or speed subtracted to compensate compensate seeing as how Fleet Focus would make it better in most areas. But the Reaver+ in my opinion is definitely what the Heavy Fighter/Capital Ship hybrids should be like.

Churchill just got pwnt. And I love Aurora for it.


Aurora: Regarding the MFing problem, would it be possible to change the class so that it MF's the instant you get level one in the class? The benefits would be twofold: Firstly, the class would be easier to balance, and Secondly, low level players would have a noticeable, visible difference upon choosing the class.

I don't know if it's codable or not, but if so, I THINK it would solve quite a few of the problems you've talked about with it.

Was typed within 45 minutes.

1. Why do you think Large AP's are used over Plasma, Cheetah, and Kinetic? They're relatively easy to get, do ridiculous amounts of damage per missile(talking about 2500 a hit before resists, which most ships, player and AI, tend to have poor numbers in. The few weapons that do most damage per hit are the big thoraxes, which take up to around 10k elect per shot. A missile takes like 500 elect per shot. See the problem?)

The fact Destruction affects missile damage is an afterthought. The fact you can aug your ship sup resist, sup cap and put out the dps of a zerk/sniper with a 100b aug setup and use only 200m worth of missiles per oly run is stupid. NO class should be able to use 3b on their entire setup and do the burst damage of a much older, richer, and experienced player in any situation.

2. Missile Factories and Mobile Factories benefit those who can use bases. Gunner will effectively become a P2P only class as Jeff_L changes f2p accounts become unable to build bases. What good is a class if it is NOT called a premium class, and yet is actually one. False Advertisement hurts a lot more than balancing missiles to be obtained through generators.

I also never said they should all be good ones. A basic gen for kinetic medium missiles may have 25 storage, at 1 per 15 seconds, and cost 100m at the Gunner base. A better one for kinetic medium missiles may be BP built, using 500m creds, a ruin weapon worth 500m, and some commods whose effort is also 500m. Stats like 50 storage, 1 missiles every 10 seconds.

You STILL need the launcher in order to deploy any missiles, and missiles should be NB from the generators. So a gunner without a launcher is stuck without missiles.

But going back on what I said, NO class should be forced to use or interact with a player station to advance in any way for teching up or obtaining better gear. If that was the case, then all non T20 skill ubers and all DG's should be removed. Going half way is just as bad as doing nothing.

And I know someone is going to argue "Engineer requires bases for its drones, so a Gunner requires bases for missiles, likewise with FC's. Perpetual Motion. Your argument is now invalid. A whole galaxy built around drones and obtaining drones. Is it that hard to make a whole galaxy around missile generators and obtaining missiles?(Not Hyperion)

3. Why is it that the majority of Gunners nowadays USE a Heavy Fighter over their Capital Ship? It can't be that it's better stats, because even when they hit T21, they STILL use the Heavy Fighter. It has to be the way Heavy Fighters are used compared to Capital Ships, because using a Heavy Fighter prevents the Gunner from using its stronger mining lasers, better missile launchers, and a +2.2x(MF2) boost to mining damage. But we want Gunners to use capital ships rather than Heavy Fighters.

So why not have a Capital Ship that is used exactly like how the current Gunners use Heavy Fighters? In essence, it WOULD BE a Heavy Fighter, just with the hull tag "Capital Ship". Take the Zebra, it is one of the most commonly used Heavy Fighter for Gunner. Even the Izer, Rosy, and Reaver are used more than dreads. Why are they used more? It can't be that they use sustainable(guns) DPS and can dodge shots.



It IS locked. It is a capital ship. A Sniper/Zerk attempting to use a Capital ship will find that they have no ability to stealth, less ability to dodge(as there would be capital ship locked engines and the capital ships have very big weight problems).

Furthermore, a Sniper/Zerk will run into hull problems, as their Combat Focus Heavy Fighters: +3% shield max, +1% damage. Equipped Items take 2% less space becomes Others: +1% shield max.

Not particularly sure a zerk or sniper is going to willingly sacrifice that hull, damage, and shields for the use of an aura and the ability to use better launchers for missiles they get no bonus for.(Assuming they fit the missiles too)



As useless as a Sniper or Zerk in a Heavy Fighter. I can assure you that half an aug(Bule Super Sidhe) is not a worthless base stat, and that gunners would love having the ability to do more sustainable and higher damage(guns) than big burst damage(going on with missiles) that may disappear when they really need it(run out of missiles, Hawk warps in), Player has now changed Facebook status to "Fucked".

4. Damage under MFing. See Zerk's +100% Bonus(MF5). And it was my point to suggest that grand total of +200% damage. A Gunner should have the sustainable DPS of a zerk, without the resists, elect temp(in class skills), and hostility. And I did suggest missiles be massively reduced, firepower wise, in general.

Of course a ship specifically designed to spew missiles would get missiles that do pack a wallop, but I did not want an entire class built around using missiles over guns. If that was the case, why is Missile Mastery a subskill, and the MF/Weapon Hold skill the class skill?

And how would you get such missiles without turning the ship into a pure missile disaster that gets nerfed? Because its launcher, as you stated, will affect ALL of its missiles, and therefore give missiles not intended for high DPS to be very very broken. So you give it a specific generator for a specific missile and prevent any launchers(player launchers) from imparted a stat booster on the missiles.

5. Rail Guns. Do exist in SS as I have described. Magcannon Turret is a 360o turret with decent(low if you moved it up to T20) tracking on the projectile. The difference that I described is that it needs higher projectile speed, which is easily fixed since it IS a magcannon, and Snipers can get their Merc Mag moving faster.

Artllery. Is a Weapon, probably a Launcher, but not a missile launcher. The projectile fired has no AI to steer it into the face of an enemy, and the ammo is required to be loaded into the launcher(cooldown/charge up period). It is a volley weapon, but more sustainable than spamming Large AP's in someone's face.

In a sense, you can call it a dumb missile, or a rocket. But a rocket/missile can be targeted by a SD and shot down. An artillery shell is as shot down able as a Pulsius Sharpshooter bullet.

6. Debuff Generator don't do ANYTHING to the weapons other than add a debuff for when it HITS the target. while I have no idea how to code this one, they are auras that depends on hitting the target, which is exactly like Destruction.

Destruction does not change weapon color, and only is applied to enemy when the Gunner whacks enemy with any kind of weapon. Until the enemy gets shot, the Gunner cannot apply effect.

Changing the effect would work(if/when coded) like changing an Overloader. Hotkey 1st and 2nd Gens, swap when you need a different effect.

Effects are like -25% Range for one, and -15% speed for another. Unlike a SD using a special debuff weapon, the Gunner loses NO dps whatsoever when using his. Therefore, it can carry on and not be handicapped by trying to help his squad.

Having it an effect applied to a weapon when you HIT the target also opens up a vast variation of designs a Gunner can do. For every weapon(2) that the Gunner carries, he has maybe 9 different effects other than destruction. However because the Gunner CAN do dps, you don't get things like the missile spam dread setup coming onto runs. You have a real setup that can dps alongside(never said they'd fully match a sniper or zerk) a zerk or sniper, and could take over if, for example, Zeus thunders and kills a sniper.

7. Yes, I know it is holiday special. But Pumpkin AI had the chance to drop "good" Capital Ship locked gear. Basically, it was the first capital ship loot before a player reaches the point where he and his squad does Red Photon runs, which is very far off.

And content that can be reused is good content, for that means less work for a dev to do. Would you love to make totally new models, textures, and balance the balance sheet for 2 more weeks to do some cheap Gunner content?

The point is to get that gear to drop, although in reality, the "good" capital gear is not spectacular, and the effort done to obtain a full set is a pretty big waste as NON CAPSHIP LOCKED ruins are better, and cheaper, and quicker to obtain.

I just wanted to see a bit more variety in AI's for deep Perilous. No need to include their shouts, just have a few Pumpkins roaming around like you'd have with Green Battleships. Later on, Rotting versions for the Battle Thatch and Sphere could be added, along with T15 and T20 versions of the locked capital gear for those people wanting to use the ships.

8. Interdiction Frigate is T11, SPEED DEMON LOCKED, and identical to the Earthforce Frigate(aside from the tech difference). Even if it was removed from the SD lock, why the fuck would anyone use it over an Earthforce Frigate, or an Earthforce Destroyer? It has EFF stats, but uses more combat slaves slots. It may be able to use Std Double/Adv Double augs, but that isn't a real bonus as people don't normally use them anyways.

Which is why I suggested to take an Earthforce Destroyer, replace the model and texture with that of the Inter Frigate, and make it T10. Making it T10 still would not change the stats. Then add it as a Fleet Focus 10 locked ship at the Fleet Focus base in Lyceum. Maybe for 400m credits to buy.

Churchy wins .. I prefer him to Aurora any day.

Just do everything that Churchy says and the game will be better off, Churchy should be head Devonian.