Armaments need re-balancing

Sunless Sea
1

A few things I’ve noticed lately:

[li]1) Guns appear to do almost the same damage in some instances – even against crabs and bat swarms, I am doing between 19 and 24 damage per hit With any weapon no matter which ones I equip (and I’m recording the damage per hit, not relying on the damage tables provided in stats).
[li]2) Right now, there appears to be almost no difference between harpoons and cannon. I know in previous versions harpoons were a little too powerful (and the effects cannon and torpedoes were debatable) but in their current state the difference is not noticeable.
[li]3) Iron appears to have little effect on damage at all. Right now, my character does 19-24 damage with no crew whatsoever, but does the same with his iron stats boosted optimally (at least an additional 30 points with the right armaments and crew).
[/li]

 My suggestions?  Lower the damage inflicted by harpoons to ships significantly (or at least noticeably) but make their damage to crew more significant -- almost enough to be feasible for seizing occassional ships.  Right now, seizing them seems almost impossible, even though others with game-editing tools say it is in the coding.
 Also, raise the damage by torpedoes, but make the damage to crew zero so that they can't be used to seize ships.  Cannon should be the same, but should have more feasibility towards sea creatures or vice versa.  

 Thoughts?

edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 12/23/2014

2

I think this is one of things that they’re fixing in the January update

3

In the matter of guns, I’ve been having the same problem, but in truth, I’ve been going straight from base deck gun to Hellthrasher, and I’d presumed that the difference in damage was all arranged through the Iron boost.

However…

I do agree that the damages on the weapons should be varied, rather than adjust the iron statistic, which affects the damage caused by all weapons, not just the one that the iron bonus affects, it also means that your land based Iron challenges are also affected by the increased stat, and as there’s no reason why a howitzer would improve your chances in a bar fight, a modified stat on the weapon rather than an increase to Iron would be the way forwards.

I also agree strongly with making the different sorts of weapons affect targets differently, I’ve completely given up on the taking of prizes, it’s just not possible to bring the crew down to a reasonable level without wiping out the ship, the quandary is in how to represent this without causing unnecessary complications to the combat system. One possible option would be to have another button added to the combat display that would allow a ship to pound away at the enemy till their hull has been reduced to a level that would allow the use of harpoons to chip away at the crew, but then switch to using harpoons when the hull had been sufficiently damaged to allow the harpoons to have some effect.

The other option (and the one I prefer) would be to vary the amount of time that a weapon takes to cycle up when it comes to different targets, if you’re using a harpoon weapon, it does crew damage, but takes a while to get lock on a ship because the gunners got to aim past the plates, whereas against creatures, you can just fire and forget and it’ll do damage either way. Weapons that only affect hull should have the same cycle times no matter what because you’re just firing, and torpedoes…

Ah Torpedoes…

Torpedoes I have a problem with in general, not because it’s not possible to use them on a shipboard configuration, but that they need such an amount of calculation to fire them, and even then would only work on a limited turning basis (Certainly not enough to engage creatures and fast moving corvettes), the damage they would do when they land would be colossal, enough to cripple most things, but they should be on a forwards firing basis only, requiring the ships commander to move their ship to a point where the salvo could be placed to land.

Now…I shall pause to breathe.

The problem inherent with that is that while it makes for a more realistic game if you do it that way, a lot of people don’t like the amount of positioning that you have to do to make this effective, and it would detract significantly from the fun for many. I think that torpedoes should do massive damage (particularly as you’re paying for every shot you fire), and that they should do ongoing damage to ships for a few seconds afterwards while the crew patch up the holes caused under the waterline.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again…

So pause again…

I like that the shots are animated, even though most rounds fired from naval guns are so fast that the chance of you seeing them would be almost nothing, particularly in the dark (as we always are), and I appreciate that game balance and cinematic effect are the order of the day, so to sum things up.

Differing damage for weapons rather than increasing the Iron Stat.
Differing lock times for weapons that do crew damage when firing against ships

And most importantly

If you hit something organic with a torpedo, it should really, really make a mess…

4

[quote=Rocket Heeled Jack]I also agree strongly with making the different sorts of weapons affect targets differently, I’ve completely given up on the taking of prizes, it’s just not possible to bring the crew down to a reasonable level without wiping out the ship, the quandary is in how to represent this without causing unnecessary complications to the combat system. One possible option would be to have another button added to the combat display that would allow a ship to pound away at the enemy till their hull has been reduced to a level that would allow the use of harpoons to chip away at the crew, but then switch to using harpoons when the hull had been sufficiently damaged to allow the harpoons to have some effect.

The other option (and the one I prefer) would be to vary the amount of time that a weapon takes to cycle up when it comes to different targets, if you’re using a harpoon weapon, it does crew damage, but takes a while to get lock on a ship because the gunners got to aim past the plates, whereas against creatures, you can just fire and forget and it’ll do damage either way. Weapons that only affect hull should have the same cycle times no matter what because you’re just firing, and torpedoes…[/quote]

It could be done much simpler than that, surely? If we take a few simple rules, like, say, &quotCannons and Torpedoes damage Hull&quot, &quotHarpoons damage Crew&quot, and &quotCrew cannot be damaged until Hull is below 50%&quot, then we have a complete ship-taking strategy using nothing more than the existing mechanics. I soften up the enemy with my deck-guns, then pull around and let the harpooner on the forward gun start picking off the crew. Harpoons might still do a little hull damage, so that a whaling-boat cornered by pirates isn’t completely out of luck (just, you know, mostly out of luck), but not enough that they’re just &quotcannons with bonus damage&quot instead of a specialised anti-organic weapon.

(Now that I’m thinking about it, this line of reasoning does rather suggest that some or all of the existing weapons should be opened up to any of the existing gun slots. If I want to use my steamer for fishing, without any anti-armour weapons, or to arm my frigate with nothing but Hellthrasher cannons, why not?)

5

The problem inherent with setting rules such as crew cannot be damaged until Hull is below 50% and then having harpoons unable to damage hull is that if you only have the one weapon, you’ll never get to damage the crew in the first place, because you need the other weapon to get the hull down to point. If all ships still had the option to have two guns on them, this would alleviate this somewhat, but it then turns the game into a running gun game, I spent a long time running around with two front guns and when you know what the opponent is up to, it’s possible to end most of the enemies without any serious difficulties.

As to the rest, I have no problem at all with all guns being available to all positions, in fact, it would make more sense, especially from a single gun vessel point of view, you’d choose a weapon that would do the job that you wanted it to do without having to be limited on what you wanted.

The other thing to consider is that most harpoon weapons were reasonably versatile and allowed for the firing of different types of harpoon, as evidence by the different sorts of harpoon used in whaling in the middle of the twentieth, with everything from solid steel harpoons to those with explosives attached to the back of them being available.

I like the idea that you could have varying ammunitions on the weapons, and I also like the idea that you pay for your ammunition as a general rule, which would allow you to load the right shell/harpoon for the task at hand, and would prevent you from loading up with all the expensive shells unless you were willing to put the money up for them.

Again, appreciated that it’s a lot more coding, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

6

Capturing ships intact is a bit of an advanced technique, though - restricting it to ships able to equip two weapons makes sense to me. It would be a good incentive to invest in the mid-range combat-oriented ships, too.

7

:)

I can see where you’re coming from, I don’t agree, but I can see how it would appeal. For me it would be only an incentive to save up for the dread every time, the frigate just doesn’t have the cargo levels needed for a lot of the missions.

8

This seems like a good place to being up a strange combat quirk I’ve noticed. I’ve been using the merchant cruiser for a long time now as I imagine a lot of people do because the ships with smaller holds make it so hard to go on longer voyages and the only other large hold ship is prohibitively expensive, which means I have an aft gun but no forward. I have fully upgraded both guns, but that means my aft gun is solidly more powerful than my deck gun, which means my most effective combat strategy is to goad something into chasing me and firing on it from my rear, which makes very little sense. I assume this balance was set up assuming that you would have two guns facing forward, but now that that’s so much harder to achieve (without sacrificing storage anyway) that I haven’t had all three guns since they were removed from the starting ship.

9

Oh, that’s simple - you see, the Merchant Cruiser was based on designs passed on to the Admiralty by Spathi Fwiffo. The strikingly-coloured ships seen in the vicinity of the Dawn Machine are said to be influenced by the legend of the Black Spathi Squadron.

10

I find that while the rear guns are more powerful, they take longer to cycle up to get target lock on something, meaning that for every three shots you’ll get at something when your light is on it, you’ll only get two when you’re firing in the dark, making the deck gun a better option all round for firing at things, but you can’t retreat from charging enemies as fast while in reverse as you can while you’re going full ahead. In the usual “Run away while firing” option for dealing with bigger creatures, having the option to retreat at speed is nice, but the firing solutions are too slow, particularly when you’re running from one and find a smaller one chipping away at you from another direction that you can’t lock on because you’re too busy dealing with the big b’stard behind you.

Multiple lights on vehicles with rear guns would be the way forwards 

Multiple weapon locks for vehicles with multiple weapons, different locks for creatures fore and aft 

I’m going a bit gunbunny on this, I’m going to retreat to the waters to keep writing things for a while….