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Author Topic: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role  (Read 1906 times)

Realm

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To put it simply, reducing the recoil on Devastators makes them actively worse against Fighter and Bomber swarms, as the more narrow spray with GI can't keep up with the wide formations favoured by Fighter Wings. Without the reduction, Devastators can more reliably saturate the area and stop grouped-up swarms of Missiles and Fighters.

This was present before the latest hotfix, but was something I'd avoided by choosing not to upgrade GI to Elite on any build where I was using Devastators on my Flagship. It's the only vanilla weapon that seems to be negatively affected by this skill, so I don't exactly know what sort of fix to suggest for this that wouldn't directly nerf the weapon or the skill, and it's a very disappointing interaction given that otherwise GI is a fantastic skill for any Officer piloting a ship with a good array of PD weaponry.
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Bob69Joe

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Re: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2021, 04:19:48 PM »

Hardpoint emplacements, the ones that don't rotate more than 15 degrees or whatever, further reduce recoil. Maybe a redundant point, as I was thinking of haephestus guns when you mentioned devastator.
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2021, 04:45:44 PM »

There's a toggle for keeping some weapons from being affected by projectile acceleration; I haven't found one for accuracy buffs, but if there isn't one already, maybe there should be.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2021, 04:49:56 PM »

Last version, at least, reduced spread with high range and increased shot speed made Devastators into actually good general purpose HE. All the shots would fly in a narrow stream and many of them would go to max range.
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Realm

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Re: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2021, 04:53:54 PM »

Hardpoint emplacements, the ones that don't rotate more than 15 degrees or whatever, further reduce recoil. Maybe a redundant point, as I was thinking of haephestus guns when you mentioned devastator.
I wouldn't likely use a Devastator on Hardpoints for PD/Anti-Fighter roles, the spread is valuable and most ships with Large Ballistic mounts have weak maneuverability. The recoil reduction for the Hephaestus does make that weapon quite a lot better, which is why I'm rather stuck on thinking of a solution to this issue that'd help the Devastator without hurting the skill as a whole or making the Devastator potentially quite garbage without the skill.

Last version, at least, reduced spread with high range and increased shot speed made Devastators into actually good general purpose HE. All the shots would fly in a narrow stream and many of them would go to max range.
Yep, I do like that it opens new options with the weapon - I just wish I could selectively disable it if I want to use Devastators for Anti-Fighter roles. It especially hurts when Gunnery Implants is so good for making the medium/small PD weapons exceptional at their role, which sets up a fantastic multi-layer defense against Carriers when paired with non-recoil reduced Devastators.
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Megas

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Re: Gunnery Implants makes Devastator Cannons awkward/worse in their role
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2021, 05:57:56 PM »

Last release, I used Devastator (mainly on Onslaught) primarily for anti-frigate and anti-destroyer.  On a turret, even with reduced recoil from Gunnery Implants, Devastator still spreads quite a bit.  I do not mind choking up its area-of-effect for better sniping.
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