Shotgun Ships - Should it be nerfed?

[reapo 46]

Whatchu guys think of ships stacking cannons as close as possible on their ships to hit a more condensed point on an enemy ship? I like it and hate it at the same time. On one side, I can destroy an entire enemy side with a couple well placed volleys. On the flip side, there isn't much room for counterplay. 

 

TBH, I think Devs are going to nerf this meta and promote intuitive counter play so instead of the whole "whoever has more cannons on one side, wins" its going to be a meta of whoever has the better crew/captain. Which I think it should be. I mean I love seeing about 100 green numbers pop up on screen, but I'll always take a better crew wins meta over that. It'd make the game more fun anyways

[Zlax 41]

Tbh they should remove large cannons from ships and only allow cannons in the gun ports of ships.

Would make balancing them easier and remove alot of the monstrosities we see atm

 

Should be noted that they should then introduce actual ship parts with forward pointing gun ports and add gunports on the backside of the galleon

[Shintai 117]

The current gun setup on ships, both PvP and PVE is just awful. The anti SOD setup usually includes 18-20 cannons in a dense setup in the front or back for example. Anything but pretty besides not what balance is about.

[kampfer91 58]

Here is the problem .

All gun stack either 1 port side and 1 at the back , which leave the other side very vulnerable , and when bad wind kick in it is even more harder to steering your ship and aim all cannon .  Which mean , the ship that have better maneuver will win

And no , don't remove large cannon , they can't aim , only go up and down , have tendency of miss .

[Defixio 26]

i was absolutely shocked they allowed for cannons to stack and pile up in the front or back.

 

I was super used to Eve Online where the gun hardpoints determind how many guns you could fit period. as part of the configuration, part of the ship you were using. 

 

atlas has weight limits sure but i expected a certain class of ship to have a hardcoded amount of cannons, and where they could go to maintain normalcy.

[Sharana 8]

8 minutes ago, Shintai said:

The current gun setup on ships, both PvP and PVE is just awful. The anti SOD setup usually includes 18-20 cannons in a dense setup in the front or back for example. Anything but pretty besides not what balance is about.

True, but doesn't mean it's always awful  Also 20 cannons is big overkill, I have 9 large in the back and had no problems with sotd level 50ish. Also doesn't look ugly

 

Not everyone makes bullshit like that:

[kampfer91 58]

If you can afford that much points to crew limit and accommodation ........

Cus the ship will be slow af with all those weight .

[Shintai 117]

That second pic....hahaha 

7 minutes ago, kampfer91 said:

If you can afford that much points to crew limit and accommodation ........

Cus the ship will be slow af with all those weight .

It´s not so much crew and weight as you think. Granted the second picture requires 48 gun crew and a few for sails. But weight wise it only uses 4800 if medium and 6720 if heavy.

You can easily run a brig with 2x32 guns on at least 2 sides using group commands to change crew.

28 levels in crew for 37 crew (leaves a bit extra) and 12 levels in weight for 17400 weight.

Edited February 7, 2019 by Shintai

[kampfer91 58]

I refer to that 48 cannon ships , it weight would excess 9k at minimum .

Heck , my ship have 10 large cannon and 2 balista but if i add ammo usually it will have weight around 9k .

Anyways , i really don't have anything against this kind of build , this is like WW2 tank destroyer vs medium tank which a vehicle remove its turret in favor of a gun that guarantee to destroy enemy vehicle but leave theirs side vulnerable .

Edited February 7, 2019 by kampfer91

[Thor Ragnarock 99]

I don't have issues with cannons on the upper deck this was normal. Having multiple layers of cannons is a bit unrealistic. Cannons should have some forced space around them for what would be a loading crew and the recoil which the guns lack in this which would actually dramatically slow the rate of fire if you had to load the cannon and then heave it back out before firing again. At the moment you can pretty much stick them right against each other, they are forced to be spread out in the mid decks due to the snap points. I don't know that the upper decks need snap points. Could give each ship a cannon limit like the sails. Would need to be reasonable though I don't have issues with a schooner or brig dumping all their weight into cannons and ammo if that is their intent. I just think it shouldn't be possible to have tons of cannons on the port, starboard, aft, or bow only.

[Shintai 117]

Snap points on the upper deck sounds like a good idea.

[reapo 46]

I agree that large cannons should remain as I like the fact that they have higher range, it makes attacking islands a lot easier, when getting rid of those coastal defenses. And I agree, having it to where the cannons snap to the top deck instead of whatever you want placed should be the way to go. I'm hoping this keeps getting more and more attention. Idk if they'll be able to add this into the Feb update, but maybe the next one they might have a better solution for the issue.

They should just be able to make cannons snap to the railing of a panel like swivel guns do.

I do feel like the ship meta is going to change drastically eventually and hopefully the changes will be handled smoothly when they change.

[Redrick 14]

15 hours ago, Shintai said:

You can easily run a brig with 2x32 guns on at least 2 sides using group commands to change crew.

How are you managed it?

Edited February 8, 2019 by Redrick

[Kidori 143]

I never really understood why you'd need as many cannons as I've seen on a lot of ships, at least in PVE. I have 6 rear-mounted large cannons on my brig and I down lvl 50+ SotD in just a handful of volleys.

Granted the best kind of kill is overkill, but at what point does the overkill become overkill?

[kampfer91 58]

i guess because some find its hillarious .

But ya , more cannons = more weight and unnecessary waste of cannon ball . Usually it only take less than 20 balls to destroy high level ghost ship .

[Zheo 0]

No, they shouldn't be nerfed. There are drawbacks on building ships like this.

[Bullet Force 151]

This could be solved if the devs added some real physics and a balance factor to the ships. Putting a lot of weight on one side of the ship should through off the balance and therefore the handling. In any case none of this is helped by the fact that there is so little variety to choose from in ship design atm. You have basically 4 types of ship to choose from, 1 of which isn't even really capable of being a warship so that leaves 3. So you have 3 ship types and only 2 types of cannon. That isn't a lot of room to be creative.

[Herasea 59]

1 hour ago, Kidori said:

I never really understood why you'd need as many cannons as I've seen on a lot of ships, at least in PVE. I have 6 rear-mounted large cannons on my brig and I down lvl 50+ SotD in just a handful of volleys.

Granted the best kind of kill is overkill, but at what point does the overkill become overkill?

I think people are scared they might lose their ship if they don't kill it quickly. Admittedly, i thought that too, tested on a private server were the SotD went up to 99 lol and it was doable, but just a dragged out fight and took more thinking .

But overall i think it's fine to limit cannons, all you have to do is fight smart with SotD, because it's surprisingly doable. Not trying to show off  like i'm some master king MLG, but like i said you can dodge and weave pretty easily if you time it well.

[Mahakmar 21]

the thing with these kinds of ships it minimizes the need to repair and the poor ui showing where you actually took a hit, so if you running in a brig with side cannons you will spend some time running over all 40 planks to see what is damaged where, so i understand people putting guns on the back minimizing the risk, heck im gonna do it also with a brig cause atm im solo playing as most company gone dormant/waiting for that golden patch

[Talono 434]

2 hours ago, Zheo said:

No, they shouldn't be nerfed. There are drawbacks on building ships like this.

And these drawbacks are .... ?

But dont be afraid little troll. The devs wont touch your favourite roxxor & rulor LOLstomping tool

Edited February 8, 2019 by Talono

[Fopfumaster 10]

wait until they add some kind of structural integrity or ship balance ships that have all that weight from 48 large cannons on the bow will sink bow first

[Mephos 52]

23 hours ago, Zlax said:

Tbh they should remove large cannons from ships and only allow cannons in the gun ports of ships.

please make it more boring .. its not enough that ships have structure limits now you can´t even place cannons how you want? 

gtfo

[Zheo 0]

1 hour ago, Talono said:

And these drawbacks are .... ?

But dont be afraid little troll. The devs wont touch your favourite roxxor & rulor LOLstomping tool

Weight and the fact that they cant really shoot in multiple directions and that can get u in bad situation if wind just happens not to be in your favor.

Also if you miss once with this kind of ship it can be the end for u as well since it takes more time to turn for another shot.

 

Also, i never made a shotgun ship my self.. have been on a few tho and got sunk by one too.

 

Also weight balance wont help, you can have all your cannons point in one direction even if they are not all in the front.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Zheo

[Fefu 43]

On 2/7/2019 at 2:20 PM, Zlax said:

Tbh they should remove large cannons from ships and only allow cannons in the gun ports of ships.

Would make balancing them easier and remove alot of the monstrosities we see atm

 

Should be noted that they should then introduce actual ship parts with forward pointing gun ports and add gunports on the backside of the galleon

There should be no more than 2 bow chasers and another 2 stern chasers. Chase guns typically threw smaller shot but at greater velocity and with longer range than the port/starboard cannons. The object was mostly to dismast the enemy albeit history records RN frigates holing adversaries underneath the waterline with chasers. In short chasers were used to primarily slow down an enemy and not to sink it. The current builds in Atals are truly monstrosities.

The determining factor in a sailship fight should be the type of ships in the fight and the ability of the captain to use the wind to his advantage.  Having said that Atlas is still far away from being able to mimic real sail conditions so for now it's a glorified cannon platform game. I guess it will not change anyway which is a pity as it would add another layer of skill.

 

I'm a purist - sue me