Satisfying and effective side-gunning is far too avionic dependent

[Hokibukisa]

I believe that a lot of dissatisfaction that people have with sidegunning is due to us RJ owners/pilots not having good sidegunner investments into our avionic loadouts. I know that I am guilty of this. My reasons:

1. I prefer photors while piloting. Having to lead fighters by steering the ship, I just don't care for, never will.
2. Most people don't side-gun anyways. They just.. join session and go to the forge, play shawzin, while I nuke the map with Tether.

Zetki Photors *plop* *plop*, alright done.

Drop in Hyperstrike and Polar Coil, and none of the others cause they don't benefit my photor enough to justify the investment.
Then we enter the I didn't invest, thus they don't invest ouroboros cycle. Everybody always being used to S#&$ guns and Tether nukes, nobody bothers. gunning.

While I can take the blame for my guns being S#&$, but lets review the avionics to get gud guns.

13 Turret Velocity
 8 Predator
13 Hyperstrike
10 Section Density
 9 Polar Coil

5 out of 9 Integrated slots, totaling 53 drain out of 130 capacity.

And all of this buys you is side-guns that finally feel good at shooting fighters. And only fighters.

Fighters might make up for a large part of RJ, but not 56% of it. That is asking too high of a price, and why we RJ pilots don't pay it.
And if we don't pay that price, our side-gunners get bad experiences.

 

DE please, I beg, don't fix with avionics, that which was broken in the first place. You (DE) need us (RJ players) to put asses in seats. We all know that in the end, relying on Tether to carry Railjack isn't the way, and we all know Scott wants to nerf it into the floor. Shooting fighters with railjack guns is the way to go. But you never sold it to us. You gave us a broken toy that nobody asked for and are trying to sell us a fix for the ridiculously high price of 5 avionics slots and 53 drain.

Weapons should feel satisfying from the start, not anemic. I suggest removing Turret Velocity and Polar Coil from the game. Not tweak or buff, but remove. Make the projectiles fast enough from the beginning. Make the heat capacity high enough from the beginning. We didn't have to fix Tycho Seekers for them to do their damn jobs, we shouldn't have to fix our guns either.

If you lower the avionics investments into guns being fun, more people will use them.

Maybe my idea is dumb, but at least start thinking about this the right way. Guns need to be fun and feel potent. And to me, they actually are. With completely gun avionics, all 5, my zetki apocs are actually really fun and shred fighters. I still prefer photor when piloting, but my side-guns are actually legit fun now.

Just, ya know, make it cheaper.

[motorfirebox]

Agree with all of this. Investing heavily in side guns makes them "okay" at best. And with battle avionics being so powerful—they are 90% of railjack right now, the other 10% being crewships—an "okay" weapon is not worth investing in. Thus most of the time side guns aren't even "okay".

Really, side guns should be main DPS. Pilot should focus on maneuvering and avoiding fire. Maybe battle avionics should actually be limited to side gunners, rather than the pilot being a one-man band.

[DrivaMain]

14 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

Really, side guns should be main DPS. Pilot should focus on maneuvering and avoiding fire. Maybe battle avionics should actually be limited to side gunners, rather than the pilot being a one-man band.

That will make solo players pretty upset and solo play pretty miserable. I say the middle ground is Gunner and Pilots have independent flux and munitions, so Gunners and The pilot don't have to worry about fighting the limited Flux energy availability and Gunners can actually contribute.

[motorfirebox]

6 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

That will make solo players pretty upset and solo play pretty miserable. I say the middle ground is Gunner and Pilots have independent flux and munitions, so Gunners and The pilot don't have to worry about fighting the limited Flux energy availability and Gunners can actually contribute.

Speaking as a frequent solo player, I'm honestly not worried about solo players. Between archwing and the upcoming command intrinsic, I think soloing will be easier than ever regardless of how much we take away from there pilot's seat.