Almost every sentence you wrote was started with the word you… lol…
You mean like the patience we already showed when counting out how many shots different parts could handle. Most of us already figured out how to get it to work on a build. The weapons lacking even the pity buff they gave it reducing some of the dmg to self by a small bit didn’t get it a raise in popularity.
The scorpion has massive benefits over the Astraeus due to it’s piercing abilities and damage range. The only thing it’s nearly as effective with is it’s accuracy.
I have lots of playstyles. I partially mentioned two different ones in here. However just because something is noted as working in a particular playstyle doesn’t mean a player or players are enjoying playing it that way. Do you think it’s fun having to remember how many charged shots you’ve taken through the match?
DPS matters until the last enemy is dead not till they don’t have a weapon.
Not to mention the fact that on the Scorpion you don’t need to charge your shots, making hitting enemies a lot more easier as your gun will shoot the moment you push the button, rather than having to hold it while also holding the enemy in your sight while you most likely are also moving yourself.
I’d say that if the situations were reversed, Scorpion would need you to charge your shots and Astraeus simply shot the moment you pushed the button, instantly doing the self damaging charged shot and forgetting all about uncharged shots, Astraeus would be more popular and Scorpions popularity would instantly plummet
There’s no need to count shots if you build properly and use the Master cabin. It’s pretty much the only good use I’ve found for the cabin, but it’s pretty effective in this one context.
When you’re working with unlimited charged shots, the gun feels a lot better.
The point is that just because it’s an epic does not mean it has to be near useless by design when compared to the Relic counterpart, which already is pretty loose as a counterpart because Scorpion has piercing abilities and does not need you to charge shots. The need to charge the shots is the thing that keeps Astraeus from performing any better, a big enough downside to the point that if Scorpions would need to charge their shots almost nobody would use them, just for the reason of having to charge shots which makes accurate shots near impossible in most situations.
Yet if Scorpions would need to charge their shots, they’d still do much more better than Astraeus because the piercing adds so much that you once again do not need absolute accuracy and can count of getting a lucky hit on something. Even if Scorpions needed to charge shots, Astraeus would still suck massively compared to it simply because it has the downsides of no penetration and needing to charge their shots. To the point that the suckiness of it could not be counted on just “Oh one is epic and one is a relic”
Astraeus is fundamentally flawed as a weapon, and none of those flaws have to do with self damage but the fact that it is an accuracy weapon with a non accuracy firing mechanism
Astraeus is flawed but I’ve found good use for it because this is the consensus on it as a weapon; and so hovers haven’t ruined this weapon yet. The Astra at its range is superior to the Scorp as it does far better without the excessively huge footprints that CW builds have, it just has a higher skill floor.
The chargeup mechanic is good, the Scorp should have it. The self damage is good; it adds build limitations that keeps it off of cookie cutter hovers and wheeled glasscannons.
My only complaint with it is Omamoris are too overpowered and it cannot be paired with them, and that they turn too slow when charging which leads to a lot of misses from perfect aim.
That’s not really building properly, it’s just relying on a stack of gimmicks to alleviate a problem that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place. We looked at that months ago and I even posted the differences in firing counts for a few different pass through parts. I’ve tried more parts and other set ups since then too.
I don’t really enjoy the Master cabin and building with it using an Omamori, gunmounts and two Astraeus limits builds to a choice of two different main placements. Both Astraeus mounted low in front or both mounted high in the back. This gives 17 shots before the gun pops or the master ability is needed, If you ditch the Omamori you can increase the positioning by another option two side mounts but the shots are reduced to a limit of 9 before you have to use the repair function. To me this is far from ideal and is the type of situational building the dev normally try to get rid of as it hampers build diversity.
Using any other cab without using the Omamori your fairly much limited to 14 charged shots using 2 pairs of elbows instead of the gun mounts for the most charged shots without effecting framing and hp. (There are some other mount styles too.) This what I’m currently trying to get by on using set-up in a reloader style. The downside of this set-up forces a player to keeping track of charged shots, doing that is really not fun; especially when getting rushed. There’s no way to guestimate the answer of how many charged shots are left for the next encounter without counting.
The self damage and mounting situation really does bother me the most. While I don’t mind the basis of having a charged shot mechanic, they really should get rid of or highly reduce the self damage situation.
Ive always found it wierd that in some weapon lines the guns get easier to use and aim. Like…youd think easier guns would be lower tier amd the harder to use gums would be higher tier because of player skill curves. Noobs suck so they need easier stuff. Vets are better so they can handle harder to use weapons. But i guess the higher tier guns would be too much better than the lower tiers in that case if a vet is really good.
I managed to create a two-Astraeus setup with two Gun Mounts, two Small Buggy Floors and a Freight Train Plow, all attached to both an Averter and the Astraeuses (Astraeusi?) that will run 25 charged shots before exploding. The plow also acts as back armor for the guns and the car. I’m running it on a relatively fast build with a Deadman, 4 Omni, a KA-1, an Ampere, a Hardcore and a Neutrino. Seems to do pretty well. Sometimes, I get to sit back and pick off weapons or explosive elements, while others take some more scootin’ between the shootin’. I do take uncharged pot shots when a target is less stationary, so I haven’t blown my own guns up yet.
Your managing 25 shots though that’s nearly twice what I’m running not using an averter. Without a damage protection unit a player is kind of stuck around 9 or 14 shots depending on passthroughs used. It’s the same thing I mention in the first paragraph about getting around the issue with stacking gimmicks. Which shouldn’t be required to run a weapon.
When I said “building properly”, I just meant taking full advantage of the stacking of exploits possible with Master, pass through, and defensive modules.
I agree that we shouldn’t need to, but this is a weird niche weapon, and Master doesn’t have many other good uses, so it doesn’t bother me much in this context.
I can’t remember now how many shots I can take before hitting the Master perk, but it’s enough that I don’t need to count. I just hit the perk every time I’m in cover.
It looks like you’re using the direct frame mount method (I missed the post from July about it.) I never realized that they have 90% pass through, too. That does add a lot of potentially smaller options. Time to play in the garage again …
Edit: I played with your Owl build a little. By replacing the left pair of Frame 2x8’s with a single 4x8 (same mass, same durability, 10 more PS), so that the whole thing is connected to the Averter, I gained an effective 210 damage (Averter gives 21 more durability and pass through makes that 210) for that Astraeus. By replacing the right one’s front 2x6 with a 2x8 (filling gap between it and the left one’s front 2x6), I gained an effective 170 damage for the right Astraeus. Got to 31 charged shots before the right one blew, taking off the front wheels, and another 5 or so before the left one blew. Total additional cost was 10 PS and 54 kg. Though, you’ll probably never need those extra shots, so …
I got what you meant but wanted to clarify that it’s making use of work arounds, so it’s not really just proper. If your using the gun mounts it’s going to be around 17 shots when paired with the Omamori. It’s a fair bit of leeway though it drops to 9 shots if your not using the unit. I built a bunch of them using the Master trying out the 3 mounting positions available. I mean it’s been almost a half year now that I’ve had them. I’m really not a fan of where the mounting positions are though which is the main reason of why I don’t just use it on it. I might give it another try on the master after the new generator comes out because it’s 4x5x2 foot print which will fit well under the Master cab. Even with that it’s still a bit of a goldielocks issue with me. Mounts too low and too high often introduce some design issues that I’m not fond of.
If I was going to try to fix the issue and leave in the self damage characteristics: I would just change the % increase of the perk and increase the normal shot damage by a suitable amount to make it come out to nearly the same and then lower the self damage. If the rate of self damage was lowered by around upwards of a half then it would greatly diminish the necessity of using the Omamori or Averter with it. 9 - 14 charged shots on mounts is just way to low. At a half it would give around 18 to 28 charged shots depending on mount (not counting frames) would be much more ideal. There are are other options too but that’s the only one that really keeps the Master cab advantage with it.
I ended up adding some smaller pass through parts alongside the gun mounts to diffuse the damage more.
Now that I think about it, I might have swapped the gun mounts for those syndicate pieces. Will have to check later.
Regardless, I’ve never lost my guns due to self damage on that build, so it works good enough for me.
I agree that it’s not good when weapons really only work on certain cabins, but that’s not unique to this gun. I’m sure we can all think of a few others that depend on one cabin to work.
The syndicate elbows will do 14 shots as a pair on a single gun. I’ve had them pop off with the gunmounts (9 shots) but I try to be pretty careful. I’ve been using the elbows more recently but it’s still an issue when not using the Master cab. With it set up as a reloader it’s easier to burn through the shots, so it kind of exacerbates the issue too. I haven’t tried spacing in more yet just do space availability on the current build.
Ability to function well vs Falling off while heathy I think are two totally different types (levels) of dependencies even if they are both dependencies. I can’t really bring another one to mind that are that dependent on a cab that they cease to function fully. In the case of flame weapons with Blight maybe, that’s by 40% dmg, 50% range, and 30% puddle but that’s no where near as crippling as it’s just shear advantage in using it. Most of the weapons themselves don’t have a con that large in their general use though. Assembler with Kami but again the overheating itself doesn’t do any real damage by itself.
You’ve definitely spotted an oversight that I haven’t polished out yet. I left that gap there for sake of not having the frames protrude too much, and I probably left those 2x8’s in after initial layout since I rough-stickframe everything. I might have left it as a couple of 2x8’s with tusk players in mind, but that build works. You just have to spin around and not keep front forwards at all times with frame mounting, unless you locate the guns far apart on a pancaktm
