Cannon Balance

[Crazypills]

So I'm at the end game here. I've got the Emerald Rider, or whatever the battleship is. I'm overflowing with money, and my ship is decked out with (most) of the best stuff. There are still some drops that could improve my ship, but that's just more farming. At this point, I'm 30 hours in. It's fun! I was comparing upgrades and decided to map em out a bit, and here's what I discovered (and tried):

Short cannons are incredibly OP, long cannons are very weak, carronades are unusable.

Short Cannons have:

• Recharge: -2 (smaller is better). This is one of the most powerful stats in the game, and each cannon is giving -2. That's insane.
  
• Accuracy: -5. The accuracy negative helps balance it out a little bit, but not a whole lot. It seems that short cannons are the "overwhelm them with shells" cannon, but it needs less accuracy for that to actually be true.
  
• Targeting area: Rapid +12, Standard +4, Accurate +2. This is giving the cannons a very wide field of fire, making it pretty easy to stay on target. It's not massive, but it's comfortably large.
  
• Range: -1. The range negative I feel is where the bonus should even out, but it doesn't come anywhere close. That's not really a fault of the cannon's because closing bonuses come from other parts of the ship.
  
• Efficiency: 60. This is mostly an overlooked stat I believe, but it's surprisingly important. Three short cannons (on an Emerald Rider) take 37% of your crew (14 out of 37) to get to 120% efficiency to make the most of your guns.

Combined with 3 Mizandrians and 3 Reeks, you end up with a Recharge of 1 second (so high you can use a spyglass mod to increase range up to 9, which is 1 less than base/the same as long cannons), reduced aiming time, and minimum efficiency penalty. In fact, your cannons recharge so fast that you can actually volley a second time before your first volley is actually done. Even with the hit to accuracy, you can get off 4 volleys at close range against an enemy battleship and sink it before it gets off a second volley of its own. THIS IS BONKERS.

DPS: 1535

Long Cannons have:

• Recharge: none.
  
• Accuracy: +7.
  
• Target Area: Laser. It turns each aiming type into a laser, which is incredibly hard to keep on target. You could cite skill as the important factor, but let's be honest. If you're fighting another ship moving quickly, it'll be hard regardless of skill.
  
• Range: +0. For long cannons, they don't shoot very far. I assume this means they're supposed to be the average mid line cannons, but they don't quite fit that.
  
• Efficiency: 80. It takes more sailors to keep long cannons efficient: 51% (or 19 crew), which is crew you can't use elsewhere.

Long cannons have less actual cannons, and with the same mods as above, you end up with a recharge of 5 seconds, which I would consider either pretty quick or pretty average. It feels...normal to shoot at this rate. Accuracy is 106%, so you never miss, but you're aiming with a laser, so good luck keeping it on target for 3 seconds. The dps comes out to 760, or half of what the short cannons are doing, even with their hit to accuracy.

DPS: 760

Carronades have:

• Recharge: +1. Each cannon on your ship makes you fire quite a bit slower.
  
• Accuracy: -12. What? Really poor accuracy and really slow firing?
  
• Target Area: no changes.
  
• Range: +2. You can shoot further, that's nice
  
• Efficiency: 90. It takes 57% of your sailors to get maximum efficiency. That's a lot.

Carronades have a longer range (16), and you can get it up to 21 if you try hard, the problem is the recharge rate is so high it's not worth it - the same mods as before gets you an 8 second recharge rate with a range of 16, but an accuracy penalty higher than short cannons. In fact, accuracy drops to 49%, substantially worse than the supposedly inaccurate short cannons: In fact, you can't even get off a second shot in a 10 second window. Just to fulfill your curiosity, you can get a max range of 21 on your cannons with mods (that I'm aware of, there may be other things I haven't found yet). 6 from carronades, 3 from Geze mods, and 2 from a spyglass mod. Unfortunately this puts your recharge at 16 seconds, but hey, shooting 4 times a minute is fine, right?

DPS: 273

Culverins have:

• Recharge: none.
  
• Accuracy: none.
  
• Target Area: no changes.
  
• Range: none.
  
• Efficiency: 70. I believe these are should be the base cannons on every ship. They are as unspecial as you can get. They actually need a bit of a buff, since they're a little TOO bland.

DPS: 646

What this shows me is that range is punished heavily, and is viewed as a very strong stat. In fact it might've been, if such high speeds weren't so easily attainable. On my battleship, I have a speed of 31, a maneuverability of 32, and a sprint artifact. No one can catch me, no one can run away, and it's probably the combination of that and the short cannons recharge that breaks everything.

I've played around with multiple cannon types, but sadly nothing comes close to triple short cannons as far as dps goes.

What's the solution?
Cannon balancing, hopefully. This isn't a purely multiplayer game, so it doesn't matter TOO much, but it'd be nice if the choices you had were roughly equal, so you could go with the playstyle you liked. I've played with the numbers a bit and tried to give them values to enable balancing.

                          Short       Long       Carronade      Culverins
Cannons                    18          16           16               16
Recharge Rate              -1           0           +1                0
Accuracy                  -10          +6            0                3
Rapid Fire                 +8          -16          -4               +1
Standard Fire              +2          -5           +1               +2
Accurate Fire               0          -1            +3              +1
Range                      -1          +1            +2               0
Efficiency                 65          85           85                75
DPS                        919         760          473               715

The end result is a little better I think. Short cannons excel in short range even though they're inaccurate and you're rewarded for getting in close and hammering the enemy. Long cannons actually live up to their name with a range buff; Due to their limitations, they're unusable for rapid fire and poor in standard fire, but have an accurate, narrow window when you take your time. Carronades can fire a long way and can be aimed easily, but are slow to reload and not very flexible in short range. Balanced cannons, or maybe just...cannons, are decent at pretty much everything, have an average range, recharge at a standard rate, etc. Mods are definitely part of the problem as well, but that's a different post.

Edited to add Culverins.

[Kenedius]

you missed out culverins and it be interesting to see how they stack up but pretty cool what you have done, i'm in the same place as you best ship with full upgrades but i find that the cannons ( I use the longs but dont have the issue with the small aim area personally) and full upgrade on lage ship only leave you with maybe 150 in space so going after loot becomes a pain

[Crazypills]

Yeah, space is something else entirely haha. Remind me where to buy culverins and I'll add them in. Just some observations I had when messing around. I have to admit though, the super fast shotgun build is pretty fun, you should give it a shot. There's nothing quite like non-stop cannonfire for as long as you have ammo.

[Kenedius]

They are at the 2 star or 3 star port near the bay of silence on the first map, i like the laser strike since it means 1 volly kills everything below a frig even with rusty balls and since i dont bother with bording since there is no benefit compared to sinking i have everyone split for sail and cannon and so rairly lose guys and the low volly cost means the little loot i get to sell plus gold earned allows decent profit, the shotgun set up would be really sweet for leviathan mission tho

[FishBoneFredd]

Thank you for putting this together. A lot of good info that I'm sure took a lot of effort. I use culverins also, and I found short cannons to be very good. Although, that was before the last big update, and less with less math involved.

[Crazypills]

I added Culverins in, but they're essentially the Balanced or Basic cannons I suggested to add. They need a small bit of tweaking, but otherwise, no changes.

[Serpentarius]

Culverins are, for now, my favorite cannon type, it has a wide charge arch, making charging the shots easy, it has good range, good charge speed and are pretty accurate even on the middle tier

[Tomato Juice]

Wait the Carronade (short low muzzle velocity gun) has the longest range?

Strange.

[Serpentarius]

Originally posted by Tomato Juice:

Wait the Carronade (short low muzzle velocity gun) has the longest range?

Strange.

Long Cannons have the longest range and highest accuracy but takes forever to charge and ha the smalest charging reticule

[mr_hotwire]

Originally posted by avreliy.dev:

wow! awesome research!
will use it for re-balance.

lool...

[Vanilla]

how about bombard cannon? it's best or worth?

[mr_hotwire]

Originally posted by avreliy.dev:

cannons re-balanced... will be available in open-world build... don`t know when. =)

1 year mabye?