INTRO
BATTLESHIP BULLETS AND BEHAVIOR
--1.)Protectors
--2.)Drones
-----Other Bullet Notes
BATTLESHIP'S BIGGEST FLAW AS BULLET SPAM CLASS
--1.)Gun Placement
--2.)Bullet Power
-----Firepower Test
BATTLESHIP'S BIGGEST FLAW AS DRONE CONTROLLER
--1.)Bullet Behavior After Being Fired
--2.)Bullet Time To Live (TTL)
-----Other Bullet Statistics
SO WHAT IS BATTLESHIP?
HOW TO WIN WITH BATTLESHIP
--1.)The Hold
--2.)Hold and Repel
--3.)Hold and Release
OTHER TIPS
--1.)Passively Attacking
--2.)Screen Clearing
--3.)Pushing Back
--4.)Dodging than Shielding
--5.)You are UNDERPOWERED
The battleship is a lv45 tank, branching off from the twin flank and the overseer classes.
It is a peculiar tank because it is a marriage of three class types.
- Bullet Spam class (Stream of Drones)
- Drone Controlling Class (Drones that you control, the other half of your swarm)
- Auto Class (Protectors, the auto drones which are half of your swarm)
However, the class also shares the weaknesses of the three types.
- As a Bullet Spam class, your drones disappear after a short while. they are also weaker than normal drones.
- As a Drone Controller, your drones require control.
- As an Auto class, your protectors are at the mercy of their AI.
The battleship has two types of bullets.
1.) Protectors.
These bullets have AI. they seek out shapes but prefer enemy tanks over them. they also prefer closer targets.
Alone, they are very small, wery weak, and deal little damage. On the other hand, they are fast, deal quite a large knockback, and come in numbers. They are shot out from the Front Right and the Rear Left Barrel. they comprise half your swarm.
2.) Drones.
These bullets are essentially protectors that follow the mouse cursor as long as you are firing (pressing LMB). Repelling (pressing RMB) also works with them. they assume normal protector AI behavior when you are not pressing LMB. They are shot out from the Front Left and the Rear Right Barrel. these are the other half of your swarm.
Other bullet notes:
- Do take note that when the drones/protectors make a sharp turn or overshoot, they stop applying speed (they still move, due to momentum), turn, and start accelerating in the new direction. This wastes quite a bit of time (~1 second to reach top speed). This is important to one of the later topics.
Every bullet spam class rely on their overall DPS (damage + penetration + reload + barrels that can hit a single target). In a more practical setting, you want your spam class to hit targets, and erase bullets. While the homing bullets are something that would help in hitting stuff, this class has a hard time erasing bullets, as well as dealing damage.
1.) GUN PLACEMENT
Battleship barrels are placed perpendicular to the front of the tank. The bullets are shot SIDEWARDS. That means you won't be able to shield yourself with a constant stream of bullets. While you can roughly control half of your swarm like an overlord, you really cannot rely on it as a shield or as something that you can attack with.
2.) BULLET POWER
Since I cannot compare the numerical values of each bullet, I have created a test that would compare Battleship against other tanks. this does not define each bullet's exact bulletdamage/penetration value, but this will show the relative firepower of each tank against each other.
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FIREPOWER TEST
A test was done to compare the bullet strengths of the FF tanks:
Tank (Control), Gunner, Auto 3, Auto 5, Battleship
- All of their bullets are set to 7 Bullet Speed, 7 Penetration and 7 Reload.
- The target is a Lv45 Tank with 7 Health and 7 Body Damage.
- A Single Volley of bullets will be sent to enemy. (that means 4 for Battleship/Gunner, 1 Bullet for Tank/Auto) - If the damage done is immeasurably small, More volleys will be shot (multiples of ten).
- The damage done to the Tank will be measured and multiplied to their max reload to get their IDEAL DPS (DPS in an IDEAL SITUATION, where all bullets hit the target).
DO TAKE NOTE that these are not exact values, due to the non-numerical nature of the game.
TANK
- Bullet Power ~9.58-11% per shot.
- Reload: 3 bullets per second.
- Tank will eat ~28.74% to 30% of the target's HP per second.
GUNNER
- Shooting 40 Bullets would do ~84.9315 to 86% damage (surprisingly strong)
- Bullet Power: 2.1233% HP per bullet.
- Reload: 3 bullets per second (per barrel)
- Reload: 12 shots per second (all barrels)
- Gunner will eat ~25.4796 to 27% of the target's HP per second.
A3
- Shooting 1 bullet seems to be immeasurable
- Shooting 10 bullets yield a damage of 36.4873%.
- Bullet Power: 3.4873% HP per shot.
- Reload: 3 Bullets per second (per barrel)
- Reload: 6 Bullets per second (2 barrels facing you)
- A3 will eat ~20.9238 to 22% of the target's HP per second.
A5
- Shooting 10 of them yields a damage of 37.8378%.
- Bullet Power: 3.7837% HP per shot.
- Reload: 3 Bullets per second (per barrel)
- Reload: 9 Bullets per second (3 barrels facing you)
- A5 will eat ~34.0533% to ~36% of the target's HP per second. (It can surprisingly be as strong as tank)
BATTLESHIP
- 4 battleship bullets deal negligible damage to the enemy.
- 40 bullets will add up to ~56.7 to 58% against it.
- Bullet Power: ~1.434% HP per shot.
- Reload: ~3 bullets per second (per barrel)
- Reload: ~12 bullets per second (all barrels)
- Battleship will eat ~17.208% to ~19% of the target's HP per second.
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BOTTOM LINE: BATTLESHIP HAS VERY LOW DPS!
Not only that, this test is done in an IDEAL situation. this means that you are shooting with ALL of your bullets. in a real-world scenario, you are only using half of your swarm, since the protectors screw around a lot. In that scenario, it puts battleship a bit below, if not equal to Gunner-Trapper (the Gunner part) in DPS. Think about it.
Gunner-Trapper's Gunner parts. can. outdamage. you.
GUNNER-TRAPPER'S GUNS.
The thing with drone controlling classes is that they can attack in an unexpected direction (aka. the flank). with battleship, you have very little control of your drones due to the life expectancy of each drone. this makes this tank very hard to use when used like a drone class.
1.) BULLET BEHAVIOR AFTER BEING FIRED
due having sidewards-facing barrels, along with the drone/protector speed, they move on a curve before reaching the mouse pointer. Because the cursor is in front, the drones/protectors have to make a 90 degree turn. They have to turn to the front, and then accelerate until they reach top speed. this wastes precious time for the drones.
2.) BULLET TIME TO LIVE (TTL)
Three Seconds. with all the intricacies of the true drone classes, three seconds is way too short for drone class users. Your flanking ability will be very limited here. Don't expect to do tricks such as booby trapping or the claw with this class.
Some bullet statistics: (BSpd) (MATH) (CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG)
- Bullets have a lifetime of roughly three seconds. (from barrel recoiling to before fading out)
- Bullets have a fading out time of ~0.33 seconds.
- At 7 Reload Speed, A battleship can have a maximum of 44 bullets (4 in the barrel and 4 fading out, so 36 usable bullets)
- At 7 Bullet Speed, the maximum theoretical speed a bullet can achieve (constant max speed in a straight line) is ~20.1876 squares per second. Roughly the same speed as a basic tank bullet with 6 bullet speed.
- Therefore, the maximum theoretical distance a bullet can achieve (straight line only) is ~60.5629 when solid, and an additional ~7.2190 while fading out.
- Battleship bullets take one second (from zero) to reach their top speed.
- the distance from center to top of the screen (of battleship) is ~24 squares, while the distance from center to left side is ~48 squares.
Considering acceleration and ignoring the cuvature of the bullet trajectory, the max distance a solid bullet can attain is ~50.469, well before the corners of the screen (53.67 squares).
BOTTOM LINE: BATTLESHIP HAS WAY TOO LITTLE RANGE!
Battleship is an Autotank with drone controlling capabilities. as an autotank, it is very good at clearing areas from shapes, pointing enemies from just offscreen, possibly hitting them as well, and generally being a pain to smaller tanks (as well as tanks that reload slowly). as a drone controller, you, er, control drones. with that in mind, this tank kinda shines in TDM, when you are protecting another unit (such as an Auto5) or in maze when you kinda reach around a corner with your drones.
Really, it's more of a cute move than a deadly one.
As an auto class, it also suffer from less than stellar damage. From the tests that I have done, it really shows. you can kindamake a concentrated stream that could ghost through some bullet streams and you can use your drones to kinda make a flanking maneouvre.
Right now, treat it as an auto tank first, bullet spammer as second, and drone class, last.
So, you are a class that has Low Damage (Both Burst and DPS), Relatively short range and no method of propulsion. how do you win?
You do not win with battleship.
You simply try to not die as battleship. you will not be able to hold yourself for long when you get the leader arrow in FFA. Battleship (as of 2016.10.23 SUNDAY) is underpowered. Nevertheless, Here is how I use the Battleship.
Builds:
My Build:
0/0/0/7/7/7/5/7
Maxed out Bullets would mean greater knockback.
Anokuu's Build:
0/0/0/7/7/5/7/7
You sacrifice higher knockback for more bullets.
Some Tricks for Battleship:
THE HOLD.
- Holding the LMB makes your drones follow the mouse cursor until they disappear. Holding in in empty spot in front of you can make for a shield of sorts, blocking shots that would hit it. watch out because this shield is smaller and weaker than the overlord's version. on the flipside, it replenishes quickly, due to your reload.
HOLD AND REPEL.
- Very much like any other drone class, You use this strategy to send your bullets in an outward arc, possibly in an attempt to hit the enemy in multiple locations. it is somewhat effective in scattering your drones as well as clearing the screen. the downside is that you cannot do this from afar, as repelling will take quite a bit of time.
HOLD AND RELEASE.
- Holding your drones near your enemy and releasing the LMB afterwards would be a great idea, because when no mouse button is pressed, the drone AI will assume control, and will seek the nearest target, hopefully, an enemy tank. This is great due to the Fire and forget nature of the drones (They disappear easily, you replenish them easily as well) - this is great when you have to get away from an opponent, since you do not have to manually drag your drones.
- On the other hand, you are DEFENSELESS at this state, since you are not producing bullets. Make sure that you are in a safe position while doing this maneouvre.
1.) WHEN YOU ARE SHOOTING, YOU ARE PASSIVELY SEEKING ENEMIES.
half of your swarm have AI as their default behavior. Your attack is weak, but at least you are attacking. This is good as an early warning device (if an enemy is near), or when chipping a weakened enemy down to zero.
It is also bad because a protector stream is very much like an arrow to your position. Take note of this. when you are sneaking by, stop firing so that you will not draw attention.
2.) MAKE SURE THAT THE SCREEN IS CLEAR.
The dilemma of necromancer is replenishing its drones. Your dilemma as a battleship is having control of the protectors. Clearing the screen would mean no distractions for your protectors. You do this to slightly move the AI behavior to your favor. No distractions would mean the protectors would nearby tanks, enabling you to attack with FULL FORCE, and By force, I mean with the strength of AUTO 3. In doing this, you have a few options:
Destroy Everything!
your protectors are actively doing this. you can help them by using the drones you control to destroy the remaining shapes in your vicinity.
Move to a less populated area.
Nothing else. Just move to an area with less shapes.
3.) AIM TO PUSH BACK, RATHER THAN TO KILL.
You have below Average DPS. You also cannot reach far. in a fight, you will be disadvantaged. the only notable things about you are your reload, your drone AI, and the knockback they generate. try to put your life first before your score. you are underpowered.
4.) DO DODGING MORE THAN SHIELDING.
while your swarm has the ability of blocking a stray sniper bullet or two, it quickly dissipates after a couple of shots. think of your shield as something that would soften the blow, instead of something that would completely protect you.
5.) REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE UNDERPOWERED.
You have the same DPS as auto 3. Your drones have a range of ~53 squares (from center to coner of screen). your shield can block bullets, but not for long. Fighting tanks with at least 6 bullet speed (barring destroyer and trapper trees) Will be hard. Every matchup that is not against the destroyer, smasher or trapper trees is a bad matchup.