Light Mortar turn rate nerf discussion!

[eigos]

I just found out during a battle in Conn, that there is essentially a nerf to Light Mortars, that ultimately, cost me the fight.
After checking with Justin (Durandal) about it, he confirmed it, that indeed, the turning speed of the turret itself is reduced.

Now, I have no idea why this nerf was necessary in the first place, but now that it's there, I thought to create a discussion around the topic.

What exactly was nerfed: Every gun and turret in the game has its own turning speed along the hardpoint, most of which are identical. Light Mortars used to turn equally as fast as other cruiser turrets. Now, they turn a whole lot slower.

Where is the problem with this? I will use the extreme example, the Outcast Storta All who have flown it, will know - its 3 heavy turret slots have REALLY bad firing arcs, and none of them can fire backwards properly.
Let's say you have to fight a larger enemy in your Storta. You will want to kite and keep a safe distance, while firing your Mortar and dodging incoming projectiles. To fire it successfully, a Storta needs to be lined up 30 degrees sideways, or make a risky upside-turn (leaving the flat side of it exposed). It takes a lot of skill and timing to line up a Mortar shot while dodging.

Before the nerf, you could have maybe 20% of your shots fail to fire, because of a miss-alignment of your ship towards your target. The 4 seconds of cooldown before the next shot take effect, but you are still in the fight, dodging and aiming for the next shot.
Now after the nerf, every time you make that sideways turn maneuver in order to line up a shot, you NEED to wait for the Light Mortar to turn FULLY to the desired direction, which can take anywhere between 3 to 6 seconds, depending on its previous position, which WILL change according to your mouse movements while you were dodging!
This essentially means, you are exposed to all the incoming enemy fire, while you wait for the turret to TURN, before you can use it! *If you attempt to fire the Mortar earlier, before it turned completely, it will essentially NOT FIRE and trigger the cooldown of 4 seconds, and meanwhile you will have taken a whole lot of damage from the battleship that's chasing you!

This nerf essentially affects every single cruiser (or destroyer) that has limited firing arcs. It's much less of a problem for the others, which have proper 180 degree coverage on their heavy hardpoints.?
My personal view is, that nerf needs to be retracted and the Light Mortars need to be made the same as they used to be.
I don't see any reasoning behind such a nerf and this is why I made this thread, for people to voice their opinions about it.

Gonna try to post a poll on this.

P.S. Please, keep on-topic and don't turn it into a flame war of any kind. I am asking for a discussion, which is ONLY about the turret nerf, NOT about the ship.

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[Gagadug.]

If the LM would turn as fast as a normal turret it would be very easy to use it in both the role of a mortar and a razor.
The cruiser razor and the light mortar projectiles have the same velocity wich makes it already now possible to use a LM to snipe snubs.

[Operator]

Agreed here. This nerf is pointless, even for a light mortar. It already has lesser dps than Archer's FWG (DON'T YOU DARE TO NERF IT TOO) and it was supposed to be a snipe thingie for cruisers. If you nerf it's Turn rate - then buff something else.

[Durandal]

And I just voted no because I didn't understand the question. Oh well.

No, the nerf was perfectly justified. It turns like a heavy artillery gun, as it is supposed to.

Agreed here. This nerf is pointless, even for a light mortar. It already has lesser dps than Archer's FWG (DON'T YOU DARE TO NERF IT TOO) and it was supposed to be a snipe thingie for cruisers. If you nerf it's Turn rate - then buff something else.

It was nerfed immediately after a very large buff to its projectile speed.

[Operator]

And I just voted no because I didn't understand the question. Oh well.

No, the nerf was perfectly justified. It turns like a heavy artillery gun, as it is supposed to.

Agreed here. This nerf is pointless, even for a light mortar. It already has lesser dps than Archer's FWG (DON'T YOU DARE TO NERF IT TOO) and it was supposed to be a snipe thingie for cruisers. If you nerf it's Turn rate - then buff something else.

It was nerfed immediately after a very large buff to its projectile speed.

whelp, that suffices

[eigos]

FLStat says the Light Mortar still has its standard 900 speed. I don't see any buff there.

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[Titan*]

And I just voted no because I didn't understand the question. Oh well.

Same here lol

It already has lesser dps than Archer's FWG (DON'T YOU DARE TO NERF IT TOO)

Oh come on archer fwg have the best dps in the game
It needs nerf not the damage but projectile speed it supposed to be anti battleship weapon not cruiser or gunboat
Yes archer can solo even pro gunboat players with only fwg
Hold x and press right click

FLStat says the Light Mortar still has its standard 900 speed. I don't see any buff there.

Before the buff it was 600

[eigos]

FLStat says the Light Mortar still has its standard 900 speed. I don't see any buff there.

Before the buff it was 600

No, it was always 900. Even the outdated wiki says so.

[Thunderer]

@Teerin: "- Light Mortar speed buffed to 900 m/s"

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[Thyrzul]

As far as I know ship stats on the wiki are not outdated anymore ever since someone competent (afaik Conrad) implemented scripts to draw data from game files and update the wiki automatically. Of course that doesn't mean the wiki is entirely up to date now, but isn't entirely outdated either. It concerns more or less the same stuff you can check with FLStat too.

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