Just a quick idea I came up with; What if, as a gunner did damage to an enemy, they would do more damage to that type of enemy?

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Heh. But anyways, the idea is that as you do massive amounts of damage to a certain type of enemy, your damage versus that type of enemy increases with thyme. For example, if you do 20 million damage to BG's, you get a 100% increase in damage versus BG's. Have it so that it decreases along a curve, so that, for example, at 10m you do 50% more, then at 20m you do 75% more, then at 40m you do 100% more damage, etc. Eventually your damage would stop meaningfully increasing, but it would still slowly be there.

This would have an interesting effect; in the beginning, gunners would be much less useful in new areas with new AI types. However, as time passed and they had more opportunity to complete that area, their damage would increase until finally they would be a very much desired character for the run.

Secondly, it means that gunners would take a lot longer to get into their own than other classes, essentially meaning you'd have to be a gunner for a long time to succeed. This makes older gunners better. I like this part.

Anyways, any thoughts/objections?

a sniper analysis that has a higher % cap, for gunner.

1. It makes the class uninviting to newer people
2. It's broken in PvAI provided that the person sinks enough time in
3. It won't help in PvP or else it would be broken.

Perhaps this could be tweaked a little bit. Instead of making it to a particular ship, why not make it to a particular target? And to make it more versatile, make it a percent of the enemy's shields. Tweak it more so that it's based on the amount of shields the enemy has, not have how much damage done.

So basically, there is a 0% percent damage increase at 100% shields on Zeus. However, your squad gets Zeus down to 50% shields. You now have a +50% damage increase.

Much more versatile this way and more balanced.

Except that's essentially no different from sniper. I want something that effects the class permanently.

I don't think that a person should be rewarded more for grinding on a certain type of any. It makes it so that in order to gain a bonus the person would have to dump tons time into something. It disencourages relaxed play and consequently very few people would pick the class.

Very people already choose the class

If you liked the class, you would keep playing and become powerful over time. If you didn't like the class, well then you wouldn't make a gunner. It's as simple as that.

I'd rather Gunner get a good ability without grinding than one that did.

Exactly.

How about, instead of damage, the gunner's debuff improves the longer they stay in a galaxy. It's sorta like analysis but with more options. It wouldn't improve PvAi like dgs much, but it would be much better in boss fights.

Or maybe, the debuff is based on damage dealt. So that if you start with a 10% debuff, that makes your damage increase slightly, and it slowly increases based on your RoF and DPH. So that eventually the debuff is very strong, but the gunner has to constantly fire and weaken the enemies armor over time.

I actually like the original idea, it'd make gunner a unique class. It needs tweaking but I do like the general concept.

It doesn't make Gunner any different than sniper. We already have sniper-like gunners running around. No need to make gunner even more like sniper, without being a sniper.

- Gunner needs to do more DPS, in one way or another. Sustained DPS. Taking firepower away from missiles to increase ship dps is a solution, and that also lets debuff missiles come into play.

- Mining Weapons are not the only damage type. Yes, sniper has a buff to Physical. But sniper also has a massive damage buff to other weapons. Gunner has a strict mining buff to capital ships. Powerful against mining weak stuff, but more or less useless everywhere else?

- Gunner ships are not FC ships. They are completely different ends of the scale. One likes heavy resists and shield bonuses, the other enjoys firepower and range. Neither can use the same ship effectively as the other. And as it stands out, the Dread is most like a FC's ship.

- Missiles should never ever be spammed, or be preferred over your own weapons for a Gunner, unless you have that odd Missile Specific Ship that was designed to launch missiles purely instead of weapons. Furthermore, missiles should not be such a game changing aspect that you must have them or you just suck.

- As the opposite of FC, a Gunner must use debuffs. While JeffL has said that Gunner Debuff Gens would be hard to code, Splashing Weapons, Chaining Weapons, and Field Artillery would be very good things to add as a compensation.

The reason I wanted the Debuff Gens was to make it less of a balancing act, since unlike seer, gunner uses a wide variety of weapons, translating into a very large combination of weapon types, damage types, and playstyles. You'd be here all decade figuring out how to balance ~3000 new weapons for this class.