I love playing Lockdown, and I love the new depth it brings to the game, but I've noticed something about each of the weapon types as they relate to PVP. Swords are really useful general-purpose weapons, as always (so useful in fact that you'll frequently be caught dead without one!), and bombs are good for forcing enemies away from points, which is a neat twist from PVE.

Guns, however, are practically non-existent. The sole exception to this is Pulsar, which is essentially a ranged bomb anyway. I never see epic gunfights; I rarely see gunners win fights at all, frankly, since swordies (especially strikers) can close the modest range distance in a snap and a good bomber can just dodge around until his allies sweep through again.

As gunner myself, this is very disappointing, since I feel that guns are where the real variety in Spiral Knights is to be found, with most guns being fairly well-balanced against each other (with, again, the exception of the Pulsar) to allow players a real breadth of style. I'm sure all the other gunners out there are similarly disappointed that their favorite weapons just aren't good in this setting. More broadly, I feel that having an entire weapon type be unviable for competitive multiplayer is a really strange design. Lockdown is still fun, so I won't call it "bad" since it still accomplishes the goal of a game, but strange.

So, fellow forum dwellers,

How would we set about making guns matter in Lockdown? Post your ideas!
(You can stop reading here if you don't want to read MY idea, but I'll know if you did!)

For my two cents: Lockdown is about capturing points, and then keeping them. Everything that doesn't contribute to these in a relevant way is not going to see play.

• Swords are good at dealing damage, which kills enemies. Enemies who are dead cannot capture points, and cannot prevent you from capturing them.
• Bombs cover points, making it difficult for enemies to move onto them to capture them, and providing you with a little safe zone with which you can capture the point you're bombing.

Currently in LD, guns do neither of these things. They don't do enough damage to stand up to a sword user, and the extra range they have is irrelevant against all two of the three classes (Strikers speed into you and recons are invisible) and mediocre against the third (Guardians can be worn down from afar, but only until their buddies show up). They're a little helpful against bombers, but bombers aren't common enough that you'll expect them in every match, and a good bomber will just dodge around your shots, even with a big burst weapon like a Pulsar. They don't kill enemies, and they don't protect points; the most useful gunning I've seen in lockdown is limited to Pulsar spamming (which is just as tiresome in PVP as it is in PVE) and interrupt support with Antigua lines (which requires another player to be useful, and is probably not enough fun for most people to try and learn to do it).

Ideally, however, whatever role a gun should play in Lockdown should be distinct from the roles that swords and bombs play. As I said earlier, Pulsars can be thought of as ranged bombs (grenades, if you will), so they don't really do anything new and different compared to existing strategies.

What role they should fill is a bit of a puzzle, though, since their main advantage over other weapons in PVE is their range, and range is pretty much irrelevant in Lockdown for reasons stated above. The obvious choice is to buff their damage via one or more of the class mods, but again, since range doesn't matter, swords will always be the batter option as long as they do more damage... and in competitive play, the "better" options are the only ones that are going to get used.

So I'm going to make an off-the-wall suggestion: while the Recon module is equipped, all guns have a 50% chance to inflict a short (1 second or so) period of Stun. The brief stun would allow the gunner to buy some time against advancing swordies, increasing the damage output somewhat (since they'd have more time to survive) while solo and cementing guns in a support role when moving in a pack. A small damage boost would also be nice, but I think that would actually be more appropriate on Guardians, since they use their guns more for picking off fleeing enemies or countering enemy gunners, where the damage would be more helpful than the delay.

Potential problems (which no suggestion should be without!) would probably include:

• Pulsar spam (but seriously folks, when is Pulsar spam NOT a problem?), mitigated somewhat by a chance of stun rather than an automatic application.
• Skilled gunners hitting repeatedly with fast-fire weapons, effectively locking the target in Stun; this would allow the gunner to kite around with impunity while the crippled target limps around and dies, which is probably not fun. I would argue that this would still take some skill, would probably be no more obnoxious than flying auto-target Flourish Strikers, and would also likely be less common. It has the additional advantage of being impractical to perform with expanded Pulsar shots!
• Stun resist equipment may completely negate the short duration... but the Plate line could use a day in the sun, and is still weak to piercing swords, so this seems fair.
• Possible weirdness when interacting with guns that already inflict stun (only the Stun Gun and Magnus lines, so far), but I'm sure OOO's talented programmers can come up with an easy solution to that!