All in all, I think the changes are positive, however I think a few more changes would make the thing play much better. Being able to dive with them was an obvious necessity, idk why that wasn't there on launch but it's here now and that's good. More damage from shooting them into ship hulls is also good, it was very obvious from the beginning that it was going to be too weak to actually act as a forcing function. I assume we'll be seeing a T2 (on the 3 tier system), and a T3 if removed. While not ideal, because T2s are usually the last thing you rep anyways, it's better than it was. Bringing back the one shot in the form of the harpoon spear is just stranger to me though. I mean you guys went through all the trouble to get rid of one shots with the blunder nerf, only to reintroduce it now. I very plainly see this as a direct downgrade from last year, prior to the blunder nerf. Harpoon spears will now be largely necessary for preventing boarders, but also a lot clunkier and less fun than the blunder was. I personally just don't think one shots belong in SoT at all 🤷♂️
Now I'll get into what I think should be done to further improve the tool. First of all, the ship damage change is completely fine so I'm not gonna be changing anything with that. The core thing that I think should be changed with it is changing from a loot object to an item/throwable. Having to pick it up and throw/load it into a cannon is clunky. There's no way around that. And I think by simply allowing the harpoon spear to have an inventory slot, whether you can only hold 1 or more (if it gets it's own category) or up to 5 (if it was placed under throwables) would really help this tool flawlessly incorporate itself into the games combat. Obviously the damage would at least have to no longer one shot. PERSONALLY while I think either change would be just fine, giving it it's own inventory slot makes the most sense. This allows a smaller maximum, such as 3 to be placed on the item, ensuring that it can't just fully replace cannonballs in these hourglass matches where people have 10000 of every supply. It also allows for a smaller stack limit within barrels/crates, such as 3-9, making it so you, again, can't just use them to replace cannonballs. When it comes to the hand to hand side of things, regardless of the number you could have at once, the one shot would have to be removed. It would simply be too easy of an out to switch to the spear and kill someone immediately. If balancing for 3 spears, I think ~45 damage is a good amount. This allows it to replace blunderbombs as the "last resort" option in underwater combat, but also not be good enough to be better than just purely using a weapon. I don't have anywhere good to put this, nor do I know if this is already the case, but I think it'd be cool for the spear to have a lot of range and accuracy when underwater, allowing it to be a clear better option over the blunderbomb spam most melee users rely on currently. 2 quick examples as to why 45 damage makes a lot of sense. #1; a sword/blunder user could use the harpoon spear as their primary answer to underwater combat. This would allow them to hit the other player for 90 damage, and assuming they hit 2/3 shots, they could then follow up with the blunderbuss allowing them to get the kill semi reliably (they would need 2 pellets to hit). #2; if the other player instead opted to use something like the sniper or pistol, and take something like the sword or blunderbuss as their second weapon, they could then utilize the spear as their primary follow-up when in underwater combat. This would allow them to kill the other player (example 1) faster, and more reliably, in underwater scenarios, than the other player could kill them. In the case that someone is using the double barrel, they would be able to get the kill by hitting at least 3 times. Maintaining that the double gun is slightly weaker than the pistol. And this would still maintain that the pistol is slightly stronger than the EoR due to it having a faster reload than the EoR. And so, while adding more functionality to the spear, making underwater combat more fair across different weapons types (aka allowing more weapons to be viable), and making the spear more fun/easy to use, these changes maintain that
#1 cannons are the primary method of dealing damage to ships
#2 the balancing order of pistol, then EoR, then DB, then Knives, then Blunder, then Sword is maintained in underwater combat (I haven't ever used blowgun so I didn't factor it into any balancing ideas).
#3 Blunderbombs are no longer the only way to deal damage underwater without a long range gun, yet are still a stronger option for close range underwater combat.
I think the quantity, whether spears should be throwables or their own category, and how exactly to discourage using spears strictly over cannons can be refined further via play testing, however I think the changes listed here would be an overall positive for the game. I cannot stress this enough, you would really need to be careful about spears replacing cannons in super high supply matches. And ofc if you change the number of spears allowed you would need to change the amount of damage they can deal. Anyways, that's all I have, ask questions if you want.
