"New" Weapon stats (2.2 - 2.3)

[Popi]

Hi there,

My 5 cents on how i see the re-balancing of weapons (in 2.2 - 2.3)

First of all... lasers have been kept back (again)

Laser Pistol  ( 8TU - 30 Damage / 12TU - 50 Damage )
Laser Rifle    ( 11TU - 40 Damage / 17TU - 60 Damage )
Heavy Laser ( 18TU - 60 Damage / 23TU - 100 Damage )

Compare with the steel bullets version
7.62 mm Pistol ( 6TU 40 Damage / 8TU - 111 Damage ) (Less TUs than laser and double damage!)
Assault Rifle     ( 11TU - 111 Damage / 18TU - 296 Damage ) (Same TUs and... five times as much damage!)
Minigun            ( 15TU - 100 Damage / 30TU - 500 Damage ) (1/3 more TUs and... five times as much damage!)

And armor value isnt too great to make up for the diference
So lasers are... way too weak

RPG and grenades... just by comparison... do too little damage... we have a minigun does 500 damage, smg 375, flamethrower 360, shotgun 220. How can it be a IC rocket just does 90 and HE 120?, maybe RPG should be much more expensive to fire and reload, having worst accuracy... but as they are now... if i would ever find a "tank" unit... last thing i will use against it is a rocket.

Other way to "fix" them in single is make them pretty expensive and/or bigger... and maybe remove them (or allow just 1) in MP.

But it does little sense that even the weakest unarmored soldier can take a grenade or a rocket, blow it in his face... and survive.

[BTAxis]

Firstly, the balancing isn't finished. I need to do a lot of testing, plus I rely on reports like this one.
Secondly, lasers aren't supposed to be that effective. They're the next step up from the standard weaponry (not quite obsoleting the latter) that is the human's answer to plasma. PBW is just stronger than laser. That's a singleplayer consideration. How does this translate to multiplayer, you ask? Well, read the proposal for point-based MP.
Thirdly, the values you posted here are wrong. Here are the defs for the minigun and heavy laser:

Code: [Select]

{
name "_Full-Auto"
skill heavy
projtl bullet
impact bulletImpact
hitbody null
firesnd weapons/chaingun
speed 0
spread "3 6"
crouch 1.0
range 60
shots 25
ammo 25
delaybetweenshots 20
time 30
damage "20 5"
dmgweight normal_spray
reaction true
}


Code: [Select]

firedef
{
name "_Long Wave"
skill close
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
speed 0
spread "0 0.8"
crouch 0.3
range 60
shots 1
ammo 3
time 12
damage "50 10"
dmgweight laser_light
reaction true
}
That's 40-60 laser damage in 12 TUs, and 600-1000 damage minigun damage in 30 TUs (15-25 damage per shot).

fourthly, the TU/damage ratio isn't the whole story. If you look only at that, you end up with the wrong idea. Let me correct the twisted TU/damage view with the following:

In 12 TUs, the heavy laser does 40-60 damage. Let's suppose the soldier is wearing medium armour. The calculation becomes: 40 - 25  = 15 damage minumum, 60 - 25 = 35 damaghe maximum.
In 30 TUs, the minigun does 600-1000 damage, but in 40 shots. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that all 40 shots will hit - which they really won't - then the armor will reduce 12 damage - per shot! So the calculation becomes at minimum: (15 - 12) * 40 = 120 damage. At maximum: 520 damage.

The minigun does a lot of damage, but again, not NEARLY all of those shots are going to hit. And since the randomness factor applies to every bullet, you aren't going to do the maximum damage in a practical situation. It'll be more like the average damage, which would be 320.

[Kaerius]

Honestly most weapons are not even upgrades on the basic ones, and weapons relying on putting out a lot of projectiles are weaker now that armour works.

Why would I ever use a laser rifle or heavy laser over a sniper rifle? The only reason I can think of is armour, if the aliens become very resistant to bullets later on for example, but laser went right through. I seem to remember it saying in an alien autopsy for one of them that laser would be ineffective against that race though...

Plasma weapons similarly aren't much of an upgrade, the spray modes do a lot of damage, but then each hit will be modified by armour. Why would I use a plasma rifle over say a machinegun(that will burst on reaction fire). The grenade and blade are nice though.

It's not until particle weapons you come to the upgrades, and even then, it's mostly because they go through armour like it wasn't there. Particle rifle is probably the best multiplayer weapon, kills someone with ~150 hp and power armour with one application of rapid shots every time(assuming you hit with 3 shots at least, out of 5 in the burst).

Personal pet peeve is weapons that rely on weight of fire to do any damage, that have a single fire snapshot, totally ruining their reaction fire potential(assault rifle, submachine gun, etc). Since snapshot was added to submachineguns, I haven't bothered with them. I wish reaction fire would at least use the burst option by default(on pretty much all weapons...)

Another thing that bugs me is the twohanded pistols/mini-mains(plasma pistol, smg, mini-shotgun). They'll never replace other twohanded weapons as main weapons, and they aren't useful as sidearms, because you can't just draw them in off-hand and fire.

[BTAxis]

Why would I ever use a laser rifle or heavy laser over a sniper rifle? The only reason I can think of is armour, if the aliens become very resistant to bullets later on for example, but laser went right through. I seem to remember it saying in an alien autopsy for one of them that laser would be ineffective against that race though...

The sniper rifle is supposed to be accurate and deadly over long distances, but be TU ineffective. That's one reason why you'd want to use different weapons.

Plasma weapons similarly aren't much of an upgrade, the spray modes do a lot of damage, but then each hit will be modified by armour. Why would I use a plasma rifle over say a machinegun(that will burst on reaction fire). The grenade and blade are nice though.

Plasma weapons shouldn't really be that much better than the human weaponry - after all, you get that stuff really early on. They should at least be a little better, though, so maybe some tweaks in that area are required.

It's not until particle weapons you come to the upgrades, and even then, it's mostly because they go through armour like it wasn't there. Particle rifle is probably the best multiplayer weapon, kills someone with ~150 hp and power armour with one application of rapid shots every time(assuming you hit with 3 shots at least, out of 5 in the burst).

Not so. The PBW rifle does 55-85 damage per shot, 4 shots per burst. The power armour has protection 50 for that damage weight. If all 4 shots hit and you do maximum damage every time, you still only do 35 * 4 = 140 damage. Not enough to kill a 150HP soldier. Methinks you're not using the newest ufo definitions.

Personal pet peeve is weapons that rely on weight of fire to do any damage, that have a single fire snapshot, totally ruining their reaction fire potential(assault rifle, submachine gun, etc). Since snapshot was added to submachineguns, I haven't bothered with them. I wish reaction fire would at least use the burst option by default(on pretty much all weapons...)

Too cheap. I am trying to move away from one-shot kills with this balancing. Reaction fire should be a system that gives you options and doesn't leave you sitting around without defence while the enemy makes his move. It should not be the main method of killing.

Another thing that bugs me is the twohanded pistols/mini-mains(plasma pistol, smg, mini-shotgun). They'll never replace other twohanded weapons as main weapons, and they aren't useful as sidearms, because you can't just draw them in off-hand and fire.

This is a good point. How do you think these weapons can be modified so they're at least worth taking along?

[HitMan]

Hi,

If I remember correctly in "UFO enemy unknown" every item had weight. The more you had equipment=weight to carry the slower=less time units you had. I have not noticed this in Ufoai or maybe only small effect that does not make a difference. With stronger weight to TU effect you really need to consider if you want fast soldiers with less fire power or slow soldiers with more fire power. The best would be a combination of course.

For example in "UFO enemy unknown" if you packed heavy weapon in backpack and heavy weapon at hand and rest of the slots full of ammo and grenades a rookie soldier did not have enough time units to shoot at all.

This could be one way to make two handed light weight weapons more important.

- HitMan

[BTAxis]

That has been suggested, but I don't really like that model. Instead, I suggested that armour would induce a TU penalty - none for light armour, some for medium armour and a lot for heavy armour. That makes armour competitive - you trade speed for protection. It's also simpler (read: better), but it doesn't prevent rookies from using heavy weaponry.

This feature isn't implemented, and it won't be in 2.2.

[Kaerius]

Honestly, I'd consider at least making the plasma pistol one-handed, that'd make it valid as a sidearm.

As for the mini-shottie and smg... I don't know really, they're so pathetic now that armour works, I'd be tempted to drop them completely, or up the damage. There are 5.56NATO(.223) submachineguns now(in reality), some bigger calibre ones in the future doesn't seem too far-fetched. Make it inaccurate instead as the recoil makes it jump around. It already costs quite a few TUs to use.

Tried playing with only particle rifles and cannons today, hardly an upgrade now that they don't completely ignore armour anymore. The particle rifle does have a bit of merit though, as a sort of cross between the sniper rifle and bolt rifle, though slower to fire...

Honestly at the moment, you're best off sticking to the good old sniper rifle, bolt rifle and the odd flamethrower, other weapons have very little merit except for niche rolls that you rarely need. A big part of that is how horribly inflated the TU costs for higher tech weapons have become lately. You'd think some WH40K fanatic went through them with the "You shouldn't be able to move and fire in the same turn" mentality.

[BTAxis]

Yeah, that's the philosophy behind most of the heavy weapons, including the human ones (though as stated I didn't really do much about those yet). But I'm kind of assuming that eventually, soldiers are going to get better TUs than 40 tops in the singleplayer game, as a result of their increasing stats. However, the fire-or-move thing should only go for the heavier fire modes. Snap shots should be less costly.

[Kaerius]

Note that max in a normal game is currently 42TUs, and I think the total max is 46(possibly reachable in a very easy game). Currently stats do not go up on soldiers, so you're stuck with the stats they start with(perhaps something for a bug report).

Higher tech weapons are still really really silly in their damage/TU ratio. Although worst is undoubtedly the lasers. Mind you I thought the heavy laser was kinda crap when it was 60 damage for 5 TU and 100 damage for 7 TU, but you couldn't choose reaction fire firemode then(and it doesn't seem to work most of the time now either). 60 damage for 17 TU and 100 for 21 is just ridiculous, and don't even talk about the laser pistol...

When snapshots "should be less costly" why does it cost 19 TU the particle beam cannon? Sure it's a cannon, but that snapshot isn't going to take down any alien in one hit unless you're playing on very easy, and it's not all that accurate either.

Let's not talk about hard+... needed 6 frag grenades to take down a single alien in the first mission on hard...

[BTAxis]

Let's get something straight here first, you are *not* supposed to take down an alien in one hit, at least on normal difficulty. Or an enemy soldier in MP. That's exactly the thing I'm trying to get rid of, because I really hated that in MP in the older versions. I mean, why even bother putting on armour at all if the weapons are just going to overpower it anyway? (edit: excepting the charged blast and similarly high-powered weapons, of course. But not with midrange weapons.)

With that out of the way, I think we can assert that the alien weapons and the lasers are too weak. I'll have to see about that. I don't want to lower the TU costs too much, though. Low TU cost should really be reserved for secondary weapons. Also, the TUs in singleplayer should increase - once that is implemented. Right now we don't have anything of the sort.

Six frag grenades for one alien is too many, agreed (I don't actually know what bonuses the aliens get on the various difficulties). I drastically lowered the grenade weapons because they were so overpowered before (300+ damage for a plasma grenade, ensuring a kill every time). They're at 110 and 150 now, so they SHOULD still kill a soldier in two hits if you aim well. But as they're supposed to be explosives they'll often do less than that. The trouble is that with values around 200, they become insta-kill weapons again, and as I said before, that's something I want to avoid. The best way would be to change the damage falloff with distance, but that's not possible unless you change it in the code.

[BTAxis]

Small update: the only bonuses the aliens get are on damage. On hard the aliens do about 170% damage and receive only 60% damage, and on very hard the aliens do about 300% damage and receive about 35% damage. (This is after armour subtraction.)

I think that's pretty insane... No amount of balancing is going to work with that. Perhaps some tweaking here would be in order.

[Punkiee]

The RPG question is also tied to the purpose it has to serve.
Typically an RPG is for heavy armored big targets. It thus is very heavy and costly and is inaccurate, does a great deal of damage and has a great damage area.
But its used atypically in the game for small weak humans. It has untypical accuracy, does little damage and has a small area effect.
The RL RPG is nothing like the UFO RPG, it just has the same picture.

OR we bring it to use by introducing heavy armored big targets (drones, exoskeletons, ship point defense) and tweaking its stats as to match the RL stats.
OR we remove it from the game by renaming it, making it another weapon (remember the TFTD guided alien rpg?)
OR we remove it from the game as it serves no purpose and is too atypical.

[BTAxis]

Please, no "real life" arguments. I'm sick of that discussion. I just want to create a set of weapon values that make the game fun. If the RPG is ridiculous, well, so be it. As long it's a well-balanced weapon, that's enough for me.

[Punkiee]

The weapon is modeled after its RL component. That may be its origin but that has nothing to do with the arguments i am posing. Therefore : "The RL RPG is nothing like the UFO RPG, it just has the same picture."
Ill assert again that the weapon as it currently is serving no need. Its just an odd looking gun but is used in the same way.

[BTAxis]

Not so. It is a splash damage weapon. That makes it very different from a gun.