UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: inquisiteur2 on May 07, 2007, 11:19:16 am
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I love the design and the concept but not the weapon stats.
On difficult settings I managed to develop laser rifles with clips and went on a terror mission in the stadium (ideal pleace for such weaponry since there is long distance shooting).
Fortunalty only one of my soldiers have been equiped with the laser rifle because I realised that actually the pre-warp assault rifle, or even the automatic pistol where much more effective. Damage rate is ridiculous.
We could keep the same damage rate and the same accuracy, but the action points cost is too high; this weapon has no pros since a soldier equiped with a laser rifle can simply not match any other soldier, even against melee equiped opponents. I would at the very least divide the action points requirement by 2 for each firing mode.
By the way, did somone work on the weapon balancing at this time ? I could take a look at it...(As long as I don't have to code that its ok for me).
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i think the lasers are a bit pointless too. lots of people have commented about general weapon balancing.
in the campaign, i proceed straight to the plasma research. also human starting guns are better than lasers.
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Two months ago people were complaining that lasers are overpowered. Then we lowered stats. Now people are complaining that lasers are too weak.
People are right in both cases.
That is just a matter of balancing.
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This time they are really really week....do we have somewhere a comparative table for all weapons ?
If no I can still create an excell sheet using the stats provided in the wikipedia/game.
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Please do. Do not use stats from wiki. Go to base/ dir, unpack 0ufos.pk3 (or enter ufo dir if you are using something other than installer) and grab stats from weapons_*.ufo files.
Also, it could be great to have such weapon stats page on the wiki, if you have time...
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Please do. Do not use stats from wiki. Go to base/ dir, unpack 0ufos.pk3 (or enter ufo dir if you are using something other than installer) and grab stats from weapons_*.ufo files.
Also, it could be great to have such weapon stats page on the wiki, if you have time...
And please include not only damage and time but also damage rate (damage/tu). In a sustained firefight with multiple soldiers that is probably the most important stat. Obviously, for reaction fire and one on one combat this is not necessarily true, but in AI the adage about a firefight being about who has more firepower seems to hold true. You may also want to figure in reload times damage_per_round / (time_per_round + (reload_time/mag_capacity)).
This will make a big difference for weapons with small magazines. I'm not sure how the source (pack, belt) of the ammo affects the reload time though, that could also be a factor.
Also damage type would be useful to have as well.
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i am on it.
http://ufoai.ninex.info/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1398&highlight=
for your own sanity, don't do it in excel.
give me a few days, more tables to come...
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Ah I wasn't aware of that, I you require some suggestion I would be happy to look at it once it is finalised, or if you have a more detailed draft to submit.
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Reload times are rarely signifigant at all unless the following criteria, measured through use of this calculation is met:
# of enemy soldiers / by the # of your soldiers / 2 (your soldiers can be reasonably expected to inflict up to twice the casualties worth of damage minimally necessary)* 115 (approximate average of extreme low and high health).
/ this by # of rounds * the average of the min and max damage per round given the weapon's firemodes * average protection % vs the weapon damage type afforded by all armours.
If this quotient is greater than 1, there is a considerable probability that reloading will occur.
So let's say the average protection vs fire was 50% (.50), and I'm using a flamethrower. There are 8 soldiers on the opposing team. There are 4 on mine.
Ammo is 6.
Step #1: ((90 / 1 (Candlelight)) + (180 / 2 (Inferno))) / 2 = 90
Step #2: 90 * 6 = 540
Step #3: 540 * .50 <? 115 * (8 / (4 / 2))
Step #4: 270 <? 115 * 4
Step #5: 270 < 460
Step #6: 460 / 270 = 1.703 - 1 (Representing the first clip which does not require reloading).
Step #7: 1 (Round up because we cannot partially load a magazine)
Result is > 0 so reloading is likely and thus relevant, making it prudent to factor in the impact of reloading when regarding the Damage/TU efficiency/firepower of a weapon.
As soon as I get good data pertaining to:
A: the average range at which combat occurs, and
B: the impact of various spreads at this range on hit probability.
I will factor in an accuracy component as well. Clearly this isn't a model which offers perfectly accurate predictions, but it is a useful one. Please note that "overkill" firemodes (ones that use more ammo than is necessary to kill a single target, SMG full auto for example), and those that feature splash damage may present exceptions.
The protection % used in this calculation should obviously be adjusted as appropriate if you know the armour your opponent will be equipped with, or your knowledge otherwise suggests that a bias towards a certain value is more appropriate than a simple average.
EDIT: Added some clarifications (hopefully).
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Please note that "overkill" firemodes (ones that use more ammo than is necessary to kill a single target, SMG full auto for example), and those that feature splash damage may present exceptions.
On Very Hard, and sometimes even hard... there is no overkill... just proper application of excessive force. :)
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Haha, true, though 'overkill' is definitely common in regular difficulty/multiplayer games.
As for the laser weapons, I completely agree.
By the way, did somone work on the weapon balancing at this time ? I could take a look at it...(As long as I don't have to code that its ok for me).
Yes. I have a 0ufo.pk3 file availible for download and use here (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1710454&group_id=157793&atid=805244). Simply substitute the old one in the base subdirectory of your UFO 2.1.1 folder. Please provide me with feedback regarding the changes, and back up your original 0ufo.pk3 file.
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Yes. I have a 0ufo.pk3 file availible for download and use here (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1710454&group_id=157793&atid=805244). Simply substitute the old one in the base subdirectory of your UFO 2.1.1 folder. Please provide me with feedback regarding the changes, and back up your original 0ufo.pk3 file.
A bit of feedback:
1. Flamethrower seems overpowered. It (almost?) never misses, deals fantastic damage (there is not much resistance vs fire) and costs a mere 8 TU for candlelight. I would suggest upping the TU cost for it`s fire modes. I mean, how can you use a flamethrower with the same speed as assault rifle? Both cost 8 TU for 1st fire mode and 12 for inferno/3-round burst, while FT is much more damaging. It`s range is short, yes, but at those 8 squares it still has 100% to hit, while weapons such as shotgun or SMG are barely effective at such a distance already. I have no problem with FT frying everything in 1 blaze of inferno, but the soldier wielding it shouldn`t be able to escape afterwards so easily. What about making it 12/18 or 12/20 for appropiate fire mods?
2. You upped plasma blaster ammo to 50, yet it`s magazines are smaller (1x1) than those of a rifle. A bit inconsisitent. I admit, that aliens are kicking my butt with this weapon (that damn blast radius offsets poor accuracy ;) )... would be nice if it had at least one weakness. Like small range, low ammo or whatever.
Overall a whole system would benefit tremendously if we could implement a weight as a factor. Heavy heavy weapons would lose some of it`s appeal if they started to seriously weigh you down.
And thanks for your work, btw :)
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1. Flamethrower seems overpowered. It (almost?) never misses, deals fantastic damage (there is not much resistance vs fire) and costs a mere 8 TU for candlelight. I would suggest upping the TU cost for it`s fire modes. I mean, how can you use a flamethrower with the same speed as assault rifle? Both cost 8 TU for 1st fire mode and 12 for inferno/3-round burst, while FT is much more damaging. It`s range is short, yes, but at those 8 squares it still has 100% to hit, while weapons such as shotgun or SMG are barely effective at such a distance already. I have no problem with FT frying everything in 1 blaze of inferno, but the soldier wielding it shouldn`t be able to escape afterwards so easily. What about making it 12/18 or 12/20 for appropiate fire mods?
The problem with increasing its TU cost is the fact that the soldier needs to close distance prior to utilizing the thrower. While it is true that it typically equates to instant death (I should hope so), you would do well to keep in mind that there are many weapons which are compartively lethal at far longer ranges. Closing distance also means that your thrower equipped soldier is that much less likely to have the TUs necessary to escape retribution. Because this is true, the risk demanded of such close proximity should be reciprocated with the reward of high lethality. I definitely will note this however, and see if it correlates with any other feedback (that aside the shotgun has been strongly empowered in this patch, you should try it).
2. You upped plasma blaster ammo to 50, yet it`s magazines are smaller (1x1) than those of a rifle. A bit inconsisitent. I admit, that aliens are kicking my butt with this weapon (that damn blast radius offsets poor accuracy )... would be nice if it had at least one weakness. Like small range, low ammo or whatever.
I'm merely following the UFOpedia design suggestions. The Plasma Blaster is meant as a powerful, long range suppressive fire weapon. This inconsistancy may be explained by the fact that the magazine is an ultradense battery as opposed to a chamber filled with physical ammunition. That said, the weakness of the plasma blaster is inherant in its poor accuracy, and high TU cost of operation. While the splash damage of the ball firemode projectiles does offset the former weakness somewhat, you will lose a long range firefight with high accuracy weapons such as the laser family (which has been signifigantly buffed in this modification) nearly all of the time. Also, with more advanced armours, the splash damage is almost negligible; only direct hits will do any appreciable harm.
Weight will eventually be implimented. This is meant as another of the Plasma Blaster's weaknesses (and one of the Flamethrower's as well).
Lastly I would like to thank you for the contribution of the feedback. The more of it I receive, the sooner and better I can review and retool the weapon balance. Keep it coming! :)
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No problem :)
Regarding flamethrower, you are probably right from the gameplay perspective. It just seemed to me not "realistic" (but hey, it is s-f afterall!), that it`s so fast and good in hit&run tactics (I dropped SMG and shotgun in favor of FT). I guess introduction of weight may rectify this problem without altering TU costs.
As for plasma blaster, I encountered it very early in the game, so not surprisingly it gave me hard times against the aliens. But that`s not that bad to feel like fighting in WW I trench warfare once in a while ;)
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With regards to the laser weapons, the pistol is pointless except as a suicide weapon. The laser rifle would make a fantastic sniper weapon and the heavy would be ideally suited to an air to air weapon or as a short range heavy weapon. The heavies range is to long, if it requires someone with great strength to wield it, I doubt they would be able to hold it for very long.
I think the lasers have great potential, yet they are out gunned, due to the the aliens better weapons. No sooner have you researched lasers and beginning production and they have moved from plasma to particle.
I think the alien weapons should be based on a human success ratio. If you are getting good kills with the laser, they bring out heavy plasma. You research plasma and get your own back. Also it could depend upon your armour stats.
Basically I think your always out gunned and out armoured.
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With regards to the laser weapons, the pistol is pointless except as a suicide weapon. The laser rifle would make a fantastic sniper weapon and the heavy would be ideally suited to an air to air weapon or as a short range heavy weapon. The heavies range is to long, if it requires someone with great strength to wield it, I doubt they would be able to hold it for very long.
I think the lasers have great potential, yet they are out gunned, due to the the aliens better weapons. No sooner have you researched lasers and beginning production and they have moved from plasma to particle.
<Clipped>
Basically I think your always out gunned and out armoured.
Having played the original UFO games, I agree with the last statement. A big part of the game, and its challenge, was in coping with the fact that the aliens almost always had you outgunned.
But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. From the alien's point of view, humans are a primitive people with only primitive technology, and as such make for easy prey. That would be why they chose to invade Earth in the first place.
That puts the Earth, and the player, in the position of trying to defend the planet against their superior technology. This is true right up until the end-game, when we finally achieve tech parity with the aliens.
In the case of the laser weapons, this is certainly a case of mismatched firepower. That was true in the original game too. The pistol was fast, but did little more that let the aliens know where you were. The rifle was little better. The only way I found to use the rifle effectively, was by positioning laser snipers to catch an alien in a crossfire. One rifle was nearly useless, but two or three working together could bring down most aliens quickly.
That means its all about the tactics you use, not the firepower, most of the time. The aliens rarely bothered with tactics. (The game couldnt support good AI at the time anyway.) But then why should they? From their point of view, we are little better than cavemen, so they should be able to beat us without bothering much with tactics.
Still, the lasers were never more than a temporary weapon, used until plasma weapons were gotten into service. A bridge if you will, between useless bullet-spitters and weapons with real power.
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agreed but would be a shame to end with a set of laser weaponry that no one will develop / use because its is less cost effective and power effective in any way that primitive powder based guns.
It would be also good to avoid what has been introduced for example in UFO ET where there is a lot of weapons technology technology, but from a generation to the another only power increases thus obseleting completely each previous weapon set. Would be good to have a particularity for each weapons technology, for example laser would be caracterized by precision and small TU requirements, plasma by power, starting weapons by versatility, etc...I guess this is what is currently achieved.
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agreed but would be a shame to end with a set of laser weaponry that no one will develop / use because its is less cost effective and power effective in any way that primitive powder based guns.
I did do this: http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=1725.0 (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=1725.0) a while back. Dunno if it's going to get implemented or not.
But test it out, if you don't like the current lasers.
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The thing is that armor is probably going to be implemented soon. Once that happens, I intend to completely rework all the weapon values from scratch.
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I love the design and the concept but not the weapon stats.
On difficult settings I managed to develop laser rifles with clips
Making clip-fed laser already make them pretty useless. Laser in the original X-COM were useful because they were pretty quick to research and produce, and did not ammunition to be produced. What's wrong with clip-less lasers?
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The fact that they're not consistant with Winter's expectations of realism ostensibly.
In any case I'd have to agree that laser weapons as is are largely useless. Great sniping, long/extreme range weapons, but there are far too few maps where this advantage can truly shine. At every other distance they just get outslugged due to their TU/damage inefficiency. The accuracy doesn't even begin to make up for it.
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That's true. At short ranges, pretty much anything will hit most of the time, so accuracy stops being an issue then. All you really need is high damage, preferrably with as low a TU cost as possible (it's a bit too easy to just talk about Damage/Tu cost, as armour also comes into it).
I don't expect this to change anytime soon. What we need is maps that encourage people to use long-rage weaponry. As it is, close-range and indirect fire weapons have much more use.
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There's a point I agree with - I personally would be happier to see some maps that are not in populated areas but out in the wilderness. Many such places exist on Earth; does every mission site have to be in a place where there are civilians and man-made structures?
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I have ideas for a desert tileset that would be just such an environment. But I'm kind of hoping we get support for patches (of the map editing variety), because I think I could make nice sand dunes with them.
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The fact that they're not consistant with Winter's expectations of realism ostensibly.
Realism in a game about fighting UFO aliens with lasers in 20XX?
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Yes.
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Yes.
OK. Realistic = like the real thing.
Here are the real things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_weapon#Military
Not very exciting, unless your handheld lasers are only blinding enemies too ;) I don't think there are any clips at all.
Also realism: there no alien invaders and no-one knows how 20XX will look like.
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Nevertheless.
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How about "fun factor"?
Unless you are really keen to perfectly simulate non-existing weapons you just completely imagined.
In X-FORCE lasers have limited number of shots per mission, but are recharged automatically after. Another reason to keep a sidearm weapon!
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Of course, I agree that the game should be as fun as possible. And if it is necessary to sacrifice some realism to accomplish this, I will do so. However, this is almost never necessary. We can have both.
I don't believe making the laser clipless will really improve the game, and so I will not do this for the official scripts. If you don't like it, that's unfortunate. But you can change this for yourself, as long as you don't want to play multiplayer. You can edit the laser weapon script file (/base/weapons_laser.ufo) and change all the fire modes to use 0 ammo per shot. The laser will still use a clip, but it will never run out.
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I always saw laser weapons as a simple (to both reseach and produce) substitute for plasma weapons unless plasmas are captured in reasonable numbers and then researched. It was clipless not by accident!
By making a clip-fed laser, it's no longer worth it anymore. Research clip for every weapon? I can research much better plasma instead (and never come back)! Painstingly remember to produce clips for every single mission? I can (and often must) produce other things instead (like plasma clips, if needed)!
Laser = worthless gimmick now (even more since it's appearantly inferior even to firearms). But OK, your game.
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Also< I noticed you seem to make laser weapons a sniper weapons. How about Heavy Laser being a long-range single shot weapon, and Laser Rifle being a general-purpose rifle?
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I've spoken with BTAxis about the laser weaponry over IRC. We've come to the seeming consensus that the laser pistol and rifle will become much faster firing, increasing their damage/TU (raw efficiency) ratio, in addition to the latter's clip size. The heavy laser in the meanwhile may utilize the sniper skill, and is likely to be made more damaging. These cumulative changes should have the effect of making the laser series viable.
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As for the aliens' weapons' superiority, I think they should indeed be superior, in some cases, even in every respect. The aliens' technology should considerably outstrip human tech; weapons balance is a contradiction in terms with the premise of the game being what it is. The player should have to resort to superior tactics, discipline, fire-arc control and layout in order to overcome superior technology in the aliens, and game skill-level selection can compensate for those learning the game. I know that most, if not all, players of this game already engage in such tactics, but I'd like to emphasize that it's the difficult odds of the story that make it such a compelling one.
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I share Aiki-Knight's point of view. I'd prefer the alien technology keeping superior vs. the human tech.
Furher:
For me, all laser-weapons but the heavy laser are balanced. For the heavy laser I would suggest more ammo (for example 9 shots like the grenade launcher).
And of course, I'd like a ultra-heavy laser-cannon for the interceptors (other thread?).
cu
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We have to remember this post was started before the laser weapons were rebalanced. It seems that lasers are currently the most accurate weapons in the game. The laser rifle, with it's assault skill, is more accurate than the sniper rifle with it's sniper skill.
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Yeah, laser weapons are pretty effective now. Personally I find some tweaks are still in order though. Accuracy for the series should be proportional to weapon power, rather than inverse (last I checked in 2.2 this was the case). This makes sense both in terms of realism and gameplay. As it stands, it's absurd that the laser pistol, the weapon with the shortest range, is the most accurate.
Further laser weapons at present seem to stray from the low damage design initially intended for them; currently their damage output per shot is very competitive. I recommend reducing damage and firemode TU costs alike to address this inconsistancy. Of course, this makes them less desirable in their role as extreme range sniper weapons, and exasperates the existing issue of a small ammo capacity, so in order to compensate, I suggest both increasing clip sizes across the board (especially in the case of the laser rifle which is also meant to be an assault weapon), and implimenting some sort of secondary 'overcharge' fire mode. In exchange for additional ammo and TU usage, the laser weapons could deliver powerful, accurate single shots proportional to the excess ammo expended.
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Some tweaking by myself:
// =======================
// LASER PISTOL
// =======================
item laserpistol
{
name "_Laser Pistol"
model weapons/laserpistol/laserpistol
weapon true
type pistol
animationindex 2
holdtwohanded false
firetwohanded false
shape "0 0 3 2"
center "2.5 0 1.2"
scale 1.7
ammo 26
reload 10
price 5400
size 10
buytype weap_sec
}
// =======================
// LASER RIFLE
// =======================
item laserrifle
{
name "_Laser Rifle"
model weapons/laserrifle/laserrifle
weapon true
type rifle
animationindex 1
holdtwohanded false
firetwohanded true
shape "0 0 5 2"
center "4.5 0 1.5"
scale 1.26
ammo 18
reload 14
price 9570
size 35
buytype weap_pri
}
// =======================
// HEAVY LASER
// =======================
item heavylaser
{
name "_Heavy Laser"
model weapons/laserheavy/laserheavy
weapon true
type biggun
animationindex 1
holdtwohanded false
firetwohanded true
shape "0 0 5 2"
center "8.5 0 1.5"
scale 1.15
ammo 10
reload 18
price 22540
size 50
buytype weap_pri
}
item laserrifle_ammo
{
name "_D-F Cartridge"
model weapons/laserrifle/laserrifle_clip
type ammo
animationindex 0
shape "0 0 1 2"
center "0 0 0"
scale 1.8
price 210
size 7
buytype multi_ammo
// buytype weap_pri
dmgtype laser
weapon_mod laserpistol // weap_fds_idx=0
{
firedef
{
name "_Wave Fire"
skill close
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
speed 0
spread "0.7 0.7"
crouch 0.9
range 60
shots 1
ammo 2
time 6
damage "40 10"
dmgweight laser_medium
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Pulsed Fire"
skill close
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
delaybetweenshots 8
speed 0
spread "0.7 0.7"
crouch 0.9
range 60
shots 3
ammo 3
time 6
damage "20 5"
dmgweight laser_light
reaction true
}
}
weapon_mod laserrifle // weap_fds_idx=1
{
firedef
{
name "_Wave Fire"
skill assault
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
speed 0
spread "0.5 0.5"
crouch 0.7
range 90
shots 1
ammo 2
time 9
damage "60 15"
dmgweight laser_medium
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Pulsed Fire"
skill assault
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
delaybetweenshots 8
speed 0
spread "0.5 0.5"
crouch 0.7
range 90
shots 3
ammo 3
time 9
damage "30 10"
dmgweight laser_light
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Aimed Wave Fire"
skill sniper
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
speed 0
spread "0.3 0.3"
crouch 0.5
range 90
shots 1
ammo 2
time 16
damage "60 15"
dmgweight laser_medium
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Aimed Pulsed Fire"
skill assault
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
delaybetweenshots 8
speed 0
spread "0.3 0.3"
crouch 0.5
range 90
shots 3
ammo 3
time 16
damage "30 10"
dmgweight laser_light
reaction true
}
}
weapon_mod heavylaser // weap_fds_idx=2
{
firedef
{
name "_Wave Fire"
skill heavy
projtl laserOverload
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/heavy_laser
speed 0
spread "1 1"
crouch 2.0
range 120
shots 1
ammo 2
time 15
damage "100 25"
dmgweight laser_heavy
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Long Wave"
skill heavy
projtl laserOverload
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/heavy_laser
speed 0
spread "1 1"
crouch 2.0
range 120
shots 1
ammo 3
time 25
damage "166 40"
dmgweight laser_heavy
reaction true
}
firedef
{
name "_Pulsed Fire"
skill heavy
projtl laserPulse
impact laserImpact
hitbody laserImpact
firesnd weapons/laser
delaybetweenshots 8
speed 0
spread "1 1"
crouch 2.0
range 120
shots 3
ammo 3
time 15
damage "50 15"
dmgweight laser_medium
reaction true
}
}
}
In general, all laser weapons are fast, accurate but they don`t offer very much damage/TU. Take note, that I also altered armour, so that lasers, especially heavy, remain effective vs all armour types, while firearms and plasma weapons do not.
All laser weapons can be fired in a single wave or 3 short pulses. However, unlike firearms, both firemodes take the same (low) amount of TU`s, since there is no recoil. Pulsed fire is more effective damage wise, but will have trouble penetrating armour, as each beam is only half-strenght. Laser Rifle has addtionally aimed firemods, which make it more accurate than the sniper, while heavy laser has "long wave" - type of overcharged mode, you were asking for - ideal against heavy armoured targets, should kill any alien regardless of armour on standart difficulty.
Comments are welcome :)
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Lasers appeal to my style of play which usually (when not doing Wachau map) consists of long range attacks. I laughed my arse off when I saw the stats on plasma pistols and rifles. For me the high damage is simply not worth the short range these weapons have. I have only encountered three aliens so far, the taman, ortnok and (i forget) i think the shevan (some sorta lizard guy, they are brown) and my weapons, even the smgs are still effective. Another thing I noticed is that alien armor provides more protection against plasma than lasers? Makes sense.
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they sure are fine now, good job on the rebalancing. ;D
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I tended to use the laser weapons quite a bit, even at the end, although I wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do.
About halfway through the game (on Normal difficulty) I stopped using the Sniper rifle, so the laser rifle and heavy lasers were useful for long-range firefights, (which is how most of my missions start).
I think the big-chunky alien is resistant to lasers so they tended to take more hits before going down , but lasers did the job eventually.
Anything to keep me out of the most effective range of the aliens guns !!!
Balance seems OK to me, although having the aliens weapons operate at short range doesn't seem very over-aweing tech-wise.
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On Very Hard, and sometimes even hard... there is no overkill... just proper application of excessive force. :)
LOL
I remember when laser where more powerful, still I wouldn't call them totally useless. They're about the only weapon you can get any kind of ammo for (partial weapons) that do good at longer ranges, where the aliens lack any kind of power to speak of.
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Accuracy for the series should be proportional to weapon power, rather than inverse (last I checked in 2.2 this was the case). This makes sense both in terms of realism and gameplay. As it stands, it's absurd that the laser pistol, the weapon with the shortest range, is the most accurate.
I agree with your conclusion, but not your starting point. Actually, accuracy is a function of weapon length [or even more in detail, the distance between the rear sight and the end of the barrel/front sight]. A long barreled sniper type will be the best. The assault type weapons should be midway between the sniper and the SMG type. Machine pistol and pistol type will be the worst.
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I agree with your conclusion, but not your starting point. Actually, accuracy is a function of weapon length [or even more in detail, the distance between the rear sight and the end of the barrel/front sight]. A long barreled sniper type will be the best. The assault type weapons should be midway between the sniper and the SMG type. Machine pistol and pistol type will be the worst.
That only takes into account the sights' accuracy, in which case many telescopic sights are the most accurate (if adjusted properly), but not very long front to back. A longer barrel is more accurate in practice because it allows for more tolerance in sighting: if the front sight is adjusted a millimeter too much to the left, it's a bigger angular difference with a short barrel than a long one. A longer barrel also allows for more support to be applied, e.g. a two-handed grip. Also in play are dimensional and positional tolerances of parts. A sniper rifle (these days) is machined to much tighter tolerances because it must be accurate. SMG, not so much, so they allow a little more slop, which makes it much cheaper to produce, incidentally.
More power leading to better accuracy is only accurate with ballistic rounds. More power means higher speed, which means less drop at a given distance due to gravity (can be compensated for). More power is usually accompanied by greater projectile mass, which helps in the stability of its flight -- wind can't push it around so easily, imperfections in the bullet (uneven weight distribution) don't count as much. Since laser beams are massless the point is moot in both cases.
In the end laser (and other beam-type) weaponry is inherently more accurate than kinetic weaponry just because it is easier to manipulate light on a precise and consistent basis than matter. A rifle clamped to a very heavy base (to make recoil a non-issue) and fired four times at a target will show, in most cases, four different impact points. There's a lot of random stuff that can happen in the shell casing, propellant, slug, barrel, path to target that change the course. A laser, you clamp it down, and flash it four times, it'll hit the exact same spot four times.
In other words, laser accuracy is limited to human skill, where it's not necessarily the case with ballistic weapons. That said, human accuracy is generally better with long arms. My proposal is this:
Pistol: middle-of-the-range accuracy, both snap and aimed. Kneeling doesn't help much, since it doesn't stabilize the weapon itself.
Rifle: decent accuracy at snap, a little better than pistol. Aimed, it goes even higher, since here there is actually much room for improvement. Kneeling helps even more.
Heavy laser: It's big and awkward to carry and aim, so lowest accuracy while standing. Probably so unwieldy that a snap shot could go anywhere, but an aimed shot should have some chance of hitting its mark. Crouched, support really helps. Probably has a bipod under the barrel. Final accuracy is better than the pistol. If it's meant to be a support weapon ala M249 SAW (machine gun) final accuracy when crouched should be between pistol and rifle. If it's meant to be a sniper-type weapon as mentioned by Surrealistik (still a support role) then accuracy should definitely be highest, but only when crouched!
I do agree that the laser pistol and rifle are pretty well balanced (except for the accuracy cross), but the heavy laser isn't. Currently I never use it because the damage isn't really that much, TU usage is horrendous, and the magazine is tiny.