Ranged Weapon Balance

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

One of the biggest request on the last two balance topics (and something most people seem to agree on) is the need to balance ranged weapons.

There’s a few ways to do it, and it probably needs to be a mix of all three:

[ol][li]Make ammo and firearms much rarer[/li]
[li]Make crafted firearms weaker[/li]
[li]balance all ranged weapons by stats[/li][/ol]

  1. This is quite easy to do, and mainly just means taking them out of a few drops and lowering the weapon types that are dropped. This makes sense from a coherence perspective as firearms are pretty much what people would bring with them when they were trying to evacuate. Additionally, this means getting rid of/making MUCH rarer the soldier/gang corpses that are lying everywhere. It’s completely free loot, and the most powerful that there is in the game - it’s completely OP.

  2. I know there’s a lot of backlash against making crafted stuff weaker, but I think it makes sense to have crafted firearms/ammo weaker. It drive exploration and makes the player conserve ammo/firearms. They become something to search after (like the old days of catadda) and something to feel achievement in getting.

  3. As it says, balance the stats better. This would just be a general nerf across the board as ranged weapons are currently way too powerful.

Any further suggestions/more direct examples?

Let me cut in before the usual barrage of ‘you don’t want us to have fun’ comes along: this is what I FEEL WILL MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN. I currently think ranged is ridiculously OP, so that’s why I’ve suggested it.

2

also reduce criticals and headshots, and nerf their damage. Because otherwise all this health buffs zed received are irrelevant.

http://[URL=http://s1050.photobucket.com/user/Ferodaktyl/media/cdda/crits.png.html][/URL]

as you can see, my handguns skill is at almost 4. And i can one-shot-kill almost everything.

3

Wow, yeah that definitely needs to happen. Especially considering how low your skills were. Maybe half the chance it is now?

4

consider that EVERY shot was either a crit or a headshot. Every single one. So think about reducing them maybe until at skill level 10 and above someone can headshot/crit maybe 3 times in ten, or something like that.

5

Take a look at this PR: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5854

It reduces the dmg criticals and headshots deal.

6

Me, I’d like weapons scavenged from dead bodies and such to have a chance of being severely jammed or damaged. Basically in need of minor to major repair.

Also, please redesign survivalist basements. A place with racks upon racks full of stuff is nice and all but they’re too uniform… and perhaps too generous.

7

[quote=“Ferodaktyl, post:4, topic:4938”]consider that EVERY shot was either a crit or a headshot. Every single one. So think about reducing them maybe until at skill level 10 and above someone can headshot/crit maybe 3 times in ten, or something like that.[/quote]+1 to this. My gripes with the way ranged attacks work right now is that it’s too easy to score a crit/headshot even at low skill, making guns a win-all button.

8

I don’t really think crafted weapons should be made weaker. Right now recipes are already harder to acquire, and by the time you have the recipes and raw materials to make ranged weapons on par with scavenged weapons, you’re already a pretty well-established character. With all the new recipes that have been added, the game has been going in a more crafting-based direction, and I don’t think bringing it back to how it was in the old days is the right way to do things. Personally, I like crafted weaponry over scavenged weaponry because no matter how long or how far you search for ranged weaponry, when you find it it’s still based on random chance. Crafted weaponry feels earned.

9

I am FOR reducing the chance for headshots but against nerfing their damage (doesn’t make sense to me).

But from a “scientific” point of view;
Firearms are the weapon of choice for todays soldiers because they are easy to handle, compared to the weaponry used e.g. in the dark ages.

There can’t go anything wrong when standing two tiles (how many metres is a tile again?) away from a slow zombie with a scoped rifle.

And modern ammution is designed to kill!
I think the we have to focus on what we, the commutiny AND the devs want for cata:
sacrifice “sientific”/logical facts/mechanics for better gameplay or vice versa.

On crafted weapons:
I disagree on nerfing damage for the self made rifles/smgs. The main damage comes from the cartrigde anyways - accuracy however is another point. A rifle or handgun crafted in modern factories are way more accurate than some pipes clumsily duct taped together.

10

this is true. The problem consists in the fact that crafted weapons are made redundant by the amount of found weapons. Even when playing with 0.2 loot spawn i still find way too many weapons, esp. on zombie soldiers. Maybe if we limit the types of weapons found on a specific type of zed and/or to specific locations we’d have more incentive to craft the weapons we want.

11

Severely nerfing criticals seems like a good way to go, but I think a blanket (crafted and found) nerf on all ranged weapons would make sense as well, mainly because most enemies (atleast your major ones) are slower than you. This would only be a point or two, but just enough to make ranged a tactical thing, rather than finding the weapon with the biggest clip because each shot kills.

Accuracy for made weapons makes the most sense as well, I feel there should be an incentive to explore and get factory made ones.

When you talk about ‘earning’ the weapon through crafting, I get what you mean, but I feel I’d be just as satisfied if I had actually had to fight to get a good weapon, rather than just stumbling across an immense trove of ammunition, guns and kevlar every few tiles.

12

I think general item spawn is already addressed through the item spawn option. The issue with corpses dropping too many good items and spawning too often should be addressed too, I suppose. I think your mentality is too rooted in the old system as far as crafting goes, though. Right now, crafted weapons are largely gated by books, which are generally found in places as hard to raid as gun stores - libraries, schools and the like. In fact, slightly more, I’d say, because you generally don’t find crafting books off corpses. I think if crafted weapons were nerfed, there’d be no incentive for crafting weapons over scavenging one at all.

I really don’t think you’ll ever get around the central issue that ranged weapons are simply innately superior against largely melee-only enemies by virtue of not having to get into melee range, though. No amount of blunt-hammer nerfs are going to break through that central issue.

13
nerfing their damage (doesn't make sense to me).

Does being 1-shot-killed by a turret from a 20 range - assuming default viewport size, without even knowing that there’s a turret - make sense to you? I don’t think so. That was the major reason for suggesting the dmg nerf.

14

Couple of things:
I am adamantly against reducing ammo/weapon amounts. CDDA is based in the northern USA, we like our guns. I could probably find 300+ handguns & rifles within 15 miles of where I am right now, not to mention 100k+ rounds of ammunition. What I would support is making sure that the weapons found in gunstores and residences are are civilian model weapons (no fully automatic, etc) as well as civilian rounds (none of the penetrating ammo).

As for reducing quality of handmade rounds, I’m against this if it means a blanket, permanent reduction in the quality. There are many people in the US that buy materials in bulk and make their own rounds. These can sometimes be low quality, sure, but usually they’re the same or exceed the cheaper store bought rounds.

15

[quote=“Inadequate, post:12, topic:4938”]I think general item spawn is already addressed through the item spawn option. The issue with corpses dropping too many good items and spawning too often should be addressed too, I suppose. I think your mentality is too rooted in the old system as far as crafting goes, though. Right now, crafted weapons are largely gated by books, which are generally found in places as hard to raid as gun stores - libraries, schools and the like. In fact, slightly more, I’d say, because you generally don’t find crafting books off corpses. I think if crafted weapons were nerfed, there’d be no incentive for crafting weapons over scavenging one at all.

I really don’t think you’ll ever get around the central issue that ranged weapons are simply innately superior against largely melee-only enemies by virtue of not having to get into melee range, though. No amount of blunt-hammer nerfs are going to break through that central issue.[/quote]

Yeah I was mainly thinking of targeting too many good item drops, less about frequency. I can see a battle with it though, as even trying to remove super good Japanese swords from gangsters (which was a bit weird in the first place) got a huge backlash. Regardless, I’ll try to drop the spawn rate of some military drops as well as drastically cutting down on ammo.

Ranged weapons are largely superior (and nothing can stop that really) but I feel that they can be balanced to reflect that they’re a no-brainer to use before something enters melee. Part of this is limiting ammo sufficiently that you actually have to choose when to use it rather than just filling everything with lead the minute you see it, but making sure that you can’t one shot things also is a big part of it. A strong ‘using ranged at melee range’ penalty could be useful for this as well.

I realise we’re talking of north USA, but I think it can be balanced out by people taking their guns on evacuation/expending a lot of rounds fighting back. I think this is a fair assumption, and being set in the future we can argue that a bit of gun reduction might have happened. I know it’s still testing the boundaries of realism, but I think for balance it’s necessary.

Really, balance wise, I think we can either have really (unrealistically) weak ranged weapons, or rare ammo. I’d rather the second.

16

i agree with this. I can always manage the amount of loot from the option menu, so that is not such an issue

maybe i missed that part, but i don’t remember anyone targeting specifically the damage of handcrafted weapon. I would like some overall nerf on damage and crits.

i am thinking along the lines, how much it would take to put someone down with a weapon, if that someone is impervious to pain, has no vital points to be targeted (goo has taken over his body, it is not concentrated specifically somewhere) and all you can do is to deal enough damage overall until the corpse is either pulped or torn apart.

17

another idea poped (or pooped) in my mind : put most weapons found in house basements in safes. That’s how people are supposed to keep them anyway, right?

18

Hmm i like the idea of only being able to craft “dirty” ammo that has a small reduction in damage (20-30%) and an increase in dispersion again something around (20-30%) in comparison to the industrially made counterparts, (i think rivtech ammo already works like this), and could be justified by saying that the survivor stretches the amount of powder in order to have more bullets, as an example, the powder obtained by disassembling 50 9mm rounds would be then used to craft 75 dirty 9mm rounds

19

I don’t think ‘dirty’ ammo should be the only option, but it would be interesting to have it as an additional option. It doesn’t make sense from a realism perspective, and I think crafting vs scavenging is fairly balanced, ammo-wise.

20

One of the things that needs to be adjusted is the formula for getting a hit with a ranged weapon. It is currently too easy to get a hit.

I’m also against any kind of penalty for shooting at close range, with certain weapons anyway. No one should miss a target standing 5-15 feet from them with a pistol or shotgun, you don’t even really have to aim that much. Pistols do lose effectiveness quickly beyond that range for unskilled shooters though. But with a shotgun, you can just load a slug or something similar to keep effective at longer ranges. SMGs and to a lesser extent, rifles, are also supposed to be effective at shorter ranges.

If you feel ranged is too overpowered, stop using it. No one is forcing you to use ranged weapons, no matter how easy or convenient they are to use. I’ve only played 2-3 characters (out of scores) as ranged w/guns. Most of the time I either do martial arts, melee or archery.

A better suggestion might be to rework the extra mag stuff so that all ranged weapons (that are magazine fed) require a magazine of ammunition to reload. This would allow us to increase the time required to reload a (magazine) weapon. Weapon that don’t require a magazine like revolvers or bolt actions shouldn’t require more time. Revolvers of course could use a speed loader or two.