I started up a Freedom mode game in 1.9 and have been playing around with the Tower raptors on Akua to test out the small arms changes. Here's my thoughts; The new T2 pistol and T2 laser pistol are both very nice. Their power, audio, and small size on the screen make them quite satisfying to use. Both the SMG and laser SMG, on the other hand, and nearly impossible to control owing to both high recoil and very high fire rate. Most of your shots wind up over enemy heads, no matter how short and controlled your bursts are. These weapons' low damage and small magazine means you spend almost as much time reloading as you do shooting. They are not useful in their present state. The laser carbine is much better. Acceptable damage, controllable, good magazine size, good fire rate. It is a fine supplement to the laser rifle. I expect it will be a favorite for POI raiding. The laser rifle seems largely as good as it was before. My only concern is that it has recoil now. The laser rifle's lack of recoil was a unique feature that made it ideal for zero gravity combat. In a dangerous situation where orientation is already difficult, the recoilless laser rifle wouldn't push you around like other weapons would. It's a small thing, but could have implications for space POI raiding. The rocket launcher is still a rocket launcher. Efficient and effective AOE/anti-materiel weapon. I'm not sure if the new model is supposed to be shoulder-mounted or used like a rifle, but that's a cosmetic concern. I don't recall if the projectile drop was present before, as I mostly used the rocket launch at short and medium ranges against groups and sentry guns. What I do know is that it makes for a fun mortar. Flamethrower looks very good. Simply holding it inspires a very mischievous feeling. Sourcing fuel for it has always been very difficult, though. I expect it will continue to see little use unless this changes. The new basic assault rifle is looking to be a workhorse moving forward. I expect it may replace the pulse rifle in this respect. Its new higher firing rate and audio make it a joy to use. The choice of full auto on the T2 shotgun was an interesting one. I noticed it's also extremely easy to fire as though semiautomatic. It just feels good. I've often though this game could use a regular battle rifle, and the new T1 sniper rifle fills that niche perfectly. Ten fast firing rounds for plinking heads at medium to long range. A fine alternative to the heavier T2. The patch notes posts on Steam seem somewhat incomplete. If there were changes to the other weapons, I didn't notice them. Oh well. Just means we have to try them all, don't it?
I can't say that I am very happy with the revised Shotgun specs. I don't much care for the multi-fire T2 shotgun, but more importantly, it has been nerfed into almost complete uselessness. The damage of the T1 shotgun is 100 as it was before, but the T2 weapon used to be 115 and is now down to 45, less than that of the basic pistol! I haven't tried the Epic Shotgun, but that appears to be anything but Epic. It's danage is down to 55. I can imagine the disappointment if this ever appears in an alien container (eg on the rad r station). It is probably going to be only fit for duming in the factory.
T2 shotty seemed more effective against the groups of smaller raptors than the big ones. Upping the damage a little would help, but I think bigger magazine would be more important if the intention is to make an lighter automatic or semiautomatic shotgun in contrast to the T1's heavy pump action feel. Then you can just have the epic version be the best of both worlds.
It could be part of my standard playstile, but I generally used the shotgun in relatively close confinement situations against spiders and scorpions. In a run through the abandoned Drone base on Masperon, I found myself in considerable difficulties using the T2 shotgun, since the usual single shot has virtually no stopping power. When faced with three or four scorpions darting around you, something a lot better is needed. The rapid fire mode is useless unless it has a much bigger magazine. Again, don't forget, that up till now finding a T2 shotgun was a prize worth having so that you could get rid of the limited T1 device. I have now acquired the Epic Shotgun and its slower rate of fire is somehow an advantage, but its poor stoping power is still marked. I don't really want to carry around 1000 shotgun shells so that I can waste them on rapid fire. It would appear that for the early stages, by far the best weapon now is the T2 Pulse rifle. This of course does not have the spread of a shotgun. I suppose as an experienced player I have never confused or puzzled by the T1/T2 distinction. T1 was the base weapon, T2 was unlocked later and always a superior verion of the T2 weapon and the Epic version was better than the T2, hence only ever found in Loot boxes and never available for trading. We now have a situation where the T2 and Epic Shotguns are retrograde weapons. and the >Epic shotgun is probably destined for the factoy. I haven't met one yet, but have the Zirax Shotgun troops also been similarly nerfed, making them virtually sitting targets? We really need a good close range weapon.
I think we should expect the news SMGs to pick up some of the slack. The laser carbine certainly feels like it wants to.
I have tried out the other new weapons at the Abandoned Drone Base and agree with you that the recoil on both smgs makes them completely uncontrollable. The Laser Carbine is better but it still doesn't seem to have the stopping power of the old T2 shotgun, at least not as far as Scorpions and Abominations are concerned. Besides which, Shotgun cartridges are cheap and use readily available materials. Laser cartridges are not cheap and require Pentaxid which, early game is in very short supply. What is needed is a close range weapon with a good spread, which can take down creatures in one or two shots. We already have a variety of weapons with high rates of fire which, irrespective of their projectile types, need fequent re-loading. A really good single shot weapon which has stopping power and is suitable for use at close range is very much needed.
Well, the best close range weapons with a good spread and stopping power that can take down creature in one or two hits would be melee weapons. Until someone hands us some power swords, running and gunning back through cleared rooms is going to continue to be the only feasible defense against overwhelming opponents.
So, I've been having a look at the new weapons layout, and my head hurts slightly from looking at all the stats. I find myself confused, I understand the aim is to give the weapons a niche but I struggled to work out what that would be, especially looking at the midish level 10 section where you get a lot of competition. So, am I write in thinking that broadly the weapons are supposed to be: 'Melee'/ultra close: Shotgun Short: SMG range Medium: Rifles Long: Snipers But then I was left with questions! Why would I choose the pulse rifle when the assault rifle T2 just seems better. Why would I choose a carbine over a laser SMG? Is it meant to be slightly longer range, and a bit more accurate - but then that puts it into competition with the AR T2 which again seems better than all of those. The range in atmo doesn't really offer much. And I don't understand what role the pistols are supposed to play, as they seem like a poor man's sniper (why not just use a sniper?) I also felt confused by the progression, which didn't always seem to offer an improvement, or an obvious one to me. The laser rifle looked around the same as the Pulse T2 overall, if not a little worse (though I may be underestimating the benefits of less spread). But it's not clearly better to my casual look. Thought the same about the pistols - wasn't sure what the laser pistol was supposed to do when it looked only slightly better than the pistol (assuming 0 spread and slightly higher head push it better overall). Don't get me wrong, I like the look and the idea of the weapons, just not sure what role / use some of them have compared to their peers. I am confused!
Makes sense from a purely FPS perspective. However, this is also a survival-crafting game. You have to provide your own weapons, armor, ammo, and supplies. Pistols are light weight and their ammo is cheap. Pulse rifles can be made entirely with mined resource, but are still quite versatile. Higher end stuff tends to wear out quickly. Once the changes to weapons' performance are settled, material costs will provide the context needed to determine real their practical value.
Went at it again. This time, it was raptors and Legacy monsters on Masperon and the drone base on Omicron. Some refined thoughts; The assault rifle is very well situated. The pulse rifle, however, is a worse and more expensive weapon. The minigun actually feels like it has a niche now, having performed comparatively well against lvl5 Zirax. The SMG and laser SMG are better now. Still a little wild, but effective with some trigger discipline against small, low level targets at short range. The hand cannon is a winner. Reasonably effective, light weight, reasonable cost, rewards careful marksmanship. Gonna be a mainstay short and medium range weapon going forward. This is good, because the assault shotgun is, as noted, nerfed. Low damage, low range, low accuracy, high recoil, high rate of fire, long reload time. It is not effective against anything. A survival tool is a better weapon. Regarding the merchants on and above Omicron, I noticed the InterWeap vendor still sells the T2 pulse rifle, but not the SMG, laser SMG, or laser carbine. Might also make sense for Bertram's at the Sanctuary to sell SMGs, since they're roughly at the same tech and material level as the weapon this merchant already sells.
The T2 Shotgun wasn't "nerfed", it was changed to function differently. What it doesn't say on the tooltips is that shotguns fire multiple pellets per shot. Typically it's 8 pellets, so a T2 shotgun firing 8 pellets at 40 damage does 320 damage with all pellets connecting (Additional 2.5x damage with a headshot). You're also looking at a significant rate of fire increase from 0.85 (70.5 RPM) to 0.15 (400RPM). That's 5.666x faster than the T2 shotgun in 1.8. Factoring reload times, a 1.9 T2 shotgun outputs 35,520 damage per minute (which is higher than any other Epic weapon). It's not a one-shot kill weapon like it was in 1.8 (115 per pellet, 8 pellets for 920 damage per shot) where it was and still is obscenely overpowered (Most enemies don't have more than 600 hp). Now, you need to unload multiple rounds but have more than enough speed to do so. Numbers-wise, i'd say it's too fast for too little damage per shot. It has a comparatively small magazine, but with such high RoF you're likely to put 4 rounds into one enemy when 2 is enough. It's too easy to accidentally empty the entire magazine in 1.2 seconds. Suggestion: Reduce RoF from 0.15 to 0.333 and increase damage from 40 to 70. It's still 3 rounds per second, but more controllable so you're less likely to overload the rounds and it should take care of the recoil by having the rounds spaced further apart. The higher base damage (560 total) will be enough to put down most weaker targets, with the RoF to deal with higher level/chunkier enemies.
All I can say is that I shoved it down the throat of one of those parasite-injecting legacy mutants on Masperon and emptied the magazine, and the mutant thought that was very funny. This happened both on a mag dump and tapped shots. Whatever math the assault shotgun is running on, none of it seems to be reaching enemy brain buckets in sufficient strength to put them down in an acceptable time frame.
Testing in version 3 confirms that the new Tier 15!!! "Assault" shotgun doesn't assault Scorpions point blank even after unloading the whole magazine into them. If this weapon really has 35520 hit points per minute and a scorpion has an HP of 6oo, why isn't the scorpion evaporated? I cannot understand why this weapon is at Tier 15. It is reasonable to expect that a higher tier weapon should always be better a lower tier similar device. At the moment I cannot think of any reason for wanting to deploy a weapon that doesn't function. On the other hand the other weapon I tried this time round, the hand cannon is definitely worth having and although not quite as good, is a better replacement for the old T2 Shotgun. All the above tests were carried out in the Abandoned Drone Base on Masperon as before. I haven't yet got round to trying any of the other weapons again.
Further testing at the Abandoned Drone Base. The smg now appears to be much better controlled, but is still not really an impressive weapon. The Pulse rifle is better than the Assault rifle ,but again is not as good as it should be. It is about the only weapon that can plausibly be used to take out a sentry gun, but even then you will probably end up taking a lot of damage before taking it out. I have no idea how the calculations are made regarding what weapon inflicts how much damage on any specific target, but it does not appear to work well when the danage of the individual projectile is as low as 40 - 45, irrespective of the rate of fire. It really shouldn#t be necessary to carry thousands of rounds of shotgun and projectile bullets/shells every time you enter a POI. I haven't checked any of the laser weapons on the grounds that these are not really feasible early game weapons and the Drone Base on Masperon is only going to be tackled early game. The laser ammunition is unlikely to be available at this point. I have also not tried out the sniper rifles as these are not suitable for use in confined areas. (The tier 2 Sniper Rifle has a recoil of 5???) Overall, I feel that although there are a number of new weapons, all of the mid-range capable weapons have been removed and one can only hope to pick up a few Epic weapons from the POIs. Although it is not clear what Epic weapons will be available in the future.
Sniper rifle has always been the bottom rung heavy weapon for taking out tough targets like drones, golems, and sentry guns. It's more of marksman rifle now, but it can fulfill that previous role just as well. Rocket launchers will probably continue to be the standard, though. It's a good sign to have disagreement over whether the assault or pulse rifle is better. Means there's room for personal taste.
Call of Cthulhu deals with a shotgun, a unique weapon as the "projectile" is a cluster of relatively low mass pellets, using range modifiers- the damage is normally 2D6 but at close range it's 4D6 that to reflect inertia and the effective tight choke. In a video game this would encourage the player to hold until the target was almost on you before pulling the trigger. Based on the data in ItemsConfig.ecf it doesn't look like that sort of range multipliers is in play (spread=0, bullets=8, no ref to DamageMultiplierConfig.ecf) but exaggerating those settings on all shot guns would make them more like the "room broom" their nickname implies.
Okay, thought I would have a look at the changes with exp 3 - I think pretty much all my concerns were answered with the tech tree - there seemed to be understandable progression and a much clearer sense of roles (though I haven't tested in a POI, I gather shotgun seems not to work as intended). My only thoughts were I would give a little buff to the pulse rifle and carbine - though they are slightly better overall in terms of damage compared to their predecessor on the tech tree, they both also had some negatives compared to that (less head damage etc). Doesn't have to be much, but perhaps worth boosting their damage a few points to more clearly improve. Other than that, looks really good!
One small point I have noticed while going through my favourite POI. In addition to checking the performance of the weapons, I also checked the contents of the loot containers. One of these had a T2 Assault Rifle. These have never been tradable at Trade stations, but it was always possible to either put them into the Factory, or Deconstruct them. Now you can't do either. You can only use them (with a truly awful recoil) or trash them as otherwise they would be dead weight. Is this intended?
Apparently the InterWeap trader still has his secret secondary stash of T2 pulse rifles. I still need to try the SMG changes, but the assault shotgun has its mojo back and is ready for prime time now.
