Combat System/Weapon tweaks ideas thread Thread - 3089

EDIT: And I posted it on the wrong board, damnit.

So, I'm getting worried that I'm making too many threads, but here are my ideas on combat balance and tweaking to make it more interesting and more fun. YetiChow mentioned some exotic weapon ideas but I never read the thread so sorry if some of this has been said before. Apologies as well for the horrendous formatting/possible spelling errors, but this was drafted in notepad.

Without further ado, here's a list thing. Feel free to add to it if you've got other ideas.

-cloak tolerances/destabilization
--When cloaked, you have a bar that indicates how much stress your cloaking system is under. This bar decreases gradually over time, and fills whenever you move or fire. If you move too far too fast (sprinting no longer causes instant decloak, but rather just causes a LOT of destabilization) at a low cloak level, you'll short it out. Firing weapons is also no longer an instant decloak, but rather causes a large amount of cloak destabilization. Silencing a weapon or using a melee weapon reduces how much destabilization attacking causes. By levelling up cloak it is possible to perform many more actions while invisible than normally possible.

-weapon stat position changes
--Weapon stats should be layed out more like this. The main body determines the weapon's fire rate (and appropriate buffs/debuffs), ammo/energy use, accuracy reduction on shot (recoil, new stat that I would highly suggest adding), charge rate (if energy weapon) and holds the most bonus stats. The magazine contains any special shot properties (multishot, explosive, etc), base bullet damage and determines the burst stat (which I will address later). The barrel of the weapon determines shot range, speed and accuracy. This is more sensible than the current system and would make more more versatile weapon combinations.
--There needs to be a "burst meter"
--Weapons need "recoil", so their accuracy doesn't need to fully reset after every shot (exceptions being charged shots or sniper weapons)
--Burst should be reworked into 2 different stats for energy and non-energy weapons. For energy weapons, it should be the "capacitor", which empties as you fire and recharges over time. You can also press a "reload" button to disable your weapon temporarily to recharge the capacitor at 3x the normal rate. For ammo weapons, burst should be "magazine size". Unlike Energy weapons, the magazine does not reload over time, but instead must be reloaded manually or when it is empty. Presumably on average you should get more shots out over time with a LV1 ammo weapon than an energy weapon.

-Weapon special stat changes
--Weapons can have ONE special stat by default, launchers can have 2. No more explosive homing shotguns.

-All special effects use more ammo/energy

-energy weapons have acid, ice, electric effects
--acid effect reduces a weapon's damage by 50%, but does 50+(stat)% of the weapon's base damage (before the 50% reduction) over the next (magazine level*2)/(stat) seconds.
--Ice reduces a weapon's damage by 40%, but causes a slow effect on normal shots and a full freeze effect on charge shot (Just like the ice beam in Gentrieve 2). Time is based on stat level.
--electric reduces damage by 30% and is similar to explosive, but only procs on hit. On hit it delivers (damage after the 30% reduction) - (10 * (number of chains))/stat)% damage for a maximum of the stat's level in possible chains, rounded down. (i.e. A level 3.208 lightning stat could chain 3 times).

-energy weapons are semi-auto only, charge shot on left click
--Right click is reserved for scopes, which should be on energy weapons

-energy weapons can also have beam shots, which reduce damage and range but add instant hit
--The logic behind this is they'd make good weapons for mid-range combat, but they'd be weaker and have less range than a standard weapon

-energy weapons can mount scopes
--Required to keep them on par with other weapons

-ammo weapons have explosive, multishot, homing
--All of those work as they do now, but multishot should have higher values on average (I'd say level 1 multihot should shoot 3-5 projectiles that do 33% to 20% damage respectively. Higher levels approach a max of 10 projectiles then start reducing the damage debuff)

-ammo weapons can be bolt-action, semi auto, full auto
--Bolt action weapons do the highest damage, but have the highest recoil and ammo use.
--Semi auto is similar to as they are now, one click per shot, middle of the road.
--full auto does the least damage per shot (negative damage modifier) but uses the lest ammo per shot and has the lowest recoil.

-ammo weapons can mount scopes and be silenced (like they can now)
--Silencers reduce cloak destabilization, which makes ammo weapons more useful for stealth characters.

-Launchers always have explosive (unless they are single bullet shot)
--This explosion does spread energy weapon effects, but its damage debuff stacks with the damage debuffs of the energy weapon effects, drastically reducing the damage of the effects.

-Energy Launchers can have 2 effects at once (in addition to explosive if appropriate)

-Ammo launchers can be explosive homing multishot, but such magazines are exceedingly rare and suffer from the same lack of damage output that multi-effect launchers have. Such magazines also have very low capacity, necessitating frequent reloading.

-Launchers can be single bullet shot, lob based timed explosion, lob based proximity explosion
--Lobbed rounds need much more force behind them.
--Lob based timed explosion rounds should be sticky

-Pistols are HALF as heavy as rifles with equivalent level parts, but suffer from lower damage/range, lower magazine size and higher recoil.
--Pistols follow the same rules as their rifle equivalents otherwise.

-Pistols cause less cloak destabilization when fired

-Pistols are nearly always semi-auto, and have much shorter ranges than rifles
--Ammo pistols can rarely be full auto, but it's very rare and not as effective as it is on rifles.

-Melee weapons cause even less cloak destabilization than silenced pistols

-Daggers cause the least amount of cloak destabilization, but cannot dash and do low damage

-Swords remain pretty much the same

That's all I've got right now, sorry again if I retreaded things other people have said.

Edited by: Xangi

Some of those suggestions may be rephrasing (or just not knowing the other suggestion existed, some of them are pretty old and the threads are buried...) of existing suggestions, but it's great to have them all in the one place

Personally, my favourite is the idea for cloaking changes - if that's practical, that would be awesome! At the moment, cloaking is useful right up until the point it stops working and then it's utterly useless - that may seem like a tautology, but really it's a lot more of a problem than, say, agility. E.g. with agaility, it "stops working" when you get overburdened, but it's possible to void that utterly so it's not a huge deal. With cloaking, you need to voluntarily disengage it to do certain things and then all of the extra points you've spent on it are suddenly useless - even if you do re-cloak (and yes, it is easier to do that at a higher level), you're still going to get shot at and seen.

Weapon effects are a cool idea, but I'd presonally prefer to have "specialised" weapons for 'big' effects like freezing - that wouldn't necessarily mean a fully different weapon, but maybe a component which is incompatible with other kinds of components (e.g. the freezing and acid attributes both come on the same piece). Also, IMO it makes more sense for energy weapons to have less special effect options (maybe just fire-based DoT, blinding and such things which could be created IRL through energy?), while ammo weapons would have acid, freezing vapour etc. I do agree though that having exploding energy weapons shouldn't be as common - maybe if they shot a ball of plasma, but that shoudl make them very expensive to charge IMO... partly that's for "realism", but also because it would help differentiate between energy and ammo weapons. IMO, ammo weapons are the "big guns", the dedicated firearms, while energy weapons are "convenient" since they don't use ammo but should have a few less options/more generic uses.

I've personally made a list of ideas for weapons, some of which head in very different directions although some points line up almost exactly. It just goes to show that while baseline combat is fun in 3089, it could be a lot more fun with a little bit (or preferrably a lot, if phr00t has time ) more variety

Lots of ideas here! I'll be making incremental changes to the weapon system.. don't want to change too much at once & introduce too many balance changes (and likely bugs) along the way. The things I agree with most are the burst meter & weapons with more unique effects. I'm getting the burst meter in the next release, along with a bunch of other adjustments that will hopefully make the weapons more useful/unique (reducing homing on shotgun-like weapons, increasing lobbed projectile speed, adding a stun effect to daggers, adding more weapon visuals etc.).

Cloaking is tricky... I don't want it to become "overpowered" if you could make everyone attacking you suddenly stop at a press of a button... if you get behind cover, or use a telelocator out of their sight, you'll "lose" them and you can re-engage your stealth mode and hide again.

Phr00t wrote: Lots of ideas here! I'll be making incremental changes to the weapon system.. don't want to change too much at once & introduce too many balance changes (and likely bugs) along the way. The things I agree with most are the burst meter & weapons with more unique effects. I'm getting the burst meter in the next release, along with a bunch of other adjustments that will hopefully make the weapons more useful/unique (reducing homing on shotgun-like weapons, increasing lobbed projectile speed, adding a stun effect to daggers, adding more weapon visuals etc.).

Cloaking is tricky... I don't want it to become "overpowered" if you could make everyone attacking you suddenly stop at a press of a button... if you get behind cover, or use a telelocator out of their sight, you'll "lose" them and you can re-engage your stealth mode and hide again.

The whole idea of the cloak tolerance/destabilization is that it will actually start weaker than it is right now, but over time grow to be a lot more effective. Sort of like the cloak and dagger in TF2, but it gains more effectiveness and features as you level it up.

Also I'd really, REALLY suggest not putting homing and multishot on the same gun (at least for rifles/pistols). It just makes uber weapons that outclass all others.

The only issue is that without homing, 3+ shot weapons are virtually useless at anything like a sensible range - they just spread so darn much lol. Perhaps the solution is to give them a bit less spread and make them fire closer to the centre of the aiming cursor, but have each individual shot be weaker? That way it's easier to hit with shotgun like weapons from sensible (read: not so close that your opponents are hitting you automatically) range, but it's more important to be on target.

The alternative is to go the complete opposite - have a specialised 'shotgun' which is designed for "pray and spray" tactics? ATM, it's hard to charge robots with guns blazing because your shots are scattering all over the place, it would be cool if there was a gun or a component setup designed for charging tactics. I know that it feels really badass when you pull it off currently (time warps help there), so imagine how badass a whole shotgun-based build would be lol

Edited by: YetiChow

YetiChow wrote: The only issue is that without homing, 3+ shot weapons are virtually useless at anything like a sensible range - they just spread so darn much lol. Perhaps the solution is to give them a bit less spread and make them fire closer to the centre of the aiming cursor, but have each individual shot be weaker? That way it's easier to hit with shotgun like weapons from sensible (read: not so close that your opponents are hitting you automatically) range, but it's more important to be on target.

The alternative is to go the complete opposite - have a specialised 'shotgun' which is designed for "pray and spray" tactics? ATM, it's hard to charge robots with guns blazing because your shots are scattering all over the place, it would be cool if there was a gun or a component setup designed for charging tactics. I know that it feels really badass when you pull it off currently (time warps help there), so imagine how badass a whole shotgun-based build would be lol

Yes, shotguns need to be more accurate, homing should be a bonus onto a gun, not a necessity.

The thing is, IRL it's not that shotguns aren't accurate (in fact, the whole point of the spread is to make hitting small fast targets easier), so much as they lose their power over long range, and they do fire off-centre but it's upwards rather than sideways. Having the bullets spread randomly isn't shotgun-like at all, although it would be cool for multi-shot weapons to generate a lot more kickback - that way they'd be a little more intuitive to use and a lot easier to control if you're firing sensibly.

YetiChow wrote: The thing is, IRL it's not that shotguns aren't accurate (in fact, the whole point of the spread is to make hitting small fast targets easier), so much as they lose their power over long range, and they do fire off-centre but it's upwards rather than sideways. Having the bullets spread randomly isn't shotgun-like at all, although it would be cool for multi-shot weapons to generate a lot more kickback - that way they'd be a little more intuitive to use and a lot easier to control if you're firing sensibly.

I'd settle for a compromise between reality and gameyness.

On another note, to test how broken the guns really were, I used a memory hack today and gave myself 9999999999 credits and 999999 skillpoints. I then walked in one direction until the game crashed (saved the errorlog, will post later) stopping occasionally to get new guns. My test results showed that a level 19 homing explosive multishot (4) rifle killed level 100 enemies better (as in faster on average with less missed shots) than a level 95 homing explosive single shot rifle. The difference in power is THAT vast.

Edited by: Xangi

Thank you for extensively testing, Xangi. Yes, the shotgun is definitely getting "nerfed" -- multi-shot weapons will have both less explosive and homing stats. However, I'm going to decrease the accuracy penalty from 20% to 15% per extra shot (which should make them a bit more accurate). We'll see how this plays out in testing... more changes can be made later if needed.

Phr00t wrote: Thank you for extensively testing, Xangi. Yes, the shotgun is definitely getting "nerfed" -- multi-shot weapons will have both less explosive and homing stats. However, I'm going to decrease the accuracy penalty from 20% to 15% per extra shot (which should make them a bit more accurate). We'll see how this plays out in testing... more changes can be made later if needed.

If you want to do more testing on your own, just grab CheatEngine. Since you're probably (I mean, 99.9% chance) familiar with RAM and how it works you won't have any trouble figuring out how to use it. Also, crash log below.
I.imgur.com

Edited by: Xangi

Man, I used to use ArtMoney (http://www.artmoney.ru/) back in the day and it was a ton of fun. Glad to see these programs still work, even on my game However, being a developer of the game allows me to change numbers without hacking it

Thank you for the error report! This happened when you were really far away from the center of the world?

Phr00t wrote: Man, I used to use ArtMoney (http://www.artmoney.ru/) back in the day and it was a ton of fun. Glad to see these programs still work, even on my game However, being a developer of the game allows me to change numbers without hacking it

Thank you for the error report! This happened when you were really far away from the center of the world?

Yeah, I was in a zone with level 100 robots, I did some testing of the dozen or so guns I'd picked up, then I decided to try to go a bit further and it crashed almost immediately. If I had to estimate it was probably around level 105 or so.

I'm just releasing v0.92a now, which should avoid the crash, but something is going on funny that was causing the crash in the first place... now that it shouldn't crash, we will see what is going on that far out...

Phr00t wrote: I'm just releasing v0.92a now, which should avoid the crash, but something is going on funny that was causing the crash in the first place... now that it shouldn't crash, we will see what is going on that far out...

I think it might have just been some weird render crash, sadly though, my backup point for that save is in a level 15 zone so it'd take me a while to fly back out there.

EDIT: Loving the new melee weapon variations. It's EXACTLY what I had in mind, makes the weapons seem more different and unique. Can't wait for the gun parts, but don't rush it. Also, not sure if you can, but if you could allow 3089 to scan the assets.jar (or a specific directory) for an indefinite amount of graphics for each part it'd allow users to draw their own parts and easily add them into the game. Either way, awesome job.

Edited by: Xangi

Robots should have more interaction with each other (don't take it the writing way. Like they should talk with each other like if one's at low hp maybe he would retreat and ask another robot to follow and help him. If the play runs into the building when a robot is after him, the robot would ask local units to help him search the building. Also are you planning on adding more robots if so you should add a robot that could heal injured bots. This would make the game much more strategic in how the player would approach these situations. Again just a suggestion