Wimpy Weapons

[mrtwosheds]

Do you think my Destroyer weapon, a one shot-charge gun/laser will upset people? the combat version is only single and not as powerful as a mag but the assault version hits like a bomber when doubled up on a walker, its got range too, it takes 7 seconds to fire and uses loads of ammo, you need a few trucks. Without trucks you get two double shots in a walker.
Its practically useless with AI.

[Red Devil]

That might be good for a defensive weapon in a GT.  SupportProcess uses chargeguns well.  I have a modified assault MAG that is one shot at full charge.

I'm not arguing for one-shot weapons here.  Just pointing out useless ones which could be more useful instead of being bench warmers.  But, as has been said, due to humans rolling through the weapons quickly, the fire rate (and, hence, DPS) increases.

Maybe a better gauge of a weapon's usefulness is damage per ammo cost, or at least account for that in the calculations.

What I've noticed is the the reliance upon fewer and fewer weapons, which detracts from the beauty of the game, which is the ability to counter weapons with other weapons.  If you rely on just a few, why bother having the rest?


Jax is supposed to be a getaway weapon, where you poop it out the back to slow down your pursuer, but all it does is make people laugh.

Splinter should do *some* increased damage.  The best thing is does now is maybe cause some alarm to humans when you get multiple damage indicators and distracts AI units when they get hit.

The Stinger is a thermal missile and its seeking ability is determined by the heatSignature of the target, so not much can be done to the missile to make it not seek so well except to reduce the heat sig of the craft.  They are a nice over-the-horizon weapon.  Pretty weak against heavy and light armor compared to the TAG's swarmer missiles.

Agreed about the Prox mine ammo.

Agreed about TAG, except maybe for the leader round speed.  They're stronger than Stingers against armor.

Might be Mini-Hornets on Pyramid.

need coffee...

[mrtwosheds]

That might be good for a defensive weapon in a GT.

I wouldn't want it built anywhere near my base! It causes a very large explosion when it hits. It is best used to annihilate the enemy base buildings and constructors while still out of range of most defences, its at the end of the tech tree, you need an Emperor before you can build one. Its intended to break stalemate situations, the walker is of course vulnerable to attack while charging.
3 units can use it walker x2, battle tank x1, and mortar dalek x1. the first two cannot use shields, the mortar dalek can use shields and specials and well may be dangerous in human hands. If they can drive it (assault hover)

[Zero Angel]

thermalmissiles like the stinger have two values which adjust its effectiveness, one controls the radius at which the stinger picks the highest heat sig, the other one controls how fast the stinger turns while it is tracking a target. The turn speed definitely needs to be reduced, and i'm not kidding -- not by much, but by enough so that it isnt such a powerful noob weapon in DM. Stingers were bad in 1.2 DM, and are worse in 1.3 DM. This is not good.

[Killer AK]

Bz2 is mainly strategy and i find stingers good.
I find prox mines wimpy.
I also find Seekers are good although i don't use them much.
I use seekers when driving a sentry fighting scouts.
The seekers preoccupy the FAF Missle's

[Killer AK]

Besides I ussually use Lancers to try to fight sabres.
The scions don't have many units that give sabres a fight.
I've found in my tests that warriors always get thier asses kicked by sabres and are very weak. However the lancers do a much better job and last a little longer.

[Red Devil]

I see what you mean now. Looks like stinger was changed from this in 1.2:

[MissileClass]
omegaTurn = 1.0

[ThermalMissileClass]
coneAngle = 0.25

to this in 1.3:

[MissileClass]
omegaTurn = 1.5
omegaWaver = 0.5
rateWaver = 6.0

[ThermalMissileClass]
coneAngle = 0.3

[Red Devil]

Good point about Seekers:

unitName = "Seeker"
heatSignature = 10.0
imageSignature = 10.0
radarSignature = 10.0

[Avatar]

Thermalmissiles are why Scions have Solar Flares, although Flares can be fun for a lot of odd uses...

Shadowers are my fav, as are Lancers.  I like having four or five Lancers sitting around my base in case MortorBikes come cruising in.  Tag in Rocket Tanks does the same thing for the ISDF.

I can't (won't) speak to balance for human games, as humans is cwazy wabbits and will do the darndest things with mundane weapons...

I always figured if you balanced things properly for the AI to use that'd be the best you could do...  humans will always find a way to turn balance on it's ear.

-Av-

[Zero Angel]

I would suggest not increasing prox mine damage value higher than what it is in 1.2. As it is, prox mines already do enough damage to be useful in 1.2 DMs, to the point where some people will set up a small trap and lure a ship there to fight it, booby trap pods, or simply run around laying mines hoping to catch unsuspecting ships that are low on health.

I havent checked whether they are nerfed in 1.3 DM, but if they aren't nerfed the only change that need be made is to have its ammo consumption tweaked down by a relatively small amount.

[anomaly]

I think what would be a very good idea is to create DM and strat versions of some weapons that have had large changes made to them in order to create balance in strats.  For instance, remember when they made the ammo cost of pummel super high?  Sure it helped prevent people from taking down your rec with pummel scouts but, it also made pummel completely useless in DM. 

And the proxymine really needs to be changed.  Maybe, not in damage as Zero Angel suggested, but the suppress range makes it useless to deploy in a dog fight.  I'd suggest increasing the trigger range to maybe 30 or 40, turn the suppress range down to 20 or 15(or get rid of it), and keep the damage the same.
Oh, and if anyone wanted to I think the visual explosion could use some reworking as it is it looks more like a gaseous burst than a real explosion.

[Zero Angel]

I like that suggestion. FYI always beware of tweaking things too far, like avatar says humans have a way of cleverly finding use for certain things that they werent fully designed for. You tweak something by a lot and while it seems perfectly balanced in your few playtests, a human might find  way to exploit its qualities too much. (ie: Imagine if splinters were turned into powerful base killers, then what would happen if three or four human tanks started firing splinters at the rec of a well defended base)

[Red Devil]

I've been doing that with the AI team's ships and the AI team's weapons in FE lately.  That way, the AI gets some help, but it doesn't affect the human team ships.  Some of the guys here have seen the fast test scouts I made that show what the AI is capable of when given a chance.  The FE ones aren't like that though.

How about a very slight kick added to prox too?


Here's the Proxmine, which is untouched in 1.3:


Dispenser:

[WeaponClass]
classLabel = "dispenser"
wpnName = "Prox Mine"
fireSound = "mmine01.wav"
wpnReticle = "gproxmin"
wpnCategory = "SPEC"

[DispenserClass]
shotDelay = 4.0
objectClass = "proxmine"


Mine:

[GameObjectClass]
geometryName = "igprox00.xsi"
classLabel = "proximity"
scrapCost = 0
scrapValue = 0
maxHealth = 150
maxAmmo = 200
unitName = "Prox Mine"

[MineClass]
lifeSpan = 30
xplBlast = "xminxpl"

[ProximityMineClass]
triggerRadius = 20.0        <== make this 30..40
suppressRadius = 40.0     <== make this 15..20


Damage:

damageRadius = 50.0       <== Keep this?
damageValue(N) = 600
damageValue(L) = 400
damageValue(H) = 200
damageValue(S) = 400
damageValue(D) = 600
damageValue(A) = 200

[mrtwosheds]

The problem with xminxpl.odf is this

particleClass2 = "xminxpl.puff"
particleCount2 = 70
particleVeloc2 = "90.0 90.0 90.0"

70! particles lasting 1 second, anyone ever see 70 particles? no, the game culls most of them. 90 velocity is what makes it look gassy.

[mrtwosheds]

While I'm at it,
gsplasma_a fires at a rate of 50 per second.
plasstream renders this for every shot
[Core]
renderBase = "draw_twirl"
textureName = "plasma.tga" //flame2
textureBlend = "one one modulate"
startColor = "255 155 155 255"
finishColor = "255 200 0 155"
startRadius = 0.1
finishRadius = 1.0
animateTime = 1.0

[Puff]
renderBase = "draw_twirl"
textureName = "plasma.tga" //flame2
textureBlend = "one one modulate"
startColor = "50 50 0 160"
finishColor = "255 0 0 0"
startRadius = 0.01
finishRadius = 5.0
animateTime = 1.0

So thats 100 renders every second! 1 for every millisecond for as long as you hold the trigger down.
People don't like using this weapon in strat games because the overhead strain it places on your pc can get you killed.

Someone double the damage and halve the fire rate or more for pb4!