I'd like to hear some other peoples choices in weapons with 1.0 so far. I play on harder scenarios like tribe or a nothing start and apparently there were enough changes to the weapon systems that I'm getting my ass kicked.
I remember assault rifles always being pretty much some of the best overall weapons for versitility. Long range, good damage, decent fire rate. SMG's were good for high damage at shorter ranges.
SMG's don't seem nearly as good these days, and I saw in another thread someone mentioned LMG's being really good now. Has their accuracy and overall usefulness been improved?
I'd like to hear what sort of weapon choices you guys go with for the early game, the mid game and the late game. More melee builds, 50/50, more shooters, what sort of loadout you do for em, what factors are coming into play for your decisions like a low skilled pawn vs high skilled or trigger happy vs careful shooter.
Looking at just raw stats bows still seem pretty powerful, but I know there are numbers I'm not fully seeing/understanding as it's a lot more then just raw damage.
I too used to like Assault Rifles and Heavy SMGs, but not so much anymore. The one big thing that seriously changed up the ranged weapons that I'd use is the introduction of ranged stagger. Generally speaking, these are now the only ranged weapons I'd really consider maining in my colony:
* Recurve bow (in certain situations)
* Greatbow (this can even stagger centipedes, unlike a bolt-action or sniper)
* Revolver (early-to-mid-game)
* Bolt-Action Rifle (early-to-late-game)
* LMG (mid-to-end-game)
* Charge Lance (late-to-end-game)
There are only a few non-staggering weapons I'd use:
* Machine Pistol (for weak shooters)
* Charge Rifle (for weak shooters late-game)
* Minigun (its DPS somewhat makes up for the fact it can't stagger)
And these are the weapons I used to like but don't anymore:
* Assault Rifle (used to play a major role in my mid-to-end-game arsenal)
* Heavy SMG (used to heavily favour this for close-quarters until late-game, but not so much since the gap between machine pistol and HSMG has narrowed, and MPistol's range is worth more to me)
As for melee, I've gone somewhat 30/70 nowadays, rather than the old "you're not a brawler? Have a gun!" policy I previously adopted. With the accessibility of shield belts and the buff to melee weapons, melee has certainly become a much more viable option. Lancers seem to go down pretty easily to melee rushes, and melee's also useful for distracting centipedes. Regarding weapons, I usually favour the gladius since it's relatively cheap yet dishes out pain fairly quickly.
Cool. Is the weapon stagger listed in the stats of the gun info section? I'm at work so I can't look right this second.
I'm struggling a lot more in the early and mid game right now, for more reasons then just the weapons of course, but it would be nice to hear what people are switching too and is working for them and why. Game keeps giving me characters with terrible combat skills. Like 0 shooting and 2 melee and stuff like that. Right now my current tribal play through has *1* shooter (with like an 8) then the other 4 people have 0 to 2 shooting, and like 3 to 6 melee, so they are all melee people. Issue is raids keep coming with all shooters and they start breaking and burning everything down before I can trick them into following me inside somewhere. I'm not sure if it would just be better to have low skill people still using some revolvers or something even if their terrible shots. The stagger might be worth it.
I do have a few normal recurve bows. Better or worse then poor quality auto pistols/revolvers you think?
Standard guns worth using late are LMG, charge lance, minigun, and situationally sniper, hsmg, incendiary. Charge rifle is a noob trap weapon, only slightly better than a machine pistol LOL.
Quote from: zizard on July 07, 2018, 06:53:19 AM
Standard guns worth using late are LMG, charge lance, minigun, and situationally sniper, hsmg, incendiary. Charge rifle is a noob trap weapon, only slightly better than a machine pistol LOL.
Yeah this is exactly the kind of things that makes me question my decisions. When doing a rich explorer start the charge rifle is really nice in the beginning, and keeping it around late game (at least in prior versions) was never an issue because I always had a ton of people with assault rifles, snipers, etc all mixed in, but the fact that its presented like a very late game weapon and statistically it's really not that great makes me really wonder what else is off. Like how bows are presented in the game. From a stats perspective I glance at the tab and see high damage numbers, not insanely slow recharge fire rates and wonder why some later guns seem weaker and what I must be missing. Of course, when I try to use an army of bowmen against a mix of raiders with guns I still get my ass kicked. lolol.
Quote from: zizard on July 07, 2018, 06:53:19 AM
Charge rifle is a noob trap weapon, only slightly better than a machine pistol LOL.
Why do you say this? From the ingame analyzer the CR has an average DPS of 7.18 (with 7.24 at medium range) while the MP has an average of 5.65 (3.86 at medium range). Plus the CR has much better armor penetration.
Tynan how come DPS is listed for melee weapons in the info section in game but not for ranged? Is this something we can get, even if its just best guess estimates or something? It would be helpful.
Quote from: Tynan on July 07, 2018, 08:03:15 AM
Why do you say this? From the ingame analyzer the CR has an average DPS of 7.18 (with 7.24 at medium range) while the MP has an average of 5.65 (3.86 at medium range). Plus the CR has much better armor penetration.
It shouldn't use the average over ranges that the weapon can't fire at. Medium range accuracy is mostly irrelevant since medium is 30 and both weapons have max range of 22. Sure there is some LERP from 15 to 22, but that is not even halfway to 30 and makes no real difference.
Low values of AP (i.e. 100/AP >> 1) have very small effects due to superlinear scaling of EHP with AP. In the low armour regime, armour is negligible. In the high armour regime, low AP weapon damage is negligible.
I hadn't tried the mingun lately because I read that 50% of missed shots just straight up miss rather than go on to hit other things which was the strength of that gun. Was that reverted or was the minigun buffed to compensate?
"--Missed shots now have a 50% extra chance of hitting nothing; this will make missed shots less likely to hit random things (but doesn't change the chance of missing)."
Since miniguns always miss that looks like a whopping 50% reduction in damage.
Quote from: Greep on July 07, 2018, 03:34:29 PM
I hadn't tried the mingun lately because I read that 50% of missed shots just straight up miss rather than go on to hit other things which was the strength of that gun. Was that reverted or was the minigun buffed to compensate?
"--Missed shots now have a 50% extra chance of hitting nothing; this will make missed shots less likely to hit random things (but doesn't change the chance of missing)."
Since miniguns always miss that looks like a whopping 50% reduction in damage.
They don't always miss anymore. They just have absolutely awful accuracy. Expected hit rate on aiming target is nearly the same, but area effect is now halved.
Quote from: Tynan on July 07, 2018, 08:03:15 AM
Quote from: zizard on July 07, 2018, 06:53:19 AM
Charge rifle is a noob trap weapon, only slightly better than a machine pistol LOL.
Why do you say this? From the ingame analyzer the CR has an average DPS of 7.18 (with 7.24 at medium range) while the MP has an average of 5.65 (3.86 at medium range). Plus the CR has much better armor penetration.
Have no idea where ingame analyzer is.
Hit changes are from ingame tolltip. Pawn with 20 shooting, pirate target on max range, no cover, max range.
MP - 43% to hit with 3x6 damage = 7.74 avg damage per burst, 514 RPM
CR - 58% to hit with 2x15 damage = 17.4 avg damage per burst, 180 RPM
Same pawn, timber wolf target.
MP - 36% to hit = 6,48 per burst
CR - 49% to hit = 14.7 per burst
Tested by spawning hungry timber wolf. Managed to do 2 bursts with CR and 4 bursts with AP. Expected damage for MP 25.9, for CR 29.4 (target is moving here but it doesn't matter much since accuracy change should be proportional)
According to this test, CR is 13% better.
All tests ended poorly for my pawn, since wolf not even once was neutralized before getting to melee range. Godlike shooter with weapon which is positioned as best ingame can't fend off a wolf... I guess it's all you need to know about ranged weapons now.
MP has 514/180 = 2.85x better fire rate.
CR has 2.5x better damage per shot.
CR is 1.35x more accurate.
According to this data, CR is 14% better DPS-wise.
In my opinion, the damage done by firing with any type of rifle with decent accuracy and skill should always do enough to take down that type of target, especially if several hits are successful. Melee shouldn't be required.
Quote from: Golden on July 07, 2018, 06:47:13 PM
In my opinion, the damage done by firing with any type of rifle with decent accuracy and skill should always do enough to take down that type of target, especially if several hits are successful. Melee shouldn't be required.
But then you are missing a great chance to get your limbs torn off! Just think what a great story it is:
I was a godlike marksman. Once I took my ultra-advanced spacer-tech assault rifle and went to a walk in the woods, where I met a hungry wolf. I started shooting from maximal range (15 meters) and let out two deadly volleys (2 shots each), shooting off wolf's ear, which caused him to go manhunter. Then he got to me and tore both my hands off. Luckily, then when he forgot about me, since manhunters don't finish off their targets and went to traders caravan, where he got killed by the doomsday launcher, killing half of the caravan as well, which caused our reputation with them to go downhill. They were a weapon dealer and spilled a ton of their goods, but it is so cheap to sell that we don't even bother to collect it.
Quote from: Oblitus on July 07, 2018, 06:21:54 PM
All tests ended poorly for my pawn, since wolf not even once was neutralized before getting to melee range.
The CR used to be able to kill a bear reliably. The rich explorer starting with was a huge deal
Quote from: Oblitus on July 07, 2018, 06:21:54 PM
They don't always miss anymore. They just have absolutely awful accuracy. Expected hit rate on aiming target is nearly the same, but area effect is now halved.
Hmm. So is the minigun a lot more worthwhile to give to a pawn with high shooting than it used to be? I seem to remember back in the day they were almost better to give to someone with garbage accuracy and shooting but a trait like trigger happy and just let them spray inside a killbox type area, because the gun in itself was almost just as useful there as it was in the hands of a super skilled shooter. I never used em much before unless I didn't have a choice or was in a really specific situation for that one fight because over all they always felt a little underwhelming or risky.
Tests after the last update.
First challenger - our old friend Timber Wolf.
Second challenger - level 20 pawn (scar on shoulder so 87% manipulation). He is a wimp, so any scratch downs him. All weapons are normal quality. Wolf starts from the current weapon's max range.
Charge Rifle: 4 : 1. Pawn has the time to do 2 bursts, usually 1-2 hits. Chance to hit at 26 range 35%.
Machine Pistol: 5 : 0. Pawn has time to do 3 bursts. Chance to hit at 20 range 33%. Hits quite consistently, but damage is simply not enough.
Chain Shotgun: 4 : 1. Pawn has time to do 1 burst. Chance to hit at 13 range 47%.
Minigun: 3 : 2. Pawn has time to do 1 burst. Chance to hit at 31 range 13%. Lucky burst can cripple target enough to give time for second burst.
Revolver: 4 : 1. Chance to hit at 26 range 28%. That one success was thatks to stopping power buying time. Won't work with bigger target.
Heavy SMG: 4 : 1. Pawn has time to do 2 bursts. Chance to hit at 23 range 27%. Single victory was from lucky first burst that shot off one paw and heavily damaged another.
Assault Rifle: 4 : 1. Pawn has time to do 2 bursts. Chance to hit at 31 range 37%.
Pump Shotgun: 3 : 2. Pawn has time for 2 shots only. Chance to hit at 16 range 60%. Stopping power is huge thing here. A good hit basically means that pawn cat hit one more time.
LMG: 3 : 2. Can do 1-3 bursts, depends on success of previous. Chance to hit at 26 range 22%. Stopping power is a huge factor. Brain shot can be deadly.
Bolt-action: 4 : 1. Pawn has time for 3 shots. Chance to hit at 37 range 46%. Stopping power does little due to low rate of fire.
Incendiary Launcher: 4 : 1. Only one chance to hit. And even successful hit gives no warranty.
Charge Lance: 2 : 3. Pawn has time for 2 shots. Twin brother of bolt-action. Same range, same accuracy. Three perfect headshots. Not exactly representative.
Recurve Bow: 5 : 0. Pawn has time for 2 shots. Chance to hit at 26 range 41%.
Great Bow: 5 : 0. Pawn has time for 2 shots. Chance to hit at 30 range 41%.
Sniper Rifle: 4 : 1. Pawn has time for 2 shots. Chance to hit at 45 range 44%.
Overall score:
Wolf - 58
Human - 17
Summary:
- All ranged weapons suck hard and successful use is very RNG-heavy.
- Since tests are on unarmored targets, low damage weapons would show worse (can be worse?) performance in combat against tougher targets.
- Tests are done with a mod that improves threat response, so pawns start shooting immediately when the wolf gets into range. Otherwise pawn would only shoot from range 10, and in this case pump shotgun is your best bet.
Interesting info, but why test with such a weird pawn? Level 20 scarred wimp is a bit odd.
Anyway, the idea it combine melee and ranged fighters; a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.
^ ranged has the advantage of not taking return fire until melee closes though, and there are still ways to guarantee the melee can't.
Also was the autopistol nerfed since 1.0 started? If it is still consistent with the wiki it has the unique property of being capable of shooting and moving in < 80 ticks, no other weapon can do this in < 100 (machine pistol burst eats too much time). That gives the weapon a unique niche in that only fast weapons can contest their mobility with cover. I haven't tested it in the most current update yet, but if it's still sub-80 it's a solid weapon for urban engagements now for its pure mobility.
Quote from: Tynan on July 08, 2018, 02:45:44 AM
Interesting info, but why test with such a weird pawn? Level 20 scarred wimp is a bit odd.
Anyway, the idea it combine melee and ranged fighters; a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.
That's what RNG gave me. Who am I to argue with RNG? Scars are extremely common roll in my experience, so until you got bionics - it is what you have to deal with. Wimp is fine anyway since battle which comes to melee is already lost strategically.
But this is way too overturned in favor of melee. An almost perfect shooter, yet 22% chance to win against one of the basic enemies with little to no effect from the equipped weapon.
And the biggest problem is - melee pawn is expendable. It is a meat shield that will inevitably take damage from both sides (had my melee pawn got her leg shot off by my own shooter while being in direct proximity). Raiders and animals can afford it; they are just spawned from thin air. Player has no such luxury.
So only real options are expendable animals (a big headache) and turrets (kinda unreliable when you got raid during a solar flare).
In my experience, during mid-game raids, my pawns are outnumbered in 1:5 to 1:10 ratio. Animals just can't reproduce fast enough. So all that is left is "cheese" - traps, turrets, killboxes. Things that can be rebuilt and repaired.
There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn. You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.
Gunplay gains advantage as you add more shooters and more of the game's mechanics. It's true that automated hunting is still very dangerous compared to drafting though, where with the latter it's going to be routinely 0 : 5 in pawn favor with 5x the shooters and lack of immediate predator aggro, and this is before getting into bullet intercept in manhunter scenarios.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on July 08, 2018, 03:25:29 AM
There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn. You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.
Sure, if you attack a downed pawn. Otherwise, it is too situational.
Early game - revolvers looks fine. Especially you dont have a much choice and they are pretty frequently delivered to you doors.
Mid game - shotguns, heavy smg for "door" fights. Bolt action for sniping.
Late game - snipe/lances as heavy fire support, charge rifles at front line with melee dudes. I dont know why people complain about CR - they are work much better than assault rifles against heavy armored targets like centipedes or guys in power armors.
Assault rifles is ok too. Especially for lazyness. Viable for any kind of activities - hunting, door fights, sniping.
Miniguns now looks completely useless. Didnt try LMG.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on July 08, 2018, 03:25:29 AM
There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn. You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.
EVERY enemy pawn is expendable, which is why they can get away with using melee pawns all the time. That's always been my problem with how raids are balanced. Yes, we can use smarter tactics than the AI raiders, but there gets to be a point where smart-but-still-fun is simply not sufficient; The cost will end up being too high, because our pawns aren't expendable. So you get killboxes and animal hordes or door cheesing or what have you.
Quote from: Tynan on July 08, 2018, 02:45:44 AM
a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.
One shooter vs one melee, unless the melee is using tactics to close the distance without getting shot, should almost always default to the shooter, unless the melee is considerably better than the shooter. Melee should be the resort of the zerg rush, where you can afford to lose lots of pawns, or used tactically, using terrain, covering fire or superior protective equipment to get close to your enemy. In roughly even odds, the melee shouldn't win, except by fluke.
Quote from: Oblitus on July 08, 2018, 03:28:22 AM
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on July 08, 2018, 03:25:29 AM
There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn. You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.
Sure, if you attack a downed pawn. Otherwise, it is too situational.
If you just draft and attack in the open, sure. That's a losing proposition no matter the weapon though.
If you don't do that, then it's up to the player to engineer the situations where the weapon has the advantage.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on July 08, 2018, 12:25:09 PM
If you just draft and attack in the open, sure. That's a losing proposition no matter the weapon though.
If you don't do that, then it's up to the player to engineer the situations where the weapon has the advantage.
This is exactly what I mean. I've expressed my discontent with the melee vs ranged system in the past, but I think this is the main point of contention. A melee pawn charging directly at a gun-wielding pawn who's targeting him is just too damned strong. If the player doesn't target the melee because there are too many of them, like in a tribal raid, or because they prioritize the ranged pawns, then they kind of deserve to get wrecked. But when I have 3 pawns targeting a single melee, and he still gets there mostly unscathed, that's where I draw the line. As a player, I should never consider draft-and-charge to be a viable tactic, either.
Idk... I just want one awesome martial artist in my game, that's all. 8) Craft her a bo-stick or some have some stealth skills and smoke bombs to get in close and take out that entire enemy base solo! :P
Hehe
Quote from: DariusWolfe on July 08, 2018, 12:42:12 PM
This is exactly what I mean. I've expressed my discontent with the melee vs ranged system in the past, but I think this is the main point of contention. A melee pawn charging directly at a gun-wielding pawn who's targeting him is just too damned strong. If the player doesn't target the melee because there are too many of them, like in a tribal raid, or because they prioritize the ranged pawns, then they kind of deserve to get wrecked. But when I have 3 pawns targeting a single melee, and he still gets there mostly unscathed, that's where I draw the line. As a player, I should never consider draft-and-charge to be a viable tactic, either.
I'd be ok with this, except for the resultant situation.
For raiders, having pawns permanently injured is irrelevant: They cannot run out of pawns. Raiders can send melee pawns in, have them get injured in every battle, and it doesn't matter because they'll have fresh pawns for the next raid. So, raiders can use melee pawns effectively, whereas we can't. If your melee pawn charges them, he's going to take melee damage, hostile fire, and friendly fire. He's pretty much garaunteed to be injured, probably seriously, and as a result he's going to be scarred or crippled. Each raid will permanently reduce his capability both as a warrior and as a useful pawn.
Sure, there's bionics and archotech, which can actually improve a seriously mangled pawn, but that's extremely expensive end-game stuff there.
I find, in the early to mid game, firing into a melee is insanely dangerous and basically a 50-50 chance of hitting your own pawn.
If this where a game with health bars and no long term injuries melee vs. ranged would be way easier to balance. But with long term injuries, how can you balance when considering how the attackers are not impacted by crippling injuries, but the defender suffers attrition in every single raid?
There's also the issue of the tech tree. I play tribal because it lets me take flawed pawns where other scenarios necessitate "Perfect" colonists but still get a challange. But if melee outdoes shooting weapons then why should I ever research past Plate Armor and Longswords except to maybe, eventually, put down a few distract-o-tron improvised turrets?
Quote from: Wintersdark on July 08, 2018, 02:12:04 PMI'd be ok with this, except for the resultant situation.
(snip)
It feels like you're disagreeing with me, but you're not saying anything I disagree with. Can you elaborate on how you think my suggestion is bad, given the context you gave?
It's clear that Tynan wants to keep melee viable. I'm reluctant, but I'm also willing to admit that I could be biased. So I'm trying to give suggestions that keep melee strong
at melee ranges only. Given that raiders tend to come at 2-3x the colony's strength, melee raiders are still viable because the player can be distracted by gunners, explosives, or just overwhelming numbers. Melee colonists can be viable as defense against those melee raiders, commandos sneaking around to assault the flanks, or ambushers. Both sides can take advantage of superior defensive equipment as well, later game.
I definitely agree with some of the commentary here in regards to the AI factions do not have the same limits in place as players, but get the same combat systems we use (sometimes better equipment/pawns even) and it can be pretty unfair at times when they already come in much larger numbers. I also agree that we have human brains and logic to try to work around it but the code does need to support us in ways as well.
I'm finding I still need to use a kill zone alley of sorts, riddled with traps, turrets and my shooter pawns with melee behind them waiting to engage if people make it close, which they always seem to and I generally lose at least one person per raid it seems now. I'm still early to mid-ish game right now.
Revolver didn't seem to do much good for me. When it was my only gun it did, but I was having better luck with an autopistol.
Bolt action has done lots of work for me for auto hunting, and once instance where I needed to distance sniper someone, but too slow for most of the raids that have come at me.
LMG's definitely seem a lot better then I remember them being. My 2 pawns using the LMG's are only so-so shooters. One is like a 11 and the other an 8 or 9 I think, they are doing a good job spraying down bad guys, getting hits and keeping them off me. Mostly.
Assault rifles seem better now that they were buffed back up a bit.
The SMG definitely feels weak, almost too weak. IMO it should have at least a little stopping power, or perhaps if all guns has a
little bit at least that might help balance out how fast melee hordes can close the gap and slaughter you.
I do have 2 arctic wolf pets and a dog that I've had to use quite a bit to save my ass. I've shot them so many times lol. Only one tail lost so far though, phew.
I'm not a fan of the fact that I can't shoot point blank anymore. That was the one way you sometimes had a chance to survive an animal or bad guy closing the gap when you didn't pray hard enough to RNGesus.
The game I'm on now was a naked brutality start. Thankfully all the food poisoning let me make it long enough to recruit a second pawn. I did have to roll for quite a while to get a starter pawn that could survive the start. I'm midway through year 3 and I only just now researched turrets and assault rifles. It took FOREVER before I was in a secure enough spot to let someone research.
My tribal run died out to a raid. A single melee user took out 3 people, then the 2 shooters took out my last 3 people almost perfectly, from behind cover. :/ FU randy.
So far I'm finding I need roughly 3 melee people with above mentioend dogs/wolves + 4 to 5 shooters, traps, and a few turrets to handle the amount of people a tribal raid throws at me. Pirate raids are coming with less people and nothing too crazy yet with weapons. I've had to get creative to get around seiges and mining around defenses.
I've lost 2 people to melee scythers. It moves so fast that if you have a ranged pawn and you don't take it out right away, you're just done for.