Charge rifles are too common

[Shurp]

I like the idea of something "in between" modern ballistic weapons and plasma weapons.  But magnetic weapons sound boring.  A railgun is just a fast bullet.  Why not do something exciting like *nuclear* weaponry?  You know that uranium that shows up here and there but seems useless?  How about fission hand grenades and bullets?

[Stormfox]

Just wanted to chime in once more:

This thread seems to run away to "add stuff"-land. I do not think more weapons are neccessary (or helpful in the current situation). The actual amount and names of the current weapons are sufficient to give each of them a niche - the problem is just that most of them do not have one right now.

Re-tuning the current weapons so that most feel useful and have something unique going for them should be a priority. Adding anything else can safely be left to modders.

My suggestion:

Shortbows, Pilae, Grenades and the superweapons do not need to be rebalanced much (even though I dislike the ridiculousness of the rocket launchers, since nothing helps you against those).

Low-Tier-Weapons:
These three weapons form the "core", are better than the barbaric weapons and fullfull three distinctive roles. Basically a bad assault rifle (smg), a bad sniper rifle (bow) and a bad shotgun (pistol). These three weapons should also form the bulk of early game raider equipment and slowly phase out to give room to more mid-tier stuff.

Great Bow
Since it nowadays comes after quite some tech, it could stand to be a bit stronger. Some more range and a small increase damage, to make it stand out more as an upgrade to the other barbaric weapons and not too shabby an option to equip a colonist with if you want a long range weapons and all you rifles are already in use.

Pistol
Rework it into a heavy pistol (or revolver, befitting the mood) and up the damage quite a bit (20?) while slightly lowering its rate of fire. A hand cannon that is overall not that strong, but a solid backup until you find a good rifle.

SMG
One is enough. Use the stats of the heavy one with the range of the small one. Attack speed roughly in-between them. Should basically be almost as good as the assault rifle with a bit less range.


Mid-Tier-Weapons
These will form the core of most of the game. At the beginning, they will be rare (besides the starting survival rifle, obviously). After a few raids, these will become the common items to loot. These are the items players would want to craft a few of when they first get the appropriate tech.

Survival Rifle
Stays more or less like it is now. A very slight damage buff (perhaps greatbow, pistol and this one all share 20 damage?). Works well as a baseline "cannot go wrong" weapon.

Shotgun
If it keeps its mechanics as a single shot weapon, up the damage significantly. 30 at the very least. Slightly lower attack speed. That way, its a faster shooting close range heavy damage weapon. Almost the same punch as a sniper, much better dps. Dps better than most weapons, but the range of 16 hurts. If too good, make the accurracy fall off quicker.

Assault Rifle
More damage per shot than right now. About 10 should do the trick. It should have the highest dps of all the weapons until this tier, but only closely edge out shotgun and smg. Its main benefit will be the good range to go with that. Its main drawback will be the low punch per shot.


High-Tier-Weapons
These weapons should require an additional, expensive tech - or one smaller tech, each (enhanced optics for the sniper, something technical sounding for the charger, high-velocity-barrels or something like that for the lmg). They are slightly better and much more expensive to craft and much rarer as drops (and therefore, as enemy weaponry).

Sniper Rifle
More or less stays like it is. If it needs a slight buff, make it attack a tad faster.

Charge Rifle
More or less stays like it is. Perhaps +1 dmg per shot since we buffed the assault rifle.

LMG
Burst count up to 12 or so. Longer warmup, a bit lower cooldown. Should have the highest sustained dps, but stays at the relatively low dmg per bullet. Gains a bit of range.

PS
Oh, and weapon ranges should be homogenized a bit. Most follow the 4-jump-rule, but there are some strange outliers. I suggest giving all weapons one of 16/24/32/40. 2-3 spaces more or less do not make a real difference in practice, but 8-tile-brackets feel noticable.

[O Negative]

Balancing weapons already in the game is all well and good, and it's good to stay on-topic. I get that.

If there are no plans to add more weapon types for different tech levels, then balancing now is a fine option. As long as all of the potential vanilla game weapons get into the game before any major effort spent balancing is done. You could balance all of the current weapons in the game right now perfectly, and then muck it all up with the addition of a single weapon. (Fairly easily, too)

Also, balancing weapons is easiest done in a spreadsheet, where you can visualize the effectiveness of a weapon more easily. At least, that's what I use when I balance them for my play throughs

[mumblemumble]

The idea that charge rifles are more common because they are modern brings up a very interesting question. If its common as a gun on the GLITTERWORLDS, how are they being supplied regularly to there?

Compare this to say, a tribal village out in the middle of nowhere, or just a frontier town. In the tribal village, a bow is MUCH more common as it is easy to produce, and nobody goes to the village to sell guns. Thus, little, if any guns show up.

Compare to a frontier town, they might produce their own firearms, wagons, axels ect, but NOT have state of the art laser sights, night vision, ect. This is because it must either come from WITHIN the area, or an outside source.

I guess with all the trade ships, its not farfetched to get a few, but I agree they should be rarer.

[PrZe77]

I think it would be good if colonists needed a certain level of weapon skills to use them safely. If a colonist has a lower rank, the accuracy and speed drops and there is the possibility that the colonist will damage himself or damage the weapon.
If a charge rifle blow your hand away, it will be less used ...

[Stormfox]

I think it would be good if colonists needed a certain level of weapon skills to use them safely. If a colonist has a lower rank, the accuracy and speed drops and there is the possibility that the colonist will damage himself or damage the weapon.
If a charge rifle blow your hand away, it will be less used ...

Not only is that an unrealistic change (how much more difficult can squeezing one trigger vs another be), but also would require more micromanagement (making sure there isnt a bad shooter that picks up the wrong weapon), add frustration (why can't my guy shoot that rifle, why do guns always explode in my face, why is that nice high-tech drop I got useless for the next 7 months), and add absolutely no positive gameplay elements.

[Arctic_fox]

my question is why do we assume that glitterworlds are common? i would think modern (i.e real life) level tech + or - a few years is more common, i think i read someplace that glitterworlds were quite rare infact as most worlds tended to either regress due to resource lack/lack of skilled people or bombed them selves back to the stone age.

sure CR would find there way to the open market any weapon will but we can make a few safe ASSUMPTIONS based on cannon, First glitterworlds are advanced and very low crime and most peoples needs are met so few people would wish or need to own a weapon so they wouldnt be all that common for john doe to own in most cases, Second glitterworlds do fail and go to war so some weapons on the market is obviously going to happen, Third some glitterworlds may be happy to trade weapons but others wont due to culture.

I think the problem is we can make them and power armor at a work bench easily, what we need to have happen is make them rare and very expensive and if you do craft them or power armor you need special parts from traders to finish them and make them work.

this would slove a lot of the CRs problems, Though this would still leave a lot of the other issues woth other weapons that were told are being worked on.

[Razzoriel]

I made a weapon rebalancing mod in that the charge rifle was refurbished as a PDW 3.0. It has the same range, but increased damage, accuracy in all departments and a drastically low warm-up rate, meaning it is a great hit-and-run firearm that gets outclassed by the Assault Rifle in long-range firefights, but better in nearly every other field. So it's not a Pump Shotgun 2.0 anymore, but something like a sidegrade from the Assault Rifle with more effectiveness nearly everywhere but longer range capabilities.

my question is why do we assume that glitterworlds are common? i would think modern (i.e real life) level tech + or - a few years is more common, i think i read someplace that glitterworlds were quite rare infact as most worlds tended to either regress due to resource lack/lack of skilled people or bombed them selves back to the stone age.

sure CR would find there way to the open market any weapon will but we can make a few safe ASSUMPTIONS based on cannon, First glitterworlds are advanced and very low crime and most peoples needs are met so few people would wish or need to own a weapon so they wouldnt be all that common for john doe to own in most cases, Second glitterworlds do fail and go to war so some weapons on the market is obviously going to happen, Third some glitterworlds may be happy to trade weapons but others wont due to culture.

I think the problem is we can make them and power armor at a work bench easily, what we need to have happen is make them rare and very expensive and if you do craft them or power armor you need special parts from traders to finish them and make them work.

this would slove a lot of the CRs problems, Though this would still leave a lot of the other issues woth other weapons that were told are being worked on.

I always took the assumption there's a line between modern and glitterworld tech which the CR fits in, where wars were still being fought (but in much less frequency) and the CR was the upgrade from common firearms those worlds invented.
Been testing it for the past two months. Since the gun is as common as it is in Vanilla, it's still an upgrade, but not as drastic as before, and I like it how it is.