Shotgun missing 1 foot away?

Started by cawsp, November 29, 2016, 11:53:03 AM

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cawsp

I have a 13 skill shooter with a good shotgun and from 1 foot away she missed like 15 shots in a row and eventually got killed by a 5 skill shooter with a sniper rifle. That is just stupid. At a 1 foot range a shotgun should have a very low chance to miss with anyone over a 5 shooting skill. Maybe it's just bad RNG but that doesn't make for a good story. It makes for a broken story. I would love it if I knew a shotgun was very good close range and I had to make the choice to run in close with it taking a risk for major damage or stay back for less effect.

As a person who hasn't played another game since purchasing RimWorld I sincerely hope this is part of the upcoming weapon changes.

Reaver

Was your shooter a frail, bad back, cataracts (or missing eyes), trigger-happy, one-armed old guy with really good skills? Was the area she was standing in lit, and the sniper's dark? Cover? Just really bad RNG? There must be a reason why you got unlucky.

Shooting I find is just one of those skills to be underwhelming to see in use and never can tell if I can rely on it or not (a level 20 shooter is kinda lame when compared to say a level 20 in a productive skill that has easily visible and rewarding outputs).

Maybe it's because I never reach level 20 shooting, even with skill loss turned off, and find just spamming bullets and pawns works better than any precision I might get, or the amount of effort needed to get that high level of skill.

cawsp

My shooter had no injuries and they were both standing in the dark outside no cover about a foot away from each other. I can see the dark having something to do with it and probably that mixed with bad luck but... it's a shotgun... I'll be honest, I've never used a shotgun before but I imagine a master at shooting can shoot a target one foot away with fairly good frequency even if it's darkish outside? at least better than an amateur with a sniper rifle trying to do the same.

Actually the funny thing is, the sniper rifle guy had an injury from one of my turrets so he should be even worse off!

Sharp

What do you mean by a foot?

If they were 1-4 tiles away then the shotgun should be winning, anything further away than 4 tiles the shotgun and sniper get around equal in accuracy.

Or could be a due to mods?

Scythah

Shotguns are definitely kind of underwhelming as far as weapons go. There's a few mods that make them better (Like combat realism) but they could use some tweaking in vanilla too.

Jarwy

Yes, guns have been in need tweaking for a long time now. Combat realism mod is a good direction to take the gunplay in Rimworld.

cawsp

It could be mods but I run a fairly slim build. By 1 foot away I mean if they were any closer the other raider would start melee. really as close as I could get her and still shoot. I only play on perma-death so this kind of uncertainty with weapons and skill makes me want to curl up behind my killbox and stay safe and boring :) I wish I could trust a shotgun creeping up behind a sniper would be successful. That would lead to some interesting tactics.

Here is a picture. It's almost point blank.



She had about 15 shots from that position before the sniper turned his attention to her. I was shocked with every miss.

Thyme

I use shotguns for hunting before I get hold of a Charge Rifle. They're quite nice in terms of firepower if you ask me.

For the dead colonists, what weapon qualities and conditions did you and the raider have?

Also, when throwing a coin, there's a solid chance to get head 10 times in a row. Forgot the numbers, but people tend to underestimate that.
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Elixiar

Shotguns should be the perfect weapons against horde assault from stuff like Manhunters or tribals but have kind of spread makes it pretty useless against individual targets.

Doesn't make much sense to me that it fires as a 'cluster'.

Never has.
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brcruchairman

Quote from: Thyme on November 29, 2016, 01:57:21 PM
Also, when throwing a coin, there's a solid chance to get head 10 times in a row. Forgot the numbers, but people tend to underestimate that.
P(heads)=0.5 [Given a fair coin.]
P(heads * 10) = 0.510~=0.00097~=0.1%.

Those are pretty low odds. Of course, if you throw a set of 10 coins in a hundred different trials, that increases the odds somewhat. More interesting to me would be this: save scum, try again, exact same conditions. If a similar result is had, then it's pretty suggestive evidence that it's not bad RNG but something in the code. If it's replicated in three trials, I'd be pretty confident in the results, especially if it's reproducible.

Quote from: Elixiar on November 29, 2016, 04:37:40 PM
Shotguns should be the perfect weapons against horde assault from stuff like Manhunters or tribals but have kind of spread makes it pretty useless against individual targets.

Doesn't make much sense to me that it fires as a 'cluster'.

Never has.

I'm inclined to agree; at extreme ranges, the spread is significant in real life, but over any reasonable Rimworld ranges (particularly those at which the shotgun is often employed) it's pretty close to a point-mass. Assuming one Rimworld tile equals 1 meter, the pump shotgun has an effective range of 16 m.1 At that range, you'd be looking at around a 5 inch-spread.2 Depending on the exact gun and barrel length, that spread may vary, but even with a relatively wide spread (e.g., one inch spread per yard of distance3) you'd be looking at a tight spread within a bit over a foot.

Contrasting this with what I've seen of the Rimworld shotguns, which seem to spread a few meters at the maximum range of 16 meters, this is a pretty significant difference. What I imagine as a more effective simulation (and more interesting gameplay mechanic) would be, if possible, having damage drop off with distance. For instance, in meatspace, a spread of 15 inches (the most generous estimate I'm using at a 16 m range; I'd welcome sources that show greater spread) could easily result in fewer pellets impacting the target. In game terms, that'd mean less damage.

But, by contrast, at close ranges, shotguns are fairly notorious for superior stopping power. While only slightly better when compared to rifles (within 5% one-shot incapacitation) when compared with handguns it's a solid 20-30%.4 When looking at fatality, a shotgun and rifle are more than doubly as lethal for torso shots, and significantly more for handgun.5

This seems to suggest that, in game terms, shotguns could provide an interesting compromise; a rifle would do comperable damage to a short-range shotgun, but have much greater range. In contrast, a shotgun would be slightly more likely to hit at greater ranges, but necessarily do less damage. This means there could be the interesting game dynamic of "Do I want high-probability, low damage shots at range, or low-probability, high-damage shots?" Personally, I like the idea of each gun being useful, just in different roles. (E.g., sidearms have quick target aquisition but reduced damage, making them useful for close quarters, rifles and shotguns being useful in an open field but having their own tradeoffs, etc.)

As for the OP's complaint, I do agree that the difference in outcome given the armaments and shooter skill is both unrealistic and, game-wise, no fun. From a realism standpoint, a sniper rifle is more unwieldy (though not by much) in close quarters than a shotgun at 1 m ranges. From a game standpoint, it's really frustrating when your level 15 pawn gets his butt kicked by a level 5 one.

As for the assertion that shotguns shouldn't miss at close range, that I would very much disagree with; any weapon short of a fragmentation grenade, if not or poorly aimed, will miss. Because at close range any firearm is effectively a point target (3 yard shotgun shots make one continuous hole6) the miss chance for any longarm should be comparable.

As a side note, it seems to make sense to me that handguns should not have reduced accuracy at close ranges, which would make them useful in-game. My first thought was that they would suffer reduced accuracy at close range due to the psychological panic factor, but a study of the NYPD seems to suggest otherwise.7 In fact, this seems to suggest that handguns or other handheld weapons would have a very useful niche in close contact scenarios. In meatspace, that's just a Thing. But in the game... that adds another interesting dynamic, namely that your ambush team of tunnel fighters may want hand weapons while your skirmishers and snipers may be well-served with rifles and shotguns.

In any case, all this is merely idle thought; my personal feeling is that making the guns of Rimworld more about role than simple hirearchy of "power" would be very fun. However, not everyone will agree, and that's okay. Similarly, I've made a lot of arguments based on meatspace; these are interesting, but there are many of the opinion that it's more important for the game to be fun than realistic. That, too, has merit, and if someone both believes (with good reason) that fun trumps realism, and that this more role-based rather than power-based firearms notion would not be fun, then I will happily acknowlege a difference of opinion and that their stance is perfectly rational and valid. :)

All that said, I'm curious; what do people think about this? Does this seem like a reasonable solution to the OP's problem? Does it seem fun? Or does it seem unnecesarry, inaccurate, or otherwise unacceptable?

References:
1: http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Pump_Shotgun
2: http://www.realpolice.net/forums/firearms-4/27706-shotgun-spread-patterns-pics.html
3: https://www.zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=84803
4: https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alternate-look-handgun-stopping-power
5: ibid
6: See #2
7: Page 7, http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/OIS.pdf

Zhentar

Quote from: cawsp on November 29, 2016, 01:53:45 PM
Here is a picture. It's almost point blank.



She had about 15 shots from that position before the sniper turned his attention to her. I was shocked with every miss.

That picture doesn't really show enough to be able to fully explain what happened, but it does reveal some important details. But I'll crunch some numbers for you anyway, considering a few different scenarios.

First, I'll note that the game considers those two pawns to be 2.83 tiles apart. Shooting skill is not particularly important at that short of a range. With no traits, a skill 13 pawn has a 97.5% base shooting accuracy, so 93.1% accuracy at that distance. A skill 5 pawn has has 95.8% base shooting accuracy, so an 88.6% accuracy at that distance.

2.83 tiles falls within the "touch" accuracy of weapons. A good, non degraded shotgun would have a touch accuracy of 84%. A normal, non degraded sniper rifle would have a touch accuracy of 50%.

It's dark, so that adds a 15% accuracy penalty. It's also raining, which is another 20% accuracy penalty.

So all combined, your shooter (assuming no traits or reduced capacities) would have a .931 * .84 * .85 * .8 accuracy per shot, or 53.2%.
The enemy would have .886 * .5 * .85 * .8 accuracy per shot, or 30.1%.

In the time to take 15 shots with a shotgun (again with no traits), the sniper rifle could be fired 5 times, giving your enemy an 83% chance of landing at least one hit, and with sniper rifles, one hit is often all that is needed with an unarmored pawn. But of course, that's not the part you are complaining about; it's the other part - at 53.2% accuracy, the odds of missing 15 times in a row are 1 in 13000. This is small enough that it's easy to round to "never", but do keep in mind that with hundreds of thousands of RimWorld players, a 1 in 13000 event with only a single trial per player will be encountered by dozens of them.

But there are other potential explanations as well. If your pawn was trigger happy, her accuracy at that range would drop from 93.1% to 64.6%, ending up with 36.9% per shot, bringing the odds of missing 15 times in a row down to just 1 in 1000. If "like 15 misses in a row" is actually 11 misses out of 12 shots (since a single shotgun hit is relatively unlikely to incapacitate an opponent) on top of that, then it's just 1 in 29 odds. Or if the shotgun was degraded, or your pawn was missing even a single finger, misses become substantially more likely.

cawsp

Hmm... that's really interesting. I will say that I am constantly amazed at how often the raiders get lucky shots. While they were shooting each other there was a part of me that was thinking "he's totally going to hit me before I even hit him once isn't he...".

After this raid was a siege and I played it very safe (stealing their mortars in the night like a thief). They only hit my colonists with two bullets but strangely enough the first bullet destroyed a colonists right arm and then second bullet destroyed another colonists left leg. I must just be getting very bad RNG this game.

Alenerel

How much weapon degradation affects accuracy and damage? Does happen the same with melee?

Daman453

Soo... i had this problem. Siege shows up, draft people... ok a level 0 shooter gets a sniper rifle... get my brawlers behind cover, have to dash across a plane. The sniper was got one shot off, and it hit my brawler... not only did it HIT it also TOOK OFF A LEG! 500 exp to that shot. It should be locked. 10 on wards can hit very small areas on the body, and level 0's can be lucky if they hit the body. I don't see a way without tweaking shooting skill, but it's so weird how level 0's can even aim the sniper and/or hit something with it. You wouldn't give a civ a high powered sniper rifle with no training after all. Maybe something where if you are low skilled and use a complex weapon, you have a chance of failing. Maybe a cut arm, or you shot your foot. Burns on your hands ect.
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Zhentar

Quote from: Alenerel on November 30, 2016, 09:24:14 PM
How much weapon degradation affects accuracy and damage? Does happen the same with melee?

Ranged weapon accuracy is reduced linearly from 100% of base accuracy at 100% health to 60% of base accuracy at 0% health (so 80% accuracy at 50% health).

Melee weapons have no accuracy; hit chance is dependent entirely on the pawn's melee hit chance stat (unless the target is immobile, where it's 100% accurate). Instead, melee weapon damage is affected, with the same linear reduction to 60% damage at 0% health.

Quote from: cawsp on November 30, 2016, 09:11:49 PM
Hmm... that's really interesting. I will say that I am constantly amazed at how often the raiders get lucky shots. While they were shooting each other there was a part of me that was thinking "he's totally going to hit me before I even hit him once isn't he...".

Your colonists are getting lucky shots all the time too. You just don't notice because it's the outcome you were expecting. The time a raider with a sniper rifle at a 2% hit chance faced a 50% hit chance from my expert sniper and ended up winning with a shot that shattered her pelvis, spelling my colony's destruction is pretty god damn easy to remember. The time the reverse happened I said "ha!" and moved on.

Quote from: Daman453 on November 30, 2016, 11:05:38 PM
The sniper was got one shot off, and it hit my brawler... not only did it HIT it also TOOK OFF A LEG!

Yeah, that's what sniper rifles do. 40 points of damage means it destroys whatever it hits unless it's well armored or the torso.

I agree that an army wouldn't go around giving their worse shooters sniper rifles, but I have a feeling you wouldn't actually be happier if the game started giving all the highest skilled raiders the most powerful guns instead of randomly gimping them with awful pistols and sandstone shivs.