Community Discussion Reseach to fix ammo loss

[Ruggerman]

If the game has been written, with new weapons, like the Plasma, and Lasers, in that they lose their magazine holding capacity, within the ground combat, will there be a research project, to stabilize and or increase the magazine holding capacity of such weapons.  

Edited September 24, 2019 by Ruggerman

[Max_Caine]

Bear in mind the only weapon type at the moment which wil loose ammo is the plasma type - no other weapon type does that. 

[Ruggerman]

Armies don't issue weapons that have less than optimal performance to their troops, as it would be a dereliction of duty, to those in their care.

I can't help but think, that this is a design failure, as an a temp to cover a whole.

May need to go back and redesign this one!!

Also the Laser weapon with their Walmart Batteries don't help

This game needs to be fun, as well as challenging, and be able to be set at different levels of difficulty, if not this may be the end of the line.

[Max_Caine]

Quote

Armies don't issue weapons that have less than optimal performance to their troops, as it would be a dereliction of duty, to those in their care.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the SA80, a useless bloody weapon if there ever was one.

Amies do mess up procurement, and goverments do buy things for national defence that are totally unfit for purpose. My country in particular has a long and sordid history of buying crap that doesn't work, such as horrible engines in their Main Battle Tanks.  Ok? Ok. 

Now, moving on. Here, try this:

laser_rifle.json

I've modded the laser rifle. It still has a three-shot power cell, but that cell now refreshes completely at the start of every turn. You get infinite ammo without having to spend TU on reloading at the cost of having a much smaller ammo count per turn. You'll find that not having to carry around extra power cells and being able to fire roughly the same number of shots that you would with the ballistic rifle every turn makes the laser rifle more interesting to use.

Now, let's discuss the different rifle types. As far as range and TU cost are concerned, currently all rifle types (ballistic, laser, plasma and gauss) have the same stats. Currently, the biggest difference betwen them is the amount of raw damage they do and the ammo they have. Ballistic does 30 and has 20 shots, laser does 45 and has 3, gauss does 55 and has 20, plasma tops out at 70 and has 12. Plasma currently looses 2 shots a turn, meaning that with no other intervention, the cell will drain in 6 turns. countered against that, each time the shot connects, it will do 133% more damage than the ballistic rfle, or 27.7% more damage than it's closest competitor, the gauss rifle. As things stand currently, I'd use the plasma rifle as it's the top dog in the damage game but with caveats - I'd unload if I could the weapon at the start of the game, and only load it just before I'm certain I got into a fight. I'd only give it to top line operators, because each shot on this thing is precious. what I'd do with it is probably decrease the degeneration rate (possibly to 1 a turn), or boost the size of the cell, or probably both, so that ammo ticks away without it ticking away too quickly.  

[Coffee Potato]

You could go the XDiv route, and mess with armor penetration stuff. Like Plasma may rule for raw damage, but lasers may penetrate better, etc. 

Some could have bonus stuff, like the plasma rifle setting the ground on fire when it hits. 

Or maybe gauss chews scenery. 

Or maybe go the Ogre Battle route and have them reduce stats in such a way that seems random, only to discover 10 years into playing the game that the devs thought ahead 4000 steps to some bizarrely specific scenarios (looking at you Maces). 

Or maybe do the UFO thing, and have ranges matter more. 

Or do the Silent Storm thing, and have everything cost more TUs, to try to make the standard rifles seem almost worthwhile. 

Or pull a Long War, and have weapons that suck to keep in rotation, but don't really have many non logistical or range related downsides. 

[Ruggerman]

So is that to mean, that the people who write this game, are just going to give the players what they deem fit, just like some countries procurement system, and not develop better euipment.

The back pack and utility belts, are also of value.

 

[Coffee Potato]

6 hours ago, Ruggerman said:

So is that to mean, that the people who write this game, are just going to give the players what they deem fit, just like some countries procurement system, and not develop better euipment.

The back pack and utility belts, are also of value.

 

Oh yeah, get some Jagged Alliance in there!

[Chris]

Potentially yes. But your logic doesn't make any sense Ruggerman - sounds like you just want every weapon to be good at everything. Be really powerful, be accurate, have lots of ammo capacity, etc, and anything less is unrealistic nonsense. But that's boring. Plasma weapons do a lot of damage but plasma ammo is difficult to stablise, that's the trade-off for the extra damage.

Anyway, leaving aside the fact you're playing a video game where balance is important, in real life weapons have to make trade-offs too ... like a .50cal sniper rifle can't fire 300 rounds per minute. I guess that's also dereliction of duty by the US Army in your view? 

[Ruggerman]

Soldiers tend to ditch unreliable weapons, as they don't wont to be in that situation were you pull the trigger, and all you hear is "Click, Click," Soldiers are trained to go through their AI's when a weapon stops working, but if the weapon falls outside there training expectations, you find another one quick!!

When your life is on the line, you want certainty, and if that means double tapping the enemy, then that how it is.