General Category > Plot and Game World

Playing with half mecha damage and half speed accuracy penalty (a victory dump)

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Ephafn:
I don't really see why high BV weapons are inherently overpowered. A BV 4 DC 5 weapon is pretty much equivalent to a BV 1 DC 20 weapon in most aspect (both destructive power and cost), correct? The accuracy bonus is compensated by the need of a bigger roll to hit with all of the bullets too.

As for scatter, I always considered it as weapon disadvantage, not as a bonus. With it, you get the spread the damage over all the target surface, making it unlikely to destroy components (especially the torso or the head) quickly.

Frumple:
The thing with scatter is that it pretty much always hits. When the biggest thing stopping you from destroying the enemy is plain ol' hitting them, that's pretty huge, especially for low(er)-stat characters. Basically, it doesn't really matter how much less damage it does (and it doesn't do less, per se, just less focused. More focused is better, of course, but...), any damage is more than you'd be doing if you missed. Since there's a number of statii inflicting scatter weapons to boot, they're bloody close to the best 'opening' weapon you've got -- for a while, at least.

S'basically the same thing with the BV. You'll have a harder time doing full damage, but any damage is more than none at all. Other weapons can be more effective, but there's a comparatively greater investment involved to get that to happen. BV and SCATTER (And it's blast and line compatriots, of course.) are just more effective at lower investment levels.

The damage they do still increases as your skills do, too, so they've got a longer 'shelf life', so to speak, of usefulness... in my opinion, of course. Non scatter/low-no BV weapons are still pretty bloody capable of shredding everything that moves... just not with a low gunnery score.

EDIT: Actually, thinking on it, there might be more going for BV weapons than I was keying on. The big thing on that BV4 DC5 vs NoBV DC20 weapon would be the DC20 one would be a perception rather than reflex weapon, which is a point in BV's favor. M'also fairly (but only fairly, I'd have to check) sure that the DC20 weapon would be a fair bit heavier than the DC5 one, which would be point the two.

I think it'd ultimately mean that the average no-BV weapon would realistically cap at DC 10, not 20, at least without involving a fairly notable defense malus (from having to invest in perception to get equivalent rolls.).

I find myself curious if anyone's crunched the damage/tohit numbers of a XP-equivalent pure gunnery vs gunnery + spot weakness character, now that I think about it. Say 20k into gunnery on one, 10k into MG and SW on the other, see how things turn out. Maybe take artmoney to the thing after a while, I guess. At higher levels when cash-training lets things get silly, it's not that big of a deal, but earlier on, that tohit bonus is probably the more desirable option... I think, anyway. Heh.

Ephafn:

--- Quote from: Frumple on May 12, 2010, 05:37:03 PM ---
The thing with scatter is that it pretty much always hits. When the biggest thing stopping you from destroying the enemy is plain ol' hitting them, that's pretty huge, especially for low(er)-stat characters. Basically, it doesn't really matter how much less damage it does (and it doesn't do less, per se, just less focused. More focused is better, of course, but...), any damage is more than you'd be doing if you missed. Since there's a number of statii inflicting scatter weapons to boot, they're bloody close to the best 'opening' weapon you've got -- for a while, at least.

--- End quote ---


I hadn't realized that scatter worked the same as a radius 0 blast. Looking at the code (note: HasAreaEffect returns true for SCATTER weapons):

--- Code: ---
{ If this is a blast attack, dodging becomes harder. }

if HasAreaEffect( AtDesc ) and ( AtRoll <= DefRep.HiRoll ) then begin

{ For every time the defense roll beat the attack roll, }

{ the damage of the attack is reduced by half. }

if AtRoll < 1 then AtRoll := 1;

T := DefRep.HiRoll;

while T >= AtRoll do begin

T := T - MOSMeasure;

ER.FXDice := ER.FXDice div 2;

end;

if ER.FXDice < 1 then DefRep.HiRoll := AtRoll + 1

else DefRep.HiRoll := AtRoll - 1;

end;


--- End code ---

In short, beside the fact that the damage get spread over all the target body, SCATTER weapons are strictly better than equal weapons with half the DC and +5 to ACC (MOSMeasure = 5). That's quite good for a modifier which doesn't increase the cost of weapons (as can be seen on SCATTER ammunition costing the exact same as normal ammunition).

plllizzz:
IMO, to balance that, scatter weapon range should be near-melee range, where the probability of hitting someone is high regardless

long-to-mid range scatter weapons should be removed, leaving those with range about 2-3 tiles [still a nice distance in SF: 2]

avestron:
I would suggest that scatter weapons suffer damage and penetration penalties at medium and long range respectively (Like a shot gun).

Problem solved.

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