Ranged weapons, Nerfed?

[vanderpm]

On the subject of SP's, I have had to gain some SP's from armor crafting just to try to keep up with buying Ranged weapon plans

[rodrigoq]

Damage seems to have been drastically reduced.. Only 38 ranged fighter.. tried a few scowling goari with my trusty q40 pistol and q36 ammo.. I find goaris the only way to break even with ammo.. Well,, I basically had to stop and go melee to get enough goari mats to continue killing today.. usually I can keep myself supplied with ammo to kill constantly for about 30 min before having to resort to melee to get enough mats to make a full load to last me another 30 min.

NOT TODAY! 10 min later my 30 min of ammo was gone. Dealing about 55% of the damage I was before the patch. Can't do store bought mats for ammo.. damage is retardedly low, and would probably cost me 100k+ dap to make enough ammo to fight for 45 min.

Gues i'll just give up on ranged till i have a packer full of mats to supply me with enough ammo for a 5 hr hunting trip... by then i should be lev 100 melee...

[usinuk]

Damage seems to have been drastically reduced.. Only 38 ranged fighter.. tried a few scowling goari with my trusty q40 pistol and q36 ammo.. I find goaris the only way to break even with ammo.. Well,, I basically had to stop and go melee to get enough goari mats to continue killing today.. usually I can keep myself supplied with ammo to kill constantly for about 30 min before having to resort to melee to get enough mats to make a full load to last me another 30 min.

NOT TODAY! 10 min later my 30 min of ammo was gone. Dealing about 55% of the damage I was before the patch. Can't do store bought mats for ammo.. damage is retardedly low, and would probably cost me 100k+ dap to make enough ammo to fight for 45 min.

Gues i'll just give up on ranged till i have a packer full of mats to supply me with enough ammo for a 5 hr hunting trip... by then i should be lev 100 melee...

Well, I can confirm the above, being a nice 42 ranged combat 53/51 ranged crafting type.

Now seems to be that damage roughly corresponds to ql level - 20ish ammo was giving high 20s damage (with a ql27 pistol that has all choice/fine mats and max damage from some choice wood). 30ish was giving in the 30s. At least all choice ammo isn't giving 0 anymore...but this is not the type of 'adjustment' many of us had hoped for.

I find it interesting that the 9 mats I require to make a 12 pack of ammo is more than the 6 for boots, equal to to the 9 for a bracelet, and has the half life of about 1/1000000 of either of those.

I'll keep slowly going up the ranged tree by using melee along with ranged and let you know if anything changes. Now have launcher/autolauncher/rifle plans (oh, btw, there are 40 sp medium quality plans for them up the tree) and will shortly choose which 2h ranged ammo to start working on.

This skill needs love _badly_. I could live with the low damage and high costs if the range were, well, actually ranged. But when I have to pull a mob using a spell since my pistol stops at about 25m, and since there are no specialized fight skills besides aim-body-part, there are issues for those of you not willing to drop 500-1M creds in advancing this.

[lariva]

I'm talking basic ranged combat. Right now it is nearly worthless at higher levels. I'm not saying make it better than melee combat, nor am I saying make it cheaper than melee combat. I'm just saying that it needs to be evened out a little closer and that damage should somehow be tied in with skills and/or stats and not just ammo dependancy.

I have nothing to say on the subject of artillery because, right now, I cannot even make nor use artillery.

I think there should be a distinct differentiation between different types of combats.

As an example (not really thought through):

1) Fighers are oriented towards close combat with one or two relatively small mobs
2) Mages are long range, single mob orientation
3) Rangers multiple mobs, long range
4) Crafters just throw hammers around

This way each of the categories have their own purpose and to get maximum efficiency out of the group all parties are needed. Mages cant survive without fighers if mob gets too close; fighers need healing and stamina and none can stand up to things that rangers can; the catch for rangers? - cost.
You can take things out very quickly and efficiently but the cost is high. This way there are options and bricks for all types.

That was an attempt to be objective, in game I absolutely hate guaranteed max damage if a mob hits you during casting (why am I wearing that armor again?)

[lamitoma]

Up da clips to 32 or 64 ammo may be a solution ?

[tetra]

Up da clips to 32 or 64 ammo may be a solution ?

more like 200-400+ with the current mat usage on ammo. Go out hunting with some friends one night, cound how many times you cast a spell or swing your weapon over the course of the night. Take that number and divide by 12 to get the number of clips you will need. Take that number and multiply it by 9 to get the number of mats needed.

Lets be simple and say that you cast/swing 24 times per fight, deal with 40 mobs an hour, and hunt from around 8pm till 2am (6 hours)... I choose those times since that's about when I am normally on in the evenings.

That works out to 5760 attacks, which at 12 shots a clip is 480 clips, at 9 mats per clip that works out to 4320 mats for an evening of hunting.

At 12 shots per clip, it works out to 720 mats for every hour of hunting in a group with a ranged weapon.

At 32 shots per clip, that works out to 270 mats per hour for just ammo.

At 64 shots per clip, that works out to 450 mats per hour for just ammo.

At 100 shots per clip, that works out to 86 mats per hour for just ammo.

At 150 shots per clip, that works out to 57.6 mats for ammo per hour... a very possible number if your group doesn't mind you looting every single kill and assuming every mob drops useful mats for ammo making in the proper quantities.

At 200 shots per clip, that works out to 43.2 mats per hour of hunting in a group... again same problem.

At 300 shots per clip, that works out to 28.8 mats per hour of hunting in a group... getting within the realm of possibility, but that's right around the amount of mats needed for a full suit of heavy armor every hour....

At 400 shots per clip, that works out to 21.6 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

At 500 shots per clip, that works out to 17.28 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

At 600 shots per clip, that works out to 14.4 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

At 700 shots per clip, that works out to 12.3 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

At 800 shots per clip, that works out to 10.8 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

At 900 shots per clip, that works out to 9.6 mats per hour of hunting in a group.

To add to the stupidity of ammo mat consumption... if weapons came preloaded with a clip in them, it would be cheaper to just make weapons and delete them whenever it's first clip is empty since it takes more mats to make one clip of ammo than it does to make an entire pistol or rifle

[aether4u]

I simply mean that to be a feasable crafter - and by this I mean supply people with weapons - you need multiple plans. As such, a melee weapons crafter will often have many different types of plans. This becomes especially important once warriors get up and the tree splits because they will want to level up close combat/one handed to get extra skill points. Later on it breaks into different trees even.

But for ranged - there are basically only two hunting guns. Pistol and rifle. The "bow" weapons do the exact same damage as their counterparts, so it's just a graphical difference (much as the axe and sword are). And even if you bought every gun plan that's still only 6 plans. Weapons crafters get .. 10 or so. At 30 points a peice for the first plans, thats 120 points that the weapons crafter has to spend above the ranged to get *Every* weapon plan (which most wont do, but for demonstration). Factor in the medium quality plans that are 40 points each, and you see the skilll points starts to balance out.

So I just meant that ranged crafters dont really need that many plans to provide for people, since most people will just want a rifle. And like I said - it only seems daunting at first. Once you get higher and trees split you will have a flood of skill points.

I hope that makes sense.

Does a bowrifle and rifle have the same dmg/range potential then?

[vanderpm]

Does a bowrifle and rifle have the same dmg/range potential then?

damage, yes, range no.

[dpi209]

Right to start with, sorry for the long post

First a small correction:

But for ranged - there are basically only two hunting guns. Pistol and rifle.

You completely forgot the launcher and the autolauncher... That makes a total of eighteen ranged weapons (six weapons normal/med/high quality) and eighteen ranged ammo plans a crafter can buy, at total ((6*30+6*40+6*50)+18*100 - 30 - 100 =) 2390 SP to spend. There's a total of 30 melee weapon (10 weapons normal/med/high, correct me if I'm wrong) plans for a total of ((10*30+10*40+10*50) - 30 =) 1170 SP a crafter can buy. And the melee weapon crafter won't buy any "double" plans either, so if a ranged crafter has to decide between pistol and bowpistol, rifle and bowrifle and (how unfair to compare) launcher and autolauncher, the same applies to the melee crafter who can decide between sword and axe, mace and staff, pike and lance and so on. Well, doesn't look like the costs were equal...

To get back to the topic, there are some things to mention regarding ranged fight. Some of those who beta'd SoR will remember that there was a stanza "Hit Rate +" which got removed in favour of doubling the hit rate of weapons by default... But, and that's the cause for ranged weapons being so slow, this change was only applied to melee weapons.
Furthermore, ranged combat was neither never really balanced nor was it an objective in focus beta. Even worse, when there were objectives that covered fight, it was said only to use melee fight. And during focus beta, area effects were disabled for a long period of time. That lead to the actual situation, where a range fighter with a launcher is the only weapon that has a combat effectiveness that can be compared with a combat mage or melee fighter.

To summarize the current situation:
"bad" points of range fight:

• was "forgotten" when doubling weapons attack rate
• was not balanced yet
• doesn't have a damage output that is nearly adequate to melee fight
• is very expensive
• has only one stanza in the complete fight tree that can be applied
• although stamina use is minimal or zero, strength must be raised to be able to carry ranged weapons of higher levels

"good" points of range fight:

• problem with weapons' range fixed
• problem with damage when crafting ammo fixed
• area effects active (applies only to launcher)
• does not require any / require hardly any stamina

Unfortunately ranged fight is just now at the point where it can be balanced, before it wasn't really possible due to the problems that are now fixed and are listed under the "good" points. But, with the fight system at the current state of completion, balancing should not be too difficult.

From my pov, following steps should lead to a ranged fight system adequate to melee and magic:

• Adjust the weapons damage of all ranged weapons except the launcher by +40%
• Double the current attack rate so that it reflects the changes to melee weapons when the "hit rate +" action was taken out of the skill tree
• Reduce the amount of mats needed to craft a clip of bullets / rockets while doubling the current clip size. The amount of mats needed to craft one magazine should never exceed the amount of mats to craft the weapon the ammo can be used with.
• Double the bulk of ammo for sidearms ((bow-)pistol, (bow-)rifle)
• Reduce the bulk of launcher ammo from 15/rocket to 7/rocket, e.g. a magazine of 6 rockets had a bulk of 90, it is reduced to 42. Reduce the bulk of autolauncher ammo adequately; unfortunately I don't have any numbers here.

This won't balance ranged fight perfectly, but it should lead to a situation where ranged fight is at least usable...

[mordred3]

[QUOTE=dpi209]Right to start with, sorry for the long post

First a small correction:
You completely forgot the launcher and the autolauncher... That makes a total of eighteen ranged weapons (six weapons normal/med/high quality) and eighteen ranged ammo plans a crafter can buy, at total ((6*30+6*40+6*50)+18*100 - 30 - 100 =) 2390 SP to spend. There's a total of 30 melee weapon (10 weapons normal/med/high, correct me if I'm wrong) plans for a total of ((10*30+10*40+10*50) - 30 =) 1170 SP a crafter can buy. And the melee weapon crafter won't buy any "double" plans either, so if a ranged crafter has to decide between pistol and bowpistol, rifle and bowrifle and (how unfair to compare) launcher and autolauncher, the same applies to the melee crafter who can decide between sword and axe, mace and staff, pike and lance and so on. Well, doesn't look like the costs were equal...

I didn't forget the launcher and autolauncher, I specifically stated "hunting" guns. You do not "hunt" with a launcher and autolauncher. Considering launcher ammo weighs 45 for 3 shots and autolauncher ammo is lighter but still very expensive for only 6 shots. I did not state these weapons because they have almost no practical use outside of raid. Thus hunting weapons are pistols and rifles.

Skill points really are not the problem. It's cost and effectiveness.