DUST Search - Balancing the 4 ARs following EVE lore

Finn Colman wrote:

You also have to think about the physical part of this. As far as I'm aware these weapons are not all too different in shape, aside from the ornate Amarr Scrambler and Laser Rifles. I don't know the interior mechanisms, so I can't speak for the weight of each. In terms of accuracy for the ScR when ADS, since it's a laser (then again I don't know what happens when you use a laser in short pulses {I will admit that it would seem to stick a bit more closely to EVE} ) but I can say that shooting massless light can't really involve any sort of kick or lift on the front of the gun, meaning that it's accuracy would depend on the stability of the hands holding it. Perhaps the lense focus is a bit off when firing in pulses rather than in continuous lines.

The standard AR is longer than the CR, making it less maneuverable, and this is something I can't explain as to the physics part of it. The CR is also a projectile weapon meaning that it has all of the same kick as a modern gun, due to it's use of a rapid expansion of gas to propel a bullet. Personally from what I've heard about how the AR works, the main difference between it and an RR is a lack of the short pre-fire charge-up, lack of a handle to increase stability, and the projectile that it fires being a small container of plasma vs a bullet (both magnetically propelled as opposed to using something like gunpowder). Being that the AR and RR use the same propulsion I can only see that grip on the RR as a reason for increased accuracy, and I'm afraid it just doesn't cut it for me.

Those are my only critiques, and I'm sure you can enlighten me as to the reasons why I may be lacking in information, or where I could be misinformed. I don't want to claim to know it all (because if theres one thing I know, it's that I don't).

As for the gameplay and lore aspect, I approve.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 0 post(s)
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 50	Posted - 2014.04.16 10:24:00 - [1] - Quote I think I don-¦t have to explain the problem anymore: Rail Rifles dominate more or less everything. There are some situations where other ARs are better but they are few. It is the weapon with the highest range (keep in mind that there is not even a tactical RR released yet), great DPS and alpha damage. But other ARs have the same problem: The scrambler has the highest alpha damage, high RoF and thus DPS together with the second best range. All that simply doesn-¦t fit into EVE. There you have the spectrum with range on the one side and DPS and tracking speed on the other. So a turret either has good range and bad DPS and tracking speed or good DPS and tracking speed but short range, not both. Now let-¦s take a look into EVE turrets: Stats are taken from XLarge Turrets with Tech I -50% range ammo (Antimatter/EMP/Multifrequency) fitted to fully skilled Titans Note: Falloff Range is the difference between Effective and Optimal Range Optimal range in EVE is where you turret hits for sure, effective range is where 50% of your shots hit. Railguns have the best range but the lowest DPS and lowest damage per bullet. They-¦re highly accurate on long distance but when the enemy comes closer they can-¦t follow them anymore. After their optimal range they-¦re not that good and have the second shortest falloff range. Blasters are the opposite, the short ranged hybrid weapon system: They have the highest DPS with almost 2x the Railgun DPS but the worst range. Even their effective range is shorter than the rail guns optimal range. Their damage per shot is one of the highest, only beaten by Artillery shells and slightly by Pulse lasers. Autocannons are the short ranged projectile turrets. They feature the best RoF can thus out damage most other turrets after some seconds. They have a moderate damage per shot and the second highest DPS and but only a short optimal range. This is compensated by a quite good falloff range. Artillery turrets are the Autocannons long range counter part. Though its optimal range is the shortest of the long range turrets ist falloff range is the longest overall which gives it the highest effective range by far. Its damage per shot is the highest of all turrets but this comes at the expense of the lowest RoF. Pulse Lasers are the short ranged lasers. They have the best optimal range and damage per shot of all the short ranged turrets but only a moderate DPS and RoF and the lowest falloff range overall. Due the unique feature of laser turrets not to consume ammo and to instantly switch ammo types they don-¦t have to reload which balanced its overall DPS. Beam Lasers are the long range lasers. They have the lowest Damage per shot of all turrets but a quite decent RoF and thus DPS for a long range turret. This DPS is further increased due to not having to reload. Their falloff range is the second longest of all turrets which puts them on pair with rail turrets in effective range. So far about the turrets. As you can see is there the spectrum with DPS on one side and range on the other clearly visible. Now let-¦s get to the combat philosophies of the four main factions: Amarr: They are the steady horses of the empires. With emphasis on a large armor buffer, laser weaponry that doesn-¦t require ammo and the best capacitors their ships are suited for much longer battles than comparable ships of other factions. Their ships are usually bonused for sustained battle with bonuses to armor resistances and/or capacitor need. Caldari: Since it-¦s the smallest empire they have taken much effort in optimizing their ships for efficiency and thus multiplying the force of relatively small fleets. Their ships have the best range while still maintaining a good tank hence they are usually fitted with long range cruise missiles or railguns. Though they are quite good when fitted with short ranged torpedoes or blasters as they offset their downsides. Gallente: Gallente favor a quite offensive playstyle: get in range quickly and wreck havoc. Thus all their systems are geared towards this with damage bonuses, quite fast hulls, ewar that forces the enemy to come close and good repair systems for an active armor tank to not loose the mobility. Once in range their blasters and drones do insane amounts of DPS, even without bonuses. Minmatar: They are the most adaptable faction in New Eden. Their ships are often able to tank armor and/or shields, field either missiles or projectile turrets and have quite respectable drone capabilities so it-¦s hard to say how they will attack. Same with their tactics: Either the rush in quickly and deal a huge alpha damage at first and then get to safer distances again, or they stay far away in the effective range of their weapons and use their target painters and webbers to have the enemy still easy to hit at these distances. Most of their ships get bonuses to RoF get out even more damage more quickly. If you want to transfer this into DUST you need DUST equivalents to the EVE values. DPS is clear, range and tracking speed is a bit trickier since EVE range denotes accuracy not damage falloff. I-¦ve come to this key: Optimal range=accuracy when ADS Effective Range=hipfire accuracy, tracking speed=rotation speed when ADS, enlarging of the hipfire reticule when rotating The damage falloff should only depend on the type of weapon used and be a -x% per meter value that can be reduced by the sharpshooter skill. The damage drop should be the largest for blaster tech, followed by autocannon, pulse laser, beam laser, artillery and railguns. 1/2 @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 50	Posted - 2014.04.16 10:24:00 - [2] - Quote Conclusion: Amarr: sustained battles = Assault Best mag size and ammo capacity, best damage per shot, low-medium rof, good ADS accuracy, bad hipfire accuracy, moderate tracking speed Caldari: long range, high tech = Tactical Best ADS accuracy, worst hipfire accuracy, bad tracking speed, worst dps, either low rof medium damage charged shots or medium rof low damage uncharged shots, semi auto, moderate magazine size Gallente: short range, DPS focused warfare = Breach Good damage per shot, good rof, best dps, worst ADS accuracy, medium hipfire accuracy, best tracking speed, moderate magazine size Minmatar: skirmish warfare, Hit-¦n-¦Run = Burst Best rof, medium damage per shot, good hipfire accuracy, bad ads accuracy, good tracking speed, worst magazine size The differences between the values especially of damage, rof and range should be big differences unlike now where they are only minor ones. The dps of a rail rifle (tactical) should be about the half or 2/3 of that of a plasma rifle (breach). Also should each faction keep it-¦s major attribute for other AR variants. So would the breach rail rifle have a better ADS accuracy than other breach ARs, while a tactical combat rifle would still have a better rof than other tactical ARs. The tactical combat rifle would also be unique as it would fire several bullets in rapid succession when fired charged, as you can-¦t charge a bullet. With all these changes the four ARs would be balanced among each other and fit into eve lore. Cheers, Aml @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 50	Posted - 2014.04.16 13:05:00 - [3] - Quote Mordecai Sanguine wrote: What i've understand : - Amarr have been screwed up. We have reload, we have ammo, we are NOT good in longer battles. We have bigger PG/CPU cost on our weapons. And our EXTRAORDINARY ability to have resistance and long batttles is.... 30 hp more.......Which is erased at the end once fitted... Amarr is been done so wrong. Learn to read! I was talking about Amarr in EVE and that they should be like it in DUST too. @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 51	Posted - 2014.04.16 21:11:00 - [4] - Quote Mordecai Sanguine wrote: Aeon Amadi wrote: Mordecai Sanguine wrote: Aeon Amadi wrote: Mordecai Sanguine wrote: What i've understand : - Amarr have been screwed up. We have reload, we have ammo, we are NOT good in longer battles. We have bigger PG/CPU cost on our weapons. And our EXTRAORDINARY ability to have resistance and long batttles is.... 30 hp more.......Which is erased at the end once fitted... Amarr is been done so wrong. No-one has very good long-battle survivability except players with good gun-game. And part of having good gun game is knowing what battles you can and cannot win; something that gets kind of skewed when weapons that are to perform in certain conditions are bested by other weapons in those conditions: An AR getting bested by a CR in CQC, for example. CR has a higher potential DPS, lower fitting requirements, longer range, etc. PG/CPU cost doesn't mean anything on weaponry if it's powerful. Scrambler Rifles have the ability to perform a charged shot for x2.9 the damage; which can one-shot some standard suits. That's a lot of power that needs to be balanced out. Since Prof changes and damage nerf actually it can't OS any suit in the game. Scrambler rifles are ***** since Update, they don't worth their x2 PG cost. I'll run my Scrambler Rifle tonight (I don't have Proficiency but I do have Operation 5) and record it; see if I can land some OHKs. I can OHK Proto Scouts with my Ion Pistol so I'm almost positive I can OHK some people with a Scrambler. Can you get back to topic? YEAAAH you had OHK a 100 ehp suit....charging a shot during about 2.5 sec.... 2.5 sec is how much damage from an another weapon ? 800/1500 ? @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 53	Posted - 2014.04.17 19:54:00 - [5] - Quote Jillic wrote: Actually, I've been wondering about this as well, I came to the same conclusions, just never posted on the forums. Though, I have to nitpick your choice of Amarr as assault and Caldari being Tactical, but that's mainly due to the SCR being semiauto and it's charge function. EDIT: And that's so much of a gray area due to the sniper rifle being caldari. Disregard, I agree completely after further thought. As stated above would these be the basic variant of the weapons. The basic scrambler rifle would then be like the assault one is now, the basic rail rifle would be kinda like the basic scrambler is now, just with other value for damage etc. @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 54	Posted - 2014.04.18 06:42:00 - [6] - Quote Jillic wrote: AmlSeb wrote: Jillic wrote: Actually, I've been wondering about this as well, I came to the same conclusions, just never posted on the forums. Though, I have to nitpick your choice of Amarr as assault and Caldari being Tactical, but that's mainly due to the SCR being semiauto and it's charge function. EDIT: And that's so much of a gray area due to the sniper rifle being caldari. Disregard, I agree completely after further thought. As stated above would these be the basic variant of the weapons. The basic scrambler rifle would then be like the assault one is now, the basic rail rifle would be kinda like the basic scrambler is now, just with other value for damage etc. So the standard SCR would become the ASCR Standard RR would be a tac semi auto Standard CR would stay the same But the Standard AR would be a Breach, doesn't the breach AR have a longer range, lower ROF? EDIT: So the proposed change is Amarr - Tactical to Assault Caldari - Breach to Tactical Gallente - Assault to Breach Minmatar - Burst to Burst Yes but CCP should change so that Breach is simply better DPS by improving both damage per shot and RoF on the expense worse ADS accuracy. The crappy ADS accuacy would automatically reduce the range it can be used at. @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 58	Posted - 2014.04.19 06:45:00 - [7] - Quote Jillic wrote: You can change your turning speed in the options menu, for both ADS and hipfire. Are you saying that this feature should be removed and instead rely on the weapon? If that's the case, suits should affect turning speed as well. While I advocate a change for the rifles themselves in damage, ROF, range, accuracy and whatnot, I don't necessarily support your idea for altering the turning speed. Not yet at least. Baby steps, my friend. Well, I'm saying since the beginning of Closed BETA. Suits should have their turning speeds, weapons should have modifiers for that for each hipfire and ADS @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003
AmlSeb Molon Labe. General Tso's Alliance 66	Posted - 2014.04.24 14:54:00 - [8] - Quote Finn Colman wrote: You also have to think about the physical part of this. As far as I'm aware these weapons are not all too different in shape, aside from the ornate Amarr Scrambler and Laser Rifles. I don't know the interior mechanisms, so I can't speak for the weight of each. In terms of accuracy for the ScR when ADS, since it's a laser (then again I don't know what happens when you use a laser in short pulses {I will admit that it would seem to stick a bit more closely to EVE} ) but I can say that shooting massless light can't really involve any sort of kick or lift on the front of the gun, meaning that it's accuracy would depend on the stability of the hands holding it. Perhaps the lense focus is a bit off when firing in pulses rather than in continuous lines. The standard AR is longer than the CR, making it less maneuverable, and this is something I can't explain as to the physics part of it. The CR is also a projectile weapon meaning that it has all of the same kick as a modern gun, due to it's use of a rapid expansion of gas to propel a bullet. Personally from what I've heard about how the AR works, the main difference between it and an RR is a lack of the short pre-fire charge-up, lack of a handle to increase stability, and the projectile that it fires being a small container of plasma vs a bullet (both magnetically propelled as opposed to using something like gunpowder). Being that the AR and RR use the same propulsion I can only see that grip on the RR as a reason for increased accuracy, and I'm afraid it just doesn't cut it for me. Those are my only critiques, and I'm sure you can enlighten me as to the reasons why I may be lacking in information, or where I could be misinformed. I don't want to claim to know it all (because if theres one thing I know, it's that I don't). As for the gameplay and lore aspect, I approve. Okay, we can leave some physics outside as EVE does it too but I actually have some ideas how it could be explained. Pulse Laser recoil: Active cooling mechanisms like the little slide at the end of the scrambler pistol. idk if the rifle has one too but i think so. The lense focus due to heat would do a good explanation as well. AR vs CR vs RR manoeuvrability and accuracy: Gallente have a pretty good research department and could use more advanced materials for the ar to make it lighter. The rail rifle could have had a quite strong kick initially which was compensated by making the gun heavier and adding the grip to get better control over it. This would have lead to worse manoeuvrability in CQC. Also AR and RR just use the same ammo. Rails fire the whole bullet consisting of metal shell and plasma core whereas blasters use the plasma only and ionize it and then use a strong electric magnet to propel that ionized ball out. The shell remains in the weapon and is thrown out like a regular cartridge. @AmlSeb on Twitter BPO exchange: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1852003