Tebu Gan
Dem Durrty Boyz
General Tso's Alliance
1253
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Posted - 2015.01.30 20:31:00 -
[1] - Quote
Guess what guys, for 2 days in a row now, I have played Dust. And today might be the third! What's changed? Well nothing really aside from destiny finally becoming boring more or less. Dust is still more or less Dust, but more specifically for me, TANKS ARE THE SAME! So nothing new there for me!
Tebu's ideas
Above is a link to my trello, thanks for turning me on to it Rattati. It's MUCH better than using my old sticky note method, and very easy to record thoughts before they slip my mind. Anyways, it has a few thoughts and idea's in there that might prove useful to someone out there. Now that I have that thrown out there, I want to talk about tanks, specifically turrets.
Turrets and Tanks
There is talk of changing up turrets as some are overperforming, others underperforming, and some confused on what they want to be. What ever shall we do! Well for starters let's look at rails.
Rails
Overperforming much? Maybe just a little or maybe it just seems that way. Rails can fill the role of anti AV (at most any range) with limited AI functionality. They are in my opinion very versatile and definitely a favorite of mine. But let's ask why, and how this makes them a possible over performer.
Range - It's the ultimate ranged weapon. It's a sniper mounted to a TANK. This is something I feel doesn't get enough attention, and unless it does, it will forever hold it's glory or be nerfed into oblivion. The problem with rails atm as is seen by Rattati, is that it's too good in close range. To that I say DUHHH.
The issue here is that you have not focused on what is it's greatest strength! Not addressing that range is the issue will lead you to further increasing the heat cost, reducing the number of shots, thereby making it an extremely long process to drop anything. Meaning brawling with a blaster or missile will most certainly mean short and swift death.
But I feel that not only hurts it in CQC, but also at range. What good is this AV weapon if I can't kill something unless I get a full 20 seconds to beat on it. A lot happens in this time and forever will kills slip away from a railer. A good thing, yes. But what if I want to actually kill something and not just be a support AV weapon.
As range increases, you need to increase the time it takes to make a kill. Conversely, as you decrease range, decrease the TTK. I would rather see this done with Damage per shot, than I would heat cost, but best of all, I want it seen doing both with different turrets. A rail at a range 400 M, making small, but consistent damage, or a rail doing large damage but over longer period of time then we have now.
So I'm saying yes it's a good idea to increase heat cost, but not a favorite of mine as you will just make rail tanks redline snipers without giving them what THEY NEED. An option to brawl that is. Options are limitless here.
Brawler rails:
Moderate damage, high ROF, low heat cost. Consider adjusting ammo for additional balancing options.
High damage, low ROF, moderate heat cost. Consider ammo per clip for additional balancing options.
Long range rails:
Low damage, High ROF, lower heat cost. Higher than normal ammo per clip.
High damage, low ROF, High heat cost. Lowest ammo per clip.
Honestly, turret variety is sorely needed and missed, and I think will help you along with balancing tanks as a whole. Too much is trying to be done with too little, in my opinion of course.
Blasters
Some would say these are the underperformers. Wholly disagree. They work really good against shield tanks! The issue here is range, AGAIN. But something else needs to be considered along with it, AI functionality.
While I can get kills with a rail, a blaster has much more potential in making the kills. I say potential because I'm not the greatest killing infantry. Just not my thing, but something I'm working on improving in the future. I have seen people slaughter infantry with them, even in their current state. And over a rail, at the very least I can damage infantry far more effectively than I can with a rail. So considering the AI functionality, I would say no, they ARE NOT UNDER PERFORMING.
If you want a blaster to perform well against other armor, then they should lose much of this functionality, much like you did with rails and splash damage. There is talk of using an active modules to increase AI functionality, by reducing dispersion. So if they are to kill infantry, much easier than they do now, why in the world do you want them performing in the AV department as well. Not to mention that a module decreasing dispersion not only helps against infantry BUT OTHER VEHICLES AS WELL.
Thing is, we had blaster that not only killed infantry but other tanks with ease. It made blasters king and severely skewed usage for many top players to use only those due to the immense diversity they offered. I say focus on one or the other. But not to say that you can't go with a module to improve AI ability.
But it would again be best to offer diversity in turrets (I know this my not mesh with the grand master plan Rattati has but maybe it can give some ideas). Just an example of how this could work.
AP
Low damage, high RoF, built in active dispersion module - Increase TTK against infantry but make it very possible make the kill.
AV
Higher damage, low RoF, lots of dispersion, no module - Hits harder, but nearly impossible to make a kill against infantry, good against other tanks. Dispersion makes it hard to hit another tank at optimal, might need to be addressed in some way.
I'll add more in the future but that is it for now. I would very much like to see some diversity though come to turret types. Don't know if that is even in the game plan but I feel it really should be if you actually want to balance out and emphasize the differences between them.
Tanks - Balancing Turrets
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