Early gun balance

[Juku121]

Most pistols have aimRange 20, good ones 25... Really, saying they are more accurate than machine guns is just making a fool of oneself, and not even worth discussing.

If I'm making such blatantly foolish claims, it's surely easy to refute them and tell me e.g. the exact range at which an LMG matches or exceeds the aimed fire from a M1911 in terms of accuracy. Come on, inquiring minds want to know!

AimRange is not the beginning and end of accuracy calculations.

Otherwise, I agree that pistols have their uses and pitfalls, and sometimes it's good to promote gameplay over excessive realism. Pistols in battlefield situations is certainly an iconic example and as long as they inflict less damage, they already have a handicap that's really easy to ignore in DPS calculations.

[Eddie]

You need to clarify if you are talking about accuracy or efficiency. Rifles are more accurate at long rang, that is true. But if a rifle can do one shot at 80% accuracy, while a pistol can do four shots at 60% accuracy in the same time, the pistol is still the better weapon at range.

"Long range" is also not exactly defined. Is it 30 tiles? Or 40 tiles? Or something else?

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, if it's not aimRange, then I honestly have no idea what the problem is.

I don't even know who advocates what any more... Clearly everyone has their own model of what weapons should be like. That's fine, but 1) I also have one, 2) I don't get what some of you don't like about it (apart from pistols possibly having too fast aimed shots).

[Juku121]

It's about effective accuracy, i.e. the final numbers you see ingame (which aren't entirely... accurate , but that's not the issue here).

To be clear, I'm not pushing for any concrete changes. I just find some of the current accuracy values rather baffling. But I've not played using them, so this is largely theorycrafting, anyway.

I think the other posters' issue is that pistols can provide almost machine-gun-level volume of fire at quite practical ranges, which are probably in the 20-40 range.

[Solarius Scorch]

Ah, yeah, pistols fire fast. I agree it can get close to machine guns. But it's way less effective because of many reasons, so I think it's an accurate representation, more or less.

[Eddie]

I will post specific suggestions for better balance once I playtested them.

[khade]

Pistols are generally limited by their ammo, though I recall there is at least one machine pistol in this mod, which do have a decent amount of ammo.  Those could possibly have more limited range in general, they look unwieldy to me, at least.

[Eddie]

Allright, here is my take on balancing the early guns. Item file attached, so you can give it a try.
I used Accuracy*damage/Tu as a benchmark.

Pistols:
Generally, all pistols have dropoff 3. Keeps their effectiveness at range low.
Overall a reduction in efficency of about 25%. All accuracies above 50 reduced by 5. Cost slightly more tu to fire. At snap range, Glock & Beretta about as good as MP5.

SMG:
Generally have autofire range 11. I felt they needed that. Autofire is what SMG are for.
Snap accuracy increased by 5 for weaker guns. Snap efficiency of SMG now comparable to pistols of same caliber.
Minebea rework: similar efficiency like glock, but slightly better. A direct replacement of the glock. Increased accuracy, but two handed. Only 10% penalty for 1 handed use. It looks like it is two handed, so the change is like it having a 10% bonus for using it with two hands.

Precision rifles:
Hunting rifle and bolt action have snap range 20. Snapshot speed of hunting rifle same as bolt action. I figuered a hunting rifle would be a bolt action, so thats why same speed. Efficiency at range unchanged though, because of snaprange increase.
Nitro express: aimrange 25. It's not a sniper rifle. Now sniper rifles are not compleately obsoleted by that thing.
QBU-88: fires slightly faster so that you can do aimed + snap + a bit turning in one round.
SKS: snaprange 18.


Example for weapon selection: Glock vs. Hunting rifle
Range below 25 glock is better, for longer range Hunting rifle.

Hunting rifle vs. bolt action:
Hunting rifle for low accuracy agents, bolt action for high accuracy agents.

Colt .45 vs Uzi/Rak/Minebea:
SMG is better at range below ~14 tiles. Above that Colt is better. Minebea then again better at range above 25.

I have just changed a few weapons so far. I first wanted to change the ones I have encountered in game, so I can playtest.

List of weapons that I have changed so far:
Glock
Beretta
Colt
Magnum
Makarov
Tokarev
Snubnose
Light Pistol
Enfield Revolver
Minebea
Skorpion
Uzi
Rak
Sten
Hunting Rifle
Bolt action
SKS
QBU-88
Nitro Express

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks, I'll sit down and analyse it ASAP.

One thing that worries me is dropoff 3 on pistols. Sure, it's coherent, but remember the AI is using the same weapons, and pistols need to remain a threat.  The AI is not very bright, so I'm not sure it'd work out.

[Eddie]

I tried to consider enemy weapons. The weaker guns that only the enemy uses got less of a debuff than the top guns that you would use. Attached is the spreadsheet I used, so you have an easier time analysing.

Yes, pistol wielding enemies are less of a threat at long range. If you keep your distance, you can reduce their danger. If you have rifles, you can use that to your advantage and fight at long range.

You also have to consider that now a rifle wielding enemy is more of a threat to you (depending on your range). I think that is a good thing.

I guess it comes down to playtesting. If enemys can't hit shit, you can always increase their accuracy stat.


Edit: some explanation to the spreadsheet.
Damge is grouped as raw, per tu and per round. XCom rounds down, so Per tu is to see how much this rounding changes. Per round is useful to compare performance of aimed shot.
The shortrange bonus variable I used to simulate that you hit more the closer you are. For example at point blank nearly all shots hit. Put a negative value, and you can simulate dropoff by range.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks.

For now I:
- Nerfed the Nitro Express by giving it aimRange: 33.
- Gave autoRange: 11 to all baseline SMGs. It was an error from the very beginning.

Currently thinking about adding dropoff to pistols, but it's a pile of problems, as I'd have to do the same for SMGs.

[Eddie]

I thought about the dropoff 3 for SMG too. They don't need it, because they have generally lower accuracy. Dropoff is absolute, not a multiplier.

A pistol with accuracy 60 looses 30 points from dropoff and is at 30, so it got it's accuracy halved.
A SMG with accuracy 40 looses the same 30 points from dropoff, but is now at 10. So the SMG looses way more.

A dropoff of 3 for high accuracy pistols, while leaving it at 2 for SMG makes this comparison more fair.

[mumble]

I'm kinda worried that the black ops pistol is the mediore pick of the line : The rifle, assault rifle, sniper, auto sniper, shotgun, caws, and smg all are great, especially compared to their counterparts, but the black ops pistol has less damage than say, a colt 45, or some of the other bigger, non magnum pistols. Infact it only has 1 damage more than the SMG, while the smg has a much better DPS, capacity, and handles reasonably well.

I think maybe raising the power of the pistol up to 28 might be reasonable, to reflect the power its supposed to have, and make it more of an upgrade to pretty much all pistols (as blackops is supposed to be) since I feel like the smg is more worth having as a side weapon almost entirely

[Solarius Scorch]

I think maybe raising the power of the pistol up to 28 might be reasonable, to reflect the power its supposed to have, and make it more of an upgrade to pretty much all pistols (as blackops is supposed to be) since I feel like the smg is more worth having as a side weapon almost entirely

I had similar ideas, but was hesitating because of vanilla... Maybe it'd be a good idea, since now we have a wide selection of pistols.

[Eddie]

So Solarius, do you plan any further changes to balance?
I've did some more ruleset digging and found some examples that demonstrate the current state of things:

Pistol vs Rifle, example 1
QBU-88: snapshot - 63% acc, 30% tu, 29 dmg, snaprange 20
.45 Colt: aimed shot - 80% acc, 32% tu, 30 dmg, aimrange 20
The point of the QBU-88 is the fast and accurate snapshot capability. But on closer look, the aimed shot of the .45 colt does something very similar, but a lot more accurate. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Pistol vs Rifle, example 2
Famas: snapshot - 60% acc, 20% tu, 26 dmg, snaprange 15
Snubnose pistol: snapshot - 60% acc, 20% tu, 26 dmg, snaprange 15
The Famas has the exact same snapshot as the Snubnose. Does that make sense?


Now we can argue if pistols are way too strong or rifles way too weak. Solarius, what do you consider "standard" guns that you use to balance the others against? What is your standard pistol, your standard assault rifle, standard sniper rifle?
If I want to come up with some values that you approve, I would like to know what your idea for balance is. Like which gun should be worse than that gun, which gun should be an upgrade.