[Discussion] Weapon Balancing

Hi there

Since NC is going back to the roots i want to discuss the weaponbalancing. I did some research in the past and analysed the inflicted damage of most rare weapons on a runner.

First of all, the data:

EDIT: Not that easy to read but u'll get in it. :)

Rifles R-C	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Efficiency in %
Disruptor	Energie 231/177,265	Fire 99/75,974		76,7381/76,7414
Ionic Shotgun Rifle	Piercing 404/193,806	X-Ray 330/158,568		47,9718/48,0509
First Love	Energie 159/91,138	Force 39/22,784		57,3195/58,4205
Silent Hunter	Piercing 1111/531,408	Force 277/132,847		47,8315/47,9592
Ray of God	Energie 433/202,730	X-ray 185/86,882		46,8199/46,9632
Ronan Sniper	Piercing 202/96,909	Poison 135/64,606		47,9748/47,8563
Dex 113 AK	Piercing 45/30,323	Poison 45/30,303	Stack 11/9,132	67,3844/67,34/83,0182
Dex 108 AK	Piercing 42/43,009	Poison 42/28,673	Stack 10/5,736	102,4024/67,269/57,36
Libra	Piercing 63/48,800	Force 15/12,206		77,4603/81,3733
Healing Light	Energie 393/225,067	Xray 98/56,261		57,2519/57,4092
FAR-6000	Piercing 66/44,395	X-ray 29/19,917		67,2652/68,6793
HEAVY WEAPON H-C	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Efficiency in %
Cursed Soul	Energie 118/90,024	Xray 29/22,502		76,2915/77,5931
Ravager	Energie 190/127,200	Fire 47/31,805		66,9474/67,6702
Devourer	Fire 283/176,762	Poison 141/88,381	Stack 70/17,864	62,4601/62,6816/25,52
Ionic Shotgun	Force 136/64,094	Piercing 346/162,735	X-Ray 204/97,641	47,1279/47,0332/47,8632
Equilibrium of Forces	Piercing 50/38,798	X-Ray 12/9,709		77,596/80,9083
Creed	Energie 511/243,504	X-Ray 127/60,884		47,6524/47,9402
PISTOLS P-C	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Efficiency in %
Crossbow	Energie 155/148,605	X-Ray 207/99,074		95,8742/47,8618
BHG-9mm	Piercing 262/125,844	Fire 175/83,891		48,0321/47,9377
Slasher	Energie 125/83,967	Fire 53/35,999		67,1736/67,9226
Ionic Shotgun	Piercing 558/286,321	X-Ray 358/171,793	Poison 239/114,529	51,312/47,9869/47,9201
Liberator	Piercing 63/48,395	Force 21/16,142		76,8175/76,8667
dreakfire Prototype	Piercing 53/40,850	Force 13/10,207		75,472/78,515
SWAT Backup Gun	Piercing 114/54,669	Fire 38/7,328		47,955/19,284
Ray of Last Hope	Energie 350/166,082	X-Ray 150/71,175		47,452/47,45
Craftmans Dream	Piercing 313/149,228	Poison 104/49,732		47,677/47,819
MELEE M-C	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Efficiency in %
TsuTsu	Piercing 200/95,296	Fire 66/31,770	Force 13/6,360	47,648/48,136/48,923
Devils Grace	Piercing 139/66,672	Energie 83/40,000	X-Ray 56/26,672	47,965/48,193/47,629
Knuckles	Force 85/41,104	Piercing 51/24,665	Fire 34/16,439	48,358/48,363/48,35
AGGRESSIVE PSI USE	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Dmgtype	Efficiency in %
Fire Apoc	886/411,931			46,493
Holy Frustration	Energie 701/328,339	Fire 175/82,085		46,839/46,906
Holy Lightning	864/402,753			46,615
Toxic beam	217/101,402			46,729

All values are done on headzone

Since KK said they have balanced everything through the Techlevel of the weapons and added bonusdmg on hightech/epic/rare and Woc weapons i wonder why some weapons do way more dmg on player than others. This is the explanation. Disruptor and AK do way higher dmg based on its TL and bonusdmg than other cause their efficiency is much higher.
On the other hand it explains why there are kinda no meleetanks or apu anymore. They just have no weapon which deals based on its TL that much dmg. The efficiency on their given weapons/spells are just too low to be compared with weapons/spells from other weapontypes.
One question i ask myself is: Why do we have these unbalancing between the weapons? I mean the balancing was given due to its TL and bonusdmg but behind the scenes we got an efficiency of every weapon which creates the true inflicted damage on players.

ps: some of you may know now why i prefer the EoF that much. :P

I hate guessing when it comes to numbers with that much post point digits. How you calculate your "efficiency " is quite obvious. But that input data leaves some questions. I assume the first number of a damagetype is the value stated on the weapon information, whereas the second one is the one found in the damagelog of the runner who got shot.
So your efficiency is the coefficient between damage a weapon is said to do and the damage it actually deals. In my opinion that is truely not a value to use for balancing reasons.

For balancing I rather use damage dealt in a minute or second as a starting value and take into account what players could do against that type of damage and if it's single target (with or without the need of a closed reticle) or aoe.
And that are only basic thoughts.
I do agree that some rethinking and rebalancing of weapon damage would be cool, but it has to be done in a proper way.

Balancing all classes will be a long task, I'll be the first to admit. Its a lot of numbers and calculations, there are a lot of factors in balancing weapons, armor and mobs. I will help in any way I can with whatever data I can provide but fixing of major game world bugs is first on the list (or so I've seen).

Also, just a reminder let's keep this thread nice clean and neutral. Everybody will have their own opinion on balance and I trust we will all respect that :)

@ Grogor: You assumed it right. sorry forgot to explain it. :(

In my opinion weapons are balanced for PVE because they recieve the dmg showed up in the info reduced by some resis the monsters have. It means = highest TL kills fastest. Damage with its frequency is fine. Thats why i just picked 2 information to calculate the efficiency.

Singleshot/aiming and protection of the classes are points to consider. Just my thoughts:

Singleshot weapons: If i would compare singleshot and burstweapons im a bit slutty with fireing burstweapons. On singleshot weapons i try to aim with best precision. On burstweapons sometimes i give a shit and think "RAWRRrrr, so much plasma, next burst will hit". As faster the frequency is as more i become slutty with aiming sometimes. Means: If i aim my burstweapons just as i do with my singleshot weapons i would the same damage.

Aiming: The Aiming is fine at it is. Push enough T-C/WEP to reach aimcap and its fine. If you wanna be faster skill less T-C and dont get the reticle closed that fast.

Protection: This can be an old discussion like "A tank needs the best protection, cause every other class has enough INT to become a tradeskiller". This is still true but the current resis of all chars are too low. As a spy/monk apu you get barely over 50% resistance. As a PE somewhere between 50-60%. A Tank comes over 60% and thats not as much as we had before 2.2. If there would be more armor and maybe with available slots if build it could be very nice. I just want resistance which goes up to 70% without haveing resistance leaks. Fights get longer and you dont have to focus just with 2 aks/disruptors on shielded target. I dont even understand the recalculation of the armor/basicresis if you get a ppu shield. The shield always give 30% but on my tank i get an overall bonus of 5-6%. Armor and Basicresis are just reduced but thats another topic.


The current state is just that CS/DEV/EoF/Dissi/AK fubar because of their efficiency. :)

OK. What exactly is the efficiency value the efficiency of? I kinda got lost there.

Also there's numerous other factors affecting this:

Clip size - A Judge would out dmg/time an xbow if it weren't for the fact the Judge spends around 30%+ of the time reloading.

Aiming - Many weapons take longer for the reticle to close and/or will miss frequently without full-lock. The xbow and beam weapons have always been notorious for requiring little lock.

Skills, Implants and Resists/Armour - Most 'offensive' implants also grant mainstat bonuses, you not only have higher skills, but can use a higher TL weapons. People using lower TL weapons also have less skills; it's invariably better to use a higher TL weapon. The changes in defence going from a standard setup to a more resist/armour heavy one are minimal, wasting any choice of a high defence/low offence setup in comparison with going for the high TL setup mentioned above. Low TL setups are therefore losing out doubly, affecting how people perceive the weapons they use, when it could be quite possible that they are not unbalanced.

Do not forget who shot at you millions of times for you to get the data :P

Theres many factors in balancing IMO. The difficulty-to-use of the different weapons is a big factor aswell.. And even the need for constant aim (AK and those very fast freq weapons) VS. Weapons like CS and Dissy, where you actually only have to aim once every 3-4 secs.

Im "kinda" biased though.. I love the fast freq weapons, and hate the slow freq ones. Mainly because I find the slow freq weapons pretty boring to use heh..


I am looking forward to some balancing though, since Theres only a very few "viable" weapons out there.. But obviously its gonna take quite a lot of time to get it even close to right.

no one even brings up APU modules some of the non-rare ones out dps much higher TL rare modules

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chuck Norris

no one even brings up APU modules some of the non-rare ones out dps much higher TL rare modules

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ye, the poison halo actually is far more viable than every single rare spell except the fire apocalypse.

Sorry slith. :P
Credits to slith who worked out the data with me somewhere in the past. :p

Im lvling as a pistol spy at the moment. Not just the clipsize is too small. There are so much disadvantages compared to a rifle.

-less dmg
-less clipsize
-less range
-bad aiming (at the first lvls you have to kneel infront of your target to hit)

But aiming on low lvl weapons is a general problem. Its a pain in the ass trying to kill a cock roach or something with a build "perfect" lazar pistol. Not to mention lowlvl drones.

Range has a big impact on aiming at lower levels. Beyond a few metres when your PC/WEP is low you do have to get quite close.

The one thing that never made sense to me is the fact that weapons with the greatest range cap will always have a faster closing reticle, that means rifles have always been very easy to aim compared with pistols, because the reticle closes faster. At least that's what I've always observed, maybe I'm wrong in this assumption but if I'm right they need to unlink the reticle closing speed from the range of a weapon and instead just have weapon law and weapon skill effect it directly. That will mean you would be able to balance the weapons aim speed easier imo.

Well I hope people know what I'm talking about.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dribble Joy

Range has a big impact on aiming at lower levels. Beyond a few metres when your PC/WEP is low you do have to get quite close.

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Yes which is really silly because if you're using a pistol and stood well within range of the target it should lock very fast, all new characters are pre gimped, like they have severe mental retardation...

In my opinion reload times should be affected by weapon skill also, but maybe some won't like that, but I would see it as temporary thing for lower levels because no body can reload a weapon fast that they've never used before right?

Hell it's all so long past. I know quite a few people did in depth research on all this back when damagelogs were enabled during and after the rebalancing.

There were excell sheets and stuff to be found.

Anyhow as for the result of the OP's research: Asuming you did your experiments correctly (meaning you had no armor or resist on the target, SI was 0% and the target always was fully healed), the higher "efficiency" of some weapons indicates that there is some bug in those weapon's PvP dmg. calculation. If I remember correctly only 66% of dmg dealt by a weapon will go into PvP dmg calculation. Off of that goes shield, armor, resist in that order by a rather complicated formular (it's not simply additive).

So actually your experiment should have shown a efficiency of 66% for each weapon.

Note: I'm not sure about it completely, possibly there were different initial PvP dmg. mali for each hitzone and the headzone should be reduced to 50% PvP dmg.

Anyhow: When shooting on a runner without any shield, armor or resist every weapon should have the exact same efficiency otherwise the system is simply broken at base level already.

Another note: I again do not know for sure, but I remember that the dmg numbers shown ingame in the weapon info were off by quite a bit on some weapons/ammo types. In contrast the dmg log should show the initial DMG if I remember correctly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMeleeFreak

Another note: I again do not know for sure, but I remember that the dmg numbers shown ingame in the weapon info were off by quite a bit on some weapons/ammo types. In contrast the dmg log should show the initial DMG if I remember correctly.

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Indeed. The indicated damage shown in the info screens is completely off as far as I am aware.