Carbineer Archive

The Scourge of the Alliance

The Black Plague

Eryn GreyWolf

SOJ, thanks for checking this out in advance. I think I have a valid argument here in saying that a carbine's speed should be faster than a pistol's. If you agree, I hoope that you would present this idea to the devs in your upcoming list of fixes. Let me argue my case here:

A carbine is the equivalent of a sub-machine gun / light assault rifle. These are weapons that will shoot faster than any pistol I know. Even a machine pistol (which is not duplicated on SWG that I am aware of) would not match a dedicated carbine speed wise. We have the specials (burst-fire, full auto, etc.) which are meant to duplicate the speed in firing a carbine. This is a problem though, as it means that we as carbineers have to spam specials to get our weapons to perform like the weapons they are. If I am not dumping full-autos onto the battle queue, my carbine is shooting like a slow pistol, or a fast rifle.(Shooting for as much or less damage than a pistol too, but that's not what this thread is about.) It's wrong for us to have to use specials the way they were not intended (and in a costly manner when you look at our HAM costs). Offset it by making the carbines decay faster than the pistols, as it should be. Speed is the carbine's forte, and we are robbed of it if a pistol shoots faster than a carbine.

A pistol's main advantage over the carbine should be the accuracy at close range. I think that inside of 15-20m (for the game's sake) a carbine should suffer almost as huge of an accuracy handicap as a rifle. When you're shooting a gun that will cap off 10-15 rounds a second, recoil is going to be a MAJOR factor. Let the game reflect that. A pistoleer should be able to empty a clip into a carbineer at close range, shoot slower, but connect just about every time (make allowances for skill and weapon type as needed). Instead, the devs want to make us exchange speed for firepower, when both should belong to the carbineer. Accuracy should belong to the pistoleer at their range, as it should the rifleman for theirs. It would definately make the carbines more of a worthwhile weapon, make for some interesting player skill / strategic minded PvP battles, and lure people to the class instead of treating it as the SWG's stepchild.

All I ask is what makes sense. Carbines are faster than pistols. Carbines are more powerful than pistols. Most importantly, carbines are faster than pistols! If we need special attacksto make our weapons carbines, they're not actually carbines. I think that this is the idea that people have when they initially get into the carbines, and have to compensate for the deficiency when they realize that the carbines aren't treated like they should be. Am I making sense, SOJ? Tell me your thoughts. Again, thank you in advance for your attention here, and thank you as a whole for how you stay on top of things for the Carbineer. We are lucky to have you for a correspondent, and I am impressed at your ability here.

P.S.- I think that ammunition would be a great addition to the game. Use a special, burn your ammo faster, not to mention your weapon's integrity. You want to keep your 300 acid dmg,.5speed, 1/1/1 HAM Scatter Pistol? Watch that eye shot, friend. Might not shoot as long as you think, and when you're done, your gun's a smoking heap. Way to fight smart.

That's a bad idea simply for balance reasons. Sure, an assault rifle probably shoots faster than a pistol, but for the sake of balance you cant just make one of the weapons superior in both speed and damage. These are laser guns anyways, they dont have to work exactly like rl guns do

Damage per second should be the main balancing factor, it doesnthave to be EXACTLY the same of course, since they have different strengths and weaknesses, but it should at least be acting as the general direction you go by. You could of course balance it with accuracy, ie, making carbine not hit anything at all so the dps would even out, but that'd be just extremely frustrating, at least to me.

But from the sound of it what you're suggesting is that carbines are simply superior in terms of dps.. which is bad.

hmm actually on starsider, pistols are superior to carbines in both speed and damage.

Of course they have lower AP - but the thing with AP is that sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't

I think the biggest reason why the Carbineer isn't quicker is because it can do more damage. This is a game and because of that, we need balance and gameplay over realism. The game is designed to look something like this:

Speed:
Pistol
Carbine
Rifle

Damage:
Rifle
Carbine
Pistol

Now, I am not going to sit here and say that, that is how it is right now. Speed caps and etc aside. But that is how it's suppose to look like and the goal is to get in that range. For instance, with the new proposed weapon speed caps, things will look something like this:

1.0 Pistol
2.0 Carbine
3.0 Rifle.

So for every carbine shot, the pistol shoots twice or three times for riflemen. They mentioned that damage of the specials for carbines and rifles could be increased to compensate. And because of that, it shows that they are working on balancing out each weapon. Because right now, a Pistoleer/BH can hit the speed cap easily, but so can a Carbineer/BH. Except that the Carbineer/BH can do a whole lot more damage overall. And can pierce armor much better than the pistoleer. You could also say that they are both buffed, so HAM costs wouldn't be in that picture, and it looks pretty one-sided towards the Carbineer/BH.

But I know not everyone is like that. You could also have an example of a Master Pistoleer at the speed cap with a 56 - 263 FWG5 and a Master Carbineer not at the speed cap with a 28 - 260 Laser Carbine. Especially with AP broken in ways, the Pistoleer will outdamage the carbineer in the example. There can be this example as well: Master Carbineer not at the speed cap, Master Riflemen at the speed cap. Or a Pistoleer/BH at the speed cap (eye shot) and a Master Riflemen at the speed cap.

There are reasons as to why the rifle and the carbine do not stack up to the pistol, which could be because of broken AP or weaponcrafting problems. However, the carbine can't be quicker than the pistol because that would cause DPS problems such as the example I used with the Carbineer/BH. It appears that the Devs are working on ways to balance out the weapons more, but the pistol is suppose to be fast, low damaging, low APwhile the carbine is medium firing and medium damage, medium AP. And, like I said, I'm not going to say that's how it is, but that's how it's suppose to be. For balance.

A few things...

The reasons why Rifles and Carbines look so crappy compared to Pistols is due to the fact that many Carbines take Ferrous metals (Iron or Steel) to create them, yet they call for Overall Quality and Conducitivy in order to get good stats. Obviously, such Ferrous metals hardly ever spawn with good stats for OQ and Conductivity, hence, crappy carbines and rifles.

Pistols, on the other hand, tend to take just Aluminum, if they require any sort of special metal at all. Even the Iron and Steel based FWG5 takes *3* subcomponents, which work wonders to boost its stats, even though the resources put into it suck.

Now, to counter the "real world" argument that carbines are equivalent to machine guns which shoot faster, you forget 1 major thing: recoil. Recoil kills accuracy, and although you may be firing off 20 rounds a second, only 2 or 3 of those shots (the first ones, usually) have any chance of actually hitting your target. Hence, a pistol, in simulated combat such as this, WOULD have a faster firing rate, since one can fire a large amount of pistol rounds accurately, as the recoil is less, and there's a "pause" between shots which allows for quick re-aimming. The machine gun thus has a longer delay, since very few of its shots, compared to its max rate of fire, have any chance at all of hitting its target.

The issue of recoil is what leads to there beinga vast multitude of different guns available on the market in the real world. Some have more, some have less, some have a higher calibre to compensate, etc. etc. etc. SWG is FAR from simulating real life, in the sense that people use 1 gun for every situation.

I've really got two points to make on the comments from above.

As appeared in the post by SOJ, all weapons are supposed to be some what equal as far as DPS goes, hence thespeed, dmg, and etc categories . But also hinted upon was the stats of the pistol vs the carbine where the pistol ends out ahead. ie we die. It seems wrong that from either a schmatic or crafting standpoint that the best pistol is that much better than the best carbine. If the speed is higher and the dmg is higher, screw AP since it has problems, that makes pistol a better weapon. I thought that the purpose was not to have one weapon dominate, but they sure seem to have f@#$ed that up.

As for the comments about accuracy due to recoil, I don't hit often enough while standing still, or kneeling, at a range of 50m. I was bored and shooting banthas with the first couple of shots from the ideal distance and sometimes I would miss the first three or four shots. Is that accuracy due recoil? Wait recoil doesn't exist in the game.

So the point is, while I agree that we should be faster, I understand the reasoning behind balancing the weapons. That doesn't mean that we should have to put up with the s#!t that the devs have given us. Right now, master vs master, we lose end of story. If the professions are supposed to be truly balanced each with their own unique traits, then PvP and groups would be based around strategy making the game more fun. But that might also mean changing specials and attacks so they are more unique (like an intensely dmging action shot for the carbine-not leg3 or any of the attacks that we have now). I'm off topic and rambling, but that's because I'm so confused by the Devs and their "love" of the pistoleer and so called hate of everyone else. It baffles me how with such blatant guidelines, like the ones in SOJ's post, they can be so far off track as to make near useless classes. I do have one really big question, why is it that when people reach master lvl skills that they decide to quit?

I understand from weaponsmiths that there is a inherint flaw in the crafting of weapons besides pistols. There was a lengthy post about it on the weaponsmiths board.

It had to do with componets stats stacking for pistols, but not stacking for carbines/rifles, which if they did, would improve them greatly. I can't confirm this, as Im not a weaponsmith.

Maybe if they fixed that, the carbine gun stats would be better overall(rifle too).

A couple observations:

1. Carbines shouldn't be any faster than any other guns. Carbines are just short rifles, meaning they should be less accurate than rifles at long range, but better at short and medium range. But that doesn't mean they should be faster. A Mac-10 machine pistol is just as fast as an M4 Carbine, as is an M16 Rifle.

2. To be honest, the whole separation of pistols, carbines and rifles into different skill categories, and creating different certifications for different guns doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you analyze it from the point of realism. For instance, anybody who is really good a shooting rifles, is going to be good a shooting all rifles, not just one type. If I can shoot a gnat off a fly's butt at 200m with a 30/30, chances are I'll be able to do it with an M16, or an M4 Carbine for that matter.

3. All of the assumptions that go into making different weapon types have different advantages is based on some odd assumptions, especially that the size of the gun should affect its accuracy. We're mostly talking about lasers/beam weaponshere, so a longer barrel, as one would find on a rifle, would not affect accuracy, and there would be no recoil to affect your accuracy while rapid firing.

4. The comparison of pistols vs. carbines vs. rifles in a science fiction setting (ie. energy weapons) should be based on a trade off between weight and power. Pistols should be better at point blank range and when switching to new targets, rifles should pack more punch (bigger power cell?) at the expense of sucking at close range and slowing you down and making it harder or slower to acquire a new target, and carbines should represent a happy medium.

The Scourge of the Alliance

The Black Plague

Eryn GreyWolf

Thanks for the speed of the reply SOJ, and thank you all for your thoughts and additions. Believe me, I understand the need for balance in the game, and I don't want SWG to mimic real life in every way, shape, and form. I do think that people get the wrong idea about the carbines though, and I think that a balance issue wouldn't be a problem if done correctly. Here's where I'm headed with this:

As stated before, I believe that carbines should be faster than pistols. How much faster for in-game balance purposes would be something to discuss. If a carbine is firing 2 seconds faster than a pistol for the game, of course that's way overpowered. A 0.5 second differential though, and perhaps we can feel good about the rate of fire while keeping the pistols within fighting reach.

My true ideafor the balance of speed to damage though, was the DISTANCE. Let's face it friends, it doesn't take long to close distances in this game. Those speed and damage capabilities are only going to be relevant if we can hit what we're shooting at. We as players will close 80m in about 5 seconds, no burst run activated. That's a Pistoleer's job as a pistoleer, whether fighting a Carbineer or a Rifleman. They close to that optimum range and open fire. If they handicapped the accuracy well enough at close range, I think that the game balance would be retained......or should I say created? I'm not so sure that we're equipped to keep them from making that distance as things stand. Damage per second is the devs'smain concern I'm sure, but there's more to it than that. Of course there are many variables to take into account (buffs, power-ups, AP factors, etc.) but these same variables hit the other guns as well. AP factors could be replicated just as well on pistols by giving them some heavier versions (Magnum, Desert Eagle, etc. equivalents). They're going to have to change the guns anyway. If what I'm suggesting were implemented, I think that it would cause players to think much more about the way they fight their battles, rather than just dumping specials onto the queue and waiting to win by attrition.

In direct response to Rikilii, carbines don't exactly equal pistols as far as rate of fire is concerned, and they're not exactly short rifles. I think that's an oversimplificationof the gun class. Mind you, I don't work for Colt or Remmington or anything, but I know that Tec-9's or Mac-10's won't match the rate of fire from an Uzi or MP5, which won't match the rate of fire from a military-gradeM4. The differences might be as minimal as a round or two per second, but that's a big enough deal to be recognized. Little differences make a big difference. True enough, someone good at shooting rifles will be good at shooting all rifles, but not right away due to those little differences. Someone good firing a Dragnov won't necessarily bullseye withan M4 on the first shot. Those differences make a difference, especially when you're talking about getting a certain level of expertise with these guns.For another example, takedriving. Learning to drive means you can drive just about any car, but learning to race drive means that the differences in traction, speed, shift rates, etc. become serious, no matter how similar the cars might be.Racing a Celica won't be the same as racing an Acura.

Mind you, I don't intend for SWG to mimicreal lifeexactly, and I don't want this post to turn into a debate about the real life differences between these guns. The point of the game is to have fun of course, and we must forsake realism for that fun. This isn't a simulation game. However, I think that some of the obvious real life references should be used, because merely the names give us an idea of the capabilities. I'm not so sure we should just write this off. If all the pistols on the game fired like derringers, people would be upset. There is a way to make it so that a carbine can be a carbine without specials, and without damaging the balance of the game, just by thinking out of the box. I think it would make for a much deeper fighting experiance as well, not just a special attack spam-fest. I would like layers to have to think about how they use what they have, not just gaining xp until they get the uber-special that will drop just about anyone with 2 hits.

Okay, I'm done. I'm starting to spend as much time on the forums as in the game. As always, everyone's thoughts and ideas are appreciated. Gimme the feedback folks, so we can make this the game we want it to be.

And if you're on Gorath and a Rebel, don't be overt unless you're a Jedi.

Even then, don't be overt.

The Black Plague

Eryn GreyWolf

Well, one thing you have to consider is how people relate to these weapons. Does everyone know that a Carbine is going to fire faster than a Pistol? Does everyone even know what a Carbine is? Perhaps the first time they even heard about it was in this game. One thing is for sure, in game terms.. when you say rifle people will think, "powerful but slow (refire)" and when you say pistol they'll think, "Weaker but faster." As Sarne mentioned, I don't even know if Star Wars Carbines fire like they do realistically and if SW Carbines are quicker than SW pistols. Therefore, I don't think the system is really going to change, however, we can hope for speeds close to the Pistol. And also, I mean, if you posted on the pistoleer forum about making carbines faster than them... Yeah.

The other thing you mentioned, about ranges, is interesting. It's something I always wanted since Beta. It'd be nice if weapons fired well within their ideal ranges and had a more strict penalty for being out of the range. However, I can also see why this isn't in.. because it could be very hard to solo like that.