Carbineer Archive
Thread: weapon selection
My idea is to add cl54 version of each weapon to the game and scale its properties accordingly. Or maybe make it a smuggler slice ability to alter the weapon CL up and down.
as a former player of UO i liked the fact that i could craft me any weapon and that all of them were usable.
Actually i brought this issue up here in the Weaponsmith forum already some time ago. Somehow it ended up as "great idea" and that was it, topics which are not controversal die quickly... (And thus get no Dev-Attention.)
Anyways, with your suggestion we're now basically at5 concepts which i saw strewn over the forums:
1. The concept written here, that Smugglers can slice the weapon to higher performance and at the same time increase the level of the weapon.
This surely would be one of the easiest solutions. Though, the slicing system just got a complete rework, doesn't need one right away again. Also, a "true" imperial won't get his weapons sliced, we're speaking of illegal modificaitons, after all... so, i vote against this, the advantage gained by a slice would just be too big.
2. The concept which Akehece brought up on the commando forum. It was there only as concept for commando weaponry, but could be used for any profession.
The baseline is, that when you master a combat profession, you gain damage modifiers. These modifiers multiply the damage of your weapon, and low level weapons would gain more of a benefit out of that than higher level weapons.
Advantages i see are:
- professions will only boost the weapons appropriate to the profession, won't overpower weapons from other classes
- people will be more likely to stick with the weapons of their class, due to the modifiers
- the system, at least as written, works in steps. Thus we still won't have an equal weapons spread, there'll still be disparities.
- there actually will be no reason toupgrade your novice level weapon if it scales along and always competes with the weapons which you could now get.
3. An experimentation based system.
This would mean that ALL weapons are at first created at lv. 54. Anyways, the weapons will have an additional line of experimentation, something like "ease of use" or anything along that, where you can experiment down the level of the weapon. Thus if you put all experimentation points into lower level requirements, there'll be nothing left to increase damage and speed, resulting in a weak gun for low level characters. The same gun can also be experimented to perfect damage, speed and sac while ignoring the level... Then it'll be a lv. 54 gun, just like seen now.
Advantages of this concept:
- very easy to implement
- all kinds of weapons can be made to be a very effective gun
- keeping the "special" properties like elemental damage or other feats (like different max. range) gives people a reason to have a variety of weapons available.
Disadvantages:
- ressource considerations would dominate the production criterias of weaponsmiths. (Why produce a weapon with high ressource costs if you can build one with similar properties for lower costs?)
- the 12 pt Weaponsmiths would absolutely dominate the lower level market, novice weaponsmiths would be forced to create Lv. 54 weapons of lousy quality.
As long as weapons have different properties (range, elemental damage, etc...) there will be reasons to not only use one kind of weapon, for the second disadvantage i have no solution here, except to say that actually that's not much of a change on the current market.
4. A system of skin and core, similar to the current creation of armours.
The basic energy weapon frame for example would require:
- no (or minimal) ressources. (Those ressources were already used when creating the core.)
- the weapon core
- the barrel (normal or advanced)
- one power handler (normal or advanced)
That way you would have:
- basic frame with normal barrel and normal power handler: lv. 1
- basic frame with advanced barrel and normal power handler: lv. 7
- basic frame with normal barrel and advanced power handler: lv. 12
- basic frame with advanced barrel and advanced power handler: lv. 18
- requires a complete rework of the current weapons crafting
- thus requires a lot of coding and work of the Devs
- complexity of the crafting process still increases a bit
- some new lootable items should be introduced in the game, should be easy to get and have names like "beam focus lens", "recoil amplifier" or "hair trigger assembly".
- all weapon schematics should have a slot for the optional "weapon improvement".
- When a weapon is made without the improvement, it should not affect the production in any way. Thus the current weapon production process is not affected.
- The "weapon improvement" loot parts should have a level set into them and any weapon crafted with such an improvement will have it's level requirement increased to the level of the improvement. (If the requirement is higher on the gun, the gun simply keeps it's level requirement.)
- Weapons which have their level increased by the improvement will have their damage and speed rescaled, so they can compete with other weapons of that level. (Indeed... a DH17 which then is built with a lv. 54 loot part will be a lv. 54 weapon in terms of damage and speed. Shooting range will be of the regular DH17 still...)
- To make the improvements a bit more attractive and give people a reason to also use them in highest level weapons, give them small bonuses. (Nothing big, just some toys, pick one of the following mods at random:accuracy +5, max dam. +15, speed -0.1, SAC -5 or elemental damage heat +5... neither of those bonuses would offset balance, but they'd be an incentive to use the items...)
- coding should be comparatively simple.
- the difference between novice weaponsmith and master weaponsmith would matter less in this system.
- novice weaponsmiths still could produce nice novice weapons
- the full variety of weapons would be available
- with tiny side-effects, those guns would really be individual
- due to weapons keeping characteristic properties (range, elemental damage) the weapons with higher ressource costs will will be desireable
- due to severe limitations of factory production with loot items, the "normal" high level guns will remain in production for high level players. (Why hand-craft 100 DLT20 rifles for lv. 54, if you can also do a factory run for adv. laser rifles? But if you have one high-quality krayt tissue at hand, the DLT20 suddenly looks very attractive if you can also get the loot-part to bring it to lv. 54.)
- the whole system is based on loot. It has to be ensured that the items are not impossible to find. They should be readily available to higher level players. (There should be enough on the market to keep prices low. That way, weaponsmiths have an easy way to scale their weapons by picking up the things from the bazaar.)
- factory production of those weapons will be hard, as the loot components are limited. (Though, the same already is true for gorax shards or krayt tissues... these weapons are handcrafted and indivudually made. )
- All in all i would expect this system to have a limited effect on the current weapons market but would very much influence the selection of weapons which are built on an individual basis. (So, a DH18 pistol in the hands of a DoubleMaster would be viable, instead of the joke it is now...)
Would be nice if we would get a response from Devs on this.
Kevin Kereth Don't know how many weapons your character can wield at a time, but mine is one so I don't really need more than one Carbine in the current system.
Weapon variety comes in the leveling from CL1 to CL54/Master. The core combat engine really has been dumbed down to 'simplify' combat and thus not needing more than 1-2 weapons at most.
Pre-CU there was maybe 5% of combat that required more than 2 Carbines.....don't see anything different now really. Personally I would like to see bugs fixed and balance achieved before fluff added.
Squeakyshoes wrote:
that was the generic "i dont care" answer - sad to hear it from a correspondent, who should be actually ventilating our wishes to the devs and not being the obstacle between us
I do care but your points are just not justified at this time.
We all have different priorities and this is not one for SOE right now, simple as that.
BTW, do you honestly think I didn't scream bloody murder with the 'crazy' changes to Carbines? Come on, give me a break......
Oki, i admit that considering the mass of problems, only few of them actually in the carbineer profession, but massive issues in other professions [like BE modifiers of tailors, the whole color issue for AS when producing in a factory, etc.] , weapon variety might not be up to highest priority.
Still i'd really like the devs to at least see those ideas occasionally. If they see it now and consider it now already, they might be ready and able to implement it when urgent and pressing issues (candles, anybody?) are taken care of.