Pistoleer Archive

Is it true that the fastest speed a weapon can fire is 1.0?

Hows does your pistol speed stat, and the pistol's speed rating average together to determine how fast you are actually firing?

Jaegen - I think we need a "things we know" or FAQ type sticky. I'm getting tired of typing this one out It could include pistol ARs and damage types, info on special attacks, what speed does, etc...

Anyway, Embersyc - here ya go:

Weapon "speed" is really weapon delay. It's the time after each shot (first shot is "free") before the next (assuming no weapon speed skill and that you're not using a special attack).

Max speed (min delay) is 1.0 (a shot per second).

So just hitting "attack" with no weapon speed skil an a 2.2 speed pistol will result in you firing once immediately, and then another shot every 2.2 seconds.

First, there are ways to make your pistol faster: Slicing and weapon power-ups both directly affect your weapon speed, which is the first factor in the equation.

The second factor is a multiplier based on the special attack you're using. These will multiply your between shot delay by a factor of 1.75, or 2.5, for example.

The third factor is a modifier based on your weapon speed skill. Testing is showing that this appears to be a flat percentage. So this value = (1 - skill / 100). So if you have a skill of 60, then you multiply by 0.4.

Final equation:

Modified weapon speed * Attack delay multiplier * Speed Skill Factor

The result is then capped at 1.0.

As you can see, and as testing seems to support, at high speed skills, you fire once per second no matter how slow your pistol or how high the delay multiplier is on your special attack. This poses major concerns for game balance when you extend this beyond pistols and carbines that already have delays as low as 2.0 and below to rifles with delays of 3 to 8. Do Commandos have a heavy weapon speed skill?

The sad part, for me anyways, is that my trusty scout blaster becomes less and less effective, comparatively, as I get more skills. My favorite one had been a scout sliced to 1.3speed, but with speed bonuses, it's more useful to get a scout sliced for damage.

I really dislike the FWG5's huge range of damage, but it does appear that a higher level pistoleer's weapon of choice is a FWG5 sliced for damage. I can't wait for new pistols to be added! Hopefully one that has the scatter's high minimum damage and decent speed.

By the way, is there a good rational for why there is a 1 second cap on attack speed? Whenever I have the choice, I prefer to get a higher damage over time by increasing speed rather than damage. The only time when that isn't true was for PvP when stopping shot had a good chance of one shotting people, but that's no longer a possibility.

They had to do something to limit min delay, otherwise your damage goes to infinity when you hit zero delay (100 skill).

But I think they should do more. Leave the 1.0 min speed, but ALSO have weapon speed skill be half as effective so that at 100 skill you reduce your delay by 50%, not always to the minimum of 1.0. This would make a 3.0 vs 2.0 delay still mean something (a faster pistol should be a faster pistol... regardless of who uses it), and also help to keep the pistol vs rifle vs carbine balance by preventing everyone from getting down to 1.0 seconds.

As for scout pistols being so good - a crafting bug with multiple factory created sub-components is currently killing many of the higher level pistols. DX2 and SR Combats in particular are likely to be much better in the future when this crafting bug is fixed.