Rifleman Archive

*groan*
Listen, it's not about Riflemen having another damage type. It's about common frikkin' sense. I'll even explain it logically.

All Tusken Rifles are slug throwers. All slug throwers deal kinetic damage to their target. Therefore, all Tusken Rifles deal kinetic damage to their target.

Once again, this is not about getting Riflemen another damage type. It's about following common sense and Star Wars lore, which I've heard this game is loosely based on.

The Tusken Rifle not dealing kinetic damage is like the Devs deciding that TKM doesn't have enough damage types and therefore make the Vibroknuckler deal acid damage. It's wrong for oh so many reasons, despite the good intentions.

Message Edited by DVader539 on 04-19-2004 11:27 AM

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Fade2nothing wrote:

I f some keep bring up the technology issue saying star wars too geared torward melee which not make sense in tech advanced universe. Well have to ask why would you think that guns still use bullets? I mean come on get real with the supposed level of swg technology the potential for making advance wepons with near infinte power supplys have to ask why would they wiegh down gun with bullets?

That is because swg is make believe and does not follow logical rules. So if devs want to have classes that melee with kinetic weapons and not ranged ones hey do what they want. I meancome onif game was based on reality nothing be like u see now, Heck even our in comparision low tech military in Iraq are using higher tech items then being showcased in this game.

"Make believe it is not what we do to have fun, it is what we have fun doing."

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It is Science Fiction, and this implies some connection to "rules" and physics. Also: there is an EXTENSIVE amount of published material in the Extended Universe for SW that has to be addressed. Just saying it never was Kenetic and leaving it as energy then you have ot 1) Redefine Keneticor 2) Admit that SW:G is not to be SW and therefore there will only be an arbitrary attempt at following the EU or the movies. This smacks of laziness to my eyes. Again, in Everquest, where you don't have a tie to any other reference you can get away with it. You cannot here.

In the materials of the other RPGs and the books and the EU lore there are "slug throwers". Sad, but true. A Tusken's rifle is one of them. Making it up to be energy does not serve this game well, and it makes the devs look lazy. Sorry, but that has to be said.

I know this is a long shot - but does anyone have a screenshot from an old test where they happen to be using a Tusken?

I'm half suspecting that there was some bug that caused the Damage Type to read Kinetic while the code was actually saying the Damage done was Energy.

Has anyone got shots of attacking a 100% Kinetic mob? Or shots of a combat log and a creature's Kinetic resists that we could back engineer?

just reviving this debate for the hell of it.

A long time ago, I attempted to adapt a gun-girl character I'd done for the Dice and Paper Star Wars Game to SWG. I originally started her out as a pistol/rifle type with a smattering of weaponsmith. That turned into Master Pistoleer / Master Dancer. Then I took an 8 month hiatus. Then came back and to my great chagrin not much at all was fixed. There were nifty speeders so I didn't have to walk all over hell's creation in a spacefaring society. But by and large, that was about it.

As the Dancing profession was completely ruined and hung out to dry by the devs embracing AFK player-bots and the hologrind, I decided the devs would never pay attention to entertainers on the whole if most of my dances were still missing after a year. So I decided to get back into the rifle deal recently, after having surrendered all my scout and dancer skills in favor of SMuggler dirty fighting and slicing. Cos you know, I'd heard that for the most part, riflemen's specials worked.

Well, I've been grinding my way up on rifles on Dantooine with my pal and we've been hunting Janta tribesmen. Who are KINETIC vulnerable.So instead of zapping them relentlessly with my Laser Rifle, I thought I'd try to lay my hands to a spraystick or a tusken rifle. I remembered that the tusken was kinetic. And I could probably use a spraystick. I remembered that for a rifle, the spraystick was rather fast. Like a lot of you, imagine my surprise, shopping around on Naboo all morning looking for a weapon that no longer existed. No more kinetic rifles. And I stumbled onto the TUSKEN RIFLE & SPRAYSTICK DAMAGE thread, where Thunderheart and that Dev either lied or outright made an error and hid.

Most shocking to me was the seeming lack of knowledge about the background of the weapons in general. The Stohkli Spraystick did indeed come from Heir to the Empire, and was used to try and capture Luke & Leia, but that seemed to be about it, reference-wise. The DXR-6 was widely referred to as an acid rifle, which it is in the GAME, but not in the old continuity. A rather sore point with me over on the Pistoleer boards as the damage type for the DX-2 and the DXR-6 are completely misrepresented in SWG. Most shocking of all were several posts as to why should there even be slugthrowers that do kinetic damage in SWG at all? This above all else convinced me I needed to make a post here. Over on the Pistoleer boards I wrote a faq on all the different pistols that appears in SWG, what their names are, who made them, where they came from, what the props were made of, with links to pics of the guns in question as well as links to the descriptions of the weapons over at Warcry's Star Wars Galaxies page. I was shocked on getting here today that someone hadn't done something similar, FAQ-wise.

So... here are a few points I made concerning slugthrowers in my Pistols FAQ, as to why they might be relevant or useful in the Star Wars Continuity, and what has been said in different reference books that were obviously used by the Dev's. (By the way. The design for the Stohkli Spraystick as we see it in SWG looks as though it were taken from the design in Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons & Technology, wherein there appears lots of technical drawings of mainstay weaponry and EU weaponry. (As with Exar Kun's Doublesaber, from Dark Horse Comics, YEARS before Episode One saw a greenlight for production.)

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The Striker Pistol, or The Oriolanis Striker Projectile Pistol

A slugthrower in Star Wars? The higher tech a civilization, the more vulnerable it is to primitive attack, said a wise doctor once. And Star Wars is no exception. The Essential Guide has this to say on the subject of the Stiker Pistol and specialized ammunitions:

"The Oriolanis Striker pistol is a standard short-range slugthrower with an optimum range of 30 meters, a maximum range of sixty meters, and a slug cartridge that holds 8 slugs. As with a Hold Out blaster, only a vital hit is likely to kill. This weapon is normally easy to accquire, even on worlds with strict weapon laws."

"Ammunition is also varied, as slugs are made of metal, ceramics and hardened plastics. Specialty rounds can release toxic or stun gasses, or acid, or carry explosive heads. DURING THE GALACTIC CIVIL WAR, Several Rebel Specforce units carried explosive-tipped rounds that were quite effective in blowing through stormtrooper armour."

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A NOTE ON SLUGTHROWERS AND AMMUNITION AND DAMAGE TYPES

Like the KD-30 Dissuader, mentioned earlier in this thread, some slugthrowers use specialized ammunition. In the case of the Dissuader, you have things like Metal Jacketed cartridges filled with Borless Acid. But this is far from the only option available to us in the way of specialized slug damage effects.

There's the idea of explosive rounds that do a bit more damage, or perhaps incorporate an intimidation effect to the damage to the use of a weapon that uses such ammunition. I know I'd sure as hell be intimidated by getting shot with a weapon that blew a great exploded hole in me.

There are already examples if incendiary 'white phosphorus' rounds in real life. Rounds that when exposed to oxygen immediately burn and glow white hot. These things are the bullet equivalent of napalm folks. They don't stop burning until they've completely combusted. (This includes under WATER.) Since we already have the code in place for 'being on fire' damage, courtesy of the Commando flamethrower line, we could have a downgraded version of their fire damage. Which would be a pretty good thing to do to the heat damage dealing FWG-5, which was originally a slugthrowing weapon anyway. Though one may want to just include an entirely different weapon for Pistoleers, since FWG's become available in the Marksman line.

You could also incorporate armour piercing or ‘Poison’ effect ammunition. Again, there’s a basis for these in real life. This could be reflected in the use of slugs of depleted uranium. The poison effect being a radiation sickness effect.

Gel rounds may be good for producing stun effects of the same sort I discussed earlier in the thread when I was talking about Sonic Pistols. Though the idea of a sonic pistol is more appealing to me, Gel rounds can be more believably applied to 'kinetic' damage. Without having to incorporate a whole new 'sonic' class of damage. Though in favor of the sonic-based weapons, those could also be classed as kinetic weapons.

The two damage types most conspicuous by their absence in the Pistoleer repertoire are of course, electric and cold. (One might think that folks had never heard of a Taser pistol as a non-lethal alternative to bullets.) In an effort to expand on the damage types that could be fielded by Pistoleers, Taser Ammunition might be included for slugthrowers, particularly useful on enemies of the mechanical nature. Or perhaps you might include Cryo-Ban ammunition (A bit like the Commando's Cryo-Grenade) in the vein of the Acid Ammunition used by the Kelvarlek Dissuader.

Of course the strategic element of the game when it comes to facing the currently (6-29-2004) weak as hell Pistoleer suddenly takes on an entirely new dimension when it's entirely possible that you're not sure what he or she may be able to field against you in PvP. If Blasters and Pistols are going to be random, let's REALLY get into how random things can be. Slugthrowers that can be constructed by Weaponsmiths to produce any desired damage type would certainly introduce an uncertainty that would make any seasoned PvP player think twice before duelling a Pistoleer. (You know... He MIGHT have a Striker or a Dissuader that could chew through the one weak stat my armour's got. Do I do this? My assured win is perhaps not so assured...)

And this doesn't even get into the possibilities of a shift in damage type for existing pistol weapons as the result of a Smuggler slicing your gun. Imagine the happy moment you'd have when that Slicer tells you, "Whoa! Good news friend! Your DE-10 Energy Blaster just became an DE-10 COLD blaster! Congratulations!" In an effort to make this a definite achievement, I'd certainly restrict the possibility that a damage type shift from a weapon slice you could only get from a slice from a MASTER Smuggler. And the instances of a Damage Type shift should be an uncommon occurrence. Or perhaps a critical success on a weapon slice might nudge the weapon up a notch in Armour Piercing. The down side of course would be that there's the potential your weapon could be shifted to a damage type you don't want, or a critical failure in the slice could actually knock your pistol DOWN an armour piercing notch. But you slices your weapon, you takes your chances, right? But think of the possibilities...

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The reasoning behind the existence of slug-throwing weapons is made plain in the very reference books it would seem the developers pulled our weapons from in the first place, for both Riflemen AND Pistoleers. As well as sommon sense. They would be the cheapest and easiest thing to make. They'd be rampant and epidemic in lower tech civilizations. And of course the idea that you could slice a slugthrower to inflict any damage type is easily justifiable. Some weapons in the game I'd make non-slicable when it came to damage types as it wouldn't make sense. But Slugthrowers that do kinetic, or whatever kind of damage you wanted are not only easily explainable, but plausible even at our own meager level of technology. And certainly falls in line with what seems to be the popular sentiment on this board.

That Riflemen and Pistoleers both want to be able to field any kind of damage with the arsenals they have at their disposal. And that they'd like to be included in some of the high end content in the game that our respective inabilities to inflict meaningful damage continue to exile us from. (The master weapon for Pistoleers is the DE-10. ONLY to be found and dropped at the Deathwatch. Now find a Pistoleer that can get past the very first Super Battle Droid there... Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...)

Of course quite a bit of this is supposed to be addressed in the elusive combat balance, which I guess is late September-early October now. I've already purchased City of Heroes in anticipation that SWG may run into more problems than it solves with the Combat Balance. If the game does not become more like Star Wars in both feel and continuity, as well as being playable, I feel I shall have to take another long sabbatical.

Anyway, now I'm tempted to write a Riflemen Weapons faq as I did with the Pistols FAQ. Has it been done before? Would one be welcomed? Just sort of fishing for opinion here. You'll find the link to my pistols FAQ in my sig. Thanks for your time and attention.

that tusken king rifle is part of the krayt skull quest, i have one. Master riflemen and i can't use it, so it sits on the wall on my cantina, mirage, dantooine on bloodfin