Weaponsmith Archive

I agree here, Redguard. It's a pain to see damage increase by 10, 20 or 30 per point while efficiency will hardly even budge. Spending 3 experimentation points onefficiency should bejust as noticable as spending 3 on damage. A rebalance is definately required, I believe.

Perhaps if by adding items like scopes and stocks would REDUCE HAM costs instead of increasing them, we might be looking at a winner here. In my mind, having a stock on a rifle would make it easier to shoot with not more difficult (as the current HAM costs would suggest). The idea behind a stock is that the weapon becomes more stable and balanced and recoil doesnt knock the shooter off target so much. In essence the weapon uses less energy from the shooter to control it. In real life a weapon is better off with a stock because the added weight is made up for by the benefits. In game this is not so which is why many smiths, myself included, don't use them so much, if at all.

So there is a general agreement on this post that efficiency experimentation is largely useless given the minimal HAM gains? The exception being the specialized VK's.

I see some people do specialize in low HAM weapons. Is this a hardcore niche market?

I agree that certain items like stocks should provide an efficiency benefit. If memory serves me correctly damage is one of the experimentation categories. I find this somehwhat absurd, unless of course your going to use that rifle as a cudgel.

Anyone think they'll bother fixing this efficiency issue?

I hope the developers do take notice of this thread, otherwise the whole forum system is a big waste of space. To be fair, we must remember that in most cases the devs DO take notice of what we write here, even if they don't always action it. So many of our suggestions have been put into practice, and you don't always get that level of support and feedback in other online games. It's happened several times that I've thought 'Why don't they just...' and then a week or two later the idea has appeared in-game, all due to another player (or playerS) voicing their opinions here and the devs taking notice.

(Besides, we must be nice to them or they won't sort our efficiency points out for us!!! :biggrin

Usually not. In a couple of instances it is. I have had customers ask for a low HAM version of a weapon (like a T21 or VK) and they are usually shocked by the hit the damage and speed take. If HAM costs dropped by 5 points a pip rather than 1, it might be. Only times I experiment efficiency now are advanced scopes and heavy weapons. I can experiment scopes down to 2/2/2 HAM (a 12 point master can probably hit 0/0/0). This allows me to increase range at a very slight HAM cost. For heavy weapons like the HPBC, Acid stream launcher and lightning beam cannon, I experiment damage first (mostly for the speed), then efficiency. Each efficiency point adds a charge to the final product. I suspect that is more useful than a 1000 condition HPBC. Other than that, It's a waste of time.