Weaponsmith Archive

This is a direct cut-and-paste of Logix's old issues thread. Since the original is over a year old now, I've updated it and stickied this new one. As I said in my introductory post, I expect a lot of the weapon balance issues to be addressed in the Combat Upgrade, but for now I'm leaving them on the list so that we all know what they are and can make sure that they DO get addressed in the CU. Let me know if there is anything specific you guys want added to the list.

General Crafting-related Bugs

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  Artisan Components grant no bonuses. The Control Unit, required to craft SG82 Rifles, Lancesand Tangle Pistols,adds no additional modifiers to the weapon. Power Conditioners in Stun Batons suffer from the same problem. Control Units are optional in Spraysticks and add nothing to the finished weapon.


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  Crafting Interface and the Enter key do not mesh well. If you hit enter at the wrong stage in crafting (like the dialog box that comes up when you go to the next crafting stage) or double-tap the key, the crafting session pukes all over itself.


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  Factories stopping erroneously. The output hopper on a factory says that it should hold100 items. Many players are having problems withfactories stopping and reporting that the output hopper is full long before there are 100 items in it. Emptying and re-deeding the factory does not solve the problem.

Weaponsmith Bugs

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  Chemical and Heavy Warhead schematics are not used in any item.


• 
  
  Beam Rifle certnon-existent, making the schematic useless.


• 
  
  Experimentation on the [Advanced] Rifle Stock is hosed. This component suffers similar symptoms of the Projectile Feed Mechanism (pre-fix):Experimentation results are completely random, damage always startsin the 8-9% range regardless of quality and the stats achieved through experimentation can be much higher than what they should be.

General Weaponsmith Balance Issues

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  The Armor Piercing System needs a second glance. Vulnerableopponentsgrant no damage bonus from AP, however, non-vulnerable opponents do. In short,it is possible todo more damage to an opponent that is 30% resistant to your weapon than a vulnerable opponent.


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  Looted components and enhancements need a balance pass. Kliknik Glands are not even worth the bother, seeing that they enhance weapons that have 5 uses. Rancor Teeth are very, very rarely worth using; more often than not, they just make the weapon worse. High Powered Energy Capacitors are shadowed by their Krayt enhancements. Krayt tissues are easier to come across and have significantly more impressive base stats, thus rendering the Energy Capacitors obsolete. Melee weapons need more enhancements on par with Krayt Tissue available.


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  Plumbum Iron and Rhodium Steel need a balance pass. The extremely low conductivity stat on these two metals has resulted in sub-par components and weaponry that go unused as a result of these restrictive metals.


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  Rifle Stocks, Advanced Rifle Stocks and Advanced Weapon Scopes are underutilized as a result of penalizing stats. These optional components bring a significant amount of HAM that cannot be experimented down to a reasonable amount, outweighing any bonuses they may bring. Regular Weapon Scopes, however, are balanced properly.


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  The Elite Carbine, EE3 Carbine, Striker Pistoland Tusken Rifle require a balance pass. For reasons we cannot attribute to simple flaws such as resources or experimentation bugs, these weapons just suck. There is nothing wrong with their schematics or the ingredients they use, they just naturally have poor stats (compared to the other weapons in their respective trees) and thus, go underutilized.


• 
  
  Moderate successes too abundant. These are a plague upon our community. They cause us all a great deal of grief and anger, and much of the community feels, as Master Weaponsmiths, they deserve their work to be called more than "moderate". A reduction of the moderate success rate is requested.


• 
  
  Moderate successes can hardly be called 'successes'. Moderate successes are supposed to provide a marginal bump in stats during experimentation. Instead, they seemingly have random results, raising some numbers and lowering others, creating inexplicable experimentation results.


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  Several schematics have illogical components. The Scatter pistol, in its description, says it fires blaster bolts. However, the Scatter pistol uses a mix of both Blaster and Projectile parts. Tangle Pistol has a Projectile Feed Mechanism, but no pistol barrel. Similarly, the SG82 also has no Rifle barrel component. Flamethrowers and other weapons that are supposed to shoot dangerous chemicals would probably make more sense using Chemical Dispersion Mechanisms. The Lance is not a Vibro weapon, however, its schematic still calls for Vibro components.


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  Weaponsmith Toolkit not wearable with backpack. An otherwise highly-prized enhancement goes unused by the vast majority of Weaponsmiths, considering the great sacrifice that comes with equipping it.


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  Weapon Repair needs to be rebalanced. Since Publish 7, repair rates have been reported as horrendous; success rates being less than half what they used to be. Moreover, there seems to be no solid data demonstrating Master Weaponsmiths repairing better than anyone else. Lastly, the Weapon Repair skill needs to be properly implemented, so we have something to do with all the SEAs we're carrying around.


• 
  
  Ridiculously powerful loot weapons continue to drop. No other crafting profession has to deal with the amount of "uber" loot competing for it's sales the way weaponsmith does. Looted weapons need to be toned down. 2000 max damage, 1.5 speed, 6 HAM rifles are ridiculous.

Munitions Tree Balance Issues

Illogical placement of certain Mine schematics of the Munitions tree. The DRX Mine (Munitions I) requires a subcomponent (Warhead Stabilizing Mechanism) from MunitionsII and two named resources. The XG Mine (Munitions III) uses fewer resources than the DRX, only requires generic metals andsubcomponents craftable at Novice Weaponsmith. These two schematics should be swapped.

Mines require a balance pass. XG mine isAR1,Blast, with high damage. DRX mine is AR3, Blast, with rather low damage (I think damage output slightly worse than the XG after factoring in the AR bonuses). Anti-vehicular mine is AR1, Heat, with low damage. In other words, the easiest mine to make [XG Mine] is the best, and the hardest mine to make is the worst.

Grenades require a balance pass. In several cases, the HAM costs of the Proton Grenade (and generally, most other non-C12/C22 grenades) are so high, you end up doing more damage to yourself than you did to your target. Thermal Detonators are higher in the tree, but inferior to Imperial Detonators. Additionally, range modifiers for grenades tend to suck, something that's hard to reconcile with a weapon that supposedly has a large blast radius.

Grenade speed bugged. Irregardless of the speed on the actual grenade, all thrown weapons are hard-capped at a 9 second delay between throws.

Ranged Tree Balance Issues

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  DLT20 and DLT20a Rifle are identical. One requires a lower cert and is in a lower schematic, but still equivalent to its brethren higher in the tree.


• 
  
  The Bowcaster needs a balance pass. This weapon should have an extra boost, such as AP2, being that it is such a unique weapon.


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  T21 Rifle cannot be scoped. There isn't really any apparent reason for why this is, either, when the rest of the rifles can be scoped.


• 
  
  Carbineers need a wider variety of damage-types. Only three damage types are available to the entire profession.

Melee Tree Balance Issues

• 
  
  Ryyk Sword needs a balance pass. Marked by its poor DPS and skyrocketing HAM costs, it is severely outperformed by its predecessor, the (1H) Curved Sword.


• 
  
  The 2H weapons line needs a balance pass. The Two-Handed Curved Sword greatly outperforms every other weapon in the line, even though its cert comes much earlier. The Vibro Axe and the Two Handed Cleaver both come after theTwo-handed Curved Sword, however, they both have a lower DPS and a lower AP. The Two Handed Cleaver has been almost universally replaced by the Scythe. The only comparable weapon that remains is the Power Hammer. Even with top-end components, the Power Hammer is entirely too slow of a weapon, leaving it mostly a "Master" weapon. This leaves the Swordsman profession with very few weapons worth using.


• 
  
  The Polearms line needs a balance pass. This profession is granted only three weapons to choose from, the Lance, the Long Vibro Axe and the Vibro Lance. The Lance is quickly eclipsed by the LVA in one skillbox, granting this weapon very little use. The LVA becomes the king of the Polearm profession, even outperforming the all-too-situational Vibro Lance. The Vibro Lance has an elite cert and should definitely not be outperformed so easily. All of which have terrible range values.


• 
  
  Desh Copper needs a balance pass. Similar to the woes of the Advanced Blaster Barrel components, the Advanced Blade Vibro Unit suffers a similar fate. This advanced component is not greatly superior to its predecessor, the blame lying inthe Desh Copper ingredient requirement. Desh Copper is capped at 372 UT, even though the ABVU schematic is based from 100% UT.

Novice Weaponsmith Balance Issues

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  Gap between Novice and Master far too wide, leaving most Novices and their items very underutilized. It's common knowledge: Novice weapons are crap, everybody wants a Master Weaponsmith. At Novice, even their very first pistol, the D18 Pistol, is worse than a CDEF. Combined with the heavy grind they face ahead of them, it becomes increasingly difficult for pre-Master smiths to make a dime in an economy flooded with Masters.


• 
  
  DLT20 Rifle not craftable at Novice Weaponsmith. The schematic for the DLT20 Rifle is present in the Novice Weaponsmith skillbox. The required subcomponent, a Blaster Rifle Barrel, is not.

Wishlist

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  More weapon customization options, more improvement on options that exist. A few ideas kicked around were colored weapons, alternative components that provide the same bonuses but different looks. Additionally, fix the graphical glitch bugs associated with weapon scopes, stocks and barrelsand add new gun models to avoid using duplicate models (e.g. CDEF Rifle and DLT20 Rifle).


• 
  
  More storage. Storage is a huge issue for the Weaponsmith profession, what with all of the loot schematics and loot components now. Being able to stackthese kinds of items (such as Geonosian cubes) would be a great start, but the storage requirements for all of the weapon-enhancing loot on top of the strenuous resource requirements of the profession make it difficult to find a place to keep everything.


• 
  
  Hidden numbers. It is fairly obvious that the game uses more decimal places than it shows when calculating things like speed and damage on a finished weapon. We would love to be able to see those numbers in order to better understand the crafting process and have more control over the quality of a finished weapon.


• 
  
  Factory time/schematic complexity reduction. Some components and weapons have ridiculous crafting times. A fully-experimented Advanced Vibro Blade Unit can take nearly six minutes to produce in a factory, making weapons that sell quickly -- such as Vibroknucklers -- difficult to keep in-stock. Grenades and munition components are the absolute worst offenders, requiring weeks of factory time to produce limited-use weapons that can be consumed in a matter of hours.

Message Edited by SeaRaptor on 01-14-2005 09:09 AM

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SeaRaptor wrote:

Munitions Tree Balance Issues

Illogical placement of certain Mine schematics of the Munitions tree. The DRX Mine (Munitions I) requires a subcomponent (Warhead Stabilizing Mechanism) from MunitionsII and two named resources. The XG Mine (Munitions III) uses fewer resources than the DRX, only requires generic metals andsubcomponents craftable at Novice Weaponsmith. These two schematics should be swapped.

Mines require a balance pass. XG mine isAR1,Blast, with high damage. DRX mine is AR3, Blast, with rather low damage (I think damage output slightly worse than the XG after factoring in the AR bonuses). Anti-vehicular mine is AR1, Heat, with low damage. In other words, the easiest mine to make [XG Mine] is the best, and the hardest mine to make is the worst.

Grenades require a balance pass. In several cases, the HAM costs of the Proton Grenade (and generally, most other non-C12/C22 grenades) are so high, you end up doing more damage to yourself than you did to your target. Thermal Detonators are higher in the tree, but inferior to Imperial Detonators. Additionally, range modifiers for grenades tend to suck, something that's hard to reconcile with a weapon that supposedly has a large blast radius.

---

There is also an issue with the speed of the grenades, it doesn't matter how low the speed is the throw-rate seems to be the same. I tested this with 5.0 speed and 2.6 speed C12 grenades and there was no difference in throw speed.

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Rhadida wrote:

There is also an issue with the speed of the grenades, it doesn't matter how low the speed is the throw-rate seems to be the same. I tested this with 5.0 speed and 2.6 speed C12 grenades and there was no difference in throw speed.

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JoleneArcher wrote:

What about the Power Conditioners for Stun Batons?

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• Experimentation on the [Advanced] Rifle Stock is hosed. This component suffers similar symptoms of the Projectile Feed Mechanism (pre-fix):Experimentation results are completely random, damage always starts at 8% regardless of quality and the stats achieved through experimentation can be much higher than what they should be.

The intial exp for adv stocks for me is always 9% with the resources i currently use. This can be achieved with a great initial exp.

• Desh Copper needs a balance pass. Similar to the woes of the Advanced Blaster Barrel components, the Advanced Blade Vibro Unit suffers a similar fate. This advanced component is not greatly superior to its predecessor, the blame lying inthe Desh Copper ingredient requirement. Desh Copper has not been reported to reach over ~300 UT, even though the ABVU schematic is based from 100% UT.

Cap is 372. Currently I have some 371 desh copper that I use

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epidimick wrote:

Couple more things

Increase in weapon componets statsdoes not increase final weapon stats sometimes.

For example

*using the same resources for final weapon and experimentation on intial and final values the same*

37 max damage avbu will produce a 147 max vk

38 max damage avbu will produce a 147 max vk

39 max damage avbu will produce a 148 max vk

The final weapon does not always show the increase in final weapon componts stats. This happens most often in meele weapons.

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Max number of exp boxes wrong

For example

a DX2 20,20,15,20 intial exp will show 10,10,11,10 avaible boxes for exp. This happens all over the place and is the same bug as the stock one. Most people don't notice this because the error is not so glaring.

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SeaRaptor wrote:

General Crafting-related Bugs

Using Practice Mode and multiple Crafting tools may result in a loss of resources/components. If you are using Practice Mode, your crafting session will automatically close if another crafting tool in your inventory spits out a prototype. When it closes, you lose all resources that were in the tool.

I read that this had been fixed in a past patch but I don't practise anymore so I can't confirm

General Weaponsmith Balance Issues

Moderate successes too abundant. These are a plague upon our community. They cause us all a great deal of grief and anger, and much of the community feels, as Master Weaponsmiths, they deserve their work to be called more than "moderate". A reduction of the moderate success rate is requested.

I don't notice this anymore

Munitions Tree Balance Issues

Grenades require a balance pass. In several cases, the HAM costs of the Proton Grenade (and generally, most other non-C12/C22 grenades) are so high, you end up doing more damage to yourself than you did to your target. Thermal Detonators are higher in the tree, but inferior to Imperial Detonators. Additionally, range modifiers for grenades tend to suck, something that's hard to reconcile with a weapon that supposedly has a large blast radius.

Is this true? Thermals have medium AP

Rifle Tree Balance Issues

Riflemen need a wider variety of damage-types. The Tusken Rifle should be kinetic, the Spraystick should be acid-based.

I would say riflemen have variety second only to pistoleers now, carbineers need more variety.