DRL > Discussion

Fixed SoaB will be broken as hell.

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Zeb:
It obviously won't do too much with shotguns, BFGs, and stuff like that, but the boosts it gives to Chainguns and plasma rifles are absolutely ridiculous With Chaingun, you get +5 armor piercing damage per attack per level, meaning that at SoaB(3) you'd get  +15 armor piercing damage per attack. This means that against unarmored monsters your average damage would be rising from 17.5 per attack to 32.5 per attack- that's almost twice as much damage! And that's without throwing armor into the mix. Against an enemy with level 2 armor, you'd be going from an average of 10 damage to an average of 25 damage- a 150% increase.

The effect on the Plasma Rifle are even more dramatic, giving +8 armor piercing damage per level per attack, with +24 piercing damage. This brings the damage of the Plasma rifle from ~36 damage per attack to ~60 damage per attack- meaning that you now have a good chance of taking out high-level monsters with a single attack. Moreover, piercing damage is more important in the later stages where plasma rifles would be used then in stages where one would be using chainguns. Against a monster with 2 armor for instance, 3 SoaB would change the Plasma rifle from doing ~23 damage to a ludicrous ~47 damage. Remember that the Baron of Hell only has 60 HP. And all this speculation doesn't even take into account Overloaded rifles.  In addition to the ~180 damage minus armor penalties that an overloaded rifle normally gets, you be getting +120 armor piercing damage! The Cyberdemon, which is the final boss in the game, only has 200 HP, meaning that in a single turn you'd be guaranteed to do an absolute minimum of 75% damage.

What does this all mean? First of all, it would make the ludicrously easier. In addition, consider that the chaingun and plasma rifle are already, along with Rocket Launcher, the most used weapons in the game- well above pistols, melee weapons, or the shotgun series. this isn't like overhauling the shotgun or increasing the to-hit chance for chainsaws- these are weapons that 90%+ of normal runs use anyway. With this change there would be no reason for anyone, ever to use any non-bullet stream weapon after they've picked up the chaingun. The only exceptions to this would be the BFG which is only used in extremely select circumstances anyway, and the Rocket Launcher for destroying walls. Yes, even the RL would no longer be a viable option for damage doing.

I really think that Beta testers need to try this out and Kornal look at it before the next version comes out, because if the new version comes out with SoaB working as advertised, SoaB will become 0.9.8.5's Int3 on crack.

007bistromath:
I remember reading somewhere that SoaB was going to be changed to account for this. No idea what to, but I'm fairly certain it was.

BDR:
Ok, let's look at the math calmly.


--- Quote from: Zeb on October 24, 2007, 19:54 ---It obviously won't do too much with shotguns, BFGs, and stuff like that, but the boosts it gives to Chainguns and plasma rifles are absolutely rediculous
--- End quote ---

In my experience with the beta, this actually gives a fair amount of help to shotguns; it's still not as handy as being able to reload while moving, but it gives a noticeable boost such that you won't need to be quite as close to land a killing blow.  Obviously, a person using shotguns primarily will have more important trait picks first, but the effect from SoB is appreciable as it pads the effect of distance some.


--- Quote from: Zeb on October 24, 2007, 19:54 ---With Chaingun, you get +5 armor piercing damage per attack per level, meaning that at SoaB(3) you'd get  +15 armor piercing damage per attack. This means that against unarmored monsters your average damage would be rising from 17.5 per attack to 32.5 per attack- that's almost twice as much damage! And that's without thrwing armor into the mix. Against an enemy with level 2 armor, you'd be going from an average of 7.5 damage to an average of 22.5 damage- a 200% increase.
--- End quote ---

Your first figure on the armor math is wrong; the lowest amount of damage from a hit that is at all possible, including things not normally called hits like acid and lava damage, is 0 (as far as everything I've ever seen indicates), and I'm about 99% sure that gunshots/punches/the like have to do at least 1 point of damage on a successful hit, thus it would not be 7.5 damage but 12.5 damage (((1+4)/2)*5).  But I know the response already; an 80% increase still seems like too much of a change, and granted, the possibility that I'm wrong about the single point of necessary damage would up that to 125%.  The trouble with giving percentage changes is that when the numbers are low, so's the effect; the number difference, for conservative arguments' sake is 0-4 versus 2-7.  It's not clear just from that that things are going to suddenly turn into a cakewalk.  Before we go ahead and declare that SoB's gotta get removed, or perhaps changed such that it makes hits less accurate, or that it makes only a decimal increase in the damage, let's see what the wiki says about HP totals...


--- Quote from: theWiki ---O = 40 HP, 1 Armor
B = 50 HP, 1 Armor
B = 60 HP, 2 Armor
A = 50 HP, 2 Armor
V = 70 HP, 2 Armor
--- End quote ---

..and compare the number of times you'd have to shoot our most notorious foes (assuming all bullets hit their mark and that armor can reduce a hit to 0 damage) before they go down, since that's what will ultimately determine the change in the usefulness of the chaingun and the level of difficulty in the game (plasma rifle ignored for the moment, simply because the chaingun uses *the* most plentiful ammo type in the whole game and is the most powerful weapon using said ammo):

Before SoB:

O - worst case: never, average case: 4 times, best case: 2 times.
B - worst case: never, average case: 4 times, best case: 2 times.
B - worst case: never, average case: 6 times, best case: 3 times.
A - worst case: never, average case: 5 times, best case: 2.5 times (halfway through the third).
V - worst case: never, average case: 7 times, best case: 3.5 times (halfway through the fourth).

After SoB 3:

O - worst case: 3 times, average case: 2 times, best case: 1 time (8*5=40; ouch).
B - worst case: 4 times, average case: 2 times, best case: 2 times.
B - worst case: 6 times, average case: 3 times, best case: 2 times.
A - worst case: 5 times, average case: 3 times, best case: 2 times.
V - worst case: 7 times, average case: 4 times, best case: 2 times.

With results like these, I gotta admit there's a balance problem.  I think the best way to fix things while keeping the spirit of SoB is to change SoB so that it affects either the min or the max damage of hits but not both; I'm not totally sure which one would be better but I'm inclined towards the min damage as mods already cover the max damage portion.

Potman:
And shotguns are left unused once more...

Psion:
Maybe in the next major version Kornel will raise all the numbers involved except the SoaB bonus.  The enemies could have more hp to balance things like this out.  I kind of like the idea of SoaB so I'd hate to see it removed (although I don't think it will be).

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