I have been thinking, what does the agility mod really do for weapons? Of course, it increases accuracy. Meaning, it increases the chance that each bullet fired will hit. The issue is, shotguns always hit within their shot patterns. So, the agility mod is currently useless to shotguns.
However let's look at this a little bit differently, not basing the numbers off of DoomRL, but just a representation of concept. Say you fire 10 chaingun bullets, and 5 hit, 5 miss, on average. You apply an agility mod, and now your average is 6 hit, 4 miss. Another mod, and it becomes 7-3. Now, let's say that a shotgun fires 100 bits of shrapnel in each fire. Estimate for sake of simplicity that the shotgun has a 100 degree blast angle, therefore 10 shrapnel go each 10 degrees. So, an enemy up close is likely to be hit from most or all shrapnel, and an enemy far away is likely to be hit with 10 or less shrapnel. Let's say an enemy is far enough away that 10 shrapnel approach him, and only 5 hit. My thought is, apply the agility mod, and now 6 or seven shrapnel hit. Of course, at closer distances, more shrapnel will hit each time.
The idea is almost like auto-targeting bullet shrapnel, but the idea can be implemented in a few ways. I will attempt to demonstrate how I can see the implementations, represented by an image with the character, shooting a shotgun, and numbers representing the "relative" damage, not accurate to the game, but damage to an enemy in that square compared to damage at other squares.
The normal estimate damage map:
...1......
.4321.....
@54321....
.4321.....
...1......
Implementation 1, concentrating (auto-targeting) shrapnel in mods 1-3:
...2...... ...3...... ...4......
.5432..... .6543..... .7654.....
@65432.... @76543.... @87654....
.5432..... .6543..... .7654.....
...2...... ...3...... ...4......
Implementation 2, extending blast radius in mods 1-3:
...11..... ...111.... ...1111...
.43211.... .432111... .4321111..
@543211... @5432111.. @54321111.
.43211.... .432111... .4321111..
...11..... ...111.... ...1111...
Implementation 3, slowing dropoff in mods 1-3:
...21..... ...221.... ...3221...
.43321.... .443321... .4433221..
@543321... @5544321.. @55443321.
.43321.... .443321... .4433221..
...21..... ...221.... ...3221...
Basically, Im. 1 is similar to (I assume) the effects of a power mod, but would keep shotguns as close-range weapons. Im. 2 makes shotguns the perfect scouting weapons, as enemies from longer distances can be hit for sure, but will only receive minimum damage at any ranges outside of the existing shotgun ranges. Im. 3 slows down the damage drop-off, making the shotgun better at close and medium ranges, plus still great for scouting (probably better than Im 2 since the damage at long range is likely to be slightly larger.), but possibly over-powered and unbalancing for the game.
Please vote on which implementation you feel would be better for the game, or make your own suggestions and recommendations. Remember, these numbers and images are not based on the game damage rates, but simply to get the ideas across in visual form. Thank you for reading, and I hope you appreciate the effort put in to the post.
EDIT: I personally am not going to vote, as I would like to hear the thoughts and ideas from the community here, the more expert players, and Kornel, as he knows what the mods are supposed to do. The goal here is to create an improvement to shotguns by utilizing an existing mod option, and making the mod effective a way that is balanced yet useful for shotgun users. I am a shotgun user, but I want to hear what you all think.
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Topic: How to make agility mods useful for shotguns (Read 9233 times)