DRL > Discussion

Ruminating about MAc balance and Game Balance in general...

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BEEF:
In the other thread somebody suggested that guns consume ammo like normal, but reloading Ammochain guns requires no ammo from your backpack. Suppose on top of that, chainfiring draws ammo out of your backpack when the gun itself runs out. To prevent exploiting it for BFG ammo among other things, trying to unload a rapid-fire weapon yields a message like "You can't unload the gun without destroying it, it's belt-fed! Unload anyway? (y/n)"

You'd still have unlimited ammo, but you'd have a moment of weakness while you stop to reload. If you can't spare that moment, you can start chainfiring and dip into your ammo reserve. Magazine size becomes a consideration again, so bulk mods and miniguns are at a premium. Finally, it keeps Juggler and the chaingun from being completely obsolete, by letting you switch to a new source renewable ammo before reloading.

Thomas:
Buffing everything (including monsters) to MAc level is silly, if not because of the fact that the game becomes instakill weapon vs instakill monster then because of the fact that balancing several changes at the same time like that would be highly difficult.

With this in mind, a nerf of MAc is required. Currently, as somebody I can't quite remember so correctly said, MAc helps the player in many ways. Removing a couple would result in a much more balanced trait.

1. Helps with time management. No more reloading!
2a. Helps with ammo management...
2b. and hence inventory management.
3. Hey, who needs a chaingun any more?
4. Slightly increases damage output (in that you can now chainfire for longer without stopping)
The downside is currently no TaN. There is no other downside.

The most obvious way of balancing it, and really the only one that's both simple to implement and effective, is either removing the "Guns don't cost ammo" or "Guns don't need reloading" part, making the trait either "Guns can draw ammo from your pack without needing to reload" or "Guns now require no ammo, but still need reloading.". Either of these 2 will reduce the ways the trait helps you down to 3 instead of 5.

Another way would be to reduce the damage of chainguns in general. This makes ammochain suffer immensely, because the whole point of ammochain is to kill things before they get a chance to fire. A way to do this (that would also make SoaB viable for non-chaingun builds) is to make SoaB "All attacks made by you do 10%/20%/30% extra damage, rounded up." Because chainguns do 1d6, half the time 30% is worth +1, half the time 30% is worth +2.

If this turns out to make chainguns too weak, we could slightly increase their base accuracy/damage and HEY PRESTO THEY AREN'T USELESS WITHOUT TRAITS just like Mr. Shotgun

action52:
I agree that buffing all the master traits, then making the monsters powerful, is a terrible idea. You would be pretty much forcing players to get a master trait.

Having ammochain make your rapid-fire guns automatically refill without having to stop and reload seems like a bad idea too. It would, indeed, be underpowered. I seldom find myself in a situation where I can't step away to safety and reload when I'm using a rapidfire weapon. If I do come across a big enough group of powerful enemies that I would need more than 5 bursts of my plasma rifle, I'm going to use my BFG, Ammochain or no Ammochain.

Having them use no ammo, but require reloading... seems counterintuitive to what ammochain is. ANd I don't think it would nerf the trait much, since beaing unable to stop and reload is seldom a problem outside of a few areas with huge monster generation like the Mortuary. Outside of those areas it wouldn't change anything.

The earlier suggestion of forcing players to get the reloader trait seems redundant. I think that the Ammochain build is already weak in the early levels, even with SoB.

This is mostly because you can't get Eagle Eye. That makes a HUGE difference in the beginning--my Cateye runs are a breeze in the early levels. Having both Eagle Eye and SoB makes Hell's Arena pretty easy once you get the chaingun. And that chaingun continues to be useful throughout the game, so the plasma rifle is just a nice little bonus when you get it.

In an ammochain run, I often wind up using mostly shotguns in the early game. The high miss rate lowers the damage and makes it very unreliable. I would say that an unmodded chaingun is worse than the combat shotgun, even with SoB and Triggerhappy. You can use one or two of the agility mods in the Chained Court, but you run the risk of making your plasma rifle unreliable in the late game. And if you do save those agility mods, you will have an awesome weapon once you find the plasma gun... but you don't know when that will be. I remember one Ammochain run where I didn't find a single plasma gun in the first 13 levels! I finally found one on level 14. A former commando killed me with it.

So I think the game is hard enough in the early game. I think this difficulty does a pretty good job of balancing out how much easier it makes the endgame.

If you want to "nerf" the trait a little bit, how about making it so that you consume no ammo only when you're chainfiring? You could further "nerf" it by making it so that Chainfiring reduces your fire rate by half in the first round, instead of by 1/3. This would let you greatly reduce ammo useage with strategic chainfiring, but it wouldn't be viable to use on everything.

Another idea would be to have more former captains in the later levels. That would take some of the pressure off of Cateye users, who could burn through easy enemies with their chaingun and switch to the plasma rifle when they need a little more power.

In the end, though, I think the balance is pretty good overall. Rapidfire weapons are the most straightforward, and the easiest to win with. Shotguns aren't as powerful, but with intelligent usage they can still be damn good weapons. Pistols are challenging and weak to start with, but with the right traits and playstyle they can also be effective. Melee weapons make you extremely vulnerable, but if you can wipe out enemies quickly once you get close enough. There is a progression from easier to harder, but the harder weapon types don't get weaker so much as they require more advanced strategy. Some tweaks here and there might be good, but I think it's more than good enough as is.

Frankosity:
On the note of balancing Intuition and Cateye, I think one way could be to remove Cateye entirely (or make it a 1-level secondary trait) and make Intuition a master trait, combining the two levels into one.

Game Hunter:

--- Quote from: Thomas ---With this in mind, a nerf of MAc is required. Currently, as somebody I can't quite remember so correctly said, MAc helps the player in many ways. Removing a couple would result in a much more balanced trait.

1. Helps with time management. No more reloading!
2a. Helps with ammo management...
2b. and hence inventory management.
3. Hey, who needs a chaingun any more?
4. Slightly increases damage output (in that you can now chainfire for longer without stopping)
The downside is currently no TaN. There is no other downside.
--- End quote ---

We can safely put that another downside is lack of accuracy...but, as I stated before, it's quite easy to remove that problem because of Chained Court.  In fact, the lack of accuracy is a damn good counterbalance if NOT for the quick fix.  Can anyone think of a MAc run where the player didn't have accuracy mods?


--- Quote from: Thomas ---Another way would be to reduce the damage of chainguns in general. This makes ammochain suffer immensely, because the whole point of ammochain is to kill things before they get a chance to fire. A way to do this (that would also make SoaB viable for non-chaingun builds) is to make SoaB "All attacks made by you do 10%/20%/30% extra damage, rounded up." Because chainguns do 1d6, half the time 30% is worth +1, half the time 30% is worth +2.

If this turns out to make chainguns too weak, we could slightly increase their base accuracy/damage and HEY PRESTO THEY AREN'T USELESS WITHOUT TRAITS just like Mr. Shotgun
--- End quote ---
This appears to be a very reasonable solution...although it certainly improves the damage on weapons like RL and BFG quite significantly.  It also makes AoMC runs that much more damaging (to enemies) in general.  Admittedly, however, SoaB is almost solely engineered for rapid-fire weapons, so I don't mind making it a little more generalized.

I would argue that the point of any offensive build is to kill the enemy before they have the chance to fire (MAD?  Cateye??) and that the specialized purpose of Ammochain is to fire as wildly as possible without concern for how much ammo you have left.  To force reloading would be a small nerf in my opinion, but perhaps it is all that is necessary (other than less available agi mods...) to place it on part with other master traits. 

Besides, it doesn't HAVE to be called Ammochain if that name doesn't make sense with such a nerf.  Call it "Heavy Weapons Guy" or something, I don't care.

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