Having played with assemblies in recent versions of doomrl quite extensively, I'm convinced that some or all of them need some rebalancing to fit in with the risks and rewards of other item types in doomrl.
The basic assemblies that do not require unique or exotic mods are, imo, pretty underpowered. Tactical boots are obviously a great item, but they pale in comparison to a pair of phaseshift boots, which is about the right place balance-wise for these assemblies: better than basic mods, not as good as modded exotics. The rest of the (very) basic assemblies are items I have a lot of trouble justifying construction of. As usual for this game they seem to fit in with very one-dimensional builds, but overall I feel they could use a bit of a buff. Tactical armour could use +1 armour, HP weapon is a nice one, but not really worth constructing on non-exotic items due to the clip capacity modification, etc. Nanofiber armour is a good assembly, and probably, imo, the best-balanced of the entire bunch.
Next up we have advanced assemblies that don't require exotic or unique mods. These are probably the most well-balanced of the bunch, imo. The assault rifle is a little *too* accurate, and benefits a little too much from triggerhappy, making it somewhat overpowered. The double chainsaw would suffer from the same problem as the assault rifle, were it not for the gauranteed unique that outshines it.
Now on to assemblies that require a single special modpack. This is where things start swinging the other way... Plate armour is a good example. How plate armour gets away with it's stats is beyond me. Compare it to classic uniques like malek's armour, cybernetic armour, onyx armour etc... For a single unique item find you basically have a suit of armour that surpasses everything else in the game. Single unique item. All the other components are common as muck. Gravity boots are even easier to construct than plate armour, and offer a similarly ridiculous advantage to the player, again greater than any unique or modded exotic in the game,but are somewhat better in that they require whizkid, and are arguably a waste of a good mod pack. Nanofiber skin armour is another stupidly good item, again negating every unique, but falls into the same domain as gravity boots, balanced due to whizkid and the other potential uses of the modpack. Plasmatic shrapnel much more reasonable, and perhaps a fair use of it's component unique without going too far, but I'd still consider it as powerful as a nano railgun, which, of course, requires 2 unique drops to construct...
The most ridiculous of them all, however, is nanomanufacture ammo. This isn't that hard to construct, it's basically, again, a single unique drop and some careful inventory management. The reward, when placed on a BFG, is truly the most ridiculous weapon ever to be featured on doomrl. It's *much* more of an 'I win' button than the dragonslayer is in a melee game, and it's miles more common. It basically removes every last bit of challenge from the game, and enables us, as players, to acheive diamond badges on item drop luck alone. This thing needs changing or outright removing. At the very least, it should be restricted to non-blast weapons.
There are *some* single-rare weapons that are reasonably well-balanced. Demolition ammo is a nice touch, storm bolter, assault cannon, and energy pistol are all reasonable, and in fact I'd probably advise taking their requirements down so that whizkid is not needed. Ripper is probably underpowered given that it requires so much whizkid.
Finally, there are those weapons that *would* be good, were it not for ridiculously poewrful and cheaper assemblies in the list. The main offenders here are cybernano armour, and the biggest fucking gun. Cybernano is barely any better than nanofibre skin armour, and is much harder to construct due to it's extra requirements. When we consider the extra requirements, we have to consider plate armour, and with that, cybernano armour becomes a ridiculous waste of a great mod pack for a ridiculously small difference. The biggest fucking gun, of course, is a powerful weapon, but when compared with the much, much more obtainable nanomanufacture BFG, it's absolute rubbish.
I think the game would benefit a lot if the assemblies were rebalanced somewhat.
- It would be more interesting to non-whizkid characters if there was a little more scope and choice in the basic assemblies.
- The assault rifle and the tactical shotgun are both a little too good for the basic modpack requirements
- The assemblies that require a nano pack should be balanced somewhere in between a nano-packed rocket launcher, and a nano-packed railgun. Anything less than the nano rocket launcher will be a waste of a nano pack and not worth constructing, whereas anything more than a nano railgun means that (using assemblies) a single unique is better than 2 specific uniques, which is too much, imo.
This is just my impression from the assemblies. I absolutely love the concept, but I think the execution could use a little rebalancing, since they have made many old exotics and uniques lose their lustre.
I'm hoping to garner some opinions of other posters on this topic, perhaps I'm the odd one out with my impression of assemblies, so I pose this question to the forum - are assemblies guilty of power-creep, removing the appeal of the old exotics and uniques?
~Sylph