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Assemblies and game balance

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Sylph:
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

Game Hunter:
(I'm going to assume you (Sylph) mean "power armor" when you say "plate armor" which is, in fact, a different (but currently beta only) assembly. Also (for everyone else), I'll probably be mentioning specific mods with regards to the assemblies, so there are schematic spoilers ahead.)

Assemblies in general will need some balancing. Right now a good deal of them are all over the place in terms of usefulness and feasibility. Some examples you mention:

- Assault rifle is probably too strong given the mods used. Changing a 1d6x4 to a 2d5x2 is decent, although there's also 0.8 firing time, 1.0 reload time (where did this come from, anyway) and, more importantly, a whopping +6 accuracy. The accuracy makes sense in that you're applying triple-A mods, but the rest of the stats should be relatively unchanged. 3.0 reload time, 1.0 firing time, and 2d3x4 or 3d2x4 damage is probably a fairer weapon. We have to keep in mind that the high accuracy of the weapon appeals to MAc users, who already get a point of WK, so the bonus shouldn't be TOO high, and yet still be useful to people who aren't necessarily getting MAc.
- Tactical armor/boots are balanced, possibly even TOO good, because AA is practically guaranteed if you can handle fighting Arena Master. If you want to, it's an item you can make every single game. Having both grants -50% KB and 0.64 sec/step so, even without significant protection, they are invaluable tools.
- I think high power would do better if the capacity drop was to 3/4 instead of 1/2. The extra damage output does not make up for the loss of capacity (and therefore more reload time added to your DPS) when it's so significant, not to mention it's nigh unthinkable to use if you're getting any points of WK. If I'd consider using just P or B on a weapon over HP, there's a problem. (Exception is HP Railgun, which is very awesome, but that's a unique so it's fair.)
- Power armor can be destroyed, FYI, so you can't run into battle all the time with it. Dropping the protection a bit (even to six, essentially making the boost in terms of MS/KB) is probably for the best, however. I agree that there's a discrepancy between it and the nanofiber skin, the latter only being particularly good on cybernetic or gothic armor (which then takes even more luck in producing). (Plate armor, which I mentioned earlier, is like the heavy version of power armor, so the balancing here would mean that having a basic suit of awesome is still possible, though the MS drawbacks would balance it out in this case.)
- Nanomanufacture likely needs to be forced on rapid-fire weapons only. Nanomachic BFG 9000 is, I'm sure, so OP that no one would ever think to choose otherwise.

If you know the stats for cybernano and biggestFG, would you mind adding them to the Wiki? I can't tell if either are worth the trouble, since they're so hard to produce as it stands.

Most of the new assemblies are more balanced toward what you're talking about: equipment that is slightly better than the exotic it simulates, but not quite as useful as modding the exotic itself. In the meantime, however, we should attempt to work all the current assemblies so that they fit this ideology.

Sylph:

--- Quote from: Game Hunter on March 14, 2011, 08:52 ---(I'm going to assume you (Sylph) mean "power armor" when you say "plate armor" which is, in fact, a different (but currently beta only) assembly.
- Power armor can be destroyed, FYI, so you can't run into battle all the time with it. Dropping the protection a bit (even to six, essentially making the boost in terms of MS/KB) is probably for the best, however. I agree that there's a discrepancy between it and the nanofiber skin, the latter only being particularly good on cybernetic or gothic armor (which then takes even more luck in producing). (Plate armor, which I mentioned earlier, is like the heavy version of power armor, so the balancing here would mean that having a basic suit of awesome is still possible, though the MS drawbacks would balance it out in this case.)
--- End quote ---
Actually, I was talking about plate armour. Power armour is a decent item, but a complete waste of a good mod pack. It's specifically plate armour that I was talking about in my previous post, which I think dwarfs almost all other armours in the game.


--- Quote ---If you know the stats for cybernano and biggestFG, would you mind adding them to the Wiki? I can't tell if either are worth the trouble, since they're so hard to produce as it stands.
--- End quote ---
Sure, I'll add them later.


--- Quote ---Most of the new assemblies are more balanced toward what you're talking about: equipment that is slightly better than the exotic it simulates, but not quite as useful as modding the exotic itself. In the meantime, however, we should attempt to work all the current assemblies so that they fit this ideology.
--- End quote ---
The only new assemblies that I've tried are the grappling boots, the plate armour, and the tactical shotgun. Grappling boots seem like junk, tactical shotgun feels a little powerful, but not too bad (as I mentioned in my post).

Game Hunter:

--- Quote from: Sylph on March 14, 2011, 10:51 ---Actually, I was talking about plate armour. Power armour is a decent item, but a complete waste of a good mod pack. It's specifically plate armour that I was talking about in my previous post, which I think dwarfs almost all other armours in the game.
--- End quote ---
I haven't gotten the chance to look at plate armor yet, so I don't know if the stats are off. It's supposed to be 8-protection, I think, and infinite durability (it's onyx'd for those not in the know), but has really bad movespeed factor to compensate. Alternatively, a gothic armor with PAB would probably function almost identically (given 400% durability is nearly infinite) and takes only an exotic instead of a unique. But, again, I don't know what the MS rate is, so I'll take your word that it may very well be far OP'd.

Tactical shotgun is basically a P-modded assault shotgun with a slightly slower reload time. It might be strong because it's basic but otherwise it seems pretty balanced to me. (Personally I believe the assault shotgun is a VERY small upgrade from combat shotgun in the first place, so this is a fair way to make use of a basic assembly.)

EDIT: Looking at cybernano, I agree that it's not particularly better than nanofiber skin: something like PPBO probably makes more sense on it (and change the name to reflect it, obviously). BiggestFG still looks really awesome (not compared to nanomachic BFG but that NEEDS a fix) although all the mods needed does make it ridiculous to expect to make it in anything besides a particularly lucky A100 run (not to mention holding the mods in anticipation). It's something to talk about, for sure.

Sylph:

--- Quote from: Game Hunter on March 14, 2011, 11:24 ---BiggestFG still looks really awesome (not compared to nanomachic BFG but that NEEDS a fix) although all the mods needed does make it ridiculous to expect to make it in anything besides a particularly lucky A100 run (not to mention holding the mods in anticipation). It's something to talk about, for sure.

--- End quote ---

It's not just poor when compared to nanomachic BGF, imo. It's nothing special when compared to, say, a nano rocket launcher. It takes a long time to recharge 100 cells, and destroys a good portion of the cover you might want to be hiding behind while you wait for the recharge. I'd sooner see it become a truly awesome item, and it's probably the only one we don't really have to worry too much about being overpowered, given the mod requirements.

Re: Plate armour. Sure, it has a movespeed penalty, I just don't think the movespeed penalty is anywhere near high enough. For a 8-armour indestructible item, I'd expect something like a 80% movespeed reduction, and it would still be a massively useful assembly...

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