DRL > Discussion

Assemblies and game balance

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Thomas:
My thoughts on assembly balance:
Tactical boots are still the best assembly that you can make consistantly.
Nobody wears boots for the protection, so it pretty much has no drawbacks. The -25% knockback can sometimes be annoying when you don't get pushed away from the baron that's killing you or it screws around with your fireangel dodging, but what are you going to do, go back to plasteel (A), with its 50% knockback reduction?

As for the ones that cannot be consistantly made, the fact that they require a unique modpack should be telling of how unbalanced they are. A balance between "Is worth the modpack" and "Doesn't hand victory to the player" would be almost impossible. I'd say that a complete redesign of all assemblies with a unique requirement is needed, making them worse but with only basic mods as requirements.

The assault rifle (and similarly, the hyperblaster in BETA 2b) are both a bit too good, maybe. The hyperblaster sucks up 2 power mods, so it's got to be good, and the assault rifle means you probably aren't getting tactical boots, so it's got to be pretty good too. Even so, they've got a lot of benefits and only a couple of drawbacks.

drugon:
I think that there is a big problem with traits balance now. I mean - whizkid. With assemblies it becomes very useful trait (even more useful than earlier). More than that - you need it to take ammochain trait. And I think that ammochain is a very dishonest trait. Just infinite ammo for all chainfire weapons (and chaifire are the best weapons in the game in my opinion). More than that - you can't take army of the dead if you decided to take whizkid. I think that traits should be rebalanced somehow.

RogerN:
I've completed several runs since 0.9.9.2 was released, so I figured I'd just throw in my $0.02 regarding the basic assemblies.  I still don't have much experience with advanced/master assemblies, so I won't comment on those.

Tactical Boots
Of all the assemblies, the tactical boots are the only basic assembly that I think borders on being overpowered.  Out of a dozen runs I've only regretted using these boots once (lots of lava to run across), and that was an extreme situation which could have otherwise been mitigated using other means: environment suit, powerups, etc...

If it were up to me I would remove the knockback resistance.  Otherwise the only reason I would *not* make these boots is because I want to use the mods on a plasma rifle instead.

Tactical Armor
This assembly is pretty well-balanced IMO.  Useful for much of the game, but not overpowered.  The level of protection is an obvious drawback, but regen and speed make the assembly tempting anyway.

However, if I have to choose between tactical boots and tactical armor, I'll choose to make the boots every time - and it's pretty rare that I fail to find steel boots before the Chained Court.

Speedloader Pistol
Meh.  I'm not crazy about this assembly.  If I'm focusing on pistols then I usually go for Gun Kata, which makes reload time irrelevant (except for Cybie - but he's easy to dodge anyway).  And if I'm not focusing on pistols then I'm certainly not going to waste mod packs on them.

Elephant Gun
There's almost no reason to make this gun, especially since it uses up valuable power mods that could be applied to armor.  Shotty users will usually find a double shotgun long before acquiring two power mods.  At short range the double shotgun has a bigger punch, and at long range this gun is practically the same as the combat shotty but with poorer reload time.

Chainsword
No use outside of a Strongman Badge attempt, but that's probably reason enough to leave this assembly alone.

Gatling Gun
This is a great assembly.  It's definitely an upgrade to the standard chaingun, but not quite as good as a plasma rifle.  It's not a no-brainer either, as you might want to keep the bulk mods around for an eventual BFG upgrade.

Micro Launcher
Why would I want one of my biggest guns to do *less* damage?  Seriously, if I want a launcher more suited for combat then I'll probably clean out The Wall and grab a missile launcher.  Its 4-rocket capacity is much better suited to heavy combat situations than the negligible speed improvements of the Micro Launcher.  Practically speaking, most of my rockets are used for busting walls anyway - so this assembly is a definite downgrade.

Nanofiber Armor
Personally I'll never use it because I hate speed penalties.  The assembly might appeal to other players.

High Power Weapon
As other posters have mentioned I think the clip size penalty is too harsh.  I've used these with Ammochain (since clip size doesn't matter), but even then it was a tough decision - I'd already invested in Whizkid at that point, and I could just as easily have preferred to stick some agility mods on the gun instead.

MaiZure:

--- Quote from: drugon on March 17, 2011, 11:07 ---I think that there is a big problem with traits balance now. I mean - whizkid. With assemblies it becomes very useful trait (even more useful than earlier). More than that - you need it to take ammochain trait. And I think that ammochain is a very dishonest trait. Just infinite ammo for all chainfire weapons (and chaifire are the best weapons in the game in my opinion). More than that - you can't take army of the dead if you decided to take whizkid. I think that traits should be rebalanced somehow.

--- End quote ---

Amen on the MAD limitation - I've always been a shotgun player and because of that, I rarely venture in to the assemblies because Finesse is blocked on my build.

Thexare:

--- Quote from: RogerN on March 17, 2011, 20:06 ---Elephant Gun
There's almost no reason to make this gun, especially since it uses up valuable power mods that could be applied to armor.  Shotty users will usually find a double shotgun long before acquiring two power mods.  At short range the double shotgun has a bigger punch, and at long range this gun is practically the same as the combat shotty but with poorer reload time.

--- End quote ---
I disagree, and make it in almost every shotgun game. Yes, the double shotgun has a bigger punch at short range, but therein lies the problem - at short range. The Elephant Gun hits almost as hard (12d3 vs. 16d3 if I'm understanding the double shotgun bug right) at a considerably longer range. Shottyman completely negates the reload issue.

And I use Nanofiber regularly, especially on TAN builds. Even if it's not useful as primary armor for your build, a reliable unbreakable [3] defense is nice to have around in case your main armor breaks somehow.

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