DRL > Requests For Features
Suggestion for some shotgun-related changes
Malek Deneith:
DISCLAIMER: This post was originally made in a beta thread, as a suggestion but nothing was done with it due to upcoming deadline for 0.9.9.4 release. It has been split unchanged and moved to this forum for a wider discussion.
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Posting some ideas for modifying shotguns since the recent changes sparked a discussion on these on irc:
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Of shotguns and pellets
Let's face it - the current situation where shotguns cover an area in a semi-hitscan kind of way seems to be getting more and more troublesome, especially considering that each and every other weapon rolls for hit. Yes, it's nice to have it on our side, but it's not so nice when you get face to face with a bunch of sergeants and know for sure you won't be able to dodge out of the way, now is it? Hence my proposal is to make shotguns shoot a number of pellets instead of what they do now. How that is supposed to work? Well the AoE cone would still be here, but instead of everything in it getting hit automatically, creatures would be the target of a number of d3 damage "pellets" (so for example combat shotgun would shoot seven of such d3 hits), which would follow the normal to-hit procedure starting with the nearest target... BUT any pellets that would miss the first target would get to try to hit targets further on, until either pellets or targets run out. Some bonuses to hit at close range and penalties at longe would probably make sense also.
One problem with this idea (aside from coding hell for Kornel :P) is the armor. Obviously shrapnel = armor x 2 thing would have to go no matter what, but with individual pellets being d3, maybe d4 for some exotics some monsters would get immune to shotguns. I see two ways around it:
1) Have damage be applied for all pellets that hit in a single go (so if three pellets hit BoH it gets hurt by 3d3 not 3 x d3)
2) Increase the damage on pellets to something like d6 or even d8. This might seem imbalanced at first but remember that: a) with to hit being rolled a monster is unlikely to get hit with full blow and b) right now shotguns due their 'hit everything in cone' way of dealing damage can deal *much* more than the number on the weapon would suggest
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Of shotguns, combat shotguns and sergeants
Okay, this one is likely to be unpopular, but I think it deserves to be presented anyway. In current beta Combat Shotguns were pushed to level 6, and "vanilla" shotguns got their reload time halved to make them more notable. The result was, from what I hear (yet have to download the RC3 myself) were pretty devastating, especially for people who play AoB. Here is where my most likely to be unpopular suggestion comes in - remove "vanilla" shotguns. Flag them as monster-only weapon and move CShotty where it was before the RC to fill in the gap. Really, though some may argue - since times eternal shotgun was just a bridge to CShotty, and at best got it's five minutes of glory if somebody ammassed several of them and decided to brave the (back then easier I believe) Hell's Arena. I sincerly believe that no amount of pushing CShotty back will make shotguns a notable weapon - it's only delaying the inevitable swap-out, and as shown above any attempts to buff it are likely to result in unforseen problems with sergeants who appear early, aplenty and wield it.
Should that idea prove to be no-go, and people really, really insist on keeping the vanilla shotgun then at least do another thing and make the sergeant-shotgun unbuffed mob-only version of vanilla shotgun.
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Of sergeants and shells
This is a minor thing compared to the two others but... Well I've recently thought about shell drops and noticed something: the floor-appearing shells come in packs of 8 which is usually pretty ignorable amount all things considered. On the other hands sergeants carry around enormous amount of 30 shells each. This leads to situation where early game shotty players have more ammo than they need and can carry (due to plentiful sergeants), while on later levels when sergeants start to appear sparingly they suddenly have troubles to supply their weapons of choice, since most of the time they only find amounts that are a drop in the sea of need when faced with much hardier and more armored mobs that appear on later levels. I think some rebalance is in order, not sure what numbeers would be good though.
Matt_S:
Shotguns always did seem weird to me. I assume this plan would kill the damage percent dropoff since the pellets would already be spread out at larger distances? I can't really speak intelligently about armor changes because I'm not familiar enough with the balance involved in that, but the larger dice seems like a nicer solution. I think the shotguns would need a few more pellets though, considering that at anything but point blank, some pellets won't even have a chance to hit a single target because of spread (but I guess that'd make them even more devastating at close range).
I've been ditching regular shotguns for combat shotguns for a long time now. I agree that shotguns are pretty squarely outclassed by combat shotguns (and the faster reload time was a real pain when I tried an AoB run and that sergeant was just sitting on the staircase). However, eliminating it just doesn't feel right. I think with the first change, there may be room to work with, perhaps giving the regular shotgun a d8 for hit dice and only d6 for the combat shotgun.
Dorten:
For the first sugestion:
What about accuracy? In my view this way of implementing shotgun blast should be as follows:
1) NO accuracy bonus from traits modding and so on (you can't control where each pellet go with your telekinesis powers, can you?)
2) but some accuracy bonus stil needs to be, cause shooting shotgun at point blank and having 50% of pellets miss the target would be ridiculous,
3) NO dodge chance, or ability to dodge one pellet max.
Ny two (three) cents.
Angles of death:
I strongly oppose the no vanilla shotgun part. Also, I like shotguns the way they are. Sargents probably need to be edited a bit, though.
gunofdis:
Modeling buckshot sounds both overcomplicated and likely to cripple the area effect uses of shotguns. What's next, modeling a conical spray out of the burst fire weapons, rendering them near identical to the shotguns?
I think a better idea for improving the shotguns would be to give the break action guns (normal shotty, double shotty and derivatives) an alt reload that switches them to firing slugs, giving them single target kill power in exchange for their area effect. Slugs should be accurate (say +5 or +6, +3 or +4 for the double models) bullets that do lots of damage, perhaps half again to double the damage of a normal shell (remember, both the rocket launcher and normal shells have massive splash damage that we're giving up here). This can potentially help alleviate ammunition issues, since you won't be wasting lots of ammo plinking away at single targets at medium to long ranges. In any case, switching ammo would have the same cost as a normal reload but cannot be done on the move.
Combat shotty derivatives both already have their alt reload taken up by the full reload option and can be said to have a more delicate action not capable of surviving the heavy hunting loads used for slugs. This helps differentiate the 2 types, as the combat shotty gets rapid fire capabilities through pumping while the single shot models get versatility and the power to deal with larger demons relatively quickly.
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