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Author Topic: Bullet Dance questions  (Read 3881 times)

gunofdis

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Bullet Dance questions
« on: September 05, 2011, 00:48 »

How do Bullet Dance and SoaG 5 interact?  6 shots in .3 seconds?  less?  If I'm understanding things right you take  .4 * 1.2 * 2 = .96 seconds to fire 6 bullets with SoaG 3 and normal/speedloader pistols.  Are the times all added together before rounding and applying minimum delay?

Similarly, how do you keep this beast fed?  You spew 10mm at a ridiculous rate and waste tons of ammo overkilling many enemies  with your crazy 66 damage bursts before the trait cap.  I guess the high ideal is dual blasters, but I don't see that happening very often outside of Ao100.
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ParaSait

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2011, 04:16 »

Just saying: Bullet Dance fucking sucks. It basically changes your pistols into a piece of crap chaingun that not only wastes too much ammo but you also gotta reload every at least 3 shots. I hated it when I tried it out, to the point I decided to save my run by leaving my second pistol empty all the time. What a waste... could've chosen so much better traits.
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2011, 04:48 »

ParaSait, interesting. I've hear a few power-players saying it's overpowered :P.
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ParaSait

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2011, 05:23 »

Lol... I'unno, I hate it personally. It completely ruins the power that pistol builds have; deal a lot of damage with a minimum of ammo usage. Bullet Dance makes it a waste for it will consume at least twice the amount of ammo of which a fair amount is wasted on nothing.
And if I want pistols with a fast firing time, I'd rather pick some finesse instead of dedicating your whole run to MBd.

That being said, I also always considered Gun Kata to be kinda useless. Sure, handy, but it's a waste to go for unlocking it (and I'd rather pick another SoG or SoB instead of that). Actually, my most kickass AoMr run are masterless, or even without DG.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2011, 05:27 by ParaSait »
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Ander Hammer

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2011, 06:44 »

Use aimed shot more. It fires one bullet per gun, and with lots of SoG and Bullet Dance, it's not very slow at all. Probably faster than a full Bullet Dance attack with Triggerhappy(2); I can't be arsed to do the math. Plus it pretty much always hits.

It just struck me as strange to see someone complain about Bullet Dancer sucking because it pisses ammo when I almost immediately discovered how it made pistol versatility and killpower explode. Don't like three shots per volley? Triggerhappy(1) and enjoy merely double the potential offense.

Bullet Dancer is great.
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ParaSait

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2011, 07:51 »

Very good for you. I won't pick it anymore, though. :D
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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2011, 11:46 »

Your loss. I quite like my 2d4+6x6 at +5 accuracy each turn.

(dual AT speedloaders, maxed SoG/SoB)

Yes, some shots are wasted on dead things, but y'know what? I haven't found anything that kills Viles and Mancubi so fast.
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gunofdis

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2011, 12:38 »

It looks strong at first glance, but with maxed TH you're basically getting 3 shots in the time it takes to fire 2 normally, with less control over what you're doing.  It's mostly just riding on top of SoaG+SoB being really strong together.  Not sure +50% dps is worth 3 traits and a loss of fire discipline.  You waste at least a full pair of shots vs anything flimsier than an arachnotron, largely losing the advantage.  Or you can sit around taking aimed shots at basically everything, taking longer to kill groups of weak monsters.  Both of the other pistol master traits block SoB, so people aren't used to seeing that many damage bonuses on pistols.   I'm also not sure it actually does anything if you have SoaG5, what with the minimum action time and all.
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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2011, 13:06 »

The thing with Bullet Dance is that you're sacrificing the in-between time (and potentially ammo conservation) for extra speed, as unexpected as that may seem for pistols. Whereas a "normal" pistol strategy is to fire one (or two with DG) at a time and check your situation after each attack, allowing for a very flexible set of tactical opportunities, using MBD changes the strategy to something more akin to a rapid-fire build (or burst build as I've started to call it), plenty of shots at once but you're potentially vulnerable after each volley. In addition to this, pistols are very unsuited for burst-fire due to the extremely limited clip size...this can be easily remedied with a couple of speedloaders and some points in Reloader but it is certainly a nontrivial concern.

If we want to look at this from a quantitative perspective, however, we need to do some comparative analysis on pistols using fairly similar conditions.

Suppose we have the following traits: SoG(3), DG(1), SoB(2).
Pistols in both hands will deal (2d4+5)x2 = (7-15)x2 = 22 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.2*3)(1.2) = 0.48s, which comes out to 44.83 DPS, ignoring reloading and accuracy and other junk.
Now let's add MBD and TH(1) into the mix.
Pistols in both hands will deal (2d4+5)x4 = (7-15)x2 = 44 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.2*3)(1.2)(1.5) = 0.72s, which comes out to 61.11 DPS, or an increase of 16.28 (36.3%) in DPS.
Now let's up the ante to TH(2).
Pistols in both hands will deal (2d4+5)x6 = (7-15)x2 = 66 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.2*3)(1.2)(2.0) = 0.96s, which comes out to 68.75 DPS, or an increase of 7.64 (12.5%) in DPS.

Now, instead, suppose we have a chaingun or plasma rifle with Fin(2) and SoB(3), which is unfortunately as powered as they can get without extended max traits.
Chaingun will deal (1d6+3)x4 = (4-9)x4 = 26 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.15*2) = 0.70s, which comes out to 37.14 DPS, ignoring other junk.
Plasma rifle will deal (1d7+3)x6 = (4-10)x6 = 42 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.15*2) = 0.70s, which comes out to 60 DPS.
Let's skip the TH(1) case and go straight to TH(2).
Chaingun will deal (1d6+3)x4 = (4-9)x6 = 38 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.15*2) = 0.70s, which comes out to 54.29 DPS, or an increase of 17.15 (46.2%) in DPS.
Plasma rifle will deal (1d7+3)x6 = (4-10)x8 = 56 damage at a speed of 1 - (0.15*2) = 0.70s, which comes out to 80 DPS, or an increase of 20 (33.3%) in DPS.

Now there are PLENTY of other variables to look at, but as a matter of damage alone, chaingun and plasma rifle keep up pretty well with MBD and have an extra trait to boot (which can be put into EE to even out accuracy concerns). Naturally if we're looking at the LONG term, SoG(5) beats practically everything, but this isn't until the truly late-game: if we're trying to find a build that can keep the player alive, we need to think of the traits as they're being collected. Anyway, this is just digressing on my part.

Overall, I'd say TH(1) on MBD is worth it, but not TH(2) unless you're well on your way to reaching extended maxes. Frankly I'm a little worried it's not quite good enough in a typical game, but is certainly useful by the end.

EDIT: This would be silly if I didn't even try to answer the original question...

How do Bullet Dance and SoaG 5 interact?  6 shots in .3 seconds?  less?  If I'm understanding things right you take  .4 * 1.2 * 2 = .96 seconds to fire 6 bullets with SoaG 3 and normal/speedloader pistols.  Are the times all added together before rounding and applying minimum delay?
I'm pretty sure the minimum time limit only comes into play at the end of everything, although I'm also fairly certain that the SoG(5)'s bonus is capped at -90% firing time anyway. This would lead to calculating 0.10 * 1.2 * 2 = 0.24s for TH(2) MBD attacks, quite an impressive speed when you consider six shots per attack. On the other hand, it might also have been reduced to, say, 0.01 firing time, meaning any multiplers are mostly ignored and the minimum time limit kicks in so that even TH(2) MBD attacks are 0.10s long. (Methinks we need to change SoG(4/5) a bit.)

Similarly, how do you keep this beast fed?  You spew 10mm at a ridiculous rate and waste tons of ammo overkilling many enemies  with your crazy 66 damage bursts before the trait cap.  I guess the high ideal is dual blasters, but I don't see that happening very often outside of Ao100.
Keeping track of ammo is about the same as keeping track of ammo with, say, a gatling gun, which also shoots six bullets at once: you kill as efficiently as possible. Stack enemies on top of each other, switch to other weapons if you can afford to. With pistols, however, you can always switch to a single pistol and only shoot 2/3 bullets at a time, in case ammo is low.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2011, 13:14 by Game Hunter »
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gunofdis

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #9 on: September 05, 2011, 14:31 »

Kinda makes me wonder what it would be like if instead of DG it required either SoaG3 or SoaG2 and something like Fin or a passive defense trait.  There's already a pistol master that blocks DG, so why not have one where it's completely optional?  Then again, DG is flat better than MBD + TH2 unless you have one heavily modded pistol or a unique.  I kinda want to see how it interacts with the Grammaton and storm bolter now...
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gunofdis

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #10 on: September 05, 2011, 22:32 »

Seems like ignoring MBD and just taking Fin would work better in normal games.   Taking 2 points in Fin gets you .34 seconds per shot or .68 for 2, just a hair less than the .74 seconds you figured for TH1 + MBD for the same amount of traits.  Also only slightly slower for 3 shots (1.02 vs .96) than taking the third point.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2011, 22:40 by gunofdis »
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action52

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2011, 01:51 »

Looks to me like this is a build where you are trading off a somewhat tougher early and mid-game to make yourself ultra-powerful in the late game.

Of course, there are things you can do to help your own survivability. SoB/TH will give you some good rapidfire options while you're waiting to get your pistols powered up. You can get yourself Badass, and even a level or two of TaN.

I think the key to this master trait's usefulness is being able to take advantage of its powers at the high levels. So it's probably not worth using on the lower difficulties, where your EXP levels don't get as high. It also probably is the trait that suffers most when you can't supplement it with other weapons. So if you're playing Angel of Marksmanship on HNTR, this would probably be a poor choice for your master trait. But if you're playing, say, an Ao100 game where "late game" is most of what you'll be playing, this trait becomes a lot more attractive.

Ammo usage would be an issue, but if you were careful about conserving bullets it seems workable. And yes, you'd probably want to save the second level of TH until after you've maxed out your firing speed. You might even want to put off Bullet Dance until the very end, playing most of the game with rapidfire weapons and defensive traits, upgrading to a more powerful pistol build at the end.

I mean, with SoG5, SoB5, Fin3, and TH2 the amount of damage potential is insane. And on top of that if you managed to get dual blasters, tricked out triple tech and double power mods... I'm not going to do the math, but I imagine you could probably take out a Cyberdemon in less than 2 seconds.

Man, this is making me want to try this setup right now! After my current run maybe I'll try it in a HMP or UV Ao100 game.
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gunofdis

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Re: Bullet Dance questions
« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2011, 02:15 »

3.1 seconds on N!, assuming no misses.  Except that you're well into the range where you're shooting faster than blasters can keep up and thus have to go hide behind a wall fairly frequently.  You need absolutely every drop of speed you can get in order to bottom out the time.
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