I thought about [not taking ammochain] but decided against it. You are most likely right though, so I would like to pick your brain on this. Here is my thoughts. I already had the firestorm mod at the time I got the NPR, and I were pretty determined to mod it, seeing that it would be the most potent weapon in my arsenal. That would leave me with a weapon that fired volleys of eight with a mag capacity of 24. Three volleys didn't seem a lot to me, and from the testing I did before getting MAc it did fall short. Actually it made me wonder how useable I would find the regular NPR with its six shots a volley -> total of four volleys before recharge. I suspect I may simply be using this weapon wrong. Perhabs the trick is bulk modding it? Or more likely - run it in tandem with another weapon in the prepared slot and hopefully a point in Juggler?
I probably wouldn't put a firestorm mod on a nuclear plasma rifle in the first place, if I'm honest! I ♥ rapidfire builds (despite their difficulty, I think there's a lot of finesse to pulling them off, and I think they're among the competitive ranged builds provided you have a *lot* of experience with them), and with rapidfrie builds you'll be surprised at how much better eagleeye makes your ammo issues. You'll find that an eagleeye character can go a *lot* further with a nuclear plasma rifle than a non-eagleeye character can! A firestorm mod only increases this problem.
Besides eagleeye, though, the real key to nuclear plasma, as you guessed, is probably having a normal plasma or a gatling gun in the switch slot, and
switching tactically. Even if you only use the nuclear plasma to kill formers and imps, it will still *easily* save you enough cells to never have any ammo problems. You need to know when to use it as a first line of offense, and when to use it as a fallback, which itself depends on the target, your positioning, the layout of the level, how many monsters are left on the level, your defense, enemy arachnotrons, which powerups/health orbs you're aware of, and a ton of other criteria that you just have to get a feel for with experience! Juggler helps immensely here, of course, but even without it if you have the wrong gun in your hands you can normally find a safe moment to switch, even if it requires [running] to cover.
When I take whizkid, I save firestorms for normal plasma rifles. In a lot of games I manage to get either a TTTFP or a TTTFF plasma rifle, and either of those is *obscenely* powerful if you have eagleeye. If I were modding a nuclear plasma, on the other hand, I'm more concerned with having it last long enough to kill monsters if I'm caught out in the open - the raw DPS is reserved for my main plasmagun weapon! With that in mind, I find a burst assembly to be far better suited to a nuclear plasma - 48 cells, 1d9x8. Far better than your firestorm nuclear plasma (although your ammochain, causing a lack of eagleeye, probably makes the burst weapon assembly unviable on anything other than a laser rifle - this is what I mean about ammochain and why I hate it!). You can even bulk mod it for 62/62 ammo (but I'd sooner tech mod it or power mod it). Best of all, you're not wasting any rare modpacks, so you can save that firestorm for your main-offense plasma gun, or build it towards your biggest F.G. :).
(Extra-bonus little note - A burst assembly is quite niche, it's generally a rubbish assembly on anything other than a purple rapidfire weapon, but happens to be brilliant on a key few. The nuclear plasma rifle is pretty much cream of the crop for non-ammochain rapidfire builds. It's something of an outlier. Don't go thinking burst is a good assembly or anything! x
You are most likely right though
Oh, I'm but one voice among the whole party here! Don't take why I say as gospel! Ammochain is actually quite popular, and I know I'm something of a minority when it comes to my like of entrenchment (although there's beginning to be
some consensus about masterless being the best build for nightmare rapidfire angel games which I can get behind)
Yeah, those examples corroborates the notion that I drag along too many weapons and mods. I'll get better at letting them go when I need to.
I'm not sure, actually. Looking at your other examples, I'd say the main offender is your carrying skulls everywhere! They're not very good (and it's not a very nice thing to do anyway is it? You'll not make many friends, being like that.) The rest of your ammo strategy seems pretty good, really.
As an aside - I just started an AoI game on HMP. So far it doesn't seem all that bad, but I shouldn't speak too soon.
It's not so bad, until you get into one of those horrible situations where you need to phase device or [running mode] away! :D
Learning to rocket jump (particularly right after entering a level) helps a lot with those situations, but the
real reason I advised you to try it is exactly this - it's not all that bad, is it? ;)
I used to carry no less than 4 large medpacks every game. After a few victories on AoI, I was quite happy to carry only 2, and as time on they became more about the running mode than the health they offered!
(note - running mode is the best thing about small medpacks, especially in N! - thinks of them as running mode boosters, rather than health boosters!)
I just can't help comparing it to AoB, which is the only other challenge I have tried. And failed miserably.
AoB is a very different way of playing, but it's not really any more difficult than a normal game. Just requires different tactics, different builds, different armour etc. Have you learned to giftdrop yet? That alone carries you through pretty much all the problems HMP AoB can offer...
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Topic: [H|97%|24|YAVP] Nothing extraordinary, but my first win (Read 7729 times)