I don't think CF refuses to admit that guns are underpowered right now. I think that they plan on releasing melee combat changes because of opportunity cost. Namely, it's much easier to "fix" something that is doing quite well, than it is to "fix" something that is really busted up. Guns will need a lot of love to be on par with melee, because they have different tradeoffs but also some similarities with certain melee weapons (lightning element offers a "ranged" option for melee with no energy usage, bonehammer...). I think the team will likely need to really think hard about what they want guns to do in this game, and how do they go from here to there. For example that involves conjuring numbers from areas unspecified, I think guns could be "balanced" if they were matched up to melee weapon types (sniper rifle -> spear, grenade launcher -> hammer, rocket launcher -> axe, pistol -> dagger, assault rifle -> shortsword), but guns do 80% of the dps that their melee counterpart does. In theory, tying the guns to a melee counterpart would allow devs to balance both at once, even if it is a very heavy-handed change that may not work in reality. Also, the problems facing guns are not just numeric in origin. - Craftable Impervium weapons are T10 quality, while Found weapons are almost always T9 quality (comparable to Rubium weapons, not Impervium). There are no Craftable guns, so we only deal with Found guns, which are not at the same quality level as Impervium weapons. The exception to this is NPC-dropped weaponry, which can be T10+ quality. - Guns also have different ammo types that drastically change their effectiveness. Triple-Split ammo is great if you like pubstomping on alpha planets with T9 weaponry, but it dilutes the impact of each bullet and spreads out the three bullets such that a single target will almost never take full damage (getting hit by all 3 bullets). Explosive ammo is awesome, because it can hit multiple enemies (something that most bullets cannot do). Autotorch Plasma ammo (sticky and bouncing) is great for lighting up caves and tunnels, but not effective vs flying enemies. - Knockback. Right now (before the patch), knockback is calculated based on damage done per hit. A melee weapon does all of the damage in a single attack, and combat is balanced around this level/amount of knockback. An assault rifle does roughly 1/9 of the damage in a single bullet, because they have very fast fire rates, spreading out the damage. Effectively, guns have no knockback unless you use sniper rifles or launchers. This matters quite a bit, because guns that cannot slow/stop/stall incoming enemies discourage ranged combat, as the enemies will just be at melee range pretty soon anyway. - DPS on guns is a misleading statistic due to above. DPS is metric that is useful for sustained damage over time. Guns do not do damage over time, because enemies can close the gap and reach melee range very easily. Also, it's kinda hard to hit every shot of an assault rifle on Air Jordan mobs (thanks for bringing them back to earth, I'm looking forward to that!). Since guns use energy, and energy is used for Techs, gun users have very limited options on how to increase distance between themselves and mobs. This is a pretty tricky situation, because you don't want infinite kitiing (guns snare/root all enemies, or guns have strong knockback, or guns don't use energy, or techs don't use energy), but you also don't want kiting to be nigh-impossible (guns have no knockback, or use too much energy, or do too little damage). - DPS from 2handed guns is very similar to 1h guns. Why would I use an assault rifle for 1300 dps, when i can use a plasma pistol + shield for 1300 dps and a good way to block most enemy attacks? Or dual wield pistols and pretend I'm in the Matrix? Anyway, there's probably no "perfect" balance for guns, especially once you bring PVP into the mix. Hopefully, the guys and girls at CF can figure out something that makes guns more viable and enjoyable! *Edit* Ninja'd by a man in a scarf. Grumble grumble.
We need more plasma ammo types at some point by the way. We got the normal plasma, "sticky plasma" and "Bouncing Plasma" (which sorta is not behaving with IRL physics...). However maybe we could get "High Energy Plasma" leaving some afterburn area behind which scorches everything going into that area. Plasma Jets which are basicly a stream of plasma leaving said scorched area effect behind which hurts mobs and other creatures for a while. Then we could have the plasma accelerator, which kinda shoots high speed plasma bolts (like the regular bullet type)... maybe also bouncing plasma which is not affected by gravity which would be sorta neat and last but not least some rocketlauncher variant of plasma weapons firing "highly compressed plasma" that will explode on impact and scorching the area for a little... Sorry just had some ideas towards the current plasma weapons we have and felt like throwing them in.
Perhaps the spear's attack speed could be adjusted to be much slower to compensate, or they could get some kind of maximum aiming angle (so you could not use them for things right above your head). Would make them useful for rushing into large crowds of ground monsters.
Guns are becoming more common? Oh THANK GOODNESS. I'm hoping they will also become less "ass", because every time I find a new gun, it's just flat out garbage. Apart from that, the new combat improvements look very, very good. I'm hoping that some of the two-handed weapons have some interactions with tech or other such things, though I get the feeling that would be difficult to code (a dash slash with a broadsword or spear lunge when combined with a dash ability would be really cool).
I'm so excited to see magic in my space sci-fi adventure! Before the matter manipulator gets proper tiers too! Joy! (Don't get me wrong directional weapons are fun and cool. Its just one of those "The community did it first and its disappointing it took so long for them to enter it into the actual game." thing.)
As my preferred combat style is that of the sword 'n' board, being able to aim my sword is a godsend. Too many times I have encountered hostile fauna with the ability to jump me as if they were facehuggers. In regards to two-handers getting a secondary attack... perhaps I am wrong but doesn't this already exist? I mean not too long ago I picked up a hammer with a fire effect as it's left-click attack, but when I attack with right-click it does a poison attack. Or is the planned secondary attack be something completely different? In regards to spears... although the common consensus seems to be either throwing or spin attack, I'd like to throw in the idea of a pounce-like attack that can be executed a bit after jumping. In regards to the psi-staff, I like the concept, but I'm having mixed feelings. On one hand, being able to (for the lack of a better phrase) "use the force" sounds awesome! But on the being a staff weapon may end up treading on the thin gray line between sci-fi and fantasy. A couple pages back someone mentioned the use of a different foci: a power glove. A power glove may be able to work as a better psionic foci. Still, I like the concept so perhaps you can implement both. The psi-staff being flagged as two-hand with similar damage/speed to that of the broadsword, and the glove being flagged as one-hand with similar damage/speed to that of short sword. Question regarding the psi-weapon: when releasing the charged energy, does the projectile come from the weapon and propel itself to the mouse cursor's last location of unclick or does it spawn directly at the mouse cursor without need of line of sight? I hope it's the former than the latter because with the latter one can just block difficult enemies (ie: some mini bosses, humanoids with infinite energy plus rapid fire firearms, etc.) behind a wall and blast away in safety. Since we're on the subject of weapons, I'd like to throw in a suggestion regarding the dagger weapons. While they're faster than most melee weapons, the range just feels... well... hmm. I know daggers are suppose to be short range, but with most hostiles having a large array of long reaching weapons, be it a steel chair or spear or a vomit of blood, having such a short-ranged weapon is not exactly beneficial. With that being said, the suggestion in question would be the following: if the player is actively holding dagger(s) then they are able to sneak whilst crouching and being able to silently (and slowly) crawl around to avoid detection. Sunlight, light sources, and the lack of thereof would have an affect the effectiveness of sneaking.
"- The swoosh speed is faster, meaning greater timing required (Need to test this with latency online)" Darn, now I am forced to use skill.
Awww man. Subscribing to unstable is getting more and more tempting. Looks like combat will quickly become a matter of skill now and I am all for that. One more update. Just one more, and I'll join the unstable bandwagon!
Personally I think they should fix the arm glitch by not having the weapon aim where your cursor is 100% of the time. Yea okay, with guns it's fine, and other stuff like the flashlight serve a purpose with it, but otherwise it's just going to look silly with your arm in front of your face almost all the time. (Although I might have preferred a wasd aiming system for melee just to not have to deal so much with the mouse in combat).
If I may pitch a suggestion, the swinging animation for one handed weapons has never really seemed genuine(to me at least) and I'd say by tweaking the angle of the sword at the end of the animation would would really do it a lot of justice.
Hey, I'm not the one that wrote it. Besides, we don't even know what it looks like, just that it's magic-like.
This will dramatically enhance melee combat and give weapon variety more appeal. I hope you can figure out the spear however, it would be a shame for us spear lovers to have it finally make sense then see a dramatic nerf later on. But obviously something must be done. I have a suggestion, why not add a factor that causes missed heavy weapon swings to have a slightly longer recharge to punish spamming a powerful weapon? It also makes sense since those weapons should require more stamina.
There's no reason anyone should hate psychic abilites. And I got two words for undeniable proof. Mind. Bullets.
All I can think of with the psistaff is the psionics tech of the original Xcom, particularly the psiamp.
Yeah, I really like the idea of a maximum aiming angle. I don't think it would be efficient in real life to try aiming straight up with a spear. xD
