Novakids will craft guns instead of swords.

You forgot to mention that guns are entirely useless against multiple enemies, because even with perfect aim (which, who has that while shooting moving targets while also moving yourself?) You can kill, at most, two enemies before running out of energy.

This means that on most planets, where you normally get attacked by 2-3 enemies at a time, and in dungeons where sometimes this gets up to five, your gun is running empty, generally before you've even killed one enemy, unless you somehow managed to not only land every shot, but also focus fire perfectly.

In other words, guns can not complete any but the easiest engagements on their own.

As for huddling behind walls, spears and short swords are infinitely better for that now that they can be aimed directionally.

I'm also like 90% sure that most guns actually have lower dps than melee, not equal or even really comparable, but I can't check right now.

Anyone who says guns are powerful has either not used them, only used cluster bomb grenade launchers, is bafflingly bad at melee combat, or some combination of the above. They are so much worse than melee it's laughable.

 

This would make the novakids too OP. This would be interesting.
(Unless Novakids are meant to be merchants, trading their guns across the galaxy)

 

Guns aren't OP...

 

Making gun better than melee would also trivialize computer opponents, who aggro at a certain distance.

 

Give Novakids wild-west themed melee weapons and other races guns, too.


Not many swords were in use at the "Wild West" (in that time, somewhere in 1800 > anyway), but machetes and rapiers would work fine. Yeah I know they didn't have machetes in wild west.

Hammers... They used sledges to put bolts in railroads, right? However, we already have sledges in Human weapons.

Only axe things that would fit into Novakid theme would be tomahawks. And of course Europeans had normal hatchets.

Well... Only spears that come to my mind would be old rifles with bayonets.

You could also just get creative and invent new melee weapons that fit Novakid theme. Iron and lots of wooden parts, that is.


Okay, okay, it's pretty hard to come up with weapons for Novakids, but I still think all the races should be equal in this matter.

 

If we're gonna do that, I'd say come up with two or three ranged weapons for each race:
Human: pistol, assault rifle, semiauto sniper rifles (typical modern stuff)
Floran: Prehistoric tech, so... sling/slingshot? Maybe some kind of pollen-based weapon? Else, stolen tech from other races as usual.
Glitch: longbow, crossbow, hand cannon?
Apex: high-tech weaponry, probably lightning/plasma guns
Avian: javelin, blowpipes, perhaps some crystal-tech laser gun
Hylotl: battle rifles, shuriken, harpoon launcher?
Novakids: revolvers, shotguns, bolt-action rifles.

Of course, we'd be able to buy other race's stuff at the outpost most likely, so it shouldn't be that much of an issue there.

As far as people saying firearms should be stronger/deadlier than other weapons... I don't agree, from a gameplay perspective you really need a risk/reward balance between melee and ranged. Ranged weapons let you fight from a "safer" distance, so you'd need a reason to want to melee. I do think it's silly that melee attacks are unlimited while guns "run out of steam" though.

From an immersion/realism standpoint, I think a lot of people tend to underestimate other weapons besides firearms simply due to their age. And they also probably think they could become an expert sharpshooter in a couple of weeks. Reality isn't that simple. >_>

 

It's obvious: crowbars and baseball bats.

 

I don't mind guns being weaker than melee, but I am worried that you will run out of energy too quickly at the start when melee weapons are not available.
When I was lucky and got a gun on my starting planet but could not use it much because the damage to energy was too low. at the start one on one is fine but against multiple targets it might be hard.

But I will wait and see how they balance guns, maybe they will make them better

 

This is a good point, starting characters have no helmet for +Energy, so they will have very limited Energy pools. They will also need to make anvils and stuff before they can craft helmets, and this might be really rough if guns are not balanced when Novakids are launched.

Imo, it would be safer to launch Novakids with the same recipe for starting equipment (sword, matter manipulator, a few seeds) as the other races, and then do a backpass and replace their swords with guns after a few combat balance patches.

I think that removing the risk of Novakids being "really terrible" when they're first played in a stable release (and all the accompanying backlash) is worth the extra time it would take to implement them with swords and melee weapons and then going back and re-doing it later.

 

So they reverse engineer spaceships but not common guns?

Anyway there allredy is floran themed guns ingame (And i think they are a tad more advanced then a slingshot xD).

(Floran needler & Floran grenade launcher)

They are typically dropped by floran prison guards and such.

Glitch crossbows are allredy ingame. Dropped by glitch at castles.

Avian blasters are ingame (Basicy some kind of crystal operated machinegun) and a avian pistol.


Dropped by avian enemies. (Javelins are also ingame but they have nothing to do with avians).

Humans (at least the military) tend to use pulse rifles ingame (alien reference most likely).

 

^Additionally, apex lab guards can also drop electricity guns. Essentially tesla coils with triggers on them.
Shuriken are also in the game, as well as a varient called ninja-star, but not race-specific.

Although it would be slightly unfair if glitch could craft the current crossbows, as they can be used for hunting...

 

OTOH, the Devs seem blind to the whole 'guns are shit' issue, as do some of the players.

I say shove that shit on stable and let the backlash roar so they can actually get fixed.

 

In terms of getting stuff fixed, this would definitely ratchet up the volume of complaining, but I think as we've seen from the Great Horse Debates of 2014, there are a pretty vocal group of people that are one event away from declaring that they refuse to play a specific race ever again.

I think Novakids have the potential to be something awesomely-received by the community, so I don't think it is a good idea to make an example of them. (Don't use them to point out that guns are not viable).

Reasoning? Novakids are a stretch goal, which implies their implementation is close to the fabled 1.0 and "The End" of development (incorrect conclusion, but still somewhat prevalent amongst fearful members of the community). So, I think the hopes are highest for this race, and anytime people have high hopes...they take it even worse if things go wrong.

 

The Avalli melee weaponry at least justifies what makes it so deadly, that the aero-gels are being shaved off as they cut into the flesh, I think. The wiki does a much better job of explaining.

 

Florans don't reverse engineer anything to my knowledge... They just appropriate stuff from other races and paint them pink and green, maybe add some space plants for good measure. Point being, just because you can use something doesn't mean you could make it from scratch.

Not sure about the grenade launcher, but the needler has a non-stolen version now, by the way.

Right, and Apex have a lightning gun as well from what I saw. All of which proves that they exist in the world and fit the lore.

Setting aside the quest items that will probably get removed, it just seems strange that the player knows how to craft extremely advanced swords, armor, spaceship parts and buildings from the outset, but ranged weapons are impossible for them >_>

 

According to the races first introduction "meet the florans", that was posted on the starbound site ages ago, they reverse engineer tech from other races (they also salvage off course). However its not mentioned in the current lore anywhere i can find, so the lore might have been changed since then.

Completely agree.

 

Now that there is a race that by default crafts guns, I don't see why humans can't make guns. We don't really use swords anymore, (Not for combat) even in the USCM bunkers, and they would fit the whole militarized style we're supposed to be getting.

 

I don't understand why people think melee weapons shouldn't be focused on, especially when citing sci-fi. CQC weapons are prevalent in a lot of sci-fi. Guns need to be rebalanced but they don't need to be inherently better, especially for game play sake.

 

Thing is we are likely not military, and in the equivalent of a survival situation. You wouldn't think to make a 9mm on a deserted island. The machete has so many more uses.

 

...Then why would the novakid do so?
I wouldn't have brought it up if they hadn't decided to give it to the novakid.