I think I figured out why guns are a bit too weak.

For this example of what may be wrong with guns, I'll use the end-game.

For a rubium hammer, you get a 2400 damage per swing weapon. Guns that drop on threat 10 planets have around 1400 to 1900 dps.
That is a fairly close difference considering range advantage works well in some situations (mostly vs. NPCs, monsters are crazy).

However, an impervium hammer (the steel to rubiums iron), does 4000 damage per hit, that's a drastic increase, but guns do not have such an increase, they stay at rubium level, which is appropriate for threat 8-9 planets.

That said, even the best guns are still not great even on those planets, costing too much energy and doing too little dps.

Not saying how to fix it, just pointing out that we don't have impervium level guns outside of MMN's ammo mod.

I have yet to see even a legendary gun with enough damage to justify using it more than a sword.
The best vanilla gun I've looted thus far, is a human pulse gun with 1928 dps, and it's common. So I know good guns can exist, but it still takes a full energy bar and no missed bullets to kill anything with it on threat 10 planets.

 

Guns still need a lot of balance work done, I know this stage of beta isn't about balance, but guns are really weird right now.

Scaling of guns is linear based on tier, there is like, one file for all common pistols, rare shotguns, etc.
Though it doesn't appear that rarity affects the raw dps of guns, just gives different ammo types. Can't be certain without file-diving though.

But I'll look at a huge pile of guns..
After staring at tons of tier 4 common guns (using creative to shuffle, since it just makes the game generate a natural randomgen gun)... Here's what I see with just dps, may not be completely accurate, but I clicked a lot, and my fingers are tired from shuffling so many guns.
Sniper Rifles have 37-43 dps.
Shotguns, 44-52 dps.
Rocket Launchers, 37-43 dps.
Pistols, 44-51 dps, 1-hand.
Machine Pistols, 44-50 dps, 1 hand.
Grenade Launchers, 37-43 dps, 1 hand.
and finally
Assault Rifles, 44-52 dps.

Looks weird to me, although this is ignoring energy costs.

 

I have a very rough idea of how the code for guns works, but mostly I was tweaking numbers in MMN's ammo mod to try to get guns to a reasonable level (and just fiddling with how stats work).

Rate of fire seems to me like it's just a direct correlation to the attack speed we see in-game, 4 = 4.00 speed, 0.5 = 0.50 speed
So
"rateOfFire" : [0.5, 20],
would make a type of gun have between 0.50 attack speed, and 20.00.
not sure how base dps calculations work, but multiplier being higher reduces the damage of guns for some reason. MMN's guns are all at 0.25 multiplier.
I brought the MMN assault rifles down to around 3.5 or so dps, with 0.25 multiplier at tier 10, they ended up having 2800-3600 dps.


No clue how to tweak energy costs with those files, assuming multiplier does it, but I lost my patience with tweaking that mod.

If I knew how everything worked a bit better, I'd probably just make a gunbuffs mod from scratch.

 

The pulse rifles are great flare guns. Especially if they bounce or stick to surfaces. Unintentional aggro can be a bit of a nuissance, but if your gun is higher end, at least you did fair damage to the enemy that is now coming after you. It's at this point where I think guns kind of fall flat. They have no real stopping power. Enemy is charging full speed, and you can spend some more energy pumping him full of w/e ammo until it's time to move or melee. And the initial damage would be fine if the weapon had a decent status effect or DoT(damage over time). But currently fire and poison DoTs are only a threat at alpha or beta progression, the damage ticks never scaling with the threat. I don't mind that ranged weapons don't do a lot, it's a free hit from a distance, and it just gives you the added couple hits to weaken an enemy before melee, not 1 or 2 shotting things. If ranged weapons are supposed to replace melee weapons entirely, (like reality) then the entire system needs a re-working more than just a tweaking and guns would have to be craftable eventually.

 

randomgen gun dmg formula's should be:
lvl scaling dmg increase {weapon level dmg multiplier / projectile lvl dmg multiplier} / classMultiplier x baseDps / rateOfFire = dmg per shot
dmg per shot x energycost multiplier for the level of the weapon x classmultiplier = energy per shot.

Stuff that hampers guns:

• The basic energycost multipliers are simply to high, at tier 10 500 energy will give 5k dmg. almost enough to kill one of the weakest enemies for that tier.
• Most classMultipliers are left at 1, and they are the easiest way to balance the energy costs per gun type.
• Some ammo types struggle to hit enemies reliable.
• Ammo types all deal the same amount of dmg, and if it splits in 3 ways it divides the dmg in 3 ways.
• Like Grimm said status effects don't scale their dmg, 3 dmg a tick won't even tickle tier 10 enemies.

 

i does seem that overall, guns are too weak.
however,...find the right one.
i have a T10 1-handed legendary grenade launcher with 1269 dps that i pretty much use exclusively. its simply THAT good. it bounces and splits into 5 smaller grenades and chews mobs up! it 1-2 hits T10 mobs. and 3-4 hits instance NPCs. it really is the best weapon ive ever found and i have a T10 legendary bonehammer which i only use if im jumped underground. i have T10 legendaries of the starcleaver and slave sword also and they dont really compare.
what a great gun!

 

Good grief, Wurmheart, you know quite a bit about how the guns work. Thanks for popping in, and you're right about where guns are lacking..

 

Yeah, from what I've seen, it seems that the legendary grenade launcher is the best bang for your buck. I remember having one before the wipe that did a total of 8.4k damage on a direct hit, but took nearly all of my energy. Got one now that hits around 4.2k but only takes 4 bars. Much more manageable.

 

In reality, guns are much more effective weapons than any melee weapon. But in Starbound, I think guns should be generally weaker than melee weapons to compensate for their range. If guns were as good or better then melee weapons in terms of DPS, there would be no reason to use anything else, and many would just find guns and cheese their way through the whole game.

 

Remember, that it's specific legendary grenade launchers. One of the problems facing guns right now is that the game has a problem with "Multishot" projectiles.

1) The splitting bullets (2-split and 3-split) do a total of 100% normal damage if ALL projectiles hit, which is pretty silly. The point of splitting is to hit multiple things and throw down some suppression in an area. Doing bad damage isn't suppressing anyone, unless you count the laughter.

2) Other "multiple projectile" weapons have projectiles that EACH do 100% of normal damage. This would be Bonehammers, cluster bombs, Novaswords (sword hit = 100% damage plus projectile hit = 100% damage, total of 200% damage), and bubble swords, I think.

The "Flak cannon" approach (#2) completely invalidates the "Split" approach (#1). Why would I want a spread projectile spray that does less damage, when I can have a spread projectile spray that does full damage?

There has been a lot of discussion about guns, since they've alternated between useless, overpowered, useless mk.II, and "kinda viable but still not competitive."

Adding on to @Wurmheart's list, here's a few more things that hamper guns when compared to melee:

- Melee swings hit all enemies that touch the arc. Guns hit only the first enemy touched by the bullet, unless there is an explosion effect.
- Guns require aiming up/down/left/right/left/right/b/a/select/start. Melee has hardcoded arcs that can't really be changed, but require very little skill to land. You know exactly how the swing will work out, so why would you try to lead the target when you can just swing your hammer as soon as they get close?
- Melee weapons also have short/medium/long range projectiles. Lightning orbs can almost cross the screen. Bonehammers and Bubble swords have wide spread arcs, Tesla staffs have a medium-range zap, Novaswords fire a wide short-range orb. None of these projectiles use energy.

 

why should fiction be different than truth? why should a metal sword be better than a laser grenade launcher death ray?

then again, i teleport down from my intersteller space ship and use my forcefield generator to construct a stone pick and stone axe.

 

The difference between fiction and truth is that fiction needs to make sense =P

 

Because once you start down that path, you start sacrificing playability for logical sense. Starbound has fish with titties. Logic need not apply.

 

good argument. "starbound has tit-fish, this makes guns nonviable as a weapon." ;D

 

Not nonviable, just not demonstrably superior to melee weapons. Both styles of combat deserve to be worthwhile.

 

dual wielding common pistol drops gives 3.2k dps.

Pistols can fire while shielding.

You just need to generate a good drop. Use blink to go around dungeons uber fast and loot tons of guns.

 

i just find duel wielding pistols too energy consuming to be practical unless you are a masterful shot while on the move.

 

Guns are working fine. Late tier stuff isn't balanced and likely never will be for this current progression style. Early tier need a bit of an energy usage balance but they aren't too weak.

It's all about finding a good gun. My T4 Flame throwing shot gun left a really nasty burn effect on enemies (not just 3 dmg per tick) had a good energy cost and was great at keeping things at bay. The only better weapon I had in the tier was the bone hammer, which is just too damn good compared to everything else.

The main problem with guns for me is that you just simply don't have favorable line of sight to use them outside of dungeons unless they are single shot powerful weapons. Fully automatics are just not accurate enough when there are hills, bumps and enemies are flying around. It's way easier to just take out a sword and slice them. That's one reason guns seem weak. A lot of your shots will miss and waste energy. Stronger single shot weapons are easier to use because you can take your time to line up a shot and do lots of damage as opposed to needing 10 shots to hit to do the same. Take that fully automatic gun into a dungeon where it's easy to hit and you'll demolish the enemies though.

I don't know why people think melee weapons shouldn't ever be stronger, no matter how far science comes the effectiveness of smashing an alien's head with a giant metal hammer will stay the same.