Starbound's guns.

They haven't balanced things out yet.

Note that in the first i49 video they did, attacks did 6 damage. The next day(yogscast) they were doing 30. Apparently they forgot to balance the guns to match that.

That said, one of the things that really bothered me about Terraria was that melee weapons were kind of horrible on damage in the endgame. I'm hoping they are at least a bit more balanced in this one.

 

Voted for the current system, as I quite like it. I'm not opposed to an ammunition system though, as long as it is craft-able on the fly. Edge of Space does this really well imo.

The guns do look a bit weak judging by the i49 demo, but I highly doubt they're done balancing. As pointed out by others already, we also need to consider that melee is a bit riskier than ranged damage in most games that feature both types of combat. So that probably factors into it as well.

 

Yep. I believe the chuckling fish are going for the "closer in range equals higher in power" route, which makes sense, gameplay wise. I suppose guns doesn't have to be more powerful than swords; it's a bit unrealistic, but I hope people don't mind that.

 

It does make some sense, but at the same time we don't really know how many enemies have ranged attacks, or abilities that allow them to cover ground fast (or even just general fast movement). If a good number of enemies have those things, then the danger level is still quite high for ranged players, which would justify ranged weapons having a bit more power to them.

 

My main gripe against ammo is memories of carrying a full inventory of stacks of bullets in Terraria because you needed a lot to really do much. If Starbound keeps its stacks at 999 this won't be a problem, so the ammo issue doesn't bother me either way. I think a fun way to do it would be to have "generic" ammo represented by your energy bar, but for "special" ammo (rockets, etc) you could actually build stacks. I think that's how a lot of games did it actually, like Metal Slug - infinite pistol, limited grenades/special ammo.

 

As long as I can shoot stuff I don't really care

Besides, ammo just got tedious in Terraria for the bow, incredibly annoying to hunt for jester arrows (My favorite arrow type) I would like ammo IF there was a way to buy ANY ammo type in a store

 

Voted for the third a I doubt bows and crossbows will use energy.

 

Or, if Tiy allowed us to use 3D printers to print ammo types that we've registered into the printer, at a pixel cost. That'll be cool.

 

I like the current system, having to haul around a bunch of ammo just seems tedious.

 

I don't really think it's unrealistic. It is certainly unrealistic by our standards, but it may not be in the Starbound universe. Scientists predict that melee weapons will be the go to weapons again in the distant future as personal armor/shielding becomes increasingly better, kinda like in the Dune universe. Monsters may have really high defenses as well due to environmental factors.

Now that I think about it... Perhaps that would be an interesting thing to make variations on. Making melee more effective against some enemies and ranged against others. As well as overall armor differences in enemies. I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement though.

 

That would be great, and he could implement a system for printed ammo types like bulk ammo types in Fallout NV, where it has about 15% less damage per shot due to the low quality of the ammo

 

I think that Starbound has enough random miscellaneous shit to collect (or kill in the case of the Po) that we don't need ammo flooding our inventory. Especially with the sheer number of weapons that will be available to us, you'd have to have a "universal" ammo to keep from having so many slots dedicated to ammo. At that point, is it even worth developing 'ammo' at all because it's not unique to the type of gun (machine gun vs shotgun ect)

You could do the Mass Effect 2/3 route with thermal clips, but that's just kind of like energy anyway. Shoot until you run out, wait for it to recharge/reload.

All in all I'm fine with no ammo. If I would want anything, maybe something like an "ammo pouch" or "quiver" in the case of bows. Something you equip in a slot that adds effects to the base ammo. Examples would be Fire Rounds, Explosive Rounds, Acid Rounds, <Insert Whatever Crazy Type of Ammo You Want Here>

 

I'm fine with the weapon system as it for now. The i49 yogscast stream is really a very poor representation of what to expect in actual game play especially in regards to combat balance.

If mob health was accurate, that would make it take upwards of 6 shots with a melee weapon to kill anything. This would give low level fights a completely different feel compared to what was shown by the yogscast stream.

 

It is an interesting subject due to the fact that there are many paths they could take towards such a system. I would say that If they did decide to vary the ammunition factor it would certainly make weapon selection more interesting and specific for each player.

 

I like the current system. Different ammo types are represented by different guns (instead of one gun with 3 ammo types all using slots, you just have 3 guns that fire differently. Simple.)

There was a good stream of this that I am having trouble finding. Basically Tiy generates a bunch of random guns and fires them. The variety is pretty astounding.

I think what was seen at i49 is not a good representation of the gun system, as only low level assault rifles were used, which in my opinion behaved pretty much as expected. Keep in mind they tripled the melee weapon power for the later demos because the game was too hard for some players.

Also on one of the streams at i49, whoever is playing spawns a higher level gun. It uses up his energy bar in 2-3 shots, meaning you have to be a lot more careful about where and when you shoot. This speaks for the variety of gameplay-effecting variables available in the current gun system.

As far as spamminess, by the time I had really gotten the hang of Terraria, I fought with great precision. Not quite like carefully aiming a sniper rifle, but movement and timing were really important to avoid damage. I think the same will be true in Starbound, from what I've seen you have to be careful to avoid getting hit.

 

Alright here's what I think, there should be ammo as well as energy.

Considering Starbound is a survival game to some extent it would only make sense that you would also have to be careful about ammo consumption.

As for energy weapons I think they should have a charge and once it's at 0% you'd have to use a charging system to, well, charge it.

And for gaining ammo you should start out with some and then be able to trade/ purchase it from NPC's.

I also hope/think it makes more sense that you start out with a pistol or semi-auto rifle rather than an assault rifle right off the bat, allowing you to have more of an upgrade sense when it comes to guns.

These are my thoughts and let me know what you think.

Edit: I also think muzzle flashes should create light. (not sure if this is planned.) And it would be pretty cool to have a little customization such as gun "camos" and attachments.

 

Considering the melee weapon power was increased during the yogscast, I don't think it's fair to use it as an example. Considering energy is used for more than just guns I imagine that the main balance of melee vs ranged will be that melee users will be able to use more of their energy for other things to help dodge or close the distance, rather than just having one do a lot more damage than the other.

 

The low powered automatic guns are actually very annoying to me. I voted other because I think in low levels crafting ammo is my preference, and mid-high level would use energy. I would also prefer most low leveled guns shoot slower and have other low level ranged items be bows, crossbows, javelins, other throwing weapons, ect. instead. It does not feel natural or feel like progression to have an automatic bb gun. Start with sharp rocks, and slings; move up to throwing axes, javelins; then up to bows, crossbows; then slow fired guns; and up from there. ---So have some craftable ammo type for low level items.

Just like the matter manipulator and other high tech items you get from the start, they should progress with the player through out the game. Start with a damaged matter manipulator and have it improved throughout the game. -So with that, start with a damaged blaster as a ranged weapon that can be improved throughout the game. Have it change stats which are customizable by the player (e.g. some would prefer faster shots with lower damage / other players want high damage low rate of fire, ect). Give it more damage or faster firing speed, ect. Other tech items should also come with the player from the start, but be damaged. Double jump and dash techs should not be crafted from nothing, but be there from the start. For game balance, the tech items could be damaged and not work (or hardly work like a .05 sec dash that burns tons of energy) until in a higher tiers gaining the ability to repair them, and in further progression, improve them.

 

I'm afraid that on high levels guns will consume too much energy. And this is a very big problem because melee weapon will be overpovered compare to guns.

 

I'm fine with generic non-environmentally destructive weapons to be powered by energy, but to have the most powerful AoE weapons on a somewhat infinitely "spammable" resource that doesn't require crafting, to me, seems a bit meh. Anything from pistols to high-powered sniper rifles with expanded view range* are quite OK, but grenade launchers that are more powerful than craftable bombs or explosives would make the latter a bit obsolete. If said bombs, or parts of them could be further crafted into larger bombs, stationary cannon rounds, rockets and missiles, even bigger missiles or even a ballistic or cruise version that you could control from a console, now that'd be great.

The more powerful, the scarcer and harder it should be to make. We have fissile materials, so how about even miniature tactical nukes that leave huge craters or temporarily "liquefy" soil when detonated underground, but at the cost of hundreds of resources and susceptible to anti ballistic missile defenses like automated laser turrets or missiles and with suitable griefing prevention

*Concerning weapon precision, the way I understood it, the "sniper rifles" with scopes or something were at least planned to give an extended camera view range with which to avoid having to spray and pray in the general direction.