The art and science of gun balance

It is quite a loss; you can't use Techs like Pulsejump to kite the enemy. You will also stop firing completely once you run out.

In short, the disadvantages of guns far outweigh the advantage of range.

 

I agree with your first critique--that guns are largely impractical in the context of melee weapons that allow you the deal with enemy encounters with far greater efficiency.
I also agree that guns would probably benefit from some tweaking.

What gives me some pause is the idea of making guns, depending on the type, come too close to the raw DPS of melee weapons. Note it's important to treat each gun differently, and assess them based on the types of guns they are (rocket launchers notwithstanding), and the modifiers they happen to offer (which you touched on). But I suspect that without the proper care the event of making guns stronger runs the risk of making them favorable to melee weapons, in general; in which case the problem may not have been solved, rather the balance merely reversed. So I think there's certainly a tension we have to be cognizant of between melee and range, and my fear is that this tension can't be resolved through stat modification alone.

I would like to try address this problem by offering an alternative solution, and I'll use as my basis a point you brought up that really illustrates, as I see it, the main issue at play here, and it's the interplay between guns and tech. This whole issue might be less a problem if guns and tech didn't draw on the same energy pool. If you could fire a gun at an enemy from a distance, and regardless of how many bullets you fired, still be free to immediately use your techs, it would improve what you've illustrated as the negligible situation which guns occupy. In eliminating the shared energy pool between tech and guns, you eliminate the often mutual exclusive relationship that they share in fighting situations (that is, using your gun often results in your being "techless" for a time, so it's more practical most of the time to just use your melee weapon)--and I'm starting to think there's not a good enough reason why they ought to have such a relationship in the first place (as I see it this is the main assumption that my argument rests on for anyone who wants to attack it).
Consider that if you begin your engagement with guns and you can't finish the enemy unit off before it gets to you, you can at least weaken them before they get to you, at which point you can use your melee weapon--or, alternatively, since guns and tech draw on different energy pools, you'd still have the option to use a tech such as dash to dodge; then say, continue to fire at them accordingly, or use your melee weapon to finish them off. In this way the relationship between guns and tech would be mutually beneficial rather than competitive. And since you'd be free to fire a greater succession of bullets without worrying about it cutting into what I'll call your "dodge supply", this reduces some of the tedium that comes with the firing and dashing dance that gunplay often consists of right now.

 

More than just that as the problem... We are still using the term DPS, when we really mean EDPS - Effective DPS... over a few seconds, those numbers are the same, but over 10 seconds, the EDPS is usually less than a quarter of what is listed. I can use techs with guns just fine, if i want to be patient and take 3-4 times as long on each mob.

If the DPS of a gun was much higher than melee, but over several enemies the EDPS was lower, it would strike a good balance, but as it stands, at around tier 3, i stop being able to kill a mob with my whole energy bar, and that is line that should not have been crossed.

There should never be a time when a Tier X weapon cannot kill a Tier X mob with a full meter.

 

My sentiment exactly. The Devs need to be more mindful of the DPS weapons will have when energy is empty, since it effectively replaces your attack speed with the amount of time it takes for the meter to refill the energy cost per shot. This is especially true with rapid weapons, which go from having decent DPS compared to melee weapons (lower, but practical) to having piss-awful DPS that makes it useless.

Also, energy should refill fast enough that you will have a full meter by the time the next enemy shows up. The energy bar is there to stop you from abusing tech chips to kite, not to nerf weapons into the ground. Sure, the old energy bar refilled too fast and the old guns used too little energy, but I think the nerf was too strong and they didn't do enough to balance the power differences between each type of gun.

It's almost like someone complained "Guns are imbalanced", referring to how shotguns are useless compared to sniper rifles, but for some reason the developers thought they meant guns were OP compared to melee and got completely the wrong idea. But of course, that's just speculation. At any rate, I'm sure it will even out by the time the game is finally released.

 

I have to disagree about slower weapons being the superior choice, because with slow weapons if you miss even a single attack then you're losing a lot more damage than if you miss a few attacks here or there with fast weapons. Not to mention that slow weapons have a hard time keeping multiple enemies away, thus you're more likely to take damage that could have been avoided had you been using a fast weapon. The only time slow weapons are superior is if they can one-shot everything.

I myself find that the best weapons to use are two lightning, 1-handed weapons. Specifically a short sword with ~2 attack speed and a dagger with ~4 attack speed, because it both chews through enemies as you close in on them and has enough knockback thanks to the short sword to keep them away if they try charging. Not to mention the bonus of having a good chunk of range and a fact that each lightning ball from the dagger does around as much damage as an assault rifle shot.

 

Player skill isn't a good balancing tool.
I never miss attacks, therefore hammers are Largely imbalanced for me. There's no reason to use anything else when I can kill in 1-2 hits, and knock it halfway across the screen. And can use my full energy bar techs to kite during downtime.

 

Knockback is proportionate to damage per hit in Starbound. Most Assault Rifles and Machine Pistols I've used don't have any knockback at all. Also, I seem to have a roughly 25% miss rate regardless of the speed of the weapon, and while it FEELS worse when I miss using a slow weapon, I don't think it actually IS worse. Of course, I'm just talking about squishy feelings at this point, rather than crunchy numbers.

Same here. Melee feels pretty broken when you massacre enemies with insane DPS, and you have a ranged option comparable to some guns, and it doesn't cost any energy so you can use techs as much as you want, and the knockback is sufficient to keep you safe. Don't even get me started on the bonehammer, but at least that's Legendary. We're talking about having two uncommon drops from very common enemies.

 

Question... Why has a space-fairing, or more specifically a group of space-fairing races not yet moved past swords and shields? They can build FTL spaceships... Now that's not to say when you're in the 'I have a stone pick' phase of the game you should have plasma guns, swords make sense. When I have crazy advanced armor and laser mining tools (we made a fully AI robot remember?) I expect to be using the most efficient means of killing enemies. Long range, with as few shots as needed.

I think higher tiers could actually be better balanced around ranged combat and early levels around melee. How do you do this? Early worlds spawn more monsters, later spawn more humanoids with guns or monsters with very good gap closers. That should be the trade off, you wouldn't even need to tweak energy. Melee is about getting in hard and fast against ranged, and ranged is about picking off targets.

Just my thoughts. My opinion boils down more to personal preference, but I think there is a reason our society has advanced to guns, why shouldn't those with FTL tech?

 

With the exception of explosives, for raw damage, melee weapons still bypass armor much better. the amount of force that can be applied to the point of a mace is many times higher than most bullets can produce. you have to match the size of melee weapon to the caliber of the bullet. a 22 with a dagger, a 38 with a large mace, a 50 with a claymore... and you can see the parallels.

 

My biggest beef with guns as they stand right now in Starbound is that they just don't feel fun. Most guns are too weak to be effective, lack enough knockback to keep me safe, and every gun I find eats my energy bar like it's popcorn. Even the guns that are strong enough that they would be fun, are useless to me because I only get 1-2 shots, and then not only do I have to switch weapons, but I also have to forego any enhanced mobility until my energy recharges.

They're not effective, they're not easy to use, and they're actively detrimental to my survival. I look at every gun I pick up, sigh, and ask myself, "where would I ever use this?"

Melee weapons on the other hand, feel fantastic. The bonehammer may not have as much damage as my crafted hammer, but it sprays bones thta quickly make up the difference and often allow me to outright one-shot enemies. My crafted hammer two-shots medium-size level 10 enemies, and one-shots the small ones and fliers. My longsword has a huge AoE, respectable knockback and speed, and the lightning special, meaning I can suppress a crowd of enemies over a level plain and swat enemies above and slightly below and in front of me with equal ease - and if I swing it with the alt-fire, it goes from lightning to burning. All for no energy cost. And if that's not enough, my crafted two-handed sword sacrifices the lightning/burning specials in order to deal about twice the damage, while retaining the same fantastic AoE for no cost.

No gun i've ever found can compare with that.

Now, I enjoy guns. In Terraria, I played a rocket-ninja, armed with a homing-bullet shotgun and armor that gradually turned you invisible, increasing your damage and crit chance the closer you were to unseen. I mined with rockets because it was fun. I had a grenade launcher that shot exploding pumpkins. I really liked guns.

So when I got Starbound, and expected to go Han Solo with a laser blaster or lob around energy grenades and rockets and maybe lightning guns and death rays right out of every sci-fi movie ever, I found myself really disappointed when the best weapons I could find were a greatclub made out of bones, a lightning-ball flinging sword that wouldn't look out of place in Cloud Strife's hands, and a crooked-handled hammer with a skull on it that I built myself.

Guns need to be more awesome. More fun.

 

I just found an Avian Pirate Ship in the Beta sector. Was searching for it for a week, to get a better weapon to move on. And I gotta admit - I feel like I wasted my time. The statistics are so low, that my legendary bonehammer does like 2-3 times the damage. Why I would use a ranged weapon in that case?

Some of you are talking about "you have range". Well - range is nothing when an aggroed enemy can get to you in 2 seconds. The only way to effectively use a gun right now is to fire it, change to a melee weapon, and finish the enemy, who has like 80% HP left. Unless you want to bunker yourself with terrain, and that's kinda boring and has no sense at all.

Most of you are asking "how to balance guns". My answer is: don't. Guns should be stronger than melee weapons. After all - they shot bullets with a strength that you would never achieve while swinging a hammer. Guns should be your prima source of damage in the later stages of the game. Swords, hammers, and all those, should be only used when in caves and small spaces, where we don't have the time to aim. There's no point in reducing the damage guns deal. I - personally - would make them deal 150% of the damage that melee weapons of the same tier deal. And - maybe - increase the energy cost.

The game should be fun. And there's nothing fun in having a gun right now, since the bow deals same dmg at lower levels. And nearly any sword does more dmg at higher levels. That's kinda absurd - unless all of the weapons are nano-sharp... or made of liquid tungsten.

 

This is a horrible, horrible shameless plug, but I spent dozens of hours fine tuning guns to how I'd like them into my mod. There's a subtle logic in difference of energy costs and DPS and I'm willing to answer why values are the way they are.

I also did the same thing to random generated melee weapons in the modpack. But due to how the item system works, it only works on newly generated weapons.

 

I think the biggest problem currently is that they share a resource with Tech, while melee weapon's don't. This is a problem because everyone wants to use their tech regardless of their weapon choice. Edit - To clarify, the biggest problem for "not feeling fun" - balance issues not withstanding

Regardless of that there should not be a damage difference - would rather melee combat provided a bonus such as successful melee hits restoring some energy (which then also creates a nice dynamic between the two, and doesn't make one or the other directly more powerful)

 

A lot of the time when using guns monsters will still be up in your face, at least from my experiences. Guns and melee both have different styles of attack, but I don't think that the fact that guns can attack from longer ranges really justifies them being poorly balanced against melee.

 

the thing about teir x is its all teirs 5-10
so your basicly can be useing a teir 7 gun on a teir 10 monster
it wont work so well

 

Honestly, I thought it was weird that my ranged weapons required energy, but not my melee attacks. If both were based on the energy/stamina system, Melee wouldn't completely overshadow ranged. Using energy for both could allow ranged to forego being stuck in "balance hell", as it wouldn't have to compete with how powerful melee is currently.

That being said, using energy for melee attacks would make the game significantly harder. This could be good thing, as the game is laughably easy(imo) with how melee works currently.

 

As I was saying, it seems rather backward for progression if we go from low tech to high tech tools (pick->drill) why are swords the be-all and guns just 'meh' at best. As far as I can recall the middle ages upgraded from sword to bows to crossbows to flintlocks as soon as possible (while swords were more niche).

 

Using a tier 10 gun on a tier 7 enemy won't work well with how underpowered guns feel right now.

 

dd

i don't know what you guys are going on about with this realism bull-shit.
if you get gouged in the chest with a titanium or harder sword it's easy to imagine suffering more from that than a projectile. at least if it can go either way why not design the game in a way that maximizes the gameplay. in fact it taxes my imagination more to envision a bullet doing more damage to you than a sword - if i had the choice i'd rather get shot in the leg with a gun than stabbed in the leg with a 20 pound fucking knife.

 

It's not about the suffering, it's about the damage dealt. I encourage you to go watch some videos comparing damage dealt by guns and melee weapons (tests on objects, not humans). I'm quite sure a sniper riffle bullet shot at melee range would tear your leg apart if it hits the right spot. And I'm not even mentioning rocket launchers.

Besides - noone is talking about taking fun away from melee weapons. We're talking about adding fun to guns. That's a difference. A great one.