CIU weapon balance program - Part 3: Plasma Rifle & Positron Stream

[1galbatorix1]

@InterAction_studios

Plasma was designed as continuous fire weapon, not manual (single-shot). Given the numbers, there is indeed a damage advantage to firing manually (originally unintentional, but tolerated the justification behind this is that manual firing requires more effort, so advantages like lower overhearing or feather pushing are a reasonable trade-off. I’m aware that the whole “requires more effort” argument is nullified by auto-clickers, but steps will be taken to limit their use).

If any change is going to be made at all, it will be to reduce the manual firing rate – it will not be to make the weapon function better as single-shot.

Yeah, the thing is. Nobody will ever use this weapon as intended, as long as its stats are the way they are right now. IMO saying that manual firing requires more effort is kinda a stretch. The difference is negligible, because instead of holding the button, you simply spam it. On the other hand, manually fired Plasma Rifle does significantly more damage, but also almost never overheats.

@1galbatorix1

Reduce a bit overheat time from 15s to 13s.(15s is way too long for this weapon)

In community of veteran/experienced players, PR is accepted as 100% manual weapon, because it’s used almost exclusively in this way. That’s why I used manual overheat time in my calculations. Automatic is kinda irrelevant right now. And thanks to huge overheat time when fired manually, unintentionally getting this weapon to overheat is something, that almost never happens.

That’s what I meant by “gameplay doesn’t match the visuals”. Plasma Rifle was intended to be an automatic weapon, but every single characteristic of it screams “manual”. The only exception is the visual design. So we basically have the weapon with identity crysis. Works like autoaim Laser Cannon, but looks like Positron Stream. My idea was basically “making manual Plasma Rifle official”, so it no longer looks like automatic weapon, but what it really is.

But if you want to keep it as automatic weapon (This would pretty much mean an entirely new weapon for majority of playerbase.), you really have to adress the gameplay design of this weapon in a way, that makes it worth to use this weapon automatically. As long as it works like it works right now, everyone will be using it as a manual one.

[Sufi]

@1galbatorix1

So we basically have the weapon with identity crysis.

Well that’s a brand new sentence right there thanks for the giggle

[Sophodot]

I’d like to suggest something else. Manual firing on the following weapons can be done as fast or faster than automatic fire:

• Ion Blaster
• Neutron Gun
• Laser Cannon
• Lightning Fryer – this is a special case because chaining needs to be charged with auto-fire. Manual firing is still better on single targets.
• Plasma Rifle
• Utensil Poker
• Photon Swarm (at low power)
• Hypergun (at low power)
• Riddler
• Corn Shotgun

Normally this wouldn’t yield any advantage other than a potential increase in fire rate, but there is one other thing that is a huge incentive for clicking manually: the weapons overheat far less. Some of them don’t ever overheat at the maximum possible manual fire rate.

Why is it that a shot fired while holding down the trigger generates more heat than one fired from a single click? Decide on a single value for heat generation and keep it constant regardless of how the player fires the shot.

Plasma Rifle may be intended to be a fast overheat weapon but players are circumventing the design by using manual fire. If that would generate as much heat as automatic fire, the strategy becomes far less viable.

I take it that this heat mechanic was implemented due to an assumption that most players, especially new ones, will fire automatically and not manually? So the idea was to give players who put in the extra effort of spam-clicking an added benefit? I don’t know if that works the intended way, I’d need some statistics to see how many people actually fire automatically while using the aforementioned weapons, and if they are few, then it means nearly everyone takes advantage of this heat reduction.

It’s not something like a pro technique or a high-risk strategy, firing manually with the appropriate weapons is a basic skill that every player should acquire after their first few missions. It doesn’t make sense to give those that don’t know about that and just hold down the trigger every time a disadvantage in the form of faster overheat.

[Kylo-Hen]

@1galbatorix1

But if you want to keep it as automatic weapon (This would pretty much mean an entirely new weapon for majority of playerbase.), you really have to adress the gameplay design of this weapon in a way, that makes it worth to use this weapon automatically. As long as it works like it works right now, everyone will be using it as a manual one.

I’d prefer to see this myself, actually - especially with the “splitting” rework Positron is getting (although I still can’t quite grasp what that looks like) meaning that we no longer have an auto single-beam weapon.

But tbh the “Identity Crisis” description sums it up perfectly at the moment and needs to be addressed…

[Sufi]

Perhaps we could do something like what Galbatorix did for machine guns – Hypergun is “the basic one”, Vulcan spreads as you overheat, Boron (if these changes are implemented) would get stronger as it overheats and Moron would be the newbie gun.

Plasma Rifle could simply remain the basic beam, Lightning Fryer - chaining weapon, Positron Stream - splitting weapon.

[InterAction_studios]

I’ve reduced the manual rate to match the automatic firing rate. We’ll re-evaluate from here.

Note that manual firing is still better in terms of heat – just not in terms of damage any more. I think the “manual firing generates less heat” is crucial for encouraging manual fire.

[Kylo-Hen]

@InterAction_studios

Note that manual firing is still better in terms of heat – just not in terms of damage any more. I think the “manual firing generates less heat” is crucial for encouraging manual fire.

Well, it will certainly do that.

But that said, the change sounds like it may have done the trick and I am excited to play with it and share my thoughts.

[OneWingLunarian]

Honestly, I find the slower manual rate quite awkward to use… Maybe give it it’s original fire rate when it hits max power?

[SpryterTerraxian]

Me too lol

[InterAction_studios]

Ok, second approach (in v.44):

Distinguishing feature: Damage ramps up the longer you maintain lock-on (not necessarily on the same enemy)

Damage (0-10, 20): 200 300 400 550 700 850 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2200
Fire rate (Manual): 6.5/sec
Fire rate (Auto): 5/sec
Time to overheat (Auto): 5 sec
Time to overheat (Manual): Never
Max. damage ramp (Auto only): +50%
Time to max. ramp: 1.5 sec

[Sufi]

I’d like to see this in action, tbh.

[Akemisora]

I like the approach, it gives both manual and auto fire advantage for each.

[Sophodot]

A lot of people complained about Plasma, but I actually thought it was fine in v.43. Awkward to use, yes, but in multiplayer it was already capped 5/s so it wasn’t impossible to get used to it. And with the damage increase it was still overall an upgrade in DPS over v.41, but it emphasized even more Plasma’s staple of maximum damage packed in a single shot. This means it deals more damage than necessary to certain enemies, but that and the lower fire rate served as the main disadvantages and balanced it against its usually exceptional accuracy.

With the proposed changes, I fear that Plasma Rifle will gain a damage advantage that coupled with its accuracy will pretty much allow it to supplant Utensil Poker as the dominant weapon. And the damage increasing as lock-on is maintained isn’t as useful as one might think.

Sorry if my calculations here are wrong, I’m tired.
Assume Plasma on ↯6 at 1000 dmg/shot.
Automatic fire: Can fire at 5/sec, for 5 sec, equals 25 shots before overheating. 1st shot: 1000 dmg, damage ramps up over the next 1.5 seconds, which amounts to 7.5 shots. On the 8th shot, it reaches maximum damage, 1500, and continues at 1500 dmg up to the 25th shot, when it overheats. The first 7 shots amount to approximately 8500 dmg (rounded) while shots 8 through 25 at 1500 dmg sum up to 1500*18=27000 dmg. Total damage in 5 seconds: circa 35500 before overheat.
Manual fire: Can fire at 6.5/sec indefinitely without overheat. 1000*6.5*5 seconds=32500 dmg in those same 5 seconds, using only manual fire.

The resulting difference is that automatic fire deals in those 5 seconds just ~9.2% more damage. That’s not that great a difference. And after 5 seconds auto-fire will leave you with an overheated weapon, while manual can just keep firing. Automatic damage starts being more advantageous than manual only if the weapon is fired continuously for at least 2 seconds. Since fire rates are constant, this happens at any power level. What’s more, according to the description, the damage increase is tied to how long the fire button has been held and not to overheat. Thus, if the player interrupts firing and then resumes auto-fire with the overheat meter more than half-full, they will see much less benefit from the damage ramp up as their weapon will overheat soon after it kicks in.

I predict that for long waves, top players might use automatic fire until Plasma nearly overheats, then continue with manual until it cools down completely and then fire an automatic burst again. This sort of strategy already exists with Lightning Fryer in multiplayer CI3/4/5. Its auto fire rate is 5.88/s, but overheats, while the manual fire rate is 5/s and allows the weapon to cool down. This ensures a near-constant stream of damage, but with variations over time, higher when the weapon is firing automatically and heating up, lower while the player taps manually to avoid overheat.

In my opinion, Plasma can be just left as it is in v.43. It fully embraces the concept of max accuracy and max single-target damage/shot at the cost of lower fire rate and “overkilling” low-health enemies. If another overhaul is a must, then I’ll take these as fixed values:
Manual fire rate must be 6.5/s or people will dislike it. Overheat with manual fire is negligible.
Auto fire rate remains fixed at 5/s. Overheat with automatic fire remains 5 seconds.

Interaction Studios has expressed that Plasma has to function as an automatic weapon. Thus, we pretty much need to force people to fire it automatically. It needs to be made so that if people only fire it manually, it simply won’t do well enough. Double down on the ramp up feature. Lower the base damage by 0.75, to:
150 225 300 412 525 637 750 900 1050 1200 1350 1650
And the damage ramp should go up to +100%:
300 450 600 825 1050 1275 1500 1800 2100 2400 2700 3300
Still with a 1.5 seconds ramp up time.
I just came up with these numbers on the spot, they might still be off by a significant amount.
Compared to the previous measurement, at ↯6 Plasma would deal 34500 dmg before overheat, which is within 3% of the other value.

Looking again at what this results in, it still seems like manual fire-only might still be competitive. Perhaps further lower the base damage and make the damage ramp even more extreme? For example, allow it to increase continuously with no limit, at +10%/shot, so 1st shot=1000; 2nd shot=1100 … 25th shot=3400, Overheat. No matter how high it goes, the damage increase is useful only on bosses, barriers and other entities with very high health.

Someone help me, crunching damage values and fire rate numbers is destroying my sanity.

[Kylo-Hen]

I think there are definitely concerns about it being too powerful, but that’s what Early Access is for, right? We won’t know unless we test it. I’m open to testing the proposed changes, definitely.

What does really bother me is that Plasma (which was almost ok, but had issues) is getting a second fix before Lightning (which is struggling much more, I feel) for no other reason I can tell other than… it’s more popular, and therefore more people complained?

[anon27929001]

Lightning was never rebalanced in the first place. The chaining feature was introduced just so we make sure it actually works before anything else.

[OneWingLunarian]

I would suggest changing the damage ramp to 75%, just to make up for the fact that it would overheat for auto.

[Sophodot]

And I forgot to mention, but according to the provided description, there’s also the problem that if the player loses weapon lock even for a single shot, the damage ramp will be reset back to its base value. Still, the fast overheat and slow fire rate make automatic fire extremely unattractive for the Plasma Rifle, and even adding a damage bonus to it only provides limited compensation, given the nature of the weapon.

So I had another thought: Swap the distinguishing features for Positron Stream and Plasma Rifle.

Plasma Rifle and Positron Stream now

• Both are lock-on weapons that need to be most suitable for automatic fire
• Plasma overheats faster (5sec), Positron overheats slower (5.7sec)
• Plasma fires slower, Positron fires faster
• Plasma has more damage per shot, Positron has less
• Plasma focuses damage on a single target, Positron has the ability to split

These two weapons are alike in colour and in that they usually take the form of a single beam. I believe the situation in v.43 gives both weapons a decent fighting chance. Plasma is better against single targets, while Positron has it beat in waves with many enemies (provided there aren’t Cowards or Slobs among them).

Positron splits, but it has a rather low damage per shot, getting even lower with each split.
Plasma will increase in damage, but it already had great DPS from the start.
Currently, the two mechanics amplify each weapon’s strength. By switching them over, they would cover the weapon’s weaknesses.

If you make Plasma split instead, it would supplement its low fire rate by allowing it to engage multiple targets at the same time. While Positron would see more benefit if its lower damage increased over time. However, Plasma’s damage is so high that if it’s allowed to reach more enemies it could quickly become too powerful, unless the splitting is limited to automatic fire only, akin to what we see on the Lightning Fryer. Positron might need a decrease in overheat to allow more sustained fire and/or a very high/steep damage ramp to compete.

[Kylo-Hen]

@Sophodot

Currently, the two mechanics amplify each weapon’s strength. By switching them over, they would cover the weapon’s weaknesses.

See, in my mind that’s a good thing. The weapons should feel different, not like different methods of all filling the same niche.

But that’s just my opinion - maybe most people would rather see really similar weapons.

[Sufi]

They would still be distinctly different if these traits are switched over. Plasmer will chain and Positron will be the “basic beam”.

Honestly I’d like to see literally anything in action until we’re all satisfied. I was also kinda hoping for IA to go back to Ion Blaster and give it a slight damage buff as Galbatorix suggested (weak projectile - 150 -> 200). Ion Blaster is really great, especially compared to its past counterpart, but it’s still not strong enough for Elite missions. It’s good on easier missions though.