Me too lol
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
13 Likes
Iād like to see this in action, tbh.
I like the approach, it gives both manual and auto fire advantage for each.
1 Like
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 wasnāt 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 Plasmaās 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 isnāt as useful as one might think.
Sorry if my calculations here are wrong, Iām tired.
Assume Plasma on āÆ6 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. Thatās 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. Whatās 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 āoverkillingā low-health enemies. If another overhaul is a must, then Iāll 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 wonāt 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 āÆ6 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 ā¦ 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.
1 Like
I think there are definitely concerns about it being too powerful, but thatās what Early Access is for, right? We wonāt know unless we test it. Iām 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 thanā¦ itās more popular, and therefore more people complained?
Lightning was never rebalanced in the first place. The chaining feature was introduced just so we make sure it actually works before anything else.
5 Likes
I would suggest changing the damage ramp to 75%, just to make up for the fact that it would overheat for auto.
2 Likes
And I forgot to mention, but according to the provided description, thereās 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 arenāt 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 weaponās strength. By switching them over, they would cover the weaponās 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, Plasmaās damage is so high that if itās 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.
5 Likes
See, in my mind thatās a good thing. The weapons should feel different, not like different methods of all filling the same niche.
But thatās just my opinion - maybe most people would rather see really similar weapons.
4 Likes
They would still be distinctly different if these traits are switched over. Plasmer will chain and Positron will be the ābasic beamā.
Honestly Iād like to see literally anything in action until weāre 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 itās still not strong enough for Elite missions. Itās good on easier missions though.
3 Likes
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