Author Topic: New weapons and items  (Read 5043 times)

nameunknown

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New weapons and items
« on: August 18, 2017, 02:40:01 pm »
Dear UnderRail developers,

It is very upsetting that there is no flame thrower   and grenade launcher.
Game needs weapons like light machine gun (K MG36, Mark 48, Kalashnikov LMG).
I would like to see portable force field in the future.

 

Tygrende

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2017, 02:55:12 pm »
The thing is, while cool, those weapons wouldn't bring anything entirely new to the game. All the niches they would fill are more or less filled by already existing weapons.

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flame thrower

Pyrokinetic Stream is just that.

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grenade launcher
Grenades already exist and fill their role pretty well.

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machine gun
Assault rifles and SMGs are all about burst fire. Shotguns will have bursts as well.

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portable force field
Not sure what you mean here, but isn't energy shield exactly that?

The amount of cool things that could be implemented is unlimited, but development time and resources are. There are simply tons of things that need to be done and have higher priority, such as bug fixes, content that fills entirely new niches, etc.

nameunknown

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2017, 06:57:17 pm »
Wait a second. For example, I don't want to play using psi abilities and to spend my points on "throwing", this means that I can't use all advantages of throwing weapons and Pyrokinetic Streams. Shouldn't the alternative be there?
Light machine gun can have high strength, but not the accuracy.

Tygrende

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2017, 07:48:51 pm »
Wait a second. For example, I don't want to play using psi abilities and to spend my points on "throwing", this means that I can't use all advantages of throwing weapons and Pyrokinetic Streams. Shouldn't the alternative be there?
I'm not sure I understand.

Pretty much every offensive skill offers multiple different weapons/abilites that you can focus on and ignore the rest if you so wish. Just because you put points into guns doesn't mean you have to use all of them, it's exactly the same for throwing and psi. There are tons of viable builds that can pick one of the psi schools for a few specific abilites that have a complementary role and ignore the rest.

Light machine gun can have high strength, but not the accuracy.
But that's what assault rifle bursts are right now. Extremaly high damage potential but the precision drops very rapidly as range increases.

UnLimiTeD

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #4 on: August 29, 2017, 10:01:54 am »
If someone wanted a more "machine gun"-esque weapon, we could easily have drum magazines for Assault Rifles, including completely nonsensical mods to make them function however you like.
Problem is: Adding new items with actually different looks to the game is a lot of work, and will only be done if it adds something to the experience.
Let's take, f.Ex., a grenade launcher. It would probably require a "heavy weapons" skill of sorts, but let's ignore that for now.
There's two options:
A) It's completely OP.
B) It's Ammo is so scarce or expensive that it's barely ever used.
B of course doesn't exclude A.
However, I can for the life of me not think of any way this would actually open up new play styles.
Whether you spend points on some new weapon skill or on throwing or pyrokinetics doesn't make a difference when the points expenditure and result are the same.

Of course, if you just more options without spending the points, then.... no.
First person to give Styg Karma.

I hereby declare that I love the oddity system and am in favour of shop and carry limits.

nameunknown

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2017, 01:31:36 pm »
If someone wanted a more "machine gun"-esque weapon, we could easily have drum magazines for Assault Rifles, including completely nonsensical mods to make them function however you like.

Judging by your logic there is no need in Sniper Rifles, you can just modify Assault Rifles

Everything has to have meaningful, distinct mechanics instead of just a reskin or a better/worse version of something else.

Why do you even need to add several weapon variants of one class, when they are a better/worse version?

Well,оkey. Why then there are Energy Pistols in your game, but no Energy Rifles?

Hazard

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2017, 06:47:44 pm »
The game-mechanical role of machineguns (high strength, high caliber burst fire, suppressive fire, full-auto, and so forth) is already assigned to assault rifles. I don't believe we'll ever see machine guns as a new weapon subtype, but maybe there could be unique assault rifles that are LMGs for all practical purposes.

Having machine guns take on the current role of assault rifles (with some changes) and switching the latter's focus more into rapid single shots could be interesting, though I'd imagine Underrail's compressed combat distances considerably limit the number of different effective ranges you can assign to weapon subtypes without too much overlap. And a longer maximum view distance, 20 tiles for example, then raises the question of how do you keep melee weapons relevant.

You see, Underrail's man-portable weapons have always been relatively lightweight, with some of the heaviest weapons being an old anti-materiel rifle and impractically massive sledgehammer. Heavier weapons are left to stationary or otherwise heavy equipment - for example there's a small Protectorate mech armed with minigun, rocket launcher and heavy drill. You get to pilot one for a bit if you join the Protectorate. Some jetskis in the expansion will also have weapons of their own for naval combat.

I'll be honest, I would love a cheat that allowed you to spawn and pilot a Dreadnought wherever you wanted. :D

nameunknown

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2017, 08:30:33 pm »
You see, Underrail's man-portable weapons have always been relatively lightweight, with some of the heaviest weapons being an old anti-materiel rifle and impractically massive sledgehammer.

But the   light machine gun is not (truly)  heavy weapons....
Check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X517Utblb00
« Last Edit: December 10, 2017, 08:32:32 pm by nameunknown »

Tygrende

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2017, 08:41:20 pm »
Having machine guns take on the current role of assault rifles (with some changes) and switching the latter's focus more into rapid single shots could be interesting
Sniper rifles with a proper combination of frame/mods kind of fill the "rapid single shots" niche to a degree, I'm speaking about Spearhead and rapid reloader of course. Add a barrel retractor and it plays very differently from your standard 1 shot/turn sniper rifle with very high move/close range penalties.

Assault rifles can be made with a focus on single shots too, I beat the game with a build like this once. It's not as good since their precision drops pretty quickly over distance and there's no reason not to use a burst when the enemy is close enough.

« Last Edit: December 10, 2017, 08:43:19 pm by Tygrende »

Fenix

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2017, 08:44:53 pm »
Psionics, that transport to you Dreadnought....................

Hazard

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2017, 08:52:57 pm »
Stop giving me ideas! :D

Getting the dread out of Hephaestus should be doable with save editing... (requires working knowledge of the .NET binary serialization format, MS-NRBF)
Make a save right next to the exit and another one, say, 4 tiles to the west. Unpack both saves' global.dat and run a diff on them. Identify which of the changed bytes (there could be lots of unrelated changes) correspond to your character's coordinates. Edit the number to move the dread 4 tiles east instead. Pack the modified global.dat back to your save and go pwn everything.

Or if run-time memory editing sounds easier, one could try to find the coordinates in memory with cheat engine and edit those. https://i.imgur.com/1Bj2OHF.jpg ;)

Ha, did not think of that myself. Any gameplay problems you foresee with this trick? Besides being crazy OP. :P

Sniper rifles with a proper combination of frame/mods kind of fill the "rapid single shots" niche to a degree, I'm speaking about Spearhead and rapid reloader of course. Add a barrel retractor and it plays very differently from your standard 1 shot/turn sniper rifle with very high move/close range penalties.

Assault rifles can be made with a focus on single shots too, I beat the game with a build like this once. It's not as good since their precision drops pretty quickly over distance and there's no reason not to use a burst when the enemy is close enough.

Rapid Spearhead is still only 2 shots per turn and popping adrenaline is not enough for a third, so not quite what I had in mind. I do like this particular combination though, works really well with a 7.62 Hornet.

And yeah, that's precisely the "problem" with ARs. It's very much sub-optimal to go for a single shot specced build and weapon, especially since all the good feats are for burst fire. Point Shot is difficult to get with the 6 DEX requirement and Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire are merely "okay", nothing close to Commando or Concentrated Fire in combat power.

Edit: If we do end up getting energy rifles at some point down the line, they might fit into this particular role. No burst fire but strong single shots (especially with the new High Technicalities feat) with accuracy between ARs and SRs.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2017, 09:16:59 pm by Hazard »

Hazard

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2017, 09:19:00 pm »
Alright. Now I just need to familiarize myself with Cheat Engine...

destroyor

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #12 on: December 11, 2017, 12:30:07 am »
I did played a single shot AR once - focus on critical chance w/ Survival Instinct + Focus stim + infused Rathound leather armor, with Blitz on top:

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?AwGloJgVhGGYQEZQE4kI+mAWRZ-aiJwzEzj5EQRYgqnADstFr+eNAHCNCHKHABsfbtjRRmgmIzyMYKPCk5A

It's still weaker than a standard burst build (as individual shot within a burst can crit) but it's ok, nothing amazing.

ciox

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Re: New weapons and items
« Reply #13 on: December 11, 2017, 08:50:50 am »
I did played a single shot AR once - focus on critical chance w/ Survival Instinct + Focus stim + infused Rathound leather armor, with Blitz on top:

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?AwGloJgVhGGYQEZQE4kI+mAWRZ-aiJwzEzj5EQRYgqnADstFr+eNAHCNCHKHABsfbtjRRmgmIzyMYKPCk5A

It's still weaker than a standard burst build (as individual shot within a burst can crit) but it's ok, nothing amazing.

I think it's pretty good if you use a 9mm Chimera equipped with muzzle brake and the blue scope for crit chance, and Commando, half your shots will crit at that point so you can easily get as many as 8-9 crits per turn in two bursts.