The problem I see with the AR's is the BE rifle is much more acurate at range firing short bursts. Several times I've tried hitting ppl at range with the NF AR, only popping off a couple rounds each time with only the first round usually hitting, only to have the wounded enemy turn and return accurate counter burst fire killing me first. I've also done that to the other guy more than a few times when I was the one playing BE. In closer range fights it's not as big a deal though does make a difference, but in longer ranged fights it's a pretty serious problem.
Taken from this thread: RIFLES Brenodi Assault Rifle (Wins) Higher accuracy (Kicking spread of 0 to 0.5) Same damage (35) VS Northern Assault Rifle (Loses) Lower accuracy (Kicking spread of 0.5 to 2) Same damage (35)
So what do we want, different rifles with different competencies, or identical rifles with different skins?
If not identical then BE AR needs to have a bit worse accuracy than it has now (we can also lower the damage). BE AR is all-killing machine. NF AR requires a much more skill.
I don't know how many of the forums dwellers saw me this in emp_escort last week. I took the BE rifleman with BE AR and improved ammo with improved damage, I spawned in an apc near the third flag. As soon as I got out I saw five or six people on the ledge above. All I did was kneeling, a bit of aiming and couple of seconds later there were no one alive on the ledge. Just simple point and click five or six frags out of thin air. At medium range there is nothing better than BE AR to clean the house. I think that there should be guns that the other team really fears, but on both sides. What I'm suggesting might not be what people have in mind when they think about balancing the BE AR, but here goes nothing: If we look at the realistic point of view the NF AR should have larger muzzle velocity than the BE AR and thus it should be more powerful(and more accurate, but we'll leave that one out for now since it's a game) due to the longer barrel(longer time the exploding gasses push the bullet forward thus making the bullet go faster when it exits the barrel giving it more kinetic energy to do damage). In short: Amp up the damage of the NF AR to 45 and leave everything else be.
I totally agree with beerdude on the NF AR issue. People are stacking teams in favour of BR because A: Riflemen get a much better gun and B: They dont want to get auto snipered by the BR AR. I like wereasers idea , though an increase to 45 for NF AR still equals a 3 shot kill. Personally i would increase the dammage to 50 , lower the rate of fire and increase recoil. Another option could be to improve the NF heavy rifle to match the NF AR over range. Perhaps give the NF HR zoom and decent accuarcy and leave the AR as it is. Lots of people have had some good ideas on resolving this issue and i do hope its fixed , however its done it will need to be well tested.
holly shit, before i posted this, this thread was the same length as the furry thread in the blackhole. it is amazing (and a little sad) that empire players care as much about furries as the new patch.
To be fair, Quackums, the furry thread has very few posts pertaining to furries. It's all over the freakin' place. This is much more on-topic. Or, at least, it was...
The .7 thread is in General Discussion When conceived the NF rifle was supposed to be alot like the M1 US rifle from DOD, high damage, high recoil, semi automatic. The Emp AR should be less lethal but with less recoil and higher ROF. These traits have proven difficult to script however.
thank you, i was wondering if/when someone was gunna explain the logic behind the imbalanced rifles. the fact that yall were going for something that would make the riflemen different but still balanced but are just having a hard time finetunning the code makes me feel alot more secure that this mod is in good hands.
Amen. I would much rather have slightly unbalanced weapons that are different than balanced weapons that are completely the same for both sides. Blizzard does an incredible job of balancing, and I definitely think that their approach could be worth studying in this regard.
You know what I just read about Blizzard the other day, that they balance their games by writing AI to play each other and try every combination of everything and then record the results.
True, but have you seen Blizzard's AI? Seriously. Try taking on AI of the hardest difficulty in Warcraft 3. I dare you. Thinking about it, though, I guess the quality of the AI doesn't have to be spectacular (I'm not implying that you couldn't crank out AI like that, I'm only implying that it would take you several years to do so). It just has to be even. It's a matter of giving the teams completely equal resources (player skill, player count, and commander competence) and seeing what doesn't balance out.