Answer: Why do the new weapons feel "wierd"?

First to any moderator about to ban me this is not a bitching post or a repost. I wasn't quite sure which forum to put this under and I also made it it's own thread in an effort to stop people from posting more weapons posts. I could have added this to any number of the other weapons posts but thought it would help cut down on all the massive reposts if I made it in it's own thread.

The answer:

It all boils down to physics and the way us gamers have been trained.

How a semi-automatic rifle/submachine gun works:

First the weapon is primed by pulling the bolt/bolt carriage back by a side or top mounted rod. This is done against the force of the return spring. The bolt is then latched onto a "sear" a small bit of metal that holds the bolt back. When the trigger is pulled the sear is moved out of the way and the bolt is slammed forward by the return spring. When the bolt slams against the bullet a small rod inside the bolt called a firing pin pops out and pops the primer on the back of the bullet cause the powder to ignite. When the powder burns super heated gas is created which propels bullet down the barrel of the gun. During this process a small portion of the gas is routed out of the barrel back towards the firing mechanisim trough the gas tube. At the end of this tube is the priming rod. The rod is pushed against the bolt carriage which goes back to it's primed position held in place by the sear.

When the trigger is pulled the whole process repeats itself.

Now how and automatic weapon works.

It is all essentially the same the only difference is when you hold the trigger back the sear is held down and out of the way. The bolt then freely travels back and forth in the action firing rounds as quickly as it can until the trigger is released or there is no more ammunition.

How all of this relates to Empires.

The reason the automatic weapons feel "wierd" is that the do not operate fast enough to be realistic. In an automatic weapon the firing process happens as fast as the priming pin push the bolt back and the return spring pushes back into the bullet.

The weapons in Empires do this too slowly to the point where it is physically impossible for them to fire automatically that slowly.

The majority of all other games in the gaming universe use a standardized rate of fire (ROF) usually based on a real world weapon. They adjust damage, range, accuracy, fall off, and reload times for gameplay yet leave ROF alone to make the weapons feel more "realistic".

The devs chose to ignore this practice and try a new method of balancing.

I'm not here to bitch about this just try to clear some things up.

I hope this has been helpful.

 

Good point

 

Well the difference is that in almost every fps your auto-rifle
is like a laser that cuts through the air. In empires 2.2
the bullets dont shot fast enough to simulate a constant
death ray so you dont hit if you just spray and move the crosshair
over the enemy sprite.

 

They don't exactly hurt the sprite if you aim directly at them either.

 

It isn't as much of a death ray when your enemy can do it right back to you. The speed of Empires made it fun. With all this nerfing, I often find myself in horrible stalemates.

 

Very nicely phrased. Did the weapon scripts have to change with the OB engine? Or can we just put those back to the way they were in 2.12?

 

they had to cange recon

 

Have you actually been to this forum since the beginning of 2.2 testing?

 

http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=7511

I already explained it to him and he QUOTED ME and replied. /facepalm

 

If it is the hitbox they do hit now.

 

Fixed.
Shut up mayama. You're really fucking annoying.
For your information it's actually hard to use "death rays" because as the name implies they are highly accurate, meaning you have to aim BETTER to score a hit.

And this falloff bullshit is utterly stupid.

The long range weapons work retardedly.
The short range weapons are useless because of how big the maps are.
And now battles last for 5 minutes when they should have been over in 1.

The game is as slow as fuck. I played a round of slaughtered, 10 minutes until anyone actually did any major killing, and that was with about 30 people on the server.

I should just go play Quake 3...

 

Lets keep the comments productive. Bitching about problems and players isn't going to help anything.

"The long range weapons work retardedly." If you were a dev how exactly would you debug this?

Give emperical evidence, not anecdotes. They can't refute something you have solid proof of. This is why I wrote a 1 page paper on ROF in an effort to fix that ONE problem.

 

I think weapons could use about a 25% boost in rof combined with an increase of about 25% in range for SMGs and 50% in rifles. Increase the decrement when moving.

I'd boot everything into excel and put it all on 1 graph and tweak so NFHR is worse than NFAR until x distance (3000-4000?) where its relative damage becomes greater. Same idea with rest of the weapons. SMG1 better at range SMG2 better up close. TBH I think a lot can be done via accuracy but meh. Don't worry about it too much stuff will get reworked until there is a good balance.

You guys have to remember this is pretty much the FIRST release considering the weapons. Everything was borked from the change over to OB and devs had to start at ground 0. Things are pretty good considering. Perfect? No. That's why its a beta and a free game. Quit bitching so much.

 

I think opinions and flames could have been controlled more if this was released as a public beta first instead of an official release. With an offical release people assume this is the new direction and intention of the devs where as a beta would be a test of new ideas and platforms that usually offer more constructive critcisim then open flaming.

Just a thought for the future.

 

Not all of the weapons fire too slowly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCuTnw4hHTw
That's, presumably, 430 rounds per minute.
The NF assault rifle, the slowest of the rifles (so I believe), fires 545 rounds per minute. Typical firing rate for assault rifles tends to be 600.

Now, the SMGs do fire slower than the rifles in Empires, which is somewhat unrealistic given that a real SMG's shorter bolt means it'll fire much faster than a rifle. This is partially for balance reasons (the other reason being that making the SMGs do less than 10 damage is apparently unpopular) and also conceptually important since Riflemen, not Engineers or Scouts, are meant to be the primary infantry combat class.

I'm pretty sure you could design an SMG to fire 'slowly', if you wanted to. It would just involve some hijinx with the bolt.

Truth is, SMGs in the real world are designed to be extremely destructive and effective at close range. Hence the high fire rates, the high magazine capacities,the light weight and emphasis on controlled fully-automatic fire. The SMGs in Empires are not.

If the weapons don't feel right to you, I'm guessing it's because of the sound effects and animation and combat performance, not just the firing rate alone.

Empires is not meant to be realistic, just logically familiar.

 

We can all agree that you are one of the
most annoying members of the forum.

Weapons in 2.12 were deathrays with a circling spread, means if I put
my crosshair right or left of an enemys head and I empty a magazine
I still headshot.

 

SMGs are mainly designed to be handy automatic weapons. The original intention behind sub-machine guns is to allow infantry automatic firepower on the move. With the advent of intermediately-powered rifle cartridges which allows for a reasonably light-weight and controllable fully automatic firearm, SMGs are more or less phased out due to the superior effectiveness of rifles.

However, they are still useful in close combat due to their small size (which makes aiming much quicker and easier) and fully automatic firepower (beats a semi-automatic firearm at close ranges at the least). It finds use in SWAT teams quite often due to the comparatively lower power of pistol ammunition, which means that there is less chance of overpenetration which could harm hostages.

The high rate of fire is a side-effect of utilizing blowback operation.

Just to set the record clear. But yea, I digress. Maybe they could use a boost in firepower so that they are effective close-range weapons but drop off sharply at longer ranges.

 

if you fire untill the mag is empty the target probably die from bullets to other limbs... along with the fact he should die himself in a quarter of that time from a person aiming.

people complaining about wepons beaing too overpowered when they have them themself is always amusing.

 

Dear god a logical response!

The answer to the SMG problem is simple. High damage is acceptable in CQB and should out perform the rifles but with modified damage drop off, projectile drop off and wider accuracy pattern this could be totally reasonable. Even take penetration into account against body armor wearing riflemen.

SMG ROF is generally 700-900 rpm. This could work with the above scripting changes.

 

Well, if you really think it's just the firing rate and not certain X factors, feel free to make a suggestion on how to rebalance the SMGs.

Good to know.
Though, the P90 kinda ran away from the pack with its armor-penetrating ammunition. I figured that was where the market was heading, along with the Calico (100-round magazine on a SMG ).