So..... NC guns arent bad anymore.

[Innate]

Originally Posted by Chewy

Im waiting for the VR room to get some video of weapons at all ranges and the amount of ammo to kill based off burst firing, controlled/uncontrolled full auto, and single shot as well as trying out as many "What If"s as I can. On paper stats read just as numbers, and I for one need to see what the weapons can do because I have no idea what those numbers mean. The numbers tell only basics, not the results that come under an untold number of variables we all see in each pulling of the trigger.

I tried to do something like this before but couldn't get anything started out of the need for many people and those that I could get all had conflicting schedules (all of them). Now that the VR room is coming it'll be rather easy to get video of real in-game views of what happens at no cost of SC or certs, just the time it'll take me to make loadouts and shoot at things that don't even move. Sitting on my ass is something I can do, my chair may be cheap but it's damn comfy imp: (failed emote)

Im about to move on to biting my toe nails. Meh, they need a clipping anyway so might as well

Of course it's infeasible in the extreme to take into account "real-world" variables when trying to analyze weapons. However, most of the real-world variables either add up to nothing (their effects are counter to each other in the average of the many, many situations that come up) or they represent a tactical advantage (like sneaking up on someone) in which case they can be treated as applying equally to any weapon.

I posted some thoughts here about weapons "in vacuum" - i.e. weapons being used under perfect conditions with perfect aim. The fact of the matter is that the majority of vocal people are unable to view advantages and disadvantages in a detached, objective way - and those people will eternally cling to disadvantages of their own guns and advantages of other factions' guns.

The specific example I jokingly used was the TRAC-5 vs. the Solstice (moving and ADS). I even made this very troll-bait graph which shows there is a tiny difference in their bullet damage, with the Solstice being ahead for the effective range of carbines. In terms of theoretically perfect TTK, the Solstice is very slightly ahead outside ~20m. This is almost entirely because of its initial COF advantage (remember, this is moving and ADS). So at this point, the unobjective amongst us would claim that TR weapons (all of them, every one, not just the TRAC-5) are bad/trash/etc. happily ignoring the substantial extra damage they have per magazine and their advantage at closer ranges due to their higher ROF.

The reality is that the patterns used to offset the factions tend to make the guns pretty balanced overall, and the only progress being made torturing ourselves over which ones are better is primarily in satisfying our curiosity.

Originally Posted by Bocheezu

And recoil; TRAC-5 has a higher magnitude recoil and a more severe right lean to it than Solstice does

From the weapon data sheet's FireModes tab, you have to do some detective work to figure out which line is which weapon

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...er=true&gid=61

TRAC-5 (row 14)

Recoil Magnitude Min/Max: 0.3
First Shot Recoil Multiplier: 2.35x
Recoil Angle Min: 20
Recoil Angle Max: 27
Recoil Horizontal Min: 0.225

Medium recoil, highest right lean, highest side-to-side jittering

Solstice (row 15)

Recoil Magnitude Min/Max: 0.25
First Shot Recoil Multiplier: 2.8x
Recoil Angle Min: 10
Recoil Angle Max: 17
Recoil Horizontal Min/Max: 0.2

Lowest recoil, medium right lean, medium side-to-side jittering

Mercenary (row 4)

Recoil Magnitude Min/Max: 0.4
First Shot Recoil Multiplier: 1.75x
Recoil Angle Min: 0
Recoil Angle Max: 0
Recoil Horizontal Min/Max: 0.175

Highest recoil, but it's straight up; lowest side-to-side jittering

I take issue with your use of "jittering". Jittering sounds like a highly random occurrence, whereas both the TRAC-5 and Solstice have a very small range over which they can bump. Jittering would more correctly describe the Mercenary.

Assuming the numbers are correct (I only checked one set to get the general idea of how to do it), your analysis is a bit flawed.

The magnitude of recoil is a fairly irrelevant thing when talking about unidirectional (i.e. not balanced) recoil since to counter it you just pull faster. In this game, there isn't a gun (except maybe the semi-auto scout rifles or battle rifles) that is notably physically more difficult to counter than any other gun.

In addition, you draw an unnecessary distinction between exactly how biased the directionality of unidirectional recoil is. The only thing that matters here for balance purposes is the degree to which the directionality changes - that's why balanced recoil is the worst by far. The range over which both the TRAC-5 and Solstice can bump is the same size. You'll just pull slightly different directions for either of them in order to counter.

Also, the Mercenary which you describe as having the least "jitter" and as having straight-up recoil actually has the worst of all possible recoils - it has balanced recoil, which means it will randomly bump left or right on each shot.

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Also, in response to those who claim that flinch has no effect on weapon balance or "l2p" etc.:

All the proposed "counters" to flinch like "take cover" "don't get shot first" "don't run into an open field" etc. apply equally to players who have (or at least, had before the change) flinch-dealing monster ROF weapons. There isn't a specific "counter" to flinch that you can do with a low ROF weapon.

NC weapons are overwhelmingly balanced recoil with higher magnitude recoil and lower ROF/higher damage. If you need 7 shots to kill (common for TR and VS weapons), and flinch causes you to miss a shot, you've wasted 1/7th of a kill in terms of bullets and refire time. If you do the same with the average NC weapon (or weapons like the Flare, Pulsar C, TMG-50), you miss out on 1/6th of a kill and refire time - a higher price to pay. In addition, the way flinch works punishes balanced recoil because it basically takes whatever your recoil vector was and applies it harder - this means recentering a balanced recoil weapon is much harder after getting flinched. I'm not positive, but I had the strong impression that flinch also multiplied based on the magnitude of your recoil - so weapons like the Solstice were much less affected than weapons like the Gauss SAW or X11.