Exactly how bad is the 0.75 weapon balance?

[GreaseMonkey]

This bad:


Assuming you need to be accurate to within 1/2 a block, and you have perfect aim on someone at the fogline, you have this chance of hitting them:

• 0.60 Rifle: Basically guaranteed
• 0.76 Rifle: 79%
• 0.75 Rifle, 0.60 SMG, 0.60 Shotgun (first pallet): 35%
• 0.75 SMG: 9%
• 0.75 Shotgun (first pallet): 2%

The approximate formula for calculating the odds of hitting something at a given distance, given that the value you get is <= 0.8233, is this:

P(deviance < 0.5) = 1.6466439/(8*((D*S)^2))
where D is distance and S is spread.

If it's > 0.8233, you need to attenuate the value somehow. (You'll need to integrate k(pi/4-acos(1/q))q by dq to get the exact value in the CDF.)

The expected deviance is 0.7792918871 times the spread (1/sqrt(1.6466439)).

I'll need to gather statistics to finally nail the "SMG is OP" argument into the grave, but I think the argument that you can recalibrate your first shot faster with an SMG than you can with a rifle (due to having 5x the firing rate) and that a double-tap is a kill could be the main argument supporting this case.

[Sample]

:shock: :shock: :shock:

[[Bay12]Jake]

I don't see this as a problem. 0.60's rifle was insanely overpowered; I quit using it completely in the end because it was so easy to rack up headshot after headshot that the game wasn't fun anymore. And I suggest basing the hit-probability calculations from the SMG on a three-round burst rather than a single shot.

[GreaseMonkey]

So for a 3-round burst of the SMG, there is a 24% chance (EDIT: Assuming effectively no recoil! Treat this as a maximum.) at least one pallet will hit at the fogline.

Anyhow, the reason why it's so easy to rack up headshot after headshot is because the people you are shooting at are noobs. If you were having issues with this, you should have played on Sham's more often (IIRC around that time the players were pretty damn good).

If you'd like to see an interesting balance between the rifle and the SMG, prod me on IRC some time and I'll give you a link to my 0.60 fork (0.60-p11 as it stands). I think I might be able to kick your ass with the SMG in there, and relative to the vanilla 0.60 SMG it's effectively a nerf.

[Tek2]

I'm all up for perfectly accurate weapons and having other ways to balance them.

[EssigGurkenFred]

:O
I think SMG isn't this overpowered... in 0.76.10 nearly nobody is playing it because they are getting killed by the rifle instantly.

[USABxBOOYO]

mfw everyone who never played <0.75 is saying SMG is not OP.

[HoboHob]

The SMG in 0.76 isn't to bad. Because the rifle and shotgun are better.

[EssigGurkenFred]

The SMG in 0.76 isn't to bad. Because the rifle and shotgun are better.

My opinion...

[rakiru]

mfw everyone who never played <0.75 is saying SMG is not OP.

This.

[Priok]

I think an idea that might also work with the SMG is lowering its magazine size to 20 or 25 instead of 30, so it is not as easy to get so many kills without having to reload. also, maybe just lowering the headshot damage to something so that it is still a 2 hit kill but raises the amount of body/limb shots you'd need to get a 2 hit kill with only hitting the head once. I am not sure if this really makes, but maybe I will make a chart or something.

also, maybe damage drop off would be a good idea, it can just be on the SMG and shotgun to keep them from being too easy to use at long range. a lot of other games do this, and it works well enough so that certain weapons only function well at certain ranges.

[Prune]

:O
I think SMG isn't this overpowered... in 0.76.10 nearly nobody is playing it because they are getting killed by the rifle instantly.

I agree that the SMG is not over powered in 0.75 Fred, yet I think people don't play 0.76 is because its way too easy to kill with rifle. :blue:

[Fluttershy]

also, maybe damage drop off would be a good idea, it can just be on the SMG and shotgun to keep them from being too easy to use at long range. a lot of other games do this, and it works well enough so that certain weapons only function well at certain ranges.

So what are we going to do to make it so smg and rifle arent too easy to use at close range?

[Priok]

maybe making them inaccurate with hip fire could work, but I don't really know if that would help. Giving the shotgun a more consistent spread and maybe a little bit more damage to just make that better at close range would also be good. it might be a better idea to just focus on making the shotgun more powerful at close range so that the other two weapons are still alright.

[GreaseMonkey]

So what are we going to do to make it so smg and rifle arent too easy to use at close range?

The rifle is already a bitch to use at close range. That's where the spade comes in.

Could you say the average DPS of the shotgun at, say, point blank, 10 blocks, 20 blocks etc?

Calculating the average for the shotgun would be a complete and utter pain in the ass assuming the ACTUAL spread algorithm, where every pallet is relative to the previous, and NOT the firing vector (barring the first pallet). You'd have to calculate loci for all 8 pallets, so an easier way to do this would be to use a Monte Carlo simulation.

A simplification of course would be to assume that each pallet has the same angle and distance from the previous. From my understanding, this isn't completely terrible, but the average spread from this is probably higher than the true average spread.

We are using this simplified model.

Another thing that would make this a pain in the ass to calculate is that I have to deal with angles being in certain ranges, as we have not one but 3 targets to account for. Furthermore, I don't have the actual relative distances of the targets, let alone the radii (!).

We are assuming one target.

Shotgun damages are 37 head, 27 body, 16 limb, and the shotgun fires 8 pallets per shot.

You need at least 3 head, or 4 body, or 7 limb shots (ignoring the likelihood of getting other shots e.g. 2 head and 1 body) to get an instant kill.

As usual, we are assuming perfect aim.

Anything up to about 2.3 blocks is regarded as a perfect shot within the radius of 0.5, so assuming a perfect aim on any part, and assuming they all have the same radius of 0.5, the minimum damage is 16*8 = 128 so that's an instant kill.

For limbs (assuming just the pair of legs), you can go up to 2.7 blocks to guarantee a kill.
For the body, 4.7 blocks.
For the head, 6.3 blocks.

Calculating the damage per shot would be a pain in the ass and I'd ideally need to make a simulation. The nice thing about simulations is that they're usually calculus-free, so I don't have to somehow integrate x*acos(x).

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Ultimately, I will need to gather statistics to check when shots actually hit and what they hit and whatnot. I told a_girl to write up a script but I'll probably need more information than I initially requested, notably from_pos, from_orient, and to_pos (all 3D vectors), quite possibly also both pings.

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EDIT: Priok, this might interest you.

I think an idea that might also work with the SMG is lowering its magazine size to 20 or 25 instead of 30, so it is not as easy to get so many kills without having to reload. also, maybe just lowering the headshot damage to something so that it is still a 2 hit kill but raises the amount of body/limb shots you'd need to get a 2 hit kill with only hitting the head once. I am not sure if this really makes, but maybe I will make a chart or something.

THIS.

I've said this many times before, I've done a fork of 0.60 where the SMG follows this balance: 0.60-level spread / recoil, 20-120 ammo, 15Hz fire rate, 5 second reload time, damages are 34 head, 30 body, 21 limb.

You blow your clip very quickly, and then spend the next 5 seconds shitting yourself trying to hide beind a wall so they won't kill you. And as this is 0.60, you cannot reload without having your gun selected for the whole duration.

Actually quite fun. It's good for taking out people who are out in the open, but nigh impossible for taking out people where only their heads are showing.

The SMG in 0.76 isn't to bad. Because the rifle and shotgun are better.

Assuming the shotgun spread algorithm hasn't changed since 0.75, I would have to disagree. The algorithm used is Pretty Bad, and is not the typical spread algorithm that you'd actually expect.

Using the typical spread algorithm, and the same damages, assuming 8 pallets per shot and 0.75 damage values I calculate a reasonable spread to be 0.06 - assuming perfect head aim, 98% at 10, 54% at 20, 28% at 30, 17% at 40, 11% at 50... and 1.7% at 127.5, the fog line. (Also, 57% at 10 for limb-only damage). Note, this could do with some tweaking.