Ranged Incarnon Charging Variety

[Void2258]

Currently nearly all incarnon ranged weapons charge on headshots. The exceptions are the Torid and Angstrum, because these weapons are simply not made for headshots (grenade/missile launchers). However, they are not the only weapon type that is not really meant to headshot and should charge in another way.

Shotguns fire a wide spread of bullets, not anything resembling a precise shot. This makes getting headshots with the weapon class unreliable; you may get some pellets on the head, but even with the reticle dead center, most will miss. You can empty the magazine with the Strun, Felarx, or Boar (or Bronco; technically a "shotgun" pistol) and not get even halfway to a full charge. Shotguns are made to fire into the center of large enemy groups, spreading lots of hit everywhere. They should be charging in a way that makes more sense, such as based on number of enemies hit with a single shot or amount of pellets on any target.

The other odd type is beam weapons. This is a bit more varied as they have different mechanics across weapons, but generally the usage for beams is to "paint" in the direction of the enemies to a greater or lesser extent, not to aim for the head. Some weapons even have visual effects that make this difficult, such as the Atomos having a large beam that is hard to see around to precisely aim (another example of difficulty in precise aiming for a beam is the Nukor; not an incarnon, but it has similar precision issues due to having a very wide beam graphic). The Atomos also chains, which can make it hard to charge due to burning entire groups down even when you try to aim. The Gammacor is very precise, so an argument could be made for headshots, but the use is more to wave it across groups of enemies to get procs, not to focus down one target. Since there is a lot of variety in how beams work, this needs a more case-by-case approach, instead of a general class charge method, but they should more reflect how the weapons are used. For the Atomos, the charge could be based on to how many and how long you can chain the beam, while the Gammacor could charge based on number of enemies hit with status procs and how fast you do so. This way you wouldn't have to effectively "use the gun wrong" for the sake of getting charge.

Giving these weapons more appropriate charging conditions would go a long way to making them feel better as incarnons and not just perk stat boosts on the base form.  It would also make incarnons more interesting in general; "everything is just about headshots" is kind of boring across this many weapons.

(Additionally, some incarnons mode shots, generally those with very different characteristics that completely change the weapon usage, can actually work better interwoven with standard shots (ie Atomos, Gammacor, Kunai, Lex, Vasto, Zylock). It would be cool to make the incarnon give an alt-fire ammo pool (like Sepulcrum and Trumna, but more that one shot in the pool) rather than an either-or, as currently it's somewhat better in some cases to charge a little, swap, shoot once or twice, then swap back, instead of actually using all the charge.)

(Melee could also use a variety of transformation conditions too, but the post is too long already)

Edited March 3 by Void2258

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Void2258 said:

Shotguns fire a wide spread of bullets, not anything resembling a precise shot. This makes getting headshots with the weapon class unreliable; you may get some pellets on the head, but even with the reticle dead center, most will miss. You can empty the magazine with the Strun, Felarx, or Boar (or Bronco; technically a "shotgun" pistol) and not get even halfway to a full charge. Shotguns are made to fire into the center of large enemy groups, spreading lots of hit everywhere. They should be charging in a way that makes more sense, such as based on number of enemies hit with a single shot or amount of pellets on any target.

There definitely is an issue.  But I like making headshots with shotguns, so to me the problem feels more like Incarnon charge economy, post- multishot nerf.  Every Dual Toxo headshot produces 30 Incarnon rounds.  Every Bronco headshot produces 0.5 Incarnon rounds, 3.5 if every pellet lands (normalized for multishot mods)...which won't happen.   Is the Bronco Incarnon mode 10x to 60x more powerful per shot than the Toxo's?  Oh, hell no.  And it's harder and slower to land those headshots with the Bronco, so the disparity is even worse than that.  And that's not even the most extreme comparison--I'm not even going to talk about Torid, lol.

Anyway, rebalance the headshot charge economy, taking into account accuracy and reload quotient in the base mod,  so it more closely corresponds with Incarnon output...and the whole system will  immediately feel a lot better to me.

I am very open to additional, alternative ways to charge Incarnon weapons though.   As long as headshots remain the most efficient way to do it, given adequate skill and actual heads to shoot at.

 

[Ntrophy]

Ye it's boring, but its balanced, and i think the changes to multishot was the best thing to ever happen to incarnon weapons because it creates a boundary.  Incarnons are obviously the most powerful weapons in the game, so what's stopping them from absolutely dominating and taking over the entire game like the lich aoe’s did?  What's stopping us from bringing an incarnon weapon to every single playable mission?

 

The fact that incarnon weapons are slower to charge in lower level content is a good thing because it gives lower tier weapons a purpose, that being lower tier weapons are better in lower level content, and vise versa.  Even if by accident this is the best case scenario to ‘balance’ our power crept meta.

But i do agree that everything charging via headshots is boring as S#&$.

[ThePetajoule]

Perhaps a solution might be to gain a small chunk of meter on headshot kill for certain weapons like shotguns and beams. That way headshot are still the main way, but it requires less finesse to get weapons like those working consistently in incarnon form. Also, perhaps for some weaker weapons lower the maximum amount of shots needed to fill the meter because, as Tiltskillet said, not all incarnons are balanced in meter charge to power.