Idea For The One-Shot Weapons: Malleable Damage

[SojournerWrath]

Somewhat unusual idea that puts more emphasis on the mods you put in specific weapons.

 

The weapon's I'm speaking of especially are the Latron,  Vectis, Ballistica, Tigris, and others which have a great possible role, but don't really fill it as effectively as other options out there which serve a similar purpose, and aren't nearly as unique. Each of these weapons are sort of odd ducks when it comes to their weapon type. There is only one semi-auto assault rifle, only one one-shot sniper rifle, only one bow sidearm, and only one double barrel shotgun.

 

What else do these all have in common aside from being unique? They are all fairly specialized, yet fall short for that specialization. No, I'm not arguing that any of these are useless, but you can't really argue that the Latron is better against grineer than a gorgon or boltor is overall, or that the tigris is really all that great at taking down infested, what with a small magazine size and small spread.

 

 

What I want to suggest is this: Add in a new type of damage: Malleable Damage. This damage type works just how it sounds, you can change how the damage works. You do this based on the mods you place in the weapon. A 100% serration mod on a vectis ups the overall malleable damage to 350. Now let's say we add on a piercing hit mod because we will be fighting grineer.

 

From here, my idea gets convoluted as this system works to me, but may not fit DE's preferred numbers. To me, a 30% piercing hit mod should mean we add 30% of our base damage as slash and impact damage, to round things out and keep things somewhat under control, while also giving reason to upgrade that mod when it comes to these weapons.

 

So, we now have a 350 puncture, 52.5 slash and impact sniper rifle. In my opinion, this is definitely an OP anti-grineer sniper, but nothing so unmaneagable we can't tune the numbers down and fix it. Changing base malleable damage to 150 leaves us with 300 puncture, 45 slash and impact damage. On a "bolt action" sniper rifle, or however this thing works, that doesn't seem too far out there. Maybe tune it further, so we have a 125 base damage for 250 puncture, and 37.5 slash/impact damage. Remember, this is all with a 100% serration, so it can get stronger but we're already working with mods.

 

After all this to figure out what the damage type is, we move into the other damage type mods, such as adding a sawtooth clip into this same vectis. Rather than break the system and somehow split the weapon type, I would suggest working with the weapon as if it's base damage values were the ones modified by piercing hit, or a 125 puncture sniper rifle with 37.5 slash/impact. Sawtooth clip now adds 30% of that 37.5, leading to an increase of 11.25 slash damage.

 

 

How does the weapon decide what damage type it will become with multiple damage type mods in that weapon? The same way elements decide how they combine, primacy from top left to bottom right.

 

 

Now, what do we accomplish with a fix like this? Primarily, these odd-ducks in the arsenal now become multi-use weapons, with further modding possibilities to create the ultimate weapon for your purposes, as well as reducing the need for "restatted" weapons, ala the current overall bow situation of slash bow (dread), impact bow (cernos), and puncture bow (paris). We don't need a bolt action sniper built for slash, puncture, and impact with the above vectis, just as we have an effective weapon at all stages of the game from this very same sniper rifle, rather than having a great weapon at lower stages that just doesn't do specific enough damage later on. We also find specific mods seeing more use, and possibly more varied builds on these weapons, allowing the player to truly build their personality into their arsenal.

 

 

Any thoughts? Like it? Hate it? Let me know what you think! Constructive criticism preferred.

 

TL:DR Unique weapons (Vectis, Tigris, Ballistica, etc) change damage type based on mods placed in them, allowing you to use any gun for any faction and still be effective into the higher leveled content.

 

EDIT: Reformulated my idea as I was typing it from the one-shot weapons/charge weapons, to unique weapons... Then derped on the title. Any chance of a change from "Idea for the one-shot weapons: Malleable damage" to "Idea for the unique weapons: Malleable damage"? Would make things less confusing...

Edited January 4, 2014 by SojournerWrath

[Alighierian]

erm... my vectis is quite capable against any faction. only problem I have is with the corpus, since their heads are neigh invincible to headshot damage

[SojournerWrath]

erm... my vectis is quite capable against any faction. only problem I have is with the corpus, since their heads are neigh invincible to headshot damage

What level areas are we talking, and what mod setup? The only setup I've found to work uses elements specifically built around that enemy faction, similar to how a Lanka is modded out, and often requires heavy calibre, which drops accuracy too much to still consider it a sniper rifle.

[Alighierian]

What level areas are we talking, and what mod setup? The only setup I've found to work uses elements specifically built around that enemy faction, similar to how a Lanka is modded out, and often requires heavy calibre, which drops accuracy too much to still consider it a sniper rifle.

 

I'm talking about t3 void level (lv30-40 iirc). there my vectis can still quite reliably one-shot heavy gunners and ancients with headshots.

- Serration max

- Split Chamber max

- Point Strike max

- Vital Sense max

- Fast Hands 3/5

- Stormbringer max

- Infected Clip max

 

corrosion I swap out for magnetic or gas if I'm fighting corpus or infested respectively.

 

I know it isn't the best you can get it, but it works quite well and I only needed 1 forma for this

Edited January 4, 2014 by Alighierian

[quietcanary]

Not sure why this needs to be limited to anything specific. If we made Mods that where like corrupted in a sense that where like -50% puncture and add that to slash.... brilliant.

I agree about the adding damage bit when it comes to the 30% mods. We should be adding the mods because a gun is terrible/not good enough against a certain faction, and so we want it to do better..... having weapons that are already great against a certain faction but adding more of that damage anyway because that's the only use for those mods is a limiting way of doing things

Edited January 5, 2014 by quietcanary

[SojournerWrath]

Not sure why this needs to be limited to anything specific. If we made Mods that where like corrupted in a sense that where like -50% puncture and add that to slash.... brilliant.

I agree about the adding damage bit when it comes to the 30% mods. We should be adding the mods because a gun is terrible/not good enough against a certain faction, and so we want it to do better..... having weapons that are already great against a certain faction but adding more of that damage anyway because that's the only use for those mods is a limiting way of doing things

For several weapons it is obviously of little importance, such as when comparing the cernos, paris, and dread, or when looking at the Dera, Braton Prime, Boltor, or Karak. They all fulfill the same "role" so to speak, of a charged single-shot weapon (bow) or an assault rifle, but are made different by simple stat swaps. This gives you the feeling of the same "weapon" being usable across all factions even against level 40's, because of your ability to counteract their armor type.

 

 

Others don't have that, or at least don't have it yet... But do we need more weapons? Why not add more mods that make things more interesting, or increase the amount of customization and improvement you can make with current mods?

 

Maybe that's just me... Nobody has to like this idea :P

[Nyxem]

If I'm understanding this correctly:
Weapons will have a primary damage type set by a mod, which also determines what % of the primary damage is also given to the other damage types. What happens when you don't equip these mods at all? Do you just deal an equal split of all three damage types?

On one hand, it feels like a good way to adjust for faction changes.

On the other... this idea is adjusting for how the current physical damage mods are only good at increasing specialization, and are fairly useless in more balanced weapons.

Elemental combos work "much better" than physical mods, especially since you'll be doing primarily elemental damage with two elemental mods slapped on. IMO elemental damage shouldn't be contributing that much, but that's a whole different topic.

My suggestion is not to make a mod that changes the damage type, but reworking the physical damage mods to scale off total base physical damage. No need to change anything on current weapons, still allows for weapons that are specialized by default or for logical reasons.