Puncture Rework Suggestion

[MJ12]

Okay, right now, Puncture is awful. It takes a ton of mod energy and gives you the ability to... shoot through Grineer shields and thin railings. Whoooo! Awesome.

Yeah no.

Obviously there is, however, a problem with Puncture 20 letting you murder everything by hiding behind a battleship and shooting guys with your gun that shoots through 25 walls. And of course, Puncture is very binary. Either it's useful (hits the target for full damage) or useless (doesn't hit the target at all) So here's a rebalance idea.

Change the Puncture mod to provide +1m of penetration per level. However, the penetration listed on the Puncture mod is the point where the shot does no damage. Damage is reduced in proportion to how much cover the shot had to penetrate to hit the target. So if you shoot through 0.2m of stuff with a base Puncture mod, you lose 20% damage. If you shoot through the same stuff with a Puncture mod at Puncture 5, you'd only lose 4% damage.

Thus hiding behind a thick metal box is suboptimal (you lose a ton of damage), you can't instantly vaporize 5000 Infested charging you in a line, and Puncture... becomes useful again. Gasp.

[drunkpunk222]

For now its useless for 10 points

[HvcTerr]

Damage is reduced in proportion to how much cover the shot had to penetrate to hit the target.

No, I don't believe that is practical, programming-wise. Consider the worst-case scenario, where you've got 4 people firing Afuris at some complex piece of non-convex geometry... Well, the server would probably lag to hell. I suppose you could delegate the logic to each individual client, but still...

What you could do is have the shot's damage decrease based on the distance from where it first encountered a surface. However, this would mean that a thin metal plate followed by an air-gap offers the same protection as an equivalent distance of solid metal.

Edited April 10, 2013 by HvcTerr

[MJ12]

No, I don't believe that is practical, programming-wise. Consider the worst-case scenario, where you've got 4 people firing Afuris at some complex piece of non-convex geometry... Well, the server would probably lag to hell. I suppose you could delegate the logic to each individual client, but still...

What you could do is have the shot's damage decrease based on the distance from where it first encountered a surface. However, this would mean that a thin metal plate followed by an air-gap offers the same protection as an equivalent distance of solid metal.

 

It clearly calculates the thickness of the objects you shoot through already, because if it didn't Puncture wouldn't work. Dividing the damage is also a simple arithmetic operation, which means it's not very CPU-intensive either.

[yakutstk]

another change could simply give it a chance to pierce through say 10-15% per rank but it may end up too powerful at max rank with that setup

[neKroMancer]

Why bother with puncture mod when you can't see through wall? Shooting through cover isn't really needed since AI's head usually stick out of cover for to to shoot most of the time.

It should be retired until we have something which compliment puncture effect.

[Phlyn]

No, I don't believe that is practical, programming-wise. Consider the worst-case scenario, where you've got 4 people firing Afuris at some complex piece of non-convex geometry... Well, the server would probably lag to hell. I suppose you could delegate the logic to each individual client, but still...

What you could do is have the shot's damage decrease based on the distance from where it first encountered a surface. However, this would mean that a thin metal plate followed by an air-gap offers the same protection as an equivalent distance of solid metal.

while not entirely acurate having an airgap after a bullet has been deformed can significantly decrease its power. kind of like opening a parachute, if you open the second you hit the ground it wont do much, but if you do it 20 feet earlier it will slow you significantly.

[matrixEXO]

Well, I have a suggestion for a new puncture.

 

Puncture: Deals piercing damage, innately applying pushback effect. This pushback effect will apply some damage if the enemies that were pushed back hit another enemy (both gets dealt damage) or if they hit a wall/tall object (2x more than touching an enemy).

 

This way, it has a real purpose and can fit into weapons that has high fire rate.

[HvcTerr]

It clearly calculates the thickness of the objects you shoot through already, because if it didn't Puncture wouldn't work. Dividing the damage is also a simple arithmetic operation, which means it's not very CPU-intensive either.

 

You're basically telling me that having 0.20 puncture means that a bullet can exit the gun, go through a 0.10-deep obstacle, and continue traveling indefinitely, across more than dozens of meters. (And if it later hits a 0.05-deep obstacle, it can keep going after that too...)

 

Are you quite sure that's how it works right now? Because calculating a fixed "grace distance" after first impact is much easier.

Edited April 14, 2013 by HvcTerr

[MJ12]

You're basically telling me that having 0.20 puncture means that a bullet can exit the gun, go through a 0.10-deep obstacle, and continue traveling indefinitely, across more than dozens of meters. (And if it later hits a 0.05-deep obstacle, it can keep going after that too...)

 

Are you quite sure that's how it works right now? Because calculating a fixed "grace distance" after first impact is much easier.

 

I'm fairly sure this is how Puncture worked previously. I know ME3's penetration mods also calculate the distance traveled through objects (so you can shoot through multiple walls) as well so it's not THAT CPU-intensive.

[HvcTerr]

Heh, I remember Counter-Strike... penetration was based on the visleaves, which meant that there was usually no correlation whatsoever to reality and the penetration amounts were pretty much pseudorandom and could randomize if the mapper made tiny changes.