Puncture Mods Are Still Not Worth It

[Estred]

Agreed, the Puncture Mod is worthess, I stopped leveling mine at Update 7 (it's rank 2). If I am lucky I puncture a shield. I can agree to 1-3 maybe even 5m (to shoot through small walls/crates) but for a max cost of I think 15 Mod... that is really expensive of well, not a good mod. It is a rare mod after all.

[Niryco]

At their starting level, they still cannot puncture the Grineer Riot Shield, and they are still not viable. Puncture mods need to have their current max value tripled in order for them to be worth anything for their prohibitive cost. 1.8 meters should be enough to get collateral kills on multiple enemies. As it stands right now, however, puncture is NOT worth the energy or the money invested in them. OR, they could be based on a multiplier.

 

15 mod energy max? For what? Puncturing one enemy? It should be able to punch through at least two.

 

Possible fix I came up with below:

 

Puncture on a damage-based system. If the damage of a Snipetron is 115, multiplying it by the suggested formula would give it reasonable puncture. 115 x 0.030 = 3.45 meters. This would justify the prohibitive cost of the puncture mod.

 

Formula: damage x 0.030 = puncture rating (when maxed out)

 

Scaling of puncture mods: 0.005/0.010/0.015/0.020/0.025/0.030 or something along those lines as far as a multiplier goes.

 

That way, shotguns don't get the ridiculous puncture they had before, and sniper weapons and other high damage single-shot weapons get the puncture they need. The maximum puncture a HEK pellet could achieve (when equipped with max damage/max puncture) would be 1.083

 

This would be the best possible fix I can come up with. Critical damage should not modify the damage, however, as that would be disgustingly broken, but it really depends on what they think of it.

 

0.6 meters is indeed a lackluster to many players, however i still want to get the mod and try it out myself and 0.6 meters actually is alot of penetration. I mean when you talk about guns they can only penetrate 0.02 meters for a common anti material rifle(20mm of steel). 0.6 meters is equal to 600mm penetration, that is way above alot of tanks penetration value which is totally ridiculous!

 

But aside realism, there would seem to be much more mechanics to penetration since 60cm is a very long distance no matter how big the grineer is. By shooting the mid section it is guarantee to puncture since the mid section of the grineer is oddly the smallest. Furthermore 0.1meters of puncture will work against most cover, 10cm or 100mm penetration is a good deal that can rip through almost everything.

 

The only enemies that this mod would not work so well with are the infested as the charger is long but not wide(a flipped grineer) whilst the leaper usually moves too much making the body very thick. Not sure about ancients.

 

Probably the reason why the mod is not working well could be a miscalculation in the system somewhere or a re-doing of calculation instead of meters it uses centimeters or another distance. 0.6 puncture stated does not have to mean meters and there is also the existence of different types of materials to puncture as well as angle of impact.

 

The Puncture mechanic could have been re-worked on that made it very different from the original puncture most are familiar with. I mean take a 30cm ruler and put that against your body and the distance is astounding. Not to mention when a poster left a reply about 10meters pen and not being able to go through the box, that made not sense. 10 meters of penetration can clearly go through pretty much any of in the games model.

 

It feels like the values are not in meters, it may even be in decimeters. 10 decimeters would be 1 meter, thus not going through a box is there reasonable. Can someone please clear the real units of puncture which is the most recently updated. Thank you.

Edited June 1, 2013 by Jacate

[Depar]

i tought the "deci" only get used in the german-speaking area well never learn out, but i think 0.6 are 0,60m(60cm) and thats some distance

 

it would be good to have a scale from the ingame models so we could see where 0.x can travel trought

 

hm seeking force rank 4 puncture 0.3

 

i will test it asap with my strun to see which enemys it can pass trought

[plznohurtme]

It's meters, but we need in game scales to understand it. The thick doors on Kiste (ceres) cannot be penetrated with 0.6m rifle puncture, all enemies can be (regular doors and corpus doors can be) . I've been playing with it lately due to polarity, and it's useful, but it definitely needs a buff, minimum to 2m.

Edited June 1, 2013 by plznohurtme

[Niryco]

It's meters, but we need in game scales to understand it. The thick doors on Kiste (ceres) cannot be penetrated with 0.6m rifle puncture, all enemies can be (regular doors and corpus doors can be) . I've been playing with it lately due to polarity, and it's useful, but it definitely needs a buff, minimum to 2m.

If it can't puncture the door, is it material wise there is a coefficient to the puncture value? Where is the source for meters? Since 1 meter is like one arms length to another arm. That is very long considering the scale of humans in game

[zagibu]

0.6 meters is indeed a lackluster to many players, however i still want to get the mod and try it out myself and 0.6 meters actually is alot of penetration. I mean when you talk about guns they can only penetrate 0.02 meters for a common anti material rifle(20mm of steel). 0.6 meters is equal to 600mm penetration, that is way above alot of tanks penetration value which is totally ridiculous!

 

Nothing in the game has a 20mm steel armor (except maybe the corpus box heads). Real life tanks can easily penetrate 600mm of chalk. Your comparisons are worthless.

[Niryco]

Nothing in the game has a 20mm steel armor (except maybe the corpus box heads). Real life tanks can easily penetrate 600mm of chalk. Your comparisons are worthless.

The point i am making is, is there a material coefficient in game? You iterated it very clearly.

[plznohurtme]

There is no difference between what you're shooting through, just how far it will go (at least that's how it used to work, so I would assume they didn't change anything about the mod other than depth). There is still a hole in communication between devs and players as to what each mod does and doesn't have an effect on and in what manner so it's hard to say for sure. I'm betting that if they just raised it up to 3-4m maximum it'd go back to being more useful and with the polarity system I could see keeping the cost.

Edited June 2, 2013 by plznohurtme

[Vaskadar]

There is no difference between what you're shooting through, just how far it will go (at least that's how it used to work, so I would assume they didn't change anything about the mod other than depth). There is still a hole in communication between devs and players as to what each mod does and doesn't have an effect on and in what manner so it's hard to say for sure. I'm betting that if they just raised it up to 3-4m maximum it'd go back to being more useful and with the polarity system I could see keeping the cost.

I just don't see them ever increasing the power of the shotgun puncture beyond a full meter. 4.5 meters maximum for rifles sounds fair enough, but it could still be unbalanced on fast-firing weapons.

[plznohurtme]

I just don't see them ever increasing the power of the shotgun puncture beyond a full meter. 4.5 meters maximum for rifles sounds fair enough, but it could still be unbalanced on fast-firing weapons.

Agreed, right now shotgun and pistol puncture are half of rifle roughly. 1-2m for both would seem reasonable.

[Felandi]

What if the level of a puncture mod only affected how much terrain it can pass through and maintain momentum. Then give a weapon with a puncture mod a guarantee to pass through the first enemy it hits, and disappear on the second enemy it hits?

 

End result: An unleveled puncture mod would go through one enemy, but pretty much no terrain. A maxed puncture mod would allow you to shoot through thin obstructions, like the railing on a bridge and still hit both enemies cowering behind it.

[Depar]

i would go more for a long distance puncture (1-3) but with dmg fallof after each 0.1-2-3 it travels trought enemy or terrain

[Vaskadar]

They could bring puncture back up to PreU7 numbers if they had falloff dependent on target/surface, but that requires some programming beyond my understanding. <---script novoice

Edited June 3, 2013 by Vaskadar

[Theter]

/Signed.

[Raptros]

Not a bad idea really.

 

I think the whole spiel about high damage weapons gaining more puncture than lower is a great idea.

 

It'd keep shotguns, like you said, from being ultra-cannons.

 

+1

[Vaskadar]

Not a hotfix goes by without me thinking they could fix this but are skirting it.

[Aarows]

I think the mod, and puncture mods in general, would be solved if it simply went through a number of obstructions instead of distance. Rank 1 could go though one object/enemy/wall, and Rank 5 goes through five objects in a line.  This would clarify how this mod works for everyone, while being useful but not overpowered.  I can see most players leveling it up to rank 2 or 3 if it worked like this. 

[Vaskadar]

That's more difficult to program and would require more effort, since that basically constitutes re-writing the puncture system entirely. The proposition I have is a simple multiplier to determine the distance. A mathematical formula is much easier to add onto a script than to try and re-write how a trace functions.

[Estred]

This mod probably is a rats nest in terms of doing anything beyond changing the numerical value. It would involve either modifiying or adding mechanics to interact with the envrionement, such as damage falloff or type of surface being hit.

 

I would like to see it penetrate more because of the massive cost associated with this mod. It also is not very good on Dread, learned that quickly even with pen Dread still preferes to make pieces and oddly the way Arrow-Pen works it seems is that the Body (ragdoll) has to hit the next target. It's quite unintuitive I think.

 

+1 for pen modification

[plznohurtme]

This mod probably is a rats nest in terms of doing anything beyond changing the numerical value. It would involve either modifiying or adding mechanics to interact with the envrionement, such as damage falloff or type of surface being hit.

 

I would like to see it penetrate more because of the massive cost associated with this mod. It also is not very good on Dread, learned that quickly even with pen Dread still preferes to make pieces and oddly the way Arrow-Pen works it seems is that the Body (ragdoll) has to hit the next target. It's quite unintuitive I think.

 

+1 for pen modification

Puncture has never worked on bolt weapons in the game, so I'm assuming that Dread falls into this category.

Also I agree completely that reworking the way that the mod works is just a waste of time for DE when they could easily modify the values slightly and make it more usable without making it overpowered. They can clearly have different values for the three different mods rifle > pistol > shotgun is how the puncture should work. I see no problems with 3-4m for rifle, 2-3m for pistol and 1-2m for shotguns. It was honestly never game breaking before at even 10m, though it was super cheesy just sitting there with a gorgon and spraying everything in front of you knowing it was going to die, so I'd hate to see those days return, but that's not to say there isn't a TON of room for improvement.

[Kyte]

Dread is slashing, not bolt. Puncture should work. Sorta.

[Arcalane]

He's talking physical projectile type, not damage type. Since the bows (and boltos/boltor/etc.) use physical projectiles and thus presumably rely on the physics engine for hit calculation (as opposed to the hitscan trace of most other weapons) they do not (currently) support Puncture mods.

 

It's likely that the Dera/Supra and other similar weapons do not work with Puncture mods either.

[Vaskadar]

Yeah, Arcalane is correct. Last time I tested this, the puncture mods had no effect whatsoever on the bolt weapons, so assumptions are that the results with other similar projectiles will be exactly the same.

[1un4cy]

I see all these comments about changing the puncture via meters.

What if it got reworked to have a X% chance per bullet/pellet to go straight through an enemy and hit anything behind them as well; and maybe still go through thin objects (ie railings and fences) based on upgrade rank.

[Aigloblam]

I see all these comments about changing the puncture via meters.

What if it got reworked to have a X% chance per bullet/pellet to go straight through an enemy and hit anything behind them as well; and maybe still go through thin objects (ie railings and fences) based on upgrade rank.

Hell, we could even do it D&D Style, Using a variant of Cleave. If the projectile does enough damage to kill the first person, It penetrates through. Then you could give it some kind of damage reduction to make up for the lost momentum. So it would go like this.

 

Assuming all enemies had 100 life (so i dont have to do too much math...cuz no)

1. Shoot first person, Do 100 damage.

2. Projecticle pierces target, taking a 25% damage loss

3. Projectile hits second person, doing 75 damage, Stops because the second person didnt die.

 

So that if you have a weapon that does, say, 5000 damage, it could penetrate A LOT of people before stopping, but on high level missions, it wouldnt go nearly as far. It just seems to make sense that way. As for Cover, just use a flat rate of 0.5m. Realistically, a foot and a half of material is as much as you could ask anything to go thrugh, especially if its made out of some weird "Space Alloy" or whatever.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Aigloblam