Making The Kohm... Irresistable [Kohm Improvement Thread]

[Aeriax]

So,  we know from the many threads about the Kohm that it is not a great weapon. Let's take a rundown of it so far in it's current state.

 

It's primary issue is that it does not actually know if it wants to be an LMG/rifle or a shotgun. It acts like both, but at the same time, neither, and the way that it's shotgun-ness manifests detracts from it's ability to act like an LMG. And vice versa, actually.

 

I think that in order to improve the gun, we should capitalize on the fact that it is both a rifle and a shotgun, while trimming out the issues that stop it from being able to do so- and then allowing players to mod it into being more like a shotgun, or more like a rifle, based on their playstyle. This adaptability, in my opinion, would greatly offset it's cost, and actually make it fairly unique. A tradeoff to be considered would be perhaps to lock it's damage type into radiation only, with a very low status chance.

 

The problems:

-Every time a bullet is included, it is taken out of the magazine. This causes a geometric increase in ammo consumption even though it does cap at ten sparks per shot. This is bad, and it creates the illusion of the Kohm having a lot of ammo when really, it doesn't.

 

-The former problem is exacerbated by the painfully low value of shotgun ammo  pickups. You get 10 ammunition from one, and they're rather rare. So the "value" of each bullet is confused- is each bullet incredibly high value, because ammo boxes only give you ten? Or are they incredibly low value, because you're not only shooting ten per shot at max windup, but also firing ten very quickly? This disagreement is what completely borks the Kohm's ammo economy.

 

-Damage. Wow. None of it. And mostly slash, to boot. So it barely does anything (150, at full tilt, and again primarily slash damage), very fast, unless you're trying to conserve ammunition at which point it tickles even the infested.

 

-Bullet arc. Why?

 

The solutions:

-Every time the Kohm fires, one unit of ammunition is used. The biggest benefit by far is that you can bring the Kohm's ammo usage in line with how much you're likely to replenish as you kill things. 10 ammunition is a drop in the bucket, when you burn ten ammunition in a matter of seconds, and have a reserve of roughly 1000. You can then massively scale back the Kohm's reserve ammunition and magazine, making it much easier to actually do anything with. This actually kills two birds with one stone.

 

-Increase the damage each pellet does, and also increase how many pellets are fired at once. Make it an unusual blend of shotgun and rifle, with traits of both, where mods or even augments can be used to steer it in the direction a player wants. Perhaps put the '+1 bullet per shot in continuous fire' behind an augment? Honestly, I see it fitting in startlingly well as an augment, because a lot of them... Are kind of gimmicky. Much like this utility. I could see it firing naturally three pellets per shot, with a magazine of 30-40 and 120 or 160 ammunition, perhaps? And each pellet doing ~25-30 damage, rather than 15. Remember, there'd only be a base of three per firing.

 

-Take out bullet arc. It's not a thrown weapon. It's plasma.

 

In the end, you would have a weapon that seems to function somewhat like a Gorgon or Soma, but functions somewhat differently given that it would fire (ideally, Lanka-fast) projectiles and focuses more on raw damage rather than crits or anything of the sort. Depending on how you would want to mod it or what augments you put on, it could behave more like the previously listed guns, or more like the Drakgoon (sans charging mechanics, but with the 'bullet cascade' effect perhaps). I don't feel it'd be ludicrously overpowered either because wow, look at it's material requirements.

 

Also change the impact/puncture/slash to radiation, because it's a plasma weapon. >.>

 

I'm open to constructive criticism and suggestions for how to make this better.

 

"ugh please don't consider a weapon that needs augments" is just whining.

 

EDIT: I completely forgot about considerations for the augments. So I'm going to put them  here.

 

AUGMENTS

The Kohm, once completed, comes with three augments, like how Warframes used to come with mods. Let's call them 'Tight Choke', 'Loose Choke' and, for fun, "Resonance Cascade".

 

These augments won't be tied to any syndicates, by any means. Maybe there might be Steel Meridian variants, but I wouldn't advise it. Here's what they should do.

 

[Tight Choke]

-Vastly decreases the spread of each shot (-m% spread, putting it on par with something with a high ranked Heavy Caliber perhaps). +75% magazine capacity and +100% max ammunition, -12.5% benefit from multishot (or even incompatibility with Hell's Chamber because you're trying to put too much energy through the barrel or something? I don't know). +n% projectile flight speed, where n is some number that will make the Kohm's projectile speed on par with or slightly slower than the Lanka. Cannot be equipped while Loose Choke is equipped.

 

Basically, this is your "rifle mode" augment. It increases accuracy, how much ammunition you have and etc. but at the cost of limiting damage potential through multishot. Please be aware that the Kohm still uses shotgun ammunition.

 

[Loose Choke]

-Increases the spread of each shot (+m%, nothing too ridiculous. Makes it feel like a shotgun). +20% damage per pellet, +5% benefit from multishot (so you might get another pellet or two maybe.) Cannot be equipped while Tight Choke is equipped.

 

Shotgun mode. Not much to say about this. You lose some effective range, but you gain damage.

 

["Resonance Cascade"]

-With every bullet fired, increment bullet count by one. Functionally, this is what the Kohm already does. Compatible with both Tight Choke and Loose Choke. Irresponsible use will result in an AOE blast of 120 finisher damage that will be paired with a very short lived heat proc. I'm sure you can figure out how to use this tactically.

 

Essentially, in the bottom corner of your screen where you'd see a syndicate thing, you get... A heat gauge! It tracks how much bullet is currently being produced. Once enough 'heat' has built up, the Kohm needs to vent this thermal energy in the form of a radial fire effect. It'll singe you, but at the same time, it'll downright scorch your enemies.

 

 

Do give feedback on how one could make these work better, please.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Aeriax

[Gahrzerkire]

+1 also I think even dread full charge speed projectiles, with the same fall down would be acceptable.

[SazerTarious]

My only issue with that weapon is the ammo, even though it has 250+ Mag, still it runs out quickly. And it uses shotgun ammo pool which are not easy to get and you only get 10 per pickup.

[Aeriax]

My only issue with that weapon is the ammo, even though it has 250+ Mag, still it runs out quickly. And it uses shotgun ammo pool which are not easy to get and you only get 10 per pickup.

Yeah, it's ammunition capacity is really, really deceptive given how it actually uses ammunition. It's almost like some sort of bizarre burst weapon, but... not.

[Psiloc1n]

no augment mods please

[Aeriax]

no augment mods please

 

I need more constructive feedback to improve my idea than "don't do the thing", because that's not really a good enough reason to not do the thing. I made an effort to make the 'augments' function more like Kohm-specific corrupted mods (or, dare I say it, 'old style' Warframe ability mods, only not really) than the half-baked augments we have currently for Warframe powers. That'd be unacceptable because honestly the current augment mods don't do justice to what the system could do, at all.

 

(By the way the intent is, in case it wasn't seen, that they are included with the weapon when it finishes building (or sent to you via the inbox with a script if you've already built it probably, something like that), and not something you have to dump ten billion years of  syndicate grinding into to get.

 

That's neither fun nor interesting.

 

Think of it like the weapon would come with extra tacticool bits or whatever that you can swap to change the weapon's function, instead of the kin of what is here right now.)

[Xana_Skullsunder]

The ammo stuff is a major priority. Without that, the gun is just bad. With it, the gun is utterly terrible. Your 500 oxium would be better of being physically thrown at enemy grineer.

[-InV-igo95862]

Ammo consumption is one of the oldest problems. Such weapons as Glaxion or Akzani also have it.. Increased total capacity does not actually help as most of ammo comes from pickups. Probably scaling ammo pickups to maximum ammo capacity will solve this problem.

[hijinks_the_turtle]

I'm rather saddened to see this weapon be so bad.  Why give it a 'spin up' of sorts when the Sobek gives more damage than that thing and is more ammo efficient?  I like the ideas so far though, have it as a hybrid of a shotty and a rifle?  Though the way it was implemented was very awkward.

[ThePresident777]

DE could just increase the DPS on Kohm (it's ~75) and use these ideas for a new weapon.  We would get more variety that way.

[blasron]

unfortunatly to make this weapon viable (ammo wise) you need the shotgun scarvenger aura, a max shotgun mutation mod and the vicious spread mod (smaller spread for less firering speed). The good new is that, this weapon have a punch throught in it.

[Admonisher80]

okay I think I've found a way to play with this horrible weapon. the only way you can is with Mirage and that's only if you keep her first ability up full time it helps to have her max rank shell compression and mutation are also a must. This at least makes it playable.

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

although i agree that the kohm has rediculously high ammo consumption once wound up, i do not think it should be cut down to 1. maybe divided by 2 or 3 and then rounded up to the nearest whole number. the reason i say this is simple, if it weren't for the ammo economy, the kohm would be a late game MONSTER

 

it has 10% base status chance PER PELLET

this is increased to 34% with elemental event mods

at full windup the kohm fires 10 pellets per shot (and shoots rapidly)

with multishot this increases to 22*

 

34% status means 66% chance to not proc

(no_proc_chance^number_of_projectiles) or (0.66^22)  = 1.07e-4 or 0.000107

to find actual proc chance: 1 - 0.000107 = 0.999893

so for each shot when fully wound up there is a 99.983% chance to proc

 

don't forget that ~1m innate punch-through which makes this a real crowd pleaser

meaning although you deal very low damage, you can take large numbers of enemies out of the fight by knocking them down with blast and weaken their armour for your allies with corrosive

or you can halve their health and pit them against each other with a viral+radiation combo

 

think if the kohm as more of a rifle version of the tysis, in terms of function

 

*this is if it still works like a shotgun when fully wound up, if it processes each pellet as its own shot you are looking at a minimum of 20 with anywhere up to 30 pellets per shot

[Noble_Cactus]

DE could just increase the DPS on Kohm (it's ~75) and use these ideas for a new weapon. We would get more variety that way.

We would get more variety if DE went back and reworked a lot of existing subpar weapons. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

I'm just disappointed that DE did such a good job with the Redeemer. It looks nice, it sounds nice, it feels nice when fired, and it is a flexible weapon. My hope for future shotguns rose just a little. And then I see the Kohm and all of that goes out the window.

At least it looks cool.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Ariamaki]

It shouldn't have arc: I love arc weapons, but this one doesn't make sense as one. If it were throwing metallic sparks, that could justify both the physical damage type and the arc. But it isn't, it's plasma. Speaking of which... It should have better damage per pellet (not by a lot, just a smidge), in a non-physical base type, or a physical + element hybrid inherent.

 

The weird ammo usage bug needs to be fixed up: It should, at most, take away as many ammo units as it is firing pellets.

 

The pellets per shot cap could probably go up.

 

Either Shotgun Ammo Pickups need to be vastly amplified when it is in your loadout (120 Kohm ammo = 10 Shotgun Ammo), or it needs to "smartly" break actual Shotgun Ammo numbers down into pellets when you use it (So that it doesn't vastly inflate your stock of ammo for secondary shotguns). Either way, it needs a bigger reserve, as right now, you don't even get 4 reloads out of it, which is far below what it should be.

[Hatzeputt]

Its a very expensive weapon to build which would be ok if it was actually useful but the terrible, terrible ammo economy sees to it that it is nothing more than a gimmick weapon right now. Far too expensive for just being mastery fodder.

 

There are 2 possible solutions to this:  

 

A) Introduce a 5th ammo type called energy cells which has a higher pick up economy than all the rest but is used for weapons like Glaxion and Kohm and possibly others. This would also warrant a complete overhaul of the weapons and a change in drop tables, so a rather more lengthy and time consuming fix.

 

B) Just make the Kohm use ammo like all the other shotguns, 10 pellets = 1 shotgun ammo, 120 ammo max. You will still need either ammo restore or a shotgun mutation mod to use it at full auto for any length of time, similar to the Boar P but it would considerably ease the current troubles. 

Edited December 13, 2014 by Hatzeputt