Equipping weapons as hybrids

[Xarteros]

What: Give "hybrid" weapons the ability to be equipped in both of their relevant slots (Gunblades in both Melee and Secondary, rifles with bayonets/blades in Primary and Melee etc)

Why: Above just having more diversity without needing to create new weapons from scratch, the system would allow a player to bring less weaponry but still use certain features. A character with no melee weapon could still use Burston Prime's bayonet for quick melee (or some basic repeating stab/slash combo), and a player with only a Gunblade could equip it to just use the gun part for a while. It also means you can diversify your damage types on a single weapon, and really specialise such attacks. Mission limitations such as "Melee only" would only apply to the base weapon, so you can't bring a rifle that has a melee mode, but you can bring a melee weapon that has a pistol mode.

Since XP is split evenly between your equipped weapons, you might not always want to run certain weapons. This system would allow you to limit what you run, but still retain some of the usefulness of those slots (such as being able to use a Gunblade as a pistol while bleeding out, or smashing crates/stealth attacks with a bayonet)

How: First thing: In modding such weapons, the top of the mod screen would have a simple tab to indicate the different uses/options that weapon has, and clicking the tab swaps the stat block and mod panels to show the modding and stats for the alternate weapon feature.

Each part of a hybrid weapon would now need to be given separate stats, to accommodate the different levels of power in the different weapon categories. These stats should reflect the main stats of the weapon as closely as possible, so running similar mods should achieve roughly the same results as they do currently.

Gunblades would either start using ammo to shoot, or gain an archwing-style pool of regenerating ammo (regen rate based off melee attack speed or something), or just be infinite but slow to use in pistol form.

 

Eventually, there will just be too many weapons to really bother with, and it'll be harder and harder to make new weapons fun, unique or interesting without falling victim to power creep. This system opens up additional options for entirely new weapon categories, as well as expands the existing weapons we have by giving some of them some extra attack options (imagine doing a quick melee slam with Boltor eh?)

Chuck in some constructive criticism! List some ideas for more hybrid uses of current weapons, or maybe throw in some ideas for new types of hybrid weapons! Eager to hear more

[Arkvold]

This is a neat idea, but I see one problem with it: Gunblades.

The gun on, say, the Redeemer is not really meant to be used as an actual gun weapon.  To be implemented as a secondary, it would have to gain an ammo counter (which would conflict with its combo counter when used in melee mode), and it would have to get firing animations that aren't linked into the melee stance keyframes.

Using it as a secondary would also have different properties than using it as a melee charged attack - right now, the Redeemer's shots are essentially 'silent' by default.  They do not alert enemies, and can be used to trigger melee stealth kill multipliers from a distance, in a similar manner to a thrown glaive.  If made a secondary, the Redeemer would have to abide by secondary weapon rules, meaning it would lose this ability (and thus a lot of the reason that people take it to begin with).  Without losing this ability, it would be severely out-of-balance with existing secondary weapons.

This is to say nothing of modding woes - if the Redeemer is allowed to function as a pistol secondary, then it would be a really odd-duck among secondary weapons.  It would be a pistol, with a shotgun's damage, a melee weapon's mod capacity thanks to the stance, and all the benefits of melee mods and none of the benefits of secondary weapon mods.  How do you translate mods like Killing Blow to a weapon that can't channel, or Maiming Strike to a weapon that doesn't have a slide attack?  I see tons of potential for exceptions and errors that would need to be handled to make it work.

I'm not saying the idea's impossible, but it's not as simple as just making a melee weapon that has a gun function able to be used purely as a gun.  There's a lot of consideration that needs to go into this to both avoid errors and crashes, and ensure fairness with existing weapons of the class that you'd want to hybridize a weapon into.

[Xarteros]

1 hour ago, Arkvold said:

1. To be implemented as a secondary, it would have to gain an ammo counter (which would conflict with its combo counter when used in melee mode)
2. it would have to get firing animations that aren't linked into the melee stance keyframes.
3. right now, the Redeemer's shots are essentially 'silent' by default. 
4. It would be a pistol, with a shotgun's damage, a melee weapon's mod capacity thanks to the stance, and all the benefits of melee mods and none of the benefits of secondary weapon mods. 

Edited the quote for easier answering.

First and foremost, I might not have been clear. I think these weapons should be entirely split, two weapons occupying a single inventory slot and name. Redeemer is effectively Redeemer [Blade] and Redeemer [Gun]. It would still only need a single slot, it would still only need one Orokin Catalyst, and it would be pretty much fine Redeemer [Blade] is modded with melee mods and can equip a stance, while Redeemer [Gun] is modded solely with secondary mods. Equipping no secondary mods means its gun damage is unmodified at all. 

1: I already suggested it have an ammo counter when used in Secondary form. The easiest solution would be to use the Archwing ammo system, to have ammo regenerate instead of require pickups. In melee form there would be no need to change this to include ammo, it would remain as normal.

2: Barely an issue. The animations don't need to be fancy, and it's probably incredibly easy for them to just slip in an animation like Brakk or Bronco or even just use the charge-shot animation. Animations are the easy part.

3: The Redeemer's shots are silent by default, whilst pleasantly powerful, ultimately it's just a bug that never got fixed, since all melee weapons are silent and no exception was made. But, since you're just modding the gun part of it with secondary mods, you just put Suppress on and BAM, instantly quiet. Or hey, maybe you like a noisy hand cannon, so you can just put more damage on. Even more versatility.

4: It would be a pistol with shotgun damage, just like all the pistol shotguns. It wouldn't benefit from the Melee stance capacity, since it's only getting its effects from the secondary mods.

As I said, the stats would need to be adjusted so that a similar mod build would result in similar final stats. If your Redeemer hits for 100pts of damage on a swing, but 2000 damage on a shot, running a similar composition of damage/crit/elemental mods should result in the same rough damage values. For instance, with secondaries having more base damage and multishot, the overall gun damage would have to be decreased to compensate. 

From then on, all the regular shots from the gunblade become pistol modded shots, so if the combo goes swing-swing-shot-swing-shot-shot, the swings are all based off melee damage, and the shots are all based of secondary damage.

The only thing that really needs to be done is to allow the alternate attack mods to be equipped in overlap (unlike Sentinel guns, which do not allow mods to be equipped on multiple active weapons). Because the gun damage of a Gunblade would now always be based of secondary mods, you need to still be able to equip and mod a secondary weapon if you prefer, without the mods conflicting. Of course, bringing a secondary weapon would mean you can't equip the Gunblade as your secondary weapon, it would just use the gun damage with the secondary mods. This also means that running a Primary weapon that has a bayonet wouldn't take precedence over a properly equipped melee weapon, it's something that's meant to fill an empty slot, not take over equipped slots.

 

On the notion of Forma, you could just make it that each Forma lets you pick a polarity to change on each side of the weapon. You would need to be able to pick different polarities on the different sides, so if you wanted to, you could add a V on the melee side but a - on the gun side. This would also let you choose a blank option, if for instance you wanted a V on the gun side but didn't want that V on the melee side.

With stances, and the overall low cost of melee mods, you almost never need to forma a melee weapon. Stuff like Redeemer is a bit broken, to be so powerful with so little effort required in honing and mastering the weapon. If you want crazy gun damage, you should have to forma it up like the rest of your crazy high damage guns. 

If any of this is confusing, just point out what doesn't make sense. I'm really tired right now and this is all a lot messier than I'd like, but I want to try and develop this idea more