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[scrdest]

It would be pretty interesting if, at very long ranges, sniper weapons depended mainly on intelligence rather than perception. Long-range sniping is pretty much all about mathing it up. Then again, Cata is about close-quarters mostly.

[Sharp]

Actually any perception penalty is applied right at the same time as everything else. I mean the game literally does [DEX modifier + PER modifier + encumbrence modifier + recoil effects + gun dispersion + ammo dispersion]. Also dispersion and all of the other penalties are in quarter-degrees, not degrees.

I will say that what weapon/ammo you are wielding is the thing that now determines the cap, not your skill. This means that skills that are extremely high (over about 8-9) don't make you shoot any better, because you are limited by the weapon's physical ability to shoot accurately. No more can you warp the universe to make your blowgun hit dead on at 1000 yards just by being an extremely skilled marksman.

I understand that, but if I'm right a dispersion of 5 means the gun is supposed to be highly accurate yes? I was firing and couldn't even get any hit's above 10 tiles and only more hits at range <5 and even then still missing a lot of shots with absurdly high skill. It doesn't make much sense.

Tbh I haven't spent too much time testing or looking at the JSON's/code but eitherway the weapon stats are misleading.

[Girlinhat]

Yeah, accuracy is measured in quarter-degrees, so a weapon with 5 dispersion/accuracy should fire at 1.25 degree variance.  It goes both ways, left and right, so effectively 2.5 degree variance, and a 1 in 11 chance of hitting dead center.  If the variance is too far and takes it into another tile, then it's a miss.

If we're talking real-life degrees, then yeah that weapon is very accurate, especially at ranges of a few tiles distances, although this could be cataclysm-degrees...

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hrm, I just found shimmering portal in-town at the end of my last scav trip, and this morning I woke up with a blob hanging around my car. I'm pretty sure on this save continuity, I only opened a shimmering portal in a nearby lab, but I did try activating the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

resonance cascade

to see what would happen before save-fagging.

Did I manage to screw up? Going to have to whip up a spraycan flammenwerfer to deal with my new neighbor...

[GlyphGryph]

I understand that, but if I'm right a dispersion of 5 means the gun is supposed to be highly accurate yes? I was firing and couldn't even get any hit's above 10 tiles and only more hits at range <5 and even then still missing a lot of shots with absurdly high skill. It doesn't make much sense.

Tbh I haven't spent too much time testing or looking at the JSON's/code but eitherway the weapon stats are misleading.

And you're sure it wasn't a recoil problem?

[i2amroy]

If we're talking real-life degrees, then yeah that weapon is very accurate, especially at ranges of a few tiles distances, although this could be cataclysm-degrees...

It's real quarter-degrees (or at least a very, very close approximation that costs much less computationally).

[Sharp]

And you're sure it wasn't a recoil problem?

Yeah I took a one turn pause after shooting. I don't think you can fire any weapon which has a dispersion > 0 reliably accurately at a distance greater then 10 tiles with a high skill level (let alone a low one with encumbrance penalties as well)

It just really means any weapon which allows a range greater then 10 tiles is almost pointless, like is it possible to snipe turrets (or anything) anymore with the sniper rifles?

[Grendus]

Modern firearms are really, really accurate though. Snipers have confirmed kills at over 2 kilometers - given the previously mentioned  (by you) ~1 m per square that you yourself mentioned, that's 2000 tiles!

For assault rifles, the m16's effective range is 550m (ak-47 less accurate but not that much less).

Realistically, at the practically point-blank range 99% of combat in cataclysm takes place at, pretty much all guns should be effectively 100% accurate and the only thing determining if you hit or miss is the user's skill.

Sure, gameplay > realism and the game probably does not even keep track of monsters 2000 tiles away and it would be silly if you could shoot that far anyway.. but saying skill stops mattering because of mechanical inaccuracy in the weapon at like 10 meters is just absurd. Even unrifled civil war muskets using crappy homemade ball ammo were accurate to around 90 - 140 meters.

This is a pretty shallow analysis of gun accuracy.  Especially in panicked and adrenaline packed situations, missing a target at relatively close range is pretty easy. There's a million factors like weather, your own hand strength, and so many others.

That should be skill based though. A civilian fresh out of the shelter would probably spray full-auto rounds wildly at a zombie hoard 4 meters away from him/her, yes. A battle hardened survivor four months into the apocalypse would calmly put one handgun round in each zombies skull before returning to what he/she was doing before being so rudely interrupted.

[BurnedToast]

Modern firearms are really, really accurate though. Snipers have confirmed kills at over 2 kilometers - given the previously mentioned  (by you) ~1 m per square that you yourself mentioned, that's 2000 tiles!

For assault rifles, the m16's effective range is 550m (ak-47 less accurate but not that much less).

Realistically, at the practically point-blank range 99% of combat in cataclysm takes place at, pretty much all guns should be effectively 100% accurate and the only thing determining if you hit or miss is the user's skill.

Sure, gameplay > realism and the game probably does not even keep track of monsters 2000 tiles away and it would be silly if you could shoot that far anyway.. but saying skill stops mattering because of mechanical inaccuracy in the weapon at like 10 meters is just absurd. Even unrifled civil war muskets using crappy homemade ball ammo were accurate to around 90 - 140 meters.

This is a pretty shallow analysis of gun accuracy.  Especially in panicked and adrenaline packed situations, missing a target at relatively close range is pretty easy. There's a million factors like weather, your own hand strength, and so many others.

You're exactly right, but that was my point.  i2amroy said at a certain point skill stopped mattering because of the inaccuracy of the actual weapon.

However, modern firearms are accurate to the equivalent of hundreds of tiles in cataclysm. At the typical combat ranges in the game - below 20 meters, usually below 10 meters, the weapon's inherent inaccuracy is simply not an issue and all hit/miss rates should be calculated off user skill (which panicking/adrenaline, etc would fall under) alone.

[Girlinhat]

Then you're running into game space problem.  A sniper rifle might get a confirmed kill at 2km, and at the estimate of 2m per tile that's 1,000 tiles.  Even if we're going half that, and calling it 500 tiles for someone who's good but not been through THAT MUCH military training, that's still WAY beyond normal viewing range, which is what, like 20 tile radius?  When you shrink things by that comparison, then pistols hit at 0-4 tiles, and snipers hit around 10-15 tiles.  The game window and play area is simply too small to accommodate these things.

[i2amroy]

I will agree with you that the system could use some rebalancing (Probably decreasing intrinsic weapon/ammo dispersion, but increasing penalties from low skills/DEX/PER would get to a more realistic one). But, to put it bluntly, it works well enough that it's not exactly on my priorities list right now.

Also if we wanted more realistic numbers we would probably need to move to much a finer resolution unit for in-game calculations. (Many real-life rifles will have MOA measurements down as low as 10 or lower; for comparison a single dispersion unit = 15 MOA.)

As for how far you can shoot, for purposes of gameplay the world off-loads about 60 tiles away from you, so the max range is around 60 meters.

[LordSlowpoke]

just make a tile 20 meters across and pretend the player needs a fuckton of personal space

[BurnedToast]

Then you're running into game space problem.  A sniper rifle might get a confirmed kill at 2km, and at the estimate of 2m per tile that's 1,000 tiles.  Even if we're going half that, and calling it 500 tiles for someone who's good but not been through THAT MUCH military training, that's still WAY beyond normal viewing range, which is what, like 20 tile radius?  When you shrink things by that comparison, then pistols hit at 0-4 tiles, and snipers hit around 10-15 tiles.  The game window and play area is simply too small to accommodate these things.

Then just remove the per-weapon inaccuracy completely and make skill matter more. Who cares if you end up with a 100% hitrate with high enough skill? melee can effortlessly butcher his way through zombie hordes with minimal risk and he does not even have to worry about ammo and can use per as a dump stat.

Or remove it from all real guns, and only add it to improvised weapons (nailgun, etc) and the monstrosities you cobble together out of fridges the zombies smashed.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I am entirely against making dispersion a non-issue. In-game distances are shrunk by necessity, and if we attempted to have firearms duplicate their performance to-the-T in-game, they would be the only thing to do so. Our sight range is shrunk, our worldspace is shrunk, and time dilation is going on. They are perfectly fine as is- you want to hit something far away? Use an accurate gun. You're only concerned about things within 8 tiles? A shotgun is viable. You push shotgun range out to it's RL equivalent, and it would be viable for 5/6 of the viewable area. Not. Good. For. Gameplay.

The current system has both skill and inherent weapon dispersion as factors that effect the gameplay. This is a good thing.


In other news,
That's the third damn time I've drunk pure acid trying to figure out how to concentrate it. >:|

[scrdest]

just make a tile 20 meters across and pretend the player needs a fuckton of personal space

Given how you can walk from one tile to another for a whole GODDAMN MINUTE, this is not as absurd as it sounds. I walk pretty fast, but in ten minutes I can walk about a kilometer. Behold, the one hundred meter personal space.