This was a great post, very insightful and helpful in guiding the tinkering (or, in this case, balancing) process. Why didn't you post something like this at the start of your project, to help pw keep track of what it was shaping up to? Sure, it might be obvious to you how a project is shaping up to be, but for pw it's just a series of abstract technical questions or conversions every other day over the course of weeks. He's just a man, and that is just 1 post in the sea of posts that entails updating 4 or so threads daily. I'm not surprised he lost track of the bigger picture with this weapon honestly (he himself said that any one answer depend on how he feels about something at the moment itself).
I'll admit, this is somewhat of a bad habit of mine; I didn't post exactly what I wanted at the beginning because I wasn't entirely sure what I'd get, or what my options really were relative to each other. As I said there, at first I wanted something closer to a high capacity battle rifle, but later realized that a LSW was actually feasible due to the massive ammo capacity. I started the tests with an idea of what I'd end up with, but a large portion of my goal was to figure out what I could do.
To be honest, I'm not entirely certain what I
should do now. Before, I did try to make things clear and easy to remember, by condensing the data from previous posts into a spoiler with the important stuff. How do I do more than that? If I just post what I want, and PW or the committee posts what the appropriate cost and stats are, it kinda takes the fun out of tinkering. The only really creativity is just the base idea, rather than testing the idea and figuring out where it's applicable.
What? What the what? Hell no, where the hell did that come from? My honest opinion, to ensure we're on the same page here: it seems like a great weapon, downsizing the PSL was a good idea (I wanted to do something similar to the plasma launcher before, but you beat me to the punch) and it carries bigger-than-average bang for it's buck.
It mostly came from "Don't expect a single shard of this to rip through all opposition..." and "Death by a thousand cuts". The former is explicitly saying "It's not
that good, BUT..." and the latter is saying "This kills slowly, but is still good." Again, they seem like bad attempts to polish a turd, and
I think you'd be really good at polishing turds. So seeing it poorly done makes me think you intentionally did it poorly, which implies a goal; I assumed your goal to be reducing my view of the weapon, as I had written the description to overplay it a bit, and it seemed like you thought that that overplayed description was my actual opinion rather than intentional aggrandizement.
Maybe if I'd thought about it longer than five seconds I'd have decided that was reading too much into it, and that you're just bad at aggrandizing things. But knee-jerk thinking is another bad habit of mine, as is probably obvious. >.>
The first one is correct, no? 1 shard is weak, but you can fire 9 at a time and still have twice the turns of shooting compared to a gauss rifle. The last one... eh, just a random idea. I could try again, or you could try to come up with something.
'correct advertising' and 'good advertising' are not synonyms. They aren't mutually exclusive either, but one does not imply the other.
As far as I'm aware, the idea behind the overcharge is to to take down hardened targets, no? Since holding regular fire steady on the exact same spot is hard, and requires multiple rolls. Or maybe as a high power 'alpha strike' option (such as during springing an ambush).
I'd agree with you, but due to the mechanics of ER, it's kinda backwards. If you roll twice, on average you'll do a more average amount of damage; a three and a five might have similar effect to a pair of fours. Rolling only once means you're more prone to bad luck. I'm not really sure whether or not the difficulty of keeping consistent aim is relevant- fives generally mean you do perfectly, which I'm pretty sure would count as being able to hold your aim perfectly steady for ten seconds.
And I did say that alpha strike situations would be a place where it's feasible. I just pointed out that those situations are kinda rare for ARM (unless we're not supposed to shoot the target), so the overcharge would just become a backround feature that most people never think to use.
If it's actually meant to be something valuable, I'd make it cost three turns total, fire on the second turn, and have triple power. You get extra power on the second turn, don't lose any power overall, but subject yourself to much greater risk (what if you miss? What if you're shot on the first turn by someone you could have shot? What if an enemy jumps out on the third turn while your gun's cooling?). It makes it into a choice of how much risk you're willing to take, rather than just "If you're ambushing, overcharge. Otherwise, don't.".
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Topic: Hephaestus No Longer Exists: Crater thread. (Read 190302 times)