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[Nikitian]

Ah, so we can make live sacrifices to the bluerad gods to make the batteries 50% more efficient! Go for it, I say!
 

[spazyak]

woops clicked wrong ooc

[syvarris]

I am tired.  Sorry for any incoherence.

Will do

So I actually wrote that thing up, but ended up feeling bad about it.  Partially, I was wrong about how much stuff was redundant--mostly only con weapons are outright redundant, due to their similar design goal.  There's stuff I think is overall a poor idea, like most melee weapons, but not so much that's actually redundant.

The rest of why I feel guilty is it just shows how terrifically opinionated I am.

I can post it if people really want my opinions on what stuff has no real purpose.

Spoiler: Reply to first Nik post (click to show/hide)

Okay, this will be massive. Just like in old times! Damn, syv, I love these wall-of-text in-depth arguments you prompt us to make!

I do too.  I just need to learn to not turn them into what I did with GWG.  I had actually gotten slightly angry at Radio earlier, and now I feel bad about that.

The main advantages of Testament I see are that it can work as suppression weapon (unlike any other in the Armory), allows hitting multiple targets with a sweep (just as Spektr, but cheaper - for now), and offers 'kinetic' & 'electric' types of damage.

While suppression was the original purpose of the testament (Hence the Light Shard Weapon pun), I swapped my stance after Sean developed the spektr.  The spektr has infinite ammo, and can suppress quite well since it can fire visible lasers.  Also, it can spray high diffusion lasers, which would effectively blind anyone you aim it at.

I don't think the electric part of the damage is all that high.  Sure, a full PSL shard has quite a bit of energy coursing through it, but the Testament shard shouldn't have much at all.  PW actually did give TPU measurements for the shard a long time ago, and IIRC the potential electricity was actually our densest power source at the time, but that info would probably be thrown out if anything were seriously tried with it.  Plus, testament shards are such a tiny fraction of the total energy that they would need *massive* luck to kill.

Pretty much, shards are optimized solely for AP ability and ammo economy.  They're not really good at anything else.

Spektr, while nice and continious and infinite, is still laser-rifle-power (unless overcharged, and that one is troublesome, damn the rules). And laser-rifle-power just won't quite cut quite often, as you put it - at the very least, even less than cutting-laser-power. That said, Spektr can fire in different wave-lengths, and can use overcharge and that's why I think it's not too overpriced for 5 tokens. (Still, I thought that a laser rifle can have infinite supply for 2 extra tokens - between the generator and circuitry. If it can be made that way for 1 extra token, it's all the way for Spektr to become cheaper - to the same price as blifle and shardrifle).

Technically, the spektr is slightly above lasrifle power, since FELs are more efficient.  50%, I think.  And even baseline laser strength is good enough for unarmored or lightly armored people.  It only becomes a problem when your opponent jumps into cover quickly, or if they're wearing laser-resistant materials.

Pw varies on the cost of a generator fed lasrifle.  Usually, four tokens (or more) is required for an inmate to get one custom.  Three tokens is typically the price for a mass-produced variant, which is more relevant to us.

Some things are large and unarmored but simply tough, and where Testament would offer a barrage over an area, blifle could probably make a steaming crater of that same area. Spektr probably could as well, but only over time or with an overcharge shot.

Decent point.  I think the Spektr might win out simply because it has infinite ammo and could blind the big target, but the blifle would certainly have better damage output.

Where Hand cannon is a direct fire weapon, Brisant is indirect fire. It is actually closest we have to proper "siege"/"artillery" (if small) weapon, besides the gauss cannon and LESHO. Even if it does not see much use with us, it is going to rock with our regular sod forces, I believe. Edit: Wait, it's not exactly direct fire weapon, as it appears, and it does have more ammo loadouts from the beginning. That said, while I presume that many of the features could be possibly copied over to Brisant 2.0 (if ever), I fully expect Brisant shells to be bigger and more filled with Fun substances (judging by the weapon caliber, if anything). And that's before we mention that Brisant shells come as 3-for-token.
And finally, the main reason I love Brisant so much - those same Brisant shells are explicitly stated usable as grenades; I even had negotiated with Piecewise that they come in three-packs, like all grenades do. They should probably replace the old grenades altogether at this point, I think.

I disagree with your point about them being different types of weapons.  They're both grenade launchers, one's just smaller than the other, and seemingly not by much.  All the ammo the hand cannon can fire should be able to be mimicked by Brisant ammo easily enough, and it would be more effective if anything.

I didn't notice that the Brisant had cheaper ammo.  You've tipped my opinion from "They're basically the same thing" to "One is clearly superior, but needs tinker work to even it out."

Although, the hand cannon is probably more concealable.  That alone might justify keeping it, even if it is otherwise inferior.

It has 10 minutes worth of "ammo" actually. That's 20 5 (wait, since when did we change from 30-second batteries to 120-second ones? Oh well) times more than what you could have of a laser rifle magazine. And it has more power at that - all at the expense of having absolutely shitty beam cohesion at range, and using a chemical solution for "battery" (i.e. a generator could not replace it, unlike with a laser rifle - without a major rework, I mean).
But it's a utility tool, and we were discussing laser rifle utility use - and there, undeniably, cutting torch trumps the lasrifle.

Uh, I made a mistake there by using a production cost generator-powered lasrifle as my counter example to it, but eh...

Why do you believe the cutting torch has superior power to a lasrifle?  I was under the impression that people typically used up whole minutes of 'ammo' when they cut with it, but rarely used more than one mag when cutting with a baseline lasrifle.  How often does cutting speed matter, anyway?

See the arguments up above; I agree that cutting laser has troubles against battlesuits, but I think it can cut (if very slowly) and blifle isn't cutting laser; it has "explody" part and it compresses several seconds worth of cutting laser power into a single blast - which might both contribute to it penetrating battleplate better than "pure" cutting laser.

It compresses several seconds of cutlas power into one blast?  I didn't realize that.  I thought it would be more of a rapid blip.

Regardless, most of a BS's immunity comes from being highly reflective.  You wouldn't get much of a blast because you're not vaporizing a lot of material.  Plus, what blast you would get is mitigated by the fact that milnoplate is heavy as sin, meaning more weight you need to push.  At most, I'd see it being more of a rough shove, rather than a bone breaking launch.  Now, the blazooka would have a massive explosion, but that's because it is excessively powerful...

...This is probably why there should have never been any "balance" talk in the first place. Keep everything to "physics", and let "physics" sort out which designs are more useful. But who ever cared about going "world reasons" instead of "balance"...

Nyeh, balance talk is good, at least for nerfing, because physics rely on PW's thought processes, which are trivial to tangle.  The original Testament LSW, before its nerf, could kill a battlesuit with a short burst of shards and had a 17,280 round magazine.  And was 100% physics approved.  And cost only 4 tokens.

Balance talk has its place.

Okay, I am going to agree with RC here that we'd ask to buff the blifle. You know why? Because there are "fluff" reasons to do so (it's still unspecified how many second worth of cutting laser power is blifle shot, the power level is far above blaspistol, etc.etc.). But most of all because I hate nerfing existing things when we could buff the new one; because I willnot suggest nerfing the Testament, for example. It's mean, it screws with backlog and makes for negative retcon, and I dislike that approach so much (despite it being the major one in ER). We've hit the power creep streak, so let us flow with it for now. I... do not think it should be the main M.O. for tinker-balancing from now on, but it could be a nice precedent for things like that to happen from time to time.

Hmm.  See, reading this surprised me because I actually thought the blifle should get a buff, and I wasn't sure why you thought I didn't.  The quote was referring to the suggestion that the blifle just be 'more powerful' for no reason, which sets a terrible precedent; What's to stop some other tinkerer from designing a bad weapon, like a gunpowder rifle, and then arguing that it should be buffed for balance (and when he gets shot down, accusing Radio of favoritism).

If there's an actual logical reason for it to be better, I'd be fine.  For example, you could increase the blurad battery to have a much larger power supply, and say that the individual shots are far more powerful than a CutLas shot, to the point they can kill someone in Milnoplate due to the blast.  Effectively the same result, but there's a logical explanation for it, rather than "Well, it shouldn't be weak, so it's strong."

Did that make sense?

Can namite burn in vacuum? I don't think so, and that's where tesla arc would shine. Plus in hypothetical "oh God, everything is potentially flammable, we can't have that!" situation, quite likely. 

Namite should be able to burn in vacuum, yes.  It's essentially thermite on steroids, and therefore should be self-oxidizing.

Didn't consider a scenario where everything burning would be bad.  I'm not sure such a thing exists, though.  Ordinary fire itself isn't really harmful to us unless we're protecting infrastructure or in a large building which could collapse.  Even then, wouldn't spraying lightning around indiscriminantly be a poor idea?  Lightning is pretty good at starting fires.

Guys, guys, don't we already have that? By the name of blaster pistol, and even a token cheaper than the old laser rifle? Sue, again, it loses 'cutting', but it gains 'explosive' and I honestly think 'cutting' and 'sweeps' are overrated. You can kill people just fine without those, and that's what matters, right?

Well, I think cutting things is actually a really valuable part of the lasrifle.  It gets used quite a lot.  That's a matter of opinion though.

There's useless, and there is "inferior, but different variant"; unfortunately, I think that's the lack of this that caused the lack of assaultsuit variants and the ongoing use of old-style variant battlesuits (as evident by Lars example). It's the reason why we're still keeping HGC in the Armory, despite the acknowledged monstrous inefficiency. It's sometimes good.

Do you think Lars would have chosen a long range BS over a long range AS, if such a thing had been available?

Anyway, 'inferior but different' is sort of the worst option in my opinion.  If it's inferior, but looks different enough that one might not realize it's inferior, that's bad.  It'll lead to people buying the thing when they have no good reason to.  This is my primary objection to armory clutter- there's lots of people who don't even understand what old standard weapons are capable of, since they aren't obsessive interested in the subject like me.

If I tell you that in Perplexicon, there were three gods that would help your character be unkillable, which one will you pick (with the goal of being as difficult to kill as possible)?  Yo-drell, god of survival and stone, Flux, god of change and movement, or Blastel, god of battle and violence?  You likely wouldn't choose correctly since you don't have all the information.

But, if we remove the inferior options, nobody will choose incorrectly.  Everyone gets the best result, except for the rare fringe cases where a weapon happens to be the best through sheer luck.

Speaking of which, I now understood that we probably out to revamp the gauss weapons the way we did with laser ones (and yes, I still insist handlaser/laser rifle/possibly cutting laser are obsolete by now, it's the matter of speccing their replacement blueshard weapons). Maybe include a small blueshard in the gauss rifle magazine (and do away with the generators in the weapon)? It could both allow for increased power, rapid fire, and possibly lower weapon price as well (to keep with the trend of "1-token lasrifle replacement").
Have to provide a small and extremely cheap basic kinetic weapon option, I believe.

I'm not sure how good of an idea this is.  I doubt we can get 1-token gauss rifles, and if we're allowed to increase the value of a magazine, it would make more sense to add ammo capacity.  Also, it would mean overcharged shots won't work.

I've been wanting to make an automatic with a much lower caliber for awhile.  I was hoping to make it cheap enough to serve as a better standard weapon than the GR.

Spoiler: Reply to first Radio post (click to show/hide)

True, cutting lasers don't outright slice up a battlesuit. But we're not necessarily going for cutting in two wholesale, I'm going for a crippling shot. As Sean has pointed out, it'd still cause an explosion at the target by dumping all that energy. On a target that only has 1 layer of plate (I do think amount of material matters, since more battleplate means more matter to disperse heat over, which is what gave it its good laser resistance iirc), I think that could be enough to take the target out of the fight (or at the very least, know them down for a good while).

As I said in the Nik reply post above, I don't think Sean's point applies here.  The explosive force comes from vaporizing material, yes?  Well, that would make sense against wood or steel or something, but BS plate is highly reflective and hard to vaporize.  It takes several seconds of focused fire to get any real cutting, so you won't get a large explosive reaction.  Also, it's heavy, which means you need a particularly strong reaction to do much.

I don't think extra armor allows extra heat dispersal, at least not to a notable extent.  I could be wrong though.  I don't have any real evidence one way or the other.

I told you before: pw has outright stated that test results don't always neatly translate to equivalent in-game effects.

See, this doesn't feel like it means anything to me.  Every weapon is equally vulnerable to that effect, so if we're comparing things then it's moot.  I could be missing something though.  My brain is at 50% ATM.

But from the post I was responding to (as well as some earlier posts) you seemed to indicate the mini psl would always neatly penetrate and kill a target in milnoplate. That might not be entirely how you intended it, but that's what it looks like.

I'm sorry, I do use words inconsistently sometimes.  Before, I said the Testament was 'effective' against heavy armor, which I meant to mean 'it reliably has a notable effect'.  The damage you quoted seems consistent with that.  I was comparing it to the blifle, which I believed (and still do) to have no real effect on Milnoplate.

Also, the Testament is semiauto, although volleys probably have a slight delay.  There's no reason you couldn't shoot several 9-volleys, which would notably damage a Milnoplated person.  A blifle, even unloading, probably wouldn't even hurt them unless you used the final fire mode.

In this case though, we don't know how big a shard gives what power, so things can still be moved up-or down a bit if needed, within reasonable limits of course. 

So, why don't we just ask what level of efficiency increase PW wants blurad to have?

Ah, it don't matter that much what we think, now does it? Shall I do an interest check with our potential market to see how things are?

See bottom of Nik post.  I firmly believe that we can make better decisions than the average ARM trooper.

What? You said it didn't make sense, I gave a rationalization for it. Was it there from the start? Maybe not, because when I and pw discussed it in irc, it was mostly OOC-oriented, aka straight to balancing instead of discussing exact numbers for a while (which he hates). The reason for same cost is balance (same cost per clip but fewer shots should balance out, in theory).

I don't know what my thought process was.  I was probably wrong, sorry.

The bluerad bats for the pistol fit in the pistol. The bluerad bats for the rifle fit in the rifle, and as far as I know they are quite a bit larger (need to give an amount of power equal to a full pistol clip with every shot). Makes intuitive sense, I'd say, but it's something we could check I suppose. 

Well, why do you assume the pistol batt is larger than a marble or something?  I had thought bluraditite had far better energy capacity volume-wise, and somewhat better capacity cost-wise.

Related: Xenonauts, the remake of the original X-Com, has Alenium, which is extremely similar to bluraditite.  Their laser pistol and rifle shared clips, here's pics:
Rifle, Pistol.  The cylinder in the rifle's stock and pistol's rear is the battery.  And I think it's way larger than our blurad batteries.

You also need to remember I'm working off of what pw gave me. I think we can fiddle a bit with the numbers, but I don't know if it'd be fair to change it too much without his input.

Well, I kinda think you asked him a loaded question by not mentioning cost, and specifying 10 shots.  Also, I generally think of these arguements as a method to agree on what we think would be balanced, and what would be realistic, and then present our opinions to PW to let him select what he likes.  Maybe your purpose is different.

How exactly would you handle the batteries, then?

I'd first ask how much power I can get in a 1-token battery, then I'd ask how much power is required for a laser pulse to kill a milnoplated target.  If I didn't determine the second step by asking how many of those shots would be in a 1-token blurad batt, then I'd divide and get my number of shots.  After that, I'd ask how expensive the device is, and determine if the given prices and values are worth it compared to other weapons.  If so, I'd present it to the council, and if not, I'd toss it out.

 But that's my methodical mathmatical approach, which has caused PW to cry for my blood half the time I talk to him.  So, maybe you're right and my method isn't the best. >.>

Standard cutlas get 10 3-sec shots per token, this one gets 5. It is also half as expensive, can give a 5x shot when needed, and is much lighter. Is this balanced?

...All of those are traits of the weapon itself.  Arguably the CL might be more efficient, I guess, but we generally don't work on the assumption of varying efficiencies...

And balance is kinda an irrelevant question here.  The blurad batts are supposed to be outright superior to old batts.  It would be better to compare the blifle's battery to a blurad powered CL.

What does this matter? Again, even if you claim one is wholly superior, they aren't the same, so I think the tesla arc should remain. 

Then we disagree. *shrug*

You suggested a blaster, not a replacement for the continuously firing laser:

Sorry, you're right, I was being an idiot.  I did intend for the blaster carbine to be just a lasrifle with a blurad battery, but I didn't say that at all.  What I wrote really does seem like I intended a pulse weapon, rather than a continuous fire one.

Though maybe we can add those things in an 'outdated' section at the end? How would you propose we handle it?

Marking things as outdated would work.  Possibly clearly writing in the description how items compare to other items, as well.  A lot of armory entries are more focused on being entertaining rather than informative.

Idea: The wiki poll thing which is currently asking about ARMburgers--could we change it to ask whether people read the actual articles for items before making a purchase, and whether they prefer informative or entertaining descriptions?

(Some stuff is obselete because I wrote it as I read through the posts.  Radio's tinker questions answered some things.

@spazyak

Aww, I was really looking forward to seeing what you posted here.  I expected it to be interesting, considering your history of creative tinkering.

[Nikitian]

Wall-texting continues!

While suppression was the original purpose of the testament (Hence the Light Shard Weapon pun), I swapped my stance after Sean developed the spektr.  The spektr has infinite ammo, and can suppress quite well since it can fire visible lasers.  Also, it can spray high diffusion lasers, which would effectively blind anyone you aim it at.

Here we come to a polite disagreement again. As even Sean mentioned, it's not enough for the weapon to be visible to provide suppressive fire; it has to shoot and miss a lot (and hopefully be also loud). Plentiful of ammunition, full-auto capable, each shot crackling with electricity as it hits, Testament fits the "suppression weapon" bill much better than Spektr - if anything, Testament is more flashy and thus more capable of providing the "show of power". But we agreed to disagree here.

Hand Cannon vs. Brisant

I still think that one being hand-held and direct-fire, while the other being stationary (placed on the ground for firing) and indirect-fire, these two weapons are quite different. It is impossible to check the ranges now, but I think Brisant has quite greater upper range limit (Long in older range categories, I guess). Yet, it probably has less accuracy and cannot be fired on the hip.
All in all, I think Hand Cannon, with its diverse range of ammo and more "accurate and specialised weapon" outlook is better suited for our missions. Whereas for regular army use, where fancy gadget ammo is not really needed (compared to pure firepower and cheap if a little inaccurate destruction), Brisant is better of the two.

Why do you believe the cutting torch has superior power to a lasrifle?  I was under the impression that people typically used up whole minutes of 'ammo' when they cut with it, but rarely used more than one mag when cutting with a baseline lasrifle.  How often does cutting speed matter, anyway?

To be honest, I think it's the matter of our GM striving to be reasonable and not delve too much into energy spent calculations (see: melting on a steel cast with a single 30s laser battery on M1); CT can spare those minutes, so in all actuality it does use them up - while all a lasrifle can offer is a single magazine's worth, so it's gets spent while doing the job.
As for the power - my impression comes chiefly from the description ( you know, "powerful chemical laser") and the fact it's very specialised (short-ranged, practically no focusing, special ammo, etc.) and still more expensive than the laser rifle. Might be misguided, but at least it made some sense.
Conversely, I think about half the time laser rifle probably would not have been able to do the cutting job nearly as well, so... yeah.

-snip-
Did that make sense?

Yeah, it did. Actually, I must have gone overboard there, defending the right to buff things, so I'm sorry. It's a bit of a pet peeve for me lately that there is only the nerf bat for retro-balancing purposes - that instead of confirming that new, upgraded thing is even better than the old one, the old one gets slanted and now the new one is "reasonably good". Once again, sorry.

Well, I think cutting things is actually a really valuable part of the lasrifle.  It gets used quite a lot.  That's a matter of opinion though.

See the above about laser rifle cutting capability on topic of utility lasering; as for combat cutting, I think it is overrated in the sense that we're accustomed to it. Take it away (while promising a better damage output) and an average former convict wouldn't notice. A matter of opinion, though, I agree.
Maybe we could make and give out 0-token knives as part of every trooper's gear? That would help with quite a few cases where cutting is needed.

Do you think Lars would have chosen a long range BS over a long range AS, if such a thing had been available?

Actually, I must be missing your point on this one. Yes, I'd think that if a long range AS was developed and prototyped, Lars could just as well pick it instead of long range BS; my original point was that we didn't consider any AS with in-built weapons efficient and worth of manufacturing, so our troopers had to prove us wrong on that decision. (If long range AS was planned to be built, but was postponed/scheduled for later, I withdraw this argument.)

Anyway, 'inferior but different' is sort of the worst option in my opinion.  If it's inferior, but looks different enough that one might not realize it's inferior, that's bad.  It'll lead to people buying the thing when they have no good reason to.  This is my primary objection to armory clutter- there's lots of people who don't even understand what old standard weapons are capable of, since they aren't obsessive interested in the subject like me.

Aaand I think we've just stumbled upon yet another milestone on the road between "waste of resources" and "efficient weapon design" Let's change the initial postulate again: there are "useless" weapons, there are "different but inferior" weapons (like the ones which you just mentioned) and then there are "slightly inferior but different" weapons (the latter being, say, mobility battlesuit compared to default battlesuit (for army use, with purpose of shrugging off damage in mind)).

I'm not sure how good of an idea this is.  I doubt we can get 1-token gauss rifles, and if we're allowed to increase the value of a magazine, it would make more sense to add ammo capacity.  Also, it would mean overcharged shots won't work.

I've been wanting to make an automatic with a much lower caliber for awhile.  I was hoping to make it cheap enough to serve as a better standard weapon than the GR.

Well, it was somewhere in Tinker limbo ever since my first character died without finishing his project, so yeah, I can understand you here

I don't know about the overcharge shot, but maybe it can be worked in somehow; and if it cannot, with the abundance of cheaper high-power weapons (Testament, blifle, Spektr), it might even not be that important. But I feel that if the lasrifle does end up replaced with blaspistol (which I hope to happen), we should work on the kinetic weapon equivalent also being of the same 1-token price.

I'd first ask how much power I can get in a 1-token battery, then I'd ask how much power is required for a laser pulse to kill a milnoplated target.  If I didn't determine the second step by asking how many of those shots would be in a 1-token blurad batt, then I'd divide and get my number of shots.  After that, I'd ask how expensive the device is, and determine if the given prices and values are worth it compared to other weapons.  If so, I'd present it to the council, and if not, I'd toss it out.

 But that's my methodical mathmatical approach, which has caused PW to cry for my blood half the time I talk to him.  So, maybe you're right and my method isn't the best. >.>

I must admit, I like this approach - it's self consistent enough to avoid major "balancing over and over" pitfalls.

Also, now that I think of it, if RC's quote is correct on blas-pulse comparison to energy-seconds of laser weapons (2sec=single pulse), it means that we get 40 seconds worth of laser rifle fire for 1 token of blaspistol-sized-battery (compared to 120s/token of laser rifle battery these days), and 20 seconds worth of cutting laser fire for 1 token of blifle-sized-battery (compared to 30s/token of cutting laser battery).
It's outrageously inefficient for a powersource stated to house more power than old batteries. Eyeballing the number, I would still suggest 10x conversion rate (rounded for PW's ease of comparison; to be more precise, 100% equivalency would be 6x, so maybe 7x~9x). It would be nice, it would be noticeable, it would solve quite a lot of problems with power consumption and comparison rates. But the proper way is the one syv suggested, clearly.


On "outdated equipment":
I've been thinking about it and came to this idea: how about we put the whole original Altered Wars-legacy equipment list (plus-minus a few entries) on a separate page, "Outdated Armory" or something, and then let only the new, high-tech and highly efficient equipment on the regular Armory page? That way an average trooper could look and see only the "best" options at first glance; and if he finds a glaring hole where something suiting his needs should be, he could go and look over the outdated equipment list - at his own risk. Of course, we would have to put in even more effort to cover those glaring holes in the list, but that could just as fine be work in progress with the new and modern equipment list in place.
(Unfortunately, so far that suggestion probably works only with Con weapons list, due to the sheer number of new entries there, but that alone would be good enough for purposes of clearing up the Armory clutter.)

[syvarris]

Nik, do you think you could spoiler your text walls?  It's not so much so that people can just skip the spoiler, but so that you have to do less scrolling to find things.  It can be somewhat tiresome even on 15 posts per page, I can't even imagine what it's like for the people with larger pages.

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for length (click to show/hide)

Here we come to a polite disagreement again. As even Sean mentioned, it's not enough for the weapon to be visible to provide suppressive fire; it has to shoot and miss a lot (and hopefully be also loud). Plentiful of ammunition, full-auto capable, each shot crackling with electricity as it hits, Testament fits the "suppression weapon" bill much better than Spektr - if anything, Testament is more flashy and thus more capable of providing the "show of power". But we agreed to disagree here.

More flashy than the laser weapon? 

There is a point to the Testament being able to suppress armored targets who could ignore the spektr's lasers, but you can't actually use automatic fire effectively against them.  It takes around forty five hits to really destroy a heavily armored target with auto fire.  Hits, mind, which means no misses.

The spektr has almost every trait you mentioned; You have plentiful ammo, because it's generator powered.  You can fire it 'full auto' by rapidly turning the beam on and off.  Each shot doesn't crackle with electricity, but it's blindingly bright and painful to look at.  Plus, multiple spektrs should be able to effectively blind even a battlesuit, by firing in wide diffusion on a multitude of wavelengths.  If that doesn't fulfill the role of suppression, what does?

I still think that one being hand-held and direct-fire, while the other being stationary (placed on the ground for firing) and indirect-fire, these two weapons are quite different. It is impossible to check the ranges now, but I think Brisant has quite greater upper range limit (Long in older range categories, I guess).

Wait, what?  Stationary?  I admit that I could be vastly incorrect, but I always imagine the brisant as a futuristic, and slightly larger, version of this, rather than a mortar.  For comparison, I thought the hand cannon was a larger version of this.

Yet, it probably has less accuracy and cannot be fired on the hip.

Ngh-  If brisant has stock, and a longer barrel, it's more accurate.  Unless it's utterly shoddy.  I wouldn't shoot either from the hip, ever.

All in all, I think Hand Cannon, with its diverse range of ammo and more "accurate and specialised weapon" outlook is better suited for our missions. Whereas for regular army use, where fancy gadget ammo is not really needed (compared to pure firepower and cheap if a little inaccurate destruction), Brisant is better of the two.

The thing is, we could just remake all the hand cannon ammo in the brisant's calibre.  It doesn't have an advantage aside from being concealable.

Maybe we could make and give out 0-token knives as part of every trooper's gear? That would help with quite a few cases where cutting is needed.

Wouldn't really work.  Most cutting done with a laser is against metal, which a knife would do... poorly.

This is a good idea though.  We should make a list of what equipment standard troopers have, and put it on the wiki somewhere newbies can see.

Actually, I must be missing your point on this one. Yes, I'd think that if a long range AS was developed and prototyped, Lars could just as well pick it instead of long range BS; my original point was that we didn't consider any AS with in-built weapons efficient and worth of manufacturing, so our troopers had to prove us wrong on that decision. (If long range AS was planned to be built, but was postponed/scheduled for later, I withdraw this argument.)

Ah, okay.  I understand, you're saying that people would still want the BS in the armory because it gives more variant options than the AS, so if someone wanted a melee variant they could get it.

Hmm.  This is actually a really good reason to carry over the variants I think are bad choices, just so that people will have the superior armor when they make their bad choice.  I was gonna try to outright prevent them from being fools.

On "outdated equipment":
I've been thinking about it and came to this idea: how about we put the whole original Altered Wars-legacy equipment list (plus-minus a few entries) on a separate page, "Outdated Armory" or something, and then let only the new, high-tech and highly efficient equipment on the regular Armory page? That way an average trooper could look and see only the "best" options at first glance; and if he finds a glaring hole where something suiting his needs should be, he could go and look over the outdated equipment list - at his own risk. Of course, we would have to put in even more effort to cover those glaring holes in the list, but that could just as fine be work in progress with the new and modern equipment list in place.

I like and support this idea.  It is a good one.

@Sean in Heph thread

That... wouldn't really help.  I could do less actions, and that would be kinder to PW, but I'm not sure what else to do for each question.  Am I supposed to describe Saint's posture, tone of voice, the environment?  That all seems like bloat that would make it hard to understand what's desired.

Maybe I'll reduce my actions to five from now on.  Just to be less mean.

[Nikitian]

Sure, no problem; I refrained from packing text into spoilers mainly because it was all addressed to one person, so not much way to meaningfully divide into sections (and a single spoiler in a tiny post seemed slightly ugly; I'll do so now that you asked me to).

Also, what's with RPing you're talking about? As in, why would you want to reword perfectly fine bolded actions as questions, asked into nowhere, to no one in particular, and intended to be replied by GM, not any particular person (not even ARESTEVE)?
I can confirm that you can do perfectly fine and natural RPing when it is called for ( ), why convert natural work actions into awkward semi-RPing? Especially when both can coincide in one's action post (not to mention numerous non-action ones) just as fine.

Edit: I just re-read the last Hephaestus post of Piecewise and I think I can understand where that comes from. Still, I stand by my belief that (even if this is exactly what Piecewise wants, which I doubt), substituting talk for equal actions is not RPing science; the real thing would be to take out the experiments personally - which is, while it sounds good, quite difficult to make happen. Sean's/Anton's personal research on HEP and proto-PEW is supposed to be an example, but half of the experiment was swallowed by pms, I presume (actually building the thing) and the other half consisted mainly of "operate the prototype, hide at safe distance, test on various armor thickness" - which is actually not that much to do. And even then it was more of "engineering" kind of testing, rather than "scientific".

[syvarris]

Well, did you listen to the last ER talk?  In it, PW mentioned how Hephaestus wasn't really what he wanted; He described his desire as closer to what Sean did with the PEW testing.  I was also specifically mentioned as an example of what he didn't want: Text walls asking about armor thickness or other detailed numbers.

I felt guilty about that, and tried to talk to PW about what he wanted, and he suggested I try to actually RP experiments rather than just ask questions of god and magically get answers.  I tried to do that by having Saint personally meet with the scientist leading the forcefield project, but it ended up with Saint asking a scientist to do things, and still magically getting answers.  Hence why I said I'm doing a bad job--It's only barely 'better', and not really at all what PW wants.  I'm not sure how to improve it though.  I've tried writing action commands for doing it personally, but they ended up looking nearly identical to my old actions.  Writing in third person made it look different, but also seemed confusing and odd.

And yeeaaah, I fully agree with you on that last paragraph.  _{^{Maybe PW means he wants me to PM him my actions...}}

[Kriellya]

I feel we have an issue of speed vs. good RP.

What PW would like to see you do is RP out experiments. Depending on the player, I could think of a couple ways to do it. One would be to 'talk to yourself', another would be to pair up with another player, a third might be to place yourself as head of a NPC team that you are discussing the experiments and later design with. All up to you, all pretty optional as well.
The issue, I think, is that Heph has a lot of uninteresting experiments that have to be done before they can even know what *interesting* experiments there are to do.

This is 1) potentially boring, when the experiments aren't interesting and 2) slow, if you can only have one experiment going at a time. It's the same problem that led to the wall-of-text tinker posts, and the wall of text Heph posts. People wanted to get done with their tinker ASAP, so they asked a TON of questions in one post, and basically tried to do this entire process of experiment-result-engineering in a single post, so they could get everything they wanted done in one PW post. The problem is, they also need some of that information in order to continue to the interesting part.

I feel like spicing up the procedure will take a combination of the broad, rapid tests, and targeted experiments, followed by engineering.
First, for most subjects, you're going to have a suite of quick tests you want to run on it. For example, for most materials, you're going to want to know all about the properties, which can be done with a series of rather rote tests. If it's an artifact, you're going to want to push all the buttons in a controlled way. If the artifact doesn't have buttons... best of luck to you.
Second, when some interesting property is discovered, you'll want to make a targeted experiment to explore what you can do with that property. Sometimes, maybe if an artifact was used on mission, you'll already have a targeted experiment in mind, as was the case with the glow-worm gun.
Finally, once you know what the subject can do, you can start copying it or engineering new devices from it.

[Nikitian]

Spoiler: To Syvarris (click to show/hide)

Yeah, I did listen to it, and I'm still wondering how we should do about it. For one, I'm pretty sure if we go full scientific RPing on Piecewise (the way Pyro/Simus did on the planetoid), we'll get very little done and exhaust the GM Tinker-gone-overboard-style.
For another one, I am pretty sure I probably wouldn't be able to go even half scientific - between not knowing half the things, the slow dragging on of the turns and advanced hi-science of ER-age; I would end up as devastated as Piecewise would (which is a good indicator of a wrong approach). I'd guess that perhaps only Pyro could really keep up that sort of work - and there's a good reason we suspect him to be a governmental R&D AI

So, probably the only way I can more or less efficiently facilitate scientific research is by being a glorified science-manager; and I doubt something else is can be expected of any of us.

However, what I think Piecewise wants is stories. Not in the sense of filling our bolded-action-bossing-around with minute details of said actions, but actively doing stuff that needs choices, that requires taking risks and doing something actual (and not just world-building). I.e. there should be "encounters", to use a D&D equivalent; Anton's weapon testing was certainly meaningful in the sense of being one - whether and how to use the big black box, and how to avoid character injury or death; as a scientific event, it was but a mere footnote, as evident by the later "armor thickness testing" and Piecewise's growing boredom.
For that reason, while keeping the science management the old "ordering around way" (is there any better, really?), I am working on providing the ground for future "encounters" within that framework - note the expedition talks, trying out new (and deliciously dangerous!) scientific fields, etc. I probably would also get around to certain personal experiments once in a while (especially since science teams cannot work on Nyartifacts and I have a bunch). But apart from that, I believe that assigning science teams (and ARESTEVE) and generally figuring things out like you do would remain the mainstay of research - in that particular form, having nothing to do with risks, meaningful non-worldbuilding choices or roleplaying stuff.
Because Hephaestus ain't no sunny resort, we have grim and thankless job to do which is vital to our cause. And it is exactly  to supplement Pw's world-building.

((Also, to think of it, I find it funny that we the players are doing the tiresome and at times bland world-building work and then also have to entertain the GM. Usually it goes the opposite way, but hey, no judging here. ))

Spoiler: To Kriellya (click to show/hide)

I find your ideas helpful and agree with many of your secondary points, but I must disagree with you in the central premise of "we need more RP", for reasons explained in the spoiler above. Long story short, I believe that Piecewise is more interested in chances to fuck us up than us merely RPing our scientific work here in detail. RPing how we make choices and survive the consequences is nice and cool, and it's derivative of the fact there were those choices and risks in the first place.

Now, dangerous experiments and field-testing is another thing entirely, of course; but high-lighting those isn't exactly "RPing research in detail". And then, until a certain danger threshold and/or except in very special cases (like Nyartifacts that cannot be researched by NPCs), even disastrous experiment results would be effectively harmless to us due to plain regular precautions and safety mechanisms.
That is, until we cross that certain danger threshold, and until we start working with very special cases.

[Kriellya]

I find your ideas helpful and agree with many of your secondary points, but I must disagree with you in the central premise of "we need more RP", for reasons explained in the spoiler above. Long story short, I believe that Piecewise is more interested in chances to fuck us up than us merely RPing our scientific work here in detail. RPing how we make choices and survive the consequences is nice and cool, and it's derivative of the fact there were those choices and risks in the first place.

Now, dangerous experiments and field-testing is another thing entirely, of course; but high-lighting those isn't exactly "RPing research in detail". And then, until a certain danger threshold and/or except in very special cases (like Nyartifacts that cannot be researched by NPCs), even disastrous experiment results would be effectively harmless to us due to plain regular precautions and safety mechanisms.
That is, until we cross that certain danger threshold, and until we start working with very special cases.

Oh no, I agree with you on that. We don't need more 'RP', persay, just more action. Which is, in a certain respect, still RP

Think of it this way. RP is two parts: The fluff you add, and the actions you take. We don't need more fluff, necessarily. If that's what you want to do, or not do, then go for it. I usually appreciate it, but it's not needed
What we *do* need is more meaningful actions, which is still a part of RP. Right now we just have 'hey you. Come up with all the insights for me' There's no story being crafted in how Heph's products were created, or how we discovered what we could do with these artifacts, just PW telling you that your scientists made a thing.
I mention 'fluff' aspects because they might help you come up with actions. As in, if you're having trouble coming up with an action, try thinking about the fluff. If you were talking to yourself about it, or at the head of a team doing science, what would your next step be?

[Nikitian]

Ah, glad we're on the same page, then. 

Thank you for your "inspiration in finding details" approach then; myself, as I said, I was mostly thinking of "inspiration in transcending details" and doing "action" things on a higher scale (where things are inherently unsafe and free from being bogged down in technicalities). Both approaches are valid; and now I have to think of how to incorporate yours into my future research. 

[Radio Controlled]

spoilers!

Spoiler: syvvaris-kun and Nikitian-chan (click to show/hide)

I had actually gotten slightly angry at Radio earlier, and now I feel bad about that

No worries mate, I think I wasn't 100% clear with my wording either, seeing how much explaining I needed to do later on.

If there's an actual logical reason for it to be better, I'd be fine.  For example, you could increase the blurad battery to have a much larger power supply, and say that the individual shots are far more powerful than a CutLas shot, to the point they can kill someone in Milnoplate due to the blast.  Effectively the same result, but there's a logical explanation for it, rather than "Well, it shouldn't be weak, so it's strong."

Yeah, I meant it more as 'we have wiggle room, so we can balance it so it makes sense, maybe nerf some other things as needed to keep balance'. Not randomly increasing power just because, that'd be ridiculous indeed.

Anyway, 'inferior but different' is sort of the worst option in my opinion.  If it's inferior, but looks different enough that one might not realize it's inferior, that's bad.  It'll lead to people buying the thing when they have no good reason to.  This is my primary objection to armory clutter- there's lots of people who don't even understand what old standard weapons are capable of, since they aren't obsessive interested in the subject like me.
If I tell you that in Perplexicon, there were three gods that would help your character be unkillable, which one will you pick (with the goal of being as difficult to kill as possible)?  Yo-drell, god of survival and stone, Flux, god of change and movement, or Blastel, god of battle and violence?  You likely wouldn't choose correctly since you don't have all the information.
But, if we remove the inferior options, nobody will choose incorrectly.  Everyone gets the best result, except for the rare fringe cases where a weapon happens to be the best through sheer luck.

Problem, I guess, is that it makes sense in-game for our characters to try and make sure everybody has the best equipment possible, but OOC players still have the actual decision power. If people wanna blow their starting 5 tokens on an untested nyartifact, that's their choice, and even though I don't think that's a very smart choice, I can't exactly stop them. I guess I could increase dictator powers IC, but that'd limit the game. Basically, as much as it sucks, I think people should have the choice of inferior things. We can help them, but i don't think we wanna become too paternalistic and outright protect them from themselves. Makes sense IC, but difficult OOC.

By the way, what's the answer to that last question? Didn't follow perplexicon extremely closely.

See, this doesn't feel like it means anything to me.  Every weapon is equally vulnerable to that effect, so if we're comparing things then it's moot.  I could be missing something though.  My brain is at 50% ATM.

Thing is, can we know every weapon is equally vulnerable? it's hard to compare weapon effectiveness with any real certainty if we don't have a sufficiently large sample pool of IC usage. If pw down-or upgraded all weapons equally when going from test lab to field, it wouldn't matter, but I don't think that's really the case. So one weapon might work perfectly as advertised in the tests, and another might not.

I'm sorry, I do use words inconsistently sometimes.  Before, I said the Testament was 'effective' against heavy armor, which I meant to mean 'it reliably has a notable effect'.  The damage you quoted seems consistent with that.  I was comparing it to the blifle, which I believed (and still do) to have no real effect on Milnoplate.

Yeah, maybe I was seeing things in your wording you didn't intend, sorry if that's the case.

Also, the Testament is semiauto, although volleys probably have a slight delay.  There's no reason you couldn't shoot several 9-volleys, which would notably damage a Milnoplated person.  A blifle, even unloading, probably wouldn't even hurt them unless you used the final fire mode.

Indeed, as pw confirmed! So, we'll have to find a way to fix that (that's not arbitrarily buffing it).

See bottom of Nik post.  I firmly believe that we can make better decisions than the average ARM trooper.

Perhaps we can. So, question becomes, should we make decisions for them?

I'd first ask how much power I can get in a 1-token battery, then I'd ask how much power is required for a laser pulse to kill a milnoplated target.  If I didn't determine the second step by asking how many of those shots would be in a 1-token blurad batt, then I'd divide and get my number of shots.  After that, I'd ask how expensive the device is, and determine if the given prices and values are worth it compared to other weapons.  If so, I'd present it to the council, and if not, I'd toss it out.

That doesn't sound like a bad way to do it... but tinkering in that way over irc, while several other people are asking pw questions and sometimes he misses things and others are just chatting... Yeah, you see the potential problems with this. If it were regular thread tinker, it might be easier to do it like this.

But that's my methodical mathmatical approach, which has caused PW to cry for my blood half the time I talk to him.  So, maybe you're right and my method isn't the best.

Well, we're certainly seeing some potential pitfalls with this method. some sort of hybrid method might be ideal?

And balance is kinda an irrelevant question here.  The blurad batts are supposed to be outright superior to old batts.  It would be better to compare the blifle's battery to a blurad powered CL.

Sure, but remember also that in this comparison, there's also the issue of weight and size. these bluerad bats are much smaller and lighter than cutlass bats. I'm sure if we went for bats of same size/weight, they'd have vastly more power for similar size.

Idea: The wiki poll thing which is currently asking about ARMburgers--could we change it to ask whether people read the actual articles for items before making a purchase, and whether they prefer informative or entertaining descriptions?

Sure. I think I can make 2 polls for that (unsure how to make 1 with multiple answers). How exactly should I phrase the question and options?

How do you decide what to purchase?
1) go over the wiki items and try to make a careful decision, taking different things into account
2) go over the wiki items and choose whatever looks best at a glance
3) just pick whatever seems coolest or most popular

On "outdated equipment":
I've been thinking about it and came to this idea: how about we put the whole original Altered Wars-legacy equipment list (plus-minus a few entries) on a separate page, "Outdated Armory" or something, and then let only the new, high-tech and highly efficient equipment on the regular Armory page? That way an average trooper could look and see only the "best" options at first glance; and if he finds a glaring hole where something suiting his needs should be, he could go and look over the outdated equipment list - at his own risk. Of course, we would have to put in even more effort to cover those glaring holes in the list, but that could just as fine be work in progress with the new and modern equipment list in place.

Hmm. I could live with that in principle, but would like more outside (non-tinker peeps, for example, and wiki gnomes) opinions before committing, and make sure we are all on the same page before continuing.

So, I propose the following for the blasters: let's do them 1 by 1, and if we encounter an issue, we'll ask pw for clarification.

So, blaster pistol:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Blaster Pistol
1 token
Stat Restriction: None
Ammo: Blueshard battery, 1 token per clip/battery, 20 shots (or 1 overcharged shot)
Description: The smallest cousin of the Blueshard Blasters line, this simple sidearm uses a blueshard battery to allow for 20 shots of laser rifle power per clip. It fires pulsed laser shots, not a continuous beam. Blueshard becomes grey dust once it's spent. Small enough for concealed carry or for pilots in tight vehicles.
Special: one can discharge the entire remaining battery power into one shot, melting the weapon to slag and delivering a beam of about cutting laser strength (if a fully charged battery was used). Try not to encase your hand in molten metal when using this feature.


Should the pistol have diffusion settings? I think that this is the one that has least need for it, seeing as how its a sidearm and such, but it couldn't exactly hurt either. Also, nik, unless you really mind, I think I'm gonna stick with 3 different diffusions, seems easiest for us and (especially) pw.

[Nikitian]

Aww! And then so little said to me, and so much to syvarris-kun.  This greatly disappoints me, Radio Controlled-san.

Spoiler: Blaster Pistol talk (click to show/hide)

I think it should have diffusion settings, if solely that when a full discharge is used, one could do so in a wide blast, for example. Also, unless I am misunderstanding the default diffusion amount, I think we do want to have the two "medium" settings discussed earlier (apart from precise one - not sure if possible, actually, but up to piecewise - and wide one - this should be easy to have). Basically, since the blaster weapons deliver short pulses and not laser beem sweeps, the damage will be done mostly through the hit area (plus maybe or maybe not tiny explosion). The "default" one (which I actually propose to make secondary), inherited from the laser rifle/handlaser is too small to cause much damage - and might be too powerful at that small damage area; so I still suggest a setting which would deliver moderately sizeable hit areas - say, fist-sized at medium, and two-finger-thick at close, maybe.
Think AK-74 over AK-47: sure, the latter can pierce rail track on a good shot, but it's the former that does more damage to living targets; the latter simply bursts through flesh without much damage to body (unless a lucky hit scored, of course).
And that's even before we bring up the topic of shooting large alien monsters instead of human/sod targets.

Question: blasts are laser-rifle power; how many seconds equivalent? Because it matters, since it's gonna be used in clip size/efficiency calculations.
Also, despite how small the weapon is, and its designated "sidearm" use, I still believe it is the new equivalent for the laser rifle. As such, I think the clip can be made physically bigger (a bit), closer to laser rifle battery - so we could fully engage in calculating energy capacity the way Syv suggested.
(Now, I have nothing against 20 shots, but it matters whether those are going to be 1-sec equivalent, 3-sec, or 10-sec - the latter especially so for high-diffusion setting.)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Aww! And then so little said to me, and so much to syvarris-kun.  This greatly disappoints me, Radio Controlled-san.

Spoiler: Blaster Pistol talk (click to show/hide)

I think it should have diffusion settings, if solely that when a full discharge is used, one could do so in a wide blast, for example. Also, unless I am misunderstanding the default diffusion amount, I think we do want to have the two "medium" settings discussed earlier (apart from precise one - not sure if possible, actually, but up to piecewise - and wide one - this should be easy to have). Basically, since the blaster weapons deliver short pulses and not laser beem sweeps, the damage will be done mostly through the hit area (plus maybe or maybe not tiny explosion). The "default" one (which I actually propose to make secondary), inherited from the laser rifle/handlaser is too small to cause much damage - and might be too powerful at that small damage area; so I still suggest a setting which would deliver moderately sizeable hit areas - say, fist-sized at medium, and two-finger-thick at close, maybe.
Think AK-74 over AK-47: sure, the latter can pierce rail track on a good shot, but it's the former that does more damage to living targets; the latter simply bursts through flesh without much damage to body (unless a lucky hit scored, of course).
And that's even before we bring up the topic of shooting large alien monsters instead of human/sod targets.

Question: blasts are laser-rifle power; how many seconds equivalent? Because it matters, since it's gonna be used in clip size/efficiency calculations.
Also, despite how small the weapon is, and its designated "sidearm" use, I still believe it is the new equivalent for the laser rifle. As such, I think the clip can be made physically bigger (a bit), closer to laser rifle battery - so we could fully engage in calculating energy capacity the way Syv suggested.
(Now, I have nothing against 20 shots, but it matters whether those are going to be 1-sec equivalent, 3-sec, or 10-sec - the latter especially so for high-diffusion setting.)

I have considered all "blaster" pulses to be concentrated equivalents of 5-second beams from their respective analogues, because 5-second beams were the default mode of attack for as long as I can remember. In this case, the battery capacities closely match their current regular equivalents - the lasrifle gets 24 5-second pulses per 1-token clip, versus the blastpistol's 20. The cutting laser gets 12 5-second pulses per its 2-token battery, the blastrifle gets 10 shots per two 1-token clips.

I don't think the laser pistol should have "precise" diffusion - it's not a sniping weapon simply by not having the right form factor for it, it needs more focusing chambers.

You can, if you want to, completely replace the current-gen laser rifle with the pistol form-factor. Have two versions of the same weapon - a 2-token one that can fire in continuous beams, and a 1-token one that's limited to instant pulses. The core of the matter is that tokens are not a measure of how expensive something is to make, or how advanced it is - it's a measure of how dangerous it is to give to someone. A laser pistol that's exactly as powerful as a laser rifle, should cost at least as much as the current laser rifle, because it's at least just as dangerous.

[Comrade P.]

By the way, is blaster pistol's rate of fire limited only with how fast and often you can pull the trigger?