User:Zhani/Suggestion1
No More Walking Armories: Less weapons, more ammo.
| Timestamp: | Zhani 21:36, 3 September 2008 (BST) |
| Type: | Change to firearm usage |
| Scope: | Survivors, firearms. |
| Description: | Add Equipped Weapon feature, adjust weapon balance numbers to encourage reloading over trenchcoatism. See below for details. |
As things stand, players in Malton become walking armories, with as many loaded pistols and shotguns strapped to their bodies as they can carry. Essentially, everyone is a trenchcoater by default. This is due to how firearms currently work and their game statistics. Players are rewarded for carrying multiple loaded firearms, and there's little penalty for doing so. Guns have very little encumberance relative to their ammunition, and there's no cost at all to moving on to your next loaded weapon. I think this is unbelievable and out of genre.
My proposal is to add a new game feature and tweak weapon encumbrance, find rates, and damage in order to encourage the carrying and use of only primary weapons, with plenty of ammo for those weapons.
1. Equipped Weapon The game supports selecting items that are "worn"; however, this is only used for clothing and flavor at the moment. With this addition, survivor players select any weapon in their inventory to be equipped.
- Above "Inventory (click to use):" there is "Weapon (select):". There will be a new drop-down list in this section:
Equip [Weapon List] as weapon. This lets the player choose any existing weapon in their inventory, or an improvised weapon like a fuel can or crowbar. - Equipping a weapon costs 2 AP. This represents getting it out of your backpack/belt and having it ready for combat. The AP cost of switching weapons provides an incentive to reload over switching between a stocked series of weapons.
- You can only attack with your equipped weapon. The "attack player" option no longer offers multiple weapons as a choice, but instead lists your equipped weapon:
Attack [Joe Zombie] with pistol. If no weapon is equipped, all attacks are punches. - Once a weapon is equipped, the "Weapon:" section no longer displays "(select)", and the selected weapon is displayed there, instead of in the inventory section. Below that, the weapon-selection control remains available to select another weapon.
- Clicking ammo to reload defaults to reloading the equipped weapon if it is unloaded. Clicking the equipped weapon removes it. Clicking a weapon that does not have a dual usage (most of them) will equip them as well (this is necessary so you can still click fuel cans to use them on generators, fire flare guns, etc.)
- Upon dying, the equipped weapon is removed and remains in the player's inventory. Zombies do not have equipped weapons. Revivified survivors must reequip their weapon.
- The currently equipped weapon can be seen in the profile description, along with clothing.
2. Weapon Encumbrance Values Firearm encumbrance values are increased. Guns can get heavy to carry, and shotguns are unwieldy. Pistols: 10%. Shotgun: 18%. Ammunition encumbrance is minimized. Bullets and shells take up relatively little space, and can be kept in backpacks, fannypacks, pockets, etc. Clips & Shells: 1%.
3. Reloading Reloading a clip or shell remains at 1 AP.
4. Weapon Balance: This change slightly increases the in-combat AP costs for survivors. With 8 loaded pistols in inventory, a player can currently do 240 damage in 48 turns at 65% rate, or 156 damage, or 3.25 damage/AP. With 1 equipped pistol and plenty of ammo, in 48 turns the player can empty 7 clips, doing 210 damage @65%, or 136.5 damage, or 2.84 damage/AP; a 12% decrease.
With current shotguns, 8 shotguns in inventory do 160 damage in 16 turns @ 65%, or 104 damage: 6.5damage/AP. With the change, two shots requires either switching (2AP) or reloading (2AP). Alternately, we can simply think of the unloaded shotgun as 2AP/shot. With the change, the shotgun would do 80 damage in 16 turns @ 65% or 52 damage, a 50% decrease. The change makes the shotgun even more front-loaded damage however.
It is very difficult to make absolute recommendations on numbers for game balance. Only in-game results can show whether items are unbalanced or not, and to what degree. However, as an initial rebalancing to make the change not appear so drastic, I suggest these figures:
Pistol: 6 damage/shot. (5 flak). In 48 turns (finishing empty), a pistol would do (6*7*6*0.65) or 163.8 damage on average: 3.4damage/AP, a 5% increase. This is a very modest change, and sticks to whole-number damage. In 6 turns, the existing pistol does 30 max damage, 19.5 average, the new does 36 or 23.4 average, but on subsequent turns the reload time brings the average damage back down.
Alternately: to kill 50HP enemy:
- Current: 3.25dam/AP. (Assuming enough pistols in inventory) 16AP to kill
- New: 3.34 dam/AP ((6*6*.65)/7). 15AP to kill.
Shotgun: 12 damage/shot (10 flak). 2 turns=24 damage @65%=15.6damage. Compare to current: 2 turns = 20*65%=13dam. This is a small front-end increase. However, comparing 16 turns (8 loaded current shotguns, vs 1 shotgun with reloading): (10*16*0.65)/16=6.5dam/AP. New shotgun: 2 shots, then 2 shots per 4 turns for 12 turns, then 1 shot in the last two turns. 2*12+12((2*12)/4)+0+12=108. @65%=70.2 or 4.39dam/AP. The shotgun decreases over time. If we compare current and new shotguns starting unloaded, it's 10dam/2AP vs 12dam/2AP. The advantage of starting a fight with a loaded shotgun goes up, but the advantage of carrying a stack of them goes down. It becomes worthwhile to consider switching to a sidearm after using the shotgun. This appears consistent with game believability.
An alternate way of looking at shotgun damage: to kill a 50HP enemy:
- Current: 6.5damage/AP (assuming enough shotguns in inventory). 8AP to kill.
- New: 2*7.8damage=15.6 for 2AP, then 7.8damage/2AP (reload, fire). 7AP to kill.
Shotgun opener + pistol: 15.6 average damage/2AP. 2AP to switch. 23.4 average damage/6AP. 1AP reload. 11.7 avg. dam. /3AP. = 50.7 damage in 14AP. Slightly more efficient than pistol alone, less than shotgun alone. (I have been working with current balance values; but the existing shotgun is much higher damage than the existing pistol. It requires more AP to find ammo, and reload.)
5. Weapon search rates Firearm search rate decreases slightly (most people will only want or need one of each type). Ammunition search rate increases slightly.
Pistols: Mall Gun Stores (2%/3%), Armories (2%), Police Departments (1%), Streets (1%?), Junkyards (1%?)
Shotguns: Mall Gun Stores (2%/3%), Armories (2%), Police Departments (1%), Pubs (1%)
Clips: Mall Gun Stores (13%/16%), Armories (13%), Police Departments (12%), Junkyards (2%?), Gatehouses (?%)
Shotgun shells: Mall Gun Stores (12%/16%), Armories (11%), Police Departments (11%), Junkyards (1%?)
- If a weapon is found, and the player has selected to discard that type of weapon, but they have NOT selected to discard the ammo, they retain the ammo that was in that firearm (if any).
Potential objections:
Game balance: the change to damage output/AP is relatively small. If game stats reveal survivors grow more powerful, or one weapon is more preferred than the other, damage values can be adjusted as necessary. The point of this change is not to drastically adjust game balance in any way, but to instead encourage a change in player behavior to something more consistent with genre. Any statistical flaws that benefit a weapon type or player group can be adjusted as necessary.
Inventory changes: this deprecates the value of carrying multiple weapons. Despite the increase in encumbrance of a single weapon, this should actually free up some space for people. The changes do not severely affect the contents of anyone's inventory.
Realism/Game fiction/Genre: Carrying an absurd amount of weapons is simply silly. The only reason people do is because the game mechanics encourage it. This change provides an incentive for players to behave much more akin to typical characters in zombie films: carrying a couple favored weapons, and enough ammo to keep them supplied.
Too long/complicated: This idea consists of minor changes to game variables (encumbrance, damage, search), and adds a straightforward feature which should work consistently with the existing interface and game data structures. It requires tracking one more piece of data per character: which weapon is equipped, and removes one piece of data normally transmitted on each attack: the weapon used. This should not be a prohibitive amount of development work. Balance changes are necessary to coincide with changes to AP costs for using weapons to minimize the secondary impact on gameplay.
Dupe: this is a new, comprehensive idea that stands on its own merit.
Areas for input:
How are the numbers? Are they reasonable to maintain balance while accomplishing the goal of this suggestion?
