Colonial Marines RNG based combat

[Pseudomaniac]

Hi! I'm Pseudo! You probably don't know me! I also don't usually use this many exclamation marks.

So you know how you're rolling the dice every time you attack in CM? You don't? I need to elaborate? Fiiiiiiiiine.

Every time you shoot a xeno, you roll to hit, then roll to see if you deflect off the xenoes armour. Naturally rolling to hit depends on how far the xeno is from you, and how accurate your weapon is currently (dual wielding, attachments, type of gun, ect.).

So naturally, when you walk up to a crusher, and you have M41A AP ammo generally when you shoot that crusher ten times, you expect to deal a heavy amount of damage. Except that 7 of your shots deflect and you begin question the definition of AP ammo.

Everytime you attack a marine as a xeno you roll against their armour to see how much damage you do, sometimes deflecting, sometimes doing diddly squat or doing real soviet damage with a tail crit.

So naturally, when you're standing right next to a marine, shooting them with neuro tox, you expect to hit them. What you do not expect is your spit to phase through them, or for you to get 'The neurotox narrowly misses *insert name here*!', right before the marine pulls out a shotgun and instantly crits you with pointblank buckshot.

Now I know you might be saying that RNG makes things fun. Sure, shrugging off a rav charge with no damage might be one of those 'holy shit' moments for the marine, but for the rav who had to expose themselves, wait for the right moment to strike and dodge the inevitable return fire, it's one of those frustrating moments.

Conversely, a young crusher charge managing to pop someones head off might be that 'holy shit' moment for the crusher, but for the receiving marine he's now out of the round permanently, because he rolled a 1 on his luck.

I'm generally not sure what the consensus is on this, do people enjoy this? Should CM start moving to a point where things are far more consistent, with slashes always doing a set amount of damage, bullets, disarms doing consistent stamina damage instead of instantly stunning, ect?

[Casany]

No. If there was no RNG, marines would be instatackled every time, there'd be no chance to get away from any competent spitter, and every time you run up against any t2+ you'd just be fucked.

Same with xenos. If there was no RNG you could kill a runner in three shots, maim crushers with regular bullets, and hit ravagers without even trying destroying the glass that makes their cannon.

[Butlerblock]

RNG is mainly established so people can't power game things.

There are a lot more things in the game than just combat RNG, such as surgery. Almost every surgery action takes a random amount of time, but I believe the interval is relatively small, to prevent surgery macros.

[Grubstank]

The problem with trying to balance RNG is that it's all dependent on how frequent those "holy shit" moments are -- the problem with having that discussion here is that the devs (to my knowledge) don't release any actual figures on what the probability of certain events are.

I assume that's to discourage power gaming but the reality of the situation is that the absence of real numbers is probably what's created such a powerful culture of power gaming superstition amongst the marines in the first place

[Tharinoma]

I assure you that some players will go full powergaming anyways.
The rng is also here for the same reason dnd players use dice. In order to create a feeling of realism and allow strong roleplay, players must be unable to predict with accuracy the consequenced of one's actions.
Particularly when you play the same game over and over, in which you fight an enemy you know everything about but must pretend you are discovering.

[spookydonut]

With no rng bullets would hit 100% up to their max range.

[wrpen]

I assure you that some players will go full powergaming anyways.
The rng is also here for the same reason dnd players use dice. In order to create a feeling of realism and allow strong roleplay, players must be unable to predict with accuracy the consequenced of one's actions.
Particularly when you play the same game over and over, in which you fight an enemy you know everything about but must pretend you are discovering.

The thing about D&D is the RNG in that game is bullshit too, but it's passable because there's always a living human that can control how bad things go from there. There is no realism in a level 20 rogue failing a simple dex save 1/20 times, or a level 1 fighter one-shotting anything larger than a cat. Or a cat beating a level 1 fighter in a fight to the death, for that matter. The DM will always make sure that doesn't happen, or if it does, that it isn't as influential on the story as any actual players choice, often to the point of changing the rules of the game to better fit what should happen. CM has no DM, it has an algorithm outputting results with complete unrealistic bullshit being a non-factor.

I agree that RNG should be lessened. Not completely removed as a few people have mistaken the OP to be saying, but it is kinda unrealistic for a trained soldier, even under terrifying conditions, to miss point blank more than once, or for a clawing to do any less damage to the same spot on the same person than it did half a second ago.

[Simo94]

RNG adds a roleplay feel to the game, its one of the main characteristics of SS13 as a whole, just like real life, shit happens all the time, maybe your character is not a good shot, maybe your hands are sweaty and its a really hot day, maybe you didn't clean your gun very well last time...etc, its a roleplay game afterall, not a team deathmatch.