Increase Smartgun Armour Penetration

[Surrealistik]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Per the Subject.


Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Lets the Smartgun not be effectively useless in the inevitable late game because it can actually menace the Ancient aliens and T3s that exist then, without it being made much more effective vs pre-Ancient T1s and T2s which it is good against.


Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

Increase Smartgun penetration such that it can consistently ignore T3/ancient alium armour. The exact nature of the increase is up to the devs.


Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):

Minor coding changes.

[Steelpoint]

This may buff the weapon enough to be a viable end game weapon. Right now the Smartgun is a poor long term Spec weapon, it works very well early game but in the late game it fails hard, this is in comparison to the Sniper and SADAR which are powerful from early to late game.

[Bigchilly]

Lore wise i don't think the smartgun has the same pen as a SMG, so it would be a buff and lore friendly, maybe.

[forwardslashN]

Smartgun shoots the same rounds as the sniper rifle in the lore, but it's not very strong in the game.

[Casany]

Just add a charged barrel to your smartgun!!!

But in all seriousness I agree with this. In the lore and movies the smartgun was much more powerful then an M41A pulse rifle. +1 for me

[Snypehunter007]

I would like this to be a thing badly as someone who plays SPC and ALMOST ALWAYS chooses the Smartgun due to my lack of confidence in my GL or SADAR abilities and can't stand the FF on the M42C.

[KingKire]

+1: the smartgun is the only weapon in game that avoids friendly fire other than sentries (technically aliens). It sounds like an alright boost to this weapons potential, which does seem weak for such a massive/heavy harnessed weapon.

[forwardslashN]

Possibility: Only allow the smartgun to fire when in walk mode, but otherwise increase it's ammo capacity and damage.

[Surrealistik]

Possibility: Only allow the smartgun to fire when in walk mode, but otherwise increase it's ammo capacity and damage.

Damage isn't the issue, penetration is.

Increasing damage without increasing penetration will only make it marginally more effective vs the targets it struggles to the point of unfeasibility with, while being overkill vs pre-ancient T1s and T2s.

[Steelpoint]

Damage does not do much when you can't damage the target.

The problem with the Smartgun is that currently its the only Spec weapon that is non-viable against T3 and Elite/Ancient xenos due to lack of penetration, even the Grenade Launcher is viable against these targets (ammo issues notwithstanding).

Increasing the weapons penetration would make the Smartgun just as viable as the SADAR or Sniper in the later stages of the game, as right now the Smartgun is great for the early game but falters in the late game.

[Toroic]

Damage isn't the issue, penetration is.

Increasing damage without increasing penetration will only make it marginally more effective vs the targets it struggles to the point of unfeasibility with, while being overkill vs pre-ancient T1s and T2s.

Exactly this, +1

[forwardslashN]

Damage isn't the issue, penetration is.
Increasing damage without increasing penetration will only make it marginally more effective vs the targets it struggles to the point of unfeasibility with, while being overkill vs pre-ancient T1s and T2s.

That's not correct. Damage is more important than penetration, though your response isn't entirely surprising. I may need to fix the formulas.

[Tristan63]

It is technically a fucking handheld .50 cal, which to my understanding can penetrate light armor up to 1.35 inches thick. Only should have a hard time killing crushers and queens with a smartgun.

[Surrealistik]

That's not correct. Damage is more important than penetration, though your response isn't entirely surprising. I may need to fix the formulas.

How is it not correct?

It is a straight up fact that the Smartgun is already one of the most effective weapons in the game vs poorly armoured aliens and that buffing it vs them even more via a damage increase is unnecessary.

Also given the deflection rates of some T1-2 Ancients, and T3s, you'd need to have a ridiculous damage increase to match the impact of a penetration increment which would distort its balance in undesirable ways.

For example, if an alien has 50% deflection, the smartgun had say a base damage of 20 and base penetration (deflection reduction) of 0, and you wanted to increase its net expected damage (over time) against such a target by 25%, you'd have to increase its base damage output by 50% to have that outcome, whereas you simply need to reduce its effective deflection by 25% to achieve the same outcome by improving its ability to pierce armour.

[forwardslashN]

snip

You are taking relative figures as fact rather than passive observation. Less theoretical number talk and more arguments for why the smartgun should be more useful against xenos please.

[Surrealistik]

You are taking relative figures as fact rather than passive observation. Less theoretical number talk and more arguments for why the smartgun should be more useful against xenos please.

Perhaps the fact that it is consistently thought to be one of the weakest specialist weapons (only the grenade launcher is more poorly reviewed), and general consensus between both Xeno and Marine mains that it is shitty vs advanced evolutions/upgrades to the point of being ultimately unfeasible due to the high deflection rates they enjoy against it?

[forwardslashN]

Perhaps the fact that it is consistently thought to be one of the weakest specialist weapons (only the grenade launcher is more poorly reviewed), and general consensus between both Xeno and Marine mains that it is shitty vs advanced evolutions/upgrades to the point of being ultimately unfeasible due to the high deflection rates they enjoy against it?

I personally enjoy the smartgun, but I haven't really seen how it does against later xeno upgrades.

[Steelpoint]

Your in a unique position in that you have access to the code. You can just launch the server and test out the Smartgun on a bunch of Elite/Ancient Aliens and the T3s to see for yourself.

[MrJJJ]

Yeah i am preety sure there is a code in there that determines armor penetration, at least i think there is unless you guys deleted it for some reason

[forwardslashN]

I'm going to work on this at some point.

[SagaSword]

What the smartgun REALLY needs is more bullets fired per tick, 3 per tick is so slow.
If we increase the bullets fired it will be truly a weapon to be feared and will do balanced damage. But hey, that's just my opinion.

[apophis775]

Accepted. I think the Smartgun DOES need a little bit of a boost.

[Snypehunter007]

Moved to the new GitLab suggestion system.