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[Jiyva]

Reasons are following:
#1 Giving "Gun" type a memorable character. If a mechanics has 50% chance to happen, then the players are generally not aware of them in gameplay. To see this design's awkwardness, just imagine you have "Cannon" type has 50% to cause damage overflow or "Explosive" type has 50% to cause AoE damage. You see the point?
 
#2 A boost to combat build strategy. Now the players have a more reliable mechanism in her toolbox.

[Kyzrati]

There are many mechanics which aren't apparent at first and the player learns about over time, so I wouldn't worry about that aspect.

Based on the current meta, I would much prefer to boost cannons which are generally underutilized by comparison. Gun builds are already very strong.

You can already fairly easily increase the gunslinging percentage to 100 with utilities, making it more of a strategic choice rather than an outright reliable buff. Design-wise, strategic choices are more interesting where possible.

The thing about cannon damage overflow is that by default it rarely applies, because you have to destroy a part for it to work. (That mechanic was added primarily for massive special cannons, to avoid ridiculous situations where you use an end-game cannon and simply destroy a target's single processor or something else tiny, and have no other effect on the target.)

[Jiyva]

There are many mechanics which aren't apparent at first and the player learns about over time, so I wouldn't worry about that aspect.

Based on the current meta, I would much prefer to boost cannons which are generally underutilized by comparison. Gun builds are already very strong.

You can already fairly easily increase the gunslinging percentage to 100 with utilities, making it more of a strategic choice rather than an outright reliable buff. Design-wise, strategic choices are more interesting where possible.

The thing about cannon damage overflow is that by default it rarely applies, because you have to destroy a part for it to work. (That mechanic was added primarily for massive special cannons, to avoid ridiculous situations where you use an end-game cannon and simply destroy a target's single processor or something else tiny, and have no other effect on the target.)

Overall I agree with what you said. It may be a good idea to display the chance of gunslinging in the spec window along with some other things like critical shot, penetration, etc.

A quick question: would the game reflect the change of data in the spec window? I am using some treads but the recoil figure still remains the same in the spec window.

[Kyzrati]

It's true there's currently no display for gunslinging chance, although putting it in the item info window itself would be misleading because it's not an item property. It's a property of the volley, consistent across the board.

Volley stats (including recoil effects!) are shown in targeting mode next to the weapons on your weapon list. While using treads you can see the difference applied there.

[zxc]

>You can already fairly easily increase the gunslinging percentage to 100 with utilities,

I think this is a good argument for making it 100% all the time. That way you don't need to deal with yet another stat, and it'll make the effect clearer, especially to newer players. This would not be much of a buff, but again, it doesn't really need a buff (except perhaps vs single target late-game esp. crit immune).

What if there were a utility which made guns have a chance to fire twice instead of once (for no/reduced resource cost)? Random thought.

[Kyzrati]

>You can already fairly easily increase the gunslinging percentage to 100 with utilities,

I think this is a good argument for making it 100% all the time.

I dunno, that in itself doesn't seem to be much of an argument since there are other utilities with similarly strong potential beneficial side effects but you need to have the utility to get them. I mean, that's kinda the point of utilities.

In this particular case the idea is that you can get this effect if you're a more dedicated combat build, most of which will want targeting to complement their multi-weapon volley.

That said, I can see how making it happen by default is a nice buff for combat builds that focus on multiweapon volleys, which is an ongoing goal I have. One of the main issues is that it'll also somewhat work against my desire to improve cannons as a weapon choice as well. Currently guns are generally preferable for a number of reasons, and this would just add another.

I think basically the way I worked it out early on when adding that mechanic was that gunslinging all the time can be really powerful, which is why I didn't want it to come for free. That's why there's a percent chance to begin with, but as with most mechanics I also wanted to make it tweakable by the player's build if they wanted to take advantage of it.

[zxc]

Strange that you say guns are preferable to cannons. Energy cannons esp. EM have been meta since at least Steam release. Gunslinging has been avoided by most top players for a long time (although perfectly playable, just loses steam when hitting extended).

[Kyzrati]

Yeah but I don't think proper balance needs to be tweaked to extend all the way into extended. In extreme parts of the game like that, only a subset of strategies (or sometimes different strategies entirely) are going to work, and that's fine.

And cannons are great, but that's mostly a separate function of the "standard" expert build which is as high on utilities and low on weapon slots as possible. I'm thinking mostly from the point of view of builds with numerous weapon slots. Of course, if you're going with lots of weapon slots, guns automatically make a better choice for other reasons... Meh, maybe I'll change it... I do want to increase the value of weapon slots, and this'd be a pretty good way to do it despite my other reservations.

[zxc]

Well, a whole bunch of people only consider extended when crafting builds and strategies, and that makes sense to me because we have collectively become good enough at the game that the regular game does not require pushing new strategic boundaries.

Of course, there are challenge modes as well... but I think everyone is still focused on extended endgame.

[Kyzrati]

K, it is done, gunslinging is 100%.


And so are melee follow-up attacks against additional targets.


(will be available in the upcoming Beta 7, anyway)

[zrn]

That is interesting, so what pushed you to make gunslinging 100%? You seemed reserved about it earlier in the thread. Also, you said that cannons were already weaker by comparison, are there plans to buff cannons?

[Kyzrati]

Heh, well I always start out reserved about changing existing mechanics or systems, and when it comes to design planning will often take a stance opposite of whoever I'm discussing it with purely for deeper analysis sake. Basically if I can poke holes in something, or come at from my original point of view and still feel like a reasonable idea shows promise after cross analysis then it's more likely it'll be worth it.

In this case one of the biggest factors is that I really like the fact that this change adds value to having additional weapon slots, which is another long-term goal I've had.

Cannons do have their own niches, and can be great with the right build. I've had other thoughts on how to improve those as a weapon class, though technically that's not entirely necessary because it's not like they're unused.

[zxc]

Woah.

You sure this is a good move?

...

Just kidding. Looking forward to it!

...

Am curious though since very few people chimed in on this. I think it'll work well, at least.

[Kyzrati]

Haha, well it's easy to revert if necessary, though I also liked the fact that it makes this a more reliable tactic by decoupling it from the RNG, and reliable tactics are nice. Another reason for adding it is that as of Beta 6 I don't think we're seeing gunslinging having much of an impact on player strategy. I'll be watching this closely. (I can't imagine the melee change making much of a difference, but did that for consistency.)