Print

[ChEeKi]

I keep a big tab of various bugs, changes and fixes on the side when i'm playing AOP, these are some of the bigger suggestions i've come up with while playing the game. They are not to be taken as "required" or "demands", they are simply the opinions and changes a single player has on the way various aspects of the game are working right now.



S.P.E.C.I.A.L

-With about 4 perception (and a build designed to take advantage of this) you can fire nearly every weapon in the game (including most sniper rifles) up to the maximum hit range you can get with that weapon. Considering the ease at which sight range is given to us in perks and weapon traits, and the chance to hit formula as it currently stands, i suggest some harsh scrutiny be given into long distance weapon range (may be too low in many cases) and the values of low perception. AOP has a really interesting special system that encourages really valuable trade offs per stat, and i think perception may be too easily mitigated and treated as a dump stat.

TRAITS

-Many Starting Traits currently feel extremely negative instead of trade offs. Things like Small frame consign your character to being permanently knocked down by everything and everyone for a single point of agility. Finesse will never actually result in your character dealing more damage and things like Four Eyes, Drug Dealer and Blind luck are so situational that they're either full on buffs or pointless nerfs.

-Four eyes devalues the perception stat heavily by providing nearly +20-30 sight range with scoped weapons.



WEAPONS


Shotguns: Shotguns right now are exceptionally outstanding or absolutely worthless. The combat shotgun is easily the best Small Gun we have easily available to us for more reasons than just "It does lots of damage". There's some really bad perk choices with the combat shotgun, and some really bad stat choices on the other shotguns that make them unreasonable to use. Not to mention the icing on the cake ammunition just making them a shattered mess.


-Shotguns all have "Hit the Gaps" for some unexplainable reason. -10% DR/DT to the enemy. Thats really just a fancy way of saying "Your weapon deals +10% more damage(DR) + 2-3 Damage per bullet (DT). This isn't really a thing shotguns should have, you're not firing it at the chinks in the armor, you're just blasting them.
-The Combat shotgun has an additional +10% Damage on top of that from 2x Bonus Damage.
-Flechettes are the only choice of shotgun ammunition. This is partially because normal Shotgun Shells are worthless (+20 DR to the enemy?!) and partially because the DT penetration stat on flechettes is so blatantly and incorrectly used that the bullets themselves invalidate all armors by default.
-Weapons like the H&K Caws or Pancor shotgun have clip sizes that make no sense, or just hurt the weapon too drastically to make it a valuable choice.  For example the H&K fires four round bursts, but has a clip size of 10, which means your last burst is 2 instead of 4, for the same AP as a 4 shot burst.


Suggested Shotgun Changes:
- Remove the +20 DR on shotgun shells. Make them simply 0/0 DR/DT penetration. They're just pellets, let armor do its work against them.
- Change Flechettes to -10% DR, -5 DT. There is absolutely no reason they should have -80 DT (even if thats split across the 4 bullets its far too high and invalidates armor entirely).
- Change Slugs to -25% DR, 0 DT (from 0 DR -80 DT). One large, hard hitting bullet that hits hard even through armor is exactly what a slug is supposed to be.
-Make 12 Gauge Shell Ammunition available for purchase off the Ammo Vendor.
-Make 12 Gauge Slug Ammunition available for purchase off the Ammo Vendor ( Same Price as Shells).
-Double the Cost of Flechette Ammunition.
-Increase Clip Size of H&K Caws to 12 so it can properly fire three bursts.
-Increase Clip Size of Pancor Shotgun to 20 so it can properly fire four bursts.
-Remove Hit The gaps from shotguns, replace it with something that reduces DT by 1-2.
-Wait and see how that works out before making further changes.


Sniper Rifles

I actually have a fairly huge list of changes i would like to see to sniper rifles, but i'm not completely sure my changes would be in the best interest of the game. Instead i will strongly suggest that the following weapons.
M21,
AK-74-M PSO-1,
H&K G3SG1,
H&K MSG90,
M16A4 ACOG,

Be completely re-evaluated. In terms of
-Crafting recipes (Not requiring the AR to craft for instance),
-Ammo Types (More specialized ammunition instead of general purpose 7.62x51mm and 5.56mm)
-Perks (It seems like its just mix and match of the same 6-7 perks across all of them, even though there are perks like piercing strike and finisher, they don't change the way the weapon plays, just the RNG the weapon puts out.)
-The "Feel" of the Weapon

As far as i'm concerned, those five rifles are functionally identical and feel to the player as if they are re-skinned copies of themselves with the numbers fiddled around a bit on each. They might not be exactly the same, but they sure feel like it.

[Oliver]

+1

[Lidae]

I disagree about perception, so let me explain why. First, I will go into some details about how exactly the hit chance is calculated.

In the following, "Effective range" is 2/3 of the max range of a weapon. So if max range is 60, effective range is 40. The system is made so that being able to shoot at "effective range" or below takes very little skill, but anything beyond "effective range" requires a lot of skill. This is in accordance to our desire to reduce the gap between low and high level characters, and also to reduce the importance of super high skills.


The AoP Hit chance formula
The first 150 skill points are worth 95 hit chance. Having less than 50 skill means you can't hit with 95% chance even at point blank range. Every skill point above 150 gives 4 hit chance, so that 25 extra skill points gives 100 hit chance. Maximum hit chance then becomes 495.

For each percent range below the effective range, 0.95 hit chance is deducted. This means that shooting at max effective range has 95% chance to hit with 150 skill.

Now for each % above the effective range 10 hit chance will be deducted. So to shoot at 110% of effective range means you need 175 skill, and the maximum range you can shoot and hit at is 140% of effective range (this requires 250 skill).


Hit chance penalties
The above is the base hit chance. There are penalties to this depending on the type of weapon, strength, perception, armor class and where you aim.

For all weapons, if your skill is above 150, you get -40 hit chance (aka -4% effective range) for each strength point missing from the weapon strength requirement. So if you have 3 strength and wield a 5str weapon, you get -80 hit chance.

For burst weapons in burst mode, you get an additional hit chance penalty of 10 for each strength below 10. So again, with 3 strength, that's -70 hit chance for any burst weapon.

For all weapons, for each perception below 5, you lose 40 hit chance if your skill is above 150, and you lose 10 if your skill is less than 150. (Sharpshooter gives +2 to perception for this check).


For single shots only, if you're aiming, you get a penalty to hit chance that depends on your perception (sharpshooter adding +2 for this). It's currently the same regardless of where you aim, and you can check the penalty in the aim screen in the pipboy. The formula is:

aimPenalty = 20*(15-perception)


For every single shot, currently only while aiming (but imo we should make it apply even for unaimed shots, to make perception more important for non-snipers), you also get a penalty to your hit chance based on armor class. The AC penalty depends on the armor class of the target (modified by ammo AC modifier and armor and weapon perks) and of the perception of the shooter (sharpshooter adding +2 perception for this).

The formula is:

ACPenalty = AC*(22-perception)/4




Conclusions
Now if you followed me this far and tried plugging in some numbers, you see that perception is extremely important for snipers that intend to take aimed shots, especially if the target is moving. With 4 perception and no sharpshooter, you have a total hit chance penalty of 40+220=260, which means you need at least 215 skill to hit at effective range (2/3 of max range). If your skill is less than 168, you will have 0 hit chance even at 1 hex range. Compared to the best possible sniper (10 perception + sharpshooter + 250 skill), your range will be 20 percentage points shorter, which for a rifle with 70 or so range is quite significant. And this is even if the target is standing still! Against a moving target with average (20) AC, you lose an additional 90 hit chance, requiring 22.5 extra skill to compensate. So unless your sniper has at least 237 skill, you won't even reach the threshold for diminishing returns against moving targets. In other words, you can basically forget about sniping running targets. Not to mention anybody investing a little in AC. And even with max skill, a more perceptive sniper will always outperform you.

But yes, you can make a low perception sniper, especially if you compensate with higher skill and are careful with the targets you pick. I think this is the way it should be, in fact the whole system is designed particularly with such cases in mind: I want any kind of weird build to be viable, if not optimal, in most roles, if you know what you're doing. I want people to be able to try different roles on the battlefield without feeling like they have to make a new char with specialized stats just to try it out. Like it was on every other fonline game ever. So is it radical? Maybe. But it's most definitely intended.




Now I'm not saying it's perfect, and certainly some values (AC in particular) could use some tweaking. But I'm not going to even consider changing the underlying system without substantial testing showing that it's necessary.

A final word about sight range. We specifically added the "scoped" perks to certain weapons in order to make sure that even lower perception chars have a chance to be snipers. They won't be perfect snipers by any measure, but at least you have an idea what is going on. You should in many cases be able to see whoever is sniping you, even though you might not be able to touch them.

[John Porno]

sniper rifles seem very fine to me right now. I don't see the need for any changes until I can personally test their usage in larger ZC fights.

Concerning shotguns, there is indeed a problem. They are pretty much better than smg's and melees right now and require some atention. The next days I'll be working with cirno to properly implement all 3 shotgun ammos. When that is done I will also be committing smaller changes to rifles and lmg's and fix all the traits and perks which currently are offset.

Depending on how we progress with the server, EW will definitely see a relatively big change in mechanics. It just wont be coming the next days.

Aside from that, as soon as the shotguns have been dealt with I will see to finish the wiki with explanations and general guidelines on each weapon class to prevent confusion.

[BG Sexpert]

I wholeheartedly disagree with your perspective on S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

I also don't agree with the shotgun perspective. After a bit of explaining from Cirn0 and testing, the shotgun damage has a natural spread within it effective range, in which its total damage is dealt in an area in front of you, much the cone for bursting (blunt explanation I know).This is for single shots, so as you move closer you get the listed damage of the weapon, then within a few hexes you begin to see damage increases (further checking needed for certainty). The DR/DT is there likely to prevent shotguns from doing 0 damage on hits at the farther ends of their effective range.

The weapon gets its strength from surprise attacks around corners, and for holding strategic positions (as seen in TC where I prevented 4 Lawyer members from entering a building for 30+seconds ). With the existence of SMGs that have the ability to fire an entire magazine at once (reasonable),and high mid range, single shot damage, from Pistols; I don't think the Shotgun makes other weapons useless (Thank you Cirn0 and Slambliss for enlightening me on this opinion).

Small tweeks within the weapon archetype are needed however to make certain weapons more useful.

[Shangalar]

I think we added a huge amount of weapons to the game and remade basically every 'existing' one. Same with SPECIAL. It is certain tweaking will be necessary and during a long period of time. I am confident though that we already achieved great progress in the right direction and that AoP is already far more interesting in that aspect. I hope next phases of the Beta with much more PvP will help polishing all that. Thanks for your reports anyway.

[John Porno]

what ims aying about shotguns is just that they are *right now*, on the current build of the server, OP. That is because the shotguns are currently better at 1hexing than the smg's are and that has to be fixed.

[BG Sexpert]

what ims aying about shotguns is just that they are *right now*, on the current build of the server, OP. That is because the shotguns are currently better at 1hexing than the smg's are and that has to be fixed.

I can agree with this. SMG should have best 1hex in game.

[ChEeKi]

<>

Very insightful read, i would note that i considered the capability to get such extreme range with 3-4 perception a flaw and not an asset as you consider it.

I can agree with this. SMG should have best 1hex in game.

Yeah firing SMGs makes me sad ): , i cant say i've tested them enough to really have a grasp of why they're so low damage though.

Rifle bursts seem alright. Least we have those.

[John Porno]

as for smg's, msot of them deal about 200-250 dmg with one load of AP so to speak. The selection of the right target and the right ammo type (for 9mm) matters. Smg's will not be killing off full hp tanks in one go, though.

[ChEeKi]

as for smg's, msot of them deal about 200-250 dmg with one load of AP so to speak. The selection of the right target and the right ammo type (for 9mm) matters. Smg's will not be killing off full hp tanks in one go, though.

what smg are you using and against what target with what ammo?

[Lidae]

I wholeheartedly disagree with your perspective on S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Can you elaborate?

[BG Sexpert]

I wholeheartedly disagree with your perspective on S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Can you elaborate?

It was directed at ChEeki's perspective that PE is a dumpstat. While it is heavily used in the formula for hit% vs moving targets and among other things. PE is one of the more valuable stats IMO.