NC Infantry analysis

I have a BR 43 NC, a BR 33 VS, a a BR 16 TR and have spend more money on guns on each of these factions than I will care to disclose. But I am not going to rely much on my personal thoughts only to attach value to various facts. Here I am first going to discuss the often linked spreadsheet on symthic, explain it than at the break go into the analysis (please don't post till I get through):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...rue&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&rowsperpage=250

Bullet Max Damage: This is the maximum damage the bullet can do and the range in which that maximum damage starts and will degrade up to the bullets Minimum damage.

Bullet Min Damage: This is the minimum damage the bullet will ever do, this is especially important to understand for VS weapons as while their bullet damage degradation is slower the maximum amount of degradation is larger meaning at extreme ranges they do substantially less damage than NC or TR given that our damage degradation will cease at ranges starting at 65m.

Short/Long Reload: The reload speeds for weapons, short is a partial reload (did not fire the entire magazine) long for empty magazine, so some weapons it’s important not to go empty before reloading!

Mag size: How many bullets are in each reload for the weapon
Ammo Pool: The amount of bullets you carry in extra magazines

Recoil: This is the predictable physical movement of the gun when shooting, I.E. the force you fight against when trying to keep your crosshair on the same pixel.

Recoil Decrease: How fast the gun moves back to center position, the more recoil decrease the better burst fire becomes as you get more decrease for that time you spent not shooting during the burst.

First Shot Multiplier: This one is tricky, this is the vertical jump of the first bullet here is a visual example http://symthic.com/goods/i/bf3/plots/small_otsikoilla_opti/FAMAS (B2K)__H. Barrel.png
What this means is after the first bullet the gun will jump and than settle into its recoil, so substantial first shot multiplier will mean you will either start fireing lower (starting at a torso shot than using the recoil to get headshots) or start with a headshot than pull down quickly to settle into the rest of the pattern.

ADS Move speed: This is the reduction of movement speed while aiming down the sights a .5 is a 50% reduction in speed while a .75 is a 25% reduction in movement speed.

COF ADS still/move/jump: This is the cone of fire in various stances while aiming down the sights, a .003 is much smaller cone of fire than a .3 so while these numbers look minute this is essentially how pinpoint accurate your gun is on the first shot.

COF hip still/move/jump: This is the cone of fire in various stances while not aiming down the sights, important to note the values on SMGs here as they are similar if not identical to ADS which means ADS only gives you a visual zoom.

COF bloom per shot: This is the unpredictable randomness that occurs after each shot, the cone will increase and depending on your range with the target will eventually be unlikely to hit. This is an important stat as depending on how you starting your COF (What stance? ADSing?) and the bloom that occurs per shot, hitting your target may no longer be likely.

ROF: How fast the gun shoots, the higher the faster.

Projectile Velocity: How fast the bullet moves from your gun to the target

Projectile Drop: How much the bullet will decline from the barrel to the target, notice VS have no bullet drop.
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Now that the spreadsheet is understood, let us explore some of the strengths and weaknesses of each faction. I want to start out with the reason I feel that NC is the weakest empire and that specifically it is the 143 LMG class. In my opinion the 143 LMG class is the most important class in the game, most lethal combat occurs at short ranges due to players having ample health vs the recoil of the weapons and the fact that there is little reason to be using infantry at extreme ranges as vehicles are the mainstay of outdoor combat. So it is this close range specializing LMGs that specialize in a range that infantry is most needed and where bullets will lead to more than maiming but kills.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...10m&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&rowsperpage=250

The parse for all LMGs I am referring to will lead to the following conclusions. Because of the sheer amount of bloom increase that occurs when getting shot, high frequency type guns are extremely deadly because while at range they are not the quickest killers they prevent others from shooting back accurately so this points to the fact that RPM is a very important stat. This is underlined by the fact that one of the most feared weapons on the battlefield is the T9 Carv.

The T9 Carv has the highest RPM of any gun with over 50 bullets with reasonable recoil, bloom and FSRM. It’s only competition in damage is the VS Orion which I will go over. In comparison with the Orion the Carv is better while aiming, slightly worse at the hip, slightly less bullet velocity, slightly harder to use due to its bullet drop and slightly higher FSRM. While aiming the Orion however only reduces movement speed by 25% rather than the Carv’s 50% making the VS Orion especially good while using nightvision at night as one will be more likely to move around with their ADS up. Also the Orion has a slightly better recoil decrease making it slightly more effective at burst fire than the Carv. The most strikeing difference between the two is in magazine size and ammo pool. The Carv takes the cake with 100 bullets rather than the VS 50 and 300 in the Ammo pool rather than 200. Both weapons are extremely effective due simply to their RPM and both weapons are the default guns of heavy assaults on their respective Empires.

“At the moment, about 10 percent of those who are playing the shooter-focused game are paying in order to get access to more options or to some weapons without grinding resources.” – John Smedley SOE

According to employees at SOE most players that play heavy assault will be using these two excellent guns for the majority of their time playing planetside 2, while the NC will be using the gauss saw and while the saw is a unique gun and one effective at range, it is in my opinion irrelevant to the role of infantry in planetside 2 especially because given the sheer amount of hits a player takes at range and the fact that shields regenerate most players at extreme ranges when being shot by a Gauss Saw will simply hide behind cover and regen their shields rendering its advantage non lethal. Thus I will not be discussing the Gauss Saw only that it is my opinion that while the Carv is better than the Orion they are both excellent and have pros and cons where 90% of NC heavy infantry will be at a disadvantage due to the starter weapon.

The NC actually have a Carv equilvalent weapon, it is called the EM1 and it is one of the most terrible “trying to be another factions guns” in the game.

The EM1 major problem is its ROF, at 652 that is a 15% decrease in rate of fire when that is by and large the most important stat this class of gun can have. It has slightly lower projectile velocity and slightly worse FSRM. It has substantially better reload speed, slightly less recoil, and identical stats to the T9 Carv otherwise. This is understandably the Empires weakness, but it is not balanced like the typical Empires weakness let us look at a class of gun that the NC excels in and the TR is making the ripoff variant.

The EM6 is a gun where the NC have an advantage the 167 class of LMG these guns have bigger bullets and are better for midrange (theoretically). The other Empires equivalence guns are the Flare(VS) and the TMG-50(TR). In comparison to the EM6 the TMG-50 and Flare both have 4% decrease in rate of fire. These guns have various pros and cons which can be seen here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AuOojvNLMApVdEtIU1NKenEzNzZOSWNaanFqSUVxLWc&type=view&gid=12&f=true&colid0=17&filterstr0=LMG&colid1=6&filterstr1=167 @ 10m&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&rowsperpage=250

As you can see in comparison with the 143 class of LMG the other factions stack up nicely against the EM6 while never overtaking its overall power. This is a theme that will happen over and over again with the NC “advantages” that their other empire equivalents will be much more balanced than the 143 class of LMG.

Another example is the Gauss Rifle an NC advantage point in the 167 class of AR it is a beastly weapon. It also in its class has the closest example of unequivalence that I can discern. The Corvus is the VS ripoff of the Gauss Rifle

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AuOojvNLMApVdEtIU1NKenEzNzZOSWNaanFqSUVxLWc&type=view&gid=12&f=true&colid0=17&filterstr0=AR&colid1=6&filterstr1=167 @ 10m&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&rowsperpage=250

The Corvus has a 13% reduction in ROF, and less projectile velocity. It has a slightly better reload time than the Gauss Rifle and while it is subjective to the user, in my opinion a equal left right recoil pattern is easier to work with than the Gauss Rifles up and right but others may disagree with that particular. Other than that, the two guns are virtually the same.

I would like to touch briefly on the VS laser gun mechanics as broad stroke advantage for their empire. Please take a look at this

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/2205/lmgdamagedegradation.png

Now we already know that the T9 Carv and the EM1 would be the same in this graph, so look carefully at the red bar vs the purple bar and how the VS Orion will get some slight extra damage from ranges 15m to 72m and than get some seriously lower damage going forward. Now the amount of times a VS weapon will kill in one less bullet because of their lowered degredation will be almost nill, a few extra points of damage will not be substantial when even the smallest health pool in the game is 500 (infiltrators).

"To clarify soft point ammo, it doesn't reduce your min damage. The only negative is a reduction in bullet speed. The positive is extended range before it takes one more bullet to kill (also slightly more damage at medium range, but the one less bullet to kill is the main feature). How far it extends that range is going to change based on the weapon." – Joshua SOE dev (I will link if asked)

Now VS laser weapons WITH soft point ammo is far closer to getting to that magic number of enemies taking one less bullet. If someone is going to benefit from one less bullet with soft point is it going to be VS, thus any weapon they have that can be equipped with such will be in my opinion, substantially better.

This is to the greater point that the NC are in fact the weakest Empire infantry wise. The 200 damage type guns that are unique to the NC (the other races don’t even have an equivalent) are largely irrelevant ultra long range specialist guns which don’t make an impact when needed in facility taking and while the faster shooting calibers might have slightly higher time to kill at extreme ranges their ability to “Supress” an enemy firing at them with the flood of bullets destroying the bloom on high caliber NC weapons largely negates that. So NC have a gimmick that strickly speaking doesn’t work, while the only gimmick that the NC has that does work is really our scattercannon MAX (which is pretty big). This post has only a few examples of the NC imbalance that generally occurs and with the spreadsheet posted at the top, you can find the pattern which is quite simple the TR weapons are never far behind on any class of weapon, the VS have a slightly less full catalog of useful classes of guns but have their unique mechanic and the NC often have the weakest in class gun, and even on classes they excel in the other factions will not be far off. But don’t take my word for it, that sheet will serve as proof.


TLDR: The EM1 needs a 3-11% ROF increase, and probably needs to be the default weapon of the NC heavy assault.

Maybe we should just trade the Carv already and the forums will finally settle down. . . probably not.

The Carv and Orion are significantly better weapons to give new players. The Gauss SAW is usually favoured by veteran gamers.

Bad thread.

^This

I'd kill for a SAW on my TR character, that thing is a beast once you get the hang of it.

This is why we can't have nice things. Even data-driven analysis is written off as whining.

I think that in general the 143 damage weapons that have a rate of fire around 650 seem somewhat weak in this game. Some kind of boost for these guns would seem like a good idea.

That said, I'm not sure if it's so critical to focus on these weapons when it comes to faction LMGs. The Gauss Saw for example does only 7% less damage per second than the carv and is quite a bit more accurate and controllable. Since they increased the horizontal recoil on the carv I'd say it's still a good close quarter weapon, but it can be bested in medium range encounters which are quite common.

Still though, the 143 damage weapons with 650 rate of fire could probably use some love in either rate of fire or accuracy because they're kind of a tough sell.

Even if you took the Carv out of the game than the thread would be about the Orion and the MSW-R which would still beg for the 4-11% increase as the MSW-R is a great weapon as well.

Eh, aside from the flinch nonsense that everyone hates, I don't really see it as much.

Calling this a full on "NC infantry analysis" is a bit much, it's more of an LMG analysis. The AR's and Carbines are more or less fine. Not perfect, but nothing ever will be. The SMG is too slow but hopefully this new one coming out tomorrow with the larger magazine will be a lot faster and not get LMG cursed for it's magazine size.

The real issue here is that the LMGs that are supposed to emulate the other faction's default are completely inferior to them. Consistently. For every faction. As I understood it, they would be stuck somewhere in between, perhaps trading off higher or lower damage for slower or faster fire rates, or reload speed for magazine size, blah blah etc. Atm they really aren't, they just make a few things similar and then wreck the rest of it, or make it a flat out copy with a glaring flaw.

LMGs have been in contention as far as balance goes since before release, whether or not it's actually an issue. We could really benefit from setting some sort of baseline with a simple jack of all trades type of LMG. I'd say make it a Nanite Systems LMG that everyone could use, and preferably would have access to both the advanced forward grip and advanced laser dot so that it could be used for either long range or close.

nice analysis, the 200 damage that the NC have should have a slight advantage other than only need 1 less bullet to drop people , it should have the same DPS as any other gun considering the high risk same reward with other guns that outperforming them , so in my believe they should have higher bullet velocity. Lower Rof is one thing that it should be at disadvantage but higher velocity could make the 200dam gun more useful than it is now. as i do not see many NC favor this theme gun and prefer the other similar faction guns such as GR-22 that have the same characteristic of TR guns , lower damage high RoF

I play TR. Give me the NC weapons anyday, except the jaguar I like that gun

When data is written and displayed with a clear bias, yes. I could write up an equally comprehensive post and make whatever faction I wanted look overpowered as **** with some correctly used stats and wording.

While effort has been put in by the OP, what I see from the poster is a lack of understanding in how weapons actually work, especially on the TR front.

The spreadsheet is right there. Go ahead and wow me.

I still think the guass saw is the best lmg in the game. The orion and t9 are good for newbies, but the guass saw rewards a great player.

You see I could but I don't want to. I might sometime soon, when I feel like it, but right now I'd rather play the game. I'll summarise some points as to why NC is the perfect faction, however.

200 damage weapons, for starters. The higher skill cap of NC weaponry makes them ideal for experienced players - they have the optimal weaponry for all occasions. Gauss SAW, Reaper DMR, AC-X11, then the NC MAX in close quarters. NC has no weakness that can't be compensated for by switching between 200 damage weapons and your CQC monster MAX suits.

Recoil is never an issue, because it can be compensated for. Most NC weapons suffer from an almost pure horizontal recoil, that makes recoil patterns predictable and controlable. Contrary to popular belief, most NC weapons have similar bloom to TR and VS counterparts. While the lowest tiers of bloom per shot are largely NS, TR and VS weaponry, at middling and higher tiers, the ratios of NC, TR, and VS weapons evens out. In short, controlling NC weapon recoil and bloom is infact easier than VS and TR counterparts, due to the fact horizontal recoil is far more prevailent in TR and VS than in NC, and due to higher ROF it forces TR and VS players to conform to an NC style of play of burst firing in order to be effective. This gives NC an inherent advantage at Mid-Long ranges.

In short, NC doesn't have a single weakness. TR and VS experience far more control issues with their weaponry, have less damage at longer ranges and are less effective at closer ranges.

In terms of tank play, Vanguards are a very balanced tank all around and are perfect for both supporting their infantry from the rear and soaking damage at the front. While they are not optimal at killing anything, due to their special ability and increased levels of armour it is blatantly obvious that they are not meant to be.

You are wrong, we have one big weakness. Rate of fire and flinch. Your weapons simply make us flinch much more, combine that with a recoil, that requires perfect skill to control. It is the VS who have no downsides, since damage drop off is not an issue when most of the fights are close range.

Only read the TL;DR. Completely agreed. The starter weapons need to be starter-friendly. That should be far more important than 'faction traits' or any such ridiculousness.

Then we'd see which faction traits are completely OP (ROF, I'm looking at you) because people will be eternally using the best performing weapons. Then balancing can be done according to what is necessary; higher damage because it's offset by so many negatives, for example.