Don't forget TR SMGs for the april balance patch

And that's exactly why you can't overextrapolate data from a chart like that. In the game you recoil-compensate, and having significantly more horizontal random wiggle makes that harder. The fact that the horzontal jitter in the case of both these weapons are fairly balanced is completely irrelevant. By this sort of comparison, weapons with a high amount of reliable and predictable horizontal bias would be "terribad accuracy" because the aim would go way off target in the chart and "measure more pixels wide" as you say, but obviously that isn't true in real-world use at all. In fact some of the most accurate (in the hands of a good player) weapons are such weapons, and any FPS player worth his salt will tell you that as far as recoil goes you want most of it to be vertical (because it is entirely counterable by skill/practice) and as much of the rest you want to be in predictable horizontal bias. The third and worst category to have is the random horizontal wiggle because there is no prediction possible, and you just have to grit your teeth and be reactive as best you can - but essentially this sort of wiggle just creates a second static horizontal COF on top of the other COF that has the effect of reducing accuracy because no human could conceivably compensate for random variations that fast.

Let me be clear that I am arguing this as a point of principle that you are not drawing the correct conclusions from the chart you have presented (or rather overextrapolating from it), and not because I think it really matters much in this particular case. In the case of SMGs specifically you will be dealing with hipfire 99% of the time as there isn't any real benefit to ADS. Because of the unusual (compared to other weapons which are FAR more accurate in ADS) stats of this weaponclass the COF of SMGs far outshines recoil in terms of what determines if you hit or not - so while claiming that horizontal jitter dosn't matter as long as its balanced is "less" wrong when speaking of SMGs rather than say - AR's - it's still wrong as a principle.

TLDR: Cyclone has better recoil by far, but it doesn't matter much for the weapontype. What actually makes it more accurate is its lower COF bloom pr point of damage delivered, and that's not as drastic a difference although it is a real advantage.

-Stigma

Now calculate damage dealt between 10 Cyclones bullet and 10 armistice bullet @ max damages (until 15m with SPA)

i'll do it for you:
-Cyclone: 1670 damages
-Armistice: 1250 damages

Conclusion: Armistice blooms more to deal as much damages than cyclone. More bloom = less accuracy period.

Fact #1: After taking into account both CoF bloom and horizontal recoil, the Cyclone and the Armistice have the same horizontal spread.

Fact #2: The Cyclone has a greater vertical spread than the Armistice.

Now if you were picking a firearm in terms of accuracy, would you pick the one that had a greater or lesser vertical spread if both weapons had the same horizontal spread?

This shouldn't be a difficult question. Just take a look at the charts, and try to figure out which is the weapon you'd want.

I mean sure you can compensate for vertical recoil, but you could compensate for vertical recoil more easily if the firearm had a lesser vertical recoil in the first place. Or ignore it altogether if it wasn't really a significant loss of accuracy at practical ranges.

So if practically for the two horizontal drift is exactly the same, why choose the one with the greater vertical drift if all you care about is accuracy?

Now as I've said, in some cases horizontal recoil is extremely annoying, as in the case of the TRAC-5 that I showed before. That's a case where you could legitimately complain about horizontal recoil. But it's obvious that not all TR recoil models are the same or function to the same degree, and in this particular case of the Armistice horizontal recoil does not practically lead to a worse grouping than the Cyclone.

I mean compared to the Eridani, the Armistice has much less horizontal drift. Take a look at the Eridani graph, and you can see a fairly clear leaning to the right:



But I don't see any VS coming here to complain about horizontal recoil...

And partly I agree with you here. I'm arguing on principle too, because as I've said many times I feel that the SMGs are balanced. I'm simply correcting misinformation about TTKs and accuracy that crop up.

And the data in the charts reflect both hipfire and ADS... hipfire is in yellow while ADS is in green. The graphs do reflect both in case you missed that.

Your balancing is done incorrectly.
You generally do not need more than 1000 damage to get a job done. (if its a max you have a much higher hitbox)

SMGs are used in hipfire ranges.
If you are feeling that their recoil is high, then you need to learn to play.

Honestly i can easily get kills with the God Saw in CQC, with it having terrible accuracy.
Why? Because infantry gameplay is well balanced.

Armstice has an overall better TTK.
If both guns use equal amount of bullets to kill an enemy, the Armstice will win. (using the fail logic you're using)
Take 10 armstice bullets and 10 cyclone bullets and armstice will have a faster TTK.


I'll be completely honest and unbiased on this one:-
One buff the Armstice should get is 5 extra bullets, that is all.

If you are facing problems of accuracy while using an SMG, then i would say L2P.
Pro-tip:- Only use SMGs in hipfire ranges, you will not face accuracy issues.

You're definitely a lost cause:

#1
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...0/0&sortcolid=-1&sortasc=true&rowsperpage=250

Starting COFs Are the same.

Cyclone horizontal recoil: 0.2/0.3 per shot with 652 RPM = 2.17/3.26 horizontal recoil per second.
Armistice horizontal recoil: 0.35/0.4 per shot with 896 RMP = 5.22/597 horizontal recoil per second.

Cyclone Bloom: 0.06 per shot with 652 RPM =0.652 bloom per second.
Armistice Bloom: 0.05 per shot with 896 RPM =0.74 bloom per second.

Even a 10YO kid would be able to tell wich weapons have more horizontal recoil.

Guess what: a 2000RPM weapons with 0.01 bloom and 0.1 horizontal recoil per shot is less accurate than a 100RPM weapon with 0.1bloom and 1 horizontal recoil. It's mathematical.

Only values per second are interesting on full automatic weapons. Stats per shot are meaningless without taking in account ROF.

Why is this still an argument? The OP wants to buff an already beastly SMG, this thread is a joke.

Yeah i give up.

In-game performance wise, its fine.
I would actually like a 5 round magazine buff, but thats about all.

People need to L2P if they are facing accuracy issues with the Armstice where its supposed to be used.

If they think its a bad gun, then that's their opinion then i disagree with them.
However i do think that the Hailstorm can use a rework.

I wasn't using the "10 bullet logic" but the guy i quoted did.

Personally i prefer using TTK or "X" value (recoil/bloom/damages) per second to compare weapons.

About TTK:
Cyclone: 6 bullet to kill - 1.32 Vrecoil - 1.2/1.8 Hrecoil - 0.36 bloom - 0.55sec TTK.
Armistice: 8 bullet to kill- 1.2Vrecoil - 2.56/3.2Hrecoil - 0.4bloom - 0.54sec TTK.

Of courst that's according the target don't wear nanoweave, havn't overshield and all bullets hits.

I find the basis for this hilariously coincidental: the only reason you could predict this, is because SMG's exist in the first place. EG; all Infiltrators who want a positive KDR in CQC, run SMG's. And they'd run AR's if they could b/c they require one less Bullet for TTK. Which isn't actually true, not EVERYONE picks the same thing just b/c it's 15% more effective. Infact that's why I see some 50-80 BR Medics & HA's running SMG's too. They don't care about raw Spreadsheet DPS, they just want the easier-to-use gun b/c it results in a more consistent Cert rate.


Infact look at this real quick: (stats according to DA)

Code:

-----------------  Users DPS  DMG  ACC%  KPH  KDR
NS44 Commissioner  7,940 1.2k 450  31.5  26+  0.82
Pdw16 HailStorm    5,534 1.6k 125  22.4  20+  0.97

How's a pistol got similar stopping power plus a better KPH than the subject of this thread? Especially when people recognize that the pistol SUCKS for ADS'ing as almost everyone universally hates its sight and even with a laser rail it still results in a lot of ghost-shots or unexplained wonkyness with accuracy in general? The reason is b/c numbers LIE, constantly. Numbers are only as good as your ability to parse the reasoning behind them. There's an obvious reason behind this one too (but I'm not going to ruin it by just spelling it out).

You are asking me which of the two graphs I would pick? Well both are obviously fairly close-ish, but I'd pick the cyclone. Why? Because it has the closest aproximation of the two to a straight line, with fewer random blobs and wiggle to it. Straight line means predictability. Amorphous blobbage (no matter how centered it happens to be) means random, and skillcaps the weapons accuracy. I don't really care too much what way that line points - that's all a matter of just getting used to. If it went directly to the right that would be unusual and require a little geting used to, but still ideally suited to correction and thus the better choice. Also the fact that on both these weapons the vertical element might as well not exist its so insignificant compared to the guns general COF accuracy - and in hipfire? ... even less of a factor if that's even possible. In fact, give me 5 more bullets on the armistice and you can feel free to double its vertical recoil. I'll take it!

Again, its a largely moot point in this case because past the second bullet the COF becomes more dominant anyway. If you ADS the cyclone with a 3,4x then it is pretty easy to keep the dot on a distant target. That shouldn't be surprising considering that its recoil (and RPM) is very close to an autoscout rifle. Try the same on an armitage and that wiggle will leave you unable to keep the dot on target unless its significantly closer. Of course, at that sort of 3,4x scope range nether would hit due to COF anyway regardless of keeping the aim on target, and even if you did then the damage dropoff would mean you would have to hit them like 15 times to kill...

But, for a moment just in order to demonstrate a principle let's just imagine we aren't talking about SMGs, but rather (imaginary) empire specific scoutrifles. They all have the same stats as the SMGs we are talking about here except they have damage dropoff and ADS initial and expaning COF numbers like an autoscout rifle. To claim then that having twice the horizontal wiggle on one of the guns compared to the other didn't matter would be beyond absurd...

And to demonstrate another though experiment, what happens if you go double those horizontal values on the armitage? Does it matter now? Because I can tell you that on that compter-generated graph the grouping wouldn't change much in a completely uncompensated test-run like that. It's not magic, and there isn't a threshold at which suddenly it would make the graph look radically different. Now double it again and assume we are talking about an AR with AR-type accuracy in ADS just with those recoil numbers. You think you'd have no issues using that gun in ADS? The graph says it shouldn't matter right? ...

so let take on those points real quick:

Fact #1: After taking into account both CoF bloom and horizontal recoil, the Cyclone and the Armistice have the same horizontal spread.

Yea, of course it does. As we already both agree the COF completely dominates the recoil factor of these guns so that's why you see virtually no difference. This should be surprising to noone. You want to know what a high-wiggle weapon looks like to a low-wiggle weapon when its on a weapon that can ADS normally and where COF dosn't overshadow everything?
http://symthic.com/goods/i/bf3/plots/small_otsikoilla_opti/G3A3__.png
http://symthic.com/goods/i/bf3/plots/small_otsikoilla_opti/KH2002__.png

Now that's a fairly classic example of the fast wiggler for CQC vs the accurate long range specialist. Now, the G3A3 has far more vertical element to it here, and the horizontal dosn't matter you say (as a principle, since that's what we both agreed we were discussing now), so... are you going to argue that the KH2002 is the weapon with reliable accuracy here between the two? Thousands of high-end BF3 players would laugh you off the forums if even suggested that.

Again, relevant to armastice vs cyclone it happen to just not matter, but in principle you are wrong, and thus using it as an argument to prove your point in principle is wrong.

Fact #2: The Cyclone has a greater vertical spread than the Armistice.

Well first of all it doesn't have vertical spread. it has vertical climb, or vertical recoil if you prefer. If it had vertical spread there would be a random element to it, and there isn't. I'm not entirely sure if the vertical recoil angle in PS might actually affect some random element to vertical recoil in this game but in any case neither of the guns have that random element so it's irrelevant here. Both just have a reliable upwards recoil pr shot.

Secondly, the difference isn't nearly as great as the chart would suggest, because it shows 10 bullets each and the guns use greatly differing damage models. Compensating for damagemodel differences (ie. calculating recoil pr. point of damage) the cyclone has 9,8% more vertical recoil pr. unit of damage. Now, for a start that difference is pretty darn small, but secondly and more importantly on both guns the vertical element is tiny, and in hipfire its even LESS relevant. Number of times I've ever had to struggle or missed a target with either the cyclone or armastice due to vertical recoil - aproximately zero.

again, purely in principle vertical matters on an actually accurate ADS gun sure, but if you found someone who would be willing to argue that they would prefer double the random horizontal wobble over 10% more vertical recoil on an AR or LMG ADS then you would have to assume he was a complete newbie or just had no idea what he was talking about. Try pitching that to a competitive FPS player who has a grasp of the stats of the guns he is using and he would give you a weird look...

Again, you are only "not as wrong" because the thread happened to be about SMGs here other stats make the recoil largely irrelevant, but we both agreed that we were talking abut this in terms of principle too - and in that you are wrong even though your facts happen to coincidentally be correct.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I like a good discussion and you seemed open for it.

-Stigma

Slamming down "muh feels" with cold hard stats.

I looked hard for your point here, but I'm not entirely sure I found it... That's not intended as an insult by the way.

I said that if you could put ARs on infils then most people would use those instead of SMGs. Why? Because ARs largely supersede SMGs in all major categories. To put it in plain english, if you put an advanced laser on an HV-45 then you can use it as an SMG as you have very nearly the same hipfire accuracy but WAY superior DPS (same RPM but an full dmg category upgrade), far more DPM, as well as infinitely superior damage dropoff stats. To top it off and time you needed to kill someone at range - its still an AR, and you just ADS and kill that target because the AR has normal ADS accuracy stats and dropoff. Now try using your SMG as an AR... see my point?

If it helps to make it clearer I only referenced ARs because I was responding to someone else. An even clearer and more easily understandable comparison can be made if you take the case of carbines vs SMGs. Now, if you could put carbines on an infil instead of an SMG then I'd almost go so far as to say you would have to be a little stupid if you didn't, because carbines are basically just better SMGs (and by a long shot at that). I'm not saying that that's imbalanced (there is a reason ilfils don't get shotguns either), but it is almost impossible to find a reasonable usage scenario where a serpent or GD-7F wouldn't do as good or (much) better than any SMG alternative. If you can find some example that is not too obviously contrived for the sake of arguing then I'd like to hear it.

Now, how exactly is this hilarious coincidental? If I can take a gun that can do A, or a gun that can do A better + B also, then I'm would take the latter if I could, and I'm betting that you would too. I could not predict that trend unless SMGs actually existed in the game already? ... whaaa? (this is the point at which I just lose you completely because that makes no sense whatsoever)

I can decypt your commisioner mystery pretty quick. You are comparing a primary to a secondary firstly, so that already means you can't straight compare the usage pattern. Secondly large parts of a whole class (infils) use commisioners as basically a primary because they run sniperrifles or BASR. Even more kills get added to it by it being a finisher and being credited kills for only partial damage. But of course, all these are small fry...

The real reason for the KPH is that it only counts the time you have it equipped. That's why all sidearms generally have huge KPH, because not many people run around with it idle. In fact the commissioner doesn't rank all that well compared to very mundane other sidearms in that regard. So, feel free to test your hypothesis and bring your commisioner into a CQC battle against an SMG and see how you win that duel on average out of a hundred attempts. Numbers don't lie unless you let them, and I'm not even talking about statistics but raw descriptive numbers.

-Stigma

I'm not being Cryptic. I'm just trying not to spoil the answer for you. You're obviously the kind of person who only will adopt a new way of thinking if you believe you were the first one to come to that realization. (as evidenced by how much you enjoy hearing yourself talk)

Armistice is good as is, no buff/nerf required. Hailstorm is just another gun to auraxium and forget about imo, nothing special about it, mostly mediocre but not completely incapable.

Oh poo-hoo. Did i strain your eyes? Do I now have to make the prerequisite reply about how I should have known to make my answer twitter-length for the ADHD generation - or can we just skip the juvenile passive aggressive ********?

If you have something to say then say it. Come on, let's see that royal straight flush. I'll take my chances.

-Stigma

The Armistice is fine. The Hailstorm PDW is horrible.

Lets leave the Armistice alone. Lets buff the Hailstorm.

Voila.

dont forget everything that kills you is OP

Everything my faction has is **** and needs to be buffed.

The NS-7 PDW is great and everybody has access to it. Quit it with the tears and what not

All the Armistice could use is 5 more rounds in the magazine.

The hailstorm is just trash in comparison to the blitz and the sirius though. 10 extra rounds ain't worth the loss in accuracy and RPM. I know people say any time we ADS with an SMG we're doing it wrong, but the reason we're using an SMG over a shotgun is for some degree of flexibility that shotguns just don't have (which own harder within 10 meters.) In this regard, the blitz and the sirius are easily more accurate and have a higher RPM. Anyone with any actual "skill" (read: experience with PS2, much less shooters in general) would see this just firing each of them for 5 minutes, if that long.