Mostly to range, I haven't quite thought about other stuff, but now that you mention it, it does matter as well. Yeah, I'm starting to think that 167 @ 600+ are better balanced than 143 @ 698+ ones. Up close this doesn't matter so much, but you really can feel that beyond certain range.
Better balanced sounds a bit like more equal, as in: "All men are created equal... but some are more equal than others." But nevermind I think they're both actually fairly balanced. There's always two sides to the RoF/damage comparison when it comes to ranged fighting. As accuracy decreases with range, damage per shot becomes more apparent, and it can seem like this favors high damage / low RoF weapons. On the other hand, low damage / high RoF weapons still retain the advantage of more consistent damage output, where missing a shot delays your next opportunity to do damage by a smaller amount. When the high damage weapon hits that one minimum 143 damage shot (for example), a higher ROF weapon will sometimes hit two 125 damage shots in a row instead of just one. Flashback to the Lynx vs Jaguar discussion we had - this is one of the reasons Lynx felt quite good at range; you won't do much damage per shot but at least you'll hit that 100 min. damage in short intervals. Also, DPS decreases less with range for low damage weapons than high damage weapons because the max. and min. damages are set to tiers. The drop from 167 to 143 is 14.4%, but the drop from 143 to 125 is only 12.6%. It's kind of counterintuitive... all the "long range" automatic weapons are high damage weapons with great discrepancy in DPS (and TTK) between min. and max. damage range. (Another reason it's counterintuitive is that high damage weapons are the ones that most benefit from headshots, but headshots are the easiest to achieve when you're close.) I'd guess this is the reason that higher damage weapons have that extra 10 meters added to their min. damage range, otherwise they wouldn't even be competitive with all-rounder weapons at the all-rounder's min damage distance. A particularly striking example: Lynx max. DPS = 1894, min. DPS = 1515, drop = 20.0% AC-X11 max. DPS = 1667, min. DPS = 1192, drop = 28.5% Now which one's the long range weapon again? Shouldn't the long range weapon be better at maintaining its damage output with distance?
After auraxing the AC-X11 I found it honestly to be a better CQC weapon then the Razor. The thing is a murder machine at medium range and closer.
Well I meant it's CQC capabilities are balanced with ranged capabilities, in other words, equal Wow, this must be my day. I've caught a numerical oversight on your part. Will you celebrate with me? I can bring my own cola. The issue is you don't take into account that Lynx's minimum damage distance is 50m, and ACX's minimum damage, assuming HVA, is 98m. At 50m ACX will have 1450 DPS, which is a drop of 13%. This, and damage is only damage when you actually hit shots. For some reason low RoF, high damage weapons have much less horizontal recoil, and - often - easily controlled recoil patterns without recoil angle. Lynx and TORQ are sort of exception out of this rule with their close to 0.2/0.2 horizontal recoil and next to no recoil angle, which is the only way they can make up for their lower DPS than other specialized weapons like Cycler TRV and GD-7F. Lynx also has way higher vertical recoil per second than ACX, and FSRM.
Haha, yes, correct. Also correct. My point was that in absolute terms, AC-X11 loses more damage from max to min damage which is why it is counterintuitive that it is a long range weapon. Long range weapons in PS2 are given buffs to everything but damage at range in order to compensate that deficiency, including things like A. extended min damage range B. better recoil C. improved velocity and so on. Thing is, none of these things will fully compensate for the lost damage. The long range weapon will eventually reach its min damage, making (A) irrelevant after that point. At 95 meters, Lynx will have lost less damage than AC-X11. The better recoil will only matter when firing in full auto, making (B) irrelevant if firing in semi auto (which is what you would do with a real weapon intended for long range). If you set both weapons to semi-auto, the increased recoil hardly matters at all. Improved velocity matters against moving targets, but often you will be able to use the lower velocity gun against stationary targets, making (C) irrelevant in that scenario as well; and it's not like moving targets at 95 meters are somehow hard to hit with 450 m/s. It just seems all very backwards. If long range weapons had their absolute min. damage buffed so they wouldn't lose so much damage from max. to min, they wouldn't need to go to such ridiculous lengths to compensate for that, and they would maintain better damage at long range regardless of the scenario.
The 95m is actually a really long range by PS2's standards. I've heard a very interesting thought: "...All of the gunplay in the game has been compressed into a 300m engagement (the normal effective range of an assault rifle in real life). Because of this range compression effect, much of the game revolves around getting yourself into the "kill range" of the weapon you are using to be most effective." - Hatesphere The reason why semi-auto works in real life is because 1 bullet is enough to incapacitate a target, in PS2 we need 6 to 13. No, the velocity matters anyway. It reduces the time the target has between you starting firing and the last killing bullet hitting the target. Agreed, but this is an issue of carbine vs AR vs LMG balance. LMGs and ARs specialized to long range barely lose any damage. I happen to think that carbines are too weak compared to ARs, but all carbines, not only ranged ones, though the strong damage drop off naturally affects ranged carbines the most.
To develop the chain of thought further, Cruczi, you're saying that ranged carbines should have their damage at range increased? Isn't that what HVA does? I'd say 18m is a lot, and they did make it specifically stronger for carbines, even if still underwhelming.
I'm not saying anything should be changed, I'm just saying it's counterintuitive what makes long ranged automatics better at long range in this game. Also, HVA does not increase damage at min. range.
As far as we can tell from Hatesphere's quote, that may be intentional design, the way range compression works. Maybe weapons are not intended to be used past minimum damage range. With HVA you can engage targets at stock minimum damage range and do a bit more damage to them. Seems intuitive to me.
You know what? After auraxiuming the AC-X11, I can't like the Razor anymore. It just feels less .... reliable than my AC. The fact that it has much more horizontal shake than good ol' one-one, a horizontal recoil angle, lower damage and higher firerate is really throwing me off. AC-X11 became fun near the end though, so maybe I'll hold onto that hope.
I definitely like it more than the razor when it works, but I keep getting those people that eat 15 shots and just don't die. I think I'm pretty much done with this. It's been almost 6 months since the hit detection issues got bad enough I stopped having fun, and now I'm down to playing once every 4-5 days and it still sucks. They either can't fix it or aren't devoting the resources to it, so I think I'm going on to other pastures. Hopefully greener ones.
The Razor is basically an AC-X11 minus the amazing accuracy, plus a decent amount of velocity(though the AC-X11 gains a lot from HVA too), but with awful TTK. I don't understand why NC bother with it and I hate TR's semi-clone of it. AC-X11 works particularly well at mid ranges, and although it's awkward at hip-fire range the TTK advantage is often significant enough to outweigh the Razor's better hip-fire CoF in close range. At long range, it has superior accuracy and drop-off range although a bit harder to lead moving targets with.
