Balance, or not?

I already have. Its call new-original/original, not to mention some great info on statistics.

I couldn't agree more

I only wish I had the time and inclination to do the same... Or even the ability nowadays. My brain cells have been deteriorating for some time now LOL. I suppose I am envious of peeps that can look at all the weapons stats and then say, "in this situation I should be using this particular weapon because..."

I just pick up a gun and if I'm doing okay with it I stick with it. In fact, my weapon usage is pretty atrocious. My most used weapon is my Longshot and more recently I've been using Mattocks a lot. My next best "gun" after those is my NS-7 and I have less than 400 kills with that. My ten thousand other kills some from my Longshot, Mattocks and Railjack. I even have more Bouncing Betty kills than my SMG

I like this guy. Someone promote him.

Strange. I'd assume that the prowler would get a higher average KPH/VKPH all across the charts considering the fact that it has anchor mode, which is a purely offensive utility...

But since you say the magrider VPC VKPH comes out on top by 6%, I say NOT balanced.

Am i the only one who knows that 2 bullets get more lasthits than 1 because you dont know the HP of the victims in the stats?
Just use your OP prowler anchored and you will soon see that you cant contest against other solo roaming 450 tanks.

"But ofc because its no battletank its an artillery!" Take your artillery and give me something reasonable. Every tank can snipe with AP rounds, because we can do it with more DPM means to have 0 movement and to lose every 1v1 t2 tank fight on purpose.

Not sure why, he's probably wrong in his assessment.

You can't obviously compare dissimilar types of weapons, so KPH should be fine if you are examining same types of weapons.

He is also making another assumption, that VS use their AI weapons in exclusively 2/2 configurations, while everyone else is in exclusively 1/2 configurations. It is possible that he is right, since Magriders have been traditionally manned in 2/2 configurations at much larger numbers than the other two empires. Is however the difference significant enough to skew statistics that much?


If I want to prophesize what will happen, given the past history of "balance" in the game, then PPA will be nerfed to oblivion, leaving VS with no viable choices, while Canister will receive huge buffs and Vulcan will turn into a ground Banshee. The end result will be even more 2/2 Magrider AV crews hunting the farmers of the other two empires (leading to complaints about OP Magriders), along with more infantry AV nests (which will inevitably lead to complains about the "OP Lancer").

Except that these weapons are not the same at all, nor are they used in the same way.

I mean one is essentially a shotgun, one is a grenade launcher, and one is a heavily buffed Lasher. They are entirely different weapons, and the only thing they have in common is that they're stuck on a tank and can't damage armor.

If I asked you to compare the KPHs of shotguns versus LMGs you'd think I was crazy right? Well why on Auraxis would this change if we suddenly mounted both of them on a tank?

My point is that because the Canister is an extremely niche weapon as compared to the PPA, Canisters go unused far more frequently than a PPA, which results in KPH skewing. This is supported by the time usage per unique user, which shows that people who use the PPA almost stick with it twice as long as they do with the Canister.

The PPA isn't OP, it's just frustrating to deal with. It's mostly used by Magriders that are parked on top of a hill where they have cover to duck behind if you try and use any infantry based AV weapons against them.

Do you know what's a really good way to deal with PPA Magriders? Mass Dalton Liberator bombing runs. Just get your mates together, grab a bunch of dalton libs and bomb those pesky Magriders back to the Stone Age.

I like to C4 them. But they unknowingly roadkill me before i can push the trigger =( especially with Medic and HA.

They fit the exact same role. You can't compare their effectiveness (other empires don't have vehicle shotguns for example), but you can certainly compare their performance. People have been doing that with the ES heavy weapons.

The whole premise of Canister lagging behind the other two is based on performance, regardless of whatever mechanism the weapon is using. It would be better if we could compare them in a weapon per weapon basis, but since this is practically impossible, we treat the vehicle as black boxes and just look at the output.

Is KPH or KPU good stats to base balance changes? If you are a developer, probably not. But for the sake of discussion and given that us, as a very small minority of the whole playerbase, can't influence the balance direction in any way (or shouldn't anyway), those stats are the best thing we have in order to confirm or disprove assumptions that we make during our time gaming.

Why is the Vulcan in this discussion? It's an AV weapon and kinda bad when used against Infantry.

The Fury is always a viable choice; in fact it is better than the Marauder and Canister. Canister requires the tank or Harasser to be pretty much within C4 range and with base design in its current state, likely in a position to get blown up easily. Marauder is only slightly safer as it can be effective from a little further out. The fury actually does stupid damage to tanks as well. (Needs a nerf as well IMO)

If you look at more stats on the PPA, specifically on the Harasser platform, it becomes fairly obvious that not only is it equipped far more often, but is also far more effective at its role. It is not in balance with the Canister or Marauder. It's not in balance with 'ease of use:effectiveness' ratio either. It's also the only AI secondary that can be used at great distance effectively. One does not even need to look at the data; anyone who plays all three factions knows full well it's not a balanced weapon and won't defend it.

I'm all for leaving the Scythe PPA largely as is if not completely leaving it alone. It requires the user take a flimsy aircraft into dangerous proximity to rockets and small arms and/or be a static target exposed to other aircraft to be effective, unlike its secondary weapon counterparts.

The reason I like the quoted post is because people scramble to Oracle to prove something with a graph that tell the tiniest bit of the story. As we all know very well, things that look good on paper don't always wind up good in practice. One simple graph cannot begin to tell us if a weapon is balanced or not.

They only can be said to be in the "exact same role" if you also believe that all infantry small arms, from pistols to sniper rifles, fit the "exact same role" because they kill infantry. And the latter is an obvious oversimplification...

People who compare the KPHs of ES HA weapons are making the same mistake as I've stated elsewhere in this thread. The Lasher is a suppression weapon, the MCG is the closest to a general purpose weapon, and the Jackhammer is a close-range shotgun. The three are very different weapons with very different roles and usage patterns, and it makes no more sense to compare those than to compare any other shotgun and LMG. Simply because they're all uniquely carried by a HA does not make them fit the same role.

How about if we can't make direct comparisons because they have different roles, we don't make comparisons at all?

KPH can be a useful statistic so long as there are no significant factors which would nullify comparisons. We know this issue exists for sidearms. We also know that we can't compare unlike weapon classes together. We even know that comparing long-range and close-range weapons within a weapon class can lead to funny results.

The problem with the OP's analysis is that comparing the PPA to the Canister or Marauder is full of known problems that makes KPH not as useful. It's not that KPH isn't useful in general, it's just that in this specific case there are red flags.

In other word you feel that any comparisons are invalid and only personal feeling needs to be accounted for? Since we can't compare them directly? What's the point of the arguments about PPA overperforming then, if the answer is "compared to what?"