Red Hessian Natterturm Zwei (Class 7)

[Dragan]

Today I noticed some .. weirdness.

The Natterturm Zwei (Class 7) Red Hessian laser-gun is somewhat worse then the rheinland civilian Flammenwerfer C-1 (Class 7) tachyon-gun.

Code:

http://puu.sh/n37kM/67b186af09.BMP
http://puu.sh/n37nF/c517deec74.BMP

I don't mind the civilian weaponry (unlike their vanilla incarnations) being an decent choice; I do mind the Natterturn Zwei being completely worse in allmost any situation.

Let's compare the Stats of both guns:

The Natterturm has 420 damage, compared to the 411 of the Flammenwerfer. It deals roughly 2% more damage per shot, at the very same firerate.
Both deal default damage to shield (50%), which means we have a 2% increase in damage for the Natterturm there too.

The Natter has 600m range, compared to the 734m of the Flammenwerfer. The Flammenwerfer has roughly 22% more range compared to the Natterturm.

Projectile speed is 750m/s for the natter, and 700m/s for the Flammenwerf. Generally I'd say the higher is better, but it depends somewhat if you can sync your loadout to the same speed. Given that there are debilitators for 650ms or 750ms, I'd say the natter has some advantage here.

Energy usage is 94 per shot for the natter and 83 for the flammenwerfer. The Natter consumes roughly 13% more energy per shot.

The Natter is a laser-based weapon, which means it deals more damage against positron shields, and less against graviton.
Flammenwerfer is tachyon-based, and thus weak against positron, but strong against molecular. Seeing as both pulse weapons (debilitators) and laser weapons are weak against the very same type of shields (graviton), I'll consider this a disadvantage for the Natter at this point.

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I'm neither a pvp genius nor balancing expert, but I believe faction weaponry should be slightly better then the generic, civilian weapons. Atleast it should be on par.
In this particular case, the Natterturm seems to be just worse, having less range, while consuming a lot more energy, only for a tiny little bit increase in damage.

By generic freelancer "lore" or weapon behavior, laser weapons has high fire rates, fast projectiles, but don't do much damage, all while having no positive or negative bias towards range or energy consumption.

Tachyon weapons have generally a slightly above-average refire rate and projectile speed; with a great range, but consume a lot of energy to do so.

Red Hessian weapons, in vanilla, where described as doing a bit more damage, but sacrifice refirerate to do so.

Judging by what I could see ingame, this generic behavior is mostly still reflected in disco. (Some exceptions, or faction specific deviations exist, of course)

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So, putting this all together, I'd say (again, I'm no pvp genius or balance master), possible solutions would be:

a.) Swap damage and energy usage values of both. That way the Natter (which has far less range) become more energy efficient, while the Flammenwerfer trades the increased energy cost for a lot of range and a bit of damage.

b.) Just reduce the energy usage of the Natter a bit (again, it's laser gun, it shouldn't use more energy then a compareable tachyon gun), the lower range offsetting the slightly better muzzle velocity.

c.) Raise the damage of the Natterturm by a few %'s to make it more meaningful.

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Also, I dunno if I am the only one who is getting annoyed by it, the color of the Natterturm seems to be wrong. In Vanilla the original "Natterturn" Class 8 guns of the Hessians, used to have a really deep-redish tone, fitting to the red hessians. In disco it currently is more of a pale white-redish-something. If disco still has all the vanilla projectiles, I'd love to see it being switched back to the original pi_laser_04_proj. Let the red hessians be red again!

[Traxit]

If I were to rebalance the Natter, I would make it
430 Hull Damage
215 Shield Damage (1/2 of the value above)
549 Range
700ms Speed
99 Energy Usage
And obviously keep the 5.88 refire... Or...

The gun can be turned into a 5.00 with Sammael attributes?
Much higher damage than the norm but also high energy usage.

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The best Video Game OST
Just Got Better

[Wesker]

From an Indie point of view I can see why this would be concerning, im unaware if Indies share the same techcells but we ([RHA]) have a decently wide variety of other tech to choose from. So Im not -that- concerned.


Just mount purple goddesses like me

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