Reforming The Weight System#506

This post aims to act in good faith with the opposite intentions of post #505.

Here is a short, but detailed post diving into the weight system; how detrimental the system is @ 0.5.7; and the inclusion of possible reforms that benefit all types of players. Weight is quite a touchy subject, as the kickstarter has a infamous quote that in theory advocates against weight, while actually providing an emphasis only on armor weight:

“Customize your own M.A.S.S. without the worry of using cool looking armors with low stats, all parts don’t have stats!”

This quote hasn’t aged well, as the game has evolved towards the standard “benefits/costs“ system, for the wrong reasons. Weight as a concept, has quite the negative impact with regards to aesthetics on weaponry, while providing a meager buff towards the “ARMOR“ stat on armor parts. This is quite a fatal flaw, as the customization system inherently limits any build in aesthetics, versus encouraging multiple builds at any weight, for low cost/reward. A few negatively impacted items are heavy weapon types, such as:

• Detonator
• Chaingun
• Mace
• Hammer

This is largely factored by severe downsides with weapon weight in mind, such as higher “FUEL BURN RATE“ along with decreased “ACCELERATION“ and no benefits, such as increased “POWER“ and/or “ACCURACY“. It is not a shock that most people want weight gone, because of massive penalities and an incomplete combat system. How can weight be patched up and made into a consistent system that has checks and balances? Look no further.

FIXES FOR THE WEIGHT SYSTEM LISTED BELOW:

1. The addition of benefits, and lowered negative costs, would be a boon to both ranged and melee players, while fostering gameplay depth. Weapon types can have tradeoffs with grip type/assualter, where they swing/fire at a standard rate per type. Heavier weapons shouldn’t be super fast realistically, but they should at least have far more accuracy/power, whilst being much slower with coded in fire rate, and vice versa for small weapons.
2. The nodes “FULL METAL JACKET“ and “BINARY MONARCH“ are skillsets to grow into, providing a good test of different skill floors to start at, and skill ceilings to train towards. Readjusting the architecture tree by smoothing out a few branches to be a lot less “copy-and-paste“ of other branches is a good band-aid fix to intitate with, along with slight retunings of the stat “FUEL BURN RATE“ on “OS“ nodes.
3. Passive skillsets for grips would go a long way towards encouraging aesthetic variation, such as having a “ground-pound“ for the Hammer moveset, which could stun enemies. The foundational code is already available in the engine.
4. The current weight system doesn’t take into account the trigger rate of STAGGERING enemies, which works at a universal rate for all weapon types. Heavier weapons should have the positive of higher staggering/recoil control compared to 1H weapons of ranged/melee archetypes.
5. SageThe13th: ACCELERATION is tied to RoF & Swing Speed on weapons, and this inherently makes heavy weapons weak, compared to lighter weapon types. The way acceleration works now mean the lightest/fastest designs fire off the heaviest weapons faster, dealing more DPS compared to a slow design. To completely eradicte this issue, keep FIRE RATE separated from acceleration, and also procure a set RoF/Swing speed to each weapon type. It is now easier to build without wasting nodes on your tuning to mititgate flawed design.

A lot of weapon types suffer heavily from min/maxing weight tonnage towards speedruns and/or mission optimization, since certain stylized parts are more efficient compared to others. The concept is not bad on paper, but was executed with the wrong mindset and shows lack of long term planning for aesthetic variation. With more benefits on parts, and adjusted negative cost towards the tuning system AND parts, the system allows for any player to build with a playstyle in mind, while including the aesthetic they want at a low cost.

Last Updated: 12/26/2020 @ 4:33 PM CST

Acceleration shouldn’t effect swing and shot speed. Equiping a hammer shouldn’t make a sword swing slower or a gun fire slower. How fast a weapon attacks should only be product of it’s own weight only.