Post patch 4.1 stability tips and dev bolter balance suggeestions

[Pharaun159]

Figured after seeing so many posts with the same problems i had.

To fix stutter, freezing, crashing, and massive FPS drops after 4.1 patch and optional 4k texture pack...Delete the game...reboot your pc... then reinstall game. The game was absolutely unplayable for me before. My thermals went down, stutter was gone, resolution back to 4k, the the psychotic fps drops have stopped.


Bolter balancing. For those who are not aware.. the bolters are difficult to balance because multiple classes have access to certain ones. If you balance them to one class, another class could break the whole meta with it. For example take the stalker bolt rifle. I believe the sniper and the tactical get access to it. In the snipers hands, i believe that it takes 5 headshot to kill a majoris enemy. In tactical hands it takes nearly the whole magazine. Seeing as the regular bolt sniper can headshot an enemy in 4 (i believe) with the sniper.. to make the stalker stronger, it would invalidate the bolt sniper completely as the stalker has faster fire rate and more ammo. However buffing it would make it work better for the tactical.

Now that the explanation for the difficulty the devs are facing is out of the way. Here is my suggestion to the devs.

Bolters fire mini rockets... according to the lore.. they are explosive at close range (as there is more propellant left in the shell) and are armor piercing at range (as shell has achieved its max velocity). Make all the bolters do significantly increased headshot damage but add a range component to it. If the enemies are at mid range the headshot bonus is decrease. However at close range the rounds are explosive and hit one "cell" around the target. You'll have to play with the damage, but 10-25% would make the auto bolt weapons much better, as they are not very accurate and make them more viable when getting overrun. You might actually have to lower their damage a bit.

The result to this would make the Bolter weapons more powerful and useful in the thick of the swarms... but also reward technical play. These changes would introduce a need to be aware of range, enemy armor, and ammo consumption (because if you are about to spray a bunch of explosive bullets... you'll want to hit as many mobs as possible). This would also allow the devs to balance the different types of bolter weapons without messing with their damage. For example you could balance the stalker bolt by making it hit its peak armor penetration and head shot damage at mid range unlike the full bolt sniper which could hit harder at longer range.

[Chaoslord 87]

You got that part with Bolter rounds wrong.
Standard Bolt Rounds have a explosive charge, which is independent of the rocket propellant.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Bolter_Ammunition?so=search#Standard_Bolts

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Maybe the issue was with the shaders getting corrupted or not being in proper format after a few patches, and needed to be regenerated anyway? The shaders have to be rebuilt for an install. One time before patch 4.0 my computer blue-screened in the middle of the SM2 game and when I restarted the game had to rebuild the shaders.

[Roan Shiran]

Originally posted by Pharaun159:

I believe the sniper and the tactical get access to it. In the snipers hands, i believe that it takes 5 headshot to kill a majoris enemy. In tactical hands it takes nearly the whole magazine.

This is just not true.

[Draescan]

Perhaps the way to buff the bolters' performance isn't to buff the bolter stats directly, but to provide perk options ( because there are perks for EVERY class that are 100% useless ) on the classes who can use them with things that buff bolter performance beyond ( it pens 1 more enemy )

[Chaoslord 87]

Originally posted by Draescan:

Perhaps the way to buff the bolters' performance isn't to buff the bolter stats directly, but to provide perk options ( because there are perks for EVERY class that are 100% useless ) on the classes who can use them with things that buff bolter performance beyond ( it pends 1 more enemy )

A prime example are the weapon perks on the Bolt Sniper Rifle.
Two 25% hipfire accuracy perks on a Sniper Rifle whose biggest strength lies in it´s Headshot multiplier but also suffers from very low mag size and reserve ammo? Really?

[Draescan]

Originally posted by Chaoslord 87:

Originally posted by Draescan:

Perhaps the way to buff the bolters' performance isn't to buff the bolter stats directly, but to provide perk options ( because there are perks for EVERY class that are 100% useless ) on the classes who can use them with things that buff bolter performance beyond ( it pends 1 more enemy )

A prime example are the weapon perks on the Bolt Sniper Rifle.
Two 25% hipfire accuracy perks on a Sniper Rifle whose biggest strength lies in it´s Headshot multiplier but also suffers from very low mag size and reserve ammo? Really?

Agreed, idk why there is even a hipfire accuracy perk for anything besides the carbines and auto bolt rifle to be totally honest. If you're hipfiring your sniper rifle you probably should either be going for a dodge gun strike or you should be melee-ing instead because you just got jumped.

Sadly the bolt sniper still doesn't have the headshot multiplier it probably should have because they want the Las Fusil to stay top dog there. As such, you're better off with the stalker bolter. Why do we need hipfire perks when instead we could have a perk that, for instance, applies larger amounts of stagger per headshot with bolt weapons?

I want to add I think it should go without saying the Heavy Bolter is not at fault on this one. That weapon is still insanely powerful as is.

[Draescan]

Originally posted by Reknowned Loser:

Can't understand why it takes so many head shots (3, 4?) to kill Majoris with stock bolters, no perks, etc...

Honestly it's just to balance the OTHER weapons not the bolters. Unfortunately because of this is makes the majority of the bolters feel lame to use. They sound punchy ( some of them ) but as for the actual performance? Ehhhhhh.

They're okay. I enjoy them now, but they're still just " okay " and none of them stand out at all. It sucks because the bolter is the space marine staple. I enjoy the bolt rifle ( no grenade launcher ) and stalker bolter alright enough, but any of the others just don't feel good to use. The amount of ammo they have can be nice in the case of something like the heavy bolt rifle ( hate this naming scheme ) but then you have to give up accuracy which it needs to make use of the range stat that it has to begin with otherwise you're tickling enemies with body shots.

Basically the classes that have access to them, need to have ways to make them perform something extraordinary that other weapons cannot. They're okay-ish at killing minoris but that goes out the window the second you introduce shielded tzaangors. You will get through the shield yes but it also seems to stop the shot dead in its tracks which makes their ENTIRE niche nullified. It's a bad feeling.

For Tyranids they're genuinely not bad. However, there's still something to be said about the enjoyment factor taking a hit when a heavy bolt rifle (purple) takes roughly 18 shots or more inside its effective range to bring a majoris to execution state on the difficulty appropriate to the weapon using only headshots. This is not an accurate weapon ( by default ) and if you take the accuracy variant ( which you should ) it still requires you to not get TOO happy on the trigger because the bloom is still insanely high and it will veer off course if you full auto it. Couple this with there being about 10 majoris at once and the fact these are moving targets ( whether people want to admit it or not sometimes we all miss ) and you have the frustrations distilled to the core issues.

The enemies simply need to react to getting hit in the head if you can chain headshots. After that MOST of the problems will fall to the wayside. You're still only going to be able to consistently stun 1 enemy at a time and feasibly it wouldn't work on extremis or terminus enemies at all. It'll still take the same amount of commitment to kill the enemy but now you have more control of the engagement rather than being at the mercy of the AI spamming side dodges and mitigating 80% of your damage ( stupid mechanic btw )

[Draescan]

Originally posted by Reknowned Loser:

Thanks for that explanation and advice, makes a lot of sense and learning all the nuances is part of the fun after all. Cheers for taking the time!

If nothing else hopefully it all at least helps us all understand why this stuff is happening.

[Pharaun159]

Originally posted by Roan Shiran:

Originally posted by Pharaun159:

I believe the sniper and the tactical get access to it. In the snipers hands, i believe that it takes 5 headshot to kill a majoris enemy. In tactical hands it takes nearly the whole magazine.

This is just not true.

This was my testing pre patch 3.0.. I'm honestly not sure what it is now

[Pharaun159]

Originally posted by Chaoslord 87:

You got that part with Bolter rounds wrong.
Standard Bolt Rounds have a explosive charge, which is independent of the rocket propellant.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Bolter_Ammunition?so=search#Standard_Bolts

Thanks for the link. While i does seem seem my lore was a bit off... my intent actually still stays the same. Your link showed many different bolter rounds that could be used lore-wise to create the effects i was talking about. Thanks for furthering my lore knowledge. This game world is so COOL!

[Dams]

Hey guys, about stability did u found any improvments since 4.1 ?
actually my CPU seems to run better since 4.1 release am i crazy or ?
playin with a 3060ti and R5 5600X and seing less Fps drop and more stability.

[Pharaun159]

Originally posted by Dams:

Hey guys, about stability did u found any improvments since 4.1 ?
actually my CPU seems to run better since 4.1 release am i crazy or ?
playin with a 3060ti and R5 5600X and seing less Fps drop and more stability.

yes it did seem to.. Though i had to still do a complete reinstall

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Ok others have already debunked your false claims about the bolter damage. But in addition what you ask for here is actually to turn the bolters into grenade launchers in my view. I say buff the damage a bit more despite the class perk "problem". Because and think good about this part, these developers are not able to implement complex new mechanics. You have seen what even small patches by them can do to this game, breaking it completly for some.

There are also far to many other problems and lack of content as if they have time to make new mechanics, because that would also require a lot testing (wich is not their thing as it seems). They should work with what is there right now and avoid sources for mistakes as much as possible. Look at the forum, what the tinckering with the ai director and other stuff has done to the game. These guys are most likely really just able to push numbers around.

My guess is, the development time was so short and rushed, that this game and its systems are extremly fragile across the board, every change has high risks of failure ... :-/

So again, they should only make simple but meaningfull changes when it comes to that ;-)