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Map level design is terrible and spawn points aren't numerous/close enough to the player, enemies can't catch up with players because of how fast we are (and there is no dynamic respawn for such enemies, they just sit there), and the limited tasks per frame don't help at all.
Enemy stats in general are totally screwed and inconsistent anyway, damage falloff only is one of the stats that should be entirely revised. Better squads and tactics would definitely be of use as well, but at this point I don't think Overkill care at all. Lower grace period too.
Let's just hope Payday 3 doesn't happen to be a horde shooter utter failure.
Personally I think a sharpshooter enemy (just a normal unit with some kind of DMR, like an M308) that serves as actual longrange support would be for the best if we were going to try and preserve some kind of long-range fire normal unit in the game.
And yeah, enemies being more mobile/less kiteable would be neat (Though it was a problem in Payday: The Heist as well on DH apparently), the primary thing that would solve that (like a lot of problems with cops ATM) is implementing a FSS-like system into the game so the AI isn't so relentlessly gimped by slow reaction times. Dynamic respawning would definitely help, and I'd actually like to note that it seems to be coded into some levels like Prison Nightmare- Sadly, like team AI teleports, it's hard coded into the map as opposed to being handled dynamically, which is a fundemental mistake IMO.
This refers to the GenSec red-shirt guards, the ones that arrive in GO Bank most of the time during stealth. The reason behind this is a simple typo that they never fixed:
hard isn't a valid suppression preset, it's either easy, hard_def, hard_agg or no_supress.
The last one isn't what the name suggests, at least for NPCs that can take damage. Medics, the Hoxton and Charon NPCs use it, but the Medics should either have nil or nothing set there. While the value to reach maximum suppression is ridiculously higher, as the duration is 0.1-0.15 seconds, they will crouch and stand up everytime they get shot (due to taking damage setting the value to the maximum amount).
The reason I'm explaining this is that the GenSec red-shirt guys issue is an easy fix, and GenSec SWAT elites are suppressed just as easily as green FBI SWAT units since forever (I wish Frankelstner was more clear about it). They should also never use no_supress for anything that can actually take damage.
ZEAL SWAT and Heavy ZEAL SWAT units are reskins of blue SWAT and yellow SWAT units, respectively. The reason as to why they have no damage fall-off is because these two (swat and heavy_swat) are included in the list that makes units change their presets on a difficulty, if applicable, and Death Wish and One Down use the deathwish presets.
The deathwish presets for SMGs and rifles basically have 6.75x and 7.5x damage at any range, respectively (the reason ZEAL Heavy SWAT deal 225 damage is because the m4 damage is increased to 30, from 10, on One Down, while the mp5 remains at 10 for every difficulty except Normal).
So yeah, basically the no fall-off rule is something OVK came up with, it's not an undesired result. Though if city_swat (GenSec SWAT elites) and fbi_heavy_swat (heavy FBI/GenSec SWAT) were added to the list, since they use the g36, which has 30 base damage, they would deal 225 damage per shot just like Heavy ZEAL SWAT, that would be undesirable.
This also means that GenSec elites are using non-intended presets, but making them using the correct ones would lead to even more issues unless they fix those first, but that requires standardizing all the presets and base weapon damage. So, hoping they'll do it is kinda hopeless.
These two, along with Bulldozers, have individual presets, though only 3, one default which is used for Mayhem and below, one for Death Wish and one for One Down. But of course, not only they're unconsistent, they don't really make all that much sense.
Tasers and Shields have fall-off and kinda weird default stats, then, they don't have damage fall-off on Death Wish and the values go up a lot, then Tasers deal less damage on OD.
r870 Dozers' have the same stats on all difficulties except for the fall-off multipliers (which increase the damage) on Death Wish and One Down (the base damage of the weapon is also increased here). Saiga Dozers have underwhelming default stats, then they get a ridiculous damage increase on Death Wish, then the damage goes back down a lot on One Down (reason as to why they took them out instead of fixing this). m249 Dozers have slight fall-off for their default stats, no fall-off for Death Wish, then again, more fall-off for One Down.
Basically, it's a mess, as usual. While Tasers need individual presets due to the tase mechanic and Shields to avoid them using melee attacks. Dozers can use the difficulty presets just fine, but those need adjustments as well.
The AK they use is a cloned m4 (called ak47_ass), except that this one gets it's base damage increased on all difficulties after OVERKILL (it included). But since they're all either fbi_swat, fbi_heavy_swat or city_swat (the ones that are not included in the preset list), their weapons don't scale.
Only Tasers, Dozers and Shields scale because of their individual presets.
But yeah, cloning units without causing issues is not OVK's forte, especially with the mess that the charactertweakdata and weapontweakdata files are.
You mean the burst fire with a size of 3 rounds (or even less) after 10 meters? Oh joy. But yeah, their damage and small burst size (unless you're up in their face) is due to them having individual presets, but set as is_rifle instead of is_lmg (there are difficulty presets for is_lmg, which have fall-off, big bursts and way less accuracy, but they're never used, even by other LMG-wielding units).
The name alone doesn't change how that works since they're individual presets, but they made them as such because of it.
It's the same as I mentioned above with SWAT units. Gangsters, guards and beat cops also scale like swat and heavy_swat because they're in the list, which is why their damage (and range) goes up a lot compared to other units.
Being able to take a lot more damage in a shorter period of time sounds just as crap to me as getting bursted to death at all distances.
On topic: I agree. Damage dropoff needs to be a thing. It's dumb as heck it's not part of One Down's design and it makes open maps a nightmare.
Also indirectly makes the game slightly more nervous.
The lower grace period totally makes the difference between PDTH OVK and OVK145+, while iirc the only difference between these two besides grace period is slightly increased enemy health multiplier and lower base armor for the player (and since armor upgrades are flat improvements it doesn't matter that much, nor does it for health especially if you use Thick Skin).
Enemy damage doesn't change at all but enemies still are deadlier thanks to the grace period, yet never unfair since you still have to manage your armor and health like on OVK, just have a quicker reaction time to duck in cover. That's the main difference with OD, where they straight upped enemy damage instead of tweaking grace period (and player armor but that doesn't thematically fit in PD2), meaning all health based perk decks and builds are utter crap compared to DW, and that you have to relearn everything about the game from scratch.
When DW was released, there weren't so many open maps so it wasn't that problematic then, and Overkill clearly never ever cared about futureproofing something properly.
Literally the only way would be to do the overhaul Hoxi also did, fixing all the crap if Jules + programmer sit a day and look at it.
But they probably preferably leave it a broken mess.
@Hoxi:
Thank you for the explanation. This is the sort of form I wish all balance discussions would take. I don't have much to say on your post since it's highly technical and pretty much speaks for itself, but I wanted to acknowledge it just the same. Keep up the professional tone :)
@Festive lexilogo:
I think you may want to restructure your OP a little bit. It somewhat hard to follow what you're suggesting, exactly. Let me see if I understand. It seems like you have the following two suggestions:
I cut out a lot of your post, but those seem to be the major points. The latter is more or less what Hoxi did, I'd encourage you to track down and check his NJTA mod.
As to the former, I'm of several minds about it. Firstly, I do actually want to see cops just not fire outside their "effective range." Like, at all, under any circumstance. Shotgunners shouldn't be taking pot shots at 100 meter. But then, what DO they do in those cases? Just charge across open ground and hope to get in range? Moving from cover to cover would be nice, but maps where this is an issue typically don't HAVE cover in the first place, even if cops had the means of using it. What you propose is having those enemies shoot even outside their effective range, that just brings us around to the silliness of it.
I'm thinking something else. What about cops receiving any suppression while outside their effective range being instantly suppressed fully? That way, they at least won't sit and take shots, but will at least try to break line of sight with the player. Yes, that does mean players can grief cops from long distance and potentially kite them, this is something I'm worried about. Something like this is worth testing out practically one way or the other because it has the potential to be really cool or really game-breaking.
A bit off-topic, but I really wish Suppression weren't so easy to achieve in this game. Doesn't matter your threat rating, just shoot a cop and he's fully suppressed, even with a silenced weapon. I'd personally like make silenced weapons fully incapable of suppressing under any circumstances, and then make landed shots suppress only after a certain damage threshold has been passed similar to "hurt" animations, with Thread modifying that threshold somehow. That way, suppressing cops fully from a distance would be more worthwhile and not "something which already happens anyway."
---
As to the Sharpshooter enemy, I'm honestly not a huge fan. I experimented with the Restoration Mod for some time, and this was one of my less favourite enemies. I'm not a huge fan of damage-spiking enemies, but at least in the case of Shotgunners those generally only work if I let them surprise me. With Sharpshooters, I'd just take MASSIVE hits out of nowhere before being able to identify that one cop on the far side of the room with a slightly different gun.
If you're going to borrow an enemy from there, borrow the FBI Sniper. Those dudes behaved like normal snipers, except they'd also move like normal soldiers, so they could be in the room with you. They're visually distinct, have the red laser to indicate their presence and if I recall correctly have absolute garbage accuracy for the first few seconds after they start aiming. That's more than plenty of opportunity to either kill them or take cover, which I found to be a much better mechanic I wouldn't mind seeing in the Vanilla game.
Not really sure how they work, however. I didn't mess with the mod too much as it was incompatible with the majority of the other mods I use, so it wasn't something I could adopt for regular play. It has quite a few really good ideas, though.
@Salem:
I'm not a fan of messing with the damage grace period. Certainly not for the purposes of making the game more "nervous." That's obviously subjective personal preference, of course - I've spoken about preferring a game where both players and enemies are bullet sponges over one where both are glass cannons. Yes, lowering that makes the game significantly harder (it's part of the Mayhem and above difficulty increase), but it's not something I personally enjoy.
Well, I tell a lie. I DO want to mess with the grace period, but not to reduce it. Rather, I want to change how it handles hits of different damage values. Currently, if you take a weak initial hit and then a stronger follow-up hit while in grace, you take damage from both and the second hit resets the grace period. It's why dodge was able to chain grace indefinitely. I've talked about this before, naturally, and I'm much more a fan of Shiny Hoppip's Reduced I-Frame Damage mod.
With that mod, if you take a weak initial hit and then a stronger follow-up hit while in grace, you take the only the damage from the first hit, the damage differential between the first and the second, and the grace period is not reset. That does mean you take less damage during grace, but you get less grace at the same time. In my experience, that makes damage consistent regardless of the "order" in which you take it, as well as elminating annoying inexplicable damage spikes.
If you want to change damage grace period duration, I'd suggest doing THAT first.
I agree this OP wasn't written particularly well, the first suggestion kinda derailed the whole thing because it got a bit too technical. (That's why I tried to do the bold text stuff in order to make my main points a bit clearer. I'll put some titles in to make it easier on the eyes)
I don't necessarily want damage dropoff completely standardised, but I do want it to at least exist for all enemies (excluding snipers for obvious reasons) and be slightly more impactful on damage than it currently is. I'm not entirely against enemy damage dropoff being lesser on higher difficulties, for example, I just think at present enemy damage dropoff is too minimal especially on higher difficulties.
I don't know exactly how Sharpshooters in Restoration work so I can't really speak to it (for the record I'm pretty much just suggesting a normal enemy with lower rates of damage dropoff and high accuracy). I dunno about allowing Snipers to spawn along with normal units, even if they did keep their laser, though, I think the armorpiercing might be a bit too much. I'd probably accept it if it was a relative rarity and restricted to DW+ difficulties or something along those lines.
As for suppression, I honestly don't consider myself qualified enough to talk about it as a mechanic all that much, but I'm not against people screwing around with it to see if it can be made into a better mechanic. Interested in seeing how it'd turn out.
As for sharpshooters they sound like the ZEAL Sniper from Crime Spree. Which are pretty much horrible. And Jules didn't bother fixing (or the shield limit breaking from Winter shields). Do you really want that in the base game?
Seems like you fixed the formatting of the OP :) That makes it considerably easier to read and - crucially - to cross-reference after the fact. You might also want to look into using the [list] tag for bulleted lists, as it makes them stand out from the general text body more easily, but this is going off topic.
Oh, certainly. You'll have to ask Hoxi or someone else who knows, but I believe the enemy dropoff arrays are the main way in which damage scales across difficulties, so you very much can vary dropoff for both damage and accuracy that way. I accept that "higher level" enemies would be more accurate, but it makes sense to keep them consistent against each other on every difficulty. That's a fairly complex topic, though, and something I do believe Overkill themselves need to seriously consider.
Aim delay is something that's worth playing with for cops. Extending this significantly - say to 5-10 seconds at 50+ meters - would be a good way to balance this out, as well. Maybe we do want riflemen to be able to pop accurate shots at heisters from across the map, but only if the heisters give them the time to aim properly. I'm pulling the numbers completely out of my ass here, but this is something I've almost never seen talked about. Just about the only place I've seen it brought up is Better Bots, since Schmuddel basically set the Bot aim delay and focus delay to 0. Now I'm curious what Hoxi did with them :)
Truth be told, neither do I. I had it explained to me in general terms at one point though my memory is foggy, and the rest of it comes from seeing how these guys behave. It's actually surprisingly not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, as you may be concerned. They're VERY obvious when they do show up, they're VERY easy to kill at close range and they effectively always miss their first shot while having a pretty good chance of missing their follow-up, too. If I recall correctly, they had pretty unfavourable aim delay values. It's one of those things you'd need to try out personally, I guess.
I'm definitely not a fan of stat-tweaked Commons, though. This is actually why I'm not in favour of bringing back the HRT. To me, Payday 2 works best with clear, discrete delineation between enemies. You have Auto Commons and Shotgun Commons, and even that I'd argue is a bit much. Adding in DMR commons who are kind of like Auot commons except they deal a little more damage from a little farther away isn't something I want to see. Hell, I'd like to give Heavy shotgunners night-vision goggles and shotgun shell bandouliers so they're easier to tell apart.
I prefer discrete balance, is my point. Fewer, more radically distinct enemies vs. more stat-tweaked versions of the same enemy, as it were. With the amount of cops Payday 2 throws at us and the speed with which we have to do both target acquisition and situational awareness, minor differences get lost in the shuffle, be they visual or mechanical. I'd rather have more uniformity than less so.
Oh, I didn't actually know that. Seems reasonable to me.
Anyway, the hypothetical sharpshooter wouldn't have armorpiercing, which is the main reason ZEAL snipers are so annoying. (especially as in CS they can scale to the point where they quite literally oneshot you) I wouldn't necessarily WANT it either, this is just a concept I'm throwing out there. I don't know how well it would work out in-game.
It's basically what Salem said, although, making the game "more nervous" depends on the design alone, changing it without changing things can lead to not-so-good results, which is kinda the case for One Down in my mod, but the point was to make it just as ridiculous but letting players use any build (since no 225 damage per shot, plus it does make Stoic not op because of how it works).
That said, using a static value and balancing the game around it can work as well, which is something I'm thinking of doing. But that's also because I thought of removing scaling all together and balance the difficulties around the units that spawn there (SWAT < FBI < GenSec < DHS), their weapons and other factors such as "training in general". Other map-specific units would remain more or less the same.
Well, it only was the case with DW, but the code was pretty different back then, the reason people complained about blue SWAT/HRTs and FBI Veteran units when playing Death Wish back then, is that these were the only ones that scaled and spawned during waves, dealing 67.5/75 damage per shot, respectively. Pair that with the grace period bug when using any sort of damage resistance skill and it was even worse.
Mayhem originally used a preset called easywish, which is like a middleground between expert and deathwish. Now it remains unused and expert is used instead, like on OVERKILL. Of course, the main units that spawn there remain the same as on Death Wish, because their weapons don't scale and their base stats make them the way they are.
One Down is literally Death Wish with scaling units (swat and heavy_swat, why they didn't make new ones is beyond me, but everything about MH and OD release was a bigger mess than it is today).
Then, there's special units being a mess as I explained in the previous comment.
Don't know if I can call it professional since I'm still struggling with coding/programming terms, and now I'm making this ridiculously long comment, but I'm trying my best at being through and detailed, thanks! I'll try keeping it that way!
Well, something to consider is that scripted reinforce spawns (the ones that camp at certain spots like rooftops) are out of the question because enemies won't move at all there, suppression won't make them move at all.
That said, here's how (I think, pretty sure) the three .range entries work:
I might be wrong about Far causing them to shoot while standing still when within that range, since they might need another reason as well, but since Snipers have the highest range there and shoot regardless, I'm pretty sure it works like that.
Point with this explanation is (assuming I'm not wrong about Far), you can tweak these values according to the weapon used. Shotguns can have short ranges in general, but since Far is also short, they won't start shooting from far away right away (reinforce spawns don't count, though why shotgun reinforce units exist at all is beyond me, like Biker Heist day 1). But if you shoot at them, they can open fire while trying to get away or keep moving as if they were trying to "suppress" you.
Could be even more abused than it is now, since suppression can apply *0.5 to accuracy values among other things, shooting in their general direction from far enough and fully suppressing them without even landing a shot doesn't sound so good. That doesn't mean it can't be improved, enemies would already have more chances of surviving if they sprinted around more often, especially when far away, instead of mostly strolling/crouch-moving.
I do want to look into suppression not being maxed out when receiving damage when I have the time, it's something that definitely bothered me since forever.
Don't know how they work or what their stats are, but I personally made ZEAL Marksmen deal the same damage that other rifle units deal, except with armor piercing enabled, along with other tweaks so they don't non-scope you the moment they get line of sight with you. That way they're really just there to screw with armor-gating without being straight out better (aka ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) Snipers.
Having high damage per shot works with shotguns, provided the damage over range is done right, but with sharpshooters, either they stay in places you know they'll be there and/or stick out like sore thumbs, or they have some kind of weakness to compensate them joining normal units.
I forgot to reply in another thread about this, but we would've derailed it a bit I think. I would have to give it a try to see how it works in comparison, but negating random spikes because you received higher damage right after taking a certain amount sounds great, considering that can be annoying and seem random at times.
Actually, their Mayhem and OVERKILL damage is about the same for them actually (actually lower for Mayhem, along with less accuracy because of training I guess). They do have the same stats for Death Wish and One Down, which bothers me because other specials don't have this because reasons.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it is. You change different range entries to give them different stats (like damage, accuracy, burst delay, burst mode, etc) at different ranges.
I would need to check if that works, but it most likely does, by giving each range entry a different value instead of a static one regardless of the range. You can already give them a much higher burst delay, but that wouldn't prevent them from firing right away the first time, and I don't know what happens if the aim delay is greater than the burst delay, but I can always tweak them accordingly.
I hadn't really thought of making them be just as accurate (for the most part) but at the cost of having to aim for a longer time, punishing the player for staying in their sights for too long. That sounds way better than them taking potshots instantly.
I personally left it as is for some weapons since I tweaked other stats, but I tweaked most of them accordingly to the weapon. Going that way is just doing cheap stat increases, enemies can have very high accuracy most of the time and shoot instantly.
I already commented on this above, regarding sharpshooter type of enemies, but since you're mentioning heavy shotgunners, I have to mention I agree with that. I'm actually planning on removing heavies with shotguns because they don't seem different from other heavies, while in comparison, all the light variants that use shotguns have an easily distinguishable shell rack, among other slight differences. Of course, adding a shell rack/bandolier for those as well would be preferable, but that's on OVERKILL (even if I could mod them in, I'd prefer not to add new units because that would cause issues with players without the mod, and if it was local, players without it wouldn't see them anyway).
Regarding HRTs, they could work if they ONLY spawned between waves, moved fast enough and prioritized rescueing hostages more than anything. That last one was kinda the case, as I would have an entire group of hostages hidden in one spot, only to be freed one after another by an HRT unit after an assault ended (but it could've been better).
Them spawning during waves doesn't make that much sense however, at least, when they just follow normal units instead of going straight for hostages. You could even make normal units not able to free them at all, while making these the only ones that can do it, as long as they actually do that without behaving like other enemies.
I can see why after doing some testing and planning different things, and it's something I might do, most likely.
Since I managed to sucessfully edit .sequence_manager files, I can tweak the amount of health a Bulldozer's plate and visor have (among other armor parts, though those are not so relevant). This opened a whole bunch of possibilities for me in terms of balancing them, especially to make the different variants actually different from each other, with ZEALs being the toughest.
This even lets me tweak them so they can die in one headshot from ANY weapon, but making the plate and visor actually tough to break, instead of being the same all the time and just tweaking their health (seeing them tank whole magazines with their face was always a bit too dumb). They would also not have so much bodyhealth that makes the Titan versions ridiculous to deal with unless you stack enough damage skills.
At the same time, this also goes in hand with something else I was planning on doing, which is making difficulty depend on the unit you're facing (and thus, their training) and the weapon they're using, instead of magically making an M4 deal 10 damage on Normal and spike all the way to 225 on One Down.
However, since the three common variants of Dozers use the tank entry, I would have to remove Green and Black Bulldozers from Mayhem and Death Wish, while letting only Skulldozers spawn, as that's their territory (and if the other two where to spawn, they would just be weaker versions that can randomly spawn instead). However (again), they would be back on One Down along with the LMG variant, all with their ZEAL armor durability.
Do note that I'm nowhere near doing that yet since I'm first trying to make a decent and working model in terms of enemy health and player damage, but I'm planning on doing something among those lines.
Don't even count them. The main reason they're so annoying and broken is because they're rushed and unpolished, they don't do ♥♥♥♥ of what Jules stated about them. They're simply a copy-paste of Snipers except that they can go with common units and without the no-shooting-while-moving restriction.
Wouldn't that make the conceit of Mayhem impossible to achieve, though? The whole "Deathwish cops and objectives with Overkill damage" thing? Granted, I'm not actually opposed to the idea in principle. As you quoted me elsewhere, I'm a fan of a discrete number of significantly different enemies. The idea of knowing what to expect out of a cop based on what unit he is, rather than based on what difficulty I'm playing is appealing to me, especially if you mix cops from different difficulties like Hard does (did last I checked). Not sure how you'd manage the difficulty gap between Overkill and Deathwish, though, or even between Hard and Very Hard, then.
It's professional in the sense that you've delivered either pure problemsolving or pure objective-minded discussion with very little flame war chaff thrown in. Your posts are a pleasure to read because they're condensed information and ideas I can actually work with, albeit in theory. This is what I wish all balance discussions were like.
That's how Suppression works right now, though, I thought? You suppress enemies by shooting next to them and missing, with the angle offset being actually pretty generous even at long range. I was mostly suggesting that enemies outside their effective range be more susceptible to being suppressed. I figured that since they couldn't shoot back effectively, they might be more likely to take cover, instead. Probably not a great idea in general, though.
In general, I'm looking for ways to keep cops who aren't snipers from sniping at extreme ranges, because it makes more open maps an absolute pain in my ass. Not impossible, certainly, but they give the distinct impression of mechanical limitation - they feel like a poor fit for the game's design. By keeping enemies from delivering effective fire at unlimited range, this would serve to limit the action to a smaller area around the players, making cover more feasible.
My proposition: reduce Suppression received when being shot to the same as being missed, remove Suppression altogether from silencers. That'll probably make for ♥♥♥♥ balance, but it's a starting point to test from.
Play around with it, certainly. It's hard to spot in action, though. I've not had massive unexplained damage spikes whith this mod, but the frequency of massive explained damage spikes seems to have increased somewhat :) I personally find the Vanilla implementation doesn't handle the corner case of dissimilar damage well, in that the results can vary significantly based on the order of damage. With Hoppip's mod, damage order is irrelevant, the result is always the same amount of damage, equal to the highest damaging hit received.
If I take a sudden massive damage spike with that mod, there's ALWAYS a reason for it - something I can't say for my experience with Vanilla.
That was my thinking here, as well. As long as I have a means to game that, I don't necessarily mind enemies being accurate at long range. A long enough aim delay should give me enough of a buffer to run around and do stuff (do objectives, move bags, shoot them) without simultaneously giving me infinite leeway to just run around in the open. This has the potential to make open map overall even harder, but without feeling as cheap and frankly underdone as they do now. Plus it's a better take on Payday 2's version of cover shooting, I'd argue.
I'd propose scrapping the Shotgun variant of Common enemies altogether and replacing them with a brand, visually distinct enemy, same stats as a Light Cop. As an experiment, you can try using cops who will never ever spawn on a given difficulty, such as Metropolitan SWAT Shotgunners on Overkill, FBI Shotgunners on Deathwish, etc. Even with the larger gun and the bandoulier and the night vision goggles, these guys are easy to miss. I'd personally like to see them be easily identifiable in a crowd, and it might be something you can do.
Granted, that's in-line with my idea of giving Heavy cops a copy of the Light cops' stats just with body armour, which I recall you didn't necessarily agree with.
Honestly, that's never been the case for me but sure. I can agree with the HRT behaving as you've described them, provided they use a clone of the Light Cop stats. Like I said, I'm a fan of discrete enemy differentiation, so slightly weaker enemies with slightly more damage isn't something I'm personally interested in. I'm fine with them being Light Cop clones who always go directly for hostages. I don't even need them spawning between waves, as long as Bain calls them out when they spawn (rather than when it's already too late). A bit loke "Roof! Black Hawk on the roof!"
Eh, I don't know about making Bulldozers different from each other. I don't know that there are all that many roles for them. I can maybe see Skulldozers behaving more like Headless Dozers (i.e. tougher but can't sprint), provided they have severe dropoff and/or aim delay on their suppressing LMG, but I'm not convinced there really is much room for both Blackdozers and Greendozers. I'd personally look into using them as NM/HD vs. VH/OK variants.
Well, genius me forgot to clarify that I was talking about a rebalance mod I'm planning to make (I'll get rid of balancing changes for NJTA when I release it) but I'm testing and seeing how far I can go in terms of modding first, then make a model when it comes to numbers and features, so these things might not be final.
That said, my idea was not to combine enemies from different difficulties, but to make each "faction" (if you want to call it) more unique in terms of difficulty. The way I would differentiate them with their tactics, squad formations, "training" in general (not just with weapons) and whatever I can manage to add that isn't just numbers.
And assuming everything goes as I plan, no damage increase for a weapon that's used both on a low and higher difficulty (e.g. the M4/CAR-4 used by Heavy SWAT and FBI Heavy SWAT, where the latter would be better with it without dealing more damage per shot, and the damage grace period will help with tht by remaining the same across the board). Then, that's where enemies using different weapons comes in.
One of the ways to differentiate Normal from Hard, Very Hard from OVERKILL and Mayhem from Death Wish would be the amount of light units vs heavy units similar to what it is now, but in a more smooth way, along with the second one introducing a new special unit (nothing new to the game since I want to avoid crashes for unmodded clients if possible).
It might sound too hopeful of me considering what I'm implying with it, but it's an idea and I have to see some results first.
Yeah, gotcha, that's one of the reasons I stopped commenting in that other thread besides falling behind too much.
and Minar going with his comments as usual
Shooting next to them doesn't set the value to the maximum amount, and that's what determines wheter they duck, or abandon their objective and seek cover, or get debuffs to their weapon stats (or all of them).
Not necessarily a bad idea, it is with the way the game works right now, but maybe making it so if they're very far away when suppressed, they would just run for cover (and only fire if they have to run in your direction for a bit) instead of crouching and slowly making their way there. That may be hard for me to implement though, if possible at all.
Well, I was right with my explanation about the range stats, the only thing I missed is the that they need to have the engage attitude to shoot, but that's another deal (to put it simple, you or your team are aggressive = you are engaged by them).
Anyway, my point is that thanks to the fall-off entries that let you determine different stats for different ranges and the range entries, you can definitely make it so enemies either take longer to fire (by both aim delay and burst delay), do smaller bursts, deal less damage, or have even less accuracy. Reaching a point where you can't necessarily run around ignoring enemies, but they also don't 225-damage you. Or even don't focus on you unless you give them a reason besides being there, for enemies with shotguns.
Considering that even the ingame tips suggest it works that way, that's how it should've been since the beggining. That also doesn't necessarily screw things up, since weapon Threat is probably the one stat that is balanced all across the board, surprisingly.
I was planning on using light shotgunners only for very specific squads (like with Shields, to charge in) without being so common that they would mix with other units.
That's also not a bad idea, but I would have to use a unit that doesn't belong to these "factions" since I want to avoid mixing them between difficulties.
Pretty sure I didn't disagree, I just though at the time that it would be impossible for me to implement, but I read a bit, downloaded the tool for it, and I already edited the .sequence_manager file for a Dozer, and it worked as expected.
Assuming from what I've seen that that's how these units handle body armor (since I can't get their files for some reason), I could go with that idea.
Well, right now, Recon units do have the tasks to make them path directly towards civilians and bags (if there are any, which enables Recon in the first place) and avoiding behavior, but I can't really check if it was always like that.
And actually, they were like light cops, the issue is that these actually scaled, thus the better weapon stats.
I may be able to tweak the warning voicelines so they trigger on their spawn, along with maybe, MAYBE, improving the part about them going directly to hostages.
I already made it so waves are more consistent and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like drama (getting shot, tased, downed, etc) doesn't affect them (by skipping or extending phases) and making it so enemies start retreating a bit before the wave ends (with the crew announcing it) instead of right when it ends, which causes them to mix with new units.
That, along with the biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is fade and it's potential duration of 350 seconds if you leave some enemies alive and keep getting shot, so I'm kinda confident about it.
Never said they would spawn together while also being different, that's only going to be the case for One Down to make for the lack of extra ZEAL SWAT units to use as shotgunners, and they would be equally resilient there since they're all ZEAL Bulldozers.
Basically:
With durability I mean their plates and visors (and body health, but without going nuts about it), since I want those to be hard to destroy, while only one headshot would kill the Dozer (by using an extremely high headshot multiplier, but restricting crits from working on them).