Combat

[Valykry]

Real world, if you have the option of a sniper rifle and shotgun and someone who can't shoot, you'd give them the shotty. But as far as the game mechanics here go, is the fact that a shotgun (should) have a spread even factored into whether or not they land a hit? Or is the primary difference simply a matter of power vs range? Or in other words, is it actually beneficial to equip pawns with low shooting skills with shotguns and equip your lvl 20's with things meant to "reach out and touch someone"?

[Vulpesrojo]

Accuracy is calculated each tile a bullet needs to travel, so having fewer tiles of lower % chance to hit would be better than having it be calculated more times over a longer distance. That being said, I'd just throw them on something with a relatively short cooldown/warmup time. Accuracy by volume in that case.

[Astasia]

Effectively all shotguns in the game are using slugs, they fire one projectile at a time and it either hits or misses. That said, the pump shotgun has the highest base chance to hit within its optimal weapon range of any ranged weapon in the game, it's a pretty average weapon though in terms of damage output and the short range might make it less ideal depending on your setup. The chain shotgun has fairly low accuracy, but the highest potential single target damage output in the game. It's a very effective weapon on any colonist in short range, since ranged skill mostly only becomes a factor at longer ranges.

Usually the best all around "low skill" weapon in the game is considered to be the Heavy SMG though, it's not as accurate but spits out a lot of bullets and does fairly high damage with decent range.

[Valykry]

By best, is that also including the minigun? (I seem to recall seeing that in the research bench, and if so it is researched, just not built. Yet.)
I essentially have all but a few of the very last things researched, but ran into a wall regarding components. Only just recently managed to set up to make my own.

[Astasia]

Minigun is sort of situational. At high skill and bionics it is a pretty devastating weapon all around, even single target. At low skill it can sometimes be used effectively if you cluster enemies just right in a killbox entrance so all the missed shots hit other enemies. Single target low skill the Heavy SMG performs much better than a mini-gun though.

Here's a video that goes over sort of the basic performance of some of the weapons. It doesn't go into niche uses where some of them really shine though, and doesn't cover chain shotguns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFjPzn_NNAg

I would like to point out, that regardless of everything I just said, the only guns I personally ever craft are Charge Rifles (or modded equivalent high-end weapons). Until I get high quality charge rifles I just give colonists whatever I find off raiders, and I never really pay attention to their ranged skill since it rises pretty quickly regardless of what you give them.

[Spack Jarrow]

Originally posted by Valykry:

Real world, if you have the option of a sniper rifle and shotgun and someone who can't shoot, you'd give them the shotty. But as far as the game mechanics here go, is the fact that a shotgun (should) have a spread even factored into whether or not they land a hit? Or is the primary difference simply a matter of power vs range? Or in other words, is it actually beneficial to equip pawns with low shooting skills with shotguns and equip your lvl 20's with things meant to "reach out and touch someone"?

You want to give bad shooters reliable weapons and good shooters weapons that can make dmg faster.

Sniper rifle is a long cooldown weapon and every shot is crucial.
A rifles and pistols can shoot quite often , I think heavy machinguns are the best for bad shooters.
Shotguns are last line of defense used for stopping power , otherwise other weapons can do more dmg consistently over longer range.

Also Trigger happy want low cooldown weapons and in general are better the more skill you have to compensate for poor aim.

Careful shooter is better on bad pawns.

[Raymond]

yeah I know the feeling. Just download combat extended and have fun.

[glass zebra]

Low skill -> short range weapon
High skill -> long range weapon
As already said: the skill reduces the penalty per tile. On really low ranges, high skill and low skill pawns are really close together. Shotguns are really reliable on hitting and good if you can make use of the stopping power. SMGs are pretty much the best single target dps weapons on close range. While miniguns can put out a lot of dps, they have a long cd and long warmup which means there is a higher chance the enemy shoots your before you can kill it and also that if you do quick kills, your pawn is standing around longer. SMGs are less situational. There are other useable weapons but you gonna need to find your own playstyle and experiment with those probably.
You seem to have the right idea here already with skill level and range and your OP in general. For the shotgun, you can think of the game simplifying the "spread" into accuracy by what it means in real world: you hit a target reliably. They are not like normal game shotguns with cotton balls on high range and meat grinder of doom on low range. That said, they also have lower than usual armour pen in the game.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Also Trigger happy want low cooldown weapons

Absolutely not. Trigger happy wants weapons with a long windup because that's where it gets the most benefit. Putting it on something with almost no windup wastes the benefit of the trait and just gives you the penalty of the lowered accuracy.

[Jigain]

Exactly as Gep says, Trigger Happy wants long aiming weapons, such as sniper rifles, to maximize the benefit of the trait in order to outweigh the negative. Likewise, Careful Shooter wants low aiming weapons to minimize the penalty.

[Spack Jarrow]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Also Trigger happy want low cooldown weapons

Absolutely not. Trigger happy wants weapons with a long windup because that's where it gets the most benefit. Putting it on something with almost no windup wastes the benefit of the trait and just gives you the penalty of the lowered accuracy.

That's false it doesn't help overall DPS, low cooldown weapons benefit from trigger happy, because if you cut aiming time with trigger happy and cooldown is next to nothing , then you're shooting faster than you can think. While if you cut down aim time on weapons with LONG cooldown , then you're not increasing the dps as much as possible.

Case and point say you have a weapon with 2sec aim and 3 sec cooldown, when you Trigger happy , then you have about 1+3 = 4sec to wait between shots.

If you take a weapons with 1 cooldown and 4 seconds aim = you get 3 sec shooting interval which then leads to maximised dps.

IT sounds like you don't make the distinction between aim time and cooldown , trigger happy does not affect cooldown it affects aim time. Two separate things

Trigger happy is right out BAD on sniper rifles First it defeats the purpose of the weapon lowers it's accuracy and the gain in shots fired is minimal, because of the long cooldown that the weapon has. Sniper rifle is a abusive weapon for picking off enemies before raid happens , hit and run, it has no place on regular battlefield especially when heavy armour rolls in , it is too slow period.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

That's false it doesn't help overall DPS, low cooldown weapons benefit from trigger happy, because if you cut aiming time with trigger happy and cooldown is next to nothing , then you're shooting faster than you can think. While if you cut down aim time on weapons with LONG cooldown , then you're not increasing the dps as much as possible.

Absolutely not. Trigger happy wants weapons with a long windup because that's where it gets the most benefit. Putting it on something with almost no windup wastes the benefit of the trait and just gives you the penalty of the lowered accuracy.

Case and point say you have a weapon with 2sec aim and 3 sec cooldown, when you Trigger happy , then you have about 1+3 = 4sec to wait between shots.

If you take a weapons with 1 cooldown and 4 seconds aim = you get 3 sec shooting interval which then leads to maximised dps.

Your example does not prove your point. It proves the point of gimmethegepgun since you your second example has twice the aiming time, which is why there is a big dps increase.
If you wanna compare the effectivesness with low cooldown vs high aim weapons, you have to change that exact stat for your examples. Not both.

E.g.
For the Aim:
3s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 5s to 3.5s ,which is a 43% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.

For the Cd:
2s aim + 3s cd will be reduced from 5s to 4s, which is a 25% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.
Edit: Yeah I'm sorry that was mostly nonsense. Burst time is the only thing that puts aim time in front and the ratio is more important.

You see that 1s more aim time has a bigger incease than 1s less cd. Okay it's 50% more aim time vs 33% less cooldown (which is the same multiplier in 2 different directions) and both offer the exact same improvement multiplier.

[Spack Jarrow]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Case and point say you have a weapon with 2sec aim and 3 sec cooldown, when you Trigger happy , then you have about 1+3 = 4sec to wait between shots.

If you take a weapons with 1 cooldown and 4 seconds aim = you get 3 sec shooting interval which then leads to maximised dps.

Your example does not prove your point. It proves the point of gimmethegepgun since you your second example has twice the aiming time, which is why there is a big dps increase.
If you wanna compare the effectivesness with low cooldown vs high aim weapons, you have to change that exact stat for your examples. Not both.

E.g.
For the Aim:
3s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 5s to 3.5s ,which is a 43% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.

For the Cd:
2s aim + 3s cd will be reduced from 5s to 4s, which is a 25% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.

You see that 1s more aim time has a bigger incease than 1s less cd.

Correct lower cooldown is better as I said

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Your example does not prove your point. It proves the point of gimmethegepgun since you your second example has twice the aiming time, which is why there is a big dps increase.
If you wanna compare the effectivesness with low cooldown vs high aim weapons, you have to change that exact stat for your examples. Not both.

E.g.
For the Aim:
3s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 5s to 3.5s ,which is a 43% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.

For the Cd:
2s aim + 3s cd will be reduced from 5s to 4s, which is a 25% increase in dps.
2s aim + 2s cd will be reduced from 4s to 3s, which is a 33% increase in dps.

You see that 1s more aim time has a bigger incease than 1s less cd.

Correct lower cooldown is better as I said

That's exactly the opposite of what that math shows. Though reading my example again, I should have probably used the math differently, since 1s difference is not the same % value in every usable case. I made a mistake. The real important part is the ratio of aim time vs cooldown.

[Jigain]

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Absolutely not. Trigger happy wants weapons with a long windup because that's where it gets the most benefit. Putting it on something with almost no windup wastes the benefit of the trait and just gives you the penalty of the lowered accuracy.

That's false it doesn't help overall DPS, low cooldown weapons benefit from trigger happy, because if you cut aiming time with trigger happy and cooldown is next to nothing , then you're shooting faster than you can think. While if you cut down aim time on weapons with LONG cooldown , then you're not increasing the dps as much as possible.

Case and point say you have a weapon with 2sec aim and 3 sec cooldown, when you Trigger happy , then you have about 1+3 = 4sec to wait between shots.

If you take a weapons with 1 cooldown and 4 seconds aim = you get 3 sec shooting interval which then leads to maximised dps.

IT sounds like you don't make the distinction between aim time and cooldown , trigger happy does not affect cooldown it affects aim time. Two separate things

Trigger happy is right out BAD on sniper rifles First it defeats the purpose of the weapon lowers it's accuracy and the gain in shots fired is minimal, because of the long cooldown that the weapon has. Sniper rifle is a abusive weapon for picking off enemies before raid happens , hit and run, it has no place on regular battlefield especially when heavy armour rolls in , it is too slow period.

I don't think you understand just how Trigger Happy works. Trigger Happy lowers the time it takes to aim a weapon, also known as "warmup", by 50%. To maximize that percentage you want as HIGH a warmup as possible - compare saving 50% off of $5 ($2.5) versus saving 50% off of $500 ($250) - to profit as much as possible from it.

Here, observe the following charts (made from A17 data, but sniper rifles haven't undergone any massive changes since, nor has the two traits).

Sniper rifle DPS (damage per second) without either Trigger Happy or Careful Shooter:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/4/48/SniperRifleDPSNoTrait.png
Note maximum DPS is ~4.7 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

Sniper rifle DPS with Careful Shooter:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b8/SniperRifleDPSCarefulShooter.png
You'll see the maximum DPS has decreased to ~4.3 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

Sniper rifle DPS with Trigger Happy:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/8/80/SniperRifleDPSTriggerHappy.png
Maximum DPS suddenly skyrockets to ~6.0 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

[Spack Jarrow]

Originally posted by Jigain:

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

That's false it doesn't help overall DPS, low cooldown weapons benefit from trigger happy, because if you cut aiming time with trigger happy and cooldown is next to nothing , then you're shooting faster than you can think. While if you cut down aim time on weapons with LONG cooldown , then you're not increasing the dps as much as possible.

Case and point say you have a weapon with 2sec aim and 3 sec cooldown, when you Trigger happy , then you have about 1+3 = 4sec to wait between shots.

If you take a weapons with 1 cooldown and 4 seconds aim = you get 3 sec shooting interval which then leads to maximised dps.

IT sounds like you don't make the distinction between aim time and cooldown , trigger happy does not affect cooldown it affects aim time. Two separate things

Trigger happy is right out BAD on sniper rifles First it defeats the purpose of the weapon lowers it's accuracy and the gain in shots fired is minimal, because of the long cooldown that the weapon has. Sniper rifle is a abusive weapon for picking off enemies before raid happens , hit and run, it has no place on regular battlefield especially when heavy armour rolls in , it is too slow period.

I don't think you understand just how Trigger Happy works. Trigger Happy lowers the time it takes to aim a weapon, also known as "warmup", by 50%. To maximize that percentage you want as HIGH a warmup as possible - compare saving 50% off of $5 ($2.5) versus saving 50% off of $500 ($250) - to profit as much as possible from it.

Here, observe the following charts (made from A17 data, but sniper rifles haven't undergone any massive changes since, nor has the two traits).

Sniper rifle DPS (damage per second) without either Trigger Happy or Careful Shooter:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/4/48/SniperRifleDPSNoTrait.png
Note maximum DPS is ~4.7 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

Sniper rifle DPS with Careful Shooter:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b8/SniperRifleDPSCarefulShooter.png
You'll see the maximum DPS has decreased to ~4.3 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

Sniper rifle DPS with Trigger Happy:
https://rimworldwiki.com/images/8/80/SniperRifleDPSTriggerHappy.png
Maximum DPS suddenly skyrockets to ~6.0 at 15 tiles at 20 skill.

Completly Unrelated, the pawn is better to be on low cooldown weapon, you math showed that lower cooldown was better

and
The dps charts show that Trigger happy is inferior to Careful Shooter on sniper rifle
Sniper rifle has already long aim time, in a firefight you make few shots and it's about making those shots count
Making the already Long cooldown weapon less accurate results in poorer performance , in tests you don't have the luxury of being rushed down by meele and your pawns targeting poorly too. So aside from poorer dps the actual combat performance overall is quite bad.