Your thoughts about the weapon modding?

[Odzianna]

Since I see it barely mentioned: Here goes! What are your thoughts about the new weapon modding?

I absolutely love the addition of new weapon modes like the chemical bombs, the flamethrower or the warheads for the rocketlauncher, arguably the most fun addition ever.

But I also see some problems here, like the detriments of most mods that reduce the slotsize of weapons being the addition of energycosts per shot. Can we expect some more mods and changes to that system coming in the future?

Because if I want to make my Thunder 2 points cheaper I have to accept that EACH shot is going to cost 20 energy, and let's be honest here, that is simply way too much if you are in a pickle and a Thanatos just howled next to you.

So, are we going to see more mods that make your weapons cheaper, but give you different detriments, like slowing down firerate, making you slower or increasing aim time?

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

Overall, I like the system, but the lack of variety in non-firemode upgrades between weapons is a bit disappointing and many of the drawbacks flat out make no sense, especially where they are on upgrades rather than size mods (which ought to be classified as downgrades). Worse, you have supposed upgrades like Basic Stock, which costs space to make both the gun and the person wielding it worse suited for combat.

I won't lie, the Thunder really didn't deserve to be weighed down with the +10 energy cost size mods. Likewise, there seems to be little consideration for the actual energy per second used on weapons with high ROF.

I get that attention to balance must have been paramount with this DLC's main feature, but they really went too far with certain mods, which makes them utterly undesirable on any weapon platform.

[Kill with Fire]

Overall it's quite nice, some issues with stacking certain character buffs, namely Optimizer and not sure if it stacks twice or only once, or if its buff is actually half of what is listed, and the relatively boring methods of reducing gun size being overall "Costs energy to fire", I personally think that having them reduce max energy or energy regen to spice it up would be nice, especially since I do think that the more esoteric ones, like the Arclite's 33% less ammo for slots or life regen cap for slots are the more generally interesting ones.

Shotgun mode and I think SMG Auto could do with a buff, given Shotgun mode consumes 10 ammo per shot like the Grenade Launcher mode, but doesn't have any pierce so it can't do any crowd clear on its own. SMG Auto I believe just has the stats of the standard GAR, so that's my major gripe about it.

EDIT: The incompatibility of more than one upgrade per category, most notably Frames, also isn't that fun for me, as I do want a gun that's heavier than an armored marine with extended mags and a heavy frame.

[Dreadfire]

GAR burst mod ain't great. Go fire full auto and then burst mode and time how long it takes you to empty a mag or take down a static target like a turrent or radio tower. Burst mode takes at least 3 times as long, and that's despite the stats misleading you thinking that the RPM is higher. Yeah the RPM might be higher when it fires a burst, but if there's .75 second delay added in between bursts, you're actual RPM is far lower and so is your DPS. If anything that's a downgrade not an upgrade.

[Odzianna]

I sure would like mods being specific for weapons. Like, you get a much lighter frame for the Stinger that allows you to move around while aiming, or a tripod-mode that allows you to set up and gain a barricade buff whereever you are.

So, more unique mods tailored to each weapon would be pretty cool. Is there anything known about them expanding on the modding system, or aren't there coming any further changes to it?

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

i thought it would have specific upgrade for each weapon, instead it has the same upgrade for almost all guns. There are some special upgrades but that just makes me sad because i wanted every gun to have special modding

[Arath Hunter]

Pretty much agree with everything here. I would also like a raise in the max of weapon extenders myself, But I guess they don't want us to put both a heavy frame and heavy stock onto a Warhead Launcher. But I could dream

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Dreadfire:

GAR burst mod ain't great. Go fire full auto and then burst mode and time how long it takes you to empty a mag or take down a static target like a turrent or radio tower. Burst mode takes at least 3 times as long, and that's despite the stats misleading you thinking that the RPM is higher. Yeah the RPM might be higher when it fires a burst, but if there's .75 second delay added in between bursts, you're actual RPM is far lower and so is your DPS. If anything that's a downgrade not an upgrade.

I disagree, GAR burst is amazing ammo efficiency and if you spec for LWT and crit, its also great DPS, you're not going to kill atrocity in 10 ammo, but you will in 3 bursts.

Its also great for non weapon specced classes for self defence, while desecrator leaders will rip you apart, they would do so if you used regular gar and against regular desecrators its amazing deal.

You don't pick burst for DPS, you pick it for ammo efficiency.

[SelfCursed]

TL;DR:

I like the system a lot, and I was very happy to hear that an update with extra customization came out. However, to be honest, a lot of the mods trade-offs don't make any sense to me. The current system adds too many negatives in replacement for a few positives which only allows for very specific specialization if you exclude a few select cases such as the viking on terminator.

WALL OF TEXT:
To give you a few examples (Using just GAR) of what I find illogical:

1. Mod 'types' that don't fit a category:

A) 'Ammo' mods in a section labeled 'Barrel'. GAR is a kinetic weapon, and other than some sort of electromagnetic/electric device attached to the barrel providing a charge of some sort as the bullets exit the barrel, turning them into energized bullets, I don't see how a barrel changes the bullets into piercing, explosive, shredder and/or hollow point types.

B) 'Magazine' mods in a section labeled 'Frame'. I can partially understand that changing the frame will allow the adaptation of different sized magazines, but I don't see the logic of changing the frame just so you could use a different sized magazine. If anything, the magazine mods should probably be paired with the ammo mods. Specialized ammo/magazine mods.

2. Mods that affect things oddly:

A) Forward Grip: A forward grip is used for stabilization, it should improve steadiness of a weapon... Which should improve weapon spread, and overwatch. Improving reload does not make sense and improving crit chance is dubious. The biggest detriment to a forward grip should only be not being able to bring an under-barrel mod.

B) Under-barrel mods using primary ammo: I'm not sure how an under-barrel mod changes primary ammo into grenades, fire, or splits the bullets into shrapnel. I have no suggestions on how to tackle this... As this looks to be more of a challenge of changing base programming to include a separate ammo pool for the primary weapon, perhaps a new inventory item?

C) Scopes: Scopes are varied, but they are essentially meant to increase accuracy at the cost of peripheral vision. The idea is to be able to be able to take better aim at critical spots, so the flat improvements should include critical chance, critical bonus. The other bonuses and detriments should range between overwatch, weapon spread, and manual aim (speed, movement speed, and turn speed). Reducing overall sight radius, or in reverse giving a flat damage bonus does not make sense for a scope.

D) Stocks: Stocks are also a stabilization tool that reduce weapon spread. So depending on the type of stock you have, bonuses and detriments can range from increased movement speed, turn speed, and weapon spread,

E) Frames: Frames are a multi-faceted tool which can create the largest trade off for the weapon. The improvements and detriments could slightly affect damage, suppression, range, RPM, and reload, while majorly affecting speed (weight), stability, and capacity. It is the thing you will fit everything on, and depending the kind of frame you take, it should affect the type of mods you can attach to it, and how many before requiring extra capacity.

F) Special mention; Barrels/nozzles: As mentioned above, the current system assumes Ammo to be barrel mods, but I feel like barrels and nozzles should be something else entirely that affect suppression, threat, damage, RPM, and range. (Threat could be making the nozzle louder, or capable of creating brighter flashes so the mutants think of you as a more dangerous target)

G) Bonus note: There are many suit related effects, which I feel weapons shouldn't bleed out too heavily to the suit, however the sci-fi aspect and extra specialization sounds like it could be very favorable to creating more unique builds.

3. Current trade-off.

The current trade-off per mod grants large bonuses, but also large minuses on top of increasing capacity. Increased capacity causes the need for extra inventory extenders to use the weapon, which digs into your component pool. This double negative makes most of the builds you can make with this system very redundant, and with any class that'll use capacitors instead of primary/secondary extenders, the energy cost increase per shot will force builds to let go of fire-rate builds, focusing on flat damage output only, or just not use it at all so you don't risk not having enough energy to use a combination of suit abilities.

I just feel like the system is meant to add a lot of customization, but the trade-off creates such a disparity that only a few specialized builds benefit. I understand balance is always an issue, and I unfortunately don't have the time to spend on analyzing the best balance for the best input, but perhaps reducing magnitude of the bonuses and negatives and adding more variety can add for more customization? Since the developers have already done a great job with the game, I'm sure they can come up with the proper balance. Currently, it just feels like the workbench mod bonuses and negatives were somewhat haphazardly decided with those flat damage increases and negatives.


There are a few more examples on my mind, but I feel the wall of text is already long enough, so I'll just leave it with the following bit and that's it.


Side note on primary and secondary slots; a bit of uncertainty:

Now, the primary and secondary slots always confused me as to what they're supposed to represent. They can't be treated as just 'weight' as speed is different between weapons that have the same slot capacity. They can't be treated the same as components as changing between guns of different sizes doesn't affect EN Regen / Battery. Adding extenders does affect EN regen and battery, but since choosing a weapon that takes less primary slots than your maximum capacity doesn't affect it for the better, I can only assume primary and secondary slots suggest 'maximum space' or spatial capacity, and having more extenders means you can store something larger.

The actual things that reduce the 'size' of the weapon are called capacitors which leads me to believe that primary and secondary slots are electrical in nature, nothing to do with space or weight, but electrical distribution to the suit's unit that connects to the weapon, so I'm just not sure how to look at it since attaching things like scopes, switching out stocks, and switching out frames of the weapon seem to increase the required capacitance.

[Odzianna]

The GAR-Burst is a nice mode as it is really more ammo efficient, so if you are not in a dire situation and just fight smaller enemies you can easily save bullet. The fact that it also offers a much higher crit and range than the base mode is also a nice plus. In the description of the old GAR is says that the base model has a built-in burst fire mode, but I can't say I ever noticed something like this.

And about the explanation of extenders... Nanomachines, son. I see them as plug ins or chips that allow our highly specialized suits to properly control and maintain weapons, even if they are not initially made for them.

A massive rocketlauncher is not made for everyone, but with the extenders even a recon can use them, so I assume the extenders give the suit the needed control, stability and probably most important, the link to our suits that allows them to feed it ammo.

Notice that we never find weapon specific ammo, just general ammoboxes, so our suits convert it into what is needed, and I think these extenders give our suits the capacity to do it.

But back to the mods: I really hope they expand further with them, as this is quite the fun machnic. Tinkering and customizing what we have is pretty awesome, so I hope we get some more of that. Maybe even a mod that allows us some day to dual wield Rhino's or a Rhino and a Thunder? That would be a dream...

[N7 Yeti]

I really dont like this implemenation,too restrictive. Weapon slot mods are waaay too expensive in energy compared to the usually meager bonuses the weapon mods bring.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Odzianna:

And about the explanation of extenders... Nanomachines, son. I see them as plug ins or chips that allow our highly specialized suits to properly control and maintain weapons, even if they are not initially made for them.

Its funny, because that is exactly how lore-wise we have 1 ammo box-fit all weapon types ammo, boxes are basically nanomachines and suit converts them on the fly for required ammo for weapons.

Just some dev discussion nugget.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by N7 Yeti:

I really dont like this implemenation,too restrictive. Weapon slot mods are waaay too expensive in energy compared to the usually meager bonuses the weapon mods bring.

You don't need to use specifically extenders, capacitors will decrease "cost" of the weapon, giving you small penalty, but allowing you to mod it without the use of extenders.

And unless you are doing weapon based build, you really shouldn't be modding weapon anyway, unless its GAR burst for medic or other support class.

[Odzianna]

There are some mods that are more worth the cost than others. Even if you are using a more skill oriented playstyle you can add something like the "Optimal Frame" for the SMG which gives +5% more skill damage and +15% skill activation range, which is nice for recons and Psychics. Doesn't change the gameplay much, but more range is always good.

I would also say that the Rocket Launchers Warheads is hands down the most fun mod of them all :D

[SelfCursed]

Thanks Odzianna and Katitoff for explaining the nanomachine part. That clears up a lot of my thoughts on extenders and ammo overall. It actually also explains a lot on how the weapon mods can affect the suit so drastically.

Still, I feel like only a few specializations benefit from the changing weapons; Less flat damage bonuses to parts and reductions to overall trade-offs would greatly improve the workbench in my opinion. The optimal frame for SMG or GAR burst for the GAR is great and all, but with so much potential for customization, it's just sad to see that the workbench only provides one mod gun builds in so many cases when it could intuitively allow people to mix and match minor bonuses and detriments for a lot more customization and variety in builds.

[Arath Hunter]

Something I also noticed, you can't modify the crusader, why is that? I couldhave seen it being modified both Baton and Shield seperately, adding in secondary abilities like jump smash (hammer/mace appearance), long wide swing(Long axe maybe?), and dash attacks Sword/Blade), while modifying the shield could range from making it bigger and slow or immobile, to small defence but faster aim walking, to making it gone all together for a bigger speed boost for loss of the defence boost. I'd like to imagine to make it the cheapest, the "Debuffs" capaciters with all pieces would knock it down to powered knuckle dusters/powerfists so a melee weapon would be faster then the pistol currently is.

Though I'd imagine the animations might be a bit weird with making fist weapons, though I'd be fine with it. I doubt it'll get any love, but a man can dream.