Recently it has struck me that Sebastapols* were 'forgot' about during the great rebalancea few years back and there is a general lack of sebastapols available for use (a total of about 24).

I've been busy at work with help from one of our QA devs and we've put together a new balance sheet. For the most part, stats of the weapons are about the same as they were before, (Primal) Lion Incinerator lose about 40DPS in total. The new stats will be on test** for you to check out, and will be until next patch when they go live (or patch after, depending on when the next one is).

Here is a spreadsheet of new and old stats for comparison, the second page has some analysis including Old/New DPS graphs and some other bits and pieces:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AteE8uOXJmHDdFpBSENNNF9Vel9RREJzRG4wdWRxTkE#gid=0
Note: A lot of information has been removed from the sheet, but otherwise this is from the balance sheet, there are no formulae that are used to calculate stats. I've removed AI only Sebastapols from here as well.

Extra note on stats: The damage value is PER PELLET, likewise selfdamage is a percentage of PELLET.

Extra note: For AcqMethod, Common means it can be found in any AI base that sells 'common' items, Uncommon means it's only in specific gals. The rest are fairly self explanatory.


Please do go on test** or look at the sheet, have a play with them or take a gander at their stats and stroke your imaginary beards while you ponder the implications. If you manage to do this reasonably well, formulatling a nicely written response would be very helpful indeed.


Please discuss these changes here.

*Sebastapols are the weapons which shoot three shots AND do self damage equal to the damage of one of the shots, well known versions of these weapons are the Immo/Incineration series of weapons.
**Server: test.starsonata.com Port: 3032 for test

Well dps never concerned me, I'm not using those weapons because self damage multiplies with augs and I kill myself in a few seconds ;]

These weapons still only self damage you for 1 shot, even though all 3 shots can do critical damage to your target, right?

Yes.

Sebastapols for me, and I am sure some other people remembered it when I once...

...Equipped 5 Bule Random Insanities on my berserker wattage, flew 10k out, used the best speed tweaks I could, used a ton of Swifty-Spray Attacks while spinning around, approaching the sun in Sol at nearly 700 speed and just watched that FPS drop!

Apart from that, interesting changes Bobbo, nice catch with these, they aren't that much used apart from a low level with a Bule Insanity or a rich high level player with a Primal Lion Incinerator or five.

Aye, there isn't a great deal I can do about lag stuff without just reducing their RoF (for increased damage) and reducing particles.

I do, however wish to make some more sebastapol weapons.

<Insert suggestions from players which I never asked for, but I'll remember somewhat and possibly may influence what I do when I make them>

It looks to me like you're heavily nerfing the tech 3-5 ones, which seems like a bad idea, since they're about the only ones that ever get actually used. None of them get used except for licins, and even licins only rarely, because taking your own damage as well as enemy damage is just too much for even most shield monkeys to handle.

Negatives: Short Range, Self Damage, No Tracking, Occasional Huge Size(Suic Tend).

Positives: Large Damage, Large DPE

You're removing the large damage on the low tech ones, making them essentially useless. If anything, I'd suggest beefing the AI sebestapols over making the ruin items worse; ruin items at low techs are VERY rarely used as-is, and making them even less valuable seems to be a very bad idea.




Speaking of ruin items, anyone noticed how nobody uses ruin items anymore? Weird, huh? Maybe the, uh, balance sheets had something to do with that. *cough*

I think the low level ones were only used in lvl 20 cap era, but not any more.

That is exactly why a rebalance was necessary. Notice that the mid-level sebastopols have all been improved and will hopefully see some use among the pre-Lincin crowd. The Bule sebastopols suffered a bit in the balance sheet due to having way more range than all the others (300 range is a ton for this kind of weapon). However, as was mentioned earlier these low tech weapons are really out of the picture now that f2p aren't stuck at weapons level 4. The very fact that a tech 4 weapon did the same DPS as a tech 12 weapon says strongly to me that something wasn't right. In my opinion, the cost of making a few low tech weapons less overpowered is well worth the benefit of bringing half a dozen mid-tech weapons out of obscurity. Perhaps someone will even use Mzungu Sebastopols, Suicidal Tendency, and the T12-16 Incins.

Would u mind giving them difrence collors or numbers when theres several weps in same tech?

What benefit would that be? Or do you mean so you can discriminate between the different weapons?

Yes, I believe that is the idea. So people around you can go "Oh, look at **** Weapon, it looks more powerful than the weak &&&& weapon."

It would help with all weapons. Currently, a Blazing Mallet has the same laser as a Blazing Maul. If you didn't notice the splash, superficially, you could say they look like they are both Mallets.

No i meen so that i can distinguise bettwen them becouse seeing the dots of old and new DPS is completly meeningless if we dont know what onces that are conected.

Just play with the ones you have and see how they work? Now to dig up a Suicidal Tendency to mess around on test...

Lol yeah as if range is sucha big factor for sebastapol weapons



ehm no again, wtf do you compare t4 sebastopols with other t12 weapons, ofc they were 3x as stong as other t4 weapons, but lets face it the lion incin is also 3x as stong as any other t20 weapon.. but ill come to another comparision later



Common this statement is a joke huh ? since when is nerfing low tech weapons a necessary trade off to beef mid tech weapons when you try to get them balance wise in line ?? slighly contradictional statement isnt it ?



So lets have a look on the lowtech bule's once more:

I picked appropriate Energy Dmg Alternatives and as we can see the Bules only have 2x dmg factor now. At his point i mention once more that LinCins with 1440 are way above 3x dmg factor.
And the weapons are only usefull as long as at least 2 bullets of the 3 hit, just to have a DPS/DPE advantage over the alternative, thats not including the selfdmaage yet.
The only mentioned balance issue, the range, does not hold as a balancing argument since its not improving your hit potential (2 bullets -3bullets hit is the goal) when targeting one specific target, and no its not even of a potential advantage if you after several targets.
Before you say something there ive to say i tested it in Rumble1 and i cleared as many mass targets wiht a incin as with the insanities. The bullets that missed the ai on the first 50 distance kept flying away and decaying as unutilized damage.

Summery:
As much as I appreciate you beefed the mid tech sebastapols, (they are finally there where they always should have been),
i still think that the original statement that the low tech bules were nerfed unappropriatly is a absolutely valid point,
the 3rd counter argument concerning the In-Line-Balance was a joke anyways,
the 2nd counter argument comparing T4 sebast and t12 weapons was upappropriate since i showed that the DPS factor of the mid and high tech sebasts are 3x..so way bigger then the bules now,
and the 1st counter argument is exactly the point where i wanted to end up and say:
FFS unnerf the bules by changing how the range of those weapons affect the balance!

PS:

im really curious what you wanted to say with that statement at any point ?
I guess was supposed to be a argument for the point that we dont need those "broken low tech weapons" for f2ps anymore, and we can nerf the shit out of them now.
Well but in that case ive to say they were never broken , seemed partially so because the mid tech weapons didnt hit the 3x dps potential that the bules and lincins did back then.
But that doesnt change the fact that they were always in line with the endgame lincins, and you ended up doing the mistake beefing the mid tech weapons to a point where they have to be and still nerfing the lowtechs for no reason.