Plasma hand weapons and general effective ranges need a rework

[Serbanstein]

Disclaimer: I love Elite, I love Odyssey and what it can bring and congrats to the dev, art, community, narrative team etc. for what they've done so far.
Except to whoever is preventing the developers from making small quality-of-life changes that would take very little time and effort to implement.

My issues are the following:

• Plasma bolts are way too slow
• The effective ranges for weapons are too low, even with the lore justification that "it's harder to make hand weapons work in vacuum", and

These 2 issues are especially unpleasant when using the Executioner, which even in its current state is my favorite weapon in the game. I have the long-range mod and the scope mod, as well as both silence mods, which makes it the perfect assassination/long-range kill weapon. I love games where I can snipe people from miles away (like in Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts) and, while I don't expect anything close to that from Elite, the effective range of 150m WITH the long range mod is simply not enough.

150m... and a bullet slower than most ships... on a sniper rifle. The only sniper rifle currently in the game.

These changes wouldn't make weapons much stronger on their own, but it would raise the skill ceiling for the players with higher skills in marksmanship, like leading shots and waiting for the right time to fire.

The most prominent example of where a much longer range and bullet speed would be needed is the hypothetical scenario where Thargoid Imprint Sites eventually become AX battlegrounds. The exterior structures would make for excellent vantage points, since they're pretty hard to reach as it is. the problem is the plasma bullet fizzles out not even halfway there.
There's also the rare opportunity to climb on a mountain or your parked ship and snipe an NPC 600 or so meters away. That would feel sooo good. But currently both the max range and the bullet travel time make this full stop impossible.

My suggestion is making plasma bolts twice as fast*, and the effective ranges of every weapon multiplied such that the Executioner's bullet can at least reach the lower boundary of the NPC render distance. Maybe, increase the ranges six or eight times and worsen the falloff for shorter weapons?

Edit: *just for players. Sharpshooter NPC's can already one/two shot you if you don't pay attention

 

[Factabulous]

nope.

 

[Fake Newts]

It's a balancing concern really, slow projectiles can be frustrating in games but plasma is hugely more powerful than the other two damage types alone, and significantly faster in terms of TTK than hot swapping between them. The Tormentor and Intimidator in particular are already the 'meta' guns for Maverick suit play, given they can two or even one-shot all enemies up to and including Omnipol (in certain circumstances). I agree that the Executioner seems a bit unnecessary currently given the slower rate of fire than the other two, but it could easily be made OP if not handled with care. The AI is also very predictable so landing shots isn't hard after a bit of practice.

I already struggle to find a reason to take anything other than plasma on Odyssey missions so, even though I think they're cool weapons, a buff would just make matters worse.

edit: sniping from long range is fun in single player games but in Odyssey's content it'd be hugely unbalanced, and if NPCs did it to you you'd be annoyed, probably.

further edit: put the longer range mod and audio masking on a tormentor or executioner and you can silently kill enemies from about as far away as you want, tbh.

 

[Arsen Cross]

So, as someone who both plays only in open play (and has a fair amount of Odyssey pvp experience) and would like to see faster projectile speeds on the Tormentor and Executioner my opinion is that the plasma weapon that actually needs to most love is the Oppressor plasma assault rifle.

While the tormentor and executioner are usable in pve with immense success and still extremely deadly in pvp the Oppressor is barely usable at ranges even as close as 5 meters in pve and completely useless in pvp against even a moderately mobile player. So if any of the plasma weapons need a modification to the weapon itself it’s the Oppressor assault rifle as it’s damage AND projectile speed are so low that it’s a completely ineffective weapon for skilled players.

the real change that needs to happen is that the long range mod for handheld weapons needs to provide a 30% (imo) projectile speed boost similar to how long range for ship weapons increases projectile speed. Then of course I’d like to see the oppressor get a direct buff to damage and maybe 10-20% projectile speed increase in the base weapon.

The biggest thing to remember about the executioner and tormentor is that they are two shot weapons against almost all targets including the majority of players in pvp. Increasing their projectile speed doesn’t increase the skill ceiling, it makes them easier to use thus reducing the skill ceiling as moving targets become easier to hit.

One thing is definitely certain; frontier has intentionally balanced the FPS game so that people can’t be instantly picked off at range when shields up and readied for combat. Any changes to the projectile speed of the executioner and tormentor will dramatically improve the effectiveness of high skill shooter players.

personally I use the Eclipse laser SMG and Karma P-15 pistol as both are extremely effective for their purposes and once fully engineered you can kill several enemies of the highest caliber without reload as well as both being capable of killing those same enemies individually with a single magazine.

as far as engagement ranges are concerned I was disappointed with them as well. There’s no long range optics and even the executioner with the long range mod barely reaches a range of 250-300m and 300 meters is the typical range which most games configure their sites for. What this says is that frontier doesn’t actually want us sniping.. or more importantly they don’t want people getting sniped with no ability to close range and retaliate because of gameplay concerns.. something I have mixed feelings about because it makes sense for the sizes of settlements and planetary poi’s we have but does not make sense for the literally planet size scale of the ‘maps’.

either way I do want to see the projectile speed increased for plasmas but not by too much. What I really want more in the sniper vein though is a kinetic sniper and real long range zoom optics.

 

[Serbanstein]

What I really want more in the sniper vein though is a kinetic sniper and real long range zoom optics.

A fast bullet sniper would be hard to balance, because think of how deadly Executioner NPC's can be even when you have time to dodge the bullet. I think if just the executioner gets a doubled projectile speed just for players and a 4-6 times-ish range increase, it could be the perfect sniper.
EDIT: or if a doubled projectile speed is added to the greater range mod

In terms of zoom, the scope mod multiplies the default weapon zoom and the default weapon zoom changes with effective range, so with the Executioner if you get the greater range and scope mods you essentially get at about 14x zoom, where 4 or 5x is, I think, the Executioner's default.

 

[Arsen Cross]

A fast bullet sniper would be hard to balance, because think of how deadly Executioner NPC's can be even when you have time to dodge the bullet. I think if just the executioner gets a doubled projectile speed just for players and a 4-6 times-ish range increase, it could be the perfect sniper.
EDIT: or if a doubled projectile speed is added to the greater range mod

In terms of zoom, the scope mod multiplies the default weapon zoom and the default weapon zoom changes with effective range, so with the Executioner if you get the greater range and scope mods you essentially get at about 14x zoom, where 4 or 5x is, I think, the Executioner's default.

I disagree with regard to a fast projectile speed kinetic sniper. It’d really only be super useful against i shielded targets which the executioner already instant kills targets without shields. In general there should be a laser sniper too. The kinetic and laser snipers would be amazing against suit and shields respectively but unlike the plasma sniper wouldn’t be insta down on both. This would give snipers more options for team play.

have someone like me who focuses on close to mid range combat with an Eclipse? I melt shields.. so you bring your kinetic sniper rifle. Two man team? Run a pair of executioners for synchronized shooting of the same target. Going to be doing a two man sniper team in pvp? Each take a kinetic and laser for sync shorting without the slow projectile speeds. Food for thought is all.

either way doubling the projectile speed of the plasma weapons would cause them to be far too extremely overpowered. I’m extremely mobile in pvp and I’ve already come across people in pvp who can use the existing plasmas against high speed and highly active vertical moving targets almost with the same accuracy and deadliness as if they were using the hitscan laser weapons. Those players would be unstoppable with double projectile speed plasmas against anything other than equally skilled players using the same loadout. So no. Whatever the increase is it should definitely be LESS than a 50% increase.

 

[Wlfric]

"Would be annoying to get sniped with a bullet you can't just lazily step out of the way of...."
Welcome to the reality of sniping and the need to recon before attacking?
yeah I do get a laugh at a "rifle" with the speed of a grandma's slow pitch softball that you can just side step slightly and get out of the way of it. Try hitting a skimmer with it. They just drift a little and whoooosh you miss.
Surely in the year.. 3000 what?... we can produce a firearm for sniping that's not foiled by someone deciding to take a step forward 2 seconds after you've pulled the trigger.
Quake was ruthless on this with its rail gun. It was part of play. Sometimes you railed someone, sometimes you got railed. The reload speed balanced it.

 

[Fake Newts]

Quake was ruthless on this with its rail gun. It was part of play. Sometimes you railed someone, sometimes you got railed. The reload speed balanced it.

Yes, but then Quake was a fast paced, hyper focused competitive arena shooter... whereas Elite: Dangerous is a janky and vast open world in which travelling to the place you might get instagibbed often takes ages, and where battles often take place in the open. I personally enjoy FPS games that pull no punches, but the context of the surrounding game shouldn't be ignored.

Elite's FPS content might have been good if it had been built tighter and tougher, but for most players it'd probably need to be accompanied by more lenient respawn behaviour and less travel time.

Agree on the plasma assault rifle though, that thing is absolute garbage, I had actually forgotten it exists.

 

[Wlfric]

Well, I think the major complaint was that if it was made an actual sniper rifle it would affect PVP play. I'd imagine that'd be in drop zones for conflicts. Worst thing in a conflict zone you get pegged and whoops.. dropping out of the dropship again. Considering the issue of being sniped when doing a mission or whatever, I get killed in the most bizarre ways already anyway but never by a sniper. I'd say the real issue is being shot on the ground and the horrid mechanic of being dropped off at a detention facility. Maybe they should make it a combat game and re-rez us in orbit in our ship minus SRV if we took it out and of course mission fail.