I suddenly realised they're more likely to add custom plasma bolt colours before any rebalancing occurs, if ever.
What is the Point of Manticore’s Oppressor?
- Thread starter CMDR The Riz
- Start date
Actually i'd like a rainbow pattern and also a X-massy pattern for those Winter Holidays CZs
They could always bring back that Winking Feline person for some festive handheld flak launchers.Actually i'd like a rainbow pattern and also a X-massy pattern for those Winter Holidays CZs
Correct - there is no headshot bonus when shields are up.
With the current Resistances, the AR-50 needs 21 rounds to drop a G5 Dominator's shield; increasing that would push the TTK closer to those of the Laser weapons (which are far too high, in my opinion). Personally, I feel that the Kinetic weapons are in a good spot at the moment and adjustments to them are not needed.
I had to mod up a second Oppressor when I put Greater Range on my first one, as I was thinking along the exact same lines as you were. This was right after Odyssey launched when we all didn't know what the mods did, and in my surprise and disappointment I created this Thread:
I Have A Definitive Answer on Whether or Not The Extended Range Mod Increases Projectile Velocities...
NO, IT DOESN'T. Source: https://youtu.be/xTsJKaKyNc0 I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that this is a bug (Issue Tracker Report can be found here). According to the stats listed on the weapon (which is a thing now - horray!) the Effective Range increases from 35m to 53m, which is...
I still have that Oppressor in my inventory. I might put it on the wall in my Fleet Carrier's office at some point
The Oppressor is naturally harder to aim with a much slower projectile velocity than the AR-50. In many cases, the point at which I have to aim to land a hit is so far ahead of the target that it's behind an object (crates, barrels, barricades, etc.), despite the actual target being out in the open. Infantry also tend to accelerate in different directions very rapidly, resulting in that aimpoint changing locations incredibly fast and tracking being difficult to achieve.
In contrast, I do not need to work as hard to land a sustained burst with the AR-50; furthermore, I do not need to maintain fire on a target for as long as the Oppressor to secure a kill thanks to the AR-50's substantially faster TTK. As an interesting aside, I also don't need to be as accurate with the AR-50 to match / beat the Oppressor's TTK. Recall from earlier in the Thread from Calculator v1:
And something that REALLY fascinating to me, thanks to the power of my calculator... Let's assume for moment on top of the other assumptions that:
With that all in mind...
- The Oppressor Shooter has an Aimbot and has a 100% accuracy rating
- Every other shooter can hit 60% of their shots
- The Shooters and Targets are at point-blank range (zero meters apart from one another)
Have a very close look at both the Oppressor and AR-50 bars: they are nearly identical. You can be 100% accurate with the Oppressor and match TTKS with an AR-50 that misses 2 in 5 shots - at point-blank range, no less!
This still holds true with the v2 Calculator.
Chevron-style optics both IRL and in other games are zeroed to the tip of the chevron, not in the space above it. The fact that I am seeing that some other weapons' optics aren't properly zeroed at any range is indicative of an issue that at least merits a bug report, as there is presently no way for us to manually zero our optics in game.
Since the Intimidator is the intended CQB weapon for the Manticore lineup, shouldn't the Oppressor be changed to fill the midrange role better, instead of being a worse CQB weapon?
The Intimidator already fills that role exceedingly well, and with the single-bolt bug active is a better midrange weapon than either the Oppressor or Executioner.
As I indicated earlier in the Thread upon the release of the v1 Calculator, there is plenty of room to improve the Oppressor. I'd like to see it as a weapon to be respected, neither an overpowered death machine nor one I laugh at while dancing through a cloud of purple bubbles from an Omnipol trooper desperately trying to stop me from exploding their Settlement for the 12th time in a row... and then stealing their ID to do so a few moments later.
For the Oppressor, it's a 3.75 s headshot kill on a G5 un-Engineered Dominator suit with the Headshot mod at point-blank (down from 4.63 s), compared to 2.80 s from an AR-50 without the mod.
Why not both?
Thank you for your reply.Correct - there is no headshot bonus when shields are up.
With the current Resistances, the AR-50 needs 21 rounds to drop a G5 Dominator's shield; increasing that would push the TTK closer to those of the Laser weapons (which are far too high, in my opinion). Personally, I feel that the Kinetic weapons are in a good spot at the moment and adjustments to them are not needed.
I had to mod up a second Oppressor when I put Greater Range on my first one, as I was thinking along the exact same lines as you were. This was right after Odyssey launched when we all didn't know what the mods did, and in my surprise and disappointment I created this Thread:
I Have A Definitive Answer on Whether or Not The Extended Range Mod Increases Projectile Velocities...
NO, IT DOESN'T. Source: https://youtu.be/xTsJKaKyNc0 I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that this is a bug (Issue Tracker Report can be found here). According to the stats listed on the weapon (which is a thing now - horray!) the Effective Range increases from 35m to 53m, which is...forums.frontier.co.uk
I still have that Oppressor in my inventory. I might put it on the wall in my Fleet Carrier's office at some point
The Oppressor is naturally harder to aim with a much slower projectile velocity than the AR-50. In many cases, the point at which I have to aim to land a hit is so far ahead of the target that it's behind an object (crates, barrels, barricades, etc.), despite the actual target being out in the open. Infantry also tend to accelerate in different directions very rapidly, resulting in that aimpoint changing locations incredibly fast and tracking being difficult to achieve.
In contrast, I do not need to work as hard to land a sustained burst with the AR-50; furthermore, I do not need to maintain fire on a target for as long as the Oppressor to secure a kill thanks to the AR-50's substantially faster TTK. As an interesting aside, I also don't need to be as accurate with the AR-50 to match / beat the Oppressor's TTK. Recall from earlier in the Thread from Calculator v1:
This still holds true with the v2 Calculator.
Chevron-style optics both IRL and in other games are zeroed to the tip of the chevron, not in the space above it. The fact that I am seeing that some other weapons' optics aren't properly zeroed at any range is indicative of an issue that at least merits a bug report, as there is presently no way for us to manually zero our optics in game.
Since the Intimidator is the intended CQB weapon for the Manticore lineup, shouldn't the Oppressor be changed to fill the midrange role better, instead of being a worse CQB weapon?
The Intimidator already fills that role exceedingly well, and with the single-bolt bug active is a better midrange weapon than either the Oppressor or Executioner.
As I indicated earlier in the Thread upon the release of the v1 Calculator, there is plenty of room to improve the Oppressor. I'd like to see it as a weapon to be respected, neither an overpowered death machine nor one I laugh at while dancing through a cloud of purple bubbles from an Omnipol trooper desperately trying to stop me from exploding their Settlement for the 12th time in a row... and then stealing their ID to do so a few moments later.
View attachment 301496
For the Oppressor, it's a 3.75 s headshot kill on a G5 un-Engineered Dominator suit with the Headshot mod at point-blank (down from 4.63 s), compared to 2.80 s from an AR-50 without the mod.
Why not both?
You wrote to remove the shield 5 at the AR50 is 21 shots. And how many is that for an Opressor at 100% hit at 35m?
And how long does it take for both?
I do not know why, but for some reason I personally feel more comfortable with opressor and I do not know how to explain it. The only thing I miss with his misses is an increase in 2 or 3 times the magazine. In the end, the machine gun should have a large amount of ammunition.
Watching the video, it takes the AR 20 shots to break the shield, followed by 6 shots to kill, or 3 headshots. The oppressor takes 9 shots to break the shield, and 9 shots to kill, or 4 headshots.Two months later and I'm finally back with the Calculator v2!
Since we received confirmation from the Community Managers on the latest Frameshift Live stream that work on Update 12 is ongoing, I feel like now is the best time to revive / have this discussion in the hopes that someone important sees this so that any Oppressor buffs make it into Update 12.
But before I begin, I'd like to extend my gratitude to De_Toqueville and the folks behind the Elite Dangerous Odyssey Material Helper for collecting and providing the data on weapon reload, stow and ready times. It would have taken me far longer to get this done without their help
Now, here's a link to the v2 Calculator:
Oppressor TTK Calculator v2.xlsx
docs.google.com
As before, if you'd like to play around with the Calculator:
Some major changes from the previous version:
There might be some additional changes but it's been so long I may have forgotten
- Weapon magazine size is taken into account when calculating the final TTK, and is able to detect when multiple reloads are required to achieve a kill.
- TTKs zero-second start point was moved to the first shot rather than before the first shot (read: I was missing a -1); before this change an extra shot refire time was added to the final TTK which was most noticeable on the L-6.
- Weapon stow / ready times are factored into the TTKs of the Eclipse / AR-50, Aphelion / AR-50 and Zenith / AR-50 TTKs (Not all of them were symmetrical)
- The Intimidator has a brand-new Intimidator Sim to help calculate just how many pellets are needed to break the shield and how many damage the Suit underneath, though it is still subject to the single-bolt bug assumption for simplicity. This was the primary holdup for the v2 Calculator as I had difficulty translating what needed to happen into something a spreadsheet could do. (I could do it well enough with some For loops in Python...)
Anyway, here are the updated Point-Blank and 35 m charts:
Some observations:
To drive that last point home, I recorded some video of me attacking a large Agricultural Settlement (the layout that has the huge main building and those three HAB buildings a couple hundred meters away) with both the Oppressor and the AR-50:
- With the inclusion of the reload times, it became readily apparent that the Laser weapons needed one reload to secure a kill at the above ranges, which further increased their TTKs.
- The Intimidator is the only weapon with the ability to secure a sub-second TTK at point-blank, which is possible even without the single-bolt bug.
- The Executioner is performing much better now that the refire times have been corrected, beating out the AR-50 at the ranges these graphs are at.
- Overall, the AR-50 is still a solid all-around performer and would be the best choice for a stand-alone rifle at most ranges.
- The Oppressor lags even further behind because of the refire adjustment decreasing the Executioner TTK, greatly increasing the need for buffs.
Source: https://youtu.be/neLP2EuPBxw
Source: https://youtu.be/IoKWRroH1Co
The weapons used in those videos:
G5 Oppressor:
G5 AR-50:
- Magazine Size
- Headshot Damage
- Faster Handling
- Stability
G4 L-6, but only periodically:
- Magazine Size
- Scope
- Stowed Reloading
- Magazine Size
Clearly I had a easier time with the AR-50 than the Oppressor, to the point where I could effortlessly shoot an incoming grenade out of the air.
In conclusion, I reiterate my earlier recommendations for the Oppressor:
I'd also like to ask for a general projectile velocity and rifle-class Effective Range buff, as there are a few Settlement layouts like the one above with these long sightlines that don't make sense with the current velocities and Effective Ranges. In fact, I might just make a massive Odyssey combat overhaul thread with this new calculator...
At a fire rate of 6.7/second, that means the oppressor has a kill speed of about 1.94 seconds, vs the ar50 with a killspeed of 2.3. The Oppressor can kill 5 enemies per mag, while the AR50 can kill just under 3. Accounting for reloads, it will take the Ar50 30.5 seconds to kill 10 guys, vs the oppressor taking 21.9 seconds.
Honestly, the only change that I'd like to see is increased range boosting projectile velocity slightly, and maybe give the oppressor a bit more reserve ammo.
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Given your numbers, the oppressor should be nerfed
To be fair, that's basically the oppressors best use case. And it assumes perfect accuracy, despite the fact the other two manufacturers are much easier to hit with.Given your numbers, the oppressor should be nerfed
A better comparison would be, say you have a group of four enemies; you use your laser rifle to take all their Shields down, with four shots apiece. Then you swap to your kinetic rifle, and kill them all, again with three shots apiece. Total time spent, about 5 Seconds, where an oppressor would take 7.76 seconds.
As far as I'm concerned, the oppressors biggest weakness is in comparison to the other plasma weapons. Because functionally, they do the exact same thing, only better.
That's why I want it to get significantly more ammo capacity. If I can't do as well, at least let me do for longer.
More supplies is right. With a high rate of fire and a bad hit, you can go out on a different weapon's effectiveness.
Interesting... can you link to the specific spots in the videos where you obtained these values? They don't seem to match up to anything I have on my end.
I'm just watching the enemy health bar and counting every time it moves. The plasma, for example, takes about 3 shots per shield bar, and there are 3 shield bars. As far as I can tell, it applies to every part of the video, so there's not much use in highlighting any specific example.
Edit: I suppose there are different HP enemies. Look at the ones with 3x shield bars.
In a 1vs1 yes, Intimidator is better than anything esle in close combat.
But in 1vsMany, the Oppressor is excellent for suppressing an entire enemy team, making them stagger but also doing consistent damage
I just linked you a sequence from your own movie that shows a 3s kill time for a full shield full health npc, why mention a g5 dominator?
Also dont think i've seen a similar performance in your ar-50 movie, although i might be as well mistaken.
Currently Exec, Tormentor and Intimidator are very powerful, bordering OP - as a single shot high frontload damage.
Improvements to the Oppressor can and will lead to a very powerful, bordering OP automatic weapon.
And when FDev improves something, they usually go over the board.
I'd rather see the Oppressor removed from the game than improved into OPness
All the Oppressor needs is doubled projectile speed, so that it works at proper assaultrifle range. The damage is fine.
Still, I am inclined to only one improvement - a lot of ammo.
A lot of people here have compared that Opressor is kind of a replacement for ray and kinetic and you don't need to change weapons. So in this case it needs a double magazine all the more !
I'm still hemming and hawing over the last mod, but I'd pick bigger magazine, if it meant that I carried more bullets overall, rather than the same number of bullets used up more quickly, due to less [fewer?] reloads.
The accuracy, in a machine gun, seems sufficient, thanks to stability, though rounds still seem to rise up gradually from the recoil kick.
You get slightly more bullets due to the initial load being bigger.
That seems like the way to go, then 
Indeed, the enemies we face have different HP depending on their class and rank: Rank 1 Sharpshooters have the least, Rank 5 Enforcers have the most.
I've been going through the footage I linked here as well as some I've recorded since, and I noticed a slight deviation on the number of rounds the AR-50 takes to drop the shield of an Omnipol Striker (who should be wearing a G5 Dominator suit, if the assumption that they use the same gear as us holds). It took 27 rounds from close range (~10 m) for the shield and 8 bodyshots for the Suit, instead of the expected 21 shield hits and 15 Suit bodyshots. The video can be found here:
Furthermore, I'm also noticing that something is off with the Oppressor as well - it took me 13 shots to break the shield of an Omnipol Enforcer (which I'm assuming is wearing a G5 Dominator + Damage Resistance) and a further 30 shots (one of which was a headshot, timestamp just after 0:24 in the video below) to drop them. I expected 15 shots to break the shield and 28 bodyshots to kill.
The footage of the Enforcer can be found below:
I know I missed one shot after the shields dropped as I was strafing to avoid the Enforcer's Tormentor. I did account for that one
As far as I can tell from some sanity checks, the data regarding a G5 Dominator's Suit resistances with and without the Damage Resistance mod are correct; it's entirely possible (and at this point likely) that NPCs do not use the same equipment as we do, so comparisons between them and us aren't quite linear as I had assumed previously.
Example: the effective Suit HP from the Striker comes out to:
8 AR-50 shots * 2.7 MJ/shot = 21.6 effective MJs
A G5 Dominator without the Damage Resistance mod is rated for:
30 MJs * 1.25 (25% Kinetic Resistance) = 37.5 effective MJs
I'm going to spend more time looking through my footage / recording more and checking over the Calculator to see if something's wrong on my end, or the above observations are actually correct. SCIENCE!
Forcing one target to flinch buys you a second or two reprieve from that target (particularly from Sharpshooters), but they're back in the fight before you're able to apply meaningful damage to other targets to flinch them or drop them. It's far more beneficial to drop targets quickly than try to juggle staggering them all and splitting the damage between them, which will bleed the Oppressor's magazine dry before a kill can be secured.
For example, I can drop half of a dropvulture's squad in 3.9 s with three shots out of an Intimidator with the Magazine Size mod (rank dependent); I can drop one Scout and start working on a second in the same time with the Oppressor.
Or I could just use an L-6... that always works if there's ever a need to outright delete an enemy or 6 should the need arise
The NPC in the video was a Rank 3 Scout, which has a relatively small health pool as far as NPCs go. The reason I mentioned the G5 Dominator is that comparatively it has more HP; I can get a faster TTK on a target with more HP with the AR-50 than I can with the Oppressor shooting one with far less health, thus demonstrating the disparity in damage output between the two, even when resistances are accounted for.
(Granted, the comparison is likely not linear in light of recent observations since I drafted this post, but should still be accurate enough for demonstrative purposes.
Also - in the Omnipol Striker video I also dropped an Omnipol Scout with an AR-50 in a little over 2 seconds.)
The Intimidator's fast TTK assumes all projectiles land on target, and with the single-bolt bug active that is currently achievable. I would expect that to change once that bug is squashed, though given the mobility players can achieve I wouldn't be against a rate of fire nerf to drop its DPS output a bit.
I'm personally torn on the Tormentor, as it's a 2 shot kill on Rank 3 and below targets, but requires at least 3 above that. It has a low rate of fire, small magazine, short Effective Range and high recoil. I'm not entire sure there's room to adjust some of these properties, but I'd be open to a 3 shot kill on Rank 3 Commandos if the it needed to be changed.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I believe the Executioner needs a total rework for it to perform as a marksman's rifle; it presently behaves like a shotgun loaded with slugs. My initial thoughts are that it should function something like Destiny 2's Scout Rifles or something closer to a bolt-action rifle with high power rounds with a very low cyclic rate. Either way, the focus should be on precision rather than DPS racing, which would likely mean it would be a bad choice for anything closer than long-medium or long range engagements (of which there are surprisingly many to be had in Odyssey's settlements).
Currently the Oppressor's actual useable range falls within both the Tormentor's and Intimidator's. The adjustments I proposed would help push that range further out so it can fulfill the role of a medium-range Plasma weapon; its low cyclic rate should prevent it from becoming a DPS monster. As it stands, at G5 the Oppressor puts out 16.1 MJ/s, compared to the AR-50's 27 MJ/s (not accounting for resistances).
Thankfully the Calculator takes the guesswork out of how much improvement the Oppressor needs, so if FDEV sees this Thread / Calculator that shouldn't happen. Well... theoretically
(The last time FDEV listened to one of my weapon balancing requests was back in the 3.0 Beta with the Shock Cannons; I managed to convince someone to increase the ammo reserves to what they presently are, though I did ask for substantially more...)
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if only a few players (including me
) blinked if the Oppressor was removed today. Plenty of the feedback I've seen about the Oppressor has been negative, though I have read a few positive reviews here and there.Sadly, there aren't any player-accessible statistics for what Odyssey weapons see the most use. I'd be curious to see what the most popular are and where the Oppressor ranks in that list.
If I had to pick only one buff, I'd go with the projectile velocity; I'd strongly prefer both, but I could live with either a smaller damage increase or no increase at all.
Actually, ammo efficiency (overall damage per round, including resistances of both the Shield and Armor) is one area where the Oppressor surpasses the AR-50: you get more performance per round out of the Oppressor than the AR-50, so your total ammo reserves last longer during prolonged engagements... assuming your aim is on point, which, let's be honest - mine apparently isn't
The Magazine Size mod only gives you an extra 25 rounds overall, but a 75 round magazine which is very forgiving when engaging multiple targets in rapid succession or one tanky one (Enforcers). Without question, Magazine Size is my #1 must-have mod for all weapons.
There is a slight muzzle rise with Stability, but it maxes out after a second of sustained fire. That mod completely removes the horizontal recoil which is harder to control.
Two months later and I'm finally back with the Calculator v2!
Since we received confirmation from the Community Managers on the latest Frameshift Live stream that work on Update 12 is ongoing, I feel like now is the best time to revive / have this discussion in the hopes that someone important sees this so that any Oppressor buffs make it into Update 12.
But before I begin, I'd like to extend my gratitude to De_Toqueville and the folks behind the Elite Dangerous Odyssey Material Helper for collecting and providing the data on weapon reload, stow and ready times. It would have taken me far longer to get this done without their help
Now, here's a link to the v2 Calculator:
Oppressor TTK Calculator v2.xlsx
As before, if you'd like to play around with the Calculator:
There is rounding that happens, but the best fit percentages as I can see for shield resists look like: -60% thermal, 60% kinetic, 0% plasma, and 35% explosive. It only takes 9 shots for the Eclipse to break G5 shields, 5 for the Zenith, and 5 for the Aph. 32 shots for the AR-50, 40 shots for the C-44 and 20 for the P-15. Explosive was calculated using a G1 L-6 at point blank. These were viewed looking at a G5 Player Suit.
The C-44 doesn't fit into the curve, and honestly I'm not sure why. I may need to go back and re-run the tests to see if we missed something.
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That's why I wrote with the misses in mind. The more ammo you have, the more misses you can make, and the higher the rate of fire helps.assuming your aim is on point, which, let's be honest - mine apparently isn't