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They currently aren't that powerful IMO. Rockets should start at 100 damage and Explosive Rockets should start at 80 damage.

The production line is very involved, it takes a hefty chunk of raw materials, the upgrades aren't so great, and the splash damage is kind of meh.

Rockets could definitely use a good buff. Or maybe the combat shotfun is too good?

bobucles wrote:The production line is very involved, it takes a hefty chunk of raw materials, the upgrades aren't so great, and the splash damage is kind of meh.

Rockets could definitely use a good buff. Or maybe the combat shotfun is too good?

I think other weapons should use the combat shotgun as a baseline. Currently, it's the only gun viable for base invading. If the combat shotgun was nerfed, then we wouldn't have anything to use other than maybe poison capsules or tanks, and tanks are also currently not up to par with end-game power despite being a very involved process as well.

I'd prefer the scaling of all weapons be done more equally, and the different roles fleshed out a bit.

What I mean is that all weapons could start relatively weak (along the lines of the machine gun), be available rather early, but need decent research input to end up as powerhouse for specific tasks.
For example:
Combat Shotgun: Good for large groups of weaker and melee enemies.
Rockets: Long range base bombardment.
Machine gun: Good for smaller groups of tough and ranged enemies.
etc.


Sidenote:
And given the cost of personal laser defense equipment, they could probably use a buff as well (or a cheaper recipe).

Trying to get back to the rockets issue: I too think that at the moment, there isn't a real reason to use rockets.

Mid-game, they may come in handy against big biters, when you do not yet have piercing shotgun ammo. But firing one rocket slows you down significantly, their range is too small and their impact feels insignificant. You may be able to take down 1 or 2 big biters, but then the rest catches up with you. Thus it is usually safer to run back to your base.

Increasing the damage and range should help.

The main advantage of an explosive is to multiply that juicy juicy AoE damage against multiple targets. It's hard to take advantage of AoE when the dev is focusing on bigger, meaner aliens.

bobucles wrote:The main advantage of an explosive is to multiply that juicy juicy AoE damage against multiple targets. It's hard to take advantage of AoE when the dev is focusing on bigger, meaner aliens.

Or maybe the bigger enemies should take AOE damage directly... So a direct hit on a small biter is the direct damage only. A medium is direct + 1x AOE, large is direct + 2xAOE, etc.

Maybe (in addition to upping their power) we just need a rocket launcher that fires several rockets in quick bursts. That way they'd have a role to play in base assaults: Move in and bombard the place to raze the buildings, and then switch to the combat shotgod to clean up the army headed your way.

In my personal game alteration mod, I've doubled rocket range to 45. Also, I've nerfed the combat shotgun, removing it's +20% damage bonus. The effect is that, aside from being the best way, aside from turrets, to deal with heavy biters, it can outrange absolutely everything, and is useful for killing bases if your shields cant handle the quantity of worms that are at the location. Shotgun still is more useful if you can get close, but the extreme range has interesting effects.

If you work with the assumption that some nests are just TOO big to face head on, a "sniper" variant of weapon makes a lot of sense. The rocket launcher would be well suited in this capacity, since the projectiles are fairly expensive and not terribly efficient otherwise.

bobucles wrote:If you work with the assumption that some nests are just TOO big to face head on, a "sniper" variant of weapon makes a lot of sense. The rocket launcher would be well suited in this capacity, since the projectiles are fairly expensive and not terribly efficient otherwise.

I have yet to run into one of these, and I have cleared some quite large ones

Marconos wrote:

bobucles wrote:If you work with the assumption that some nests are just TOO big to face head on, a "sniper" variant of weapon makes a lot of sense. The rocket launcher would be well suited in this capacity, since the projectiles are fairly expensive and not terribly efficient otherwise.

I have yet to run into one of these, and I have cleared some quite large ones

Lots of spawners: Fine
Lots of huge worms: Nope

I've encountered biter bases with 20-30 huge worms. No amount of mk2 power armor is going to save you from that for more than a second. I usually just turret creep those and while I do lose a couple of turrets to these bases, it's much quicker and safer than trying to rush in with poison capsules or a tank.

Yep. Explosive rockets work pretty nicely there. Alternatively, poison capsles. Admittedly, getting 4 of them on top of the worms is difficult, but is usually the only alternative.

Enigmatica wrote:

Marconos wrote:

bobucles wrote:If you work with the assumption that some nests are just TOO big to face head on, a "sniper" variant of weapon makes a lot of sense. The rocket launcher would be well suited in this capacity, since the projectiles are fairly expensive and not terribly efficient otherwise.

I have yet to run into one of these, and I have cleared some quite large ones

Lots of spawners: Fine
Lots of huge worms: Nope

I've encountered biter bases with 20-30 huge worms. No amount of mk2 power armor is going to save you from that for more than a second. I usually just turret creep those and while I do lose a couple of turrets to these bases, it's much quicker and safer than trying to rush in with poison capsules or a tank.

Destroyer capsules and armor with 7 shields. Just run in guns blazing and they are dead fast. Do it all the time.

Destroyer capsules are FAR more expensive however, but true, that can also work.

I think the issue with rockets comes down to upgrades.

for starters, you only get 1 shot per rocket, where other ammo types give you 5 or more shots. but rockets make up for that with damage... Remember damage resistances have 2 components, a percentage, and a reduction. if that reduction is too high, you just don't do any damage. So the high damage of rockets make up for the high cost and lower DPS... untill you consider upgrades.

Other weapons have 6 tiers of upgrade research, rockets only 5. this wouldn't be so much of an issue if they gave you more of a bonus per level, but the result is that they get less of a boost than other ammo types, which means endgame, their favor goes down when compared to the likes of the shotgun.

Bullet, Shotgun and laser research goes:
damage: 10%, 10%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 40%. total 120% bonus.
speed: 20%, 20%, 30%, 30%, 30%, 30%. total 160% bonus.

if you consider DPS that's 5.72 times the damage per second upgraded with research.

Gun Turret has the same damage boost which effects damage ON TOP OF bullet damage bonus.

12.584x DPS for gun turrets than if they had no research.

combat robots go:
10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%. total 100% bonus.
no speed.

2x DPS

The rocket goes:
Damage: 10%, 10%, 20%, 20%, 20%. total 80% bonus.
speed: 20%, 20%, 30%, 30%, 30%. total 130% bonus.

4.14x DPS

Basically, the same model as bullets and shotgun upgrades, but without the final step.


So my analysis (as far as research goes) is that Rockets need that 6th level, and combat robots could probably use a shooting speed bonus too.
Plus the tank cannon needs a research tree too, the tank cannon becomes a bit naff endgame when you consider the others get so much of a boost.

Don't forget that for some reason almost every enemy unit has a significant resistance to this horribly powerful weapon.

Adil wrote:Don't forget that for some reason almost every enemy unit has a significant resistance to this horribly powerful weapon.

Yeah thats the thing that makes me stay away from anything with explosive written on it. No idea what is reasoning behind that but makes rockets doubly useless

Dispite this, I found that Rockets were the best way to deal with big biters in the campagne when I was playing it. But this was still when certain things were limited, such as not having all the bullet and shotgun upgrades.

yes, rockets could use a small buff, but actually they are fine.
The reason why rockets seem weak is because

-shotgun is COMPLETLY BROKEN OP(2-3 shotting alien buildings in <1 sec)
-bullets are underpowered (didnt try them much, maybe the combat power is good, but it seems that bullets are extremly resource intensive)
-poison orb is nice, but it would be fine to have an upgrade option because compared with super end game shotgun its also too weak)
-tank is also too weak in endgame battles. Good to snipe buildings, but later too much damage from spitter
-the 2 integrated weapons into the armor seem also pretty useless


In my opinion the best way to kill aliens is to use the combat shotgut and the explosive rockets. With boosted movementspeed and maxed out energyshield you cycle alien cluster and destroy the alien spawner with the shotgun and after that you kill the dragged melee aliens with the AOE rockets.
The poison orb is for the lulz. It works and does its job(killing cluster of worms), but probably its more reasonable to just use the combat shotgun for everything.

However, I read that there will be a combat update some day, so I am positive and excited about the coming changes.