L6 SAW Changes

[MMMiracles]

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/13629

The SAW has gotten some changes in hopes of sparking more variety in nuke plans and maybe someone will actually buy it now.

Main Changes:

• SAW now requires an empty hand to fire properly or you'll get heavy recoil and the gun may even fly out of your hand.
• The generic ammo the SAW comes with does 35 damage with the burst being lowered to 3, also lowering the total fire delay.
• Cost lowered to 30 from 40, ammo now costs 7 instead of 12.

Additions:

• Three new ammo types for purchase-
• Bleeding - Minor brute, causes a lot of bleeding on hit.
• Hollow Point - No armor penetration in exchange for 45 per hit. A full 3-burst will drop a regular crewmember and leave an officer on the verge of crit.
• Armor Penetrating - Reduced damage in exchange for ignoring most standard armor and being better equipped against the tougher bullet-resistant gear.
• Incendiary - Little damage, but ignites targets on hit. Its like a flamethrower but with bullets, only good things can come from this.

I'll also be adding a generic exo-grip item that can be applied to any gun, adding an action button for toggling nodrop on that weapon. SAW will come with it by default to help prevent the tide from stealing your big shooty-gun.

[TechnoAlchemist]

Bleed rounds are worthless tbh, they'd be better replaced with incendiary of somethings else. The saw was already hella strong but people didn't have the guts to buy it, this won't make it OP per se and I think it's overall a decent change,

[MMMiracles]

Bleed rounds are worthless tbh, they'd be better replaced with incendiary of somethings else. The saw was already hella strong but people didn't have the guts to buy it, this won't make it OP per se and I think it's overall a decent change,

As far as I'm aware, the bleeding effect for the drip actually removes the blood on hit, so the current values might actually be hilariously overpowered.

[Zilenan91]

Didn't the saw do 60 brute before
Now all it does is 35, almost 50% less, for only 25% less TC cost. If people didn't buy it before they still won't now especially since they can't use an eshield with it.

I'm liking the nodrop thing though.

[DemonFiren]

Yeah, but if it's a 3-burst, it's still a total of 105 damage, thus instacrit against unarmoured.

[Steelpoint]

A bloody M90 can 3-burst crit a unarmoured opponent, and you can still afford and actually wield a Energy Shield.

Armour Piercing would be nice but good luck ever seeing Security get organised enough to equip any officers with the Bulletproof Armour, not to mention the fact it was nerfed so fuck you.

I don't see anyone buying the SAW for any good reason, its still shit and should just be made a admin only weapon as its a TC trap for idiot Nuke Ops.

[DemonFiren]

I 'unno, decking out with hollow-point for critting everything and anything ever...

[Steelpoint]

I 'unno, decking out with hollow-point for critting everything and anything ever...

Did you miss the part where the much cheaper M90 can 3-shot crit a target by default WITHOUT having to buy even more expensive special ammo?

In fact why bother with Hollow Point ammo WHEN THE DEFAULT SAW AMMO CAN ALREADY 3SHOT A TARGET?

So Hollow Point is useless, Bleeding is meh tier, armour piercing is useless when the only viable bulletproof armour on station is already worthless and incendiary is a nice gimmick but will get you killed.

The SAW is shit-tier through and through, it costs the cost of two M90's plus ammo, you cannot wield anything in your off hand and its inferior in all respects save ammo amount to the M90 or even the C20r.

Its a gimmick that is going to piss off good Op players when some idiot wastes 1/3rd of their TC supply on it.

[Cik]

every weapon but the bulldog is pretty bad and all you would need to do to make them good is reprice them

why won't you reprice them fug

[Cik]

anyways, the SAW is theoretically good when you look at it's stats. it kills the fuck out of people.

the real problem here is that ops simply do not have problems actually killing people. their default gun is "good enough" and free, which means any improvement in that department is basically superfluous.

ops have problems chiefly in two areas

1. survival, attrition: they slowly get wounded during the attack, get separated, lose situational awareness, and get cornered. anything that prevents any of this is far more important to an experienced nukeop than "gun which kills slightly faster but costs a fuckload" if they started at like 5-10 TC and the SAW was say, 12-15? you'd see them way more often (or at all, really)

2. overcoming obstacles like bolted doors, walls, etc. why the syndiborg is so popular.

at 30 TC the saw is simply a joke that will never see use, so while technically you've changed it no one is ever going to use it. even when it was a one-handed gun that instakilled people (the most deadly weapon in the game, probably) it was STILL never used because of it's expense and because the bulldog is sufficient.

tl;dr lower every weapon's cost by like 7 or 8 TC and you'll start seeing them actually used.

[Steelpoint]

I wonder if it would be better, or at least different, if we scaled not the Ops Telecrystal amount but their population?

So each Operatives gets a stock amount of TC's each, as well as a bonus 2 TC's each for every ten people on the server. But the Ops scale from three Ops at 20 (or 30) people to a maximum of seven people at 60 or 70 people.

Then we can look at rebalancing all the Op weapon and item costs to adhear to this new 20 TC limit.

In addition I think we should look at making items that Ops buy separate from what Traitors can buy code wise, right now most item costs are balanced around the Traitor's Uplink TC's whereas the Nuke Ops piggy back off of that. So instead we have a entire sub-group of items that are balanced per item cost for Operatives and their 20 TC stock + 2 TC per 10 people system.

Finally we make the Ops only start with a free Sketchin and instead balance out all primary Op weapons to be viable with one another but have around the same cost each.

[Incomptinence]

You know one of the upsides to most big dakka is spread means it can kill multiple people at once. Maybe add in an extra shot (or two) to the burst but it deviates aim a bit left or right?

Maybe spawn it with an ammo token that lets you choose an initial clip?

[MMMiracles]

I think the main problem with buying other weapons is the fact OPs are essentially given a free revolver that ALSO has cheaper ammo (2 TC per mag).
I mean, why would you buy literally anything else when you're given a good gun to begin with?

Ops do really need some sort of overhaul as it stands but this isn't what the PR is for.

[lumipharon]

SAW is good currently if you pair it with an e-shield, and someone who is reasonably robust, or atleast not a retard.
shield + SAW means you only have to watch for ballistic weapons and melee, while you shit out 60 brute shot everywhere.
It's super expensive of course, so you're probably better off getting a mech if you want a one man army.

With this change, you're gimping it by stopping you from using one hand (hands being the most vital thing in this game), which is made worse by the fact that you cannot store a SAW anywhere (unless this has changed recently).
The damage nerf makes this objectively worse then the cheaper, smaller and more versatile (nades for days) m-90.

As others have said above, there is simply no reason for anyone to want to buy this gun, post change.

Semi related, but a big problem with op weapons is that the default bulldog is simply way too strong compared to the other weapons, when you factor in cost.
The bulldog would be way more interesting if it was a utility weapon (with various different ammo types, not straight brute damage stuff), rather then just revolverXL.

Ideally I think, instead of a default weapon, with more options in the uplink, each op should (either via some uplink changes, a voucher, or whatever) have the choice of one of the selection of nuke weapons (bulldog/c-20/m-90/saw/chem-thrower etc), with their choice of gun effecting how many tc's they will have available. There could also be an option for no main gun and just more tc's, for melee only/mech pilots etc.
It's simply not practical trying to balance a 'free' default gun with tc costed guns.

[MMMiracles]

Next change is probably going to drop the SAW to around 20-25 TC to be more in line with its friends such as the c20 and sniper.

Ops should probably loose the starter bull-dog and keep the pistol. Make them buy their primaries but are at least guaranteed a secondary to fall back on, but that isn't the place for this PR.

[DemonFiren]

I wonder if it is possible to make guns fire bursts of different length.

Because then the SAW could have a short and a long burst mode, spraying a little in long mode for crowd control.

I dunno it's half past two in the morning.

[Zilenan91]

That's 70 TCs without buying anything else if every Op wants a C20. What Ops need are vouchers, because buying guns at the current prices gimp them very very hard.