Skrem's Quick Ballistic Glanceover

[Skrem7]

About The Pull Request

If maintainers want me to shorten the changelog, I can, I tend to start there so I know what to talk about up here.

What started as a PR meant to buff up rubber rounds ended up turning into a general passover I gave to much of the syntax and presentation of ballistics. PR doesn't actually change that much function-wise, but it changes a lot of lines due to a lot of changed pathing to better establish consistency within ballistic code as well as overviewing a lot of descriptions, names, and inherit moments.

Functionally, less-lethals and sniper rounds have been changed the most by this PR. To a lesser extent, .38 special and shotgun rounds have been tweaked. Finally, the PR stamps out a missing sprite bug with the WT-550 magazines, buffs up the surplus rifle (yeah, that old thing), tinkers with some projectile speeds, makes match rounds slightly better, and goes over A LOT of descriptions. I apologize for the massive wall of text that's to follow.

Will take a look at energy weapons when I feel like it (might kill disablers, I don't like mapping though).

Why It's Good For The Game

Slug and Pellet Changes

The pellet changes are actually just systemizing what was supposed to be intentional design according to code comments, it just hadn't reached every single pellet-based shotgun projectile. The improvised shell buff is to make it not a potential complete whiff because RNG mechanics are generally bad and not fun to play with.

Less-Lethal Changes

Several implementations of less-lethal (rubber) ammunition on shiptest are strictly worse than their standard alternatives. While this isn't a PvP server, it feels very not-fun meta-wise to POTENTIALLY arm for SOME insubordination and still fire what may as well be a round that bleeds someone out (as they'll cause bleeding anyway). Increasing the stamina damage on each of these makes it so they actually have a vague trade-off (maybe stamina damage can do something like slow simplemobs in the future, I don't know, I'd love to do it but simplemob code makes me screech).

To make them not directly better in PvP and not the staple of taking down the Super Scary Syndicate Shocktrooper Guy, they've had their negative AP doubled. Not as good against combatants, but still perfectly adept, if not better at general riot control against civilians. Makes sense and puts them in their niche a little better.

.38 Changes

The .38 special round relatively has more "power" and "velocity" compared to the 9mm round, though it does not quite reach the levels that .45 automatic or 10mm does in the IRL server. Furthermore, .38 special was specifically designed not to over-penetrate targets so as to minimize the chance of collateral damage in police work. These are the ultimate justifications behind giving it the worst AP out of all the pistol calibers (-30, instead of -20) while still raising its damage to 25.

This should make the Winchester a better staple for taking out weaker enemies such as legions or unarmored hermits, but it'll perform worse against goliaths, frontiersmen, and the like. All-in-all, a more "early-game" caliber, if you will, which is kinda what it's always been.

Projectile Speed and Match Changes

Match rounds don't really exist as far as I've seen. That being said, they're meant to be of higher quality, so their getting slightly higher AP and speed makes sense, even if they're mostly just a meme round.

The speed increase of DMR/sniper rounds is primarily meant to differentiate them better from AR rounds beyond having 20 more AP. Assault rifles so far have pretty much dominated with better magazine size, fire rate, and the exact same force as the DMR calibers, just doing less damage against armored targets (doesn't matter too much when you can just vomit rounds). I'd like to buff up the DMR damage even more (sniper is fine), but I'd rather get some feedback on changing them to 35 baseline before doing so.

The speed decrease on shotguns is meant to cement them as CQC weapons. Slugs are heavy. Shotguns are meant for close range. It's not much, but it's thematically a good way to keep them in their lane, not that they're even that problematic, hence only the slight change.

Sniper Rifle Knockdown Change

Having a big-ass bullet that does 70 damage with 50 AP hit you is already a middle finger. Making it potentially knock off an arm or a leg is another middle finger. Being hardstunned for ten seconds after is the icing on the cake. Changed it to a knockdown because we hate ranged tasers.

Surplus Rifle Fire Rate Buff

This thing is a joke. I haven't even seen it on the server, but I'd rather make it vaguely competitive considering 10mm isn't super deadly and only otherwise exists on the stechkin or the one Inteq SMG that you never see (Colossus-only).

It's still clunky and terrible, but it should be less comedic and more of a potential option if you have NOTHING else (will never happen).

Boarder Magazine Change

Top-loading magazine fits into a standard assault rifle? No. Doesn't make sense. Someone should probably just kill this gun, it's stupid and looks stupid last I checked.

WT-550 Magazine Fix

Don't think I've seen anyone use this weapon, I've only printed out their magazines to dump AP rounds into my NT-SVG carbine. Noticed they were invisible then. Someone increased their capacity to 30 without a care for how its update_icon works. Not cool. Anyway, fixes are good. Moving on.

Syntax, Description, Spelling, and Overall Presentation Changes

Something very important when maintaining code is generally keeping consistency in how things are not only presented, but how they're stored as well. While I'd love to do EVEN more in the method of refactoring to better align how so much of gun code works, this was something I wanted to keep as a one-day project, so I mostly tinkered with pathing, inherits, and groupings.

In the avenue of spelling and description changes, that's just 1) Cleaning up errors that PR authors and maintainers missed and 2) Making things more concise and just... better. Some of the SolGov descriptions were a real headache to look at, and not because of the frequent spelling and syntax errors.

Whoever misspelled and caused an entire series of items to be /obj/item/gun/ballistic/automatic/assualt may wish to avoid any crows for the next three months.

Perfectly willing to adjust or reel back some of my descriptions if someone can offer something better than what I've written out if there's some soul they REALLY want to keep.

Changelog

🆑
tweak: The NT 'Boarder' ARG now loads standard P-16 magazines, rather than the M-90gl toploaders.
balance: .38 special does 25 damage up from 20. AP has been reduced to -30 from -20.
balance: Standardizes pellet projectiles to lose 10% damage of both types per tile across the board. Improvised pellets no longer have a hardcapped 1-8 tile range.
balance: Less-lethal rounds now do 50% more stamina than the force of their lethal counterparts, with 25% the normal force and double the negative AP. If the round had positive or zero AP, it was subtracted by 20.
balance: Shotgun slugs do 40 damage, down from 60, but have zero AP, rather than -10. FRAG-12 and meteor slugs have had their damage adjusted to reflect their relative force.
balance: Surplus rifle fire_delay has been cut to 1 second from 3.
balance: .50 BMG knocks down instead of hardstunning.
balance: Any DMR, match, or sniper round now travels slightly faster than other bullets. Shotgun slugs and pellets now travel slightly slower than other bullets.
balance: Match rounds have had their AP slightly increased.
fix: Fixed WT-550 magazines not displaying properly.
spellcheck: Went over (almost) every single ballistic description, including the guns themselves, magazines, ballistic casings, and speed loaders/stripper clips to not only have better consistency and readability, but also be more clear on the general effectiveness of each caliber.
spellcheck: Assualt is gone.
code: Repaths/renames most ballistic ammo pathing to maintain consistency or take advantage of inherits, when possible.
/:cl:

[Skrem7]

have not eaten dinner i apologize for the word vomit

[thgvr]

holy mother of changelog

[Skrem7]

holy mother of changelog

i was told to document my changes

[spockye]

Mother of god

[MarkSuckerberg]

assualt

(I'll try to do better reviewing weapons in the future)

[Skrem7]

assualt

(I'll try to do better reviewing weapons in the future)

was it you

was it you

[MarkSuckerberg]

assualt
(I'll try to do better reviewing weapons in the future)

was it you

was it you

no but I was probably who reviewed the PR that added it without noticing it