Sloth's gun thoughts

Guns

Guns should be specialised per category, i.e. all SMGs should feel like SMGs even if their stats are different.

Guns are going to be designed around range, with the exception being launchers (typically specialising at area damage) and lasers (specialising at going through glass). This means the MaxAngle for every gun in a class should be the same, with every other lever being able to be tweaked. The reason behind this is to make each class clear at what it does and avoid a gun overstepping its bounds and overshadowing another category.

Rifles:
Should be the default gun, being accurate enough to shoot a mob anywhere on screen (that is, its max accuracy is never wider than their hitbox). From here:

Shotguns:
Very short range, being only able to hit all of their pellets up to ~3 tiles away. The exception to this are slugs which should provide the accuracy of a rifle but not the damage, only being used as a last resort.

LMGs:
Worse spread than SMGs when unwielded and similar when wielded. Should take up a large amount of storage in exchange for a larger clip size.
To avoid outclassing rifles or SMGs their angle increases quickly to max, being based around sending a lot of damage down a particular corridor rather than at a particular target.

SMGs:
Higher damage but less accuracy than rifles. Shouldn't be guaranteed to hit mobs further than ~5 tiles out.

Pistols:
Should have the same accuracy as SMGs. Their upside should be their portability (fitting in pockets or other gear) and their universality, i.e. all nukies getting the same pistol for example but not necessarily having the same primary weapon.

Revolvers:
These should be alternative versions of pistols, offering higher damage per shot (via magnum bullets) with the trade-off of slower reloads (via no magazine). Pistols also have the same caliber as SMG and have more ammo availability as well.

Sniper rifles:
Longer range and higher single-shot damage than a rifle. We don't have PVS zoomout support for guns yet so currently these will be weak.

Launchers:
These should be designed around how much area damage they do though largely don't need to be considered against other gun classes.

Lasers:
These should be as accurate as rifles but with the advantage that they can go through glass. Their main drawback is their scarcity and the fact they have to recharge, being unable to sustain long engagements. The typical laser is also expected to have lower DPS than a typical rifle given the prevalence of glass airlocks.

Corporation balancing

Typically guns should follow the following order for strength (where this also ties into their scarcity)
ERT (being rarest) > Syndicate > NT (being most common)

Levers

Tweaking within a gun class (assuming the same caliber) should involve:

• Fire rate
• Angle decay / Angle increase
• MinAngle
• Selector modes (SemiAuto / FullAuto)
• Magazine size
• Availability (something can be strong if it's very hard to acquire)
• Item size

MaxAngle should typically be left as is.

Item sizing:

Assuming a 100 size backpack as default:

Guns:
Pistol: 10 (Pocket size)
Revolver: 10
SMG: 30 (this will warrant an SMG nerf when wielding is possible)
Shotgun: 30
Sniper rifle: 50
Rifle: 50
Laser: 50
LMG: 60 (Bump up mag sizes to 10)
Launcher: 60

Magazines:
Default: 5
SMG / high-capacity: 10
grenades / rockets: 5

Tweaks to be done:

Pistol accuracy nerf
Revolver accuracy nerf when unwielded
SMG accuracy nerf when unwielded
Make SMG magazines larger size?
LMG bump mag size and item size