Descent 2 laser balance

[Xfing]

Another thing I noticed when playing Vertigo. It's been generally established that Descent 1 L4 Laser is stronger than Descent 2 L6 Laser. So I played some Vertigo, and I met this Fusion Hulk in level 11. I shot him with my L6 quads, and he took 6 rounds to go down. The score was usual, 2000 points. I thought that was curious, so I launched Descent 1 instead to check how many L4 quad shots will a Fusion Hulk take to go down - he took 8. Does that mean that the Fusion Hulk's HP got cut between Descent 1 and Vertigo, or are the lasers simply more powerful?

[Krom]

The L6 lasers are more powerful than the L4s, what happened is most of the D2 bots have more HP so ultimately it seems like the L4s/all other D1 weapons are weaker. Fusion hulks being D1 bots have the same amount of HP as they did in D1, thus L6 lasers kill them faster than L4 lasers. Try again with L4s in D2 and it will probably still take 8 hits.

The only weapon I know of that actually does dish out reduced damage in D2 vs D1 is the Fusion cannon, which had its damage cut in half for D2.

[DarkFlameWolf]

yes, which I think is utter BS.

[Theftbot]

I thought spreadfire got a cut too.

[Xfing]

Thanks for the reply, Krom, your answer satisfies me a lot. I've tried the L6 quads against Medium Hulks and Super Hulks in Vertigo too, though, and I didn't see them go down any faster than from L4 Quads in D1. Maybe I'll do that test more thoroughly next time.

I would also like to note that the damage of Mega Missiles, contrary to popular belief, hasn't been tampered with for Descent 2. You can still destroy a Lou Guard or a Super Hulk (in Vertigo) with a single Mega, as well as kill yourself at 200 shields shooting one in the wall at point blank range. The misconception was probably born by the measly damage that the Fire Boss' megas do to you, but as I wrote somewhere else, this was probably done so the boss isn't too hard at such an early point in the game (as normally Megas would be 1-hit KO's for you). The Fire Boss' Mega Missile damage has nothing to do with your own. This should be corrected on the Moon's Descendarium website, but I dunno how to contact Moon to inform him of this.

[Lothar]

The L6 lasers are more powerful than the L4s

I thought quad 6's did slightly less damage in D2 than quad 4's in D1. That was my recollection from playing 1v1s back in the IDL days, anyway.

[Sirius]

Quad 4 D1, 52, quad 6 D2, 50, from what I remember.

[Xfing]

Then how to explain the fusion hulk going down so fast? Was it its hp that got a cut?

[Sirius]

I don't have the tools with me to check at the moment, but that's definitely possible.

[Xfing]

We have two conflicting stances on the subject, Krom's and Sirius'. I'd do more research but I'm afraid I don't possess the means to do so, although this matter interests me.

[Sirius]

Shield readings out of DLE-XP are the same...

[Xfing]

Shield readings out of DLE-XP are the same...

Oh. So it would suggest that L6 lasers indeed are more powerful than L4, even those from D1. Looks like another busted myth, eh?

[Sirius]

I'd be more inclined to re-test how many shots it takes to kill each.

[Ashes]

I thought spreadfire got a cut too.

Spreadfire got altered drasticly in D2 from D1. Different size, different speed, different damage.

[Xfing]

Spreadfire got an insignificant nerf, one globule did 10 dmg, now does 9.

[Sirius]

The speed is the most noticeable change to spreadfire.

[Avder]

The speed is the most noticeable change to spreadfire.

Whats the speed change, exactly?

[Alter-Fox]

I don't know, but Spreadfire went from being my favourite primary in D1 to completely useless in D2.

[Avder]

Well, when I played through D1 and D2 on Ace, the weapons I used were as follows:

D1: Lasers with Spreadfire thrown in in corridors, occasional Vulcan Use, and a ton of Fusion in the later levels. I almost never used Plasma.

Homing missiles were standard use, with smarts picking up the slack in tricky areas, megas for robots that needed to be dead NOW (certain red hulks usually), and concs when I had something pinned or were out of everything else.

D2: Guass, Guass, Guass, and some Lasers when I was out of Vulcan Ammo; Helix for bosses, reactors, and large mobs, with a dash of Omega Cannon thrown in to deal with those G0DDAMNED BATS (spawn, red hornet, and I found its decent against the theif). I never used Spreadfire or Plasma. Vulcan extremely rarely, phoenix only for trick shots, and Fusion was useless since it got a Vasectomy.

Homing was used with energy weapons, while Mercs were my standard missile alongside guass, with Flash coming in third, smarts fourth. Megas were again used against robots that needed to die instantly, and shakers were saved up for the level 24 boss in D2 and the level 20 boss in Vertigo. Concs were almost never fired. Guided missiles of course were a very nice corner shooting missile.

[Xfing]

The speed is the most noticeable change to spreadfire.

Whats the speed change, exactly?

Well... I'd be very interested in knowing the exact change, as I need to restore the speed for the campaign some of us are creating. To be honest, I never noticed anything out of place with the Spreadfire in D2. I'd be convinced if someone recorded himself shooting it in D1 and then in D2 and displayed them both on a split screen or something...

[Sirius]

130 in D2. Don't have the figure for D1, would need ... tools which I'm not sure exist. It's presumably possible to parse it but it'd take a while.

For the record: D2 laser level 6 does 12.5 damage per bolt (12.0 on Insane, so no boost over level 5), speed of 135.

[vision]

The speed is the most noticeable change to spreadfire.

Whats the speed change, exactly?

Well... I'd be very interested in knowing the exact change, as I need to restore the speed for the campaign some of us are creating. To be honest, I never noticed anything out of place with the Spreadfire in D2. I'd be convinced if someone recorded himself shooting it in D1 and then in D2 and displayed them both on a split screen or something...

I was curious about this and looked on youtube for existing footage of both versions and was surprised to see the D1 spreadfire does look faster. Now, it's hard to tell exactly how different they are because these are 2 separate videos by different people with a lot of motion going on - hardly a controlled environment. But it does seem significant. Judge for yourself. Maybe one day I'll have a system good enough to record video and do a proper test.

D2 Spreadfire @ 3m02s
D1 Spreadfire @ 2m35s

[Xfing]

Hmm. I agree now - it's indeed noticeable. If only I knew the figures from D1...

[Xfing]

I finally got to tamper with the HAM and alter it, by hacking HAXMEDIT. This is most sweet.

I'll change the laser power figures to what they were in D1, so 10,11,12 and 13 per shot, with a 5-worth of increase in speed per level. This will also extend to the Super Laser, each level up will get 1 more damage per shot and 5 more speed. Laser is gonna be stronger than ever to help with the difficulty of the later levels.

Fusion will be restored from 30 to 60. For the Fusion Hulks also. This will most likely unbalance the D2 weapons but what the hell, I want my Fusion strong.

And for Spreadfire... damage per globule will be restored from 9 to 10, but I don't think tampering with projectile speed is alright, since you know, Helix projectiles have the same speed and it would be out of place to have the inferior weapon shoot faster projectiles. Spread should still be useful, though, for its stunning effect on homing hulks, which Plasma, for example, lacks.

[Sirius]

Fusion probably always should have been 60 in Descent 2.

[Xfing]

Fusion probably always should have been 60 in Descent 2.

Well yeah. I think Parallax was simply paranoid that if Fusion remained as strong as it used to be in D1, D2 weapons would have little room to shine. And gotta give 'em that they were probably right, unpopular as their decision may be. In D2 I use only Laser, Gauss and Helix. Omega only sporadically to dispose of weak but fast enemies thanks to its homing capabilities. But had Fusion still been 60, I think this tendency would shift very drastically, I'm not quite sure which weapons would suffer, though.

The way it is, Fusion was made into a gimmick weapon, but has its uses. A charged shot could still clear a path through a bunch of weak robots and it remained an energy-efficient way of destroying reactors.

BTW, I've done some research into Spreadfire, well... more like experimentation. Luckily, my first assumption proved correct. I exported Lunar Outpost from Descent.HOG and converted it into a D2 level, in order to create a suitable environment for tests. I set Spreadfire speed in haxmedit from 130 to 200, then I measured the time it took the projectiles to hit the wall en face your starting point in lvl1. The dominant result yield was 0,74 sec, with around 0,5 sec standard deviation. Then I repeated the experiment in D1, with the natural, unaltered mechanics and guess what? The dominant time was also 0,74 sec and the standard deviation was identical.

If the above was too long for you and you didn't read it, Descent 1 Spreadfire projectile speed is 200.

[Alter-Fox]

Fusion will be restored from 30 to 60. For the Fusion Hulks also. This will most likely unbalance the D2 weapons but what the hell, I want my Fusion strong.

Like your coffee?

[Xfing]

Fusion will be restored from 30 to 60. For the Fusion Hulks also. This will most likely unbalance the D2 weapons but what the hell, I want my Fusion strong.

Like your coffee?

Well, I actually never have coffee. Tried it once, still having absolutely no tolerance to caffeine. Drank too much, had heart problems for a few months. No thank you!