Feedback The problem with guns!

As i have played all versions of starbound i have seen since the beginning that guns are kind of bad. Think about the dps.( damage per second.) You can only deal the same or better damage with a second ability. And some arent even that good. For example i am carrying an assault rifle with 3.8 damage and 2.0 for speed. Thats about 9.6 damage with an entire clipnof energy. While a sword deals about 3.2 per swing, in some cases being much faster and better.(yes i know about second abilities.) Swords, hammers,gauntlets and daggers. The only guns which have been actually useful to me were guns with burst explosion, explosive rounds and energy javelyn as a weapon. Please tell me if i am obsurdly wrong.
Thanks.

 

People were of different minds about it, but the idea was to balance the use of ranged and melee styles. I believe it worked, guns are an option now, not a necessity.

I’m a spear person myself, but I still find uses for my assault rifle and sniper rifle.

 

Guns are still very useful in ancient vaults, you take a lot more damage just going melee. But it's true most of them feel very underwhelming. My favorite is by far the vintage rifle (nuru's quest reward), It's precise, has a high damage and high rate of fire (you can alternate left and right click). Also it doesn't rely on elemental damages so you don't have to worry about resistances.

 

Guns are pretty solid, but it takes a while to reach that point. Low tier guns are bad. High tier guns are pretty solid.

 

Guns have the advantage that you can kill your enemies without having to get near them where they can hurt you. This is the point of guns, and why they were invented in real life. In SB, they trade this for energy expenditure and slightly lower damage because - at the risk of stating the obvious - being able to kill things from a distance is in itself a huge advantage.

Using guns while in melee range would be sub-optimal, obviously, because you're taking the drawbacks while not making use of the advantages. But then, the only tactic dumber would be to try to use a sword against an enemy outside of melee range, which again takes all disadvantages while not making use of the advantages.

A clever player packs both guns and swords (or daggers or a hammer or whatever suits their preference). Shoot the enemy from a distance, then switch to melee when they get too close. Maybe pack a pair of daggers, jump in before they've noticed you, and pin them against a wall with rapid stabbings. (Great against outlaws - don't give them a chance to attack you!)

If you measure a weapon only by how much damage it does, you won't get far. Its true value lies in how well it suits a given combat situation.

 

Guns have lower damage output than melee weapons in most video games to balance things and make melee weapons relevant, in real life guns are strictly superior assuming you have ammo. In SB the best guns still have a very good damage output but the main issue is energy limitation, if you want to maximize your damage and clear levels as fast as possible (while avoiding enemy fire as much as possible) you have to hit with your sword as soon as the energy bar is empty. The best melee weapon is arguably the strongest broadsword (upgraded hokucide), it has the best balance between range, attack speed and damage per hit. Short swords have shitty range so you get hit more often, hammers are slow as fuck so you waste a lot of time and can easily miss.

 

While it's true Guns are usually of lower damage, they're not lower DPS. The reason is they have a high speed to compensate for the lower damage. Like Castlevania Symphony of the Night/Harmony of Despair, if you use Alucard with a Fist or a Knife type weapon, he can attack very quickly repeatedly. The same amount of DPS is dealt with Alucard attacking quickly as it is with him using a slower, more powerful weapon.

While Guns shouldn't have to be a necessity, they should at least be on par with other weapons. It's about options, and if Melee weapons are the only weapons which deal high DPS, they become the necessity.

I feel that Guns should be given truly random parts like Borderlands, with each Gun having the capacity to spawn with maybe 10 parts for each section of parts (maybe with as many as 5 or 6, so 60 parts per Gun category, for each type of Gun.) Each Gun should have one or two parts deemed to be "Legendary", making them a unique weapon WHILE still offering the randomosity of different damage, speed, recoil reduction etc. (and that's one thing about this game, guns don't have ANY recoil/reduction.)

They should do the same thing with all weapons which are randomly generated TBH, make a single part type "Legendary" and make it so you have the off-chance of finding a Legendary weapon in a chest that would have normally had normal weapons in them.

Guns need to be given the same amount of love that Melee weapons were given, with the many types of parts that can go together to make them. Some of those parts should be deemed Legendary, making the whole weapon (be it Melee or Gun type,) have a chance of being Legendary. This would make loot more fun in general.

Lastly, each Gun should have the capacity to have its own "Ammo" capacity. Meaning that if a Gun spawns with more ammo capacity, you can fire it more regardless of your energy pool. Think of it as adding more energy to your energy pool. It recharges the same way and utilizes your energy the same way, you just get more of it with a weapon that has more energy (this is absolutely necessary for Assault Rifles.)

Edit:

When it comes to Legendary parts, think of it like this. Let's say there's an Assault Rifle with a Legendary "Ammo" part. This would make the gun have a static title as opposed to just being known as some randomly named thing. The title would ALWAYS be the same regardless if it had this part, which would be unique among other Guns which seem to just be randomly named.

The Assault Rifle would have a HUGE amount of Ammo, making it seem like you could fire it for minutes at a time without recharge. That would be its skill. Its damage/recoil reduction/rate of fire would be different based on the OTHER parts, but the Ammo part would be Legendary, make the whole Gun Legendary, and give you a special bonus for having it.

Another Legendary Gun part for the Assault Rifle (using Assault Rifles as the example right now,) would be a part which made your gun have high damage output and made its element fire (it would always give your Gun the ability to have fire damage if you had this part.) Now, if you were to have a Gun which had BOTH Legendary pieces, you could theoretically create a Gun which had the name of both Legendary types in its title at the same time, dealt high damage, and had a nearly unlimited Ammo capacity. This would make guns FUN, and the rarity of these weapons (especially both at the same time,) would mean that very few players would have this, preventing it from being unbalanced.

Now, since the OTHER parts are random, it can still have high damage AND be relatively fast, just dependent on the part which utilizes its rate of fire/speed.

A fifth part that could be given to Guns would be how uniquely they made your energy refill after using the entire clip to recharge. It would give your energy recharge rate an entirely separate speed, despite how fast it would have normally recharged. So that's 5 different part types right there, I'm sure someone who's better about knowing Guns can think of a sixth part relatively easily.

If Chucklefish is worried about players giving themselves such weapons with Mods -- just consider, wouldn't they be able to give themselves highly unbalanced things with Mods anyway? So I don't see the harm.

 

It all depends on the gun. Assault rifles are good in some situations, and piss poor in others. Just as swords are good in some situations, and piss poor in others. It's all about the right tool for the job.