AP: Weapons/upgrades -- recoil, stability, accuracy

[Art Blade]

You may have noticed that every weapon has those stats, like accuracy, ammo capacity, recoil and stability. Higher values are better.

The recoil apparently is important when it comes to weapons with rapid fire or bursts, like SMG and assault rifle. If you shoot with those weapons, the bullets will likely overshoot, causing both worse accuracy stats for you and fewer hits on the target. So it is more important to get as high as possible a value for recoil if you want to shoot accurately (assault rifle: perfect grouping of those three rounds per burst) and not so important to get a high accuracy value (only the first round will be accurate..). Recoil isn't important for shotguns and pistols, obviously.

The stability value is important if you want to use your weapon on the move or move the weapon around quickly while you're stationary. The more stable your weapon is, the more likely you'll manage to hit something when shooting while running or, more likely, while you're standing but moving the weapon around so you hit a moving target (edited). So it is not important if you're the precision type, like stop to take aim and then fire (best if you wait until the crosshairs turn red and move in to the centre, indicating a critical hit chance).

Choose upgrades respectively.

I found out about that when I wanted to get a highest possible accuracy stats with assault rifle and pistol. In the end I changed from an ultra-high accuracy pistol (the Rittergruppen Razor) to a maximum damage pistol (the UC Commissar) and made sure the Commissar had maximum damage, and I tried to get the best of what was left of it regarding accuracy, and only then spread remaining upgrades on stability and recoil. I finished a playthrough with 100% pistol accuracy and over 550 rounds fired. 

For the assault rifle there is no alternative to the Samael Assassin regarding highest possible recoil value (that's paradox: a high recoil value means you actually get a low recoil) and a rather good accuracy combined with good values for stability and ammo capacity. That weapon can be either most precise (accuracy) or most stable (recoil). Either way, the remaining values are still above average.

Bloody expensive joy, those weapons and upgrades :)

[Art Blade]

I'm recently playing with big Shotguns instead of Assault Rifles.

Currently I use this gun with these base values / those upgraded values

Samael Redeemer	base value	modifications	new value
damage	31	Modified Choke	32
accuracy	6	Basic Shotgun Sights	11
recoil	10	Lower-Capacity Shotgun Magazine	6
stability	20	Reinforced Shotgun Components	22
ammunition	12	(a modification may have different impacts on different values)	10

Apparently recoil is always there, you don't shoot bursts, so.. I don't care about recoil.

What I do care about is damage (the more, the better, that's what this weapon is about). It looks as if damage automatically lacks accuracy (that's bad) and may also increase recoil (means, a lower value) which we can ignore, I believe.

So I try to get better accuracy using a scope (not a broad variety here, it seems) and mostly barrel upgrades such as the "modified choke." Accessories may change different aspects, including damage, recoil, and stability, sometimes they improve two aspects at once at the expense of some other aspect.. it is a science to find out what is really good. However, accuracy is responsible for how many pellets actually hit someone. Low accuracy spreads your pellets and only a few actually hit. So why invest in damage if you don't hit with full force?

I believe the trick is to get a combination of high accuracy (the more pellets hit, the more damage they dish out at once) and high damage and high stability.

The last aspect is indeed stability. It looks like stability is responsible for how quickly your crosshairs change so you get a critical hit. I believe that the higher the stability, the easier it is to get full crosshairs (all red) hence to land a good shot with proper damage and accuracy.

So I ignore recoil because that's just normal with a kick-a$$ (high damage) shotgun but I try to get a high accuracy and high stability. If I get a weapon that on top delivers high damage, then that's what I want to get.

You see, not easy to make choices: Which weapon do I prefer (can I afford it? some of them are really expensive) and to find out how to upgrade a weapon to get the best out of it. Which again may be costly if you buy one modification (upgrade) just to later replace it with a new more expensive upgrade.. and only to find out that you want to change everything (like from damage increase to accuracy increase)..

CHOICES  ;D

[PZ]

Cool - choices is what it's all about in good games.  :-X

[Art Blade]

A few simple rules:


Pistol: (best weapon: tranquiliser rounds and silencer)

The more damage, the better, So you get a "one shot, one kill" (or take-down with a tranquiliser). And perhaps some stability (for aiming at a moving target). Then accuracy. Recoil isn't important.


Assault Rifle: (second best weapon: long range and accurate. Subsonic rounds w@&k like a silencer)

Accuracy and recoil add up well = damage of three hits, you get to group your three rounds tightly. Stability is the next best thing to take care of, and damage the last.

Damage usually comes at a loss of recoil control which means only one of three rounds will hit and the rest go astray. So if you want damage you might want to combine damage with accuracy so the first round counts.


Shotgun:

Accuracy and damage so the pellets group tightly and pack a punch. Maybe the next thing is stability and the last recoil (a shotgun will always go up after a shot, won't it)


SMGs:

No idea.  ;D I've never used them.

[Art Blade]

I had time (savegame, checkpoint during a mission) to test several modifications for the same weapon, my assault rifle (a Samael Assassin). Turns out that the differences the mods make are very, very subtle. At least on Easy difficulty.

I tried high damage, high accuracy, high recoil control and high stability values (resulting from a combination of a couple of weapon upgrades I was carrying with me).

The scenario was great for it: The mission in Taipei where you follow a data trail in a warehouse (where you meet G22 members). The checkpoint was on the roof with that jamming device that looks like a satellite dish and a helicopter behind it on another higher part of the roof. So I kept taking out the same guard left of the helo while I was at the opposite side of the area, keeping a maximum distance. I reloaded the same savegame all the time but changed weapon parts before I killed that poor ba$t@rd again, and again, and again.

Actually, it doesn't seem to matter what you do. Three more damage points or perhaps four more accuracy points or whatever, a lot of recoil control, stability, and any combination. I always hit the target, and most of the time he died (the few times he didn't were probably random, I tried again with the same settings and then killed him -- but the few times I didn't kill him I had low damage values).

Funny thing to notice is the recoil control: A burst of three rounds.. the weapon fires them off, all three rounds hit, and only THEN your weapon jumps up if you're on a low recoil control value. When it was high, the weapon didn't jump, but the crosshairs did reset anyway -- they always do after a burst. So, I don't care if the weapon jumps up after  the bullets hit.

The next funny thing was how the crosshairs turn red and move towards the centre of the circle indicating a chance of a critical hit (I'd say, they indicate that you will actually hit in the centre of your crosshairs). Now, with those red centred crosshairs, I moved my weapon slowly  and the crosshairs started to turn orange and to spread out back to the outer rim of the circle (meaning poor aim). But.. when I moved rapidly, the red crosshairs stayed red. Whoa. Kind of reverse logic  ;D

So, I think all that really matters now is to go for maximum damage, that's what I found out about pistols already (better a maximum damage pistol with poor other values that really hits someone than a precision pistol with nice values, except for damage, that only stings).

In other words, at least on Easy:

ONLY go for HIGH DAMAGE.

Kind of strange, but that's how it apparently works.  :-\\

[PZ]

I still maintain that the game developers are missing out on not having OWG members serving as beta testers.  ;)

[Art Blade]

They'd probably never finish a game while I'm testing changes made  >:D

[PZ]

So true - a good game is never finished.