Bitfighter Forums

018a weapon stats:


From these we get the following values:


Notes:

• All damage values are in % of an unarmored ship's health
• Burst and Mine damage assumes a direct hit
• Triple damage is for a single projectile
• life: lifetime in milliseconds (1000ms = 1 second)
• d/s: damage per second
• d/100en: damage per 100 energy
• range: range in game units while standing still
• space: space between projectiles (lower is better)

Analysis
Phaser is the only weapon worth using in serious 1v1 combat. It is the fastest to kill an opponent (or tied for fastest if you assume direct hits with triple). It is several times more energy efficient than the other weapons. It has the second best range and firing density of the repeating weapons, beaten only by the Bouncer which is too weak and inefficient to be useful. Additionally, Phaser has the unique property that you can fire it regardless of how much energy you have, whereas other weapons will leave you defenseless when you run out of energy.

Triple is a tenable weapon if you are firing at multiple enemies, but is probably inferior to the phaser in any other situation. Cloakers should not use triple as the surprise attack weapon because it requires direct hits to even match the phaser's damage rate and even so will still be less energy efficient.

Bouncer's range, firing density, and bouncing ability make it theoretically useful for firing at enemies in tight areas. However, its uselessness as a general purpose weapon means that you will have to spend a fraction of a second switching to it from your main (i.e. phaser) during which time an enemy can either get a jump on you with his own phaser or move out of the tight area (in which case you'll have to switch back to phaser, losing even more time).

Burst and Seeker are beyond useless, since all damage is easily prevented by anyone who knows how to use a shield. Even in shieldless combat, a phaser user could kill you many times over before you deal 100% damage, even if you have perfect aim.

Thanks for these stats!

Burst is most useful for knocking people around and being a general nuisance ... which has its uses. Other than that I agree with your analysis. It's worth noting though, Burst is not a 1v1 weapon, it's that simple. You throw them in the middle of a firefight, and since people are busy dealing with other things, that's when they fail to time their Shielding properly.

IMO -
Phaser: Needs to do less damage.
Bouncer: Honestly I like bobdaduck's idea of replacing this with a railgun.
Triple: Either needs more projectiles or higher damage per projectile. I would prefer the former, obviously you'd have to change its name, idk to what, but at that point it'd be a bit of a shotgun. Which is a good thing.
Burst: Needs to use far more energy. Also IMO it needs a different graphic, but that's hardly important. =P
Seeker: Needs to use less energy and kill in three hits. Maybe make it faster too.
Mine: Is good, we just need teammates to not be able to blow them up. I have yet to hear anyone who actually plays this game even semi-frequently disagree with this notion. Also, possibly make them a little less fragile. I'm sure at this point in time they have like, 1 HP, so. Maybe it should take a couple of Phaser shots to blow it up, for instance.

Thanks for this post. I was on the fence about weapon balance changes but this is a great way to understand it. I would love to see bouncer, triple, etc be brought up to phaser's level.

Awesome analysis!



This is probably a bug, though fixing it might cause player resentment!

I think we could try a weaker phaser. I also like the idea of hitpoints for mines, requiring multiple shots to detonate -- I don't know why it never occurred to me. Maybe they should slowly heal as well.

As a game designer, seeker is definitely my favorite weapon, so I am dismayed that it is not more used. I think we should try making it a bit more powerful.

Ideally, we would have the various weapon stats balance out. Not strictly numerically, but balance when you factor in range, fire rate, and other factors. I think all our weapons should be useful for something, and none so strong/weak that they are always/never used.

Triple shot needs a SERIOUS BUFF
I only find it useful for making surprise cloak attacks, but come on, each shot makes 1/3 of a phasers shot, is slower, costs more energy, and has more range
it needs a SERIOUS BUFF

Unless it's changed since I last played, I think you're neglecting the value of burst's area of effect and knockback. One burst can affect multiple players, while being highly disruptive. That's far from useless.

Indeed, Bursts don't tend to do damage against any trained, seasoned players, unless thrown in the middle of a fire fight that is already demanding all of their attention.

What they do is serve as the best, and only real form of crowd control that is present in Bitfighter. Knocking people aside, distracting and just in general being a nuisance.

I do that pretty well too haha

If Seeker doesn't change in one of the following ways, then there's no sense in keeping it:
1)Fire faster and cost less energy
2)Track better
or
3)Do way more damage

The tracking feature at this point is not very good, and the weapon sucks in all other ways.

Yup, and they can be quite effective in 1v1 matchups. Not so much direct conflict, but in situations where one is trying to escape from the other.

Flagbearers can utilize the knockback effect of bursts with great advantage by knocking away enemies, then speeding away.

Burst is really useful in intense Bitmatches. Just sayin' :p

As long as we're talking balance, I think the relative health of the ships needs to be increased or the relative damage of the weapons need to be reduced. Bitfighter is supposed to be fast paced, but currently with 10 or more people, in a firefight its hard to survive more than 2 seconds or so, not even leaving time to think or do anything.

With a low amount of players, the current system is pretty balanced, but when there are more people its pretty anti fun when stray shots are enough to kill you the second you enter the fight. Its anti fun because the people who killed you don't have much fun because they didn't even try to kill you, it just happened on accident, and its no fun for you because you died instantly. Zapping someone should have to be a somewhat deliberate effort, not just something that happens.

EDIT: Just saw how old this thread is. Lol.

As a player who's adopted Cloak as my main strategy I would very much like to see a buff in Triple's stats as well, it's been my main method of ambush and has worked well for me in the past, but I find it's energy consumption a nuisance as I can only get a few shots off without draining up any energy I have left to cloak and dart away. As for Triple's power I see no real need to increase that. At close range it's a very devastating weapon for ambush, and in terms of mid-range works decently well as a support weapon for teammate in a firefight.

There's been a lot of tweaks to weapons power for 019 -- I don't know what they are off the top of my head, but this would be a good topic to continue after the release.

I wonder if it would be possible/desirable to make weapons less effective when there is a big crowd in a given area.

Phaser: Damage reduced from 1/5th of ship health to 1/6th ship health
Bouncer: Now bounces forever
Triple: lots more damages
Burst: Uses more energy I think
Mine: I'm not sure. There was talk of making them less vulnerable to stray bursts but whether any of that happened I don't remember
Seeker: Does more damage. Energy cost may have been reduced a bit too.

Oh hell yes.

Disclaimer: bouncer does not actually bounce "forever"

I was about to say. Everlasting Bouncers would be hell in space. Just kill me now.

Oh hell no.

In all seriousness, is there a noticeable extension of time in which bouncers bounce before evaporating?

Yes, and it's definitely noticeable. Maybe 1.5-2.0 times, thought I forget the exact amount. I'll post another breakdown of the finalized stats after the release.

Some specifics about the new bouncer: It has the same amount of life-time; HOWEVER, if it bounces, it gets a life-time bonus (up to a certain amount).

It basically translates into being much more lethal in passageways or when moving faster.

Basically, it now bounces forever.

Gotcha.

And, part of the idea is that since you get a (substantial) distance for bouncing the bouncer, you can use it as a sniper weapon but you have to be tricky about it, banking the shot a couple of times.

That will never happen in practice; Bouncer is a spray and pray weapon.