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Removing Shotgun Penetration

Why always trying to ruin this game with this type of comment, try to give positive suggestions to improve the game.

Nothing to "remove" or "reduce".

you want positive?
lets INCREASE the density of the zed's bodies, so they stop MORE pellets.


how about... some pellets go through, some pellets don't.
it could start as something like... 25% chance of 1 penetration, and a 10% chance of a second penetration (per pellet) at lvl 1 (nothing or perhaps 10% for 1 penetration, null for two at lvl 0)
and increasing each lvl, to eventually something like 75% of first penetration, 25% of second penetration (again, per pellet, not shot)

so, for example, a shot fires 10 pellets.
of those.... 6 stop at the fist zed 4 go though the it. of those remaining 4, 3 stop at the second zed, and a single pellet reaches a 3rd (and last) zed.


:)
 
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Why always trying to ruin this game with this type of comment, try to give positive suggestions to improve the game.

Nothing to "remove" or "reduce".
"Ruin"?

For one, like I said in the first post, I'm more playing devil's advocate than I am really pushing for an official change.

Second, I don't think discussing a possible way to further balance Support ruins anything. While I don't think Support is overpowered, I do think he's just a little too good at what he does.

Remember when Sharpshooter had a godly M14 and a crossbow that could oneshot Scrakes off-perked? What fun was that?
 
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A.

A.

Remember when Sharpshooter had a godly M14 and a crossbow that could oneshot Scrakes off-perked? What fun was that?

I agree, Sharpshoter with Crossbow kill a Fleshpound with a single headshot, not fun for the team because we all prepare to kill him as a team.

But you have to see the other side of the Sharpshoter, surrounded by a few Clots and a Bloat it can be easily killed.
 
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Shotgun penetration should not be removed.

Support Specialist would have to get more ammo for his guns (1 kill per shot with 62 pump shotting shells?), shorter reloads (reloading a lot more often) and perhaps a small damage boost to compensate. Otherwise I wouldn't see him as anything, but a bad close-range commando with nothing special to him. Well, except for his hunting shotgun's burst damage.

I can't foresee where the support perk would be if he lost his shotgun penetration with no proper compensation, but I would guess he would be less, or perhaps about as, popular as the firebug perk since he would have nothing special to bring. Besides using shotguns to kill stuff.
 
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Given that cutting down penetration might be a bad idea overall, an alternative could be to increase reload time. It would increase the reliance on team members and emphasize the spike damage aspect. My fondest memories of KF is holding off a chokepoint with a bullpup and a friend frantically shooting and reloading his pump shotgun.
 
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I don't think removing the penetration altogether is such a good idea. The real problem, I think, is that the combination of the double-hit bug and the redundant grenade damage bonus increases the pump Shotgun + Hunting Shotgun loadout's heavy-hitting capacity beyond what an all-rounder setup ought to have. Yes, that loadout is pretty good at sweeping too, but I don't think that's such a problem most of the time - it has its drawbacks, and anyway, all-rounders are supposed to be at least competent at it. I'd generally only assign one as a primary sweeper on extremely crowded maps that make the most of shotgun penetration, like Biotics Lab - it's a lot less effective at it out in the open.
 
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I was looking at the code last night, working on the custom shotguns, and took a good look at how shotgun penetration works. So here's the code that deals with penetration from ShotgunBullet. Combat, hunting, and AA12 all share the same code for their pellets, but with different values. You can view those values in their bullet files, listed at the bottom of the post.

ShotgunBullet.ProcessTouch()
Spoiler!
The catch is MaxPenetrations doesn't really do what the name implies. That is it does not cap the number of penetrations at whatever value it is set to, in this case 2. Increasing either PenDamageReduction or MaxPenetrations will increase the number of penetrations because the pellet needs to hit more targets in order to have its current damage to default damage ratio drop below "PenDamageReduction / MaxPenetrations"

For example, an AA12 pellet needs to have its current damage / default damage be less than or equal to 0.75 / 2 = 0.375. So hitting the first target deals base damage, 2nd target deals 0.75x that, 3rd target 0.75 * 0.75x, and so forth.

1: 1
2: 0.75
3: 0.75*0.75 = 0.5625
4: 0.75^3 = 0.421875
5: 0.75^4 = 0.31640625 < 0.375 = 0.75/2

After hitting the 4th target, the ratio drops below the limit, so the pellet is destroyed after 3 penetrations. In comparison, the pump shotgun has a much lower PenDamageReduction value, at 0.5.

1: 1
2: 0.50
3: 0.50*0.50 = 0.25 <= 0.25 = 0.5/2

So after hitting the 2nd target, the ratio reaches the lower limit and you get only 1 penetration with the pump shotgun. But, with the penetration bonus the support gets, the PenDamageReduction for all shotguns are increased to at least 0.95, which results in less damage reduction per penetration and lot more penetrations. This is why a pump shotgun off perk feels pretty lackluster, but switch to support specialist and that same pump shotgun is the best weapon in the world, next to an axe of course.

I have a test shotgun to illustrate this stuff with but I can't work on that until later tonight. In short:

  1. Base penetration stats
    • Combat/Pump penetrates 1x (hits 2 targets) with 0.5x damage per penetration
    • HSG penetrates 2x (hits 3 targets) with 0.65x damage per penetration
    • AA12 penetrates 3x (hits 4 targets) with 0.75x damage per penetration
  2. Support's penetration bonus greatly reduces the damage reduction per penetration
    • Combat/Pump => From 0.5x to 0.95x
    • HSG => From 0.65x to 0.965x
    • AA12 => From 0.75 to 0.975x
  3. Less damage reduction per penetration means more penetrations
    • Combat/Pump => From 1x penetration up to 14x
    • HSG => From 2x penetrations up to 20x
    • AA12 => From 3x penetrations up to 28x
AA12Bullet.uc, BenelliBullet.uc, BoomStickBullet.uc, ShotgunBullet.uc, KFVetSupportSpec.uc
 
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One idea I've seen thrown around a while ago is to have no penetration for big guys, like sc, fp and bloat. Shotgun pellets still work as normal against the small stuff, just the big (fat) stuff can absorb the pellets.

Make sense, and good idea.

Well... I almost never use grenade as support... unless the team cant deal with ~40% health fleshpounds... nades are jsut way tooooo expensive for its cost. And only GLs can make nades actually useful...
 
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The commando gets to headshot everything fron a long distance away while support has to wait untilt hey are dangerously close. The commando gets to pick and choose his targets before they even get to him.


Maybe tripewire needs to make more deadly enemies.

What...? I have no problem at all to kill at least 3 clots per AA12 shot at biolabs spawn location when firing at the hallway... Unless you are playing on farm...mountainpass... etc... I really dont think shotguns are bad at "long" range... (may be HSG...? )
 
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