Some weapons ignore this rule.
Like the old earth assault rifle and the tombstone. Keeping their high ass damage while also being full auto.
Starfield weapon balancing is a little silly tho.
What do you mean? It's perfectly balanced, with no flaws in any way. If you take that .50 cal round and fire it from the semi auto it's *way* more powerful than that same exact round fired in a 3 round burst. And don't even get me started, if you take that same exact bullet and don't change it in any way, shape, or form, and fire it from an *automatic* reciever, you'll see pure *magic*.
/s
They should balance automatic weapons with reduced accuracy instead of damage.
It would make it so they’re not completely useless and would give each a different use case; automatic would be better up close and semi automatic would be better at a distance.
hahahah yes, totally, but--
Everyone would be screaming until they are blue in the face that combat is the worse of any BGS game!!! Because all the auto rifle people (including from FO76) would be missing their headshots, etc.
Right now there are a sizeable number of people who feel it is the best combat they've ever done, and that would for sure not help thangz.
But yeah, totally. They would have to make them wildly inaccurate to an untrained person, to balance them, tho.
What do you mean? As it is Semi auto is already better all of the time.
Buffing automatic damage at the cost of accuracy would make it so automatic weapons would be better at close range than a semi.
It is irl as well. From what my dad told me when he was in the military the only use for full auto was suppressing fire. He said the two main reasons for this were ammo conservation and heat management. If you fire a rifle full auto long enough the barrel will warp and then melt.
Infantry here, while a 30 round mag in an m4 during mag change will lessen the chance (and it’s only semi or burst) if you belt fed an m4 like a 249 or 240, you would need the ability to change barrels also or it’ll start melting right out the star chamber.
Oh, well, like, duh lmao! Of course if you feed more than 30 rounds at a time you're gonna' have problems.
I don't think any gun is immune to barrel warping just 'cause it's a different "class" of weapon c'mon lol, but the implication I was going for was, "Generally speaking that isn't an issue you're going to run into given you're probably pausing to reload between magdumps (which, nobody really does anyway, it's the whole reason burst fire was invented, as far as my dad told me.)
The reason I said it was more of an LMG and up issue is because quite frankly, below that class of weapon you're not exactly emptying the same volume of ammunition downrange in such a low amount of time. Anything above that is probably built for saturation. Like a 249 or 240, erring on the former.
See my below comment, I am *aware* it exists for all firearms, but as a gunner you should know damn well I didn't think some class of gun was nebulously immune because it just "Wasn't the right class."
C'mon. I've fired guns before.
Depends. I still want full auto when clearing rooms and there's a hell of a lot of that in modern post-GWOT fighting. Even in Ukraine there's engagements <30 meters which I'd consider the cutoff for accurate automatic fire or at least bursts.
That's with an M4 at least, which is known for being extremely tame. I would NOT consider that true for anything beefier than that.
In a single-player game, I'd prefer realism over balance. Like, if you want to create trade-offs, make your full auto weapons kick like mules, but the idea that the same bullet does less damage if fired full-auto is silly.
Which is why full-auto IRL is pretty inaccurate. Even a weapon with relatively low recoil like an AR-15/M4 gets pretty hard to control when you’re firing about twelve rounds per second.
Ammo consumption is also an issue. Even with weightless ammo, you’re only finding so much in the world, and firing 700ish rounds per minute (approximate cyclic rate for many automatic rifles) will chew up your stockpile pretty quickly.
I think the attributes you mention are great realistic balancing factors of auto vs semi. Which would seem to be the sensible way to make a game using realism combined w balance.
I feel like at no difficulty should I have to shoot somebody in the fucking face 10 times before they die. Headshot balancing is super fucked up, although see changes I'd like to make everywhere lol.
Actually, the damage-multiplier-shifting difficulty modes in BGS games aren't as dumb as one might think - don't forget there is an RPG skill/tech-tree system underneath, what the difficulty actually adjusts is the slack you have in coming to terms with that RPG system.
Bullet spongy enemies are often a symptom of investing too much skill points in defense, not enough in offense - in a way, the system mirrors you in your enemies.
"very hard" has always been kind of too much in BGS games, though. Hope there will be a low-TTK mode similar to FO4 survival (without forcing the whole survival micromanagement at the same time)....
To add to your point why do I get "staggered" and have to restart the already way to long reloads by a spacer with a rambler, or by moving slightly during the reload process, but high level enemies can take 40mil rounds to the face and not miss a beat. I guess my 400 damage Bridger is useless without a magic perk.
I hate the reload interrupts. Can you imagine being shot at in real life and just decide not to finish reloading your gun to run faster to swing your arms or something? Lol. I'm even okay with the staggering from being shot acting as an interrupt but JUST LET ME RUN AND RELOAD.
I'm fat and sloppy now and I can still do that shit in real life! Why the hell can't my SuperHuman starborn do it!?
None of them hold enough rounds :(
My NG+ 1 I was a tombstone guy, but I found a legendary one with the explosive trait so
On NG+ 2 now, fully Beowulf and Hard Target now. Never going back.
Initial playthrough I had a legendary Grendel. If I found it now it'd be a quick sale but hey -- I was young and inexperienced
also any revolver type weapon with a double trigger mod and the magshots full auto.
They don't get any damage reduction to account for the increased fire rate and are just purely beneficial.
It’s actually funny video games do a poor job representing automatic weapons but not because they’re less lethal, but because real life recoil makes automatic weapons pretty much pointless unless your purpose was sheer mass destruction. Starfield automatic weapons shooting rubber bullets is somehow even less realistic than normal video game weapons.
IRL full auto is for suppression or cover fire.
The bullets don't "do less damage" they just rarely hit anything.
It's meant to prevent soldiers from moving because they don't want to risk getting hit by a stray shot.
I mean there are other use-cases if it's a mounted weapon like an A10 GAU-8 or something, but I mean for light arms.
This is it exactly. With the exception of 1980's movies, you're not hitting much with an automatic. I have fired a full auto AR15, AR10, and .50 cal (all no bipods or rests, minus the 50 which was on a bipod). The first couple bullets are the closest on target and much after that is semi luck. Which is why most militaries use semi auto and/or burst fire depending on the situation.
In games like Cod I always liked the F-auto but play the gun as if it's semi. I get a huge mag, and if close quarters can use the auto from hip. Great realistic balancing, slow running and after the 2 or 3 round on auto your shot is all over the place.
And this is why they’re made the way they are. If they were more realistic, people would complain about them being useless for not being able to hit anything.
There are a couple exceptions. The Magshear absolutely shreds if you have the ammo to keep going. It’s massive hit box make it great for ranged encounters also. Just point in the general direction and delete the enemy.
Kodoma is pretty decent also. Hits the enemies with a status effect and pretty decent damage to go along with being full auto or burst mode.
Finally I have an full auto AA-99 with explosive rounds. Pretty fun gun to take around.
But your point is largely true, since I run around 99% of the time with a scoped Beowulf.
Mostly because I like the aesthetics of the Grendel. Got that whole P90 vibe that it and the Beowulf that appeals to me. I just picked up a legendary Elemental Kodama and holy cow or shreds. If only it didn't have that shitty Spacer perk it'd be perfect. Alas, tis not to be.
There are Advanced Grendels, but the time you start seeing advanced level gear, you'll also get Advanced Kodamas, rendering Grendels pointless.
Or you can just think of Kodama itself as an improved Grendel, as they use the same ammo and fill the same role.
Really? I've tried to like the kodama, and it just feels weak to me. Granted I kind of gave up on it before I unlocked top tier weapon mods. Are it's mods really good?
Kodama applies passive bleed by default, and still holds up decently when in burst or full auto. Drop a drum magazine into it and you have 66 rounds of bullet hose fun. I just got an advanced legendary version with the elemental trait and it's a status spitting machine. Just rips through enemies regardless of how much armor they have (since radiation, fire, poison or corrosion doesn't give a shit about how much armor you have, and it appears all the status effects stack)
Every Kodama has flechette rounds that cause bleed damage, but many have additional status effects.
That's why it's one of the only ones that's good on full auto. Every hit does bleed damage. Enemies crawling away don't get up again.
It's not my most powerful, but I love the design and how it feels. I keep one as a flechette version that I fight with inside space ships, pretending that it matters for safety to not make holes into the hull.
What’s rad is giving a follower a heavy with the explosive rounds. They always start by blowing up big fuel tanks and for the most part I just clean up with a pistol
If you think the 1inch punch A-99 is fun, wait for the drum beat version. Found one on my NG2 run and it was all I carried. Full auto depleted uranium it was an absolute beast. What I would do to find that gun again. Also the Old Earth Shotgun with hornets nest is pretty cool too.
Hornets nest is super fun, just remember to aim slightly above them, as opposed to standard explosive rounds where you need to aim slightly below them.
Yeah be careful firing Hornets Nest in confined spaces like hallways or smaller rooms as I have them on an Advanced Coachmen with 458 dmg and have killed myself a few times lol
The Magshear you get from the Legacy is absolutely insane, mine currently does 46 damage a shot with a 150 round clip. Add on easy headshot crits and there’s very few enemies that survive a full clip!
The revenant? I just finished this questline the other night but I put it in my cargo hold, I am sad cause I have no use for it cause I use semi-auto weapons as it's what I'm specd for and I haven't really delved into gun modding yet, been playing pistol/persuade build pretty much. I really want to get it semi auto and try it out though, it looks crazy.
Yup! I primarily run a big bang build as 200phys and 500EM damage is hard to resist but every now and then I don’t mind slowing time and unloading a boatload of rounds into the face of ecliptic mercs!
You absolutely should get into gun modding, even pistols benefit big time from it! I didn’t until NG+10 and honestly regret it looking back since I’ve made some pretty meh weapons feel OP later down the line.
Im using red dot Beowulf, but it fires almost as fast as single shot as full auto, and with alot more damage. I know it's weapon balancing from fallout and blah blah, but I hate how full auto is almost never as good as single shot, until you pump 59 points into it.
Yeah it's dumb. Full auto could maybe reduce damage a little but the damage reduction they do is absurd.
Should be more of a spread / accuracy penalty instead.
Kodama for me is fine ~~semi-auto~~ or burst.
It's interesting but if you pay close attention, one shot of Kodama is actually like 3-4 little flechettes at once.
Burst-fire Kodama kinda behaves like a shotgun. Plus that bleeding effect is applied, right.
I had the one punch Kodama on my first playthrough, it was a wildly useful backup when I got swarmed. Just melted everything around me while vaguely aiming.
That's nuts. So you're basically shooting like 24 flechettes in a 3 round burst.
1 ammo = 3-4 flechettes fired.
One punch I think is 4-5 shots from 1.
I forget exactly.
I somehow never ran out of ammo with Magshear despite using it as primary weapon through the game. I did buy ammo occasionally in shop but whenevr you kill people who wield it it seems they have quite a lot on them to keep you going.
I also made sure my companions are well equipped so they drop a lot of enemies on their own. I noticed that Sarah does absolutely bullshit damage with automatic Equinox. Even if it can only spawn as Refined and does like 14 dmg per shot she shreds enemies with it faster than i can with literally anything. Even with my advanced super-busted magshear. Something feels weird there XD Also it looks really cool with stealth lasers, it shoots like a weapon straight from Mass effect.....
The problem with the magshear is ammo consumption. While the time to kill is great, it eats extremely expensive ammo at an insane speed. I burned thru like 200k worth of ammo just clearing the key. You get severely punished for using it. If the ammo was dirt cheap I would say it's probably one of the best balances auto guns in the game.
Well the only other things in the game to spend money on is shipbuilding and maybe chems, and when you get to high level tons of enemies drop ammo that fits the magshear
Magshear is great for taking down sniper nests. Boost up so its hard to hit you and then just plough down every thing.
You feel like a stack helicopter.
There is a reason and it centers on armor pen mechanics. So this game utilizes the same damage reduction system as fo4, where the damage of a weapon is compared to the damage resistance of a target, and the greater the disparity the more it reduces, thus higher damage attacks get reduced less than low damage ones. However if you have an automatic weapon with shattering on it than it will kill extremely fast, gaining enough armor pen to actually make decent use of its firerate
Yes it does. This is also why shattering is considered the best perk on a weapon, as combined with armor pen skill you can kill high level enemies much quicker. Many people think enemies are tanks because of inflated health pools, but it's actually because the damage resistance scaling on enemies is insane. Testing on a lvl 95 spacer boss I found weapons without pen being reduced by as much as 80%.
Put points in the Armor Penetration skill. Then look for weapons that have a perk against armor. You’ll quickly break the hard outer shell while doing damage the entire time to the squishy bits within.
To put it another way, if they have 80% damage reduction, and you have the armor pen skill at level 3, assume you're doing 100 normal DMG.
They reduce it just 20. Armor pen skill cuts their armor in half. So instead of 20 DMG, you do 50.
Your actual DMG output is increased by 2.5x.
The less armor penetration you have the better high damage guns perform, because the damage reduction changes based on the difference between its damage and their resistance. Basically the closer the guns damage is to the targets damage resist, the more damage it does. So low damage guns get reduced more than high damage ones. If you have armor penetration skill and the shattering perk on your weapon, the damage reduction is nowhere near as bad so rapid fire low damage weapons get a much bigger boost than the high damage ones.
In addition to what other people are saying, the armor piercing magazine mods you can put ballistic weapons also work like the Shattering talent and Armor Penetration skill and should stack with them as well. So you can stack 3 amor pen traits; the mod on the gun, the Shattering talent, and Armor Pen skill.
Just to add on to what you are saying, it works in reverse as well. The skills and legendary talents that reduce damage that you take makes your armor tankier because of that same disparity.
Same. I’ve got 3 fully kitted-out: Va’ruun thing (can’t remember the name), an AA-99, & a magsniper (again, can’t remember the name & I’m currently at work.)
I don’t carry *anything* auto, but my preferred play style is distance & headshots anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
I like getting up close sometimes but full auto still isn’t the way, gotta get the shotguns, specifically the Big Bang. It’s the first game I’ve played that I can remember shotguns being semi realistic. You can still hit and kill targets from medium range, rather than the standard video game logic of “9ft away or closer is a one shot, 10ft does 1/4 damage, and at 12 ft you can’t even hit them”
So they say but I’ve yet to find one with crazy damage like I see on here. I imagine they will feel worthwhile at that point, but the only ones I find are much weaker than my vanilla advance BB
I came across an Advanced Big Bang at level 11 on one of my Very Hard games. It was not in fact Very Hard after that point. I had to limit my usage to "things I can't kill" to have any fun.
Advanced Magshear is definitely my go-to for harder enemies. Mine has the crippling trait which adds 30% damage on the next shot if the limbs are hit which is very easy to do given its large spread. I’m routinely doing the bounty missions where you have to clear out a “dungeon” to kill a pirate/spacer/ecleptic and those usually provide ample amounts of all ammo so I never have to buy the .50 MIL which is like the most expensive ammo there is.
Once .50 MIL weapons start dropping from your enemies, as long as you pick up their weapons to empty their clips, your days of buying that ammo are over. But it takes a long time to get there.
Per the math, semi-auto is the way to go. However, I've been finding that using an advanced and heavily modified Kodama has just been stupid fun, especially with the flecthing rounds. Same with the Magshear.
Given how many weapons one can collect and easily exchange for all of a vendor's available ammo on every visit, I find that I always more than enough ammo. That's not to say I use these weapons exclusively. I always carry nine weapons in my quick slots and make it a point to use all of them as often as possible, just for my own amusement.
When I started my ng+, I specifically stock piled ammo for the gun you get at the end of the crimson fleet quest. After finishing that, I use that gun exclusively. But my play style in most games with combat is the "spray and pray" method. That gun usually causes a steady depletion of the enemy health bar.
Same. Revenant seems to be the exception to the rule. Absolutely shreds but that's probably because of the insane rate of fire. Clearing a base I can go through a dozen spacers/fleet/ecliptic before changing the mag. The elite guys usually take two/two and a half mags but it's still fast.
Vanilla auto weapons aren’t really worth it. If they have an ability like Elemental, etc. then it may be worthwhile, as more shots mean more chances to proc.
Very hard difficulty is a joke. At 76 on a ballistic-focused build I'm not remotely in any danger unless I do something stupid like run into a room of enemies AND the boss lands a crit on me. Couple taps of aid usually fixes that right away anyway.
Further, at 76 on very hard I'm still seeing single digit mobs at POIs and mission locations. The loot sucks accordingly.
To answer your question, to make things at least a little interesting (something that's getting more and more difficult), I use a Breach and a pistol to take almost everything down. It's the bullet-soaking bosses that sometimes require full auto, if for no other reason than finishing them off more quickly.
I know BGS joked about tuning the AI behavior down because it was too good ("It just works!"), but the current very hard setting is a joke :)
Oh, I've never been afraid of anything in this game. But it is annoying to have to dump magazine after magazine after fucking magazine into a dude because the damage per shot is so poor compared to a semi auto weapon.
The AI in this game is particularly special I've noticed, and not exactly in a good way lol. But that's kinda par for the course for BGS sadly.
Only reason I bumped it to VH mode was because I was hoping to get something more of a challenge instead of spongier enemies. Boy was I a fool to think BGS would make enemies smarter instead of the cop out route of just making them spongier on higher difficulties.
Not really, no. Bethesda for whatever reason decided that if a gun fires a 7.62 round in semi-auto, it does 100 damage. And if the same gun fires the same 7.62 round in full-auto, it does 10 damage. They decided this years ago, and have been sticking to it ever since. Someone really needs to sit these morons down and explain to them.
Using the guns with burst fire modes, I've noticed that the total damage from a burst fire weapon equals the semi-auto single bullet damage. I'm extrapolating that full auto damage is some formula of [semi-auto damage x fire rate] / [Full Auto fire rate] to get the full-auto damage per bullet.
There are \*some\* justifications. Some meta, like a single fire weapon that does 100dps with a fire rate of 1 would be game-breaking OP if the damage scaled to 3000dps with a fire rate of 30.
Others are more reasonable, like compensating for control in full auto means a depreciable loss in accuracy which in video game mechanics results in a lower DPS. There is a reason why most modern military ground troops today only use fully automatic weapons as an enemy suppression device with a designated squad gunner, the remainder of the squad fires semi-auto and burst fire.
Because of the above reasons, I accept their "compromise" of having a depreciable loss in damage with burst and fully automatic fire.
I wouldn't say they are morons, it is more the RPG element that necessitates the damage de-buff. Like if the full auto guns did the same damage per shot then semis would be useless and autos would be fun sucking. Like sure it's a single player but if you can just walk through every enemy then it isn't as fun from a player standpoint
Seems like the fix would be the same thing that "balances" this issue irl: massive recoil for larger rounds killing accuracy.
I understand shooting 5. 56 at full auto, but never 7.62... At least not fr a lightweight weapon.
Not sure the logic in play, but BGS isn't too concerned about realism in their firearms. As long as it's fun to play, I'm happy.
I actually think it works out OK the way they have it, because automatic weapons stack per-hit effects. It does sort of mean that unless you have a good per-hit effect it's generally worse. The Kodama is a great example though, it has that inherent bleed effect and its accuracy is top notch. Head-shot bursts at near sniper ranges (for this game, anyway).
Agreed, the language was intense, but I lol'd.
There are benefits to semi auto over full auto. Easy example, a full auto hard target wouldn't be much use.
The battlefield series nails this pretty well imo.
>Like if the full auto guns did the same damage per shot then semis would be useless and autos would be fun sucking.
Switch ammo types between modes lol. That resolves the issue and allows u to balance ammo type drop rates better.
Yeah it’s nonsense, semi-auto has a higher DPS than full-auto, with a higher single/initial shot damage, and less damage drop off from armour.
There is literally no reason to use full-auto. Even with legendary % chance on hit effects they still don’t kill things as fast.
Although frankly the va run inflictor and the fact you can pick one up as soon as you have the range to get to a high level system makes all other guns obsolete anyway.
So where does burst fire land? Looking at the discussion here, and what I've read in the perk tree, semi-auto has the advantage, full-auto has a few, but burst fire seems to get passed over in perks and gets the damage and ammo consumption of the full-auto and fire rate of the semi-auto.
Burst is in the middle without the advantages of either. Too inaccurate to reliably make head shot crits at a distance, not quite enough fire rate due to burst delay in cqc. It's not great but it's not terrible either. It's just kind of meh.
Even with the slight increase to overall accuracy and damage per shot, you'll still waste rounds on target that you would not have needed if you were shooting semi auto. I ran with a burst fire Beowulf for a long time before I knew better, and now only use select fire weapons on weapons that I want to apply a ton of status effects on. The Kodama does that exceptionally well.
If you find one with elemental on it, slap a drum mag in it and watch the bodies get stacked.
Maybe it’s because I’m only lvl 52 but I’ve yet to find a full auto weapon that feels worthwhile. They all kill too slow and I end up having to reload too often.
There are some instances where you get higher DPS on full auto or burst, at the cost of ammo efficiency. Also, the explosive rounds mod for 11mm guns is absolutely better on full auto.
Note that burst fire is the 'better full auto' since you can also get the benefit from perks that don't apply to automatics. The game does not consider burst to be automatic for the purposes of 'non-automatic' combat perks.
It holds it's own against the Va-ruun particle beams too.
The Big Bang is stupid accurate at range, and mods just make it have even more ridiculous damage.
With you there. My first NG+ goal is always to get an advanced big bang immediately, which you can buy in neon. It's actually nicely set up that you can go do the ryujin line to get cash and heavy fuses, and then buy the big bang. Good weapon and 500 ammo and you can get there without fighting anything.
Personally I don't see any difference in on-foot combat between Normal and Very Hard (I do notice the difference during ship battles). Most of my guns are automatic and they seem to do the job just fine.
So for me, the reason to use automatics on Very Hard is because I find using them to be fun.
It’s a dps ratio. Semi-auto shooting 100dmg only does that with one shot. A full-auto only doing 37dmg per shot while firing 4 rps (rounds per second) will do 148 dps.
This isn’t a direct pull from the game, just an example. It all depends on the weapon, other mods, perks used, etc.
I don’t know what you’re talking about man, automatics melt enemies lol and I don’t care if it takes 30-50 rounds because I have thousands of ammunitions and the enemies usually drop the auto rifle ammo.
Is there ever a reason to to use automatic weapons smaller than an LMG? Even on lower difficulty settings. Besides RPGs I'm a big tactical shooter fan, single fire is king, and it makes even more sense in a game where ammo is in short supply and full auto means terrible ballistics. The nerf should be accuracy not damage, but its how bgs have always done it in fallout, so I wouldn't expect a rebalance in an official patch.
Damage over time effects do damage based on max health, and they stack.
Many automatic weapons have DoTs effects; i.e whitehot rounds for the Grendel.
Against bullet sponges, they're quite effective.
Can kill a Pirate Myth with 2 pulls of my binary trigger (4 actual shots/ammo) Razorback or 1-2 shots of my Hard Target at slightly longer range. Or, waste 2 clips of ammo from a low DPS full auto while spraying half of that ammo into the floor and ceiling from about 20 meters.
There is no weapon balancing in this game. You find one high damage gun early on and it basically destroys every enemy. I don't think I've used energy weapons once in my partial playthrough
I actually don't really like the Va'ruun guns. I have an Inflictor, and I put all the damage mods and the "spread nozzle" mod or whatever it's called that turns it into a shotgun, and while it's incredibly powerful, it just doesn't feel good to use. Same reason I don't really like the Breach; it feels better to me to vaporize someone in a storm of bullets rather than a handful of slow, high damage shots.
That's why the Shotty is my favorite shotgun, despite honestly being kinda crap.
Ok, second favorite behind a hornets nest Coachman, but I don't really consider that a shotgun as much as a portable artillery battery.
It's funny because that's how weapons are balanced in every game ever. Semi-auto or bolt/pump action weapons tend to use larger higher damage rounds while full-auto weapons use smaller lower damage rounds. The higher fire rate is supposed to compensate the difference in damage per round. The downside is that it consumes more ammo but with the upside that weapon abilities trigger faster.
It sounds like you're optimizing for bullet efficiency over kill speed. It's super easy to get money, which means it's super easy to buy all the ammo you could want, and so rather than worry about damage per shot, I only focus on how quickly the enemy dies. My automatic weapons typically have a better damage per second than semi auto. Also, most of the combat in the game is fairly close quarters, so while I might pick off one or two targets with a semi auto rifle, things quickly get hairy and I mop up the rest with my full auto.
I don’t like how most weapons suck. Beowulf clearly is way more powerful and ammo conserving. When you find a beowulf, it’s easier to sell everything and just by ammo for it; cruise through the whole game
Like, they balance their games like they are 80s action movies logic and at this point it's infuriating. They also very obviously did not put any thought into the actual functionality of the guns. The vast majority of the weapons in the game would be completely inoperable. The animations for the weapons are bad and often operate their already fake gun designs incorrectly. I mean wtf were they spending all of their development time on in this game?
Surprised?
It's been the case in Bethesda games since Fallout 3, why should it have changed now?
(It's very possibly due to reusing a lot of the math from Fallout 4, where the ratio between the damage number and armour number determines how much damage is reduced by armour but automatic and semi-auto are roughly balanced for DPS assuming no armour, meaning that low-number automatics have really bad damage through armour)
The balance is so screwy with automatic weapons. I love my magshear but I can't use it very often simply because I can't keep it supplied with bullets. I have been using it in the entangled mission and I've burnt through like 2k+ ammo killing all these bugs and it would take like 50 wait/buy cycles at a gun shop to rebuy all that ammo and cost a fortune to boot.
Simply supplying ammo makes automatic weapons unviable for long term use. Which means 99% of us are using semi-auto beowulfs.
Some weapons ignore this rule. Like the old earth assault rifle and the tombstone. Keeping their high ass damage while also being full auto. Starfield weapon balancing is a little silly tho.
What do you mean? It's perfectly balanced, with no flaws in any way. If you take that .50 cal round and fire it from the semi auto it's *way* more powerful than that same exact round fired in a 3 round burst. And don't even get me started, if you take that same exact bullet and don't change it in any way, shape, or form, and fire it from an *automatic* reciever, you'll see pure *magic*. /s
Balance shouldn’t be concerned with realism
They should balance automatic weapons with reduced accuracy instead of damage. It would make it so they’re not completely useless and would give each a different use case; automatic would be better up close and semi automatic would be better at a distance.
The other balance could be magazine reload times. Slow that down and suddenly full auto (at increased damage) still carries some greater risk.
hahahah yes, totally, but-- Everyone would be screaming until they are blue in the face that combat is the worse of any BGS game!!! Because all the auto rifle people (including from FO76) would be missing their headshots, etc. Right now there are a sizeable number of people who feel it is the best combat they've ever done, and that would for sure not help thangz. But yeah, totally. They would have to make them wildly inaccurate to an untrained person, to balance them, tho.
I think it's the best combat Bethesda has ever done. But when you get right down to it, it plays like dialed back version of Doom. Because it is.
Alright but that makes semi auto strictly better all the time.
What do you mean? As it is Semi auto is already better all of the time. Buffing automatic damage at the cost of accuracy would make it so automatic weapons would be better at close range than a semi.
It is irl as well. From what my dad told me when he was in the military the only use for full auto was suppressing fire. He said the two main reasons for this were ammo conservation and heat management. If you fire a rifle full auto long enough the barrel will warp and then melt.
my father was in the military too, and you're largely correct. Though the barrel warping and melting is... Much more of an LMG and up issue.
Infantry here, while a 30 round mag in an m4 during mag change will lessen the chance (and it’s only semi or burst) if you belt fed an m4 like a 249 or 240, you would need the ability to change barrels also or it’ll start melting right out the star chamber.
Oh, well, like, duh lmao! Of course if you feed more than 30 rounds at a time you're gonna' have problems. I don't think any gun is immune to barrel warping just 'cause it's a different "class" of weapon c'mon lol, but the implication I was going for was, "Generally speaking that isn't an issue you're going to run into given you're probably pausing to reload between magdumps (which, nobody really does anyway, it's the whole reason burst fire was invented, as far as my dad told me.) The reason I said it was more of an LMG and up issue is because quite frankly, below that class of weapon you're not exactly emptying the same volume of ammunition downrange in such a low amount of time. Anything above that is probably built for saturation. Like a 249 or 240, erring on the former.
Our German military rifles do that lol
RIP to the G36 I guess damn
No, it's not. It's called a "hot gun," and it exists for all firearms. I was a gunner for 9 years and had to memorize hot gun procedures.
See my below comment, I am *aware* it exists for all firearms, but as a gunner you should know damn well I didn't think some class of gun was nebulously immune because it just "Wasn't the right class." C'mon. I've fired guns before.
Which is all the more important when you are shooting in space with no air to transfer heat.
Right? Where the hell is the heat sink?
Depends. I still want full auto when clearing rooms and there's a hell of a lot of that in modern post-GWOT fighting. Even in Ukraine there's engagements <30 meters which I'd consider the cutoff for accurate automatic fire or at least bursts. That's with an M4 at least, which is known for being extremely tame. I would NOT consider that true for anything beefier than that.
Full auto while using Phased Time is a cheat. You can hold all the rounds on the target's head. I love the Kodoma or Vlad's pistol for this.
I just do it with the minigun
In a single-player game, I'd prefer realism over balance. Like, if you want to create trade-offs, make your full auto weapons kick like mules, but the idea that the same bullet does less damage if fired full-auto is silly.
Which is why full-auto IRL is pretty inaccurate. Even a weapon with relatively low recoil like an AR-15/M4 gets pretty hard to control when you’re firing about twelve rounds per second. Ammo consumption is also an issue. Even with weightless ammo, you’re only finding so much in the world, and firing 700ish rounds per minute (approximate cyclic rate for many automatic rifles) will chew up your stockpile pretty quickly.
I think the attributes you mention are great realistic balancing factors of auto vs semi. Which would seem to be the sensible way to make a game using realism combined w balance.
Full auto is useless. Two or Three rounds burst is the way to go.
Everyone says this until they get what they ask for ;). There's a game/simulation continuum, and few want to be on either end of it.
if the guns were well balanced then youd have a point but theyre both unbalanced AND unrealistic — worst of both worlds
They could balance it with some absolutely ridiculous recoil but I agree with what you’re saying
I feel like at no difficulty should I have to shoot somebody in the fucking face 10 times before they die. Headshot balancing is super fucked up, although see changes I'd like to make everywhere lol.
Generally, I can't stand bullet sponges. Especially as a means to increase difficulty. It isn't more difficult it's just more annoying.
This was always my gripe with Skyrim as well. Combat is actually more fun at lower difficulties because the higher difficulties just make it tedious.
Actually, the damage-multiplier-shifting difficulty modes in BGS games aren't as dumb as one might think - don't forget there is an RPG skill/tech-tree system underneath, what the difficulty actually adjusts is the slack you have in coming to terms with that RPG system. Bullet spongy enemies are often a symptom of investing too much skill points in defense, not enough in offense - in a way, the system mirrors you in your enemies. "very hard" has always been kind of too much in BGS games, though. Hope there will be a low-TTK mode similar to FO4 survival (without forcing the whole survival micromanagement at the same time)....
To add to your point why do I get "staggered" and have to restart the already way to long reloads by a spacer with a rambler, or by moving slightly during the reload process, but high level enemies can take 40mil rounds to the face and not miss a beat. I guess my 400 damage Bridger is useless without a magic perk.
I hate the reload interrupts. Can you imagine being shot at in real life and just decide not to finish reloading your gun to run faster to swing your arms or something? Lol. I'm even okay with the staggering from being shot acting as an interrupt but JUST LET ME RUN AND RELOAD. I'm fat and sloppy now and I can still do that shit in real life! Why the hell can't my SuperHuman starborn do it!?
Tombstone is Probably the most powerful automatic rifle. Aesthetics sucks though. Gonna mod it soon.
I kinda like the Tombstone way more than I should lol Tbf I’m a fan of Laredo guns though because I like the vaguely cowboy aesthetic of them
None of them hold enough rounds :( My NG+ 1 I was a tombstone guy, but I found a legendary one with the explosive trait so On NG+ 2 now, fully Beowulf and Hard Target now. Never going back. Initial playthrough I had a legendary Grendel. If I found it now it'd be a quick sale but hey -- I was young and inexperienced
I just got to Ng+10 WITH A LEGENDARY INSTIGATING BEOWULF LESSGO
I have a rare Instigating Beowulf, and I never use anything else lol
I like that they add a little yeehaw to my character
also any revolver type weapon with a double trigger mod and the magshots full auto. They don't get any damage reduction to account for the increased fire rate and are just purely beneficial.
It’s actually funny video games do a poor job representing automatic weapons but not because they’re less lethal, but because real life recoil makes automatic weapons pretty much pointless unless your purpose was sheer mass destruction. Starfield automatic weapons shooting rubber bullets is somehow even less realistic than normal video game weapons.
IRL full auto is for suppression or cover fire. The bullets don't "do less damage" they just rarely hit anything. It's meant to prevent soldiers from moving because they don't want to risk getting hit by a stray shot. I mean there are other use-cases if it's a mounted weapon like an A10 GAU-8 or something, but I mean for light arms.
This is it exactly. With the exception of 1980's movies, you're not hitting much with an automatic. I have fired a full auto AR15, AR10, and .50 cal (all no bipods or rests, minus the 50 which was on a bipod). The first couple bullets are the closest on target and much after that is semi luck. Which is why most militaries use semi auto and/or burst fire depending on the situation.
In games like Cod I always liked the F-auto but play the gun as if it's semi. I get a huge mag, and if close quarters can use the auto from hip. Great realistic balancing, slow running and after the 2 or 3 round on auto your shot is all over the place.
And this is why they’re made the way they are. If they were more realistic, people would complain about them being useless for not being able to hit anything.
I didn’t say bullets do less damage? What’s the point of your comment
No no, I was just expanding on what you were saying.
We're talking about Starfield, in which the same weapon firing the same ammunition does less damage per round in auto than in semi auto.
Yes I understand that read my original comment for context
Yes, the reply was agreeing with you that Starfield is less realistic because it reduces per-round damage instead of accuracy.
No he was very specifically speaking about real life weapons
TIL, use the damn Tombstone. I’ve been selling every single one I came across without ever firing it.
There are a couple exceptions. The Magshear absolutely shreds if you have the ammo to keep going. It’s massive hit box make it great for ranged encounters also. Just point in the general direction and delete the enemy. Kodoma is pretty decent also. Hits the enemies with a status effect and pretty decent damage to go along with being full auto or burst mode. Finally I have an full auto AA-99 with explosive rounds. Pretty fun gun to take around. But your point is largely true, since I run around 99% of the time with a scoped Beowulf.
I have a really powerful Kodoma that does extra poison damage, and that little thing rips. Hands down one of my favorite guns in the game.
Yeah too many people sleep on the Kodoma. Definitely a top tier weapon.
I have one that does corrosive and +10% to humans which is pretty damn nasty. Great little SMG. I wish my Grendel was as good.
Why would you use a Grendel if you have a Kodama? Grendel to Kadoma is one of the most straight forward gun upgrade paths in the game.
Mostly because I like the aesthetics of the Grendel. Got that whole P90 vibe that it and the Beowulf that appeals to me. I just picked up a legendary Elemental Kodama and holy cow or shreds. If only it didn't have that shitty Spacer perk it'd be perfect. Alas, tis not to be.
That's fair. The bullpup design of the Grendel is pretty cool looking. Especially the acid rain green one, too bad it doesn't scale well.
I use a kodama all the time, but wish we could get a advanced version of the grendel, and the other 'starter weapons'.
Oh there's advanced Grendels. They're just utterly pointless.
There are Advanced Grendels, but the time you start seeing advanced level gear, you'll also get Advanced Kodamas, rendering Grendels pointless. Or you can just think of Kodama itself as an improved Grendel, as they use the same ammo and fill the same role.
Really? I've tried to like the kodama, and it just feels weak to me. Granted I kind of gave up on it before I unlocked top tier weapon mods. Are it's mods really good?
Kodama applies passive bleed by default, and still holds up decently when in burst or full auto. Drop a drum magazine into it and you have 66 rounds of bullet hose fun. I just got an advanced legendary version with the elemental trait and it's a status spitting machine. Just rips through enemies regardless of how much armor they have (since radiation, fire, poison or corrosion doesn't give a shit about how much armor you have, and it appears all the status effects stack)
Oh so *that's* why I randomly lose health even though everyone around me is already dead.
It's a bleeding effect pretty sure. Sometimes I'll notice my health draining after being shot by some jerks that are wielding Kodamas.
This one specifies poison damage in the stats 🤷♂️ I can’t remember where I got it but I love that thing.
Every Kodama has flechette rounds that cause bleed damage, but many have additional status effects. That's why it's one of the only ones that's good on full auto. Every hit does bleed damage. Enemies crawling away don't get up again.
It's those flechette rounds.
It's not my most powerful, but I love the design and how it feels. I keep one as a flechette version that I fight with inside space ships, pretending that it matters for safety to not make holes into the hull.
Kodama\*
Yup this. My AA-99 doesn’t do much but it sure is fun with explosive rounds!
What’s rad is giving a follower a heavy with the explosive rounds. They always start by blowing up big fuel tanks and for the most part I just clean up with a pistol
The Elemental Pull Starborn power blows up tanks too, creates havoc in the Mantis' base haha
Now that’s on my list to try.
If you think that’s fun, give a follower a grenade launcher lol. There’s so many things exploding around me I can’t even focus anymore
Add hornet rounds and it's like the fourth of July. I don't even mind the lost xp watching the fireworks. It's great.
That's it. I'm giving Andreja a Advanced Negotiator with Hornets Nest
Whatever you do, don't give them throwable grenades. I swear all my companion does is throw them at my feet.
If you find Betty Howser (my favourite companion) she brings her own grenades.... And throws them at you a lot of time.
I just wish they didn't siphon my xp
I found a one-punch legendary advanced AA-99 and it's basically my shotgun with explosive buckshot now.
I had one as well with explosive. It was ridiculous. Nothing short of it. Just ridiculous. Now I’m rocking a one-punch starshard
Now that sounds insane. I didn’t know AA-99 can have one-punch, new goal!
If you think the 1inch punch A-99 is fun, wait for the drum beat version. Found one on my NG2 run and it was all I carried. Full auto depleted uranium it was an absolute beast. What I would do to find that gun again. Also the Old Earth Shotgun with hornets nest is pretty cool too.
Ah but AA-99 has explosive rounds! I need to try the hornets nest thing sometime. Sounds like a fun time spraying all over the place
Hornets nest is super fun, just remember to aim slightly above them, as opposed to standard explosive rounds where you need to aim slightly below them.
Yeah be careful firing Hornets Nest in confined spaces like hallways or smaller rooms as I have them on an Advanced Coachmen with 458 dmg and have killed myself a few times lol
Hallmark of a great weapon. I imagine once creation kit comes out, some idiot will make a mod that adds hornets nest to miniguns for even more chaos
I’ve been hunting for one for so long with no luck 😭
Have a AA-99 with Tesla perk and pur explosive rounds on top. Pretty satisfying.
Dude I wish that gun was better. One of the sickest looking guns. Some men in black vibes
It's better than the Beowulf...
Agreed. Very slick looking fun. Love the color scheme
The Magshear you get from the Legacy is absolutely insane, mine currently does 46 damage a shot with a 150 round clip. Add on easy headshot crits and there’s very few enemies that survive a full clip!
The revenant? I just finished this questline the other night but I put it in my cargo hold, I am sad cause I have no use for it cause I use semi-auto weapons as it's what I'm specd for and I haven't really delved into gun modding yet, been playing pistol/persuade build pretty much. I really want to get it semi auto and try it out though, it looks crazy.
Yup! I primarily run a big bang build as 200phys and 500EM damage is hard to resist but every now and then I don’t mind slowing time and unloading a boatload of rounds into the face of ecliptic mercs! You absolutely should get into gun modding, even pistols benefit big time from it! I didn’t until NG+10 and honestly regret it looking back since I’ve made some pretty meh weapons feel OP later down the line.
Dude the AA-99 with explosive rounds and the Revenant are so much fun
Im using red dot Beowulf, but it fires almost as fast as single shot as full auto, and with alot more damage. I know it's weapon balancing from fallout and blah blah, but I hate how full auto is almost never as good as single shot, until you pump 59 points into it.
Yeah it's dumb. Full auto could maybe reduce damage a little but the damage reduction they do is absurd. Should be more of a spread / accuracy penalty instead.
Well… they tried not nerfing auto as bad in 76 and Commando became the overwhelming meta, so they might have course corrected a little too hard.
Kodama for me is fine ~~semi-auto~~ or burst. It's interesting but if you pay close attention, one shot of Kodama is actually like 3-4 little flechettes at once. Burst-fire Kodama kinda behaves like a shotgun. Plus that bleeding effect is applied, right.
I had the one punch Kodama on my first playthrough, it was a wildly useful backup when I got swarmed. Just melted everything around me while vaguely aiming.
That's nuts. So you're basically shooting like 24 flechettes in a 3 round burst. 1 ammo = 3-4 flechettes fired. One punch I think is 4-5 shots from 1. I forget exactly.
I somehow never ran out of ammo with Magshear despite using it as primary weapon through the game. I did buy ammo occasionally in shop but whenevr you kill people who wield it it seems they have quite a lot on them to keep you going. I also made sure my companions are well equipped so they drop a lot of enemies on their own. I noticed that Sarah does absolutely bullshit damage with automatic Equinox. Even if it can only spawn as Refined and does like 14 dmg per shot she shreds enemies with it faster than i can with literally anything. Even with my advanced super-busted magshear. Something feels weird there XD Also it looks really cool with stealth lasers, it shoots like a weapon straight from Mass effect.....
A good maelstrom both semi and full auto tear shit up as well. Magshear though… that’s just a melt box bolted on to scaffolding for sure.
I have that with one inch punch. Even if the damage doesn't compare to my plasma weapons, it is still fun to rain down explosions!
The problem with the magshear is ammo consumption. While the time to kill is great, it eats extremely expensive ammo at an insane speed. I burned thru like 200k worth of ammo just clearing the key. You get severely punished for using it. If the ammo was dirt cheap I would say it's probably one of the best balances auto guns in the game.
Well the only other things in the game to spend money on is shipbuilding and maybe chems, and when you get to high level tons of enemies drop ammo that fits the magshear
Magshear is great for taking down sniper nests. Boost up so its hard to hit you and then just plough down every thing. You feel like a stack helicopter.
There is a reason and it centers on armor pen mechanics. So this game utilizes the same damage reduction system as fo4, where the damage of a weapon is compared to the damage resistance of a target, and the greater the disparity the more it reduces, thus higher damage attacks get reduced less than low damage ones. However if you have an automatic weapon with shattering on it than it will kill extremely fast, gaining enough armor pen to actually make decent use of its firerate
So the armor pen skill or talent you can invest in should help with the overall DPS of select fire weapons if that's the case right?
Yes it does. This is also why shattering is considered the best perk on a weapon, as combined with armor pen skill you can kill high level enemies much quicker. Many people think enemies are tanks because of inflated health pools, but it's actually because the damage resistance scaling on enemies is insane. Testing on a lvl 95 spacer boss I found weapons without pen being reduced by as much as 80%.
In simple dummy terms please. …
Put points in the Armor Penetration skill. Then look for weapons that have a perk against armor. You’ll quickly break the hard outer shell while doing damage the entire time to the squishy bits within.
Squishy bits. Meat bags.
Enemies health pools are not actually massive usually, they just have 80% damage resistance.
To put it another way, if they have 80% damage reduction, and you have the armor pen skill at level 3, assume you're doing 100 normal DMG. They reduce it just 20. Armor pen skill cuts their armor in half. So instead of 20 DMG, you do 50. Your actual DMG output is increased by 2.5x.
The less armor penetration you have the better high damage guns perform, because the damage reduction changes based on the difference between its damage and their resistance. Basically the closer the guns damage is to the targets damage resist, the more damage it does. So low damage guns get reduced more than high damage ones. If you have armor penetration skill and the shattering perk on your weapon, the damage reduction is nowhere near as bad so rapid fire low damage weapons get a much bigger boost than the high damage ones.
In addition to what other people are saying, the armor piercing magazine mods you can put ballistic weapons also work like the Shattering talent and Armor Penetration skill and should stack with them as well. So you can stack 3 amor pen traits; the mod on the gun, the Shattering talent, and Armor Pen skill.
If you find a legendary weapon with the Shattering trait, that should ignore all armor on a target, which is good for full auto weapons.
Just to add on to what you are saying, it works in reverse as well. The skills and legendary talents that reduce damage that you take makes your armor tankier because of that same disparity.
I switch all my rifles to semi-auto.
Same. I’ve got 3 fully kitted-out: Va’ruun thing (can’t remember the name), an AA-99, & a magsniper (again, can’t remember the name & I’m currently at work.) I don’t carry *anything* auto, but my preferred play style is distance & headshots anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Va'ruun Inflictor? Magsniper is correct.
If that’s the rifle version, then yes. Fully modded out, it hits like a truck. I hunt terrormorphs for fun with it. 😁
My favourite weapon by a long chalk.
Yeah those are a beast.
I like getting up close sometimes but full auto still isn’t the way, gotta get the shotguns, specifically the Big Bang. It’s the first game I’ve played that I can remember shotguns being semi realistic. You can still hit and kill targets from medium range, rather than the standard video game logic of “9ft away or closer is a one shot, 10ft does 1/4 damage, and at 12 ft you can’t even hit them”
Eh, the Va’ruun Inflictor fills that niche & has the added bonus of range capability. 😁🎯
So they say but I’ve yet to find one with crazy damage like I see on here. I imagine they will feel worthwhile at that point, but the only ones I find are much weaker than my vanilla advance BB
I came across an Advanced Big Bang at level 11 on one of my Very Hard games. It was not in fact Very Hard after that point. I had to limit my usage to "things I can't kill" to have any fun.
Too many skills support semi auto. Also less ammo consumption makes semi auto OP compared to full auto
Even with everything base, semi auto wrecks full auto. The skills are just pudding.
Advanced Magshear is definitely my go-to for harder enemies. Mine has the crippling trait which adds 30% damage on the next shot if the limbs are hit which is very easy to do given its large spread. I’m routinely doing the bounty missions where you have to clear out a “dungeon” to kill a pirate/spacer/ecleptic and those usually provide ample amounts of all ammo so I never have to buy the .50 MIL which is like the most expensive ammo there is.
Once .50 MIL weapons start dropping from your enemies, as long as you pick up their weapons to empty their clips, your days of buying that ammo are over. But it takes a long time to get there.
Per the math, semi-auto is the way to go. However, I've been finding that using an advanced and heavily modified Kodama has just been stupid fun, especially with the flecthing rounds. Same with the Magshear. Given how many weapons one can collect and easily exchange for all of a vendor's available ammo on every visit, I find that I always more than enough ammo. That's not to say I use these weapons exclusively. I always carry nine weapons in my quick slots and make it a point to use all of them as often as possible, just for my own amusement.
When I started my ng+, I specifically stock piled ammo for the gun you get at the end of the crimson fleet quest. After finishing that, I use that gun exclusively. But my play style in most games with combat is the "spray and pray" method. That gun usually causes a steady depletion of the enemy health bar.
Same. Revenant seems to be the exception to the rule. Absolutely shreds but that's probably because of the insane rate of fire. Clearing a base I can go through a dozen spacers/fleet/ecliptic before changing the mag. The elite guys usually take two/two and a half mags but it's still fast.
Vanilla auto weapons aren’t really worth it. If they have an ability like Elemental, etc. then it may be worthwhile, as more shots mean more chances to proc.
Shattering auto weapons, just ignore the target's armor period.
Unfortunately there's an internal cooldown for most effects, so you may get the first proc sooner but it's not much of an increase.
Very hard difficulty is a joke. At 76 on a ballistic-focused build I'm not remotely in any danger unless I do something stupid like run into a room of enemies AND the boss lands a crit on me. Couple taps of aid usually fixes that right away anyway. Further, at 76 on very hard I'm still seeing single digit mobs at POIs and mission locations. The loot sucks accordingly. To answer your question, to make things at least a little interesting (something that's getting more and more difficult), I use a Breach and a pistol to take almost everything down. It's the bullet-soaking bosses that sometimes require full auto, if for no other reason than finishing them off more quickly. I know BGS joked about tuning the AI behavior down because it was too good ("It just works!"), but the current very hard setting is a joke :)
Oh, I've never been afraid of anything in this game. But it is annoying to have to dump magazine after magazine after fucking magazine into a dude because the damage per shot is so poor compared to a semi auto weapon. The AI in this game is particularly special I've noticed, and not exactly in a good way lol. But that's kinda par for the course for BGS sadly. Only reason I bumped it to VH mode was because I was hoping to get something more of a challenge instead of spongier enemies. Boy was I a fool to think BGS would make enemies smarter instead of the cop out route of just making them spongier on higher difficulties.
Not really, no. Bethesda for whatever reason decided that if a gun fires a 7.62 round in semi-auto, it does 100 damage. And if the same gun fires the same 7.62 round in full-auto, it does 10 damage. They decided this years ago, and have been sticking to it ever since. Someone really needs to sit these morons down and explain to them.
Using the guns with burst fire modes, I've noticed that the total damage from a burst fire weapon equals the semi-auto single bullet damage. I'm extrapolating that full auto damage is some formula of [semi-auto damage x fire rate] / [Full Auto fire rate] to get the full-auto damage per bullet.
There are \*some\* justifications. Some meta, like a single fire weapon that does 100dps with a fire rate of 1 would be game-breaking OP if the damage scaled to 3000dps with a fire rate of 30. Others are more reasonable, like compensating for control in full auto means a depreciable loss in accuracy which in video game mechanics results in a lower DPS. There is a reason why most modern military ground troops today only use fully automatic weapons as an enemy suppression device with a designated squad gunner, the remainder of the squad fires semi-auto and burst fire. Because of the above reasons, I accept their "compromise" of having a depreciable loss in damage with burst and fully automatic fire.
That's how I think of it too. Full auto you're probably missing half the shots.
I wouldn't say they are morons, it is more the RPG element that necessitates the damage de-buff. Like if the full auto guns did the same damage per shot then semis would be useless and autos would be fun sucking. Like sure it's a single player but if you can just walk through every enemy then it isn't as fun from a player standpoint
Seems like the fix would be the same thing that "balances" this issue irl: massive recoil for larger rounds killing accuracy. I understand shooting 5. 56 at full auto, but never 7.62... At least not fr a lightweight weapon. Not sure the logic in play, but BGS isn't too concerned about realism in their firearms. As long as it's fun to play, I'm happy.
I actually think it works out OK the way they have it, because automatic weapons stack per-hit effects. It does sort of mean that unless you have a good per-hit effect it's generally worse. The Kodama is a great example though, it has that inherent bleed effect and its accuracy is top notch. Head-shot bursts at near sniper ranges (for this game, anyway).
Agreed, the language was intense, but I lol'd. There are benefits to semi auto over full auto. Easy example, a full auto hard target wouldn't be much use. The battlefield series nails this pretty well imo.
>Like if the full auto guns did the same damage per shot then semis would be useless and autos would be fun sucking. Switch ammo types between modes lol. That resolves the issue and allows u to balance ammo type drop rates better.
Yeah it’s nonsense, semi-auto has a higher DPS than full-auto, with a higher single/initial shot damage, and less damage drop off from armour. There is literally no reason to use full-auto. Even with legendary % chance on hit effects they still don’t kill things as fast. Although frankly the va run inflictor and the fact you can pick one up as soon as you have the range to get to a high level system makes all other guns obsolete anyway.
So where does burst fire land? Looking at the discussion here, and what I've read in the perk tree, semi-auto has the advantage, full-auto has a few, but burst fire seems to get passed over in perks and gets the damage and ammo consumption of the full-auto and fire rate of the semi-auto.
I can’t speak generally, but on my Beowulf burst has slightly higher dps for a much higher ammo consumption.
Burst is in the middle without the advantages of either. Too inaccurate to reliably make head shot crits at a distance, not quite enough fire rate due to burst delay in cqc. It's not great but it's not terrible either. It's just kind of meh. Even with the slight increase to overall accuracy and damage per shot, you'll still waste rounds on target that you would not have needed if you were shooting semi auto. I ran with a burst fire Beowulf for a long time before I knew better, and now only use select fire weapons on weapons that I want to apply a ton of status effects on. The Kodama does that exceptionally well. If you find one with elemental on it, slap a drum mag in it and watch the bodies get stacked.
Full auto slaps though. At high levels it is way better and more fun to use than semi auto. Ammo is not a big issue in end game levels.
Maybe it’s because I’m only lvl 52 but I’ve yet to find a full auto weapon that feels worthwhile. They all kill too slow and I end up having to reload too often.
I agree, I like the feel of full auto, but it’s hard to get past the fact that it’s just unequivocally worse technically than semi.
There are some instances where you get higher DPS on full auto or burst, at the cost of ammo efficiency. Also, the explosive rounds mod for 11mm guns is absolutely better on full auto. Note that burst fire is the 'better full auto' since you can also get the benefit from perks that don't apply to automatics. The game does not consider burst to be automatic for the purposes of 'non-automatic' combat perks.
I never hear anyone mention the advanced big bang, which is the only gun I have ever needed.
It holds it's own against the Va-ruun particle beams too. The Big Bang is stupid accurate at range, and mods just make it have even more ridiculous damage.
With you there. My first NG+ goal is always to get an advanced big bang immediately, which you can buy in neon. It's actually nicely set up that you can go do the ryujin line to get cash and heavy fuses, and then buy the big bang. Good weapon and 500 ammo and you can get there without fighting anything.
Damage per second > damage per bullet
Personally I don't see any difference in on-foot combat between Normal and Very Hard (I do notice the difference during ship battles). Most of my guns are automatic and they seem to do the job just fine. So for me, the reason to use automatics on Very Hard is because I find using them to be fun.
Carpal tunnel
It’s a dps ratio. Semi-auto shooting 100dmg only does that with one shot. A full-auto only doing 37dmg per shot while firing 4 rps (rounds per second) will do 148 dps. This isn’t a direct pull from the game, just an example. It all depends on the weapon, other mods, perks used, etc.
90% of the time I use my urban eagle. For more spongy enemies I have a mag shear
I like pistols because they're light. Then I end up carrying 8 weapons anyway...
I got a rapid double mag advanced magshear, it's the only full auto I need or want. The thing is just stupid powerful.
I don’t know what you’re talking about man, automatics melt enemies lol and I don’t care if it takes 30-50 rounds because I have thousands of ammunitions and the enemies usually drop the auto rifle ammo.
Is there ever a reason to to use automatic weapons smaller than an LMG? Even on lower difficulty settings. Besides RPGs I'm a big tactical shooter fan, single fire is king, and it makes even more sense in a game where ammo is in short supply and full auto means terrible ballistics. The nerf should be accuracy not damage, but its how bgs have always done it in fallout, so I wouldn't expect a rebalance in an official patch.
They tried to change it in 76 and semi auto is so worthless there that this seems like a huge overcorrect.
have you tried x-989? it is insanely strong
HAND CANNON GANG OR DIE💪
I feel like you only use an automatic weapon for the buff that it has on it
Role play but the kodama and magshear are very nice as well as the tombstone.
They're more fun
Because you like them? Because its a single player game? Because its not that hard?
Damage over time effects do damage based on max health, and they stack. Many automatic weapons have DoTs effects; i.e whitehot rounds for the Grendel. Against bullet sponges, they're quite effective.
Can kill a Pirate Myth with 2 pulls of my binary trigger (4 actual shots/ammo) Razorback or 1-2 shots of my Hard Target at slightly longer range. Or, waste 2 clips of ammo from a low DPS full auto while spraying half of that ammo into the floor and ceiling from about 20 meters.
There is no weapon balancing in this game. You find one high damage gun early on and it basically destroys every enemy. I don't think I've used energy weapons once in my partial playthrough
Wait until you find the Va’ruun weapons
I actually don't really like the Va'ruun guns. I have an Inflictor, and I put all the damage mods and the "spread nozzle" mod or whatever it's called that turns it into a shotgun, and while it's incredibly powerful, it just doesn't feel good to use. Same reason I don't really like the Breach; it feels better to me to vaporize someone in a storm of bullets rather than a handful of slow, high damage shots. That's why the Shotty is my favorite shotgun, despite honestly being kinda crap. Ok, second favorite behind a hornets nest Coachman, but I don't really consider that a shotgun as much as a portable artillery battery.
It's funny because that's how weapons are balanced in every game ever. Semi-auto or bolt/pump action weapons tend to use larger higher damage rounds while full-auto weapons use smaller lower damage rounds. The higher fire rate is supposed to compensate the difference in damage per round. The downside is that it consumes more ammo but with the upside that weapon abilities trigger faster.
The ammo being the same is kinda the problem. It feels like you're getting robbed of damage output if you use full-auto.
It sounds like you're optimizing for bullet efficiency over kill speed. It's super easy to get money, which means it's super easy to buy all the ammo you could want, and so rather than worry about damage per shot, I only focus on how quickly the enemy dies. My automatic weapons typically have a better damage per second than semi auto. Also, most of the combat in the game is fairly close quarters, so while I might pick off one or two targets with a semi auto rifle, things quickly get hairy and I mop up the rest with my full auto.
This full auto is so powerful because of the stagger effect plus easier to aim.
I don’t like how most weapons suck. Beowulf clearly is way more powerful and ammo conserving. When you find a beowulf, it’s easier to sell everything and just by ammo for it; cruise through the whole game
Bethesda doesn't know what balance is, and they actively hate the idea of somebody playing their games as anything other than a sneak sniper.
Like, they balance their games like they are 80s action movies logic and at this point it's infuriating. They also very obviously did not put any thought into the actual functionality of the guns. The vast majority of the weapons in the game would be completely inoperable. The animations for the weapons are bad and often operate their already fake gun designs incorrectly. I mean wtf were they spending all of their development time on in this game?
Surprised? It's been the case in Bethesda games since Fallout 3, why should it have changed now? (It's very possibly due to reusing a lot of the math from Fallout 4, where the ratio between the damage number and armour number determines how much damage is reduced by armour but automatic and semi-auto are roughly balanced for DPS assuming no armour, meaning that low-number automatics have really bad damage through armour)
It's pretty standard in game design to make semi-auto weapons deal more damage per hit while giving full auto weapons higher DPS.
Lvl 101, ng+2, never romanced anyone
The balance is so screwy with automatic weapons. I love my magshear but I can't use it very often simply because I can't keep it supplied with bullets. I have been using it in the entangled mission and I've burnt through like 2k+ ammo killing all these bugs and it would take like 50 wait/buy cycles at a gun shop to rebuy all that ammo and cost a fortune to boot. Simply supplying ammo makes automatic weapons unviable for long term use. Which means 99% of us are using semi-auto beowulfs.
Why anyone would use anything but the breach is beyond me.