Ranged Re spec.

[Loran]

Ment to write this a while back as based on my own views and request by a few players and once, feel free to pick it apart 

Right now i'm pretty sure knowone uses ranged weapons due to the damage they deal and the reloading/need to carry ammo vs shooting say an acid arrow/melee weapons

the plan would be to make ranged weapons more useful/unknown on how huge of a task this would be for the coders but anyways.

Current Ranged Weapon types
Bows/Slings/Firearms/Thrown/Other?

Usage - going off memory as i havent used a ranged weapon in a while
shoot - for same room attack (per shot or used automaticly?)
ranged - shoot/throw direction name - and on hit in the mob tracks to you an attacks?


Proposed changes to current ranged weapons would add the some of the following flags to ranged weapons

Weapon Speed (Time to ready weapon for dueling or switching weapons when fighting)
Weapon Fire Rate/Delay
- Single vs Burst fire option - quicker fire rate w/ less accuracy
Weapon Range (Room/+1/+2/+3)
Rounds in Weapon (Bows 1/Old West Pistols 1-6?/Future Laser/Other Automatic Clip 5-30?/Shotguns-Rifles 1-8)?
Disposable Weapons with no clip/reload discarded after fired (Rockets Etc..)
Weapon quality - chance to jam on reload/fire - degrades over time/repairable?

Can weapon be used as weak melee when out of ammo?

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Ammo types and crafting/questing
Ammo Standardization - i forget the number of times i've found/bought a gun in old west and have an item named bullet that dosent fit/has no additional info
- Arrows/Pistol Ammo/Rifle Ammo/Special Specific
(i assume right now its settable when the item is created to use item# as ammo?)
- Elemental Effects/Other? - Flaming Arrows/Hollowpoint/Explosive/Incendiary/Holy/Silver/ etc.
- effects vs evil/chance to bypass armor/vs good/evil
(pretty sure this would have to use a crafter/shop and possibly required minerals/items traded to create)

Ammo lost/dropped for arrows/thrown or transfered to victim inventory or dropped into the room on misses?
Re-usable ammo or turned to junk chance?

Weapon and Ammo Equipped/Required to Fire
Bows and Arrows/Quiver?

Auto/Manual Reload of Weapon?
Ammo Held vs In Inventory
- Individual Ammo Required/Restocked into items/Recharge/Reload
- Arrows in Quiver/Ammo Box/belts instead of Individual Bullets/Rocket Pack/Battery.

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Skills in Place
Bow
Firearm/Throw/Slingshot

Mods/subskills or additions that may boost (call them what you will these are just placeholders/ideas)

Burst Fire - Increased firing rate - increased fire rate but increases chance to jam weapon if it uses ammo
Reflexes - Increased Response time to being fired upon?
- Chance to dodge ranged weapon
Accuracy - Chance to hit bonus for Single Room/ranged +1 room accuracy.
Senses/paranoia - Message to detect ranged weapon user multiple rooms away. - Togglable with timer after triggered
Nimble fingers - Reload speed boost/with delay timer after triggered- togglable

[Jaros]

This is great stuff.

Proposed flags
Fire rate/delay/burst fire - all good and would probably not be difficult, given that we already have melee speed and skill delays.
Range, rounds, chance of jam - good.
Disposable, rockets - good.  The issue would be making them good enough to be worth using but hard enough to acquire that you can't just collect 10 and go kill Gojira in 10sec.

I really like the idea of a ranged weapon that doubles as a melee, like a bayonet or something.
The only one I can't see being necessary is speed for dueling/switching.  No other weapons have that.

Ammo
Viri and I were talking the other day about the elemental effects they have in Borderlands.  The game is literally all guns/ammo.  It works something like this:
There are 7 weapon and ammo types.
Ammo is all generic and has no effects.
There are hundreds of variations within each weapon type.
One major variable is the elemental type.
Incendiary/fire has a bonus against unarmored targets.  It has a chance of lighting them on fire and dealing ongoing fire damage.
Corrosive/acid (which I suppose would be our water element) is good for armored targets.  It has a chance of dealing ongoing corrosive damage, in which case all weapons get a bonus against the 'corroding' target.
Shock/electric removes the rechargeable shields people wear.  For us that could equate to negating certain buff spells.
Explosive is good for something else, I think targets with exoskeletons but I'm hazy on that one.
Then there are regular guns with no element, which tend to have higher base damage.
The system works well because they each have clearly defined specialties.  Targets that are strong in an element themselves are immune to that type of damage.
We have elemental staves now so it would be great if ranged weapons were eventually brought up to speed with them.  I'm sure uses for spirit, death, etc could be thought of.

[Prometheus]

@Jaros -> hehe I love borderlands still playing it.

Okay back on point. I can see having elemental ammo and I can also see having mobs with elemental strengths and weaknesses like players do. Not sure if that is coded in or not. But I think each mob is a class so the elemental strengths and weakness would affect the damage multi of the ammo.

So I don't think it is a bad idea

Prometheus

[Jaros]

There is a lot of talk about adding chance elemental effects to spells, which will be cool.  If ranged weapons were just given elements they could make use of the same ones, perhaps with greatly increased chance of success since ranged damage is so weak.