Well, since absolutely no one asked me... here's how I would balance CM at the moment.
Here's my spreadsheet, because I like spreadsheets.I try to summarize everything in the post text, but the spreadsheet will definitely help understand the numbers, formulas, and the little details.
Apparently I can't summarize for shit, so just look at my spreadsheet you reprobates:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
When reading the chart there are a few things to keep in mind. All of these numbers, especially the TTK numbers, assume the xeno is standing unmoving right in front of the marine. Expect them to not hold up in combat. All of the numbers are also for elder xenos, so the age could effect things. I might have made some xenos like the queen too tanky, since she requires an amazing 1,290 hollow point 9mm bullets to take down assuming she's at full armor. My only comment is that you're stupid for shooting hollow points at a literal walking tank and you deserve what you get. Even the M41 has trouble dropping a queen without the aid of support weapons, though high AP weapons really put a dent into queen the fairly quickly. There's also a whole mess of notes in there. They'll help understand my mindset, but aren't too important. The chart also doesn't at all take into account FF or HvH. It's all about the ratios though. I have the pulse rifles doing ten damage per shot. If you say, "A human has 100 hp and the pulse rifle needs to kill one in two shots so it needs to do fifty damage" that's fine. Multiply all of the damage and xeno health by five. The ratios stay the same.
A lot of these thoughts stem from me not liking the idea of things moving towards being "weapon range" oriented. I respect that those changes are coming and that's that, but I figured it wouldn't hurt too much to put my thoughts out there. Much respect to the whole dev team for the work they do. My problem with the idea the incoming balance changes stems from the idea of damage going up and down as the range changes, and of some weapons having steep effectiveness falloff outside of a meter or two. I understand that this is a game of 2d spacemen who can only see seven or so meters in any given direction without the assistance of binoculars, but the idea of switching to throwing things as a backup because they're outside of my SMG range is too silly. The current idea is that the weapons should have niches, and I like that idea a lot. I think with the right tools and systems in place they can be balanced within their niches.
There's a couple of assumptions that I'm making over how things work or could work behind the scenes.
The two big changes that I think would need to be made are:
1) AP ammunition cannot simply ignore all armor. Instead it ignores a percentage of the armor. So if something has armor that eats 80% of the damage it takes and an AP bullet reduces the armor by 50%, the armor ends up only soaking 40% of the damage.
2) Xeno armor needs to have a maximum and minimum effectiveness per xeno. For instance, a crusher's armor might provide 70% damage reduction at 100% armor, and drop down to 45% damage reduction when armor broken.
This does a few things. The first change to AP being percentile means that it can have a greater effect on more heavily armored xenos while having a negligible effect on less heavily armored xenos (and no effect on unarmored xenos). It also means that more fine tuning can be done to damage values, further allowing weapon roles and niches to be reinforces.The second change allows the developers to have more control over just how tanky a xenomorph is. When combined with dodge chance based survivability this makes it easier to define a xenomorph as a frontline fighter, skirmisher, or flanker.
Alright, let's get into weapon niches and how these changes help reinforce them:
M41A - I see the M41 as being the bread and butter rifle of the USCM. This should be the weapon of choice for most marines choosing to engage in front line combat. It shoots in single shot or three round burst (though probably SS or FA once the FA change drops). The reason that this is the bread and butter rifle of the USCM is that it has fairly available AP ammo, good sustainability of fire, and has the damage needed to fight armored threats (xeno or human) on the frontline. For purely explanatory purposes, suppose the M41 does 10 damage per bullet. That means that a three round burst does 30 damage if they all connect. If shooting an enemy with 50% reduction due to armor (on the mid-high end of armor in my spreadsheet) then the round only do 5 damage each, so the burst damage drops to 15. If they had been AP rounds and only counted the armor for half then the burst damage would have been 22.5.
M39 - The M39 retains it's role as a more mobile firearm, a modern pdw. It does more damage than a pistol, but slightly less damage than the M41A. That is made up for by having significantly larger magazine sizes and a larger burst (a higher RoF in the FA update). It also has less effect on mobility than the M41. Consider an M39 doing two less damage than the M41 above. It will still hit for more damage in a burst, since it's 8*4 damage is 32 per burst over 30 per. Where the M39 loses out is that the smaller rounds have an AP penalty, counting enemy armor as being thicker than it actually is. 20% thicker here, purely for explanation. Consider the M41 example above with an enemy that had 50% damage reduction armor. The M41 did 15 damage, but the M39 would only do 8*4*(1-(.5*1.2)) = 12.8 damage. With both weapons shooting AP Ammo the M41 does 22.5 damage compared to the M39's 18.56 damage. When it comes to portability and ammunition capacity the M39 is superior in every way, but there is a definite argument that the "ability to kill things" is the only stat that matters for a firearm. Against lightly armored targets the M39 will be superior damage wise, but the M41 does about the same against mid armored xenos and far outpaces it against heavily or super-heavily armored xenos (think crushers, fortified defenders, and to a lesser extent queens).
Shotguns - The niche of shotguns are that they have higher burst damage than the M41. They deliver slightly less than two M41 bursts worth of damage every two seconds, so slightly less DPS overall than the M41. They also suffer accuracy related penalties due to distance more quickly than the M41 does. Flechette ammunition has inherent AP at the expense of lower damage. Buckshot has higher damage at the expense of having an AP penalty. Slugs are good damage with a slight AP bonus, but they are very all or none due to dodge chance.
L42A - The L42A would stay mostly the same, thought I would make it a kit weapon, similar to the SU-6 or the M41AE2. Call it the DMR kit. It has 10% built in AP due to having an extended barrel (and can't accept the EB attachment in my proposed attachment changes). It is meant to act as a support weapon with a B8 or as a long range weapon with an S8. The DMR kit would come with both. It does more damage per shot than the M41A while doing less damage overall due to having a lower RoF.
M56 - I think my proposed M56 is slightly scarier than the already scary M56, but I'm completely fine with that. After all, it is gyro stabilized auto targeting machine gun carried around by a badass to annihilate the enemies of the USCM. Some of the larger xenos practically require M56 support to take down, which I'm completely okay with.
I also have thoughts on the balance of attachments, but the big changes are that the BC goes away (because it's stinky), the extended barrel gives an additional 10% AP to any weapon that can equip it, and the suppressor gives an additional -10% AP to any weapon it is equipped to. There are no more plus or minus damage attachments though (outside of attachments that modify melee damage). This means that a weapon tricked out for pure damage doesn't really do too much more damage versus lightly armored targets, and a suppressed weapon is still able to kill lightly armored opponents fine but runs into problems facing heavies on the frontline.
And before anyone says "Gitlab it", I realize that is the proper course of action. This would be a handful of tickets at least though, and I want to have lots of other opinions on this. Besides, the game is moving in another direction, so gitlabbing this wouldn't do much at this point.
You're still reading? Here's some more radical changes that I want to see but aren't a crucial part of the balance and are instead more stylistic changes:
Give the scout spec an automatic shotgun fed from a 12 or 16 round detachable box magazine. Call them the breacher spec. They are only issued normal ammunition at first, but can purchase incendiary or breaching mags with their 45 points. Incendiary are self explanatory. The breaching slugs are really good at destroying walls and other terrain, probably taking down a resin wall in a shot or two max. This new spec is a high risk high reward close range spec, using the cloak to either close the distance or to escape.
Replace the L42A model with the now unused model for the M4RA. Chamber it in the same 10x28 caseless that the M56 uses just for lore reasons. The 10x28 caseless should be available from the vendor, though the M4RA can only be acquired through the before mentioned DMR kits. The M42A is canonically chambered in 10x28 as well, which could cause a problem here. The solution is to either ignore that because it's dumb and say that it's chambered in an even larger caseless round or say that it's the WY-102 rifle instead, which is chambered in a larger round (and which also looks very similar to the M42A anyway, so the model can be reused).
TLDR;
I like weapon niches:
M41 is the general damage dealer.
M39 is better versus lightly armored opponents.
M37 has higher burst damage but lower DPS than the M41.
L42A gets a buff but becomes a kit weapon. Fills the support weapon role as either an IFF weapon or as a long range weapon.
M56 is terrifying, as it should be.
The key questions to ask here are "How quickly should X weapon drop Y xeno so that it is fun for both sides." How many bursts from an M41 should a drone take? A warrior? A queen? How much should AP ammunition effect those numbers? Please feel free to respond with any thoughts, feedback, concerns, criticism, or hurtful words. Thanks!