AT guns' bonuses are weird

[Voker57]

So, the solution to ATG considered underpowered were to add them extra HP based on firepower and, uniquely, extra hard HP. This improves their survivability, but has two issues:

1. Attack is still poor. AT guns are limited to high-velocity weapons and their efficiency falls when laser guns are invented.
2. The special mechanic with HP based on firepower doesn't seem to make sense (why not make any model have HP from firepower? Why not make them a single characteristic in any case? What HP is even supposed to represent at this point?) and it breaks a better fix to AT guns added by Pymous' mod: availability of higher-tier weapons. The hardcoded HP bonus makes them have 5000+ HP with beam guns, and the only way to remove this is to restrict them to HV guns which makes them useless as defenders mid-late game regardless of the HP. Unless you want to use them as meat shields.

So, my proposal: remove any special HP bonuses and allow all tank weapons for AT guns. AT guns are already beefy enough as they are and they have a better niche as high-powered anti-tank weapons that can be protected by other units.

[Pymous]

Yes please Vic take a look at the AT gun issue if possible, it's a huge issue in multiplayers PBEM games

[Don_Kiyote]

What HP is even supposed to represent at this point?

I don't know very much about the battle mechanics, but doesn't HP function more like armour than 'health''? I mean, it is necessary for an attack to roll number-versus-number, Firepower against the HP of the target, to succeed, all modifiers included.

At least, that's how I've been thinking about HP so far.

[Voker57]

What HP is even supposed to represent at this point?

I don't know very much about the battle mechanics, but doesn't HP function more like armour than 'health''? I mean, it is necessary for an attack to roll number-versus-number, Firepower against the HP of the target, to succeed, all modifiers included.

At least, that's how I've been thinking about HP so far.

That's true, and having firepower affect HP this is weird.

[Don_Kiyote]

re: weird...
ha yes it is a little.

If one imagines Hit Points to represent the physical robustness or "Health" of the player character, or unit, like in D&D, then its weird. But if HP represents the overall defensive potential of the unit, or its ability to withstand attacks through using any method, then it starts to come in to focus, imo.

I haven't played with the AT Guns using this mechanic yet. But it looks like this thing you mention is meant to model or approximate how AT guns behave in real combat, IRL, ie. being quite effective on defense against tanks, using concealment, and so forth. Also, being really bad on offense.

Another disclaimer: I in fact have no idea how the use of an Anti-Tank Gun works in real life. But... maybe using them would often depend on being in the right place at the right time, either that or gtfo

As you know, AT Guns were formerly terrible against tanks, even entrenched, because they (the guns) would get rolled over by armour, presumably because they had low hit-points, and the tank could attack them just as if they were regular infantry. Boom, splat. We couldn't have that.

Perhaps one day I will see how the new AT Guns work.

[Disturbance20]

Agree, the scaling HP is very strange and results in broken units that can't die. It's broken battles in pbem, especially if we use a mod to add on the higher level weaponry to ATGs.

The HP getting higher with firepower just doesn't work in actual game play

[Pymous]

Yes please Vic can you fix it? It's a major issue for PBEM games, that cannot be fixed with modding
Thanks!

[Vic]

I am making changes to AT-Guns next open beta! I agree it can be overpowered with high attack value guns.

[Pymous]

Ahhhh great! Thank you Vic!