Effect of UDamage on abilities and weapons

Wail wrote:

Removing Energy weapons' effect when using artifacts ... Does not strike me as a tenable change, at least on Monster Mash.

But I thought you said AMs were too powerful on MonsterMash?

Wail wrote:

Also, I am not sure why you would want to further increase the effectiveness of Vorpal or Piercing weapons. Vorpal already is twice as effective as any other weapon modifier in normal circumstances*, and Piercing can easily do multiple times the damage of any other weapon when you're down to only high level players. I suppose for Piercing it'd be nice to be able to make it possible to use Double Damage except if the Monster Level/DR is above a certain threshold.

Remember the DD pickup works with those two weapons. So why shouldn't the DD artifact?

Wail wrote:

*Why Vorpal deserves twice the damage bonus of most weapons, with twice as high a max modifier, plus the Vorpal effect itself... Quite a puzzle. I can understand with Rage, since it's got a huge drawback, but Vorpal?

Because it's Druid's favourite weapon

And because it can be used on only relatively low power weapons (except the avril for some reason?)

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

Removing Energy weapons' effect when using artifacts ... Does not strike me as a tenable change, at least on Monster Mash.
But I thought you said AMs were too powerful on MonsterMash?

Not tenable for political reasons. There'd be rioting, and players would lose every map. I'd love to see it gone, because then it would force the server difficulty level to drop and make the Globe of Invulnerability an asset instead of a requirement. But people have trouble seeing past the immediate impact on themselves with things like this.

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

Also, I am not sure why you would want to further increase the effectiveness of Vorpal or Piercing weapons. Vorpal already is twice as effective as any other weapon modifier in normal circumstances*, and Piercing can easily do multiple times the damage of any other weapon when you're down to only high level players. I suppose for Piercing it'd be nice to be able to make it possible to use Double Damage except if the Monster Level/DR is above a certain threshold.
Remember the DD pickup works with those two weapons. So why shouldn't the DD artifact?

Maybe it shouldn't? A maximized Vorpal is more than twice as effective as, say, a maximized Null before than factoring in UDamage. It's certainly feasible to simply detect UDamage and half the damage, allowing the weapon to be used with either but not actually applying it (since it's essentially like a free auto-on UDamage anyway).

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

*Why Vorpal deserves twice the damage bonus of most weapons, with twice as high a max modifier, plus the Vorpal effect itself... Quite a puzzle. I can understand with Rage, since it's got a huge drawback, but Vorpal?
Because it's Druid's favourite weapon And because it can be used on only relatively low power weapons (except the avril for some reason?)

Kind of a self-fulfilling, no? That a weapon modifier that is obviously superior to other choices (for the weapons it can be applied to) would be someone's favorite.

I'll grant that the LtG and Sniper Rifle are fairly "low power" - Their DPS is rather low. But the Shock Rifle, really, is not. It's pretty much the ideal weapon in UT2004.

If all you look at is DPS it might appear that the Shock Rifle is weaker than the Minigun or Link Gun, but in actual play its advantages make it one of the best. Perfect accuracy, instant hit, virtually unlimited range, reasonable DPS, effective at both close and long range... It's even got the advantage of being really tough to run down with Resupply, since Resupply doesn't actually refill a percentage value on low-ammo weapons, making it ~2x more effective with the Shock Rifle than it is with either the Link Gun or Minigun. Doing some rough calculations, it looks like Resupply 4 regenerates ~90% of the ammo you can possibly fire each tick (assuming Max WS 50 and you aren't comboing).

Yes, in a way I agree with you. The vorpal is a bit overpowered. If the vorpal effect applied to any weapon, then the normal damage bonus would be about +20% to +30%, since all weapons get a damage bonus as well as their special effect.

Making that bonus up to +100% but limiting it to the less powerful weapons does stop them being excessively powerful. But does mean those lower weapons get used slightly more.

As you say, the shock is the best of them, and a vorpal shock is a nice treat. But I wouldn't say it was an order of magnitude different from a damage+4 link or flak, for either xp or score.