Increases shotgun slug accuracy

[VileBeggar]

About the pull request

• increases shotgun slug accuracy by 10 points (from 5 to 15) and its accurate range by 2 tiles (from 6 to 8)
• increases incin slug accuracy by 5 points (from 5 to 10) -- this is something i changed just to make it more consistent with the other slug ammo types

bullet code is pretty enigmatic to me so increasing its accurate range and accuracy seemed like the best way to assure that anything you click on will get hit. i increased the accurate range because even at 6 tiles it still kept randomly missing. it's something to do with the relationship with accurate range and accuracy but i don't really get it :/

i don't think it's much of an issue since the main selling point of slugs is their stun (and that's locked at 6 tiles), their damage is pretty lackluster. still, they're just random numbers i thought of and lightly tested, so i'm not 100% sure about them.

Explain why it's good for the game

here's some in-game footage of slugs missing at ranges where you wouldn't expect it to (yes, this is a bit of a cope PR but i'm doing this for all us sluggers out there)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/313279b1-c2f0-46e0-a5b2-9edeecf93dca

RNG should not have a place in this game's combat system to this degree. with an effective range of 6, a player is lead to believe that anything they shoot at in that range would get hit. that isn't true in a decent amount of cases. slugs are pretty punishing if you miss, and require other marines to take advantage of your hit target to make the most of it. players who are able to land good clicks on their enemies should be rewarded for it, and not punished by arbitrary RNG that decides that you'll miss your target from 1 tile away.

this DOES NOT change the range from which you are able to stun mobs. it's still locked at 6. if you hit a target beyond that range you'll just lightly damage them. the bullet completely disappears at 8 tiles, as before.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

i clicked on a lurker from 6 tiles away with 50 slugs and all of the shots hit it (incredible testing procedure).

Changelog

:cl: balance: shotgun slugs have had their accurate range increased to 8, and their accuracy tripled. any targets shot within 8 tiles will always be hit. incendiary have had a milder accuracy increase. /:cl:

[ihatethisengine]

Just like I said on discord, slugs were made inaccurate for a good (balance) reason, even though RNG is not the best way to do this. Just straight up buffing the accuracy without changing anything else will hurt the game. I'd rather have slugs useless than OP. Being stunned and slowed from the edge of your screen with no sane way of anticipation sucks a lot, which is why we've removed a lot of ranged stuns from marines over the years. And I don't think we should go back.

[efzapa]

shotgun permastun meta is back on the menu boys

[CABSHEP]

I think you also have to touch the "spread" code for slug. Because there are two RNG ways for a slug to miss, one is accuracy, which this should fix, and one is scatter, where slug will fly to the tile you didn't click on. Otherwise it will still be RNG.

To balance things out, just minorly nerf the stun and slowdown applied.

[VileBeggar]

I think you also have to touch the "spread" code for slug.

i think that's generally unneeded. scatter is much easier to influence with attachments compared to accuracy (whose attachments didn't really even do much for slugs).

[Flerpin]

Just like I said on discord, slugs were made inaccurate for a good (balance) reason, even though RNG is not the best way to do this. Just straight up buffing the accuracy without changing anything else will hurt the game. I'd rather have slugs useless than OP. Being stunned and slowed from the edge of your screen with no sane way of anticipation sucks a lot, which is why we've removed a lot of ranged stuns from marines over the years. And I don't think we should go back.

So you're basically okay with just straight up gutting an entire piece of ammunition of available to Marines because of the fear of it overperforming even though there were guard rails beforehand where it could only stun at approx 4 tiles out? That is very poor mentality to have when it comes to balance changes and straight up removing a potential playstyle in perceived fear is just, in my opinion, bad design.

[ihatethisengine]

So you're basically okay with just straight up gutting an entire piece of ammunition of available to Marines because of the fear of it overperforming

Exactly. I'd rather leave something useless than make it op by trying to make it viable with a poorly thought out buff that makes the thing very frustrating to play against.

Either come up with an actually balanced and weighted solution, or don't touch it at all, simple as. Don't see how this is a bad mentality, we are not in some kind of urge to buff slugs, the game is playable without them.

To elaborate a bit further: X exists because of Y. You should not just remove X without addressing Y just to see how it plays out until someone is annoyed enough to revert it or make an actual re-balance. This PR is removing X without addressing the reasons it was added in the first place.

[cmss13-ci[bot]]

This PR has been inactive for long enough to be automatically marked as stale. This means it is at risk of being auto closed in ~ 7 days, please address any outstanding review items and ensure your PR is finished, if these are all true and you are auto-staled anyway, you need to actively ask maintainers if your PR will be merged. Once you have done any of the previous actions then you should request a maintainer remove the stale label on your PR, to reset the stale timer. If you feel no maintainer will respond in that time, you may wish to close this PR youself, while you seek maintainer comment, as you will then be able to reopen the PR yourself

[Nanu308]

Smth smth need to bring back evasion fr...

Approved