Hello all,
We have released a major balance update to GunColony, which took weeks of work to complete. There were two main goals: to standardize weapon damage for each caliber so that we can add damage-affecting modifications later, and to make some underutilized weapons much more effective.
There are some rough spots in this update, including the fact that many snipers needed to be reworked due to the damage standardization, and some rather drastic changes to some weapons that may throw off players. However, these flaws will get patched over time, and the end result will be worth it since we’ll be able to pull off a much better weapon modification update: coming holiday 2020!
FACT CHECK
In this update, we have corrected some unrealistic traits about our weapons to make them more authentic.
- The PPSh-41 no longer has a semi-automatic mode (PPD-40 still has one)
- The MG 34 now deals one of the highest damage among machine guns thanks to its powerful round. It now has more DPS than the Negev!
- The M40A1’s damage has been toned down to be more similar to the SSG 08 which fires the same ammo
- The PPK no longer has unrealistically high damage and recoil and now realistically fires the .32 ACP caliber with increased rate of fire
- The rate of fire of the Vector has been raised from 1110 to 1200 RPM
- The rate of fire of the M60 has been reduced to 650 to 600 RPM
- MP5’s reload sequence has been made more realistic
- The Ultimax 100’s constant recoil system is now functional and allows the recoil to feel like a constant stream of force rather than a sudden bounce for every round fired
- CZ-75 Auto now has realistic ammo capacity and rate of fire, but some other stats were toned down to balance it
DAMAGE STANDARDIZATION
Each ammunition type now has a specific damage and armor penetration value that all weapons that use the ammunition will share (except for Shotguns, some Pistols, and Nylon 66). This may seem arbitrary right now but in the future it will allow us to add ammo types that change the damage of the weapon without causing inconsistent effects on shots-to-kill.
Semi-auto DMRs will have a +40% damage multiplier, and bolt-action snipers will have a +100% damage multiplier. Furthermore handguns (except starter pistols) have a +20% damage multiplier and +10 armor penetration.
We have also standardized the drag and entity & block penetration values for each bullet type. Note that this does reduce the amount of damage snipers do when hitting multiple enemies at the same time. To compensate for this, snipers can now hit more enemies with 1 shot (4 for most snipers, up to 11 for Lahti L-39).
Different weapons can still have different damage range and bullet velocity.
RIFLE ENTITY PENETRATION BUFF
All Rifles are now able to hit 2 enemies with one bullet. (This also includes LMGs with a magazine capacity of 30 or less.) This change will make rifles more useful in Mob-Arena instead of being overshadowed by both SMGs and LMGs.
WEAPON SPREAD MECHANIC
To improve weapon balance and differentiation between weapons, weapons now have varying levels of spread that apply for any shot after the first shot.
Each weapon already has a “spread increase” value that up until now only decided how much random recoil bounce the weapon had while shooting. Now a percentage of it will be actual spread depending on the weapon type:
- Normal weapons, typically with downwards magazines: 15%
- Weapons with certain magazine types (e.g. P90): 20%
- Weapons with magazine inside pistol grip: 25%
- Bullpup weapons: 30%
(The category your gun is in will also affect your ADS movement speed.)
The intuition is that the more rearward the magazine is, the more back-heavy the weapon is, and thus the less control the soldier will have over where the gun is pointing in automatic fire.
Having no stock will further increase the spread percentage to 36%, 40%, 44%, and 48%, respectively. This especially prevents pistols from being pocket DMRs and make assault rifles more competitive against SMGs at medium range.
The aim of this spread system is to allow for more weapon diversity, encourage single firing to avoid spread, and adding a new trade-off between accuracy and mobility by using stock attachments (coming soon in a future update). The amount of spread is very low in practice – you will not notice it for most weapons, but some high-RPM bullpup guns or SMGs will have significant spread.
To reduce spread on your weapon, either use a stock that increases your “Spread Control” (coming soon), which will greatly decrease spread but slightly increase randomness of recoil, or use any attachment that improves “Recoil Stabilization”, which will proportionally decrease both spread and random recoil.
WEAPON HANDLING IMPROVEMENTS
We have improved weapon recoil so that it follows the spray pattern more closely. Whenever the random recoil steers off course there will be a correction that will help it get back onto the spray pattern. It is still somewhat random, but much less so than before.
Weapon idle sway has been increased a bit since it was a useless stat again after the last decrease. This should be a fair middle ground that is not too punishing but makes the stat worth considering for some weapon builds.
Weapons other than SMGs and Pistols will now stop your sprint when fired. This is a quality-of-life change to prevent players from spraying them while sprint jumping and not hitting anything. This change does not affect Competitive.
NOTABLE BUFFS
- Most assault rifles without scope: ADS speed increased
- Bullpup weapons: Mobility increased to compensate for having more spread than other rifles.
- SVT-40: price reduced
- FAD: price reduced
- G11: recoil reduced and made more consistent, increased backup ammo
- ASh 12.7: damage increased
- RFB: movement speed increased
- UZI: hipfire accuracy increased
- Spectre: spread from shooting reduced
- M1915: now has great hipfire accuracy to excel in trench warfare!
- L86: now has much better range
- ZH-29: price reduced, ADS speed increased
- Dual Berettas: rate of fire increased, accuracy in ADS slightly reduced
- Welrod: damage slightly increased to 2SK upper torso to armored opponents
- Thunder .50 BMG: damage slightly increased to 1SK lower torso
- YC9: jumping accuracy further increased
NOTABLE REWORKS
- Some high-RPM SMGs have gotten increased damage due to the caliber standardization. However, they also had price and/or recoil increases
- Thompson: now heavier but lower recoil
- M60: increased accuracy, reduced damage
- MG 34: now much more powerful but slower handling, more recoil, and slower reload
- QBB-95: now more powerful but higher recoil
- M1919: greatly increased damage (by >50%!) and now has a 250-round belt. Greatly reduced aim walking speed and reduced ADS speed
- AWM: slightly increased damage but reduced ADS speed
- M24: changed to the M24A3, firing the same caliber as AWM with somewhat different handling stats
- SVD: reduced damage and price
- M40A1: is now a budget sniper – greatly reduced price to $1450, can no longer one shot kill
- K98k, G98: greatly reduced damage to one shot kill only to the chest and at a limited range; greatly increased hipfire accuracy; decreased price; increased ADS speed; increased movement speed
- Mosin: can no longer one shot kill armored, but the ADS speed and bolting speed has been increased
- Lahti L-39: increased wall and entity penetration, hjpfire accuracy, and ADS speed; reduced damage per shot and aim walking speed (the reduced damage is mainly just a result of the damage standardization giving lower multiplier to semi-auto snipers)
NOTABLE NERFS
While this update is mainly buff-heavy to bring the underused weapons up to the level of the meta weapons, some nerfs were still necessary to keep certain guns in check.
- FAMAS: increased price
- MP5: reduced reload speed
- Mac-10: slightly increased recoil (including randomness of recoil)
- M9A1: reduced hipfire accuracy and slightly reduced rate of fire
DAILY QUESTS BETA
We have added three daily quests to the server. You can finish them by playing various GunColony modes!
Daily Quest: PVP
- 50 kills in PVP
- 3 wins in PVP
- Reward: 100 tokens, 1000 universal Weapon XP token
Daily Quest: Mob-Arena
- 500 kills in MobArena
- 30 waves survived in MobArena
- 1 win in MobArena
- Reward: 100 tokens, 1000 player XP
Daily Quest: Challenge
- Either 3 expert wins in MobArena, or 10 round wins in Competitive
- Reward: 100 tokens, 500 player XP, 500 universal Weapon XP token
These quests are subject to change and a future version will randomize them (while ensuring you can get at least some of the daily quests done through regular play). The random crate drops will also be reduced in a future update in favor of more quests, including weekly and seasonal ones.
NEW VISUAL RECOIL EFFECT
We have added a visual recoil effect to weapons that slightly zooms out the screen after you shoot. This is intended to simulate the weapon kicking back and becoming larger on-screen, but since that isn’t doable in regular Minecraft, zooming out the screen was the best alternative. Also, this adds some visual recoil effects to hipfiring, whereas previously there was none.
NEW WEAPON DESCRIPTIONS
Added much longer and more detailed descriptions of all weapons except shotguns. Now, you will be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of a weapon at a glance, alongside some information of the weapons’ real life counterparts.
OTHER CHANGES
These changes were made on Thanksgiving; this section merely documents them on the website for completeness.
- BOLA ammo is now available to unlock normally
- Added Supersonic Ammo conversion to the Honey Badger
- Added 5.8x42DBP ammo conversion to the QBZ-03
- Added an additional 20% hipfire penalty to the MP5 10mm conversion
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug where item names appeared italic to 1.16+ players
- Fixed a bug where the anti cheat dragged players down into the ground
- Fixed a bug where due to the anti cheat, the jumping detection was not being triggered
Changes made after the update first went live earlier on Dec 1, 2020:
- All SMGs now have 20% less random recoil when ADS
- All Pistols now have 25% less random recoil when ADS
- Sterling was heavily buffed to range and handling to balance it with the MP40 and UZI
- Further reduced the price of Colt SAA from 400 to 300, buffed damage so that it can 2SK chest at any range, and further reduced swap time to present it as an alternative to M9A1 pistol
- Increased the price of the CZ-75 Auto from 500 to 600
- Reduced the price of M14 EBR by $300 and slightly reduced vertical recoil
- Reduced the price of FAL by $300
- Reduced the price of SC-2010 by $500
- Reduced the price of ASh-12.7 by $200
Hotfix Dec 7, 2020:
- Improved server RAM consumption by switching to OpenJ9 where possible, and using HotSpot with optimized flags of default Parallel GC otherwise
- The RAM efficiency improvement should allow me to move all current servers to be hosted on the main OVH machine, effectively meaning 30ms less ping for everyone (for now)
Additional balance changes
- M1915: rate of fire 360 -> 270
- M1919A4: ammo capacity 250 / 250 -> 100 / 200, ADS walkspeed +50% (was a nice experiment lol)
- Lahti L-39: ADS walkspeed +50%
- MG34: ADS time 485ms -> 510ms
- Walther PPK: Swap time 0.8s -> 0.6s
- 7.62x54mmR: base damage 42 -> 43
- SVT-40: damage 42 -> 43, rate of fire 370 -> 340, close damage range 50m -> 20m (can now 2 hit kill armored chest at close range!)
- SVD: damage 58.8 -> 60.2
- Mosin: damage 84 -> 86, ADS time 290ms -> 340ms, close damage range 80m -> 50m, price 2600 -> 2700 (can now 1 hit kill armored chest at close-medium range!)
