With so many shots in one second, it makes very little difference. What matters is how many times I must hit an enemy to kill it. I always preferred a semi auto weapon that I can get 1hit headshots with over anything else. The weapons you described are all submachine guns. I would rather have 1 shot per second, at 100dmg per shot. I played most of the COD series exclusively with bolt weapons, because most often you are fighting from cover, and its better to be able to step out, fire a single shot (tupping one enemy) then step back and cycle the bolt.

If I may be so bold as to make suggestions, I recommend that an assault rifle be nearly perfectly accurate for the first shot, and hand out 10 dmg/shot, for 80dmg per second. The SMG should be the same, but with a faster rate of fire, for 120dmg/second. It should be less accurate, and of course it empties its magazine far quicker. This would give me a real choice of which weapon to carry; I was annoyed with the HL2 series not having an accurate assault rifle, as the previous half life did.

Quote:Original post by Fingers_
Still, in a "gun vs beam" fight the gun will win (50% chance of survival - beam has 25% and both losing has 25% chance).

Another example, working on it:

Little gun fires for 1 damage every time.
Big gun fires only every third time, but for three damage.

The blue dots mark the little gun, where it hits 50%. The red dots mark the big gun, where it does 50%:



This seems to support the answer that if DPS is equal, lower ROF is better. However, that is only during the time after the big gun delivers it's punch, but before the little gun catches up. If a kill can be had during one of the little gun's other firings, then it will kill first.

After looking at it for a bit, I noticed that the transition from Likely to Unlikely seems to occupy a rather narrow band in the numbers. So I did a chart of how many shots hit after so many shots:



The chart shows expected hits after so many shots. The high ground on the left is Definitely hit at least this much. The low ground on the right is Definitely didn't hit this many times. The cliff shows how suddenly it goes from 'did this much' to 'didn't do that much'. With these guns at 50% chance to hit, if one guesses just a little less than halfway (maybe 2/5) then they are very likely to be right.

So in other words: If you wanna hit a target x times, but have only a 50% chance of hitting on each time, just shoot at it 5/2 * x times.

[Edited by - AngleWyrm on May 19, 2008 12:55:47 PM]

Quote:Original post by Ezbez
The gun would be riskier...but on average they would be the same.

An interesting point; maybe it comes down to a matter of risk tolerance.

I think you are focusing too much on numbers which the user will be totally unaware of. Just work on making the guns balanced, e.g. so people will find reason to use more than one.

This is a math and physics forum, hence the focus.

Quote:Original post by speciesUnknown
I think you are focusing too much on numbers which the user will be totally unaware of. Just work on making the guns balanced, e.g. so people will find reason to use more than one.

Quote:Original post by AngleWyrm
This is a math and physics forum, hence the focus.

QFT. He's looking for a numeric method to compare the weapons, I imagine, to the end of balancing.

Quote:Original post by AngleWyrm
This is a math and physics forum, hence the focus.

I dig that, what I'm saying is that balancing at such a low level may not be productive. Reason being, there are far too many variables to put into a simple math formula, when gameplay is inherently unpredictable. The amount of damage per second is not so important as
* the number of body shots required to kill a player,
* whether or not the weapon can get a single hit on a headshot,
* if the weapon can get a single hit elsewhere on the body
* splash damage
* range
* accuracy on the first shot
* shot placement on full auto weapons
* recoil pattern (recoiling up? recoiling randomly? no recoil?)
* weight / affect on speed of player
* time to reload
* amount of ammunition to carry
* number of seconds of full auto fire available
* penetration of body armour

Too many variables to analyse mathematically. I would think about firearms as being in classes, such as:

sniper: long range, large damage per shot, but low damage per second. slow reloading, has a scope, sometimes bolt action, sometimes semiauto.

Battle rifle / marksman rifle: long range, lower damage / second but higher damage / shot, usually semi auto. e.g. M14. I think they got this wrong in COD4, classifying these rifles as asssault rifles despite the obvious differences, and then balancing them as such.(e.g. m14 and G3).

Support: heavy and unweildy, fast rate of fire / high damage per second, low accuracy on first shot, tight shot placement at full auto. slow to reload. very loud. e.g. light machine guns. Soldier of fortune 2 got this wrong, as the m60 was so inaccurate that despite its power, it was useless unless you disabled recoil in the settings. consider the lightening gun and chaingun in quake 3.

assault rifle: range of up to 300m, accurate on first shot, takes 0.5 second of full auto to kill a player, can get a headshot in 2 hits. example: ak47 in counterstrike. You could have a laser rifle, for example, that has these properties. consider the assault rifle in quake 3.

SMG: range of up to 100m, inaccurate on first shot, tight shot placement, higher damage per second, empties magazine faster. e.g the smg in HL2. The three weapons you describe in the OP might fit into this category.

I would make a prototype for each class, and then tweak it. Also, im not trying to tell you to make call of duty or counterstrike; you could use these as a pattern but come up with wacky ones, and you don't have to call them anything like contemporary weapon names.