Fastest ranged attack

[Chalkarts]

Of all the ranged attacks which has the quickest activation and animation?

[Shred Monkey]

Referring to my spreadsheet... I think Buckshot and Beanbag both at 0.9 seconds?   I can't confirm as I've never used these in game.

[Peacemoon]

I think psionic dart from psionic assault? Something like 0.83 activation?

I tend to think of it as psychic poke...

[Vulpoid]

This would open an enormous can of worms, but it would be cool to see energy projectiles moving faster than physical ones to mimic real world physics.

[Chalkarts]

I'm just curious about what would happen if I used IO sets and my secondary to increase the attack speed and just boost the rate of fire and accuracy of my T1.

The Psionic dart or buckshot would be cool, just to chain fire it.

[Luminara]

6 hours ago, Vulpoid said:

This would open an enormous can of worms, but it would be cool to see energy projectiles moving faster than physical ones to mimic real world physics.

 

It could certainly be done, though new animations would be required for several powers.  But in keeping with real physics, the damage for nearly every electromagnetic power would drop considerably.  Single digits, max.

 

Arrows kill through exsanguination (blood loss).  Bullets also cause exsanguination, and they increase lethality by breaking apart (thereby inflicting more damage internally) or mushrooming (thus creating a larger exit wound).

 

Lasers, by contrast, make tiny holes, and cauterize the wound in the process.  Little internal damage, practically no blood loss.  Even precise targeting, such as at the heart, isn't particularly dangerous.  You'd need an absolutely enormous laser, with a power output of several hundred kilowatts (at least), for it to be more than a nuisance.

 

Radiation doesn't kill quickly, either (alpha, beta or gamma).  A "fast" death from radiation poisoning is typically several days, and even that requires such a massive exposure that it's all but certain to affect everyone in the vicinity.  Radiation burns don't develop instantly, either.

 

Energy attacks can be categorized with lasers, despite the magical +KB they have in-game.  Theoretically, we could view Energy Blast attacks as particle beams, to explain the +KB, in which case they would deal more damage... but that's because they're no longer energy attacks, they're physical (protons or neutrons accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light).  And if we're redefining them as particle beam attacks, we also have to animate them appropriately (what's the run-up time for the LHC?).  We could treat that (particle acceleration) as a super power, but in keeping with real physics, it would require incredible amounts of energy to use those attacks, so recharge times would make it impossible to develop any attack chain.

 

Electricity, now that would be a good candidate for a real physics implementation of instantaneous attacks.  Except, it's actually incredibly difficult to make electricity cross a gap of air.  You have to either shorten the gap significantly (near physical contact), or create a corridor of ions for it to travel through.  You can increase the voltage by several tens of thousands, but that doesn't ensure that it will go where you want, only that it can cross a larger gap.  So the ranged powers would have to be changed to melee, or have an animation added to reflect the creation of the ion corridor.  And even then, you're really only talking about three possible electricity effects - seizures and spasms; second and third degree burns; and interrupting the heart's normal rhythm (IOW, heart attack).  You'd need to create several new powers to flesh out Elec. Blast again, because it's unlikely there will be a blast set with three instant kills, three holds and three medium damage attacks.  There's no chance of balance in that.

 

Basically, an implementation of real physics for electromagnetic powers would be underwhelming.

 

That was a nice thought exercise.  Thank you.

[macskull]

9 hours ago, Vulpoid said:

This would open an enormous can of worms, but it would be cool to see energy projectiles moving faster than physical ones to mimic real world physics.

For what it's worth, projectile speed is already an individually-defined (and adjustable via code changes) value for every ranged attack in the game that involves projectiles.

Edited April 28, 2020 by macskull

[Solarverse]

I always felt like Ice had the quickest animations.

[Redlynne]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

Electricity, now that would be a good candidate for a real physics implementation of instantaneous attacks.  Except, it's actually incredibly difficult to make electricity cross a gap of air.  You have to either shorten the gap significantly (near physical contact), or create a corridor of ions for it to travel through.

This is what an (air) ionizing laser is for ... to create that (temporary) plasma conduit that you'd then dump taser quantities of electricity through in order to make a stun gun that doesn't use physical wires to get the electric circuit job done.

[Machariel]

6 hours ago, Chalkarts said:

I'm just curious about what would happen if I used IO sets and my secondary to increase the attack speed and just boost the rate of fire and accuracy of my T1.

The Psionic dart or buckshot would be cool, just to chain fire it.

i could be wrong but I think the recharge timer starts once the animation finishes so you can't say, get the recharge time down to below the animation time and fire it continuously, if that's what you had in mind.

[Chalkarts]

No, I was looking for the fastest animation time as well as recharge.  I wanted to try to find the fastest power and make it as fast as the animation time. 

pew pew pew 

[Sovera]

23 minutes ago, Chalkarts said:

No, I was looking for the fastest animation time as well as recharge.  I wanted to try to find the fastest power and make it as fast as the animation time. 

pew pew pew 

You can't, since the recharge only happens once the animation is finished. Even if it takes one second to animate and you have it down to one second to recharge you will always have one second between uses. Negative recharge is never going to happen.

[Hagis]

I thought it was Defender version Radiation Blast-Neutrino Bolt? Archery-Snap Shot is pretty quick too. But that knowledge is pretty dated.

[Ukase]

Anecdotally, without looking at numbers, Bitter Ice blast with Overwhelming Force seems to me about as fast as you can get as far as animation and recharge goes. Damn high dps, too. It used to be the highest single target attack from what I remember, but someone came out with a spreadsheet that suggests Blaze is better. I'm not convinced from playing both an ice blaster and a fire blaster. 

I just don't think anything can beat Bitter Ice blast. And even if it can, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion, still. 

[Haijinx]

If you play fire blast you can get the feel of a flamethrower to an extent due to the similar quick animations available and the DOT.

 

 

[catsi563]

my personal understanding is that the fastet attacks are archery's 1-2 and neutrino beam from rad blast all three have very fast animations and hit practically before the animation has finished

[Luminara]

7 hours ago, Chalkarts said:

No, I was looking for the fastest animation time as well as recharge.  I wanted to try to find the fastest power and make it as fast as the animation time. 

pew pew pew 

 

It's been done.  Rad's T1.  Even with procs, before the proc timer changes, everyone who tried it reported it to be extremely underwhelming.

[biostem]

On 4/28/2020 at 10:21 AM, Vulpoid said:

This would open an enormous can of worms, but it would be cool to see energy projectiles moving faster than physical ones to mimic real world physics.

The thing is, the various energy-based projectiles don't seem to reflect real-world physics.  For instance, beam rifle's blasts are more like star wars blasters, which are definitely slower than light.  The actual energy blast set is more like concussive blobs.  It'd probably be too good if some attacks acted more like "hit scan" powers than what we have now, anyway...