ZDoom

So.

I need some advice on a vague and unclear situation.

So I have mathematically balanced the hp of a monster set and the weapons designed to fight them for a perfect difficulty curve, based on the levels each are first encountered in vanilla. My pistol replacement is a ranged weapon that stuns enemies, but can't even kill the weakest enemy in the game effectively. But it balances by having infinite ammo. In it's basic state, the system works perfectly.

Now here's where the conceptual softballing comes in.

Suppose I add a powered mode for all weapons. Greatly amplifying the power of all the weapons to be more destructive and potent.

Suddenly the infinite ammo weapon, even if it's still the weakest weapon in the game, also becomes the most useful. The extra cost of firing the rest of the weapons makes them useless if the infinite ammo weapon can kill, even if it takes a little longer than they do. For a visual example, nerfing the elven wand in heretic, say, and giving it infy ammo to counterbalance. But powered up, suddenly you wouldn't need to ever touch another weapon, because you can save the ammo for when you can't tome up.

Any thoughts?

I'd probably end up making them separate weapons or do alt fire states that can only be used if in possession of an item which consume ammo and the primary does not and always works (i.e. your basic weak infinite stun attack). You could also modify enemies in the late game to be more aggressive so using a weaker but infinite ammo gun becomes useless because you end up being surrounded.

Imagine a game where you have an infinite ammo pistol like Serious Sam. Works great in the beginning, powerful enough to kill the weak dudes but eventually even that kinda strong pistol won't hold up when you get swarmed by enemies with way more HP and harder hitting attacks. That infinite ammo gun is a pea shooter now, but Croteam could have always added a pistol upgrade that DOES use ammo but can compete with a rocket launcher.

Maybe the "stun wand" causes the "tome" to run out faster?

Or maybe the "stun wand" doesn't even cause extra damage, it just stuns baddies longer or heals the user or can be used to rocketjump (like the laser in Xonotic) or something.


The original Unreal also has a projectile blaster that gets upgrades throughout. One of them lets you hold down the altfire and release to fire a very powerful explosive shot that goes pretty slow and can hurt you. Sure, I can use that against the late game baddies and never run out of ammo, but I'd have to be exposing myself to danger for a much longer time than if I just kept using the flak cannon and minigun dual automags and the running-out-of-ammo thing is a bridge I can cross when I get there (and often they don't need to be crossed).