Ammo rebalance project, part 6

[chaosvolt]

Summary

SUMMARY: Balance "Part 6 of the ammo rebalance project, rifle rounds"

Purpose of change

Finally started to mess with the next step of the ammo rebalance project, to now tackle rifle rounds. Once more the uncertainty surfaces.

Describe the solution

• Per feedback from Coolthulhu, base damage of bullets with more than 100 damage get a reduction in tiers, derived from the methods used to adjust damage of low-damage bullets. Also decided to actually set the precedent of having big, slow bullets (to mainly be used by shotgun slugs, but also things like ammo that's blackpowder by default) have 50% the armor penetration that would be expected.
• Revisited .36 and .44 paper cartridges, shifting them to be balanced as FMJ with a 50% penalty to armor penetration. This follows the precedent of blackpowder loads in general using halved arpen, and follows the precedent for large, slow bullets to use similar balancing.
• .50 BMG given the armor penetration updates according to ammo balance doc. Standard variant balanced as FMJ, SS variant balanced as AP. Given the already massive damage of this, I'm wondering if we should implement that idea of adding armor_multiplier to ballistic ammo now...
• 5.56mm given arpen adjustments per current standard. To avoid giving .223 Remington massive damage, balanced it as FMJ instead and balanced 5.56x45mm as AP ammo.
• .270 Winchester and .300 Winchester Magnum given standard balancing as FMJ. Additionally, adjusted .270 to be lower in raw damage than .30-06.
• .300 Blackout balanced as FMJ. Not sure what to do with subsonic variant, as only thing it seems to have going for it is lower recoil in exchange for roughly half damage.
• 7.62x51mm balanced in the same manner as 5.56.
• Further adjustments to rebalance rifle rounds as above.
• Per feedback from Coolthulhu I made some very slight tweaks to the base damage of .223 and .308, moreso to .308, but still might want to mess with a parallel update at some point soon.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Procrastinating endlessly.

Testing

Checked affected files for syntax and lint errors. The following math includes both armor calculations for specific MBR vests as they are currently, but also how they'll differ should #2108 be merged (changed from that in bold):

Bullet	Target	Ballistic Protection	Damage Before	Damage After
.223 Remington	MBR vest (hard)	48 (55)	0	18 (11)
5.56x45mm	MBR vest (hard)	48 (55)	0	26 (19)
.308 Winchester	MBR vest (hard)	48 (55)	14	38 (31)
7.62x51mm	MBR vest (hard)	48 (55)	16	48 (41)
.223 Remington	MBR vest (ceramic)	63	0	3
5.56x45mm	MBR vest (ceramic)	63	0	11
.308 Winchester	MBR vest (ceramic)	63	0	23
7.62x51mm	MBR vest (ceramic)	63	1	33
.50 BMG	heavy power armor	120 (121)	39	36 (35)

Some findings:

1. Dragonskin vests are still a joke despite my follow-up updates to ballistic armor, with less ballistic resistance than kevlar vests.
2. Steel and superalloy MBR vests also gain very little over kevlar MBR vests with this change.

Additional context

I'm not sure yet what to do about the sci-fi rounds like 5mm and 8mm, plus the big arpen values of .50 BMG make me think we should also work on giving them all an armor multiplier as standard.

The performance of MBR vests also makes me wonder if we should mess with armor multipliers or not, but I think getting rifle rounds consistent helps as it should make a follow-up a bit easier to work on afterward.

[chaosvolt]

Since I'm presently fairly unsure how to handle shotshells and flintlonk ammo just yet, there being multiple directions to take their balancing in, I went ahead and removed that part of the change. That leaves this with what should be all non-scifi rifle rounds adjusted, which I think is a good step for part 6, so guess I can mark as ready. If we're lucky it'll make it into the pending stable.

[chaosvolt]

Re-marking as draft as the 5.56 and 7.62 changes still need some sorting out. A few damage adjustments could help, but another thought that came to mind could be a parallel PR doing some additional followups on armor balance for certain items, mainly MBR vests.

[chaosvolt]

I am a bit happier with the values of .308 after noticing that there was enough room between the intermediate rifle cartridges and the full-power cartridges to reduce the damage a bit more, enough that I think I'm willing to move forward on this.

Hard steel MBR vests still don't look right, but I'm honestly realizing that that needs to be a parallel update. It has 15 lower ballistic resistance for 10 higher base encumbrance. Plus as mentioned, dragonskin vests did not get nearly as much of an increase from the ballistic follow-up updates as intended, so I'll try to work on that later today.