AEX Discussion

[Nerkson]

Alright, it's been a long time coming I feel. Here's some rough rambling.

AEX and a few other items were added to CARL aboard the Syndicate station a while back. At 5000 bucks a pop for Eight rounds, it sounds expensive, until you've fired a round at someone. Blowing off 1 or more limbs, dealing 30 brute damage a shot, knocking them over if its a direct hit causing them to drop any item they held(That are then destroyed if AEX detonates near it) , destroying walls and objects and turrets, it goes on. AEX does a lot.

When fired from a slamgun AEX is still highly potent. When fired from a flare gun or standard shotgun its extremely lethal. When fires from a SPES its a rampage machine. You can now buy cash with Traitor Credits, and for 2TC get 15k Cash. Thats 24 rounds of AEX. 

My point is that AEX is in a strange spot because of how potent and good it is. For what it can do, you'd expect it to be a utility purchase to blow open doors and walls, or something that can do extreme damage, but not both. It's not terribly hard to get large amounts of money - some jobs can do it passively with no conflict - and get Syndicate Command armor as well as the AEX, with its superior 9 damage resistance and 2 Ranged Protection thats roughly ~66% ranged protection.

[Emimiyu]

Eh... imo, the explosion isn't that bad. The buckshot that came from normal spes have damage enough to destroy one organs or make your character roll rng of having their limbs removed. Iirc it also do knockback and you can combo it with rubber bullets from bar vendor or armory. From what I have also seen the wall destroying parts only works on non reinforced walls and it can't destroy girders for some reason.

I would say the issue of aex is less on how too powerful it is while buckshot itself can just crit someone if they are not full on health + organ damage, it is just spammable and too cheap. But super powerful OP? Nah.

[Taylorstar]

In my opinion I think the AEX is in a great place, exclusive to traitors/syndicate only, if you want a decent shotgun to fire/spam it from you will need to spend 8 of your 12 traitor currency for it, I've tried using it in a slam gun the approach is painful and leaves you WAY to open for others to take you down. There's a few easy ways to get money, like making a borg transfer money into your account or stealing the captains spare if they haven't hidden it, some departments like Cargo or hydroponics can also make money, on an RP side setting up a scam or some kind of pyramid scheme/hustle for credits is another good way and you can probably get a good couple thousand credits if you hit all the safes maybe even a bullion or two.

In terms of Combat effectiveness, its great for deterring people in a shootout and disabling them from chasing, but if they get up in your face and you fire point blank, your just as disabled as they are, if they have back up you've just lost your shotgun. Security shield/barriers also deflect AEX rounds of which reflected AEX rounds are arguably more effective than reflected buckshot etc.

Accuracy is another thing with the AEX, with buckshot you can reliably hit downed opponents, that double tap comes quick. I seem to have a REALLY hard time hitting downed targets with AEX making its time to kill significantly less, the chance of me missing more shots much higher so I'm getting less bang for the buck if I'm not sinking all 8 into standing targets.

Lets talk alternatives, specifically what can easily be acquired from CARL

12ga flares, Same price as AEX but slightly less effective than any of the other shotgun ammo you get from the token (against armoured targets its less effective by FAR), you don't need to be a syndicate in order to purchase them making them available to any antagonist, its damage overtime can be negated by rolling in a puddle fire extinguisher spray and genetic mutations, also completely ineffective against borgs.

I can't speak for the other pod weapons but I can speak for the SPE12 ballistic system, have a couple of those on a big pod, or one on a nimble pod and I have seen devastating results, they can out damage your standard pod weapons, unlimited ammo and quite expensive, but in the hands of any pilot, can do significant damage and harassment across a station and its staff.

One final weapon. You can get is the 40MM HE ammo, more bang for the buck on the pod giving you 14 shots at 50k, or 2 shots for 25k. The wiki tells me that works out at 3.5k a grenade for the pod or 12.5k for the refill, the bonus for the refill is that you can use it in more portable grenade launchers, its advantages are a wider area of effect, it reliable punches holes in anything, people that get hit by one are going to be having as much of a bad day as the AEX. Its available to anyone in the listening post not just traitors/syndicates, its major drawback, is how much money you lose if you miss as well as only carrying stacks of 2 instead of 8 for the AEX.

In my opinion the weapons and ammo available for purchase from CARL are incredibly well balanced and good value to supplement any antaggary ideas someone could come up with. If there was any real massive need to rebalance the AEX for any reason I think the most justifiable choice would be to reduce the capacity of the boxes from 8 down to 6 to reduce is spam. One round I put near 100 shots down range with the shotgun, while the damage and drawn out destruction I did was a lot of fun and very effective its not as round ending as it sounds when I was limited to hit and run tactics, most people were able to retreat to get healed or was dragged away to be cloned, the body count wasn't that high for the investment that was made.

An additional note, Armour/foodbuffs/genetic mutations that increase health/regen all go a long way against reducing the value per shot each weapon, a good set of armour can reduce the effectiveness your weapons by 50%, empowered muscles gives you an extra 50 health, the hearty+ food buff is an extra 40, at which point it goes from needing 6 - 8 rounds to crit someone to about 14, with regeneration and healing overtime from food, maybe even donuts or medical patches can go really far at thinning out the value of weapons/ammos.