Balanced Ballistics

Balanced Ballistics RE is a lightweight, impactful rebalance of automatic and semi-automatic weapon damage and characteristics for Starfield that is designed to make weapon selection more engaging and highlight the differences between weapon types.

An overview of changes made is below.

Ballistic Pistols and Rifles

Damage differences between Semi-Auto, Full-Auto, Burst Fire, and Binary Trigger have been brought within 60-150% of base semi-auto damage. In vanilla this ranged from 33% to 367% (the new normalization makes this second number closer to 220% in practice). Eon Burst Fire and Binary do equal damage to semi-auto. Some barrel characteristics have been modified for realism.

Automatic Weaponry

The following apply to all automatic ballistic weapons except the Mag-Storm and Kodama. Hip-Fire recoil has been significantly increased. Weapon Cone of Fire has been increased. Per-Shot Recoil has been significantly increased. Recoil Damping has been significantly decreased.

Laser Weapons

Full-Auto damage for Equinox has been raised from 24% of Semi-Auto to 65%. Full-Auto damage for Solstice has been raised from 30% of Semi-Auto to 55%. Recoil has been functionally eliminated. Automatic vs. Semi-Automatic no longer affects recoil or accuracy whatsoever. Ignition Beams re-introduce a slight amount of recoil.

Shotguns

Shotty and Breach exhibit the same characteristics as other ballistic weapons when fully-automatic. Slug Rounds increase recoil instead of decreasing it.

Game Feel

If you are using mostly laser weapons it will simply upgrade your arsenal. These performed very poorly in vanilla, especially at range. If you use mostly automatic ballistic weapons you will have to aim carefully and fire in short bursts, but you can deal far higher damage overall. If you use mostly semi-auto ballistic weapons you will find some calibers or weapons more or less effective. If you use Burst-Fire or Binary pistols or SMGs it will simply upgrade your arsenal. These are far more effective at point-blank range now. Some niche weapon setups are going to be more or less effective, so experiment and have fun!

Tips

Auto vs. Semi-Auto damage spread was retained for balance. Put simply, you will still not fare well if you walk into a small room full of hostiles equipped with automatic weapons. However, compared to using 1:1 damage, stray bullets in long-range encounters each pose less of a risk of sudden death. DPS for automatic weapons is still flatly higher than for Semi-Auto without skills taken into account. However, you must carefully manage their recoil and firing patterns to use them effectively.

Compatibility

Auto vs Semi-Auto damage changes should be compatible with anything not doing the same exact thing. Recoil and general balance changes are mostly made by adjusting Weapon Mod Template records.

Mods that overwrite these will have varying impacts on the final balance.