Weapon Tuning: The Nova Knife

If only the Nova Knife looked this epic 'in game'..

In the first of our series looking at weapons, we take a look at a weapon sorely needing tuning: The Nova Knife. First off, we agree with the strategy here. A weapon like the Nova Knife must be carefully tuned. If not, we run into overpowering them like Replication era Swarm Launchers [Oh, the horror..] or reducing the game to Jedi Light Saber 514 like MAG was reduced to. The Nova Knife is an extremely situational weapon and users must understand this. Now if youre the kind of elite level sneaky player that can run around cloaked and unseen should you be rewarded with nova knife kills? We say yes. But not the automatic one hit kill variety we see in games like BF3. Dust is a much deeper game where the math must also add up. For a one hit kill the damage must exceed the targets total health, and the nova knife must adhere to these same rules. The first thing we must accept, is that while user skill will never be equal, the nova knife is not even a close range tool. It is essentially a wetwork style weapon where the user must make physical contact. As such, it will always be at a disadvantage when facing soldiers with guns. Still, it currently has none of the lethality its description suggests.

So its most effective range is the zero meter range around the target. The right player can still use this to his advantage if they are skilled enough. Next we look at the most important thing, the damage. 160,180 and 195 base damage respectively for the Tier 1,2 and 3 nova knives. At first glance it seems a little low for a weapon that has to be charged to use. Weaponry adds modifiers to its damage, slightly buffing it. Its real advantage, however is the HTH Combat skill. This skill has the highest damage modifier in the game [+50% at level five] and the level five skill only costs 310,000 skill points. The nova knife proficiency skill also adds 15% damage at level 5. So a fully fitted nova knife can do 341.25 damage per swipe. We think thats fine for frontal damage, but shouldnt it do more damage when someone is attacked from behind? We think so. If you doubled the damage from behind the 682.5 damage would kill anything but highly armored heavies from behind, and that seems about right. Perhaps we could even see a cool animation when the nova knife performs a one hit kill from behind. We appreciate the importance of not turning Dust 514 into a game where bringing a nova knife to a gunfight is rewarded, but when the weapon is used as intended there should be benefits.

Since the nova knife has to be equipped for use, we think its a travesty that users dont have the option to use it uncharged. R3 should give users the ability for a melee version of the nova knife and have half the damage added to the base melee total of 135. We're talking about +80, +90 and +97.5 damage [232.5 at max] which isnt game breaking at all. Melee hits actually take skill and no one could complain about being killed by a point blank weapon much less effective than the shotgun or SMG.

*Note: At second glance, the logic behind giving all dropsuits the same melee damage seems a little off. A better system might have scouts do 65, assaults and logis 95 and Heavies 135. It just seems a bit more accurate.*

Lastly we would like to see the nova knife lower the scan profile of the user. Its a stealth weapon and it should certainly have the benefits of one. As always, we'll continue to attempt to help promote and publish ideas that help establish, enhance and grow the Dust 514 community as much as we can. Have any ideas that need sharing? Would you like to join our staff as a writer? Be sure to contact us at magww@live.com