Ability to disassemble guns

[Binky]

Re-assembling guns from scavenged parts could be possible, though. I think anyone given enough time and different parts could re-assemble a functioning firearm.

Agreed, but I’m not sure what use that would have. Gun mods improve/modify weapons, and as guns don’t break, I don’t see why you would need to disassemble them? I get that it might be nice from an RP perspective, but I can imagine it’d create a hell of a lot of clutter for little gain.

[Zireael]

[quote=“Binky, post:18, topic:5477”]As the design document states, precision machinery and high-tech smithing/crafting is beyond what most players can do. This means a lot of gunsmithing would be out of their ability, as would modifying guns to a large extent.

If damage to guns was implemented, I’d support guns of the same type being able to be repaired by guns that are in a better state.[/quote]

Zaweri isn’t asking for gunsmithing, he’s talking about unscrewing the gun and taking it apart for some parts. That doesn’t require precision machinery, although it requires some tools and skill.

[Binky]

Zaweri isn’t asking for gunsmithing, he’s talking about unscrewing the gun and taking it apart for some parts. That doesn’t require precision machinery, although it requires some tools and skill.

I get that, but what good would that do? As in, I understand from an RP/simulation side of things it might be nice, but I can’t see the benefits of being able to do that.

I mean to alter guns in terms of making them better you can just use gun mods - exchanging parts on guns could also be done via gun mods (longer barrel/different stock) but I can’t see why stripping them down would be at all advantageous unless it was to replace broken parts.
I guess you could try to build a gun with lots of spare parts, but that would require a lot of parts laying around (even more clutter, especially to non-gun enthusiasts), and you’d definitely, definitely find a full working gun before getting all the parts to make one. Making ‘new’ guns would require a huge overhaul/system to give each parts values and stuff and although that’d be nice, it’s a massive undertaking.

I’m not meaning to sound dismissive, I just can’t see how this would help given the current way DDA works.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

Because the current way DDA works is not the final way it will work, for one. Not in aim or design, but mechanically. You may be able to only, or most often, find broken guns. Your own guns could break. With many parts of guns being custom, it might seem that it’s impossible to do anything with them, but there are many families of guns where parts are interchangeable. And gunmods can be folded into the same system. With enough skill, you most definitely can put together ready-made parts from different guns and make them work, even if it takes more than “insert knob A into slot B, rotate clockwise until click”. Because really, that’s what gunmods are already. If a given character has enough skill to change out a barrel, or retool the whole firing mechanism, then why can’t he just take the gun apart and make a new one?

You could even bring custom guns back. With a definite recipe, you could combine an AK receiver, a 7.62mm caliber barrel, a gas piston firing mechanism, and some metal, into a working AK47. But if you don’t use that definite recipe, obtained from disassembling an AK47, you could recombine the parts according to your own skill, and end up with a DIY assault rifle, 7x62x39mmR caliber, with stats procedurally generated based on the parts used and the skill of the character. This would allow guns to be truly customizable. You could never make the specific parts yourself, only find them. But you could lose the bulky and unrealistic retooling gunmods, keeping only the accessories, and fold all other kinds of customization into directly altering the parts. So if you have an MP5 that works, a wrecked UMP45 that you could salvage the receiver from, and a barrel from a Colt 1911, you could theoretically recombine those into a new .45 caliber SMG. If you’re particularly skilled, the new SMG could be compact and lightweight. If you’re not, and yet still successful, you could end up with a heavy, unwieldy weapon that’s prone to jamming. It’s all in the mechanics of how items and crafting are handled.

[Rivet]

If damage to guns was implemented, I’d support guns of the same type being able to be repaired by guns that are in a better state.

It already has been implemented, and you repair them using a ‘firearm repair kit’.

[KA101]

[quote=“Binky, post:18, topic:5477”]As the design document states, precision machinery and high-tech smithing/crafting is beyond what most players can do.

Re-assembling guns from scavenged parts could be possible, though. I think anyone given enough time and different parts could re-assemble a functioning firearm.

Also, following the definition in the design document, we really need to reconsider the pipe smg.[/quote]

Yeah, the pipe SMGs do conflict, and we should remove them. Will need to revisit turrets too.

But the doc goes on to say that it might be possible to kludge together a firearm made out of gunmods, so I’m inclined to say disassembly and reassembly of existing parts is entirely acceptable.

You could make that MP5->.45 SMG Sean’s talking about. You just can’t make the parts for it from scratch. That’s the issue. You can take an existing receiver and Do Stuff. Making a new receiver, etc from scrap is Not Happening.

Oh, and early congratulations on your 100th post, Sean. Welcome to NPC-ville; try not to glitch people’s games out.

[Binky]

Because the current way DDA works is not the final way it will work, for one. Not in aim or design, but mechanically.

Agreed, and I would like to see something along these lines implemented at a later date (I’d still worry about an absolutely huge number of gun parts which would be complicated for anyone not into guns) when it’s a good time, but at the moment it seems as though we’re a long way off that and would first require a big gun overhaul.

However, more gun mods (especially smallish improvements) would be great, and pretty much fill a lot of what you’ve mentioned. This could work better if gun mods required skills to use as well. I just don’t like the idea of hundreds of gun parts laying around which need to be assembled.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

[quote=“Sean Mirrsen, post:24, topic:5477”]Because the current way DDA works is not the final way it will work, for one. Not in aim or design, but mechanically.

Agreed, and I would like to see something along these lines implemented at a later date (I’d still worry about an absolutely huge number of gun parts which would be complicated for anyone not into guns) when it’s a good time, but at the moment it seems as though we’re a long way off that and would first require a big gun overhaul.

However, more gun mods (especially smallish improvements) would be great, and pretty much fill a lot of what you’ve mentioned. This could work better if gun mods required skills to use as well. I just don’t like the idea of hundreds of gun parts laying around which need to be assembled.[/quote]You could always take a hammer and a forge to any useless spares, and turn them into steel scrap.

[Binky]

You could always take a hammer and a forge to any useless spares, and turn them into steel scrap.

Yes, but you’d still end up finding:
a- solid SMG stock
b- reflex SMG stock
c- 9mm barrel
d- .54 firing pin
e- SMG trigger
f- 9mm pistol spring
g-7x62 loader
g- and so on…

This would just get annoying for a lot of non-gun people, especially as you’d need to have all the variants for all the guns (or people would push for that) and you’d get the optimum play/best use of firearms if you knew what to use with what.
That’s why I think a more generic gun mod approach would be better, and leave the stripping down as either an automatic process as an alternative to using a repair kit (a ‘busted’ smg might be able to bring a ‘lightly bashed’ smg up to full health due to using the good parts) or that it just gives you a few bits (scrap metal, screws, coil and whatever).

Really, I would love this if we had a really good/innovative approach to it, but I don’t like the idea of just having loads of gun crafting recipes and parts laying around.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

You will only have exactly one recipe per gun, embedded in the gun definition itself. And parts will be genericized, using templates, so that you will only see the gun-specific parts ingame. And even then, the only parts that will be gun-specific are the receivers. Barrels differ by length (pistol, SMG, rifle) and diameter, firing mechanisms differ only by weapon type, if that, stocks are universal, and the various springs, triggers, and firing pins can be homogenized. There is no need to stick to absolute realism here, and a machine pistol firing .50BMG from a drum magazine using a gas-piston mechanism from an AK could be entirely possible.

Really, it will not be as bad as you think. Just because there are hundreds of items of clothing from all the killed zombies, the player does not keep or even look at them all, does he? It’ll be the same with gun parts.

[Binky]

[quote=“Sean Mirrsen, post:30, topic:5477”]You will only have exactly one recipe per gun, embedded in the gun definition itself. And parts will be genericized, using templates, so that you will only see the gun-specific parts ingame. And even then, the only parts that will be gun-specific are the receivers. Barrels differ by length (pistol, SMG, rifle) and diameter, firing mechanisms differ only by weapon type, if that, stocks are universal, and the various springs, triggers, and firing pins can be homogenized. There is no need to stick to absolute realism here, and a machine pistol firing .50BMG from a drum magazine using a gas-piston mechanism from an AK could be entirely possible.

Really, it will not be as bad as you think. Just because there are hundreds of items of clothing from all the killed zombies, the player does not keep or even look at them all, does he? It’ll be the same with gun parts.[/quote]

The problem is that if you genericize the parts you won’t have the variation found within the normal guns in the game, so you’d need individual parts for ALL the guns in the game, which is over 50 last time I checked (which would probably be x5 for all the different parts). Like how would you differentiate between one 9mm gun and another one if they were all generic parts? Even if you used recipes, you could then make a best assault rifle out of the same parts as the worst one which would be a bit strange.

If you went down the individualised pieces route, it’d be ridiculously difficult to find all the right parts to make a gun, and be far, far easier to just find one. This is unless you could make custom guns, but that would require a whole new system for gun building which would be a mammoth task.

Again, I get that it’d be nice to have that flexibility, but the amount of clutter and bloat that it would cause in items (you’d have to have these parts literally everywhere to have a chance of finding compatible ones) seems to me to not be worth the small increase in gun building flexibility.

I’m all for gun modification though and this could be done by doing more basic mods to any gun in the class. So you could have an assualt rifle only mod which was a longer barrel mod, or an better stock or so on, but could be applied to any gun in the class, rather than building a gun from the ground up.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

The idea is that any given gun has a receiver - the truly “specific” bit that defines what the gun is. Beyond that very specific part, other parts are starting to be homogenized. Barrels are grouped by caliber and length. Firing and trigger mechanisms are grouped by action type. Stocks, sights, rails, everything else is pretty much interchangeable.

Taking apart a, say, Steyr AUG, will give you the AUG receiver (+built-in scope), a 5.56 caliber rifle barrel, a gas-piston firing mechanism, a progressive trigger mechanism, a rifle stock (plastic), and a 30-round rifle magazine. If you procure a receiver for an AK74, you could reuse most of those and recreate a working AK74. You’d just need a different trigger mechanism and some iron sights. I’m pretty sure it’s unrealistic by, well, real life standards, but as an alternative to retooling gunmods, I’d say it makes more sense.

[elauminx]

Disassembled guns should have lower “bulkiness” making it easier to carry around more than one piece in case of low supplies of ammo.

small benefit, but could be useful in the beginning stages of the game,
eai

[Sean_Mirrsen]

Actually, no, they wouldn’t take up less space. Guns, despite similar capacity for being disassembled, are not like IKEA furniture. They largely consist of a large metal shell with moving parts inside, so disassembling will leave you with pieces of the shell - the receiver, the stock, the barrel - and add a whole lot of other parts to that, that normally would be inside the shell.

[Adrian]

[quote=“KA101, post:26, topic:5477”]But the doc goes on to say that it might be possible to kludge together a firearm made out of gunmods, so I’m inclined to say disassembly and reassembly of existing parts is entirely acceptable.

You could make that MP5->.45 SMG Sean’s talking about. You just can’t make the parts for it from scratch. That’s the issue. You can take an existing receiver and Do Stuff. Making a new receiver, etc from scrap is Not Happening.
…[/quote]
Making a working firearm from mods would require the crafting system to become significantly more high-level. I mentioned in another thread that we should categorize tools and components to make the act of crafting more freeform, and i still stand by that.

This would just get annoying for a lot of non-gun people, especially as you’d need to have all the variants for all the guns (or people would push for that) and you’d get the optimum play/best use of firearms if you knew what to use with what.

i completely agree. IMHO Cata is already focused around guns too much with the excuse “What’d you expect? It’s the future USA.”.
Adding even more incompatible parts and terminology will only confuse people that live in a culture where firearms are not acceptable property.

Disassembled guns should have lower “bulkiness” making it easier to carry around more than one piece in case of low supplies of ammo.

I highly doubt that.
Carrying a bunch of separate parts around would actually take up more volume than having those parts slot neatly into each other.

[Zireael]

[quote=“Sean Mirrsen, post:32, topic:5477”]The idea is that any given gun has a receiver - the truly “specific” bit that defines what the gun is. Beyond that very specific part, other parts are starting to be homogenized. Barrels are grouped by caliber and length. Firing and trigger mechanisms are grouped by action type. Stocks, sights, rails, everything else is pretty much interchangeable.

Taking apart a, say, Steyr AUG, will give you the AUG receiver (+built-in scope), a 5.56 caliber rifle barrel, a gas-piston firing mechanism, a progressive trigger mechanism, a rifle stock (plastic), and a 30-round rifle magazine. If you procure a receiver for an AK74, you could reuse most of those and recreate a working AK74. You’d just need a different trigger mechanism and some iron sights. I’m pretty sure it’s unrealistic by, well, real life standards, but as an alternative to retooling gunmods, I’d say it makes more sense.[/quote]

That’s a good idea.

[KA101]

[quote=“Zireael, post:36, topic:5477”][quote=“Sean Mirrsen, post:32, topic:5477”]The idea is that any given gun has a receiver - the truly “specific” bit that defines what the gun is. Beyond that very specific part, other parts are starting to be homogenized. Barrels are grouped by caliber and length. Firing and trigger mechanisms are grouped by action type. Stocks, sights, rails, everything else is pretty much interchangeable.

Taking apart a, say, Steyr AUG, will give you the AUG receiver (+built-in scope), a 5.56 caliber rifle barrel, a gas-piston firing mechanism, a progressive trigger mechanism, a rifle stock (plastic), and a 30-round rifle magazine. If you procure a receiver for an AK74, you could reuse most of those and recreate a working AK74. You’d just need a different trigger mechanism and some iron sights. I’m pretty sure it’s unrealistic by, well, real life standards, but as an alternative to retooling gunmods, I’d say it makes more sense.[/quote]

That’s a good idea.[/quote]

This wouldn’t be the first time that DDA handled something in a way that’s “unrealistic by real life standards”. XD

Feel free to PR it: no promises, but it sounds workable.

[Zireael]

Feel free to PR it: no promises, but it sounds workable.

That would be great, Sean.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

Well, better get to work then. Anybody know a good guide to compiling with VC++2010 Express?

[kevin.granade]

interesting idea with putting disassembly recipes in the item itself, that’s worth considering.
my main problem with exploding guns into sub-components is that it seems like a hell of a lot of extra complexity for a feature you can provide much more simply if you aren’t being precise about the parts in the first place.
to be specific, there are two use cases.
fully modular guns: I’ve shot this down previously for being needlessly complicated, I have 0 interest in having all the gun components defined with individual properties and merged together into a gun that derives its properties from the components. this is an absurdly complex system, would have minimal impact in practice, and is already handled by the much simpler gunmod system.

repair parts: just cut out the middleman and use compatable damaged guns to repair each other, with the assumption that you’re stripping them for spare parts. Alternately dissasemble guns into a number of “gun parts” items (typed to match a particular gun) that is used as a consumable when repairing guns.

I just don’t see a need anywhere for specifying the exact parts used.