As far as I can tell, the new option to manually control vehicle turrets is unwieldy as hell, but it’s about the only practical way to deploy that delicious M2 Browning.
I would rather have some way of deploying a carried MG on the ground, allowing the player to fire it without bearing the potentially-agonizing weight of it. As for how it would work, I’m unsure of the coding that’d be needed, but…
I would assume setting it up would work by applying it, then selecting the ground to place it on. And like with other placed objects, examining it would allow packing it up to retrieve. Compared to the logistics of firing it, that should be the simple part to code.
As for firing it, the only thing I can think of that sounds logical would be making the turret grabbable like furniture, then having the grab function somehow allow firing it. Presumably by making the fire and reload keys treat a grabbed deployed MG as the player’s current weapon.
Assuming this is at all feasible, I’d presumably suggest not letting the player drag a deployed MG around. If they want to move it, they have to pick it back up and place it elsewhere. Presumably light machineguns would be faster to deploy and retrieve. The gun might also have a limited cone of fire in which enemies can be targeted, which would presumably depend on where the player is relative to the deployed gun while they’re holding it. Moving to another space relative to the grabbed MG would be considered traversing the weapon, and presumably this movement would be slowed based on how easy the gun is to traverse.
ALTERNATIVELY:
A second, quick-and-dirty option that might be easier would be to code some function that immobilizes the player in exchange for making the gun weightless. This has the main disadvantage of not letting the player simply leave the gun set up to use later, however.
It would definitely be simpler than adding place functions, making the grab code do crazy shit, and all that other stuff.
Like the M2 Browning does? As far as I know that doesn’t quite work the way I was suggesting.
The big issue here is doing it that way still has you CARRYING the stupid thing around, meaning the weight is still a factor. And in the case of the M2, that weight’s enough that a character with say, 8 or even 10 strength basically has to be naked to actually afford the weight of the gun. >_>
It’s pretty much impossible to fire an M2 from anything besides a heavy, firmly bolted down frame due to both recoil and weight, just laying it on a mound of dirt wouldn’t work. 1919s (M2’s little brother) generally are fine being “set up” like this, and can be shoulder fired with modifications, but are far to heavy for me to do so with in RL despite being a fairly strong, big person, and it’s unlikely your average non-steroid junky would have any better luck with it. The more modern stuff you’d expect to find in CDDA, beyond giant guns like M2s (which will probably be in use for another 100 years) shouldn’t need to be mounted as military guns are currently moving away from these sorts of weapons - most of the time time portability is worth more than sheer firepower.
In most setups, the gun and mount are a two-part thing, making it a little easier to pack. Perhaps rather than making the gun itself deployable, you could program the mount to be a buildable separate item, and somehow program the gun to be unable to fire unless the player is standing on the same space as the mount. If there’s already code to stop you from being able to fire a rifle while in a car, then it seems like it would be realistic to possibly modify that code to make it so you can’t fire certain weapons UNLESS you’re on a special space.
To leave it set up for later, you would just drop it on the same space as the stand, and then just pick it up again when you needed to use it. The mount itself would be what takes time to build/deploy, wheras you can just assume the gun hooks to it in a negligible amount of time. Not completely realistic, but would maybe be easier to implement.
In terms of being heavy enough that you can carry a gun or clothes - have you ever tried to carry an M2 plus tripod mount, plus one single belt of ammo? Hell, without accounting for the ammo, the gun and tripod still come in at around 130 LBS. The newest version used by my country’s army actually breaks into three pieces NOT including the tripod, just so that one person who isn’t the hulk can carry it in their pack, rather than keep their hands full with 130 lbs of gun. I personally think it’s pretty realistic that it’s the gun or other equipment, though it would maybe be interesting to have a takedown M2 in game that could be yanked apart to reduce volume, and need to be reassembled before use.
Though this line of though has got me curious as to whether or not one can build a shopping cart mounted M2 setup…
The point about trying to carry around an M2, plus tripod, and ammo is basically the reason why I suggested making the gun itself deployable instead of having some kind of mount that allows firing the weapon. Specifically because the way the game has it now, you can’t fire the gun UNLESS you’re wielding it, and that causes the weight to be accounted for.
EDIT: Also, you can hilariously slap an M2 on a shopping cart. It counts as a turret though, with all the absurdities that entails.
[quote=“ApatheticExcuse, post:6, topic:9148”]Oh, I see what you’re saying. Hrm, yeah, that would not solve that issue at all, really.
Thanks for confirming shoppingcart M2 btw :P.[/quote]
Hence why I’d hoped grabbing onto it would make sense, since when the weapon’s on the tripod you’re not the one bearing the weight of all that gun, right? owo
[quote=“Random_dragon, post:8, topic:9148”][quote=“ApatheticExcuse, post:6, topic:9148”]Oh, I see what you’re saying. Hrm, yeah, that would not solve that issue at all, really.
Thanks for confirming shoppingcart M2 btw :P.[/quote]
Hence why I’d hoped grabbing onto it would make sense, since when the weapon’s on the tripod you’re not the one bearing the weight of all that gun, right? owo
And yep, you can way too many things turrets.[/quote]
Indeed. Unless your character really misunderstands how to set up a tripod or something, you shouldn’t be bearing any of the gun’s weight at all. Dragging would seem to maybe be the realistic way of doing that, and probably not too code intensive to implement - after all, if we can already put them on shopping carts and drag them around, I’d guess that it can’t be super hard to design a “vehicle-like” tripod.
What you want is already in game if you dig and think.
This release also added the ability control vehicles remotely. Via the RC control.
You just need the actual piece in the vehicle. I found one in my first city, (or so I think). Robot Control System, from a street cleaner.
So create a 2 square vehicle. Plate the front. (Like with a spike plating on front to tell which way is that direction).
A big swappable storage battery and case, electric engine, and drive your mobile M2 browning where you want it to fire. Ammo should be in the location below it.
Heavy Roof mount - M2 on top, 1 foldable seat. You could probably sit in and remote control it around
I don’t know if you could fire it remotely but you can move it.
One I find some camera controls, I will make something like it with a solar and welder on it.
I implemented the clunky manual aiming system.
I tried to rework it now and I think I know how to fix some of the problems.
Here’s how I did it (didn’t PR it yet because it’s not finished, even though it works):
When you’re standing on a vehicle tile with a turret and try to fire with no weapon in hands, you get a temporary weapon, it is loaded with vehicle’s ammo, you aim it, fire it and then it despawns. It also grants you a fake UPS for that one shot.
This bypasses the need to mount heavy weapons, carry an UPS, carry ammo, have controls on the “weapon platform”, all while not forcing you to use any UI menus.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:11, topic:9148”]I implemented the clunky manual aiming system.
I tried to rework it now and I think I know how to fix some of the problems.
Here’s how I did it (didn’t PR it yet because it’s not finished, even though it works):
When you’re standing on a vehicle tile with a turret and try to fire with no weapon in hands, you get a temporary weapon, it is loaded with vehicle’s ammo, you aim it, fire it and then it despawns. It also grants you a fake UPS for that one shot.
This bypasses the need to mount heavy weapons, carry an UPS, carry ammo, have controls on the “weapon platform”, all while not forcing you to use any UI menus.[/quote]
I like this idea, definitely will be interesting to see it if it works right. owo
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:13, topic:9148”]I’m not sure how to handle one thing though: aiming from controls, especially when there are multiple turrets.
Oh and burst firing (though this time it’s more of a technical issue).[/quote]
One of several things making the current system for manually-aimed turrets a bit clunky.
