Guns, too many? Too few?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
161
1. That'd be fine, but guns in mainstream games have distinguishing factors and are mostly well balanced. In most FPS games you've got a big selection of guns, but they have different ranges, firing speed, different levels of automatic fire, penetration, stopping power and so on (not to mention that there is the graphical side of things). At the moment, we have tons of guns which are pretty much identical, other than by names and the ammo they take.
Different ranges - check. Different firing speed\RoF - needs much improvement Different damage and penetration - check

So in the end, what you are saying here is that we need to make the gun system more in depth, not less, and i’m absolutely certain no gun nut would mind a more realistic RoF system, quite the opposite. Amount of gun models and ammo types is absolutely no problem in doing that.

2. That's purely presumption, I myself am against gun-bloat and so are some others. Bringing up JA2 for gun bloat as if that means it's fine doesn't make sense as JA2 is primarily about guns, so of course there will be lots of guns.
Actually, basic JA2 has a similar number of guns as Fallout 2. F:NV, not being primarily about guns, has more, almost as much as Cataclysm now.
DDA has loads more in it, and guns should only be part of the whole thing rather than this huge list of pretty much the same weapon with different names.
No it does not. Do a count. You must be mistaking Cataclysm for JA2 1.13. Which has literally hundreds of models. We have about 60 guns now, excluding improv\heavy\energy ones. That's not bloat.

Besides, if you didn’t notice, Kevin pretty much said that future world builder will include a gun bloat Y\N option so that everyone can be happy.

This would be common place weapons, and that's probably about right as Law Enforcement and Mil. who would probably only have one or two standard issue guns. Other guns would have different levels of rarity, but I think it should be a sharper drop off between 'common' weapons and others.
If we are basing it on US, civilian handguns of various models should severely outnumber military and police ones.
162

Do you actually have a point to make that contributes to the discussion at hand, or are you just going to repeat ‘Jagged Alliance, Fallout’ over and over to points that have long been passed over in the conversation?

163

I will stop repeating ‘Jagged Alliance, Fallout’ once you stop repeating the 'gun bloat, too many guns" point over and over again, because the former comparison shows how when compared to other games, Cataclysm’s number of guns is not insanely high.

164

Have you actually been paying attention to the conversation? Everyone has been discussing practical mechanics and spawning rates, then someone jumps in again to go ‘hands of my guns’ and drags the discussion several steps back. I personally have not mentioned gun bloat for several pages now.

Anyhow, ultimately ‘gun bloat’ is a matter of opinion, and there simply won’t be any way to satisfactorily discuss it. You may think Jagged Alliance and Fallout are good baselines, and others may not. However, that’s simply not a productive conversation, and interrupts the actual discussion of mechanical changes.

165

Except that the people who complained about gun bloat and wanted some guns removed have switched their tactics to “spawn rate discussion”, and using it to get what they wanted all along by “just” making all the guns they consider superfluous extra rare to spawn. It’s the same thing, just to a slightly lower degree “hey, we are not advocating removing those guns, just making them super duper rare”.

So let’s talk about spawning rates - what is exactly wrong with them, how should we fix it, and why?

I’ve mentioned some ideas for what areas of practical mechanics of guns need to be improved upon, but no one, including you, seems to be interested in discussing that.

166

PMs are nice.

If we are basing it on US, civilian handguns of various models should severely outnumber military and police ones.
Agreed. In addition to a very small range for military, perhaps there would be some way to include modded guns on the lists? Civilians would have a wider range of handguns, but would still be based on calibers most of all, and should also outnumber military/police options, (again though, should share calibers).

Not necessarily rare, but in a different place. Pawn shops are pretty common- what’s the current status of gun basements? Perhaps a new building or two- internet catalogue warehouses? Could come in a couple varieties, including ‘guns’.

Question: what should be the primary calibers?(gunshops/civilian houses/military) What should be Military only? What should be civilian only? What should be rare/specialty only?

167

Most of the calibers in game are shared military\police\civilian ones. .44, .500 and other hand cannon calibres should be rare. 5.7 should be very rare. Grenades, rockets and such should be limited to military locations, maybye extra rare civilian ones, like the gang fight. Police stations could also have grenades and grenade launchers, but only non lethal grenades - smoke and tear gas and the like fits them well. Caseless ammo and guns for it should be very rare and military\lab only.
Automatic weapons should be limited to rare basements, events, police, military, labs and such.

168

I can’t believe I just caught up on this thread. Half of it makes my head hurt, the other half I flutter between “Oh, that sounds productive” and “what just happened.” (BTW: I play 1.13 JA with “Loads of Guns” turned on, and the thing about it working BETTER there is you can actually see a graphic of the weapon to know what type it is instantly, and I think you’re underestimating mouse-over tooltips for simplifying things … DDA doesn’t have either so its a different user experience).

I like the health-pool style simplification of the weapon stats ( The |||\ & ||| style) thing. I almost suggested it in my post earlier but was afraid people would go ballistic (pun intended) because they’d either feel it was “oversimplifying how awerzome guns are” or “making stats even more simplified” when we can all agree that the current stats are too same’y as is.

[quote=“Marduk, post:165, topic:4531”]Except that the people who complained about gun bloat and wanted some guns removed have switched their tactics to “spawn rate discussion”, and using it to get what they wanted all along by “just” making all the guns they consider superfluous extra rare to spawn. It’s the same thing, just to a slightly lower degree “hey, we are not advocating removing those guns, just making them super duper rare”.

So let’s talk about spawning rates - what is exactly wrong with them, how should we fix it, and why?

I’ve mentioned some ideas for what areas of practical mechanics of guns need to be improved upon, but no one, including you, seems to be interested in discussing that.[/quote]

As with the “changing spawn rate”, look … the police department & military already have short-lists of weapons they use, and/or acceptable side-arms. I shouldn’t find a cop’s corpse with an Uzi or Wild-West 6-shooter; or a military corpse with some soviet bloc weapon that only appeared in 2 comic books because it never saw real-life production. So I totally agree there should be a “Guns: Police” “Guns: Military” type call list that corpses and their respective buildings pull from if that doesn’t happen already. That is what I assume is being suggested. Clean things up so Joe-Newb finds REALISTIC guns on realistic corpses and if he crowbars his way into a shack in the woods surrounded by landmines he finds some better, rarer stuff (and when NPCs are fixed he may have to have a shoot-out with the tin-foil-hat wearing nutjob in there before he takes the stash).

Drug dealer & criminal corpses should, IMHO, have a different list. Put the TEC-9, and Uzi on there, etc. I think this already happens, actually, to some degree?

Gun stores should carry the more common items. You don’t walk into Guns’N’Stuff and peruse a collection of unfathomably rare items, ESPECIALLY in New England, afaik (only been to a couple gun stores up there when I lived back east). Now since this is not-too-distant-future-ish where the gun laws were relaxed, I can imagine a bigger selection of stuff there but the list should be small, of possible items that spawn in there. I think a variation on the Gun Store should go in where theres a basement, or a small “back room - wink wink” where you have a chance at bigger things. It should be a rare occurrence.

I think finding guns should be common, but finding ammo should NOT be. This is the end of the world … people grabbed their guns and fired off their ammo defending themselves. I should be able to fill a shopping cart with guns but ammo should be hard as hell to find. There should rarely be ammo on corpses really.

169

- At the risk of being a double-poster, but since this is a separate thought:

If so many guns are so similar in stats currently we can go 2 ways with it … make them all significantly different (more complex) or simplify things stat-wise for sanity’s sake. Would it be sacrilege to simplify things by caliber in the json and have each caliber n’ weapon type (Pistol, SMG, rifle) have nearly the exact same stats for each type of weapon?

So … if there are ten 9-mm pistols in game, have them ALL have nearly the same exact stats and the only difference is the name on them?

That way, when the game calls up and spawns a 9mm pistol it just pulls the stats and assigns it a name from a list. ALL the json entries for 9mm pistols get culled into 1 entry.

For instance (tossing in random ||||'s for stuff just for sport):

{
“id”: “9mm pistol”,
“type”: “GUN”,
“symbol”: “(”,
“color”: “dark_gray”,
“price”: 1400,
“material”: [“plastic”, “steel”],
“skill”: “pistol”,
“ammo”: “9mm”,
“weight”: 595,
“volume”: 2,
“bashing”: || (8),
“cutting”: _ (0),
“to_hit”: -2,
“ranged_damage”: _ 0,
“range”: _ 0,
“dispersion”: ||\ (16),
“recoil”: | (6),
“durability”: | (6),
“burst”: _ 0,
“reload”: 300
},

Then have “name”: & “description”: both pull from a list on the entry? So the game would just choose one at random from the available available list people filled in: Glock 19; Walther PPQ; Springfield XD; Glock 17; Taurus PT92; etc? I suppose “clip_size”: would need to go under the name too or people would spaz out at the lack of realism.

That makes it super easy for anyone to add a gun they like… they just toss the name, description and clip size in there and call it a day. The list of 9mms can explode infinitum yet the json doesn’t get massive with cut-paste jobs of the rest of the entire stat-list.

This practically simplifies things into “Pistol” “SMG” “Rifle” without sacrificing overall variety of weapons.

170

I fully approve of that. However, there would still be plenty of various guns classified as civilian. SOmething people who complain about gun bloat do not want.

Yep.

Yeah, still, about 2\3 of current gun types would fit this category.

Indeed.

Interesting idea, but doesn’t work as well for weapons other than pistols (like rifles with different barrel lenghts), there are barely a handful of 9mm pistols, and some parts of gun mechanics will need to be expanded (like the mentioned bad RoF system) which will help in making the guns different from each other.

171

Mk, here’s my suggestion, looking at the outdated wiki, my own empirical/arbitrary preferences, & this

[spoiler=Military/common].223
–M4a1
–ACR

9mm
–m9
–glock 19
–usp 9[/spoiler]

.223
–M249
–scar-L

7.62
–M24
–M14
–scar-H

9mm
–mp5

12 gauge
–Benelli m4/1014
–Underslung mod

Explosives
–M320/underslung mod
–Grenades

All caseless firearms

.50
–Barrett m95

12 gauge
–AA12

Explosives
–c4
–Milkor MGL
–M72 LAW[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Civilian houses].223
–Ruger 14

30-06
–Rem 700
–?Browning BLR? (Is this as common as I’m led to believe?)

.22
–Marlin 39

9mm
–glock 19

.45
–M1911

.38
–Taurus pro 38
–s&w 619
12 gauge
–M 500
–double-barrelled
–sawn-off

[spoiler=Police/common]
9mm
–Glock 19

.38
–Taurus pro 38
–s&w 619

.40
–SIG pro40
–s&w 610

12 gauge
–M500
–Rem870

Energy
–Stun gun[/spoiler]

.223
–M4a1

9mm
–mp5

7.62
–M14

12 gauge
–Benelli m4/1014

Explosives
–Non-lethal

[spoiler=Gunstores/common].223
–Ruger 14

30-06
–Rem 700
–Browning BLR

.38
–Taurus pro 38
–s&w 619

.40
–SIG pro40
–s&w 610

.22
–Marlin 39
–Ruger 10/22

9mm
–glock 19
–USP 9
–Cx4 storm

.45
–m1911
–usp45

12 gauge
–m500
–rem870
–double-barrelled[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Gunstores/uncommon].22
–SIG mosquito

.223
–AR 15

.44
–Ruger Redhawk

.45
–mac-10

9mm
–Tec-9
–Uzi[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Gunstores/rare].44
–Desert eagle

.454
–Raging bull

5.7
–FN 5-7

7.62
–savage111f[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Gangsters]
9mm
–Uzi
–glock 19
–tec-9

.45
–m1911
–mac-10

12 gauge
–sawn-off[/spoiler]

Science labs-
Energy weapons/railguns

Pawnshops/gunnuts/additional buildings
All other conventional firearms.

Hrm, posts, will start reading those.
/revised lists

172

Not a bad start Griz’ … I’d argue that loadouts on the police might need a bump (MP5, UMP) as they’d be kitted out better as the world went to hell … or better yet …

bum bum buuuuum

SWAT Zombies (and vehicle).

[spoiler] (Cut n’ Paste from wiki)

While a wide variety of weapons are used by SWAT teams, the most common weapons include submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles.

Tactical aids include K9 Units, as well as flash bang, stinger, and tear gas grenades.

Semi-automatic pistols are the most popular sidearms. Examples may include, but are not limited to: M1911 pistol series, Sig Sauer series (especially the Sig P226 and Sig P229), Beretta 92 series, Glock pistols, H&K USP series, and 5.7x28mm FN Five-seveN pistol.

Common submachine guns used by SWAT teams include the 9mm and 10mm Heckler & Koch MP5, Heckler & Koch UMP,[11] and 5.7x28mm FN P90.

Common shotguns used by SWAT units include the Benelli M1,Benelli M4, Benelli M1014, Remington 870 and 1100, Mossberg 500 and 590.

Common carbines include the Colt CAR-15 and M4 nand Heckler & Koch G36 and HK416. While affording SWAT teams increased penetration and accuracy at longer ranges, the compact size of these weapons is essential as SWAT units frequently operate in Close quarters combat (CQB) environments. The Colt M16A2 can be found used by marksmen or SWAT officers when a longer ranged weapon is needed.

Common sniper rifles used are M14 rifle and the Remington 700P. Many different variants of bolt action rifles are used by SWAT, including limited use of .50 caliber sniper rifles for more intense situations.

To breach doors quickly, battering rams, shotguns with breaching rounds, or explosive charges can be used to break the lock or hinges, or even demolish the door frame itself. SWAT teams also use many non-lethal munitions and weapons. These include Tasers, pepper spray canisters, shotguns loaded with bean bag rounds, Pepperball guns, stinger grenades, flash bang grenades, and tear gas. Ballistic shields are used in close quarters situations to provide cover for SWAT team members and reflect gunfire. Pepperball guns are essentially paint ball markers loaded with balls containing Oleoresin Capsicum (“pepper spray”).[/spoiler]

… and, BTW, if the lore states that the robo-cop type robots rolled out wide-spread to replace police, why are there cop zombies?

173

I believe the robocop system was a prototype system not intended for general use as of yet, and were hastily rushed into place when conventional forces failed, which is why they’re so buggy in the game.

Also, those lists look pretty okay from here. I’m not from the US so I can’t speak as to how accurate those military/police lists look.

174

They have replaced most of the police, with the remaining police playing a much more limited role (primarily managing the robots).

Also, I would assume that the caseless firearms would actually be the defacto military firearm, rather than antiquated weaponry like the M4a1
and ACR.

175

[quote=“Dominae, post:168, topic:4531”]As with the “changing spawn rate”, look … the police department & military already have short-lists of weapons they use, and/or acceptable side-arms. I shouldn’t find a cop’s corpse with an Uzi or Wild-West 6-shooter; or a military corpse with some soviet bloc weapon that only appeared in 2 comic books because it never saw real-life production. So I totally agree there should be a “Guns: Police” “Guns: Military” type call list that corpses and their respective buildings pull from if that doesn’t happen already. That is what I assume is being suggested. Clean things up so Joe-Newb finds REALISTIC guns on realistic corpses and if he crowbars his way into a shack in the woods surrounded by landmines he finds some better, rarer stuff (and when NPCs are fixed he may have to have a shoot-out with the tin-foil-hat wearing nutjob in there before he takes the stash).

Drug dealer & criminal corpses should, IMHO, have a different list. Put the TEC-9, and Uzi on there, etc. I think this already happens, actually, to some degree?

Gun stores should carry the more common items. You don’t walk into Guns’N’Stuff and peruse a collection of unfathomably rare items, ESPECIALLY in New England, afaik (only been to a couple gun stores up there when I lived back east). Now since this is not-too-distant-future-ish where the gun laws were relaxed, I can imagine a bigger selection of stuff there but the list should be small, of possible items that spawn in there. I think a variation on the Gun Store should go in where theres a basement, or a small “back room - wink wink” where you have a chance at bigger things. It should be a rare occurrence.[/quote]

Nail on the head. Most police and military units only carry a primary, secondary and support weapon, so I’d say they only need 4-5 on each list (to take into account a few people having to use old stock or whatever), but no more than that (obviously with a few rares as well).

Griz lists: It’s looking good, with a I’d take the Uzi, mac-10 and tec-9 out of the gunshop list, even in uncommon or rare - I doubt any civilian gun shop would sell those, even with a relaxing of laws.
As my point above states, I think it’d be good to take one or two off the military list just as it’d be weird going into a military compound and finding 8 different types of rifles or loads of different handguns - after all, the whole point is to have similar weapons so you can all use the same ammo/kit.

176

Oh … and as for realistic “gun cleaning mechanics” I’d hope we don’t go that route (even though its obviously realistic). I dread having too many “chores” all the time in game instead of actively doing “fun” stuff.

Reliability really is weird that it isn’t a bigger mechanic with firearms tho, you’re right. The damn things break or jam and sooner or later fall apart or rust. Hell, pistol-whipping a gooey zombie has to muck up a revolver something wicked.

I wouldn’t mind if weapons degraded through usage, even if it was a small percentage of it happening each time. Adding a “Firearm cleaning & repair kit” and making it craftable and limited in uses (like Med-Kits) that had a chance of fixing weapons would then be good, IMHO.

177

While I can appreciate the idea of reliability (which should be pretty damn good for most weapons, and maybe be influenced by skill) I think "Firearm cleaning & repair kit"s being the only way to treat guns would be silly.

A character with high skills should be more than capable making do with tools/rags/etc.

178

[quote=“Dominae, post:168, topic:4531”]I like the health-pool style simplification of the weapon stats ( The |||\ & ||| style) thing. I almost suggested it in my post earlier but was afraid people would go ballistic (pun intended) because they’d either feel it was “oversimplifying how awerzome guns are” or “making stats even more simplified” when we can all agree that the current stats are too same’y as is.

I think a variation on the Gun Store should go in where theres a basement, or a small “back room - wink wink” where you have a chance at bigger things. It should be a rare occurrence.

I think finding guns should be common, but finding ammo should NOT be. This is the end of the world … people grabbed their guns and fired off their ammo defending themselves. I should be able to fill a shopping cart with guns but ammo should be hard as hell to find. There should rarely be ammo on corpses really.[/quote]

Eh, I don’t trust bars- they tend to misrepresent weapons, or to miss out on fine granularity- (all small-caliber weapons would have 1-3 bars, most everything would be between 3-6, and the top 4 would be reserved for a handful of uber-guns). If anything it would just pronounce the ‘same-y feeling’.

I like this idea, a lot.

I’m ok with this so long as we can fashion our own- where there was ammo instead spawn shells, and be sure to include some primers & bits in gun shops.

Meh, I’d rather the former option. Only keeping the names would preserve the complexity/bloat, but get rid of the depth. Seems kindof superfluous compared to just ‘pistol, rifle, shotgun’.

Revisions!

.223
–M249
–scar-L

7.62
–M24
–M14
–scar-H

9mm
–mp5

12 gauge
–Benelli m4/1014
–Underslung mod

Explosives
–M320/underslung mod
–Grenades

[spoiler=Military/rare]
All caseless firearms

.50
–Barrett m95
12 gauge
–AA12

Explosives
–c4
–Milkor MGL
–M72 LAW[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Police/common]
9mm
–Glock 19

.38
–Taurus pro 38
–s&w 619

.40
–SIG pro40
–s&w 610

12 gauge
–M500
–Rem870

Energy
–Stun gun[/spoiler]

.223
–M4a1

9mm
–mp5

7.62
–M14

[u]12 gauge
–Benelli m4/1014

Explosives
–Non-lethal[/u]

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:174, topic:4531”]They have replaced most of the police, with the remaining police playing a much more limited role (primarily managing the robots).

Also, I would assume that the caseless firearms would actually be the defacto military firearm, rather than antiquated weaponry like the M4a1
and ACR.[/quote]
That eliminates progression- gameplay wouldn’t be helped by having experimental caseless firearms everywhere, not without additional changes.

@binky
They’re actually legal- they just require a license, tax, and maybe modifications depending on state laws.
-Also, there’re only 4 calibers present,(.223 ARs, 9mm pistols, 00 shot, 7.62 battle/sniper rifles), plus the rare .50 sniper & explosives.

@dominae
Yeah, a better instant-failure mechanic can spice things up for late-game survivors as well, for all weapons.
Also agree with repair/maintenance kits, and durability based on a % chance every attack to deal a tiny bit of damage.

@walken
Improvised toolkits, and have both feed off the ‘firearms’ skill just as medkits feed off ‘first aid’.

179

[quote=“ChristopherWalken, post:177, topic:4531”]While I can appreciate the idea of reliability (which should be pretty damn good for most weapons, and maybe be influenced by skill) I think "Firearm cleaning & repair kit"s being the only way to treat guns would be silly.

A character with high skills should be more than capable making do with tools/rags/etc.[/quote]

Well when you sit down to clean and repair a firearm, you sit down with tools and rags and solvent. I just jumped to the conclusion that crafting the “kit” would be the process of getting that stuff together to use, and using the “kit” would use up those items.

We have to craft bandages to be able to (a)pply them, or craft Med-Kits to use them. A kit for firearms made sense to me by Cata-logic.

@walkin Improvised toolkits, and have both feed off the 'firearms' skill just as medkits feed off 'first aid'.

Yeah, that. lol

180

The only common military pistol should be M9 i think. The rest should go to uncommon or rare.

BLR is pretty much a stand in for hunting rifles.

As for firearms getting damaged, they could be losing a durability level every time a misfire happens.

As for toolkits, that could work the same as sewing kits. You craft a toolkit (tools, some container). Then you craft repair supplies (rag, oil or some stand in, duct tape, superglue, piece of scrap metal etc.) of some charges, then load the toolkit with it. It would have some charges used to repair guns (maybye metal armor too?) exactly the same way you use sewing kit to repair clothing.