Pile O' Suggestions: Firearm Range, Vision Range and Zoom, Realism, etc

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Vision and Zoom
Okay, so currently we are only able to see at a range of a few dozen tiles with a large monitor. Adding a zoom function similar to the one in Dwarf Fortress would increase the gameplay experience. I am not sure of the current maximum view range, but it should probably be longer. If this raises concerns about performance, it would be nice if a view distance option was implemented in the options menu.

Firearm Mechanics
Looking at the game world, the arbitrary maximum range applied to ranged weapons strikes me as rather silly. In real life, the effective range of a USP 9mm, is rated at fifty meters according to most sources, yet in-game is stuck at 14 tiles due to this arbitrary limit. In my opinion, this limit should be removed for reasons of both realism and freedom of gameplay. For example, in real life the effective range of an M-16 rifle firing standard-issue M855 ball ammunition is rated at 550 meters. For an in-depth analysis of where this number comes from, this video may be helpful. Now, looking at the range in-game of 5.56 NATO ammunition and by extension all weapons firing it and assuming that one tile is roughly one meter square, this is quite silly.

So, finding some kind of balance between the maximum effective range of an average trained soldier, the maximum effective range of the firearm itself, and the relationship between that and in-game skills would be important to get this system to work properly. Moving on to the actual representation in-game, I believe that if this system is implemented, all three of these values should be included in the firearm description and the maximum effective range of your character should be included in the window when (f)iring.

Pros and Cons of this system
Pros:
Increased realism
Longer Ranged firearms
Increased focus on personal skill
Removal of arbitrary hard limits
May result in noobs blazing away at 100m with a .22 pistol and no firearm skill and wondering why they can’t hit anything, causing amusement on YouTube

Cons:
Would be OP if balancing changes weren’t implemented
May result in noobs blazing away at 100m with a .22 pistol and no firearm skill and wondering why they can’t hit anything and complaining about it on the forums

Moving on to the important problem of game balance, I believe there are solutions.

[size=12pt]Balancing[/size]

Hearing
In real life, a gunshot, especially that of a high-powered rifle or shotgun, can be uncomfortably loud at hundreds of yards and on open ground can be audible for miles. In my opinion, the effective buffs for firearms as described above could be partially balanced by increasing the range of zombie hearing. If a zombie can hear you blazing away from halfway across town, then as happens with the dynamic spawn system, you may quickly find yourself surrounded by a growing horde. With this addition, firing shotguns and the like in the middle of large towns would be a terminally bad idea.

And anyway, in the old versions before static spawn one of the really great (and annoying) things about it was that firing a gun would draw dozens of zombies to your position.

Aiming and Stances
Another way to balance the vastly increased range of firearms would be to make it take more time to fire an aimed shot depending on range to target and your effective range with the weapon. Additional functions could also be added in the form of stances and levels of aiming. Stances would let you stand, crouch or kneel, and go prone. The more stable the stance, the more accurate your shot will be and the less likely it will be for zombies to notice you. It would also make sense that, while slower, movement while crouching would behave as sneaking and would reduce the noise level of walking. Moving on to aiming, aiming levels would allow you to choose how much time to dedicate to the shots you are taking with a corresponding change in accuracy. In order to balance this, wounds and pain would significantly impair your accuracy and further increase the time it takes to handle your weapon.

Recoil
As far as I understand it, strength and skill have little or no effect on the severity of firearm recoil, and I think they should. It certainly makes sense that someone who is stronger and therefore has more body mass and muscle density would have an easier time controlling a high-recoil weapon than someone who is out of shape. Second, learning how to position oneself when firing high-recoil weapons such as hunting rifles, shotguns, and high-caliber revolvers and handguns will greatly increase one’s effectiveness with the weapon in question. And come on, how funny would it be if you fired a Ruger Redhawk ingame and got the message "The Ruger Redhawk clobbers you in the mouth for 20 damage! I swear the first time I fired a Mosin-Nagant it fixed the back pain I’d been having for two weeks…

Personal experience with firearms -
I can shoot soda cans at ten meters, not far from the absolute maximum range* of in-game 9mm handguns , with a BB pistol. Moving on to said 9mm handguns, the first time I ever fired one (a Beretta 92), I was able to get a 6-8 inch group at around twenty yards, which is roughly the diameter of a human skull. Going off of this, even someone with little experience firing handguns or handgun-like implements can potentially get headshots on stationary targets well outside the maximum range of in-game weapons of the same type.

  • Again assuming that 1 tile ≈ 1 meter

Anyway, that’s my idea dump for the weekend.

2

If the player goes underground, into building or it’s night time, range doesn’t matter beyond the range of a flashlight.

IMO, increases in range don’t need to be “balanced” by any disadvantages beyond there being more stuff to do that isn’t out in the open (And having some monsters stay indoors and not rush out like idiots.). Some of the new buildings kinda address this by having multiple rooms inside and away from windows. Hopefully, we’ll have a lot more close quarters fights once we get Z levels working both ways.

Firearms should dominate in wide open spaces.

3

True, true. I just want to be able to roast marshmallows while I pop zombie heads at three hundred yards.

4

My interpretation is that all gun-play in the game is panicky, barely aimed spray-fire-from-the-hip type combat. There is not the presence of mind or tactical awareness in the survivor to lay down with some portable gun rest and snipe at zombies 200 meters away.

Yes, you can reach out and touch somebody with an M4 out to 300 meters, but your survivor never goes into the prone, never takes cover, ect. He is standing up, popping off caps while running, with excessive clothes and armor and bags and bags of loot on his person, typically. Good luck hitting anything past 50 meters even with a good rifle in realistic situations, with a guy like your typical unemployed junkie chain-smoker survivor.

Shooting in a relaxed setting at beer cans in a steady position with a weapon you are familiar with is exactly what combat in Cata isn’t. It’s some poor bastard fighting for his life against unimaginable horrors with some firearm he can’t identify, pausing between sprints to wildly shoot in some attempt to defend himself.

5

Yet, he has the presence of mind to sit down and cook, build walls, dig giant ass pits, build beds, build cars, listen to music, craft robots, reload cartridges…

6

Yet, he has the presence of mind to sit down and cook, build walls, dig giant ass pits, build beds, build cars, listen to music, craft robots, reload cartridges…[/quote]

Well, presumably the survivor isn’t cooking, building hovels, digging trenches, crafting furniture or welding in a situation they’d otherwise be shooting to kill something.

Maybe some option to rest down and take up a good, steady firing position complete with a gun rest and all should be a thing, but I really don’t think it’s ‘realistic’ for some drunk laymen to stand on two feet and easily snipe at some horror or another at 300 meters just because the rifle he is clutching is on Jane’s Small Arm’s Journal as having an effective range of 700 meters or some shit like that.

7

I’m fine with ranges as they are now, it’s already easy to cut down any number of approaching zombies with just about any firearm before they can get anywhere near you.

8

Well, that’s what accuracy is for! Have you used the long ranged firearms that are in the game already? At low skill levels (and when suffering perception penalties) you will be firing everywhere but where you want to shoot (I used up 100+ savage ammunition trying to take down a turret from outside it’s range back when i was starting to play this game.). Your drunken unskilled dude will still be unable to shoot the horror at 300 meters.

Besides, only a very dumb character would be panicking while the enemy is over 100 squares away.

9

[quote=“DWC, post:4, topic:1783”]My interpretation is that all gun-play in the game is panicky, barely aimed spray-fire-from-the-hip type combat. There is not the presence of mind or tactical awareness in the survivor to lay down with some portable gun rest and snipe at zombies 200 meters away.

Yes, you can reach out and touch somebody with an M4 out to 300 meters, but your survivor never goes into the prone, never takes cover, ect. He is standing up, popping off caps while running, with excessive clothes and armor and bags and bags of loot on his person, typically. Good luck hitting anything past 50 meters even with a good rifle in realistic situations, with a guy like your typical unemployed junkie chain-smoker survivor.

Shooting in a relaxed setting at beer cans in a steady position with a weapon you are familiar with is exactly what combat in Cata isn’t. It’s some poor bastard fighting for his life against unimaginable horrors with some firearm he can’t identify, pausing between sprints to wildly shoot in some attempt to defend himself.[/quote]

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing man, but I’ve been playing the one where after a few weeks your mutant cyborg character can ride in to town with a spiked and armored truck and clear out the place with an uzi and molotovs. Your making it sound like everyone is stuck with this useless, pathetic coward as a character. There is no system of fear in this game, and the “presence of mind and tactical awareness” the character possesses is whatever the player possesses. Sure when you start out with an unskilled and unexperienced new character your going to be useless with a gun, but theres no limit on what you can learn in Cata. Even in real life most people can become proficient enough to hit a man sized target from a couple hundred yards with a rifle if they practice enough. I do think there should be a system to simulate fear/panic/adrenaline in Cata, maybe based on the number of zombies in view and their proximity. It makes sense that the average guy would be shitting himself if all he had was a weapon he didn’t know how to operate and he wandered into town to find hordes of the living dead. But it doesn’t make sense that someone with the potential to become a capable survivor couldn’t keep his cool enough to lay on his belly with a rifle and get consistent body hits with an AR-15 from a decent range. And not shit his pants because the zombies way over their look scary.

10

[quote=“Morrigi, post:1, topic:1783”]Vision and Zoom
Okay, so currently we are only able to see at a range of a few dozen tiles with a large monitor. Adding a zoom function similar to the one in Dwarf Fortress would increase the gameplay experience. I am not sure of the current maximum view range, but it should probably be longer. If this raises concerns about performance, it would be nice if a view distance option was implemented in the options menu.[/quote]

Great idea, and I’d like to see this implemented as an option.

[b]Firearm Mechanics[/b] Looking at the game world, the arbitrary maximum range applied to ranged weapons strikes me as rather silly. In real life, the effective range of a USP 9mm, is rated at fifty meters according to most sources, yet in-game is stuck at 14 tiles due to this arbitrary limit. In my opinion, this limit should be removed for reasons of both realism and freedom of gameplay. For example, in real life the effective range of an M-16 rifle firing standard-issue M855 ball ammunition is rated at 550 meters. For an in-depth analysis of where this number comes from, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-lVZBdRjQ]this[/url] video may be helpful. Now, looking at the range in-game of 5.56 NATO ammunition and by extension all weapons firing it and assuming that one tile is roughly one meter square, this is quite silly.

So, finding some kind of balance between the maximum effective range of an average trained soldier, the maximum effective range of the firearm itself, and the relationship between that and in-game skills would be important to get this system to work properly. Moving on to the actual representation in-game, I believe that if this system is implemented, all three of these values should be included in the firearm description and the maximum effective range of your character should be included in the window when (f)iring.

I’m confident that at some point ranges will progress beyond the limits now set, however, this change can easily be implemented, now, by adjusting the ranges in the JSON files of the [tt]/data/raw/items/[/tt] sub-directory.

Remember, it’s your game. Make it what you want it to be, and above all, have fun!

[b]Aiming and Stances[/b] Another way to balance the vastly increased range of firearms would be to make it take more time to fire an aimed shot depending on range to target and your effective range with the weapon. Additional functions could also be added in the form of stances and levels of aiming. Stances would let you stand, crouch or kneel, and go prone. The more stable the stance, the more accurate your shot will be and the less likely it will be for zombies to notice you. It would also make sense that, while slower, movement while crouching would behave as sneaking and would reduce the noise level of walking. Moving on to aiming, aiming levels would allow you to choose how much time to dedicate to the shots you are taking with a corresponding change in accuracy. In order to balance this, wounds and pain would significantly impair your accuracy and further increase the time it takes to handle your weapon.

In fact, an unarmed stance system is already being implemented for unarmed attacks, so that could be easily adapted to this purpose, as well. Good idea.

[b]Recoil[/b] As far as I understand it, strength and skill have little or no effect on the severity of firearm recoil, and I think they should. It certainly makes sense that someone who is stronger and therefore has more body mass and muscle density would have an easier time controlling a high-recoil weapon than someone who is out of shape. Second, learning how to position oneself when firing high-recoil weapons such as hunting rifles, shotguns, and high-caliber revolvers and handguns will greatly increase one's effectiveness with the weapon in question. And come on, how funny would it be if you fired a Ruger Redhawk ingame and got the message "The Ruger Redhawk clobbers you in the mouth for 20 damage! I swear the first time I fired a Mosin-Nagant it fixed the back pain I'd been having for two weeks...

Personally, I think Dexterity should be the more significant stat in handling recoil than raw Strength. Also, making Dexterity the primary stat would prevent melee chars from becoming OP by dumping everything into Strength and gaining massive bonuses to ranged weapons, as well.

11

Lot of stuff there.

As before, I’m not a fan of adding significant complexity to the game. Having to micromanage gun parts or fret about my degrading gun makes me less likely to use guns at all. (And then there’s the people who want to nerf melee. X-( )

Re stances: someone crouched and aiming could probably take a penalty to Dodge. Same for going prone. Basically, you’re fairly open to melee attackers…so be careful! (No need to come down even harsher on Pained characters by having simple damage impose combat penalties.)