Weapon Condition

A great addition would be weapon conditions e.g you overused that desert eagle and it appeared in your inventory as:

Desert Eagle (Rusted)
Desert Eagle (Heavily Rusted)
Desert Eagle (Jams)

And if you didn’t find a cleaning kit your weapon would explode in your hand and damage your arm(s)?

Guns don’t exactly work that way. The primary thing that causes weapons to jam is not rust, but simple gunk buildup (or mud buildup if you’re especially clumsy).

Yeah I know that, just an idea.

In that case you could have varying conditions involving various stages of lack of maintenance. The most basic stage would require simply taking the time to dismantle the gun, clean the parts with a rag and alcohol, and reassembling it. However, high degrees of disrepair may cause the gun to suffer permanent penalties, if not requiring completely new parts to function properly.

This would, however, require changing guns from one object into a set of smaller objects that were assembled, each with a different amount of “hp” before suffering negative effects.

The more ‘video-gamey’, but probably more mechanically sound way to handle this, is to simply give each weapon an hp, which degrades as it is used or abused. Firing a gun would do maybe 1 point of damage out of 1000, but go for a swim and your shotgun is gonna be upset with you.

Basic maintenance could alleviate most problems, with cleaning and repair kits needed to fix guns that are in really bad shape. Firearms skill would add to the amount repaired, as well as determine if you could work with more advanced guns. The same could go for other weapons, too. Once you get edged weapons to level 2 or so, you could use a whetstone to keep your katana razor-sharp.

[quote=“ArgusTheCat, post:5, topic:1332”]The more ‘video-gamey’, but probably more mechanically sound way to handle this, is to simply give each weapon an hp, which degrades as it is used or abused. Firing a gun would do maybe 1 point of damage out of 1000, but go for a swim and your shotgun is gonna be upset with you.

Basic maintenance could alleviate most problems, with cleaning and repair kits needed to fix guns that are in really bad shape. Firearms skill would add to the amount repaired, as well as determine if you could work with more advanced guns. The same could go for other weapons, too. Once you get edged weapons to level 2 or so, you could use a whetstone to keep your katana razor-sharp.[/quote]

I kind of like this idea. why would you pick up a pump action shotgun over a semi auto? HP wise, the pump has more, translating to being more durable than it’s more fragile counter-part.

as your overall firearms skill increases the hp restored from breaking down a gun and cleaning it is increased (failure actually harms the gun more?) as well as more hp given when using a cleaning kit.

a gun reaches 0 hp and becomes ‘broken’, a repair kit could be used to refill a small amount of hp at the cost of maximum hp being lowered? giving a huge boon to preventative maintenance.

Great idea IMO but it would need a group of massive gun freaks to pour over it for realism/balancing issues.
I personally don’t like HP for item condition but in a video game hey, you take what you can get if it works.

The AK-47 should only need to one service thus fixing it once and for all.

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

I enjoy the m4a1 greatly. it’s one of my favorite guns of all time (seconded only by my passion for the lovely mp5)

however, even its description says it’s notorious for its durability. I’d like this to be represented because after I pour a few hundred rounds down range in under 10 minutes I feel bad for cheating.

This. Additionally for high RoF weapons there’s the chance of heatwarping in the barrel, requiring either a full barrel change. In that kind of situation you’re more likely to suffer a breech explosion (aka, your weapon explodes and covers your precious face with shrapnel.)

Would be nice if we had the option to clean our weapons or suffer the possibility of a jam when you least expect it.
Shouldn’t be that hard to implement. if we do use a HP system with firing a single shot as 1 hp, I’d estimate it as a light possibility of jam at 200-400, then a moderate possibility above that.

Additionally there’s a lot of very simple mistakes that newbies make with firearms IRL.
Most notably the safety being on, or the magazine not being fitted correctly/ or alternatively, jamming the magazine in so hard the top bullet gets dislodged, causing a jam as soon as you cock it. For someone trained in firearms use such a jam could be cleared in seconds, (cock it, turn rifle on side, bash other side of rifle until it comes out.) but for a newbie I can easily see them thinking ‘argh, what the fuck,’ and spending a good few minutes figuring out how to fix it.

That would generally apply to most modern firearms including rifles, handguns and SMGs-- barring rather unique weapons.
Shotguns, lever-action rifles and other unique-ish type weapons should be considered slightly different though.
AKA MAC-10 and the TEC-9 should have a higher chance of jamming at 200-300 (actually, if you fired that many magazines worth quickly enough I’m pretty sure you’d get a jam anyway, but MSTK) while things like the M16, M4A1, AK-47, FN P90 and suchlike should be slightly more robust.

[quote=“drake1storm, post:4, topic:1332”]In that case you could have varying conditions involving various stages of lack of maintenance. The most basic stage would require simply taking the time to dismantle the gun, clean the parts with a rag and alcohol, and reassembling it. However, high degrees of disrepair may cause the gun to suffer permanent penalties, if not requiring completely new parts to function properly.

This would, however, require changing guns from one object into a set of smaller objects that were assembled, each with a different amount of “hp” before suffering negative effects.[/quote]
We actually have the starts of a framework for stuff like this. Crafted items track all of their specific component parts now, although it’s only used for cooking rotten stuff right now.

I agree with you but wouldn’t an idiot/newbie try bashing the shit out of it first?

...while things like the M16, M4A1, AK-47, FN P90 and suchlike should be slightly more robust.

Mister drop-in-dirt-to-jam, Mister drop-in-dirt-to-jams’ distant cousin, never-jam-47-but-might-explode-randomly.
I thought the FN P90 had a feeding or jamming problem with the 'tarded ammo mechanism. (the slot-spin thingy)

That’s true with more than just newbies. Anyone handling any new weapon is very likely to look like a fool, if they are lucky. If you are really clueless, you might end up with an extra hole or a nice gash, depending on the weapon in question.

Frankly, I think it’d be funny seeing a complete nooby trying to wield 2 bokkens (I like my head, so no swords for them). They’d probably have more bruises than the person they are aiming at lol.

Lets meta weapons in this regard.

Weapons could have following stats:

  • Overall quality (Like 0-100%, meaning quality of manufacturing+wear) - Brand new good manufacturer weapon could be 95%-100% but new cheap eastern-europe gunshop products could be 85-90%. Quality simply measures how fast and easy problems arise with these weapons, and it would drop - slowly when using the weapon, especially in unkept condition. This is irreplaceable stat, once it is lost its gone. But well kept initially great quality weapon would last thousands of shots and drop its quality only little, making it last practically forever.

  • Maintaince score (0-20 points) - this is how well gun is kept. 0 points would mean totally gunked, overshot, uncleaned, dirty gun. Using such gun would cause its quality to wear out extremely fast and be subject to constant problems. 20 points is absolutely well kept gun, cleaned and oiled by professional who knows what he is doing. When you use your gun or it is subjected to weather or misuse (like bashing) it starts losing its maintaince score, the rate how fast this score is lost depends on overall quality stat. Even deadbeat old abused guns could have maintaince score of 20, its just that they will lose that status very fast.

  • Symptoms. List of things that this gun is subjected to. These could be : “Jammed”, “Worn barrel”, “sights off”, “loose grip”, “misfires (sometimes, often, constantly)” etc etc… these things are something player can do something about (clear Jam with action) or sometimes simply accept the fact (worn barrel that cannot be replaced short of re-boring whole barrel with conversion kit.). These symptoms arise when gun fails maintaince/quality roll.

[quote=“Iosyn, post:9, topic:1332”]That would generally apply to most modern firearms including rifles, handguns and SMGs-- barring rather unique weapons.
Shotguns, lever-action rifles and other unique-ish type weapons should be considered slightly different though.
AKA MAC-10 and the TEC-9 should have a higher chance of jamming at 200-300 (actually, if you fired that many magazines worth quickly enough I’m pretty sure you’d get a jam anyway, but MSTK) while things like the M16, M4A1, AK-47, FN P90 and suchlike should be slightly more robust.[/quote]
The Mac-10 and Tec-9 are both extremely likely to misfeed if fired automatically for an extended period of time, however both weapons are very durable and likely to work in adverse conditions, as well as being easy to use and maintain.

The M16 and M4 are durable but likely to misfeed if fired automatically or used in an exceptionally adverse environment. Both should be considered difficult to maintain for an inexperienced person.

The AK47 is incredibly durable and incredibly unlikely to misfeed, if it does misfeed it’s probably because the magazine is in backwards. Easy to maintain.

The FN P90 is not a very durable gun and it’s extremely difficult for anyone but a professional to maintain fully. I do not know how often the FN P90 misfeeds, but I would guess it’s pretty rare due to the quality and expense of the weapon.

Shotguns, lever action rifles and bolt actions are generally very durable, unlikely (if not impossible) to misfeed, and easy to maintain.

i personally second the motion of component based gunsmithing and mangagement. If parts arent explicitly fitted together i’d think you could throw your firearms and mechanics skill to custom fit it. Then we can get together all of our gun nutd to figure out stats of different brands of gun components and will be awesomr.~
i’d suspect that custom firearms instead of just replacing fitted parts would be very fragile and quite unreliable unless you REALLY know what you are doing… and have found an abandoned gunsmithy

Component based weapons I think can work well, disassembling and creating new weapons would be a great touch.

My idea would be to break it down to something like:

Furniture (Defines whether it is a rifle/pistol/smg/shotgun, and what attachments it can have, and durability)
Barrel (Defines caliber, accuracy and damage)
Mechanism (Defines RoF and durability)
Ammo Feed (Defines mag size and reload time)
Grip (Modifies range and accuracy, and defines how many hands it takes)

[quote=“Vorpal2, post:16, topic:1332”]Grip (Modifies range and accuracy, and defines how many hands it takes)[/quote]I think that how many hands needed should depend on weight, recoil, and size of the weapon on the end, while the grip just adjusts how you handle it for it’s size.

Yikes, that looks like a lot of micromanagement for firearm usage. Makes me glad I’m a melee fighter.

my guns are as important to me as my car. if there is so much customization available to cars, why not to the primary weapon of most survivors?

one size of car doesn’t fit all situations, neither should a gun.

my guns are as important to me as my car. if there is so much customization available to cars, why not to the primary weapon of most survivors?

one size of car doesn’t fit all situations, neither should a gun.[/quote]

The same can be said for a good blade. The right grip, hand-guard, or edge for you can mark the difference between a great sword and a worthless steel lump.