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Changing The Weapon Firing methods


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Hey people!

I want to talk about weapon firing types (single, aimed, auto...) and how to make them realistic and more fun..

At X-Com type games, we got standard firing methods.. single, aimed and auto. Some weapons do not have all the options. It was nice for a while but now we got more options which can bring more action to the warzone. I wanted to add this to the open-xcom because X-1 did not allow me to mod so deeper. But i could not finish it at Open_Xcom because the balancing is very hard.Again but Phoenix Point will make it. We need to create more firing types and leave some old ones..

Let me discuss this per weapon type:

Pistol: Pistols are ultra weak at every xcom game.. there is always much better option.. Why? At reality, many special forces are still using pistols but at games we could not simulate this.. we always bring bigger guns.. John Wick kills mostly with pistol.. So pistols are very fast weapons which easy to aim at short distances. We give single and aimed shot to the pistols and player should fire many times with very low acc. The result is, no more pistols, give me my rifle.. At gun fights, you mostly never go for single shot if you can't aim well because of being under fire. So single shot for pistol is meaningless. There should be something like autofire for pistols with good suppression at shot range. This shot could have a bad aiming but the reason to use it to create a suppression fire at short distances like inside a room. Aimed shot should have a very very good acc bonus at close range which you should miss very rare. Even if we need to go far, we need to have a "critical hit" mechanic with range included. So aimed pistol shot should have great aim and great critical chance but it should have bigger TU then we use. As TU usage, i say make auto and aimed nearly same TU (aimed could be a bit less as single shot). A player should able to fire 2 auto or 3 aimed pistol shot with full TU.

Rifle: Our standard weapon at this genre.. everyone wants a rifle.. you can use at any situation. Short range, mid range.. as the playground is not so huge, it's the best weapon.. but it's not right. We got single shot with rifle.. i don' like that.. if you fire your rifle under fire, you use short bursts. So you use autofire as single shot at RL. For that reason, i don't like to have single shot at rifles. I think we need an auto shot and burst shot for rifles. Auto will fire 3 bullet and burst will go for 7 to 10.. so the auto will have a average aim and burst will have very bad aim with suppression. Aimed shot should not be for every "rifle".. you can make a special rifle type with only auto and aimed as it has a scope and you dont use it for burst. Rifle should have penalty at short ranges.. not so huge but it should be there.. so the player will need to take their pistol when he opened a door and saw an alien next to him. Or he will bring shotguns for those close encounters. Rifleman should be someone for support fire at a short distance..

Big guns: LMG.. so you will ask me about this when you read the rifle and how i give supp to it already. Suppression should be very important point for the battle. For us and for aliens. Alien AI should able to handle supp damage very well. Some of the AI should fire at you just to make supp and others should go for kill.. So LMG should have 2 burst type for sure.. like rifle.. An auto shot with 5-6 bullet and full burst with crazy supp. LMG should be used against armored bigger opponents. They need to destroy walls and covers.. LMG carrier soldier should take aim penalty if he moves that turn. If you are not Arnold, you just can't run and shoot someone with LMG's.. 

Sniper: One of the coolest weapon we just can't use good enough at standard xcom games because the play ground is so messy to put someone somewhere long range and use it to shoot aliens at close areas. Sniper rifles should have special aimed shots. They need to ignore covers somehow.. So they should able to hit very heavy on an alien under a window. Even a full cover would have some weakness as the alien will try to look. So when they pop their head, sniper will hit it. We need to simulate this. 

Those ideas need some game mechanics to use. I hope we can have some of it to able to give special tasks to every weapon. Thx!

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Personally, I think the pistol is just a bad weapon to include. It is practically useless, as it should be against armored targets. Submachine guns with a like TU-cheap large burst of 9mm would be a lot better. An MP5 >>> M9. You at least get suppression, it makes a lot more sense, and you get a chance to either chip away at resistance or do some real damage at very close ranges.

 

I'm not sure what you're talking about with single shot on rifles - that's how they're supposed to be used. I would like a "full auto" style 6/8/10-round burst to be added that's hella inaccurate but lets them be the true all-rounders that makes them valuable (otherwise why not just give everyone snipers and shotguns?).

Edited by DNK
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The use case for pistols is when you need something that is lightweight, either as a backup or because you aren't expecting to need a firearm but want to hedge against that.

In a base attack, it would make sense for the science and engineering staff to have pistols. It makes sense for the snipers and heavy weapons carriers to carry them.

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IN Xeno 1, I would arm a scout with a pistol and a shield, and tip toe through the combat area. The pistol gave some but not a lot of fire power, as it was the shield that would make the encounter, less deadly.

Then you would bring in the fire teams to deal with the target?

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I oppose removing semi-automatic fire from rifles, the assault rifle concept was conceived as a medium between high power long range rifles who would either be too slow in close quarters, too big or to cumbersome to use in any automatic capacity, and submachineguns/machinepistols who could dominate close range but who's rounds often didn't have the power or accuracy to take on long range enemies.

the design focused on 3 main things, enough ballistic accuracy to place single shots at long range, controllable automatic capacity at short range and an ammunition type that could be carried in capacity and would be useful at both range types. this moved AR's to having at least a single shot and an automatic mode.

the single shot is intended to mimic marksmen rifles, hence it should be accurate...significantly more accurate then a burst. it is supposed to be the shot you use when the target is far off, you have a good firing position and you have time to aim. burst is actually a medium to prevent you from ending up with an empty mag in close range, even relatively slow firing AR's tend to have rates of fire around 600RPM (most fire significantly faster), meaning it will take 5 or less seconds to empty a magazine (on average 30 rounds) if spraying, and having to reload with enemies within spitting range is less then optimal.

problem in this game with rifles so far seems to be that people love spraying guns and the "balance suggestions" I keep hearing seem to keep ramping up the burst accuracy...just making the rifles semi-automatic modes pointless.

Pistols are mainly conceived out of convenience, a light self defense weapon with relatively short range. they never took a spot as the main weapon of war, but always a utility backup position like the dagger. pistols are light weight and can be manipulated in 1 hand. unlike machinepistols, they also tend to have a decent staying power in a fight as they tend not to be sprayed (read you don't have to reload instantly). they make good weapons for enforcement positions because it is often in close range and the idea is that you don't get into a shootout to begin with. as soon as they do expect actual resistance with firearms, enforcement usually opts for machinepistols, shotguns or AR subtypes.

in the game...other then having a hand free and low impact on ones carry capacity, they should not give major advantages. (note that MP's are usually best operated in 2 hands, because like full auto AR's they run out of ammo fast and to my knowledge no MP has been desighned in such a way you can reload the thing with only 1 hand (hollywood magic aside))

this game has controlled ammo consumption in the automatic modes provided, and turn based greatly mitigates to oh shit effect that a weapon "click" effect gives when you realize your mag is now empty.

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For those people unaware, there isn't a X1 hands system. You have a primary slot and a secondary slot. Certain items and weapon types fit in the primary slot, certain items and weapons types fit in the secondary slot. You can't put primary in secondary, or secondary in primary. A solider can have a rifle in the primary slot and a pistol in the secondary slot without compromising the use of either as both are immediately accessable without spending TU to switch or having to make any other adjustments. There are certain combinations of primary and secondary that can't be mixed - a solider cannot have a combat shield as primary and a sub-machinegun as secondary, but otherwise there is a reasonable amount of room to mix and match, especially as there is also a backpack to hold things in.

People should also be aware that again, unlike X1, weapons have a flat TU cost for firing in their various modes. The more TU a solider has, the more cost-efficient it becomes to focus on firing single shots at the maxmum accuracy permissable with a weapon that can fire one or several shots. However, the most cost effcient weapons are those that fire the most hots with the least TU useage. Coffee Potato i the v6.3 balance thread has a great video showcasing what happens when you have high-TU (80+) soliders all equipped with LMGs, and a 30TU cost to use those LMGs. You just throw so much crap at the wall a lot of it sticks. Those advocating for high-shot-per-TU weapons should be aware that doing that in the current build makes every other weapon pointless once soliders get beyond a certain point of development. 

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To me this is the old "game system balance" vs "realism" discussion. Do you want a system that is easily conveyed and functions with quickly learned rules or do you want a system that is harder to wrap your head around but orients more towards actual physics and tactics?

There is a reason that in real life assault rifles have a single shot mode and either full auto or burst (or both). As conductiv already said, single shot is for accurate, ammo saving fire when you are not under a lot of pressure, much alike how sniper rifles are usually portrayed. People who do/did not serve in the military or are not members of a gun club might not find this intuitive, but the truth is that with a standard issue assault rifle today you can easily hit targets 200m away every time. I was able to hit 500m static smaller-than-man targets with a not perfectly aligned G36 over 50% of the time. There rarely are scenarios where you need sharp shooters, which is why most military don't have them in their regular troops, because the range where ARs stop being effective is so long that it almost never occurs that you would need a more precise weapon.

At the same time, the urge to get yourself out of line of fire is so big that even ARs usually suppress really well at these distances with burst fire. The reason why LMGs are a thing in regular units is that a) they have much more ammunition at the cost of weight, setup time and support needs, so they can suppress for longer times when ARs need to pause for reload regularly and b) since suppressing the enemy more means you get suppressed less in return, making it easier for your riflemen to take accurate, single shots at the enemy, or use the uncontested space to get closer and flank. C) is also their usually higher caliber for better penetration and stopping power, should you need it. That said, LMGs are also fired in short, accurate bursts instead of just spraying bullets over a whole zip code (as @Coffee Potato would say), because some bullets flying really close past you are much more effective at getting you down on your belly than hundreds flying all over the place. Seasoned shooters with both weapon systems know that and use short bursts and single shot fire accordingly.

So, let's say you want to go for realism. That would mean that an AR should be really accurate if the shooter is stationary, shoots single rounds and is not under significant fire from the enemy, i.e. he can stick his head out for a second or two without getting shot. At the same time the AR could deliver reasonable suppression, especially when coupled with more bursts from the same or more soldier(s).

That does not mean Sniper Rifles are useless. They could be used for the occasional REALLY long shot and for cover penetration thanks to bigger caliber and specialized ammunition. Their downside would be that you could basically only fire them once a round at most. I do not have experience with Sniper Rifles, but the two snap shots do not strike me as likely being sensible. If you shoot that thing, you want to be sure to hit. Getting bullets in the general vicinity is other people's job.

The LMG is, in comparison to the AR, a rather stationary setup weapon also delivering short bursts with higher cover penetration and suppression that does not run out of ammo in a considerable time frame. We ditched the mag fed LMG pretty much at the second World War already, and the only time this comes up today is with an AR with slight modifications to make it more LMG-like (like with a bipod and a drum magazine).

As for pistols, they should have a niche role for the heavy weapons soldier's sidearms and maybe for frontline NCOs (with the latter needing their whole own system for that to make sense). They are used in a police context for being the minimal option for ranged lethal power projection while also having controlled, single shot fire and a quick drawing time, which is not really a factor if you already expect resistance and have your guns at the ready anway. That said the "sidearm" option also can be fulfilled by having the sniper/LMG gunner carry an additional AR, which is also how military often times do it.

Now, after that wall of text, I'd find it much more interesting if you left all the options to all the applicable weapons. There are Marksman Rifles with burst options, a skilled LMG gunner can squeeze out single shots or the weapon directly supports it. At the same time, a rookie with an AR will often times auto fire and burn through his ammo fast needlessly. That is also why the M16 introduced burst mode as a replacement for auto fire, because with triplets you tend to hit and suppress rather well while somewhat limiting your ammo consumption. It would be cool if you would just order your people to shoot single or burst fire, with their experience and stress determining how well they are able to aim for the single shot and how many bullets they send downrange for the burst. More aim and more bullets would consume more time units, obviously...

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Pistols mostly exist because of the possibility of primary weapon malfunction, reload times and as a personal defense backup for scoped or heavy weapons. They could be made useful by introducing the possibility of malfunctions on primary weapons. Also firing a scoped weapon at close range should have an accuracy penalty (really it should be TU but that could be hard to implement) at close range targets, making switching to pistols a better option.

Single aimed shots for rifles should stay. It's useful if a soldier needs to conserve ammo or doesn't want to accidently hit/suppress a friendly close to the line of fire. 

It'd be interesting if for some weapons they added an alternate attack type, like the ability to launch a grenade from an underslung grenade launcher on an assault rifle, or maybe use an attached bayonette or the rifle butt if a hostile got into melee range.

 

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On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 9:16 PM, drages said:

 John Wick kills mostly with pistol.. 

He is a fictional character. In movies you also have gun-kata, should we implement that?

Pistol are backup weapons in RL. SMG and shotgun offer more firewepower or greater RoF and more ammo, so there's a reason SWAT and Special Forces use them. About the only thing you are right about it that the pistol should be very accurate at short range and easy to bring about.

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4 hours ago, TrashMan said:

He is a fictional character. In movies you also have gun-kata, should we implement that?

Pistol are backup weapons in RL. SMG and shotgun offer more firewepower or greater RoF and more ammo, so there's a reason SWAT and Special Forces use them. About the only thing you are right about it that the pistol should be very accurate at short range and easy to bring about.

I doubt it can be implemented, but XCOM Files made a special Quickdraw slot for small items and pistols that took either almost none or no TUs to use.

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I would agree with Dagar this is a game system balance vs realism situation. On the spectrum from arcade to Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13, X2 occupies a middle ground where the "real-world" equipment that people most understand is replaced with science fiction. There is, I feel, a danger that discussion will linger on bottom-tier equipment and that discussion is lead not on railguns and lasers, but chemical-propellant weapons that in theory should be replaced by said railguns and lasers.

 

I believe it would be better rather than trying to translate real-world weapon systems into a game which does not simulate the real world to think instead in terms of easily graspable archetypes which can be ported across different tech trees, and have a game-world niche that they fill without being the obvious choice every time. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

My opinion on Weapons in this game:

Pistols: Backup weapon or if you only have 1 hand to work with. [fast, good accuracy at short ranges, good reaction shots]

Machine Pistols: Prinary weapon when you only have one hand free. (eg shield) [sligtly worse stats reaction and accuracy wise than pistols but with burst and full auto capability]

Sub Machine Guns and CCQ Carbines: Used for agile maneuvering, quick movement, good firepower over short ranges.

(Assault) Rifles: Good accuracy and damage over all ranges. no reaction shots except set on overwatch

Marksman Rifles: Good accuracy at medium and long ranges. bad accuracy at close ranges. only overwatch reaction shots.

LMG: good suppressive capabilities. accurate when deployed (shooting over barrier or prone) spray and pray when fired from the hip.

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