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Accurate representations of real world military equipment


shabowie

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The pistol in game looks like the m9 its magazine capacity should be 15, not 12.

The sniper rifle looks like some kind of HK rifle, of the G3 family, magazine capacity should probably be 20.

The machine gun looks like an m240 or one of its predecessors, 50 rounds in a belt is very low. 100 or 200 would be better.

I hope that real world equipment will have real world values. Thanks.

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I wish more games were made with THIS philosophy. Realism doesnt always equal more fun.

In the event that realism was killing gameplay I'd agree. When its just a pistol holding 3 less rounds than it really does for no apparent reason it's just silly and just makes it harder to get into the game for me personally. In this case it actually looks like the pistol has 12 rounds because the pistol in xcom has 12 rounds, which is silly.

Edited by shabowie
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shadowbie, I beg to differ. What if it was the Marakov graphic (which is in the game asset folders) instead of the current graphic? Does that mean the magazine should be reduced to 8? Or 10? 12 is also an option - which one should the Marakov graphic have? The most common in real life in the era of the game? (8-shot) or one that suits the game? (12-shot) What about the other stats for the pistol? Shouldn't the pistol be far more deadly to humans than it is at the moment? What does that mean verses aliens, because aliens are going to be much more resilient than humans.

Let's go from your example of the pistol to your example of the machine-gun. If you give a single belt 100 rounds, then you effectively give a machine gun operator unlimited ammunition. At the moment, the machine-gun fires five shots per burst. With a 50 round belt, that's 10 bursts, which goes up to 20 bursts at 100. With 7-11 other troopers in the team to start with, exactly how many bursts is a machine gun operator going to fire? Add more shots per burst? Make bursts cheaper? I've experimented with that. As have others.

Can you see from these examples why real life should provide inspiration, but not direction?

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If you give a single belt 100 rounds, then you effectively give a machine gun operator unlimited ammunition. ... Can you see from these examples why real life should provide inspiration, but not direction?

In matters like these, real life should provide inspiration and direction.

If a machine gun belt holds 100 rounds, that's what it holds.

If that seems to unbalance the game, splash some cold water on your face and try to figure out where you went wrong and got it unbalanced, not where reality went wrong, because it didn't.

What is the in-universe explanation for it to be reduced to 10 rounds? Is that overweight dude in the supply deciding "Damn jocks, if I give them 100-round belts, they won't even have to reload! No, bully jerks, now is my ti-i-ime... Eat this, see you fight aliens with a 10-round belt, ha-ha!"

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If that seems to unbalance the game, splash some cold water on your face and try to figure out where you went wrong and got it unbalanced, not where reality went wrong, because it didn't.

Wait who balanced reality? or these particular real weapons compared to each other in a setting that uses ONLY these weapons? and with what intent? and is that balance applicable to a game that does not actually simulate reality and throws off formentioned balance through so many other means already?

I am soo confused about your statement HWP in soooo maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany many ways.

Furthermore I'll go with Erutan's answer. It's not the Xenonaut quartermaster that decides the mag sizes its the alternate reality manufacturers that never made the realistic mag sizes in the fist place.

Edited by Gorlom
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Wait who balanced reality? or real weapons compared to each other? and with what intent?

Natural selection.

Species that thrive today do so because they are very good at what they do, at fitting in their biological niche.

Weapons that are widespread today are widespread because they are very good at their role.

Species and weapons that are not very good at filling their niche go into obsolescence and extinction.

Machine guns are used because they can continuously deliver a significant volume of fire downrange. In-game they have a lower effective rate of fire than assault rifles. So they aren't even portrayed as machine guns, except in name.

and is that balance applicable to a game that does not actually simulate reality

It's a reason to fix offending elements and improve the accuracy of simulation.

Xenonauts.com says "Strategic Planetary Defense Simulator" in the top left corner.

Even though obviously tongue-in-cheek, it does reflect some of the principal strategic design choices of the game.

Multiple bases, armed civilians, alien invasion progressing on its own, rather than depending on your actions. Wouldn't basing it on your actions make for a more balanced gameplay? Of course it would! But it doesn't, and that was a design choice. So if the tactical part isn't up to the same standards, it's a reason to fix it.

And we all know precisely what needs to be fixed. There is but one operand lacking: P_hit(object)=P_hit(tile)*object.tile_occupied_fraction instead of P_hit(object)=P_hit(tile).

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Natural selection.

Species that thrive today do so because they are very good at what they do, at fitting in their biological niche.

Weapons that are widespread today are widespread because they are very good at their role.

Species and weapons that are not very good at filling their niche go into obsolescence and extinction.

Machine guns are used because they can continuously deliver a significant volume of fire downrange. In-game they have a lower effective rate of fire than assault rifles. So they aren't even portrayed as machine guns, except in name.

Pardon me but aren't you saying here that guns should adhere to a niche that does not exist in the game? wouldn't "natural selection" for guns mean that they do NOT infact simulate reality if, like you mention, their particular "real" niches does not exist ingame? Concidering all things the nices in this game is severely broadened and sometimes entirely redone compared to reality. So by your reasoning about natural selection the developer would HAVE to redesign the weapons so that they do not reflect reality... wouldn't they?

It's a reason to fix offending elements and improve the accuracy of simulation.

Xenonauts.com says "Strategic Planetary Defense Simulator" in the top left corner.

Even though obviously tongue-in-cheek, it does reflect some of the principal strategic design choices of the game.

It is a simulator of unrealistic scenarios, of someones imagination... if it was a simulator of something existing in real life I would argue that it should adhere to realism. But since it breaks that criteria already (and in so many ways) I find it silly to argue about the phrasing "simulator". The team ovbiously never meant that it would be a reaslistic representation down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

Multiple bases, armed civilians, alien invasion progressing on its own, rather than depending on your actions. Wouldn't basing it on your actions make for a more balanced gameplay? Of course it would! But it doesn't, and that was a design choice. So if the tactical part isn't up to the same standards, it's a reason to fix it.

Depends a bit by what you consider to be balance I guess? If the enemys progress was based on your action it would be more predictable and in the long run I'd expect it to feel rather cheap, unintelligent and not very fun. I'd personally consider that not properly balanced gameplay.

And I don't get what you mean by the comparison. "So if the tactical part isn't up to the same standards, it's a reason to fix it." Considering the argument about design choices right before this sentance this sounds like an argument that advocates free (unrestricted by reality) design choices that suits the developers will/vision, rather than what I thought you wanted. :confused:

Edited by Gorlom
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Pardon me but aren't you saying here that guns should adhere to a niche that does not exist in the game?

You mean the game does not involve killing hostile opponents?

Or that it doesn't have a niche for weapons that can deliver a large volume of fire?

It is a simulator of unrealistic scenarios, of someones imagination...

It seems to take place in what is, for the most part, our reality, with the explicit change being the addition of aliens.

The backstory never said that automatic weapons have never been invented in this universe. Or that the term "machine guns" in this universe refers to semi-automatics.

If the enemys progress was based on your action it would be more predictable and in the long run I'd expect it to feel rather cheap, unintelligent and not very fun. I'd personally consider that not properly balanced gameplay.

Now you understand how people feel about weapons being made ridiculous (short burst only MGs) just because they are good, rather than the flaws in hit calculation model that make them unbalanced being fixed.

The real life does not have unbalanced infantry weapons. If one weapon was so much better than all others, it would be the only one ever used (and no, nuclear doesn't count). If an attempt at accurate representation of one in game appears to make it unbalanced, it simply means the representation is not accurate. And we know exactly where the problem is.

Fixing the problem at its source is like patching a hole in the roof; assigning arbitrary stats to every weapon is like bringing more rags to where water is dripping from the ceiling. If the problem can't be fixed, too bad, but let's face it, not pretend there isn't any and wave pools on the floor away with "oh it's fiction anyway".

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shadowbie, I beg to differ. What if it was the Marakov graphic (which is in the game asset folders) instead of the current graphic?

In that case I would wonder why an elite international military organization wasn't using a better pistol for the era. The beretta 9mm makes sense as being the sidearm, but I don't think the M9 pistol existed in 1979 yet either (some references in some of the research pages to it) but rather early models of the Beretta 92.

Edited by shabowie
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You mean the game does not involve killing hostile opponents?

Or that it doesn't have a niche for weapons that can deliver a large volume of fire?

Sorrry, there seems to be some sort of misscommunication. I was not talking about the niche of firearms, I was talking about the niches for the individual weapon models to be designed/represented ingame exactly as they are in real life. Since there are less weapons in the game there are obviously also less niches in the game. As such the "real life weapons are perfefct the way they are" does not apply to the game as the game has changed the rules by excluding similar weapons and their niches. Weapons has to fill a wider niche that does not exist in real life (because it is made up out of more narrower niches). As such I argue that the developer can design his ingame weapon representations with a bit of leeway. If they find it to be more fun.

versimilitude =/= automatic fun. You can argue that you find it more fun, but since I don't you cant argue that it is for everyone.

It seems to take place in what is, for the most part, our reality, with the explicit change being the addition of aliens.

And how earth chooses to respond to the aliens by funding a private military organization (not really the realistic choice is it?)

The backstory never said that automatic weapons have never been invented in this universe. Or that the term "machine guns" in this universe refers to semi-automatics.

Doesn't mean they weren't. There may be unmentioned or vague changes that are not detailed. But never mind that I'm going to stop pursuing this particular line of argumentation. I'll conceed on the point of "simulation" as it is clear our views on that are divided and firmly cemented. :)
Now you understand how people feel about weapons being made ridiculous (short burst only MGs) just because they are good, rather than the flaws in hit calculation model that make them unbalanced being fixed.

Please don't put words in my mouth as I have no idea what you just went on about. That has nothing to do with the magazine sizes? o.0 I can't even follow that paragraph meaning...

The real life does not have unbalanced infantry weapons. If one weapon was so much better than all others, it would be the only one ever used (and no, nuclear doesn't count). If an attempt at accurate representation of one in game appears to make it unbalanced, it simply means the representation is not accurate. And we know exactly where the problem is.
You know this game does not have weather simulation right? so it doesn't have to account for how easy the weapon is to clean or if it rusts etc. (There are a lot of other factors that doesn't come into play. Not every standard in the industry is the superior item quality wise. Better PR, cheaper or easier to massproduce could land the inferior item as the industry standard. but that's not important... damnit why do I keep typing this out I dont want to pull the discussion in that direction) As I was trying to say this simulation does not accurately depict every aspect of handeling the weapon. it never will because of design choices (like making it turnbased) because it wouldn't be all that fun.

Trying to force some aspects to mirror real life because of some notion that real life has the same boundries as this game and that it would automatically be the most fun is simply a concept I can't wrap my head around.

Fixing the problem at its source is like patching a hole in the roof; assigning arbitrary stats to every weapon is like bringing more rags to where water is dripping from the ceiling. If the problem can't be fixed, too bad, but let's face it, not pretend there isn't any and wave pools on the floor away with "oh it's fiction anyway".

Where you see a fix I see another hole. Versimilitude doesn't automatically make it the most fun. And your notion that firearms are somehow balanced in real life as if real life was a game is mindboggeling to me.

Edited by Gorlom
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If you want somthing thats just like real life, then why play games?

My weapon takes 30 rounds in real life but we load 28 or 29 as it prevents stoppages due to a fault in the weapon. <-use this image when playing if it helps

The mag size is ballanced to game mechanics not reality. I would hate to walk into a game that was just like real life.

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Main question is "for what?". You can increase magazine size(or even make it infinity) if you think it make gameplay more intresting and to discuss such aspects(or you can make it by mod) is viable and this is what is beta will be about. If you want to change something just because artist draw some weapons looks like some real guns and this real guns have different magazine size - it is not have any sense, it will be still as much " inaccurate representations of real world military equipment" as it was before no matter how much ammo it will content. Visual style of both x-coms is much better separate such "weight of m16 without magazine is 2.81kg but you make it 2.95" guys but this is just about visual style

If you looking for game pretending to be "realistic" in such aspects - you choose wrong game. this is mostly about plasma blasters

Autocannon has 14 rounds, is it was not properly reproduced?

look at JA2.

This is not JA - look at x-com

In x-com every bullet is matter

Again - you can allways change two numbers in xml, and got your proper machineguns

I'm not against is at all, if it make game more intresting - why not, change it and look how it work.

I'm aganist reason why you think it must to be this way

Edited by zzz1010
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I have to agree with HWP here.

If other games can portray weapons properly, then so can Xenonauts. Machineguns aren't the end-all weapon in RL and there are reasons for that have to be properly reproduced in the game too.

Just 5 bullets in a burts seems silly..look at JA2. You have machinguns with 200-250 rounds and the game works.

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Weapons has to fill a wider niche that does not exist in real life (because it is made up out of more narrower niches).

Yes. That's why they might be better designed for that niche.

But worse? That doesn't fit. And yes, a MG modded to fire proper long bursts becomes better in the game.

Doesn't mean they weren't. There may be unmentioned or vague changes that are not detailed.

A universe where fully automatic weapons don't exist would have to be quite different from ours. It would mean either a greatly reduced level militarization, such that there would be no Cold War, or a much lower level of mechanical technology, such that Xenonauts would probably be deploying from airships (why airships? No reason, just a staple of alternate universes).

Again - you can allways change two numbers in xml, and got your proper machineguns

I'm not against is at all, if it make game more intresting - why not, change it and look how it work.

It doesn't work because the game's hit determination model is broken.

Specifically that model - at least as of the last version - assumes that every bullet flying through a tile has 100% chance to hit any object located in that tile. Therefore a weapon that fires 15 rounds in a burst would, with this broken model, be ridiculously "accurate" by exclusion. It has been discussed before.

Why wasn't it fixed? I don't know, maybe it's technically difficult or even impossible. If so, too bad. But that doesn't make it "a better gameplay choice", just makes it a broken mechanic plugged by a band-aid.

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In that case I would wonder why an elite international military organization wasn't using a better pistol for the era. The beretta 9mm makes sense as being the sidearm, but I don't think the M9 pistol existed in 1979 yet either (some references in some of the research pages to it) but rather early models of the Beretta 92.
Actually, I think they should carry a machine pistol. Why bother with anything else? I've modded one into my game. It's very easy. You just give it a three round burst fire line in the XML.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_VP70

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I have to agree with HWP here.

If other games can portray weapons properly, then so can Xenonauts. Machineguns aren't the end-all weapon in RL and there are reasons for that have to be properly reproduced in the game too.

Just 5 bullets in a burts seems silly..look at JA2. You have machinguns with 200-250 rounds and the game works.

No one fires 250 bursts in real life. That's a fiction from the movies. Your barrel will overheat and then your weapon will jam plus it's diffcult to aim accurately for more than a few rounds. A trained machinegunner will fire 3 - 10 round bursts.
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Actually, I think they should carry a machine pistol. Why bother with anything else? I've modded one into my game. It's very easy. You just give it a three round burst fire line in the XML.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_VP70

Actually making the sidearm the VP70 would be really cool. That what people in the late 70s and early 80s thought a pistol from the future would look like. They even used them as the colonial marine corps sidearm in Aliens.

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This is definitely something that ought to be left to mods. I don't give a hoot if the weapons conform to reality, and I'd much rather the developers spent their time working on bugs and polish rather than something maybe 5% will even notice, much less care about. Heck, even the "realistic" modern shooters place gameplay above reality when it comes to tuning the weapons.

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HWP, having read your response to my post, I can only conclude that you skimmed the bits you wanted and discarded the rest. Or you wouldn't have written things like:

What is the in-universe explanation for it to be reduced to 10 rounds?
When I wrote 10 bursts (emphasis added).

So take a moment....

CMMN_zpse25e11df.png

JTTNS_zps047920ad.png

...back to before you "read" my post. Now, take another look through it, where I talk about how at the moment the MG fires a five-round burst. I presented the case for a relatively low belt size if the operator were ever expected to have to reload in a mission. If the operator isn't expected to reload in-mission, then hey, why not?

The actual graphic of the MG is of an FN MAG, of which there seem to be conflicting views on how much ammo there is per belt (wikipedia says 50, Gun wiki says both 220 and 100, Modern Firearms says "steel belts of various lengths").

But there's too much focus on "ammo on the MG". This is an example. Of which I gave 2. What's your view on the Makarov example, HWP? If the graphic is of a Makarov, then it should be an 8-round weapon, yeah? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, right? And all the weights of all the weapons are so wrong. They all have to be redone. And the effective ranges need to be changed up. The amount of damage each ballistic weapon is wrong as well. Shouldn't a pistol stand a much better chance of killing a human than it does right now? Perhaps I should reduce the HP of a human. Wait... am I now modelling the game around the weapons?

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The amount of damage each ballistic weapon is wrong as well. Perhaps I should reduce the HP of a human.

To completely mess all out, we need to begin discuss what is "damage" of ballistic weapon in real life is(and amount of it in comparsion with plasma weapon), and how much HP real human( and surely real alien) have in reality.

Edited by zzz1010
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shabowie

Point_zps24cce6da.png

The point is not "why don't the Xenonauts use a 'better' weapon". The point I'm trying (and obviously failing) to make is if the graphic were changed from the current graphic to another one (say Chris falls madly in love with a russian girl who father is a hardline communist, and to impress her and him, he makes all the Xenonaut weapons Soviet weapons) then the stats would have to be altered (in the example case, magazine size) to fit if the most important criteria for weapons was they must be modelled as closely as possible on the real-life version of the graphic. If a graphic of a Makarov is all you have then the modelling will be of a Makarov, which will be all you get!

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If a graphic of a Makarov is all you have then the modelling will be of a Makarov, which will be all you get!/QUOTE]

I think that reads wrong (at least to me). If an image of the Makarov is all you have, then the modelling won't be of a Makarov, which is what you said in the bit above.

I feel that there's a balance to be reached in this. The weapons fit into roles. The roles are fairly well defined. They are broadly realistic within those roles and definitions (the shotgun doesn't nuke the building for example). Beyond this, and we're into game balance v realism v enjoyment. After a certain point beyond that discussion it does become gunfondling, and left to mods while resource is better spent elsewhere. At the other extreme, the camp looking for the guns to shoot stealth unicorns don't ever seem to be represented for some reason.

(say Chris falls madly in love with a russian girl who father is a hardline communist, and to impress her and him, he makes all the Xenonaut weapons Soviet weapons) If a graphic of a Makarov is all you have then the modelling will be of a Makarov, which will be all you get!

Stay away from those Russian Bride ads Chris! Especially after that long week you've just had.

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