On Machine Guns

[StellarRat]

@rat I like the short range / super long reload time, but I'm unsure about it being more TUs than a rifle. Given that units have to move more to use a shotgun / might need the reaction time it makes gameplay sense to keep it lower. Practically speaking each shot would take longer, but it seems that initial one might be a bit easier to get off?

Having fired both shotguns and rifle I can assure that they both take about the same amount of time for a single snap shot. Using slugs you have aim just as carefully as you would with a rifle. You might spend a faction of a second less time aiming the shotgun with buckshot since the range would normally be much closer. However, recovering from the recoil of a 12 gauge and working the slide to load the next shell takes more time than getting the next round off with an M-16 (self-loading.) To make the shotgun operate sigificantly faster than a rifle would require semi-auto shotgun AND a sawed off barrel. With that setup you could basically just point and fire, however, the effective range would be very limited probably less than 20 yards. For room clearing only it might be a good choice. Edited February 28, 2013 by StellarRat

[TrashMan]

Solution - Shotties cost less TU's to fire, but require you to work the slide (costs TU) to load the next shell (different than re-loading).

[GizmoGomez]

To be honest, that'd make me pretty annoyed. Not because of any balance issues, but because of the "Are you freaking kidding me?" factor. It'd be like pushing the gas, and turning the wheel being two different actions when driving the hunter. Or something. (Pretty sure it was a joke, but still)

Anyway,

We've already established that realism takes second place to gameplay, so if it works better for the shotgun to inexplicably have less TUs to fire, I'm all for it. Besides, I like shotguns.

If you think about it, shotguns are somewhat easier to aim, based on my limited experience. An M16 has that little aperture sight, and it's somewhat annoying to line that up for a quick shot, so a shotgun having a faster time to squeeze off a shot makes sense, at least to me.

[Gauddlike]

Good find. I did not remember this from the suppression thread.

I only had a vague recollection that was triggered by your post.

Still took a bit of locating.

I posted up an idea that might help make balancing easier with (hopefully) not an insurmountable addition to the coders workload here.

It doesn't specifically address some of the mentioned problems with the shotgun though.

For that I would hope the new UI could be made to support multiple ammo types for all weapons.

People could then add slug, shot, flechettes, dragon breath rounds, or whatever else they could come up with to make the weapons more interesting.

[GizmoGomez]

That'd be great, and not only for shotguns. There could be a "flashlight" round for weapons, so you could shoot across the map and light it up, kind of like incendiary rounds worked in the OG. There could also be incendiary rounds in this, but the flashlight (or perhaps "flare" rounds actually) would just light up the area, like flares.

By the way, kind of off topic, how do you get flares? Am I just stupid, or do you need to research them or something?

[Gauddlike]

Flares should be default equipment that appears in your pack on any night mission.

They should also vanish after the mission is over, whether they are used or not.

Incidentally I did mod the ferret a while back so it had a secondary weapon that could be used to launch smoke grenades or flares.

That seemed to work quite well (except smoke grenades were non-functioning back then).

It gave another role to vehicle as well.

[GizmoGomez]

That's really, REALLY nice. I always hated needing to manually equip everyone in UFO:EU, but the flares took it over the top sometimes. This system is much better.

About the flare gun idea, it'd be more useful than regular flares in that you can use your accuracy and such for guns, and not for throwing. Or however it's calculated.