Making firearms scale without just making "cooler" guns do more damage?

[deuxhero]

The market idea has potential.

 

[spectre]

Enemy weapons blowing up always rubs me the wrong way. I figure, the whole point of designing an encounter with enemies wielding cool trinkets is that the player gets that "hey cuntnugget, that's MINE!" moment. Take that away and you get this feeling of being cheated.
NuSEXCUM felt particularly ham-fisted, imo, because they could at least try and justify it by differences in anatomy, make it so that the weapon needs to be modified for human hands, and even then the ergonomics is just off so we're better off just building it from scratch.

Sure, denying technology for the enemy to study is a thing, but nobody would do that for small arms. Heavy equipment, entire machines of war could self-destruct, but that doesn't make a lot of sense for pistols and rifles.

In reality a 100 year old Colt 1911 will still disable most targets you hit with one shot. If you want to have weapon progression then just abandon realism and have higher tier guns be better "just because". If you don't want to increase damage then accuracy and rate of fire are good candidates.

Games tend to have problems when modeling firearms, because as you say, quite often one shot is enough which is not very gamey, and if it all boils down to who gets the drop on who, why have weapon progression at all.

The colt could be a nice case study. I think it depends on where do we put the 1911 on the progression scale.
If we start the progression with a flintlock pistol, the 1911 will be miles ahead when it comes to stuff like rate of fire, magazine capacity and reliability. In this case, there is clear progression.

This might get a little fuzzy when we're comparing the 1911 to a revolver. The difference in ammunition won't be as big, so the selling point for the 1911 would be the slightly higher capacity, 7+1, and the quicker reload. There's also the difference in weight, unloaded 1911 is slightly above 1 kg, a colt walker would be almost two times that. What's the saving grace of a revolver then? I'd say ease of use and maintenance as well as reliability. You get a misfire, no biggie.

Now, if we compare the 1911 to glock 17, there is a noticeable difference in weight, ammo capacity, recoil, but does that make the 1911 obsolete? Sure, the glock might be favored by police and security officers, but there will be people who still want to shoot a .45 bullet because of different reasons. This is where modernized versions of the 1911 come in with double stack magazines, recoil compensators, rail attachments, etc.

What I'm saying is, there's plenty of potential parameters for a player to decide if a gun "better". I think it's quite fair not to focus on damage too much for a change. I definitely wouldn't ignore stuff weight, ammo capacity and handling.

 

[Galdred]

Enemy weapons blowing up always rubs me the wrong way. I figure, the whole point of designing an encounter with enemies wielding cool trinkets is that the player gets that "hey cuntnugget, that's MINE!" moment. Take that away and you get this feeling of being cheated.
NuSEXCUM felt particularly ham-fisted, imo, because they could at least try and justify it by differences in anatomy, make it so that the weapon needs to be modified for human hands, and even then the ergonomics is just off so we're better off just building it from scratch.

Sure, denying technology for the enemy to study is a thing, but nobody would do that for small arms. Heavy equipment, entire machines of war could self-destruct, but that doesn't make a lot of sense for pistols and rifles.

Indeed, it felt that way in nuXCOM, however, having weapons that are retina/digitally locked to their user would make sense in a not too futuristic settings with some form of gun control.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, I think I took the most offence with the blowing up part. I mean, if every alien grunt is running around with a bomb in their hands how do they prevent accidents at work (silly me, it's obviously alien magic-tech)? Those mutons weren't particularly bright.
And if they were, how about using it offensively. Run out of ammo? Throw that gun at the enemy and make it explode. It feels like we're having a canful of worms here.

I agree, fingerprint protection isn't outside the realm of possibility, though from what I read, it's yet to become a thing with gun users because its expensive and unreliable (as in, you can rely on the gun because the recognition rate isn't 100%
and people who get into life or death situations aren't prepared to take that chance). Still, it can be done with todaytech and could work very nicely as a standard thing in cyberpunk settings (with the cherry on top option to hack those safeguards in mid-combat).
I would still see it as a way to prevent the use of a weapon in the same encounter, immediately after its picked up, but not for denying the player the weapon entirely. I think such an approach is fair to the player.
Though I am wondering about the purpose of such form of gun control from a gameplay and worldbuilding perspective. If the player characters have guns of their own, they can still get the ammo (unless the ammo is different, or the locked gun is just overall better). It would be most meaningful when the player characters do not have guns of their own and you want to make them work for it, like in some kind of a prison, or a caste system where only a few can carry weapons.

For reference, the way it was done in jagged alliance 2 was like so - rocket rifles were fingerprinted and bound to a specific user, so when you pick it up and try to fire, you get a beep, error.
You could get your hands on "clean" weapons from a supply depot, or haul your ass to one of the repairmen to bypass the lock.
So, you jump a few hoops, and there's your endgame weapon; although the mini-rockets did not render conventional weapons obsolete. While the punch was there (two hits and almost any guy goes down) there were issues with ammo availability,
rate of fire and attachments, so sometimes you would still want a regular boomstick for sniping, suppression and CQB.

 

[Tacgnol]

Problem with STALKER was the main thing separating weapons is what accessories/upgrades they could take (limits which rarely had basis in reality), and guns otherwise felt very samey.

That's really not true in mid-late game play. The penetration factor on ammo makes a massive difference when fighting armoured enemies.

There is a very noticeable difference between 9x39mm, 5.45 and 5.56 guns in most stalker games. Not just in damage, but also velocity and bullet drop.

What might be a fairer point is that there is rarely a massive difference between guns of the same calibre, but that varies heavily.

 

[deuxhero]

I was referring to within the same caliber.

 

[DraQ]

Enemy weapons blowing up always rubs me the wrong way. I figure, the whole point of designing an encounter with enemies wielding cool trinkets is that the player gets that "hey cuntnugget, that's MINE!" moment. Take that away and you get this feeling of being cheated.

That mostly stems from gamedevs being unable to provide meaningful progression, or actually meaningful differences between items without making better items faceroll tools.

What might be a fairer point is that there is rarely a massive difference between guns of the same calibre, but that varies heavily.

But why should there be one? They are tools optimized for the same purpose and sharing the most crucial parameters in the form of using the same cartridge.
They are still different enough to allow for individual favourites.

Anyway, scaling is mostly cancer. There is some room for having more and less advanced gear, but just having a linear progression is boring and opens up a whole bunch of different cans of worms, the contents of which then proceed to eat the entire mechanics.

Instead, it's best to look at how firearms can differ from each other:

• Mass (can be a biggish deal with stringent inventory limitations, but can also help with recoil management)
• Ammo mass
  
• Cost (how much do you have to pay for this gun? what else could you have instead? How bad would it be to lose it? How much unwanted attention do you attract?)
• Ammo cost (how much does it cost to shoot this gun?)
• Ammo availability
  
• Capacity
• Rate of fire (per firing mode!)
• Reliability
• Durability
• Maintenance cost
  
• Accuracy (also per firing mode!)
• Exit velocity (affects flatness, time to target and terminal ballistics)
• Ammo specifics (terminal ballistics, loss of velocity and accuracy due to air resistance and wind, etc.)
  
• Perceived recoil (mostly affected by muzzle velocity, bullet mass and rate of fire, but also by layout, ergonomy, mass and various recoil mitigation features, details of firing mechanism - for example famous reliability of kalashnikovs is partly paid for by shake caused by bolt group slamming about with a lot of force)
• Handling (how fast and easily can you move weapon around, may include sub-attributes like total length)
• Reload speed
• Stability (for example bullpups tend to fare worse here)
• Thermals (how fast the weapon will overheat, firing while hot affects reliability, wear, accuracy, etc.)
• Aiming ergonomy (how much sighting down affects your perception of what happens around in your peripheral vision and of what the target is doing)
• Attachments
• Noise and flash
  
• Firing modes (for example AN-94 has very rapid dual burst mode that hits the same spot twice and would make the damage double for armour penetration purposes, some weapons might allow short burst without recoil until after the burst, etc.)
• Other quirks

Even for very similar firearms small differences in multiple categories can result in very distinct feeling weapons.

 

[laclongquan]

Set the critter abilities extreme high and so its weapons are the thing that limit its capability.

Take JA2 for example. If you set enemies level and abilities high, their crappy mini 14 is the thing that differentiate strongly with their better troopers using FAL.

If you are worried about too much loot, set the resell price = 10% of mint weapon, maximum. AND price fluctuate (too much goods and it fall down, events happen to reduce stock).

Set weapon weight correctly also is another factor to differentiate tier. Why do people this day use 556 instead of 762 or 303 of old? Because you can carry more 5.56 and shoot more, while the freaking 7.62 or .303 is freaking heavy and you run out of bullets after a few burst. And god help the machinegun. Hours to carry ammo, ten minutes to set up the box, 10 second of full rock and roll... and you are out of ammo.

 

[SniperHF]

Tie it to faction reputation. Only enough street cred should make the top of the line arms dealers give you the time of day.

So similar to the PB/Gothic armor system, but for weapons.

I think that's easier to handle for armor, I could see a game that's not heavily focused on combat pulling it off though.

 

[Tacgnol]

But why should there be one? They are tools optimized for the same purpose and sharing the most crucial parameters in the form of using the same cartridge.
They are still different enough to allow for individual favourites.

I agree, and I tend to get annoyed when a gun of the same calibre and barrel length mysteriously has 10% extra damage in games.

I tend to think firearm progression should primarily be based on ammo calibres. This also works well with keeping lower tier weapons useful, as you can make high end calibres rarer depending on the setting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Instead of "better gun = more damage" just make different guns serve different purposes and avoid upscaling of HP and damage to ridiculous levels, because HP bloat is the worst way of dealing with character and difficulty progression.

Depending on what kind of setting your game is in, there can be different tech levels for guns.

Muzzle loaders load very slowly but have higher accuracy and range than breech loaders, for example, if you wanna go for a late 19th century tech.
Muzzle loading pistols have higher stopping power but revolvers have a much larger magazine.

With modern tech level, you can have attachments for guns, like silencers for the sneaky characters, larger magazines (you could get drum magazines for your SMG for example), etc.
Different guns have different magazine sizes, use different bullet calibres (bullet calibre should be the main feature determining damage), have different firing speeds and firing modes, different accuracy and range, different recoil, etc etc.

So a better gun just may have a more stable grip, less recoil, higher accuracy and range, etc, rather than doing more damage.

 

[JarlFrank]

But why should there be one? They are tools optimized for the same purpose and sharing the most crucial parameters in the form of using the same cartridge.
They are still different enough to allow for individual favourites.

I agree, and I tend to get annoyed when a gun of the same calibre and barrel length mysteriously has 10% extra damage in games.

I tend to think firearm progression should primarily be based on ammo calibres. This also works well with keeping lower tier weapons useful, as you can make high end calibres rarer depending on the setting.

You can also just make higher calibre ammo rarer so you can't just waste it in every encounter.

 

[Wunderbar]

So a better gun just may have a more stable grip, less recoil, higher accuracy and range, etc, rather than doing more damage.

problem is, most of these stats aren't all that important in a videogame. Stable grip and less recoil - something you can live with (assuming it's an action-rpg). Low range - just move closer, maps are usually small anyway (unless you're playing arma or something).
In the end it all boils down to damage.

 

[spectre]

I would agree that if the maps are confined to 100x100 meters, a good chunk of the gunplay and tactics immediately go out of the window. Obviously, a lot of this won't be possible in a very simplified game model, say NUSEXCUM or Fallout 2.
Still, a small play area still lets you focus on CQB, with battle outcomes being decided by miliseconds and preparation (and there's plenty of places to draw inspiration from: Door Kickers, Rainbow Six, etc.).
If you're shooting up an office space, for instance, there's good fun to be had by shooting through walls and, for example, bullet penetration through various materials can become an important factor.

I disagree that you cannot model different stats in a satisfatory manner. Look for an FPS that actually models various gun characteristics, say Escape from Tarkov.
All this can be translated into twitch gameplay by affecting bullet spread pattern when shooting semi or full auto, the time required for the aiming reticle to stabilize, the speed of the gun moving around on the screen, all this can be tied to the different weapon stats.

For turn based combat, this can still be modeled by stuff like action points, Jagged Alliance 1.13 did that with various AP costs for reload (and not just replacing the magazine but also chambering the round for pump action and bolt-action guns), raising the gun, aiming the gun, difference in accuracy in various situations (snap shot, aimed shot, short burst, full auto). It's only a matter of how gun-oriented is the game supposed to be. A lot of the nuance might be lost on "normal" folk.

 

[JarlFrank]

Still, a small play area still lets you focus on CQB, with battle outcomes being decided by miliseconds and preparation (and there's plenty of places to draw inspiration from: Door Kickers, Rainbow Six, etc.).

7.62 High Calibre is such a great example for this. It's also one of the few RTwP system that actually works, rather than just being some awkward Frankenstein's monster cross between TB and RT.

Every action takes a certain amount of seconds/milliseconds, from unholstering your gun to aiming to pulling the trigger, so having a smaller and faster gun which guarantees you the first shot can win you a battle.

Damage being the primary concern is only an issue if your system revolves around whittling down HP and nothing else. If you got wounds and bleeding (Like JA2 has, or 7.62 HC), even causing low HP damage will already be disadvantageous for an enemy because he'll now have to retreat behind cover and bandage the wound if he doesn't want to continue losing HP from the bleeding.

Suppression mechanics can also contribute to making other things than pure damage output valuable.

 

[gurugeorge]

I think the main problem here is the dogma that people have to have new shiny things every five seconds. If you don't have that requirement, then you can use the same shotgun all the way through the game, upgrade it a bit as you go, and come to love it; and then beyond that, go rock/paper/scissors with specialized weapons for particular tasks (like the RPG launcher vs the helicopter attack, or the Big Bug Zapper for the Big Bug).

That dogma is tied in with the dogma of Progression. Again, it's quite viable to think in terms of something like "levels," but that sense of progression can only really have weight and meaning when you have a few of them, like half a dozen or so, or a nice round number like 10, for the progress of a career. When you get to games with 80 "levels" or something like that, it becomes a bit meaningless, even annoying.

In actuality, in real life, you learn to do a thing and with a bit of practice you can do it "close enough for jazz" as the saying goes - thereafter, every increment towards perfection costs more and more to attain, for less and less impact. And it's the same with "gear" of any kind. With modern music gear, you can get something that does the job pretty well; then every level beyond that, the gear costs more and more for ever-tinier improvements and shavings towards perfection.

But most people think that doesn't sit well with the idea of a game (I don't know why, personally, but that seems to be how it is) - for games, there's a sense that you have to have as much progression impact between lvl 79-80 as between 1-2. But it seems to me that that's just a rod for developers' backs.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Ammo types.

I can't believe all the multi-paragraph things I've read that the neck-beards have posted here.

Zep--

 

[DraQ]

Ammo types.

I can't believe all the multi-paragraph things I've read that the neck-beards have posted here.

Zep--

Making firearms scale without just making "cooler" guns ammo do more damage?

 

[spectre]

But he did read them, or so he says.

-Qwinn

I think the main problem here is the dogma that people have to have new shiny things every five seconds. If you don't have that requirement, then you can use the same shotgun all the way through the game, upgrade it a bit as you go, and come to love it.

Yeah, there are entire genres out there that prove that if you don't progress from single digits of damage to at least quintuple digits, you're doing it wrong.
I think it's an interesting approach, could result in a variety of builds an maybe larping (there's many guns like this, but this one's mine). Reminds me a bit of Familiarity bonuses from Silent Storm, although that system felt a bit underdeveloped and was certainly underdocumented.

 

[deuxhero]

I'd argue 7.62 isn't an RTWP game, but an RTS that allows pausing between orders (which is quite common in the single player campaigns of more modern ones) and gives exact time estimates of how long an action will take. There's no internal "turns". That's kinda beside the point though.

So a better gun just may have a more stable grip, less recoil, higher accuracy and range, etc, rather than doing more damage.

As mentioned in the OP, New Vegas actually does this a few places. The most obvious is the Varmint Rifle to Service Rifle transition, where the service rifle actually does the exact same damage as the varmint rifle but much faster (bolt action vs. semi).

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd argue 7.62 isn't an RTWP game, but an RTS that allows pausing between orders (which is quite common in the single player campaigns of more modern ones) and gives exact time estimates of how long an action will take. There's no internal "turns". That's kinda beside the point though.

Why is it necessary for RTwP to have an underlying turn structure for it to count as a proper RPG?

The "turn" structure of RTwP is the worst element of the whole system, because it leads to an awkward cross between real-time and turn-based that never feels very fluid or natural.

7.62 has the best RTwP system out there.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout Tactics, Silent Storm, Silent Storm Sentinels, Hammer & Sickle make a very good illustration of firearms scale.

FTBOS has three weapon stages, corresponding with three major enemy groups. And with large map, it also allow for sniper range and RPG range. In particularly, fighting against Behemoth with their insta-kill M2 can showcase RPG rocket has noticeable bullet speed.

Silent Storm, with wide range, does allow for effective sniper play~ By sniping, you can allow for increase vision.

Hammer & Sickle show there's need for pistol when map has NPC checking for visible gun wielder. Which is why you carry pistol because clothes hide its presence, while carrying longer guns, on hand or in inventory, still show over the shoulder.

Also, SS, SSS, HS has a submachine gun that is just double the magazine capacity of MP40. The only use of that is you dont need to carry a spare magazine for it. Just take a fully loaded MP40-2 and go. Does it work? For me it is, because every time I have to choose I get that one.

And overall, the better the quality of enemies over the progress of the game, make the case for cooler guns.
+ Robot has best armor, so you either spent bullets like firehose to kill them, or use energy weapons to kill them faster.
+ Higher level of enemies wear metal or better armor, so the JHP bullet no longer work well and you need AP ammo to pierce it.
+ SS and SSS has robot with best armor that only rifle with highest penetration can pierce it. So even the earliest rifle can still be of use (if have no alternative).

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

JarlFrank Two weapons of the same caliber can have different damages.

Its because of barrel length. More barrel length means the weapon can accelerate more.

So, let's say we have a single caliber but multiple different weapon sizes:

Derringer >>> Pistol >>> Big Pistol >>> Carbine >>> Rifle >>> Large Rifle.

But yeah, two very similar guns, and one has +10% is lazy.

 

[DraQ]

I'd argue 7.62 isn't an RTWP game, but an RTS that allows pausing between orders (which is quite common in the single player campaigns of more modern ones) and gives exact time estimates of how long an action will take.

Yes, that's what RTWP means (except it does not need to be an RTS).
It's "real time with pause" not "really turns without point".

I'd argue 7.62 isn't an RTWP game, but an RTS that allows pausing between orders (which is quite common in the single player campaigns of more modern ones) and gives exact time estimates of how long an action will take. There's no internal "turns". That's kinda beside the point though.

Why is it necessary for RTwP to have an underlying turn structure for it to count as a proper RPG?

The "turn" structure of RTwP is the worst element of the whole system, because it leads to an awkward cross between real-time and turn-based that never feels very fluid or natural.

Turn structure in RTWP is literally the worst of both worlds and completely misses the point.

The main advantage of TB is that it decouples tactics from party size and player's dexterity with controls.
The main disadvantage that it is contrived, has built in input lag, timing artifacts and introduces side effects and complexity when you try to combat obvious exploits.

RTWP with underlying turns ditches the advantage, keeps the weaknesses and the exacerbated them by letting complexity and awkwardness balloon out when RT and TB parts of the mechanics clash.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd argue 7.62 isn't an RTWP game, but an RTS that allows pausing between orders (which is quite common in the single player campaigns of more modern ones) and gives exact time estimates of how long an action will take. There's no internal "turns". That's kinda beside the point though.

So a better gun just may have a more stable grip, less recoil, higher accuracy and range, etc, rather than doing more damage.

As mentioned in the OP, New Vegas actually does this a few places. The most obvious is the Varmint Rifle to Service Rifle transition, where the service rifle actually does the exact same damage as the varmint rifle but much faster (bolt action vs. semi).

most recent rtwp RPGs do not have any sort of underlying turn structure