Re: New Direction for Firearms

[J. Ali Harlow-2]

I'm forwarding the following on from David Damerell.

Ali.

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On Saturday, 4 Nov 2006, J. Ali Harlow wrote:
> Warning: I know nothing about firearms. I'm CCing Chris and David to
> get some rather more expert opinion as well as general thoughts.

Mmm, "short bullets" for assault rifles and "long bullets" for SMGs
don't fit.

Modern firearms divide up a bit like this (you may know most of this
already, but let's have it again).

Firearms either have manual actions, where after each shot the user
must do something to load a fresh round (eg bolt-action rifle,
pump-action shotgun); or are "semi-automatic" - where after each shot
the gun (normally using gas pressure from the propellant) loads a
fresh round itself, but the trigger must be released and pulled again
to fire again; or "automatic", where the trigger can be held
indefinitely. These days many automatic weapons have a three-round
burst option which means only three shots are fired per trigger pull;
this is because recoil effects tend to mean shots 4+ would be
effectively unaimed.

Pistols fire rounds with a (relatively) low energy/bullet mass
ratio. They are therefore short and squat because there is little
propellant behind the bullet. Most pistols are either revolvers or
normal semi-automatics (confusingly, the latter are normally referred
to as "automatic pistols"); few single-shot pistols are made except
for competitive sports. A revolver is heavy (because each round in the
magazine is enclosed in its own chunk of barrel sufficient to
withstand propellant pressure) and holds a small number of shots but
is more reliable - if a round is defective, it can just be rotated out
the way by pulling the trigger again, where a normal pistol would
jam. Therefore revolvers were more common earlier, when ammunition was
less reliable.

A fully automatic pistol would be a "machine pistol" - there's a grey
area between machine pistols and...

... submachine guns. SMGs fire pistol bullets, but fully automatically
(or, these days, with 3-round bursts). An SMG would tend to have a
larger magazine than a machine pistol and be able to fire for longer
periods without problems.

Pistols and SMGs still have rifled barrels (a spiral pattern which
spins the bullet and improves accuracy).

Rifle rounds have higher energy/projectile mass ratios; hence they are
long and thin with lots of propellant. There are many calibers of
rifle bullet, but typically for a given caliber (eg 7.62mm) there are
many kinds of rifle which fire it.

Sniper rifles (obviously) are built for accuracy with scopes and
semi-automatic or single-shot actions (the advantage of single-shot is
a semi-automatic action may jog the gun around a bit while the bullet
is still leaving the barrel). Sniper rifles tend to use the larger,
more powerful bullets; they go further and the user isn't facing the
recoil of multiple shots at once.

Assault rifles fire rifle bullets automatically (or 3-round bursts
blah blah, but less commonly than for SMGs). Modern soldiers have
assault rifles as their standard weapons.

There might also be a "rifle" - unscoped, semi-automatic. Soldiers
would carry these before the invention of the assault rifle (and
bolt-action rifles before that - World War 2 took us through all three
stages).

Shotguns are unrifled weapons intended to fire a cartridge filled with
lots of little projectiles. They are hence extremely dangerous close
up and on unarmoured targets, but less effective at range (the
projectiles' speed drops off more rapidly). The chance that _a_
projectile hits the target is high. Some shotguns breech-load (the
barrels flip open and fresh rounds are inserted - the classic English
country gentleman's double-barrelled shotgun is like this); some are
pump-action, the manual action you see in all the movies (a
pump-action shotgun is loading shells from a magazine in the gun, and
once that's empty, it has to be reloaded - slowly) - most police
shotguns are semi-automatic; some semi-automatic shotguns are made,
mostly for military use. There is a prototype "Jackhammer" automatic
shotgun but only about two actually exist.

A heavy machine gun is a crew-served weapon firing rifle bullets. A
true heavy machine gun is capable of long sustained fire; as well as
the gunner, there are crewmen to bring fresh ammunition, change
barrels, do care and feeding of water-cooling, etc. It is minimally
portable - for example a Browning M2 weights 58kg, and that's without
buckets of bullets.

However, man-portable light machine guns are made - essentially a
heavier machine gun with a higher sustained fire rate and probably a
bipod or tripod.

> Pistol (Flintlock?): lead balls
> Rifle: minie balls
> Assault rifle (Sturmgewehr 44?): short bullets
> Sniper rifle (Lee-Enfield?): stripper clips
> Shotgun: shotgun shells
> Auto shotgun: small shotgun shells
> Submachine gun (Thompson?): long bullets
> Heavy machine gun (Gatling?): cartridges
> Rocket launcher: rockets
> Grenade launcher: gas and frag grenades

My proposal, which I think that you are trying to represent, is that
soldiers carry pre-20th century weapons and hence that 20th-century
ones and the ammunition for same are rare, and that you don't want
_very_ new weapons.

I would suggest the following:

Represent the loading status of weapons by making them specialised
containers. Also add a powder bag for the primitive weapons - a
charged item. Powder should not be in short supply unless the player
goes for frequent baths; immersion should destroy a proportion of the
powder in powder bags, and also put loaded black powder weapons in a
state where they'd need reprimed (but not fresh bullets, obviously) to
fire.

Bullets generally more effective on S/M monsters than L.

General problem with accuracy; the accuracy penalty many approaches
carry is not meaningful in NetHack, where players always hit after a
certain point. I think this is symptomatic of a more general problem,
though.

"Pistol"; a caplock weapon, single or double-barreled. Good damage
(many black powder weapons fired pretty huge bullets), but reloading
takes a couple of turns; you'll fire your pistols but then fight
normally. Fires "pistol balls". Light enough that one might carry
multiple loaded pistols. Could be #twoweaponed. Suggest if you (w)ield
a loaded pistol when #twoweaponing pistols one of which is unloaded,
it always does the right thing.

"Musket"; Ali's "rifle". Only one shot, but that very painful. Still
slower to reload. Heavy. Fires "musket balls".

"Blunderbuss"; early-era shotgun. Big advantage; doesn't need ammo,
just powder - it's loaded with any old pointy junk lying around. Slow
to load, normal shotgun advantages/disadvantages (whatever you decide
those are), no enchanting ammo.

".45 automatic" - it's necessary to have a modern pistol if modern
SMGs are going to make any sense. Medium damage, sometimes fires
multiple rounds at high skill (like any semiautomatic weapon), 7-round
magazine (of ".45 bullets" because "pistol bullets" the "pistol"
doesn't fire would be too confusing, although suggest a helpful
message when players try and use the wrong era ammunition with a gun),
can be #twoweaponed.

".45 Thompson" - sub machine gun. Same damage as the pistol, but
higher fire rate. 50 round drum magazine. Can't be #twoweaponed.

Lee-Enfield's a good choice for the sniper rifle, since it takes the
same .303 cartridge as the Bren gun, which I suggest as your
man-portable machine gun, and the Vickers gun, which would make a
non-portable heavy machine gun if you wanted one. There isn't really a
.303 assault rifle, but call it "assault rifle" and who knows?

Problem - given ranges and super accuracy in the dungeon, who's ever
going to use a sniper rifle over an assault rifle? That's one for
you. Possibility; ditch assault rifles, the Lee-Enfield is still a
valuable weapon (firing high damage rounds long distances without
reloading turns), have the Bren gun fulfil the current assault rifle
role. Bren gun should be (a)pplyable to deploy bipod, improve fire
rate and accuracy, player can't move without folding it up again or
dropping it. Also if ammo in short supply player may favour greater
per-bullet effectiveness from single-shot weapon.

Shotgun - pump or semi-auto only, decent damage on the right targets.
How you define those is up to you, but ought to be devastating on
jellies, puddings, cubes, other extra-soft targets. Both use the same
ammo.

No opinion on grenades/rockets.

> We need to limit the effectiveness of enhancing ammunition.

Perhaps enchant/silver bonuses apply only on the first hit of a
volley. Also, only primitive firearms fire silver bullets; modern
ones, you'll have lead and like it unless you want to burn a wish.

>> *Soldiers might (using current chance percentages) spawn with Pistol,
>> Sergeants with Shotgun, Lieutenants with Rifle, and Captains with
>> Rifle and (or?) Shotgun with high enchantment each.
> I see no reason to use any enchantment here and I think captains
> shouldn't carry firearms. Their weapons are mainly symbolic.

With only the primitive weapons, Captains and Lts should have pistols,
soldiers muskets, and sergeants a mix of twin pistols, muskets, or
blunderbusses.

>> *Reduction of Rogue skill in Firearms to Basic, maybe Skilled, and
>> increase of Yeoman's Firearms skill to Expert, maybe same for Undead
>> Slayer.
> Sounds sensible.

You could split Firearms into Pistols and Longarms to provide more
variety and bleed skill slots.


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[Clive Crous]

Great post from David!

Thanks.

I would so love to see this evolve into some kind of new Monk class ala
Equilibrium
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Kata )

;)

--
Clive Crous
http://www.darkarts.co.za/



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