Interesting weapon, character, game ideas - yaaay!

[Shards]

You guys are forgetting something quite major...

Miniguns have multiple barrels because they fire big ammo so fast that one barrel would meltdown... but with 9mm, this is not a problem, and thus a minigun would simply make the gun less accurate and overly complex. (not to mention more expensive to produce)

[spyder07]

I'm thinking a smaller version of some of the armored core stuff. That would be sweet. I think the minigun would work, just with some bigger ammo.

[MadSole]

Well, no. If you want high speed small blunt bullets, it'll take a lot of boom. Boom makes heat, and when you spit out enough in a short amount of time, you'll get an advantage with mutiple barrels.
We're talking 3 long barrels, not the short mp5 or UZI type. It means a much more stable recoil, and higher speed bullets for the same explosion.
I'm thinking that rubber ammo would be ideal for much law enforcement. Nobody dies, but they get their breath knocked out of them.

[spyder07]

You could overcome the heat problem with a small cooling system. And that pic that firewolf posted was cool but if the minigun was below the arm and instead of having two miniguns, on the other hand you could have a flamethrower or maybe even dual mini plasma cannons. The plasma cannons could draw power from the armor's battery unit.

[Sirgalahadwizard]

The mechanized armor in Aftermath looks alot like that one picture posted before - with the dual hand gatling guns. However, it's alot leaner and looks alot more dangerous. Mine weighs about 800-1000 lbs and gives the character the equivalent of +10 strength (so if you originally had a 7, wearing the mechanized armor you have a strength of 17). Does some wicked f*ing melee damage - even has a powered claw glove for melee combat (making a paw strike from a deathclaw look like a love tap, this one really can rip you in half).

In Aftermath, the mechanized armor, along with all the other high tech weapons are powered by a portable cold-fusion module with practicially unlimited energy storage (well, as much energy as a large atomic bomb, and when applied to menial tasks like propelling a half-ton suit of armor, it's energy output could last for millennia or until the module breaks... also has a limited energy output, so you cant make it blow up).

My original idea for the GAT minigun was inspired by fallout. You know how the super mutants hold their miniguns? That's almost exactly what I wanted to replicate - except it's a smaller minigun a human could handle shooting from one arm. I think it would end up getting handled alot like a tommy gun - mob guys with tommy guns shooting from the hip type of image (you get?). Mostly it probably isn't too useful except for Guards and crowd-control police units (cause it shoots real quick and is short-lived - the ammo feed is small, but it at least buys time for rienforcements to show up).

The plasma weapons I came up with use one of those cold-fusion modules along with a "metallic slurry" for ammo (so it has two clips - one gets depleated, the other is required for operation). The metallic slurry is basicially just microscopic particles of metal (probably iron, maybe aluminum or titanium or an alloy), suspended in some kind of non-interacting solute (probably gelatin, water-based lubricant, etc). You prime the weapon first (equivalent to resetting the firing pin on a rifle after inserting a clip), making it suck a little globule of the slurry into the firing chamber. When you pull the trigger a series of lasers heat the glob to about 30K Kelvin and use a series of magnetic rails or rings to pull the glob down the barrel and throw it down range. It has the properties of an Incindiary/ArmorPiercing/High Explosive round - cause when it hits, it explodes but it projects the explosion forward into the target, and obviously has incindiary capability (when it hits, it blows a hole in the target and sends out a shower of bright sparks). Neat huh? Well at least it doesn't melt people like fallout plasma weapons did.

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Oh, one of the things I would want Aftermath or any other post-apoc RPG game to do is to continue right when you thought the game was over. Ie, you kill the big bad guy, there's a nice movie, but for some reason the game doesnt end - and you know for sure when you get back to your "base" or wherever you report back to...

Another thing i'd like to do is throw challenges at the player that call for the equivalent of experience levels alot greater than the player has at that time (yet still beatable, we dont want to throw a level 2 vault dweller at the cathedral with only an assault rifle and normal combat armor now do we? it's not very pretty). It requires the (human) player to use more of their brains rather than combat strategy.

Also giving the player multiple ways to overcome obstacles is a good thing - remember the master from Fo1? You could kill him 3 ways - talk him to death, set off the nuke, or blow him away. One of those methods used intelligence and charisma, the other uses skills like lockpick and science, and the other uses plain ol' combat tactics.

[MadSole]

I like your plasma gun. But if you have magnetic microscopic slur and you fire it using a magnetic array anyway, why not just plot it into the good ol' railgun mode? You transfer the energy needed to heat the stuff to the electromagnetic array instead, and then you let the slur slip into the magnetic stream. Effectively, this would function as though the gun emmitted ghost fingers. The slur has such a velocety that it rips through and disintegrates anything in it's way...It does it instantly, and what's more, if you have sufficient cooling of your electromagnets, you can keep this up. Much faster rate of fire than a vulcan minigun, much more deadly than a a flamethrower, and longer range and better stopping power than a barret anti matirial sniper rifle.
Ok, so it's a railgun, so what?, I like railguns

[James]

MadSole:

Nice conceptual design!

You seem to have put quite some thought into the recoil problems. Essentially it seems like you’re describing an exoskeletal arm extending to the shoulder. Why not then use make it fully active: i.e. use the same gas system or electrical power to actuate the arm and compensate for recoil, much like modern turreted weapons compensate for the vehicles motion. Then, instead of locking the vertical traverse, user input could still move the gun up and down with the assistance of the actuators. This would make the design more complex and costly, but shouldn't add very much more weight.

You would also need to compensate laterally for the torque of the spinning barrels, but this could be done in exactly the same way.

I like your use of lightwieght materials to keep the weight of the system down. The downside of this is that recoil will be more of a problem. But the barrels will add the most weight to the system, so this will help.

I'm sure you know this already, but gas hydraulic systems are usually known as pneumatic systems btw , and they are heavy, as are the cylinders which would be required to hold the high pressure gas. Why not go with electrical power, since the ammo supply would be limited, you shouldn't have much of a weight problem from the amount of batteries you would need.

Still, this doesn’t overcome the reason why miniguns are not suitable infantry weapons: ammo supply. Although your solution of using small calibre lightweight caseless ammo would save weight and thus allow more ammo to be carried by an individual, it also means that more ammo would need to be expended for any given job.

So it would be possible to fire short controlled bursts against individuals effectively, but not to lay down effective suppressive fire (for very long anyway). So by using a minigun, one of the main advantages of GPMGs or LMGs is lost. This is true to some extent even in existing aircraft mountings: they can carry a fair amount of ammo, but with the high rates of fire it won't last long.

So, overall, why not stick to an assualt rifle backed with GPMGs?

I do think your idea is cool though

Shards:

But little 9mm weapons don't fire nearly as many RPM as minigun type designs. If you could make the ROF for a 9mm weapon that high then the thermal energy input into the barrel would be higher, which would need addressing. Better to keep the ROF to a sensible level thus avoiding all problems.

[Sirgalahadwizard]

I already have weapons like that MadSole!

Have you ever heard of "metal storm"?
I have a few of em - consists of a gun barrel packed about 3/4 the way with bullets and explosives with small barriers inbetween (which flake off as sabots). An electric charge from a firing computer sets off the explosives in a sequential order... which means you can have one helluva of a fire rate. My metal storm cannon uses 13mm pistol bullets (.50cal hollowpoint), and fires them at about 10000 rounds/min. No, it doesnt spew them all out, it fires in either 5 or 10 shot bursts... and since the fire rate is so high - they all act in unisen as a single projectile. Imagine a long lead rod smashing into you.

The plasma weapons are designed to detonate on impact - not penetrate like a gauss rifle. The plasma slug only goes about 200-300 feet per second, you can see it coming (and possibly dodge). However, because of it's volitile nature it dissipates pretty quick (at about 300 feet downrange). If you want to kill people in personnel armor though, machineguns are a better option (I got a nice machinegun called the "HRC-1" which is like a large bozar... it even does decent damage againse mechanized armor), however mechanized armor units aren't effected by bullets of just about any kind very much - and plasma is a nice alternative.

As a matter of fact, the only way you could kill the big badass at the end of the game is with either plasma, fire, or explosive weapons. Think of frank horrigan except he regenerates - blow him into bloody chunks with a machinegun and he just puts himself back together again like the T1000. Plasma weapons are the best way to kill him (since he doesnt regenerate that damage)... the only way to kill with fire is that you have to blow his Enhanced Mechanized Armor off of him first (good luck), and if you want to you explosives - you're gonna need a whole lot of em (about 5 TOW missiles, rarest and most powerful explosives in the game). Laser, Super Damage, Electrical, Slashing, Bludgeoning, and Piercing wont kill him - only temporarily disable him... and Stun has no effect whatsoever. (oh, super damage is like falling off a skyscraper, like getting ran over by a train, having a boulder fall on you, etc).

I have the 4.5mm Coated Pin Sabot weapons for people to use if they want to pierce armor. Think of them as 5.56mm bullets on steriods. They go through sandbags, personnel armor, and light vehicles like a hot knife through butter. They got's just as much armor piercing capability as a .50cal barrett or browning, and do about as much damage to a person as a 7.62mm. They're a low-tech version of railguns (they're like the m-72 gauss rifle from fallout2, except with a 2/3 damage modifier instead of a 3/2). However, you wont cause any reasonable damage to mechanized armor with em unless you score a critical.

[Sirgalahadwizard]

I came up with a neato damage equation:

D = Randomized Damage (ie, pick a number between the highest and lowest given values - like 5-12 or 8-16)
P = Randomized Penetration
DT = Damage Threshold of the Armor suit.
DR = Damage Reduction of the Armor suit.

[((P - DT) / P) x D] x [(100-DR) / 100] = Final Damage
notes:
*when a randomized number is used twice, it is not rolled twice - rather the initial result is used again.
*all numbers equal to or below zero are instead, zero... no negative damage folks.

So what does it do?
You take the pentration rating, subtract the damage threshold from it, then compare that with the original penetration rating. This ratio acts as a first line of defense damage reduction. Then you simply multiply this against the real damage reduction.

So what does it mean?
For all intensive purposes, Penetration is what you want to get - it's equivalent to the amount of damage something does in fallout. However, if something doesn't even have armor, penetration doesn't matter - and it's damage you wanna shoot for (pun intended).

For instance - A Desert Eagle with hollowpoints would have a damage rating of 20-32, but it would have a penetration rating of 7-11 (or something like that). But if it's using armor piercing... it would have a damage rating of 5-8, and a penetration rating of 14-22. (using the fallout2 desert eagle .44cal, and ammunition mods for .44cal ammo as the basis).

If someone's wearing power armor - with a damage threshold of 12, the blasted thing wont do a single point of damage with hollowpoints (since the penetration value will never exceed damage threshold). However, with armor piercing, it will do damage every time (since the minimum penetration value *always* exceeds the damage threshold)... though it wont do much.

So why would anyone want to use this system instead of damage mods?
Basically - freedom. You can make the range of damage and range of penetration independant of one another. Ie, like two weapons both using 5.56mm, you can make one of them a "higher quality" (like the .223 autoloader is compared to a hunting rifle) than another without having to change the amount of penetration (or damage) they do. You can make one of them more lethal than the other without having to compromise an ability of an armor suit to block both of them.

Example: Fallout Assault Rifle and Minigun. Both use the same type of ammo, but have different firepower. If you wanted to make power armor invulnerable to both of them - bullet for bullet, you could make em both have the same penetration but different damage ratings (that way bonus ranged damage could simply give you +2 damage and +2 penetration).

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Some of my examples:
Beretta Handgun... 9-15 damage, 7-11 penetration
M-77 Handgun... 11-15 damage, 11-15 penetration
USAS-12... 3-7 damage, 5-12 penetration (x10 pellets)
"GAT"... 5-8 damage, 13-15 penetration

The beretta, M-77, and "GAT" all use 9mm, but you can see they have different effects on armor - the GAT is better at piercing armor because of longer barrels, but got penalized in damage because it's a minigun. The M-77 is about as efficient at shooting 9mm's as it can get, and this makes it far superior than the Beretta, moreso for penetration than damage though. The Shotgun doesnt do much damage per pellet for the same reason the GAT got penalized (game balance), however with multiple hit attacks, criticals are much easier to cause than normal... so niether of them really need much penetration. (A note on criticals with multiple hit attacks - they are done bullet-for-bullet, so in a burst of 10 attacks if only one of them causes a critical, only one is critical - not all of em. But usually this supplies enough damage to make it worthwhile.)


Hope I didnt ramble on too much. Thought it was a neat idea and the world should see it.

[BlacKnight]

Just out of curiosity, and I mean no offence, but why are you all obsesed with miniguns when it comes to weapons? I mean don't get me wrong I like a good rotary barrelled weapon just as much as the next person but what about rocket launchers? or 35mm hi powered cannons with "one hit kill" abilities? or flame throwers? or just brand new areas of guns like two-stage-light-gas guns or something completely of the wall with new ammo and new stats required to use certain weapons? Heres an idea why not a weapon or group of weapons which you cannot use untill you get a certain perk? (ie it requires special trainning or practice or whatever).

[Megatron]

How about a minigun that fires rockets? And in the cetre it has a flame-thrower and on the side it has a sling-shot type thing that fires land mines. and the rockets are 100mm, and the minigun barrel is 10 metres long.

w00

[Sirgalahadwizard]

"Just out of curiosity, and I mean no offence, but why are you all obsesed with miniguns when it comes to weapons"

Because they do an insane amount of damage to people, using conventional ammo (except it uses a whole lot of it). It's also that it's practicially impossible to dodge a minigun blast, at least without it ripping you a new ass in the process (though at extreme close range I can see dodging it as a possibility [nudge the weapon aside - weapon sundering], or if the shooter has the strength of a child). Also, you can do some interesting things to miniguns to make them almost completly ineffective against certain characters.

Dont get me wrong - I love single hit-kill weapons. Their advantage is that if they're powerful enough, they can almost completly ignore armor all together. However, they have some major weaknesses - if you miss, it's all or nothing (with the exception of large explosives)... they're typically real slow... and usually they have ammo that's hard to carry around - rockets and big energy cells.

One thing I miss that shoulda been in fallout series are mega-powerful energy weapons. Like a BFG-sized plasma or pulse rifle y'know? Something that does as much damage as a Pulse grenade except in plasma or laser denomination (so it can hurt people).

Oh, and the BFG-10000 from Quake2 is my all time most favorite computer game weapon... with the Minigun ("Chaingun") from Quake2 being my second most favorite (third place is a tie between a whole buncha guns - alot from fallout series).

Hehe, Quad Damage BFG 10K, heh, huh huh huh huh (::laughs like bevis and butt-head::).

I had an idea for a 100mm Moarter Launcher for a Xcom-type game I was working on a long while ago (something called the "edf-project", I was a lead weapons designer, I gave up when they started degenerating from all the squabbling).

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In aftermath I had 5 weapons skills - Semi-Automatic, Automatic, Hand to Hand, Throwing, and Melee Weapons. Semi-Automatic includes any "single" attacks (even if done by a big machinegun), Automatic includes any burst attacks (SMGs, Assault Rifles, and Heavy Machineguns all use Automatic for their burst attacks).

Energy weapons used Semi-Automatic (or automatic, depending on function), at a -40% accuracy penalty... and you had to make the equivalent of a science check whenever you wanted to reload or power the weapon up (critical failure = you lose the clip). You could alleviate all of those bothersome penalties with a perk designed to allow you to shoot energy weapons.

Big guns like rocket launchers (ie, cannons) also gave you a -40% penalty to the applicable weapons skill - as well as a 25% reduction in range until you got something like weapon handling perk. This effect stacks for heavy energy weapons (Super Plasma Cannon or the Laser Rifle for instance - both weigh in excess of 40lbs).

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Pyro - you're evil. And I actually had something like that!

I called it the "MAD CAP", had a big plasma rifle, a RPG launcher, a 5.56mm minigun, and a 33mm Grenade Launcher on it. Weighed 85lbs, minimum strength requirement pushes it even for mechanized armor (Min. St. 18 - you'd need a natural strength of 8 and a suit of mechanized armor just to wield it). Was one of those prestiege' weapons... the big bad boss didnt have it (he had an assortment of arm-mounted guns which could pierce armor, and he wore an Enhanced Mechanized Armor which you couldn't get ahold of).

[the guardian]

bfg... sounds familiar... yes yes


you stupid fuck! bfg is from doom! (stands for Big Friggin' Gun btw)

[Megatron]

Nope, ID put it in quake 3 and 2 I think.

Quake 3 was like a rapid fire plasma cannon, and I'm not sure what Quake 2 bfg did as I never played it.

You stupid fuck!

[VasikkA]

Nah, BFG in doom wasn't that fun. Sure, it killed every motha* in a room but it was slow and used lot of ammo. My fav was the rapid fire plasma cannon. And of course the double barreled shotgun

[spyder07]

Actually I think that a rocket minigun would be possible if mounted on a vehicle, turret; but not carriable. It could have a slow rotation but enough barrels to fire 1 rocket every 1.5 sec. It would shoot small 2-4 inch unguided "dumbfire" rockets. Because of the heat produced by the chemical rockets, it would have to have some sort of cooling system on it as well. It would be great for filling the sky to shoot down an aircraft.

[Kozmo_Naut]

Nope, ID put it in quake 3 and 2 I think.

Quake 3 was like a rapid fire plasma cannon, and I'm not sure what Quake 2 bfg did as I never played it.

You stupid fuck!

The BFG in Quake2 was kinda like the BFG from Doom, except the big green ball shot lasers at your enemies.

Oh, and it had a very sofisticated damage calculation system...

[Sirgalahadwizard]

Quake2 had a very basic damage calculation system - all weapons had a fixed amount of damage they did (with the exception of varying distances from explosions, and the bfg) - the machinegun did 8, the minigun did 6, and the hyperblaster did 15 (dont rightly remember the other ones but they were fixed too). The numbers were different for multiplayer - but there was no randomness or critical hits (or damage reduction for that matter - and no, the deligation of damage through armor and power shield doesnt count as damage reduction... since it doest really make a rock/paper/scissors effect like it does in fallout or command & conquer).

BFG from quake 2 was more realistic than the one from doom - in doom you could shoot it point blank and not get hurt. And the BFG from quake3 just plain sucks (it's like a full auto rocket launcher), but the concept is nice (I just dont like them recycling the name "bfg" to such a lame weapon).

but it was slow and used lot of ammo

Yeah, but that's typicially the norm when you have one-shot-kill weapons. It *is* a one-shot-kill weapon by the way, and making it slow and use alotta ammo is a good way to balance it out. Im an efficiency nut when it comes to damage - I dont like to squish little guys into oblivion when I coulda used a lesser weapon to kill em. But the BFG is a really nice on-shot-kill weapon because it is remarkably efficient (compared to using cells with a hyperblaster/plasma rifle) at killing little kiddies.

If anything, the most unbalanced weapon ive ever run into is the quake2 rocket launcher - it shoots real quick (refire rate), ammo is cheap, and it does lots of damage. This, above all other weapons, should be banned from multiplayer gameplay... but this is just my experienced, educated opinion.

[Haplo]

The cheapest weapon I ever saw for Quake 2 was part of a mod. Had a chaingun that fired shotgun shells, called it the streetsweeper. Oh yeah, and they changed the machinegun so that it fired out rockets at an astounding rate! Tons of weapons in that one... I think it was the MWP (mega weapons package) mod.

[spyder07]

I think the rocket minigun could work but not at the fire rate your talkling about.