It might be 27 years in the future but it’s also after the collapse of the world as we know it. You have to think that brain bites were spent elsewhere along with the potential loss of manufacturing techniques. For example the bullpup design is great as a hybrid but technology is only just hitting the point of being able to solve some of its larger issues. If we were to place such guns in PP the reality is that people would likely stick to what they already know (aka the AR and AK platforms, depending where in the world we’re talking) and not waste time developing better bullpups when they already have a working design.
For those wondering, the bullpup is great in that it gives you a longer barrel in a shorter overall size, but it currently has problems in regards to the linkage/trigger pull due to where the trigger is placed and with most designs not being reasonably ambidextrous among other things. Throw on the familiarity so many countries have with non-bullpups along with nothing really “forcing” a switch and it’s no surprise more countries haven’t adopted them (much like how the US didn’t adopt the AR until the Vietnam War even though the gun had been on the market for almost 20 years by then).
Also I REALLY hate the open trigger guards. I can see it on the Cult of Sirius guns but for anyone else I just have to take a few breaths and ignore it. Such a design is HORRIBLE for anyone trying to properly design a gun barring a very specific reason (such as excessively bulky gloves for extreme cold).
I agree entirely with you! “Old” technology which is widely available now is what the starting point should be in the game. Xcom2 actually has it right especially with some of the weapon mods that add masses of our present day weapons to it. Take the heavy weapons guy for example, a grenade launcher with a realistic length barrel and a “Predator” hmg that is fun and within technological limits. As for bullpups, if your base is in China, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and various European Country’s that’s what your militaries would be using now so supplies of those would be readily available.
Ironically, I do not like XCOM2’s third tier of weaponry very much, and absolutely despise the third tier of armor. This has nothing to do with the “realism” of plasma weapons or the internal logic applied in their design, but is rather due to the fact that it breaks with the entire “resistance” theme. Magnetic/alloy tier is awesome as weapons and armors look like limited production prototypes, with apparent frames, wiring and whatnot, while plasma/powered armor tier looks mass produced and sleek, totally forgetting that XCOM’s entire “production chain” is lily Chen plus a handful of engineers.
Not ignoring the rule of cool either, X2 power armor doesn’t exactly look badass enough. It’s too skin tight. For example, if you compare it to Mass Effect designs for lightish futuristic armor, it clearly lacks attitude!
And as far as FiraXcom outperforming PP, and assuming PP delivers everything as promised, there are still a few things PP probably won’t have :
Multiplayer, even if only 1v1 skirmish, isn’t planned in PP.
Cinematic cutscenes. It doesn’t make or break a game but cutscenes are nice and can provide immersion. I don’t think PP is going that route but, on the other hand, I hope for reasonable walls of texts and a more developed Ufopaedia to give flavor.
Animations. jury’s still out on this one as we’ve only had BB to look at, but so far animation weren’t that impressive. Of course, things can change in the final version.
Yep. Though in regards to the countries using bullpups, you start running into various issues that take away from the enjoyment of the game should one attempt to incorporate that. The nuances of why someone would use a specific gun over another are largely lost in video games (understandably many of these nuances have no practical way to be implemented in a video game); often simplified to things like mag size, reload time, and accuracy regardless of just how “accurate” such things are.
Now in X2 I’ve used a mod that added all sorts of different weapons and they merely increased in damage as research went up, but for a dev the question would be if it reasonably adds or detracts to the game. And I just don’t see them adding in certain areas having AR, AK, bullpup, etc gun-types. It just doesn’t add much to the game while opening up various other issues, especially if trying to make it reasonably realistic (for example many guns out there don’t use STANAG for the mags, and even some guns that do won’t fit all STANAG mags. I personally had to shave off some of my STANAG mags to get them to fit into my “STANAG” compliant bullpup as an example).
Certainly in games a generic assault rufle is the way to go with standard magazines for all, my only caveat is that it should look that it could work. Xcom2 vanilla pretty much did this I just hope PP does the same.
Edit for crap typing yet again, shaking hands on touch screens is a real pain in the rear!
Funny enough, I was just reminded about open trigger guards while rereading Deathworld by Harry Harrison. It’s an old serial sci-fi about a planet that really hates humanity. The guns there don’t have trigger guards, because when even the plants are trying to actively murder you, you need your gun to fire instantly :p. We can probably call that BullSciFiDo, but it did strike me as relevant with the way PP is.
I have an objection to this: 27 year in the future with a continuous period of increasing international tensions, a few conflicts around the board and a new World War. I’m no weapon expert (pistol, rifle, machine gun and that’s it for me) but it may not be so fantasy to have drastic changes in weapon designs.
Yeah, we don’t really have ALL the details of what happened, we know in general. It’s not hard to imagine that WW3 could lead to a library at Alexandria type event, and that vast amou ts of technical and scientific minded folks were wiped out. There’s a lot of folks that could rig a firing system into a handheld form and not know crap about ergonomics. Does anyone remember if the stamped metal gun plans that were used by the French resistance in ww2 had trigger guards?
Edit: Looking at pics. Trigger guards seem to be pretty entrenched.
Edit edit: and from Wikipedia - “Some firearms may have their trigger guard removed or repositioned as not to impair use with large cold weather gloves on, especially those intended to be used in arctic conditions.”
Now, even taking that with a grain of salt, maybe that’s our answer. If designed to be used with bulky armored suits, it could make sense.
Cinematics are always cool, but PP is one pf those games where I’d say they are not needed. A cool illustration and a wall of text can do wonders for the atmosphere and immersion.
Multiplayer for me is not needed Even if I do understand many players wanting it. And animations are still being worked, so I keep the faith in the team.
Regarding bullpups: while PP cannot simulate the advantages of it being shorter, it can simulate the slightly decreased weight. However, a game that has a grid based inventory management system could easily take advantage of the smaller size of a bullpup.
Regarding open triggers: even to accommodate a bulky armoured finger, it is a bad idea. There is a reason they don’t show up in militaries, even in winter triggers anymore.
Without going full 3d cutscenes, you can also use Adobe after effects to animate artworks and give some life to your narrative. If youy think about the art of Darkest Dungeon or the cutscenes of Frost Punk, it’s not exactly high tech, but it certainly sets the tone in 2 seconds
Never bothered to play FiraXcom’s multiplayer, but the feature is there for those who wish (and is probably the first thing I’d have cut if I had to make sacrifices during game design).
By all means it “can” happen, but if we study history chances are high that drastic changes wouldn’t be made barring new technology (such as magnetic weapons) or something pretty much forcing a change (like the jungles of Vietnam). This is why the British were still using muskets in the Revolutionary War and why the US went into Vietnam with .308 caliber guns. It’s what they had, it’s what they knew, and they saw no reason to change prior to the conflict.
Even now we can see how hard/long it is for things to change on the civilian side. After WW2 people used service weapons as hunting weapons. Then as new designs came out the hunting scene stuck to their old designs. It wasn’t uncommon for them even put down new designs, such as calling composite stocks “plastic crap” compared to wooden ones. Over time as people served in the US Military and then gone back to civilian life they’ve taken their gun preference with them and so the “black rifle” design has slowly become an acceptable sporting/hunting design. But I mean we’re talking about a design that was created in the mid/late '50s, not initially adopted by US military until 1964 (with it not starting to replace the standard issue rifle until 1969), and the civilian market not really picking up until the '80s (with the major boom not happening until the '90s). That’s 30-40 years for the design to really catch on on the civilian side and 15-20 on the military side. And I remember talking with my uncles in the 2000s and they STILL hated the thought of people hunting with a “military weapon” as if their guns weren’t military weapons at one point prior to being the “accepted” hunting rifle.
And all of this is with standard supply lines, the Cold War (which was an arms race), and multiple other wars/conflicts. So barring something truly revolutionary I don’t see the standard rifle really changing that much in the PP setting. I’m personally a fan of bullpups, I believe it’s an overall superior design for a military rifle, and think that if R&D were to be thrown at the design like it has with the AR model that the issues of bullpups could be solved. The problem is getting people to break from what they know when there’s no “need” for it.
It all depends. My AUG-clone weighs roughly as much as an AR-15 so it isn’t really that much lighter. What it does have for it is where that weight is distributed which makes it less taxing to carry around and wield for longer periods of time. Likewise due to where the weight and chamber are it makes follow-up shots easier due to the physics of the recoil. But the gun is only 27" long even though it has a 16" barrel. For an AR-15 model to hit that overall length it would need a fully collapsed stock and around a 10-11" barrel which in turn affects its accuracy once you step out of close quarters.
So the weight would be a wash, you would need the game to factor in “weapon bloom” for followup shots for the recoil differences to matter, there’s no real long-term “endurance” stat (not even OG XCOM’s Energy stat would properly model this), and even with a grid system one rarely swaps around their main weapon (and you’d probably be talking a 4x1 vs 5x1 for weapon length which isn’t likely to matter much for most people even if they do swap around the weapon).
Outside of the fact that options can be nice, I just don’t really see what a bullpup vs AR vs AK would really add from a gameplay standpoint. A few minor things (or arbitrary balance things) but the real differences between the designs just aren’t modeled in games or don’t really matter.
Just as a passing thought, for inventory storage, many modern assault rifles come with folding stocks, so would be roughly the same length as bullpups.
I am for the Marsec Machine gun. Has a Laser Squad futuristic brand meaning and had a re-appearance in Apocalypse. And its … Mars Security Inc >:-) Future of Microsoft,Apple, Google and others!
This is going to depend on what design is used. The AR can’t have a folding stock due to the buffer tube, and it’s the buffer tube that directly plays a role in why the gun has such a higher cyclic rate compared to an AK, it’s low recoil, and other things.
Many guns indeed can have a folding stock but this is because their spring for cycling the chamber is located elsewhere. But by moving where that spring is you also change up recoil, muzzle rise, weight, and required materials.
You can thank Google for this as I knew ARs couldn’t use a folding stock due to the buffer tube but I had no idea how other guns were able to or just why the AR used a buffer tube prior to your statement.
Edit: Well there are ways to attach a folding stock to an AR for transport purposes, but this requires additional parts and would render the gun inoperable until the stock is folded back out compared to most other guns which can fire even with their stock folded.
Even if I do understand many players wanting it. And animations are still being worked, so I keep the faith in the team.
