Retitle "pipe" weapons to "low-tech" so they don't sound so stupid...

[dainsgames]

Edit: changed suggested retitle to "hand-machined" to make the comparison with machine-tooled guns plain. I can't edit the post title after submitting the post, sorry :\ Also, taking suggestions on better names, because I'm not the best at naming things.

 

 

Because the concept of using a pipe to make a firearm is stupid. I mean. REALLY stupid. So stupid, it hurts the brains of people who understand the difference between the hundreds of PSI a pipe can withstand and the TENS OF THOUSANDS of PSI an actual gun chamber and barrel must withstand.

 

But, low-tech guns with smoothbore barrels can be made in home/garage workshops, and they CAN take low-pressure rounds like pistol bullets (.22, .25, .32, .380 .45 and various calibers in between). They are heavier and bulkier than precision-tooled weapons and never rifled (rifling is precision machine-work), but they do work.

 

So this suggestion is to keep the guns, but just relabel the damn things so they don't hurt the brains of people who are trying to get immersed in the game, but can't because "wow, pipe gun? you have to be freakin' kidding me".

 

(ok /rant off)

 

Here's the suggestion:

1. Replace the word "pipe" in all pipe guns with "hand-machined".
2. Add the word "smoothbore" to all pipe weapon barrels.

 

For added realism and a good natural progression up to real weapons.:

1. Raise the weight of pipe weapons by about 20% over machine-tooled equivalents. You have to use more metal when you can't do actual metallurgy to maximise strength.
2. Put a 20% debuff on pipe weapon accuracy and range (I think those debuffs go on the barrels). Smoothbores do about the same damage within their range, but rifled weapons have seriously better accuracy and range.
3. Retitle the .38 to .380 and replace the .308 with .45. No way a homemade weapon can take 60,000 PSI (the amount a .308 round produces). Low pressure means LOW pressure, and for bullets that tops out at around 20,000 PSI. The damage from a .45 is enough to get you through mid-level, and pipe guns already have that caliber receiver too.

So as you raise in level and switch to machine-tooled weapons, they get lighter, more accurate, longer-ranged and you get access to higher-powered rounds. Which is actually how things work, and imo. should be reflected in game.

 

Thanks for reading!

[seekingthesun]

Pipe guns were in fallout 1 and 2. They're firmly part of the lore, even before the war they were a part of civilian life due partly to wartime shortages of weapons.

That said, there's nothing stopping you from opening up FO4edit, going to the name entries under the pipe weapons, changing those, and changing the weight values.

EDIT:

Edited April 10, 2016 by seekingthesun

[SaintOlaf]

how about "Makeshift"

[Boombro]

Their legit name is handmade though.

[dainsgames]

Pipe guns were in fallout 1 and 2. They're firmly part of the lore, even before the war they were a part of civilian life due partly to wartime shortages of weapons.

 

That said, there's nothing stopping you from opening up FO4edit, going to the name entries under the pipe weapons, changing those, and changing the weight values.

 

Well snap I didn't know that. No wonder they're so named. But, they weren't present at all in FO3/FONV, and those are the only Fallouts I played before FO4.

 

And yes, I know I can do that. I've seen enough other people having a problem with the whole pipe-gun concept that i thought it worth a mod request (plus mild rant lol). I'm hoping someone will integrate it into their mod vs making it a standalone (which I'm not far from doing myself).

 

The problem with modding it up as a standalone is that other mods will definitely change these same values, and integrating mod changes is an utter mess - this engine goes by record and *not by field* which would let everything work together as long as the same field wasn't changed.

 

So anytime anyone changes anything at all about anything, that change will either override everyone else's modded change about the same thing, or be overridden by it. Whether or not there's an actual data conflict. :\

[dainsgames]

Their legit name is handmade though.

 

Interesting. I bounced between handmade, handcrafted. low-tech, improvised, and crude as names, and none of them really say "I was made on a home workbench using basic machine tools instead of in a machine shop or a factory".

 

I'm good with whatever though, as long as it's not "pipe" arggh. Plus frankly they're a tad too comparable to the better weapons in range and accuracy.

[Langy]

Just so you know, it is entirely possible to build a gun out of a cheap pipe; people made guns out of car radio antennas back in the '50s, apparently. Hell, the US Army apparently publishes how to make an improvised gun made out of common steel pipe (for use by insurgents in an occupied zone, like France in WWII).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Real-Gun#Making_an_Improvised_Pipe_Gun_sub

 

[Note: Information taken from random websites found on a Google search; may not be factual]

[dainsgames]

Just so you know, it is entirely possible to build a gun out of a cheap pipe; people made guns out of car radio antennas back in the '50s, apparently. Hell, the US Army apparently publishes how to make an improvised gun made out of common steel pipe (for use by insurgents in an occupied zone, like France in WWII).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Real-Gun#Making_an_Improvised_Pipe_Gun_sub

 

[Note: Information taken from random websites found on a Google search; may not be factual]

 

Sure, you can stuff a bullet into anything and shoot it. But it's only "technically" a gun because the bullet comes out of the other end, not because it's an actual useful weapon. The whole "blow up in hand" factor means they're one-shot use because you can't count on the materials to hold together shot after shot.

 

The car antenna guns you referred to were such one-shot affairs used by street gangs to show how tough they were. A .22 rimfire has a rim, so you could snap off an antenna, drop a bullet in so it would slide into a section where the rim hung up, then use a rubber-band arrangement to snap a screwdriver against it to set it off.

 

The biggest safety factor with these kind of "weapons" is that the cartridge does not actually fit the barrel, letting the propellant gases blow past the bullet to reduce the pressure. Which of course means the power is way reduced and accuracy sucks.

 

As for the homemade 9mm pipe gun (which actually looks like a serious attempt to build one), it's littered with warnings about the thing blowing up too. Apparently they don't consider using a lower-pressure round as a safety measure (a .38 Special round is half the pressure of a 9mm) nor using multiple pipes with padding in-between.

 

So yeah, I guess if you seriously stretch, you could build pipe hand guns. But I would still rather go with this approach. They have weapon workbenches right out in the open, so low-tech smoothbore weapons fit right into the setting.

[Langy]

Maybe, but I'd be surprised if the pipe weapons from Fallout 1 and 2 weren't directly intended to be based off of the improvised guns taught by the US Army. They're supposed to be improvised, POS weapons that can blow up if you so much as sneeze at them; removing that by making them non-improvised weapons is both silly, inconsistent with the lore, and inconsistent with their intended place in the Wasteland.

[minngarm]

I don't see how pipe is immersion breaking. The average person in the wasteland over the generations would think of it as a pipe. Those that knew better were likely mostly killed off in the war being military/police, others would have handed down the knowledge selectively sure, but in all likelihood it would have died out.

 

So calling something by it's common name is just immersive.