[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[antistar]

the gauss rifle in FO4 looks like a crude prototype or handmade one compared to gauss rifle in FO2 and FO3, I don't think they are the standard issue weapons for military, maybe you can rename them "prototype gauss rifle" or "handmade gauss rifle"?

 

I don't think it's quite ramshackle or low-tech enough for "handmade", and "prototype" doesn't feel right since it's not a unique weapon. Plus there's already the Prototype Gauss Rifle from Creation Club of course. (I would agree though that if "prototype" was to be used, it should be for the vanilla FO4 Gauss Rifle rather than the Creation Club one - just going by appearances.)

 

So maybe I'll go for the middle ground and call it an experimental model: "XM76 Gauss Rifle".

[Moldy]

A question,regarding the Gauss.

 

Will you keep the nonsense suppressor? You're firing a hypersonic projectile from a firing mechanism that is inherently noiseless,with a projectile travelling so fast,it leaves a plasma wake,and explodes on impact due to how much energy it's packing. A suppressor makes less sense on that thing than the Barrett.

[antistar]

Ugh yeah... that thing. From a brief look around (about all the time I can spare for a weapon I don't... really care about very much), it sounds like gauss guns - or coilguns - are usually silent (excepting a sonic boom if the projectile is supersonic), unless they're made in a particular (probably sub-optimal) way. In that case there might be a loud crack-of-lightning like sound from an electrical discharge.

 

... Maybe. It's not something I know much of anything about, and like I said, I don't really have time to do a lot of research on it. If anyone has any input on this, go for it. The two likely choices as I see them are:

 

1) Leave the suppressor as-is and blame it on Weird Science.

2) Remove the suppressor as an option and make the Gauss Rifle silent or quiet, while the projectile is supersonic and very loud.

 

 

In other news I just did the Harpoon Gun - or "Greener Harpoon Gun", as that's what it's based on. They weigh 75 lb(!) and each harpoon is ~10 lb, apparently. I've made the in-game harpoons weigh 1.5 lb each since they're much smaller than the real ones. At the moment I've got it doing somewhat more damage than the anti-materiel rifles, even... but obviously it's super-duper heavy and slow to use.

[jkruse05]

The M72 Gauss Rifle was of German design and manufacture, possibly from H&K or Rheinmetal AG, but I'm going with Walther since the pistol variant is called the PPK12. It's still under debate whether the "prototype" style from Fallout 3/NV/CC is of American or Chinese design, since it appears on Chinese propaganda posters, but is only ever carried by Americans in the simulation (but, conversely, the simulation is said to be wildly inaccurate). With the significant departure in appearance the Fallout 4 version may be better attributed to an American company, or at least use a different naming convention from the previous ones.

 

Personally I'd attribute it to the same company as the AER series, but unfortunately Bethesda hasn't told us who makes those. American army naming conventions would make it something like M(random number)E1, probably M1E1 since we've never seen any other variant. Maybe the E part would change as you upgrade the coils.

[kuzi127]

If the military was behind the FO4 gauss rifle design, I doubt they would be happy with a sub-optimal design that makes the gun itself noisy. That being said, the suppressor makes absolutely no sense for it. The only benefit I could see would be reducing the sound of the sonic booms right after the bullet exits the gun. That would only affect the shooter, and even then only a tiny amount since the suppressor is fairly short.

 

Lore wise, I think the best explanation is that the "prototype" style was invented by the Chinese, but captured and reverse engineered by the US. FO4's version would be the actual prototype, the US' home-grown design developed at Fort Strong (being their next project after the fat man, allowing for its presence only in Boston) before they captured the significantly better Chinese ones.

[jkruse05]

If the military was behind the FO4 gauss rifle design, I doubt they would be happy with a sub-optimal design that makes the gun itself noisy. That being said, the suppressor makes absolutely no sense for it. The only benefit I could see would be reducing the sound of the sonic booms right after the bullet exits the gun. That would only affect the shooter, and even then only a tiny amount since the suppressor is fairly short.

 

Lore wise, I think the best explanation is that the "prototype" style was invented by the Chinese, but captured and reverse engineered by the US. FO4's version would be the actual prototype, the US' home-grown design developed at Fort Strong (being their next project after the fat man, allowing for its presence only in Boston) before they captured the significantly better Chinese ones.

That's why I was thinking it would be an M#E# instead of M#A#. Models with the E designation are "Experimental" and are often not officially adopted, though there may be a few in limited use. The designation would change if it were in official use.

[antistar]

I'm reasonably happy with the slightly more ambiguous "XM76" for the Gauss Rifle. Maybe it's a military designation, or maybe it's a third-party referencing the M72 and military designations in general because it sounds cool - who knows!

 

One weapon model name I have no idea for is the Missile Launcher, which I'm working on at the moment. I'm not familiar with any lore-based names for it. So if anyone has any ideas...

 

 

Back on the Gauss Rifle firing-noise issue though, and the idea that it might only make noise if poorly made or in poor condition; something that occurred to me earlier is that I'm giving weapons five condition levels on the receiver slot - like I've mentioned before - and there are also five noise levels to choose from for a weapon in FO4. So I might remove the Gauss Rifle suppressor omod and have the receiver omods affect noise levels as follows:

 

Awful - Very Loud

Poor - Loud

Average - Normal

Good - Quiet

Perfect - Silent

 

It would give a slightly different dynamic to modifying the Gauss Rifle.

[jkruse05]

The base Missile Launcher is most like a PIAT, visually, but I don't think it functions quite the same. The PIAT is more of an RPG, or even a mortar, than a missile launcher, but I guess you could say models made over a hundred years later use a more modern projectile. If I remember correctly the PIAT series went up to Mark III, so something like a Mark X may be appropriate.

More modern comparisons might be the SMAW or maybe the older LRAC (I'm linking these so you can find info about naming conventions and see pictures, not because I doubt people have heard of them). They have the most similar profiles out of modern missile systems.

 

If SMAW, naming conventions could make it either the "Mk ### SMAW" where the number is something higher than 153, or simply the "SMAW III" or higher roman numeral.

 

If LRAC it would just be LRAC F2 or higher.

 

Really though, from my digging, it seems anti-tank systems change naming conventions constantly, there's no real consistency from generation to generation, so if you just come up with something that sounds good and makes sense, I say go for it.

 

Anyway, what's your planned name for the Gatling Laser, or are you cutting it?

Edited February 7, 2018 by jkruse05

[Moldy]

Recall that the missile launcher,in all of its iterations,is a tube,open at both ends. Odds are,thanks to that,and that alone,it's recoilless,thanks to the force of the missile's launch being ducted straight out the back end. As a result,the Stabilizer muzzle mod is less than pointless.

 

More onto potential naming systems,the mods are so wildly disparate that I think it's impossible to pull from a real weapon to name the weapon. Base form,it's barely any different from a LAW,outside of reuseability. Next up is a side-loaded three shot magazine,a system I can't find a close relative to on a modern weapon. Finally,we have a replaceable four tubed missile pod on the front end,an obvious and direct ape of the M202 FLASH. And then there's the guidance system.

 

I think we need to get fictional here. Maybe call it something like the M#M# VMLS,or Variable Missile Launch System,with suffixes to denote things like the guidance system,or the missile pod.

[firehawksh]

I can't really agree to giving sonic booms to the Gauss rifle. For one, it doesn't have the velocity of a railgun, which is the real contender of electromagnetically charged weapons. Furthermore, sonic booms are generally generated (see what I did there?) by aircraft when their speed exceeds that of sound's, and conventional firearms when discharging a shot. A Gauss rifle or railgun would fire their projectile without explosives, thus the resulting sound, if there's any, would only be created after the ammunition leaves the weapon. This all means it's seriously questionable how much noise it can actually make when shooting. It's also possible that by combining suppressors with subsonic shells pretty much all noise could be eliminated.

 

Another notion is that when something flies fast enough, the kinetic energy it carries could create a small explosion or something similar at the surface it crashes into. So it'd be more accurate to use delayed sounds based on distance.