[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[Moldy]

It would be interesting to see how the under-barrel launcher was implemented in that mod, but yeah; the file is hidden at the moment.

 

 

As for damage falloff over range and whatnot, I'll have a look at ballistics data when I get to that part, with the aim being to have relative differences between different rounds and weapons hopefully make sense and feel right, if nothing else.

 

As kind of a side-note on muzzle devices: I may remove their "range" penalties in WARS as my understanding is that they don't appreciably affect things like muzzle velocity since they're positioned on the muzzle, and the round has already accelerated to where it's going to via expanding gas in the barrel by the time it leaves the barrel and passes through the compensator/suppressor/whatever. Ported barrels on the other hand may affect the "range" (and damage?) since gas is escaping from the barrel sooner than it otherwise would in a barrel of the same length.

 

... I'm possibly not explaining that well, and again I'm an Australian computer nerd so I've never so much as touched a real firearm; this is all from various bits of research. In any case; in WARS, muzzle devices may be a straight upgrade (excepting added weight), though I may have suppressors reduce recoil less than compensators/brakes.

 

 

A few other comments - and some of this is mentioned in the OP:

 

- The Hunting Rifle (Remington M700) will be .308 only - no .50 BMG because seriously. Maybe .30-06 as well though if that round is in AmmoTweaks?

- The Combat Rifle is replaced with the Mini-14 in WARS and now uses 5.56x45mm only.

- The Handmade Rifle is an AKM (called "Handmade AKM" in WARS) and uses 7.62x39mm rather than 7.62x51mm. In vanilla they just use the vague "7.62" as the ammo name, hence the confusion.

- 7.62x51mm NATO is indeed very similar to .308 Winchester.

 

I was simply comparing things to the vanilla game,for everybody's sanity. Further,I assumed a NATO cartridge,because it was used by a weapon used by American troops in the Fallout universe; The weapon is mentioned in loading screens to be military hardware.

 

However,I should reiterate; The .45-70,while a big and powerful cartridge,quite often used for bear hunting,it is not a sniper's round. It's effectively a .45 ACP bullet stuck on a magnum-length casing,and given a 70 grain load. .308 Winchester appears to be 150 grain,while 7.62*39mm has a 123 grain load. I can't seem to find the grain load on .50 Browning,however. But,because it's a scaled up .30-06 Springfield,we can assume it's a lot more than the 7.62*51mm.

 

The point I'm trying to make,I guess,is that the lever-action rifle wouldn't be a realistically sound marksman's weapon. The ammo it takes just cannot remain accurate and lethal at the ranges that the much smaller 5.56 NATO can,let alone what either 7.62 variant can do.

 

Where DID that perception come from anyways? .45-70 rifles being marksman rifles? That said,though; They'd be AMAZING medium-range brawling weapons. If it can drop a bear,an armoured man would be an afterthought.

[Nihilisaurus]

 

However,I should reiterate; The .45-70,while a big and powerful cartridge,quite often used for bear hunting,it is not a sniper's round. It's effectively a .45 ACP bullet stuck on a magnum-length casing,and given a 70 grain load. .308 Winchester appears to be 150 grain,while 7.62*39mm has a 123 grain load. I can't seem to find the grain load on .50 Browning,however. But,because it's a scaled up .30-06 Springfield,we can assume it's a lot more than the 7.62*51mm.

 

The point I'm trying to make,I guess,is that the lever-action rifle wouldn't be a realistically sound marksman's weapon. The ammo it takes just cannot remain accurate and lethal at the ranges that the much smaller 5.56 NATO can,let alone what either 7.62 variant can do.

 

Where DID that perception come from anyways? .45-70 rifles being marksman rifles? That said,though; They'd be AMAZING medium-range brawling weapons. If it can drop a bear,an armoured man would be an afterthought.

 

The original .45-70 loads were US military rifle rounds designed for volley fire and long range marksmanship. They were expected to retain lethal energy to silly ranges like 3000 yards, and those loadings (with a big round-nose bullet that's about twice the weight of the one in .45 ACP as standard at 4-500 grain vs 200ish) did. Loaded for rifles, with a big bullet and smokeless powder instead of black powder a .45-70 round generates a lot of muzzle energy and manages to retain enough of it to be dangerous to a significant range. It doesn't do it fast though so it's not a good cartridge for a sniper, as the wind, imperfections in the bullet and gravity all have time to skew the course of the round, degrade its precision and pull it in a nice big ballistic arc. In-game this could be recreated by a slightly worse accuracy and a lower velocity projectile, resulting in long-range shooting accuracy being hampered by having to lead the target, compensate for drop and only being able to take 'good' shots against large targets or targets out of cover.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~sharpsshtr/CritterPhotos/SandyHook/SandyHook.html

 

US Army tests from the era show that even at 3000 yards a .45-70 will come in at a ridiculously steep angle - but will still punch through several inches of wood. It remains lethal, but not necessarily accurate. The hit ratios in the report demonstrate that.

 

 

 

I was simply comparing things to the vanilla game,for everybody's sanity. Further,I assumed a NATO cartridge,because it was used by a weapon used by American troops in the Fallout universe; The weapon is mentioned in loading screens to be military hardware.

 

However,I should reiterate; The .45-70,while a big and powerful cartridge,quite often used for bear hunting,it is not a sniper's round. It's effectively a .45 ACP bullet stuck on a magnum-length casing,and given a 70 grain load. .308 Winchester appears to be 150 grain,while 7.62*39mm has a 123 grain load. I can't seem to find the grain load on .50 Browning,however. But,because it's a scaled up .30-06 Springfield,we can assume it's a lot more than the 7.62*51mm.

 

.50BMG is just so much larger than anything else it's pretty much in a league of its own. Based on hard numbers like muzzle energy there's no reasonable way to have both pistol calibers (.38, 9mm, 10mm, .45ACP) and full-size .50 do damage in the same league in gameplay. Hell, it even dwarfs other rifle rounds in terms of carried energy. Looking at it, it's easy to see why though. The bullet alone is comparable in size to a complete 7.62x39mm round and the cartridge case is long enough you could hide a .308 inside it and still seat the bullet properly. It's simply massive.

 

http://i.imgur.com/vmllMQH.jpg

[For scale, cartridges (nearly, .45 and 9mm swapped, but depends on loading) by muzzle energy: .45ACP, 9x19mm, 5.56x45mm NATO, 7.62x39mm, 7.62x51mm, .303 British (just), .50 BMG]

 

A .50 BMG round has something like 18-20,000 joules of energy at the muzzle, compared to about 3500-4000 for a .30-06. It's actually a pretty big problem in terms of balance if you just try to scale damage based on delivered energy. Taking the muzzle energies of all the cartridges in the game (and making something up for 2mmEC and 5mm), declaring the .38's energy to be worth 12 damage and scaling from there gives you approximately (depending on what loading you choose and what barrel length each was fired from) this chart:

 

 

 

And that's with .50 being .50 Beowulf not .50 BMG, that gives you damage in the range of 655-745. The relative energy column tells you almost all you need to know: a single .50 BMG round carries as much energy as 60 .38s. And it only gets worse when you consider that cartridge design and aerodynamics tell you that .50 round will hold onto that energy in flight much more effectively than the .38s will. Comparison to any other semi-automatic pistol round outside .50AE gives similarly absurd numbers: 36 9mms or .45s, 20 10mms. Even rifle rounds don't far much better at 10 5.56mm or 5-6 .308s. For a handheld weapon .50BMG is simply absurdly powerful, which is why .50 rifles tend to weigh at a minimum about 10kg compared to 3kg for a 5.56mm rifle, in order to contain the involved pressures and have robust enough actions to manage the resulting forces. In-game balance aside from making .50BMG weapons prohibitively costly and cumbersome to use is difficult. At the very least - if that route is taken - given their extreme weight, size and power they should have awful aim-time, hip-fire accuracy and recoil.

Edited September 4, 2017 by Lt Albrecht

[Bottletopman]

I wonder if weapon mods in FO4 have effects to slow down movement of the wielder, would be great for any light fifty guns. In fact, everything in regards to handling should be horrible - slow equip time (probably use an animation that's suited for a heavy gun if you're bothered enough), slow reload time, slow aim time etc.

 

I remember trying to lift a HS-50 M1 at the gun show last year - it wasn't even loaded and I couldn't lift it, I mean I try to keep fit, but I'm not that strong, and it's actually pretty damn hard trying to carry 15kg in a rifle-style grip. Some muscly guy (and I mean farmer muscles, not gymbro ones lol), came over and got his buddy to take a photo of him holding the gun, looking down the scope, he was going red in the face and his arms were trembling from trying to hold it just for a few seconds. The things are damn heavy, but more importantly perfectly legal to have here in Australia :D only 11,000 bucks...add 6k if you want the scope as well lol.

Edited September 4, 2017 by Bottletopman

[BrendonLeCount]

@LtAlbrecht - I'd imagine that a .50 bmg would go through an organic target, delivering only a fraction of its energy unless you're using it against heavy armor or a sentry bot. It would be a good thing to pair with a damage threshold system, letting the "overkill" ignore a fixed amount of damage threshold.

[antistar]

https://bethesda.net/en/mods/fallout4/mod-detail/4034215

This is the under-barrel launcher but it's only out for Bethesda.net on Xbox one for some reason. Hope this helps in some way.

Thanks; looks like it's implemented fairly differently to how it is in WARS. Probably no new animations for it, etc. It's hard to tell for sure if it's XB1-only. (It's strange when people do that... I mean you need a PC and a PC copy of FO4 to make the mod in the first place.)

 

 

[Whole lot of info]

Thanks for all that; that's pretty useful. That ammo chart in particular is basically exactly what I was planning to do as a starting point when it came time to do the stats. Saves me some trouble. :)

 

.50 BMG was always going to be the fly in the ointment when trying to make the small arms combat in FO4 make sense without being no fun because a certain weapon kills everything in one shot. As you said there, high weight (of weapons and ammo), slow aim-time, high recoil (with no auto-recovery) and poor hip-fire accuracy are all things I'm almost certain to do for .50 BMG weapons. Scarcity of ammo is another thing I'll probably need to tweak.

 

 

I wonder if weapon mods in FO4 have effects to slow down movement of the wielder, would be great for any light fifty guns. In fact, everything in regards to handling should be horrible - slow equip time (probably use an animation that's suited for a heavy gun if you're bothered enough), slow reload time, slow aim time etc.

@LtAlbrecht - I'd imagine that a .50 bmg would go through an organic target, delivering only a fraction of its energy unless you're using it against heavy armor or a sentry bot. It would be a good thing to pair with a damage threshold system, letting the "overkill" ignore a fixed amount of damage threshold.

These are interesting ideas too. Slowing movement speed may be a possibility. If I did that though I'd be tempted to do it for heavy weapons generally (and only when outside power armour), so it could become a whole thing... which could be good or bad, I don't know. I'll give it some thought.

 

Reducing .50 BMG damage compared to that chart's value but giving it a bonus against robots and power armour may work, too.

[Nihilisaurus]

 

 

[Whole lot of info]

Thanks for all that; that's pretty useful. That ammo chart in particular is basically exactly what I was planning to do as a starting point when it came time to do the stats. Saves me some trouble. :smile:

[...]

Reducing .50 BMG damage compared to that chart's value but giving it a bonus against robots and power armour may work, too.

 

Word of warning, it leads to annoying bulletsponge enemies early game because 12 damage is truly pathetic. I looked at maybe scaling the damage by bullet weight or something to tip the scale a little but there's not really anything that works aside from arbitrarily giving pistol calibers (.38, 9mm, 10mm, .45) extra damage. Some sort of fudge factor to account for energy deposition or a New Vegas hollowpoint style effect to allow lower velocity rounds to be useful against unarmoured targets is a must if you don't want the player to struggle to get through the concord museum without running through every available round.

 

You could probably cut the damage of .50 BMG in half to ~300 and it'd still be very impressive, lethal to unarmoured enemies and a decent threat to power armour.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Lt Albrecht

[antistar]

I'm also planning to remove HP scaling with level, which could result in even more bullet-sponginess in the early-game unless I do some fudging. It seems unlikely that I'll be doing a straight "conversion" of real-world muzzle energy values.

 

 

In other news, the Mossberg 590 textures are nearly finished; I should be able to show some images in the next day or two.

[crawe1x]

Just saw your new posts of the Mossberg. Truly amazing work, antistar.

 

There are some fantastic weapons mods out there, but WARS looks like it's in a league of its own!

[antistar]

Here's the textured Mossberg 590:

 

- Mossberg 590 06

- Mossberg 590 07

- Mossberg 590 08

- Mossberg 590 09

- Mossberg 590 10

 

Again, based on resources by An Aggressive Napkin and Tigg, with a whole bunch of changes by me.

 

So far in WARS I haven't really bothered doing low-detail variants (which the game uses whenever a weapon is not in the player's hands), but as you can see there, I did for the heat-shield. The low-detail variant doesn't have actual holes in it.

 

The shell holder will have shotgun shells in it, it's just that the shells are not in this Painter file as I'll be using the shell model/textures I made for the USAS-12.

 

Next up is getting it in-game; still need to do all the exporting and whatnot.

 

 

(And thanks crawe1x.)

[Longstrider92]

That looks badass you are making amazing progress man, keep up the good work, still looking forward to loving this mod!