Guns of Atom

[stan]

There are many guns in Atom and most of them are rather strangely modelled. Following are my thoughts based on both gaming and shooting experience. See below for more;-

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Where?:P

[InEffect]

Originally posted by Neyreyan:

Where?:P

Below!

he has no more thoughts

[stan]

PISTOLS
All pistols should be short ranged. It really makes no sense to give medium range to handguns since they lack both the sights and the stability of a third point of contact (your shoulder).
This makes balancing much simpler since you don't have to nerf the damage or increase AP cost to make up for the increased range.

Your Zip Gun as described is a precussion cap single shot pistol. Reloading is a very slow so the AP cost should be 3/4/6. Essentially you should have more than one or switch to a melee weapon as soon as you fire off your shot.

The Custom Revolver is fired using paper cartridges. This is really a precussion cap and ball type revolver like a Colt 1851 Navy or 1860 Army. Realsitically there is no way to relaod the revolver in combat so your 5 or 6 shots is all you get. Theoretically you can replace the empty cylinder with a loaded one but that basically requires the revolver to be disassembled. For game purposes it should be 3/4/-. Carry extra loaded pistols.

Capsule revolvers are essentially improvised cartridge revolvers. They really should not be better than a Nagant revolver which is a reasonably modern double-action smokeless design. 3/4/6 is reasonable.

There is no reason to increase the damage or reduce the AP of the Capsule+ revolver given that it fires the same .30 round. It just has another chamber to give 6. Another possible improvement is a faster ejection/loading arrangement like a break top (a la S&W No.3) or swing out cyliner (S&W Model 10 M&P) so the reloading is faster for an AP cost of 3/4/4 which makes it better than the Nagant!

The Nagant revolver should be 3/4/6 also to refelct the extreme slowness of the gate loading cylinder arrangement which requires each fired cartridge to be individually ejected before being reloaded.

All the semi-automatic pistols like the Makarov, Tokarev etc. should have the same AP cost for snap firing (3) and aimed fire(4) and loading (2). This allows most characters to get 2 snap shots off, 2 aimed if they have 6 or more points in DEX.

Burst and automatic fire from machine pistols is a waste of effort without a shoulder stock unless you are within one or two squares.

More cotd. Rather too much for one giganto post.

[Reef]

devs almost always have to sacrifice reality for game balance

[stan]

They don't have to. Long guns are always better than a handgun.

Cotd.......

The Stechkin(APS) and Mauser Schnellfeuer(M712) should come in versions. With and without a shoulder stock.

Without stock they should be 3/4/6/2 with ultra bad dispersion at anything over 2 squares.
With the stock it is just very bad!

The stock should however give you ability to shoot out to Medium range albeit with a very fall off in accuracy.

SMGs
Vz61 Skorpion in Atom is depicted as being a 9mm. The 9x18mm version was never used during the cold war andwas produced primarily for the US export market after. It was used in .32ACP/7.65mm Browning which is much weaker than even the 9x18mm.
If you assume that the ammunition magically works, it should have an AP of 2/4/5/3 but low dmg and terrible accuracy drop off.

PPS-43. More powerful, harder to manage in automatic, the Sudaev SMG should have AP of 3/4/6/3.

Cotd........

[One]

Balance of handguns is really poor now in game due to how many AP they need to shoot. There is no single reason to use handguns now in game in any situation when you can use rifels and automatic weapon. Handguns should be strong in close combat indeed buy they are not. The only exception is crafted revolver due to those 2AP which is actually even to good and should be nerfed to 3AP

[stan]

It is true to say that you should not bring a handgun to a gunfight. The only reason to do so is that it can either be concealed or rapidly drawn if your long gun stops working for any reason. The game currently allows you to switch weapons (B) at will with no AP cost. Handguns and small melee weapons (e.g. knives) should be able to do so with maybe 1 AP. Larger weapons should take longer, so transitioning to a PKM or such should take at least 4AP or more. This keeps handguns relelvant at higher levels or when you are using slow firing long range weapons.

Some of the weapons appearing in Atom are weird. For example having both the HK33 and M16A2 curiously rechambered for 5.45x39 is just strange as hell when you can just have an AK-74 or AKS-74 which is missing.

The Hunting Rifle and Old Rifle should not be worse than the crafted equivalents. Indeed they are the same thing, essentially manually operated rifles built from prewar components.
They would have higher AP than the self-loaders which really should have 3AP for snap and 4AP for aimed shots unless they are full-power rifles firing 7.62x54mm which would be 4/5. This means anyone with 6 or more dex can still squeeze off 2 shots a turn in semi-auto.

Historically there were no sporting rifles in 7.62x39 or 5.45 in the Soviet Union. The only rifle found was the M1891 Moisin-Nagant, which is utterly absent from the game. It should be available as a basic rifle, a PU-scoped sniper version and an Obrez or crazily chopped down pistol conversion. The last is a long time favorite with Russian partisans, bandits and utterly in keeping with the wasteland of post-atomic Soviet Union.

You base crafting progression for manually operated/bolt actions of all caliber should be;-

Single Shot - Magazine fed repeater - Magazine fed with scope.

Obrez can be made from Single Shots or Repeaters. Just use ToolKit.