A Better Gun Rework

Development Ideaguys
1

So I’m here to talk about the new gun mechanics, with weapon durability and the chance to misfire or jam.

One intention of reworking guns was to patch out guns getting deleted if acid was applied to them, and well I think patching out guns being deleted from acid is a nice change, but the approach went too far and it acts as an unnecessary marine nerf.

Another intention for the new gun mechanics was to add more immersion to the game, to make it feel more like you’re in the military.

The largest issue I have with the new gun mechanics, however.

Guns jamming simply for shooting or if marines get slashed while holding the gun is a very poor feature.

One, guns jamming due to shooting just punishes marines for playing the game. Doing their objective. I already take issue with hedgehog rav’s shield punishing marines for shooting at it, but this is objectively worse. Your reward for killing two ravagers who were slaughtering the front? Your gun’s broken and needs to be fixed. And guns taking damage for being slashed is also not a great feature, because well, getting slashed is a very common feature. Marines are already punished if they get slashed a lot, fractures and having minutes to be revived or permanently removed. This just feels even more punishing to marines.

I get that this was intended to add “immersion” and “soul” to the game, and to help have the game focus more on being a MRP space station game then an arcade death match, but this doesn’t outweigh the negative consequence to gameplay. This is also a video game, and good gameplay is obviously very important. I think punishing marines simply for shooting feels too far.

It’s akin to if Mojang were to make it so players in Minecraft take fall damage when landing on water from a high enough height. It’s realistic, yes. But it would greatly aggravate a lot of people considering how iconic of a feature it is and how integral it has become to Minecraft gameplay as a whole.

If you want to make a good RP game, there has to be both good RP and good gameplay mechanics as well. Someone isn’t going to have fun in a DND-inspired video game if the gameplay is awful.

Point is, guns jamming because of xeno slashes and just shooting is very bad gameplay-wise, as it serves to heavily nerf and punish marines more. CM13 has been balanced around marines being able to reliably shoot for a long while now.

Here’s my ideasguy for reworking the new gun mechanics.

Guns should ONLY be able to jam and misfire if acid is applied to them.

Guns would work perfectly normal as they did before the gun mechanic rework when the marine uses it. No misfires, no jamming. They can keep on shooting.

UNTIL.

They go crit and their gun gets applied acid. THAT’s when the gun has a chance to jam or misfire, and the marine would need to have their gun fixed.

I think this rework would not be too punishing for marines, because well dropping your gun and having it applied acid should definitely punish you in someway, but it also adds the immersive realistic gun jamming and misfire that the devs want to replicate.

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

3 Likes
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I think your argument is rather weak because it over-exaggerates the negative impacts of the PR. The buff from having your gun be indestructible to everything but acid and huge explosions far outweigh the consequences of… your gun losing very, very minuscule durability from shooting. Most xenomorphs still do not target the hands because that’s ineffective- There’s no point breaking the guns when marines can heal it right back with minimal effort. Legs and feet are still king.

The second my gun jams, I pull out some lubricant or grab a field repair kit and spend a dozen seconds fixing it back to 100%. Because of this, my gun only jams like once every half hour from shooting, easily rectified because the consumables for repairing guns are in essentially infinite supply.

If you don’t at least carry lube in your helmet, that’s really on you.

A marine who does the bare minimum for maintenance (instant repair after the first jam) will only have at MOST, a dozen jams in a two hour round.
In exchange, having your gun not get deleted by HEDP and random bullshit?
That’s a great trade-off. A great buff, for a nerf that effectively has no gameplay impact so long as you maintain your gun.

It’s really not that big a deal.

6 Likes
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this PR is a buff to marines, your gun doesnt instantly disapear from explosions and acid which is very nice, in exchange you have to repair it and the damage you get from shooting is so small that you would have to mag dump almost all the time for the gun to jam, i used a HPR one round and fired like 600 rounds without a jam and it was in fine condition, the only people who get nerfed are the deltas who stay at the forefront running the meta loadout shooting at everything that is a threat and if it comes to storage you can look up my comment about it on the UNGA removal and flask discussion thread, if your gun is melted as a rifleman go up to a engineer who isnt frontlining all the time, big chance they brought their 15 uses of weapon repair kit

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The problem is those jams will add up. What if you are trying to fight back against a ravager ambushing you and your gun jams as you go near crit?

What if you crit a ravager but your gun jams, and then a drone is able to drag it to resin?

This will frustrate a lot of players in the future, given how gun jamming is RNG-reliant.

If my suggestion sounds overpowered, maybe the acid does a lot of damage to the gun and it takes time to fix? I still think guns jamming because of shooting or slashing is unfair and will serve to only annoy players.

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Yet to experience my gun jam despite me usually fielding the HPR. The mechanic itself has an almost miniscule impact on how marines have to kit themselves, with most people repairing their weapons while getting treated by a medic.

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My example used the bare minimum for gun maintenance- Only repairing once you start jamming.

You argue that gun jams are RNG. While true in the fact that the odds of a jam get progressively worse with degrading durability, it is false in the sense that you can literally avoid gun jams 100%.

A properly maintained gun will never jam. Never, ever, ever. Take care of your weapon, and it will never fail you in the midst of combat.

As such, I see two flaws in your argument here:

A) Gun jams are completely avoidable, and if they happen, it’s because the player was negligent. If a player’s gun jams, it wasnt because of unavoidable RNG. They chose to neglect their firearm, and thus the blame rests solely on them. If your gun jams before you kill a ravager, that was your fault, not the gun.

B) Gun jams are so infrequent that the probability a player’s gun jams before critical moments such as kills is astronomically rare. Other factors like marines bodyblocking your LoF and FF are so, so much worse and impactful than mere gun jams. You have to REALLY fuck up for your gun to jam frequently enough to start to noticably degrade your combat performance and if it does happen, its 100% on you for neglecting your firearm that badly.

2 Likes
7

I haven’t had a single one of my guns jam at all since the PR’s merging. At all. Ever. One time I picked up a very old M4RA that had been acided far before and didn’t examine it and THAT jammed and I freaked the fuck out when the Runner pounced me again but like… just… just lube your gun, man… if it’s anything below “Good” then it’s time for a fix.

Every other marine has a kit or lube. It’s that easy. In exchange, I don’t get my HPR deleted and my single round before work basically ruined? Fuck yes. Dude. Fuck. Yes.

1 Like
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checking the state of the gun is as simple as examining it, a ok fix takes like 1 maybe 2 minutes at most, this is a game where you spend 25 minutes preparing for drop then walk over to the place with xenos, on 624 you have to wait 30 minutes for conbat and you say you cant spend that time to patch up your gun?

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I have only noticed gun jamming as an in-game mechanic standing out with Ol’Painless within the hunting grounds. That gun must’ve jammed at least a dozen times, and the man still escaped after at least two pred kills.

As far as immersion goes, I play a bit of Comtech, and I don’t hate the thought of fixing a gun’s booboo. It almost feels like it might break up my usual pillaging for metal to build or repair a barricade. I could weep (and I do) about how little of an identity I feel the role has. A 15-point pamphlet or being an FTL/SL can grant you nearly everything expected of the Comtech, but because no one will know to yap it’s better. That isn’t even the end of the list! Please give me something to stand out like a snowflake. The damn sentries are more interesting than the Comtech is, and that’s the only thing they have.

It doesn’t read to me like you are against anything conceptually, but rather how it’s implemented within the game; unless I’m misunderstanding something about the post. I think it’s fair to deliberate on, and it certainly has a few layers to it, but it is also still a recent addition with room to be fleshed out. A stand out for me is that Comtechs receive 15 weapon repair kits from their two vendors. 10 from one and 5 from the other. I’ve only ever fixed 5 guns since the addition. They also only stack to 10, and it’s bothering me. How many guns should I be expected to fix? I’ll see Req send down a bag full of repair and maintenance things that go untouched the entire round. It just makes me feel even dumber wasting the slots.

To summarize, I think the mechanics are more interesting than they are harmful to gameplay, they just need a little more time to cook.

1 Like
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Having my UPP gun jam after 10 seconds of using it on first contact as a ERT caught me off guard. Especially since I wasn’t paying attention to the addition of this new mechanic.

It got me killed.

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Had my MK1 jam as a SO and missed a Rav kill, and then it happened a second time later and nearly died because of it. Fixed my gun in between, so I assume the xenos were aiming for hand that round, hence why the constant jamming.

Id rather slashing marines and shooting your gun did not apply a debuff BUT if your gun drops, not only acid can break the gun, but xenos can now slash your gun to break it.

This would make a LOT more sense and make mag harness a LOT more of a viable build, since ANY xeno can slash, so now you gotta decide if your gamer build of reflex sight, agrip is worth it over having to constantly repair your gun.

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12

:smiley:

The point was to

and add a gameplay loop for Marines to interact with ComTechs other than to force them to build barricades and move their turrets.

1 Like
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True, the gun jamming needs to go, or be heavily nerfed, so it’s a very rare occurrence, nobody finds the mechanic fun and it doesn’t improve gameplay.

The guns not being completely destroyed when melted was a nice feature though, there’s nothing worse then Xenos just melting all your guns. Although I’d rather my gun be completely melted then have to deal with gun jamming generally, it sucks.

6 Likes
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I am happy as a frontline delta that my weapon finally have stopped exploding honestly. I don’t care about my weapon at all, but whats on it. Never used a repear kit tho. I just walk to perma dead corpses until it have the weapon i need. Strip off my attachment and back in the game i go.

1 Like
15

I heard that spec guns like the scout guns jam easier then most guns.
And some people here have or in the Discord already mentioned missing kills or battles being worse then they should be because of misfire.

Maybe I’ve overblown the jamming issue, but it’s still noticeable judging from what people say.

The thing is, when queen has a deathball of four ravagers with her, sometimes you don’t always have time to move back to corpsmen/comtechs and get your gun fixed.

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Didn’t play with the new mechanics yet since I’m not at my house but from what I hear it’s extremely annoying and unfun. Personally I’d make it so your gun never jams unless it’s acided or exploded. I mean we have synthetics battleships AI but our weapons still jam?

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I don’t know why anyone has said anything, but why does the caseless guns jam exactly? Isn’t it desgined to almost never jam by its very nature? The only way I see it is faulty ammo.

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I mean, I assume jams are just feed issues, right? Even caseless ammunition has to feed.

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Yup there is 2 main kinds of jams, Failure to eject and Failure to feed

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I’m gonna be real, the people complaining about the jams are generally the same people who dont bring any repair consumables and insist on never repairing.

I saw a dude constantly complaining about jams as they emptied mags upon mags without stopping to repair. He couldve stood still for a dozen seconds and fixed his problem, but insisted on complaining while doing nothing to prevent or mitigate the issue.

Stuff like ERTs suffering is valid since they dont spawn with any repair consumables, but your average PFC and specialist has access to infinite consumables, it’s just that people refuse to take them.

I guess I’m a little jaded because the CM community is… the CM community regarding balance (people saying the SG far sight + falloff removal PR was a nerf when it was actually the most broken buff, or saying valkyrie was a bad caste was astonishing.)

In this case… guys, your problem is solved by putting one tube of lube in your helmet… Come on :crying_cat:

I get fracs fixed more often than I jam, so I just fix my gun at FOB whenever I need to go back for resupply/surgery. Lube is also super fast to use, you can literally repair perfectly fine on the frontline in between pushes.

1 Like