This is a much better idea.
IRL the Mean Rounds Before Stoppages is expected to be ~5,000+ for “modern” rifles like the M16. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 2-3x better than that for stuff designed in this century though.
In caseless ammunition the “case” is solid propellant rather than brass (which typically surrounds the propellant), which makes the cartridges lighter and more compact (hence, you can stuff more of them in a magazine). All stoppages I can think of should still apply though, even failure to extract/eject could be possible with a dud round that didn’t ignite and needs to be cleared from the chamber.
With that said, no military on Earth would voluntarily be using a rifle that has stoppages within a few hundred rounds like is being implemented here, and in terms of gameplay this kind of game mechanic has always been hated by players in every game that’s ever tried it. People barely tolerate it (and complain about it often) in full on autism sims like Stalker. It is not cool or fun to have stoppages unless it’s a thematic thing, if you try to make it a gameplay thing nobody is going to like it. I’d rather have melted guns 2 seconds after I drop them on the ground than guns that jam every few hundred shots (let alone more often than that).
This PR should’ve just added gun disassembly/reassembly autism and a 1 in 10,000-20,000 chance of a gun jam that you clear by hitting the spacebar - had that been all it did there wouldn’t be any problems with it. Thematic, cool, doesn’t impact gameplay.
Impacting gameplay with gun jams to the point that you’re having it happen even multiple times in a 1-2 hour round, needing to lug around gun healing gear for 20 minutes of fighting is not good game design and not fun. You might as well be thinking about adding muscle soreness to xeno arms from slashing people next.
Cool PR idea absolutely murdered by trying to make it some gameplay thing.
That’s also what I’d do. It’s still not clear to me if just firing the gun wears the condition down but I’d assume it does.
From what I’ve seen so far, the jamming starts at something like 90-95% condition and gets progressively worse from there - I get the feeling on a linear scale rather than a logarithmic one. (I would recommend a log scale at the very least)
My personal experience when playtesting was most guns working fine without issue or impact, and then I picked up a gun somewhere and had it jam on me literally every other bullet. It jammed about as often as it fired. Maybe more. I had to basically tap my spacebar as often as I clicked with the mouse, and that experience by itself completely changed my mind on this idea. There’s a way to do this still, it requires a very soft touch if it’s going to happen, and should stray away from being a major gameplay/balance factor, and that’s not what I’m seeing.
My original support for this was because I thought it would be mostly thematic - I can take apart a gun, oil the parts, put the parts on a table, cycle the action, etc. and sometimes every other round I’d have a stoppage to clear which would have some tense impact in that moment, but be too rare as to affect how enjoyable the game is to play. That was the direction of gun autism I thought this was going to go in.
That’s not what we seem to be getting unfortunately.
First it was backpack wind up, and I said nothing.
Second it was removal of PFC kits like veteran and medical kit, and I said nothing.
Third it was the removal of fast injectors, and I said nothing.
Fourth, it was the removal of Unga, and I said nothing.
Finally, guns jamming just for playing the game (aka shooting), and I spoke up, but there was no one to defend me.
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Lol yea; actually weapon durability degradation code has comments on individual ammo types representing each one’s likelihood to damage the gun when used so it actually is exactly tied to ammo quality (aside from if it gets acided/exploded/slashed; or is some kind of meme gun notorious for jamming IRL, then it has a special Bozo Jam Chance flag on it [rip to my CLF homies])
Some of the ammo degradation choices dont make sense to me but it’s w/e (they nerfed me, personally, on xm88 and amr, me, personally!!!); i havent had my own guns jam yet but the stuff i picked off the ground obviously has had issues.
I think the storage issue presented with taking a small or normal sized item is a bit tough and probably my biggest gripe because i personally play roles that are pressed for space, but i imagine on riflemen, it’s not world-ending. I dont think “oh well one guy will be the gun repair kit guy and you just bum off them” that some people mentioned in other threads is really a solution though necause then No One will be that guy, because someone else will, right?
My smaller gripe is that i agree, i think, that gun jams arent fun! Fixing guns is fun to me, though, and i enjoy doing it with the spare gun pile in the FOB when i’m bravo. The moment someone finally opens the workshop on the almayer to fix guns is going to be gold.
TLDR; like the idea, not big on the implementation, but can’t think of a more apt way to do it
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