Firearms discussion

[Jaster]

Pistol whip some nethrim!

[Lun]

How long are barrels of the revolvers in game? If they're anything like http://www.traditionsfirearms.com/produ ... cts_id=561 I would like to request that you can parry with a firearm. You see it in a lot of video games, and they can have a small chance similar to a dagger. The chance can change depending on your firearms skill.

Also, since thieves are dirty fighters can they have a pistol whip skill? No one will see it coming. :>

EDIT: Or you could just change how kidneyshot works when the thief is holding a gun
I was tempted to ask for an assassin skill, but I realize that's more Claw of Shar.

[Jaster]

That'd be epic.

[Slaidh]

You could parry with a bow too, but it would get ruined real quick. I don't think they're made to stand up against damage like melee weapons are.

[Lun]

Oooh, that leads into weapon breakage, too. Though I was thinking parry along the lines of "hit the blade aside", and pistols are mainly made of metal, so they'd be more durable than a bow. Though I suppose you could block with dual pistols.
Maybe the pistol will get "battered" and other damage over time and you'll need to bring it to a blacksmith to repair.

[Acarin]

Does firing guns or using archery while mounted decrease accuracy? I imagine it would be harder to hit a target from a moving animal.

I know there are people who train in irl to fire while mounted and it's significantly harder to be accurate.

[Reynard]

Particularly if the horse is NOT trained for battle.

[Jhieger]

I think tactics marksman should be impossible or half effective with dual pistols, and fully effective with a single. I also think it would be a nice unique benefit for single wielding a revolver to have a slow accuracy boost over a short time if you keep firing at the same target. Higher accuracy and higher chance to hit what you're aiming at as you adjust between each shot. Since the revolver is preloaded, you don't have to move it around and lose your aim to reload between shots, or to grab a new arrow like you would with a bow.

Revolvers are nice with the rapid fire you get at the start. However, unlike weapons that do a lot of damage on one hit, with a revolver you're unlikely to hit the body part you're aiming for each shot, so it ends up more like a scattershot. I think this should be the case with dual wielding revolvers, really that should decrease your accuracy overall, but with single wielding I think you should get an accuracy boost to hitting where you're aiming, something like I mentioned above.

Thoughts?

[Acarin]

I think tactics marksman should be impossible or half effective with dual pistols, and fully effective with a single. I also think it would be a nice unique benefit for single wielding a revolver to have a slow accuracy boost over a short time if you keep firing at the same target. Higher accuracy and higher chance to hit what you're aiming at as you adjust between each shot. Since the revolver is preloaded, you don't have to move it around and lose your aim to reload between shots, or to grab a new arrow like you would with a bow.

Revolvers are nice with the rapid fire you get at the start. However, unlike weapons that do a lot of damage on one hit, with a revolver you're unlikely to hit the body part you're aiming for each shot, so it ends up more like a scattershot. I think this should be the case with dual wielding revolvers, really that should decrease your accuracy overall, but with single wielding I think you should get an accuracy boost to hitting where you're aiming, something like I mentioned above.

Thoughts?

I think that you're forgetting about recoil...

[Rithiel]

I think that you're forgetting about recoil...

And the fact that people tend to move when they're shot at.*

*From my knowledge of books, movies, and television, not personal experience.

[Acarin]

I think that you're forgetting about recoil...

And the fact that people tend to move when they're shot at.*

*From my knowledge of books, movies, and television, not personal experience.

They do? Oh. That's what I've been doing wrong.

[xavier]

While I know this would be a horrible thing to put into the game and causing much less love of firearms of the flintlock variety at least. The major thing I've not seen mentioned is the possibility of the firearm backfiring as according to everything I've ever read this was a distinct issue even with some regular users who were quite practiced at how much powder to pour into the barrel. too little powder and the shot isn't as powerful. As you are usually using them within a few yards of your opponent this isn't such a big deal but would account for the limited damage versus melee weapons and bows. Too much powder in the barrel didn't cause the shot to come out faster so much as it caused the barrel to sort of explode and I have seen a flintlock backfire in such a manner, the guy who fired it lost a finger and a chunk out of his thumb. If we were to go into rifles I'd suspect this would transfer over to damage to the head/eyes/neck as well. This wasn't just an issue in flintlocks either, back in the days before powder packs on naval ships scoops were used thus making the amount of powder not always the same when firing the cannons so just imagine a lesser version of 250 pounds of iron bursting like a black cat in your hand. I would much take a bit less damage from firearms and call it caution and never have my flintlock blow up in my hand rather than have the chance that not only will the enemy be trying to kill me, but the gun in my hand as well.

[Gruff]

Typed on iPhone so bare with me.

To be honest, fire arms were the big draw for me to come to the game. I was looking for the guild that would give specific abilities to gunmen...only thing I found was Mercs +50.

Why aren't there any gun skills? I like the engineer idea, I'd just call the guild "Gunsmiths". Just off the top of my head:
Quick Draw -lowers fire RT on small weapons.
Snipe - I think there is a skill like this for bows...is there for rifles?
Loader - Reduced RT on reloads
Butt stroke - close combat stun allowing for flanking or moving to avoid distance
Riding Accuracy

Etc.

Given a day to think I could probably give you ten or twelve skills easily emplemented.

Gun perks could be the creation of an M1 Grande type rifle with a 5 shot mag.
Shotguns for spread shot. Etc. it's funny to me that we have revolvers but are essentially working with single shot muskets and colonial era rifles instead of the pistol equivalent of the Wild West's bolt acton pump actions. Colonial is not steam punk. Maybe make those lesser rifles affordable to new players coming in like cheap melee weapons and then have them able to pick up better, strong weapons as you level.

If fire arms are gonna be a pain in the ass, shouldn't they be that much more awesome on the damage side?

Also, perhaps something the guild could make for others is ammunition that doesn't require powder for loading.

[Vertebrate]

I like the firearms too, and the guild stuff sounds wonderful. I had some thoughts though:

Flintlocks take longer than 3-9 seconds to load.
Flintlocks defeat any armor, even plate, while no arrow has ever been able to defeat plate. Even crossbows have trouble with plate outside a few dozen meters.
Where are the muskets and bayonets? A musket is an effective rudimentary melee weapon even without bayonet.
Flintlocks pistols make a rudimentary melee weapon, on par with a hatchet or hammer.
Carrying multiple loaded flintlocks and quickly shooting through them- all lined up and ready- is a viable solution in a siege, but carrying all that iron on a hunt or extended assault was prohibitive.

And most nerfed of all: Flintlock pistols are notoriously inaccurate, but notoriously able to kill an infested merchant at close range with LESS than 15 shots! One non-vital shot would be enough to send a man or animal running for second thoughts, and two non-vital shots would be enough to send even the most hardened veteran to the back of the lines, while grazing shots are almost negligible. And flintlock pistols require almost ZERO practice to hit what you're hating (quickly loading and long range marksmanship are another matter, though.)

The reason that firearms have the potential to severely imbalance the game is because firearms truly did change the world. I imagine Clok is set in the 1700s at least, maybe even early 1800's, right? What's being done and discussed in this thread are ways to balance firearms with melee weapons and bows. But this is a silly discussion if the game is committed to realism, which it seems to be. One way to control balance without nerfing realism is to control distribution. Living in a quarantine is a perfect device to balance the game without nerfing things. Revolvers should be very rare, if they are present at all. Revolvers and rifled barrels with loaded cartridges completely did away with melee weapons once and for all, bar the saber and knives/bayonets. If Clok is going to keep melee relevant, AND keep firearms realistic, it's going to have to control distribution to crude firearms/ammo/supply, and maybe even eliminate revolvers all together.

[Lysse]

Firearm distribution is already controlled, to an extent.

However, just because real life firearms were vastly superior in the real world does not mean that necessarily they should dominate in the game. While realism is really cool, you also have to keep in mind that at the end of the day it is a game, not a real world simulator. A person can fell and process an entire tree in a few minutes, harvest thousands of herbs in a couple of days, and grow crops that should take a season, in a much shorter period. While there's a lot to the game that's realistic (which I love), there are certain things you have to take with a grain of salt. Weapon balance is one of those things; at least, that's what I think.

[Drayla]

I disagree that firearms would dominate if they caused the same damage as melee weapons. It would really just be an issue of choice, though firearms would be a more viable option for newbies than they currently are. You say that firearms made melee weapons obsolete quite quickly, yet they were people who carried nothing but a sword into battle as recently as World War I. The only way I think firearms would become the dominate weapon in CLOK is if they suddenly started causing a huge amount of damage comparable to the heavy and awkward hafted weapons.

[Lysse]

Firearms have been in the game for a bit, and the reason they don't do a ton of damage is because they have other advantages, as far as I'm aware.

[Drayla]

Mainly the ability to be fired at both ranged and engaged positions, and a 4 sec reload/fire. I think dual-wielding flintlocks would be effective perhaps, and dual-wielding revolvers would be amazing, as long as you killed whatever you were fighting in those 12 shots. But, I can't even find a revolver, so I'm not sure whether they are still in the game or not.

[Lysse]

They're in the game, they're just regulated compared to the other guns (I don't want to say any more on that, in case it isn't meant to be public knowledge).

I'd say flintlocks are good openers, and should be accompanied by something else. Like melee weapons, or magic even.

[Nootau]

Vertebrate, you make a few interesting claims about armour verses firearms. Could you cite your sources? I will start from the beginning of your comments.

Flint lock pistols while easy to use, and moderately accurate on non moving targets within five to seven feet were very poor to use against a target that was moving or a smaller target. This was because rifling had yet to exist which made shots very inaccurate. In addition, most of the shots varied in amount of powder used resulting in it being very difficult to know how much of the powder was even used per shot, setting aside damp powder from humid locations. A unprotected limb shot with a flint lock would only be about as damaging as a short bladed thrust dagger strike, the bullet did not actually penetrate that deeply into the body from low velocity, resulting in much of the damage being from the shock and cavitation within the body.

While firearms changed wars and battles that was not until post rifling and post available blacksmith crafted armour. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, knight and knight like armour was a ready defence against firearms. This is because firearms of pre twentieth century normally did not have high enough sustained velocity to penetrate plated armour outside of near point blank ranges(plate armour was slowly phased out during this era to lighten the weight of foot soldiers leaving mostly commanders and important officers well protected).

In addition, Drayla's comment perked my interest. The amount of damage a bullet, even during WWI did was minimal compared to the damage inflicted by a melee weapon such as a sword. The firearm's advantage was the same as bows, range. The advantage over bows was rate of fire and ease to instruct in its use to use it well. A firearm in fact does less physical damage than even a bow from its lack of mass and surface area, the bow was simply phased out as it was easier and quicker to train a physically weak person to be a rifleman than it did to train them into a competent archer.

[Rias]

I don't know how I want to do it, but I do want to give fintlocks (particularly the single-shot variety) some love somehow. Revolvers are pretty nice, but as has been brought up in a few threads, their damage is usually spread out over multiple hit locations and therefore harder to get a quick kill with as can be done with bows using Tactics Marksman. You can riddle someone with holes quickly with revolvers, and it's fun to do, but the target can usually still stagger away or fight back after that initial 6-shot burst, because those holes are spread out instead of concentrated in one area.

Being able to file while in Engage is nice, but pretty minor, since you need to be able to get ouf Engage in order to load more powder.

I think firearms are still mostly novelty weapons. They can be effective, but just about any other weapon category, except hurling weapons and whips (the latter are not meant to be effective killing tools anyway), is better. If you can get your hands on some of the long guns (carbines, muskets), those can be extremely effective, but those are intentionally limited and hard to get.

Once firearms breakage goes in and they have a shelf life, I'll be more willing to see the more powerful firearms distributed a little more often and widely. Still limited, though. I want them to remain special.

[Acarin]

If any of you see Jaster or Bryce snipe for one shot kills to eyes from hiding, you'll stop calling firearms weak...

[Bryce]

It's true.

[Acarin]

Which brings up this question...

How is it so much easier to aim at a particular target with a firearm than with a melee weapon? Maybe it's just what I've seen from watching several snipers in the arena, but it seems they hit an aimed target FAR more frequently than melee fighters. I would think it would be far more difficult and require way more skill to be dead on with shots than striking to the head with a dagger, for example.

[Rithiel]

Which brings up this question...

How is it so much easier to aim at a particular target with a firearm than with a melee weapon? Maybe it's just what I've seen from watching several snipers in the arena, but it seems they hit an aimed target FAR more frequently than melee fighters. I would think it would be far more difficult and require way more skill to be dead on with shots than striking to the head with a dagger, for example.

As far as I know, they're identical. There are plans to make it easier or harder to hit where you're aiming based on weapon type, but you all know what the todo list looks like.