Guns and You - A feedback thread on guns and their implementation.

[Critawakets]

Guns in SS13 right now i feel are bad compared to what they could be. They dont feel fun to shoot and while feeling nessesary for combat, also somehow dont feel the part. I think it honestly is just some sort of lack of feedback, so lets fix that.

1- [Full-Auto]

Guns do not have full-auto. It just doesnt exist. However, just porting beestation's fully automatic guns will not fix everything magically. Guns right now are balanced around being semi-automatic with no consideration for fully automatic firing as it isnt implemented. So if the PR is ported guns will need a fair modicrum of rebalancing and to do that it would be wise to categorize what kinds of guns are. Guns should be balanced around "Is it fast chip damage" or "Is it slow, but high damage?" Also such a thing could help to balance some guns (Energy Guns could have less fire rate for lethal than laser guns.)

Auto-rifles are obviously part of the fast chip damage club, but shotguns would be king of the slow but high damage club. Laser guns would be somewhere in middle.

2- [Feel]

When you first shot a gun in SS13, were you blinded by its majesty? No you were not.

Guns just do not feel punchy or strong, but like shooty sticks that do pew pew. Sprite-wise, they are good enough however the inhands sprites for shotguns could be made way less cartoony. As for effects, there should be recoil (your sprite going backwards a bit but returning after you stop firing), screenshake and some echo to the firing noise as it passes through environments. But the worst offender is sounds. Gun sounds right now are downright awful in my opinion. They just dont feel punchy in any way. Some new sounds with some sound mixing could go a long way in making gunplay more fun, even if it does not affect gameplay.


"When you code it"
I can work on it, it just is that i want feedback and suggestions, alongside maybe getting people to help along with this.

TLDR; guns are boring, make them not boring

[Super Aggro Crag]

firing a gun in station without earprotection should instantly stun you as your eardrums rupture

[Farquaar]

Guns should be deadly and dangerous, but a fear of so-called "murderbone" will probably make some players apprehensive about any adjustments in that direction. Still, I fully support the idea you're going for here.

For a weapon to feel good, it needs to have solid sound design and a strong gameplay effect. A peashooter with fancy sound effects isn't fun to use, and an insta-kill gun that sounds like a crushed coke can when fired isn't satisfying either.

Another issue which is probably just inherent to Byond is the aiming. Aiming is stiff and janky. There's no cover system or anything either. The meta amounts to just yakety sax back and forth until your opponent runs out of shots. In an ideal world, the game might have a smooth, dynamic aiming system like Hotline Miami. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in Byond, so stiff aiming and static looking is probably here to stay.

That's all off the top of my head. There's a few articles and videos made on this subject, so I'd encourage you to check those out and see how much game design theory you could translate into SS13.

[oranges]

the players will not like guns that feel strong and I don't particularly feel like pushing it up hill right now so it's kind of a moot point anyway

[CPTANT]

I don't think full auto is needed, burst fire comes close enough already with the turn based nature of the game.

[Cobby]

Guns are already incredibly strong by the nature that your accuracy is depended on where you click and not anything pertaining to your character.

[Omni]

As they are guns are.... weak is not it, they are not very strong
Of course there are some weapons that cause healthy dose of respect like most shotguns, L6, .357, maybe research hi tech guns (ut these only ever get printed when there's blob and science is particularily competent).
Most gunfights happen in wide hallways, and, particularily more robust players, can easily dodge them well enough. Hell, with above average lag, they hardly even need to do that consciously. You can also see max 7 tiles in each direction (barring stuff with scope, but that's atrocious to use tbh), that's enough for anyone determined enough to walk up and shove you into the wall/baton you. This really is not hard to achieve, and on top of that guns are harder to get than aforementioned and require regular maintenance in form of keeping them loaded. Making ranged combat... just not very efficient solution most of the time. Person shooting egun, for instance or ltierally anything other than shotgun usually either aims for moving target that is too far and keeps dodging or aims for target that's too close and they are basically omae wa mou shindeiru.

[Istoprocent1]

Guns, could use some rework. Gameplay vs realism. If the guns become deadlier, then there is less room for gameplay and the combat will turn into the same as "1 hit gg stun combat" used to be - who lands a hit first, wins.

What really needs to change is the ability to hit a location with 100% accuracy - aim head, 100% guaranteed to hit head, which is whack. The aim game should be centered around aiming for the center mass and then some shots randomly deviating to other parts and only having point blank shots hit locations with 100% accuracy.

Stechkin is a solid reference point in terms of lethality when it comes to gunplay.

For the feel - good sound, muzzle flash and other fancy feedbacks to hit dem dopamine receptors.