Guns guns guns!

I loooooooooooooooove the guns in Arcanum. My favourites at the moment are the Hand Canon and the Looking Glass Rifle. Which firearm do you think is best?

 

I go for the Warbringer in Vendigroth. High firepower and it allows you to carry a shield at the same time.

 

My research on Arcanum firearms for unpatched game.

For patched game, Droch's Warbringer is easily the best- more damage per turn, more efficient ammo usage, allows for using a shield.

 

Excellent. Thanks.

 

There is only one word fit for what I feel right now, and it's a Swedish word.


ORKA.

 

SMAL WALE

 

"Large dolphin" would be more accurate, actually.

 

Or LARJ DOLLFIN, depending on if you're Swedish or not.

 

Bah, in the unpatched game, the best gun before the warbringer is the looking-glass rifle. After the patch, they severly weaken the weapon.

I don't like the mechanized gun because it's an ammo gobbler. 6 bullets for a shot? Let's be reasonable here, it should be more powerful than it is if it's going to use that much ammo.

 

It isn't that powerful because they tried to keep it realistic: a gun firing that fast can't be totally accurate, so they attempted to reflect that in the damage. I personally was a fan of the long-range pistol... that with a blade-launcher as a back up were my personal favorites... ^_^

 

LGR is good, but hardly the best. It deals less damage on average than the blade launcher, and the accuracy bonus isn't all that relevant after your Perception and Firearms skills are high enough.

Automatic weapons are more difficult to control, so accuracy suffers when firing bursts and ammo gets wasted. Try firing a mini-Uzi one day (1200 RPM) and see how good you are in hitting human size things with it.

Besides, there's no shortage of bullets in the game. I end up with 7000-8000 bullets usually. And the speed of the Mech gun makes it great for real time combat and adds flexibility in turn based, too.

 

Dear sir, I'm a chronic cheater, I don't have any perception or firearm skill defects in MY characters!

You have a point there, but one thing I would say is that a mechanized gun is something that should be stationary and not carried around. That kind of bullshit is best left for movies like Rambo... then again, this IS a game with Spock eared elves and hulking half-ogres...

In regards to your statement that I should try a mini-UZI.. I would have to train with it, and with sufficent practice I should be able to hit human sized targets fairly well.

That's the whole thing, a master of firearms as my character would be shouldn't have much of a problem. In real life I probably wouldn't do well the first time, but would after some practice.

 

Why? First submachineguns were used already during World war I (the Italian 'Villar Perosa') and were quite inaccurate.

A lot depends on the weapon. You can be the best shooter in the world, but you cannot shoot accurately if the weapon itself or the ammo is not designed for consistent accuracy. If the cartridges in your clip are loaded to different pressures they will hit in different places even if you keep the sights exactly on target at all times. If your weapon has loose tolerances, it won't have consistent accuracy. If your weapon has more muzzle climb than you can physically control (and even professionals find it hard to control the muzzle climb of a mini-Uzi or a MAC-10 in long bursts), there's simply nothing you can do except turn the switch to single shots and use them as pistols- or use them from a REALLY close range, for which they were actually designed.

 

Automatic weapons can be fired accurately. There's a reason why, when you do CQC training, people generally end up getting all their bullets within the target outline, using SMGs. Games and books aren't really very accurate in their representations of how these things work.

Here's a guy properly using a 5.56x45mm Minimi:



As for range and such, military marksmen often shoot out to a thousand yards in competitions without scopes. Just using the irons (the "V" and post) atop rifles such as the M16 and FN-FAL. That's quite normal.

 

It's a bloody LMG, Scaramouche. It's HEAVY for the small caliber it shoots, so the recoil and the muzzle climb is low. A MAC 10 weights like a pistol and a half and fires a heavy recoiling (for a pistol round) .45 cartridge at 1100 RPM. Pull the trigger, and your hand goes skywards. And even with an LMG, try keeping a continuous burst of, say, 30 rounds completely within a human size target at 200 yards or so and see how many you'll miss. LMGs CAN be very accurate in single shot because of the heavy barrel- but in the auto mode, they are suppressive fire weapons designed for area targets.

That's nonsense. Shooting an M16 out to a thousand yards without scope? Ever heard of ballistics? An M16 bullet has a THREE HUNDRED INCHES DROP at 1000 yards. It doesn't have any velocity to speak of anymore at that distance, it's FALLING already. Plus the light bullet has a hell of a wind drift, even on a calm day. Like hell you can do it, even with a scope. Without the scope you won't see the target at all. Do you have any idea how wide an area will your front sight post obscure at 1000 yards? Or about the limits of INHERENT accuracy of the gun? If your army issue weapon magically happens to be a 1MOA tack driver (sniper grade accuracy), that's a one inch wobble at a hundred yards. That's a ten inch wobble at 1000 yards that is purely the weapon's fault. We aren't talking ammo quality, we aren't talking shooter skills yet, or wind drift, or anything. Just the weapon. In single shots. Now try a ten round burst on a windy day with the ordinary military ammo that is far from match grade.

The furthest that you can accurately shoot SINGLE SHOTS with any 5.56 weapon is 600 yards, I believe.

It is more believable that a FAL or an M14 in .308 would make a thousand yard shot- but only if scoped. Realistically, the army would use 0.50 BMG at that kind of ranges.

 

With a gun that small, sure. Lucky for me, we used real SMGs.

Nobody uses a burst of thirty rounds. Generally it's about three to five. And they all end up inside the target. Also generally you don't do this at 200 yards unless you're using heavier weapons. For longer range with light machine guns, yes, you're probably doing suppressive fire.

Yes, 1000 yards without a scope is rather normal in military sharpshooting competitions. If you don't believe me, email some members of a military sharpshooting team. Irons on rifles are graduated to take into account the ballitic arc. And marksmen are trained to take wind and such into account. Yes, the post is wide at 1000 yards. Luckily the pupil of the eye is wider, so it's irrelevant.

Now, some other gamers on an internet forum once doubted this, and apparently first-hand knowledge from a former military chap using a forum isn't good enough, so I emailed a member of the US Navy sharpshooting team and he confirmed it for me. Perhaps you could do the same now. Or you could simply read this page from the US Navy:

By the way, that LCDR Ted Janacek mentioned on that page is the one I emailed.

 

You're completely correct, but I don't think that the mechanized gun is a submachine gun, it strikes me more of medium machinegun along the same lines of the German MG42 and American M240 or M60. It's not easy to accurately fire rifle calibered weapons off your shoulder from a standing position when you're stationary, let alone when you're moving.

And oh, by the by, the Italian Villar Perosa wasn't in widespread use in World War I. No submachine gun was. The Americans had their Tommy guns to be used, but they reached the docks of New York on Nov 11, and the war was over by then. The German MP18 gun arrived to the troops a few hours after the war was over and they never had the chance to use them. Just a trivia fact I think is worth mentioning.

Oh I'm fairly aware of the concepts you're talking about, my friends frequently make jokes about my obession with guns. My obession has pretty much subsided, but I still have an interest in them and I'm starting to read up again since I've begun writing more stories... gotta get the facts straight you know.


And one more thing. The Minimi is not a LMG, it's a Squad Automatic Weapon, look it up on FAS.org if you're interested.

 

The Minimi is a light machine gun. Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) is an acronym which has gained favour in the USA in recent years. As such, in the USA, the Minimi is: a Minimi, a light machine gun, a squad automatic weapon, and an M249. Why? Because the US military is obsessed with acronyms. However, introduc9ing new acronyms does not change the fact that it is a light machine gun.

By the way, fas.org does indeed list it as a light machine gun: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land ... ewwpns.htm

 

And also as SAW

Anyways, you got a point there about hte LMG thing.

Anyhow, I once considered writing a guide to firearms for Arcanum Fanfic writers about two years ago, but that didn't catch flight because of some personal problems I was having at the time, and as well as the fact that I wasn't entirely sure whether it was really worth it as there doesn't seem to be that many Arcanum fanfic writers anymore... or back then, anyway.

 

The US military (and my own, these days, since the trend has spread) loves to over-manage crap. Add acronyms and ever larger amounts of bureaucratic nonsense. The SAW acronym refers to the [role of the weapon. LMG is the type. Minimi is the name, and M249 is their little US military number for it.