regarding gatling/minigun

[Aiki-Knight]

Who said anything about it being a early-game weapon?
Oh, UFO had gattling guns..the real deal.
All the reasons I've heard so far are purely subjective...nothing that really holds water.

You fall in the same logical hole as before - you treat it as a assualt rifle instead of a specialized weapon. I ask you now to apply all these arguments to a large missile launcher. According to these arguments, such a launcher is the stupidest thing ever...yet it's there. There are even missile launchers or weapon systems that require two people to man properly! Oh noes - you can't run with it or storm room with it! Obviously, the military is sooo stupid to have these, right?

So, let's not forget the following:
1. game is set in the future
2. human have alien tech
3. humans have power armor

All things considered, a gattling canon is PERFECLY workable.
Power armor solves the issues of mobility and stabiltiy, while modern tech can solve the issue of weight and ammo. In fact, I'd be surprised if by 2084 you couldn't build a gattling cannon that's perfecly man portable. Don't forget, we had one for 20 years allready - all it needs is to be further refined and improved, as all weapons do.

Yeah. There are missile launchers and rockets launchers in real life. Had them in World War II. There's no personal gatling gun in deployment. No, no there isn't. Enough said.

[TrashMan]

Yeah. There are missile launchers and rockets launchers in real life. Had them in World War II. There's no personal gatling gun in deployment. No, no there isn't. Enough said.

You mean there isn't one yet.
Don't forget, the current microgun still has bugs and it's not used due to it's limited effectivenes.  Just because the military doesn't use something right now doesn't mean it won't use it in the future.
The evolution of weapons goes like that. When the first planes appeared the military didn't see their usefulness...until someone tried to use it and WHAM - everyone was using them. Same with helicopters, submarines and a whole plethora of other weapons. History repeats itself.

There always needs to be a first attempt(assuming technology is ripe for that attempt) - if you get hung up on the past, technology wouldn't go forward.

I believe I have proven that the technology is mostly there, and that are no REAL logical arguments against it's deployment.

[Winter]

I believe I have proven that the technology is mostly there, and that are no REAL logical arguments against it's deployment.

You haven't proven anything. All you've been saying is that you think that technology will be advanced enough to in 2084 to manufacture man-portable miniguns and you think that there are no practical objections to infantry using miniguns. Both are completely subjective opinions, and while the former may be technically correct, the latter is based on all sorts of bad logic and wrongness. You've never provided anything more concrete than vague far-fetched theory to back up your statements, and you bandy about the term 'miniaturisation' as if it's some kind of magic charm that'll make all the problems with your proposal go away.

If you want to actually prove anything, bring out some figures. What calibre ammunition would your proposed weapon use? How many barrels? How is the rotation powered (note that gas blowback is not and will never be enough to spin a minigun around)? How do you aim to get around the ever-present technical problems with miniguns, i.e. Newton's Third Law of Motion (propelling that much lead forward has an equal and opposite reaction regardless of recoil suppression), the inability of infantry to carry enough ammo, and the fact that throttling a minigun's fire rate down to practical levels renders the ROF little higher than that of a good machine gun today let alone one from 2084? How do you aim to get around the ever-present tactical problems, like the fact that a minigun cannot be effectively aimed by infantry no matter how many buzzwords or fantasy technologies you apply, cannot provide suppressive fire, has neither the accurate punch of a sniper rifle or the staying power of a machine gun or the armour-defeating potential of a rocket launcher, runs out of ammo all the time, inflicts huge amounts of collateral damage and thereby endangers civilians in any combat area, is unreliable and jams constantly, requires loads of room and time to fire, and is ridiculously expensive to operate and reload? And lastly, how do you handwave away the fact that miniguns can be far more easily equipped onto combat robots, of which UFO:AI has plenty and which would vastly outclass any infantryman in using a heavy high-recoil weapon? UGVs would thereby fill the hypothetical role of 'minigunner' in a squad, of which there certainly would never be more than one, if it's such a specialised weapon like you've said. So, from a practical in-character standpoint, for what possible reason beside pure demented insanity would anyone in the UFO:AI universe want to give miniguns to infantry?

"It'll work better in the future" is not a valid argument since it does not counter the infantry minigun's irreconcilable problems with the laws of physics.

Regards,
Winter

[TrashMan]

then you haven't been reading very well.

The Microgun with 1000 bullets already weighs as much as a regular heavy machine gun... and you can reduce that weight further with various techniques I mentioned. So weight is not really a problem.

You can use caseles ammo or simply a smaller caliber to achive a far better ammo capacity at no weight expense. 3000 bullets is more than enough, since you would be shooting in controlled bursts. And minigun is a support weapon for use in shorter engagement - ammo problem solved.

That leaves recoil, which cannot be fully negated, but can be reduced somewhat. Enough for a normal human to use it a full speed? Don't know. Maybe.
If not, power armor solves that problem, since it can offer a stable platform - thus, the recoil and aiming problem are solved.

So all PHYSICAL issues are perfecly solvable.
Tactical issues you put forth aren't really tactical issues..by those criteria I could out half of the worlds weapon systems on the "too uselss /stupid /unrealistic" list.

Do I really need to go trough those "issues" one by one? Because I can easily prove you wrong.

cannot provide suppresive fire

LOL. With 3000 bullets (compared to 200 in heavy MG's) and a selectable RoF it's the best weapon for the job. Set it low and start spraying. No need to reload for quite a while - constant supressive fire.

has neither the accurate punch of a sniper rifle or the staying power of a machine gun or the armour-defeating potential of a rocket launcher

It doesn't have to be either of those things. Does the rocket launcher have the accuracy of a sniper rifle? What about ammo issues for it? Does the sniper rifle have the same kick as a rocket launcher? Does it have the same RoF as a machinegun?
Oh, and a gat gun could very well have the "staying power".

huge amounts of collateral damage and thereby endangers civilians in any combat area

So does a rocket launcher..or a heavy machinegun. Here's a tip - watch where you're aiming it at.

is unreliable and jams constantly

Eh? Modern gattling cannons are quite reliable. They also use linkless ammo that has a excellent record of non-jamming.

requires loads of room and time to fire

Not really. The microgun system is quite compact, so it doesn't take a lot of room.
Long time to fire? Only if you could setting it up on a pod to fire, but that wouldn't be necessary with power armor. Unless you're reffering to spin up time, but I already mentioned 2 very real ways to solve that problem.

ridiculously expensive to operate and reload

More expensive than that state-of-the art coilgun/railgun or plsam particle accelerator?
Reload time? Not longer than a missile launcher.








***
Now, I'm curious as to why you're so zealously attacking the concept of a minigun, while at the same time you have all sorts of crazy alien tech. Are plasma cannons or particle cannons or antimatter drives or FTL travel possible? Can you explain how they work DOWN TO THE SMALLEST DETAIL? No? Then why do you have them in the game?

[Winter]

then you haven't been reading very well.

I have, you just haven't been arguing very well. You still haven't provided any concrete figures with which we could verify or kill your concept. You also completely ignored my pointing out that any minigunner role would be fulfilled much better by our UGVs.

The Microgun with 1000 bullets already weighs as much as a regular heavy machine gun... and you can reduce that weight further with various techniques I mentioned. So weight is not really a problem.

So it weighs as much as a machine gun that takes at least two people to carry and which cannot be fired from anything except a vehicle or a tripod, and that'll be just fine for one ordinary soldier? Oh, and we don't use any heavy machine guns.

You can use caseles ammo or simply a smaller caliber to achive a far better ammo capacity at no weight expense. 3000 bullets is more than enough, since you would be shooting in controlled bursts. And minigun is a support weapon for use in shorter engagement - ammo problem solved.

Solved how? Do you know how much bullets actually weigh and how much space they take up?

The most likely candidate for your future minigun, the 4.73mmx33mm caseless round, has a mass of 3.25 grams per round. At 3000 rounds, that's still nearly 10kg for just the ammo, and you can't reduce weight any further and still have a round with enough mass and penetration to kill.

Also, the volume, which I don't have the time to work out right now, would be prohibitive.

That leaves recoil, which cannot be fully negated, but can be reduced somewhat. Enough for a normal human to use it a full speed? Don't know. Maybe.
If not, power armor solves that problem, since it can offer a stable platform - thus, the recoil and aiming problem are solved.

How does armour provide a stable platform? It still wouldn't offer anything to lean against and the shooter would simply topple over backwards from the recoil.

So all PHYSICAL issues are perfecly solvable.

No, they're not, you've just selectively ignored and hand-waved them away.

Tactical issues you put forth aren't really tactical issues..by those criteria I could out half of the worlds weapon systems on the "too uselss /stupid /unrealistic" list.

Really? How do you figure that, eh?

Do I really need to go trough those "issues" one by one? Because I can easily prove you wrong.

I asked you to prove anything of what you said, you have yet to do so.

LOL. With 3000 bullets (compared to 200 in heavy MG's) and a selectable RoF it's the best weapon for the job. Set it low and start spraying. No need to reload for quite a while - constant supressive fire.

Not exactly constant. More like a few minutes at most, at which point you have a very expensive paperweight and the enemy will come out and kill you since you can't reload.

It doesn't have to be either of those things. Does the rocket launcher have the accuracy of a sniper rifle? What about ammo issues for it? Does the sniper rifle have the same kick as a rocket launcher? Does it have the same RoF as a machinegun?

The rocket launcher doesn't need the accuracy of a sniper rifle, the two are very different things and their areas of excellence don't overlap. Your minigun, however, is outclassed in everything you say it does by other, more useful weapons.

So does a rocket launcher..or a heavy machinegun. Here's a tip - watch where you're aiming it at.

Stupid comment, you yourself made the argument of the minigun easily tearing through walls. Can you see through walls?

Also, I'd like to point out again that we are not using any heavy machine guns nor do we have plans to incorporate them, therefore constantly trying to drag them kicking and screaming into the argument is nothing more than a straw-man.

Eh? Modern gattling cannons are quite reliable. They also use linkless ammo that has a excellent record of non-jamming.

Anything with so many barrels and moving parts is going to jam far more frequently than an ordinary gun, and takes a major undertaking to unjam. The current ideal time for unjamming a minigun is 5 minutes.

Not really. The microgun system is quite compact, so it doesn't take a lot of room.

Apart from the long barrels and the fact that troops would be forced to carry the gun at the hip, thus constantly contending with waist-height obstacles in a crowded urban environment. Not to mention the thousands of rounds of ammo.

Unless you're reffering to spin up time, but I already mentioned 2 very real ways to solve that problem.

No, you didn't, you just threw some more vague theories without any facts to back you up.

More expensive than that state-of-the art coilgun/railgun or plsam particle accelerator?

Oh yes, at least as costly as that. So much ammo, used in the way a minigun uses (or wastes) it, costs thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Reload time? Not longer than a missile launcher.

What the hell? How do you arrive at that? A missile launcher can be reloaded by slotting another rocket into the breech and bringing it back to your shoulder. A minigun would require bringing in a whole new backpack of ammo from somewhere and then linking it up to the gun. The two are not even remotely comparable.

Now, I'm curious as to why you're so zealously attacking the concept of a minigun, while at the same time you have all sorts of crazy alien tech. Are plasma cannons or particle cannons or antimatter drives or FTL travel possible? Can you explain how they work DOWN TO THE SMALLEST DETAIL? No? Then why do you have them in the game?

Another straw-man argument. The two are not comparable. A concept we already KNOW to be completely unrealistic and unworkable at any time in the present or future, and for which we have incontrovertible data to that effect, versus advanced alien technology based on concepts that modern science doesn't fully understand. You might as well be asking why we've got humans fighting the aliens rather than magical people from Tir Na Nog fighting the aliens.

We're not explaining things down to the smallest detail, either. We simply don't include concepts which the facts show to be realistically faulty.

Regards,
Winter

[Nevasith]

LOL. With 3000 bullets (compared to 200 in heavy MG's) and a selectable RoF it's the best weapon for the job. Set it low and start spraying. No need to reload for quite a while - constant supressive fire.

First you need to place it somewhere. You dont expect any of your man to stand on a hill and start to spray, do you?
Connecting  gatling gun to a powered armor would need a strong connection- not just an arm to hold it- how would you put such a thing through the window, and what if the window is to high? How do you put such a weapon on a ground to hide? Wont even mention that a rotating barrels would need sort of frame to protect them from hitting the ground or a wall/whatever. You wont have much use of "supresive fire" do you have if it takes a poor sniper 5 seconds to take down your gunman as he cant find a cover?
Also why use 3000 bullets when 200 is enough? Its like killing a mosquito with a canon

It doesn't have to be either of those things. Does the rocket launcher have the accuracy of a sniper rifle? What about ammo issues for it? Does the sniper rifle have the same kick as a rocket launcher? Does it have the same RoF as a machinegun?
Oh, and a gat gun could very well have the "staying power"

Actually RL works for many as a more powerful sniper rifle
one hit kill doesnt need much ammo
well sniper rifle should also be one hit kill, but would damage game balance i guess.
dont you think, that if using gatling gun as an infrantry support weapon would make any sense it would be used? its just too much trouble to use it. Dont forget about the rotating engine and its power source.

So does a rocket launcher..or a heavy machinegun. Here's a tip - watch where you're aiming it at.

never cared much about civilians- if they dont know its better to hide during a battle- let them die. To be honest- normally RL are used to destroy vehicles and tanks- sometimes buildings. In UFO many people use RL sice they are effective but i hope in future versions RL would simply miss living creatures as their homing system wouldnt treat them as target.

Eh? Modern gattling cannons are quite reliable. They also use linkless ammo that has a excellent record of non-jamming.

Im more concerned about rotating engine and barells itself- if some dust gets to it...

Not really. The microgun system is quite compact, so it doesn't take a lot of room.
Long time to fire? Only if you could setting it up on a pod to fire, but that wouldn't be necessary with power armor. Unless you're reffering to spin up time, but I already mentioned 2 very real ways to solve that problem.

If i recall you mentioned a constantly rotating the barrels. Good idea- it was in Unreal Tournament i think, that you could make a minigun rotate constantly. The drawback is noise- you will notify every alien in 50m radius of your presence and weapon, while you should try to take them by surprise  and kill before they realise what hit them.

Now, I'm curious as to why you're so zealously attacking the concept of a minigun, while at the same time you have all sorts of crazy alien tech. Are plasma cannons or particle cannons or antimatter drives or FTL travel possible? Can you explain how they work DOWN TO THE SMALLEST DETAIL? No? Then why do you have them in the game?

They dont need details- aliens are supoused to use strange and futuristic weapons-
Also Plasma rifle is just a strange assault rifle. Particle is like a sniper- but more dangerous.
And it makes sense. But it doesnt make any sense to give infantry weapons meant for machines like aircraft. Its like giving a soldier a 85mm tank canon, or a 8 barreled rocket pod. It has different uses.

For Xcom troopers the mobility is crucial. That is why they have machine gun which can be operated in various conditions- snow, frost, dust, sand, mud, etc.
At the moment you are the one attacking. We just tell you about logical problems with miniguns- . They look cool but that is all.

[Falion]

Mattn, Winter, or BT is this similar to the current Machine gun in the game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249

[Winter]

Mattn, Winter, or BT is this similar to the current Machine gun in the game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249

Of course it is. Any light machine gun is similar to our machine gun, they're the same class of weapons, though a few years apart.

Regards,
Winter

[Falion]

I was thinking so, but thanks for the clarification 

[TrashMan]

I have, you just haven't been arguing very well. You still haven't provided any concrete figures with which we could verify or kill your concept.

What? D I have to do all the work here.. I mentioned articles and weapons and technologies. Geez, use google search, you can find articles that will back up my claims.

So it weighs as much as a machine gun that takes at least two people to carry and which cannot be fired from anything except a vehicle or a tripod, and that'll be just fine for one ordinary soldier?

If you got power armor it can be carried by one.
Note that the microgun CAN be carried and operated by one person.
38 kg - that is total weight of the whole system, gattling gun + backpack with 1000 round.
I expect that by 2080 you can get that down to 30, if not more.

Solved how? Do you know how much bullets actually weigh and how much space they take up?

The most likely candidate for your future minigun, the 4.73mmx33mm caseless round, has a mass of 3.25 grams per round. At 3000 rounds, that's still nearly 10kg for just the ammo, and you can't reduce weight any further and still have a round with enough mass and penetration to kill.
Also, the volume, which I don't have the time to work out right now, would be prohibitive.

A caseless round is roughly 1/3 the volume of a normal one. So you could fit 3 times more bullets in the same ammo pack used in the microgun. 10 kg isn't much, b.t.w.

How does armour provide a stable platform? It still wouldn't offer anything to lean against and the shooter would simply topple over backwards from the recoil.

Easy, power armor can dig itself into place - lock legs in a wide stance for stabiltiy, increase support for the spine and soft swivel movement for the hip.
And like I said, there are way to reduce recoil to some extent. The two things combines should be more then enough.

I asked you to prove anything of what you said, you have yet to do so.

If you ever bothered to check upon what I said, you'd notice that every technology I mentioned has alleardy been implemented somewhere or is being implemented.

Not exactly constant. More like a few minutes at most, at which point you have a very expensive paperweight and the enemy will come out and kill you since you can't reload.

Are you telling me you can shoot for minutes with other weapons without running out of ammo at some point? And who said you can't reload a minigun? You just need another agent who will carry another backpack,..and, you know...sidearms?

Your minigun, however, is outclassed in everything you say it does by other, more useful weapons.

Really? Name another weapon that can put that much led in the air? well....I'm waiting.

Stupid comment, you yourself made the argument of the minigun easily tearing through walls. Can you see through walls?

that wasn't me.. Shows how much attention you're paying 

Anything with so many barrels and moving parts is going to jam far more frequently than an ordinary gun, and takes a major undertaking to unjam. The current ideal time for unjamming a minigun is 5 minutes.

Dunno where you got that figure...Even assuming it's true we're talikng about 5 minutes of constant fire, right? You should be trough all 3000 rounds by then.

What the hell? How do you arrive at that? A missile launcher can be reloaded by slotting another rocket into the breech and bringing it back to your shoulder. A minigun would require bringing in a whole new backpack of ammo from somewhere and then linking it up to the gun. The two are not even remotely comparable.

It takes a bit longer, but not that long. How difficult you think it is to attach a new chain?

Another straw-man argument. The two are not comparable. A concept we already KNOW to be completely unrealistic and unworkable at any time in the present or future, and for which we have incontrovertible data to that effect, versus advanced alien technology based on concepts that modern science doesn't fully understand. You might as well be asking why we've got humans fighting the aliens rather than magical people from Tir Na Nog fighting the aliens.

unrealistic?  :ounworkable? incontrovertible data? 
Where do you get this stuff?
Are we even living in the same universe?
What's next? You're gonna tell me the moon is made of cheese?

Lol...sorry if this sounds nasty, but I don't know weather I should laugh or cry.

Gattling cannons are one of my many points of interest, so I studied them a bit. I also aced physics classes and I has a project director from CERN as my teacher. We covered antimatter, quantum physics, nanotechnology...he even invited experts from the field, guy working in the labs to show us some stuff. Some of the prototpye tech is so far out there...Here's a tip - watch out for nanotech. It's the next big thing!

Erm..where was I? Oh yea - so don't think me some raving fool who doesn't know what the hell he's taking about. I guess we have a different view about a subject, but I'll be damn if I agree with you on that, when everything I know tells me otherwise.

[Aiki-Knight]

If you're making the bullets small, and slowing down the rate of fire, I just don't see the point of making a more complicated weapon to do what a machine gun already does well. A gatling gun would be hard to fire prone, or from cover. Casting aside the impossibility of it, you'd have to stand up and hold it still to fire. You have to understand that real soldiers don't stand in the middle of a battlefield in one place, holding a hip-mounted weapon and blasting away. Any decent shooter with a rifle would take him out. Real soldiers fire from cover, and need to be able to maneuver the weapons to take pot-shots through windows, around corners, between branches, etc. It would really be almost impossible for such a gun to be used. Even a "rocket launcher", which is admittedly a cumbersome weapon, can be used from some cover, although it's only used when needed. A machine gun allows a soldier to go prone fast, get up fast, and duck around fast. A gatling gun just wouldn't.

If you want lots of rounds, the devs could more easily give the current machine gun the 200-round box clip for the M249, and work with that. That clip's been around for a couple of decades. It would weight a fair amount, and so other agents would have to carry some, if you wanted to deploy many hundreds of rounds. Wouldn't that satisfy the need?

[Nevasith]

Gattling cannons are one of my many points of interest, so I studied them a bit.

That is why you do not listen- you do not put any useful arguments for minigun. Nanotech? How do you expect a nanotech to solve MG problems?
The machinegun we have now is like M249 which weights aroun 6kg, declared effective range of 800m, and theoretical ability of firing 500 rounds per minute(source wikipedia)
There is also available a little bit heavier version-~7kg which has a range of 1km and theoreticly can fire 1150 rounds per minut if rps is all that matters for you.
There are some things NO nanotech will EVER change. You can make rounds smaller but what you get would be a needle gun which has not enough power to stop anything as it would just pass through (For EX. Ortonok doesnt have ordinary blood) or the bullet would just break on armor.

Really? Name another weapon that can put that much led in the air? well....I'm waiting.

Medieval canon
The point is not which weapon puts most led in the air- its not the only measure of weapon usefulness. Read what Aiki wrote.

A caseless round is roughly 1/3 the volume of a normal one. So you could fit 3 times more bullets in the same ammo pack used in the microgun. 10 kg isn't much, b.t.w.

Add to it weight of the gun itself, the need for additional ammo, inability of taking a sidearm...

Dunno where you got that figure...Even assuming it's true we're talikng about 5 minutes of constant fire, right? You should be trough all 3000 rounds by then

.
No he wasnt. The weapon could jam after few shots. And than you need to hide for 5 minuts to unjam the gun- sound too long if you ask me, but if the engine jams there could be bigger problem

[Winter]

What? D I have to do all the work here.. I mentioned articles and weapons and technologies. Geez, use google search, you can find articles that will back up my claims.

Well, no. Like I said, they just contain more vague theory and irrelevance.

If you got power armor it can be carried by one.
Note that the microgun CAN be carried and operated by one person.
38 kg - that is total weight of the whole system, gattling gun + backpack with 1000 round.
I expect that by 2080 you can get that down to 30, if not more.

Which is still far too much for an effective urban conflict weapon. Hell, the SPW version of the Minimi, which is the sort of thing PHALANX would use, is only 5.75kg fully loaded with 200 rounds. And if you think any military force would give a troop ruinously expensive powered armour solely so that they can fire an oversized and clumsy machine gun that's useless in exactly the areas where PHALANX will be operating the most, cancelling out all the inherent speed and mobility advantages of a powersuit, you are wrong.

A caseless round is roughly 1/3 the volume of a normal one. So you could fit 3 times more bullets in the same ammo pack used in the microgun. 10 kg isn't much, b.t.w.

Exaggeration. A 4.73mm caseless round, like the one I used in my example, is around 40% the size of a 5.56mm round. 40% of an ammo backpack so large and unworkable that they never even tried it on still leaves you with something larger than the original 1000-round pack which was also considered so large and weighty that it was unfit for purpose. The 4.73mm pack would actually end up heavier because of the greater number of rounds in it.

Easy, power armor can dig itself into place - lock legs in a wide stance for stabiltiy, increase support for the spine and soft swivel movement for the hip.
And like I said, there are way to reduce recoil to some extent. The two things combines should be more then enough.

Again you say this without any facts or figures to back you up. And you forget that heavy recoil thrown at any human being at the speed a minigun does means accuracy gets thrown out the window. This is a massive no-no for modern militaries where accuracy has become everything.

If you ever bothered to check upon what I said, you'd notice that every technology I mentioned has alleardy been implemented somewhere or is being implemented.

Most of it is either entirely theoretical or has no bearing on your argument. That little article you posted about the recoil-decreasing mechanism, for example, has little relevance because it would have far more of an effect on single-barrel rifles and machine guns, thereby making the machine gun even more preferable over any kind of minigun.

Are you telling me you can shoot for minutes with other weapons without running out of ammo at some point? And who said you can't reload a minigun? You just need another agent who will carry another backpack,..and, you know...sidearms?

You cannot, CAN NOT, hold a position against a superior hostile force with nothing but sidearms while you're switching backpacks and relinking your bloody minigun. Never mind the fact that extra backpacks are again 10kg of load on top of (possibly even in place of) their other equipment.

Really? Name another weapon that can put that much led in the air? well....I'm waiting.

Name one situation, even one, where you could possibly need that much lead in the air. There's nothing a minigun can do that can't be handled by a machine gun or other weapon that a squad is already likely to be equipped with.

Dunno where you got that figure...Even assuming it's true we're talikng about 5 minutes of constant fire, right? You should be trough all 3000 rounds by then.

I read it during my research into why infantry miniguns are an unworkable concept. You can look it up too. And that's 5 minutes for the very recent modern version.

It takes a bit longer, but not that long. How difficult you think it is to attach a new chain?

How long do you think it takes to bring up another backpack, take it off, put it on and relink the chain? Never mind the fact that sanity prohibits bringing more than 3000 goddamned rounds to an engagement on the backs of infantrymen.

Really, just think of a squad of infantry being told to seek and destroy a specific target in a densely-populated system of narrow Iraqi alleys, without harming any civilians or causing lots of damage. What would you have them do with a minigunner? Make him stand and wait outside while the rest of the team carry out the mission? He can't really go in there without banging his oversized weapon into everything, and he certainly won't be able to fire it. And this is the situation that PHALANX is in all the time, constant close-in work sweeping buildings and UFOs. There is essentially no open-ground combat where a minigun, even if it could be made workable, would be remotely useful.

(Facts: The Microgun itself is over 1 metre long projecting out from the hip, as opposed to a modern bullpup assault rifle or LMG (usually between .75 and .8 metres) used in a shoulder-back shooting stance or lowered with the stock at the shoulder and muzzle pointing at the floor.)

unrealistic?  :ounworkable? incontrovertible data? 
Where do you get this stuff?
Are we even living in the same universe?
What's next? You're gonna tell me the moon is made of cheese?

Why not? That's what you've been telling everyone here. Positive thinking is not an alternative for practical solutions, and there are no practical solutions that will fix all the things that make the minigun such a terrible infantry weapon.

Gattling cannons are one of my many points of interest, so I studied them a bit. I also aced physics classes and I has a project director from CERN as my teacher. We covered antimatter, quantum physics, nanotechnology...he even invited experts from the field, guy working in the labs to show us some stuff. Some of the prototpye tech is so far out there...Here's a tip - watch out for nanotech. It's the next big thing!

Wow, all that education, and you still have no idea about the military uses of miniguns and why they're not applicable to infantry?

Erm..where was I? Oh yea - so don't think me some raving fool who doesn't know what the hell he's taking about. I guess we have a different view about a subject, but I'll be damn if I agree with you on that, when everything I know tells me otherwise.

Well, everything I knows tells me you're wrong, and I've told you why. Your technical solutions are dodgy and you completely ignore the tactical implications of using a minigun in tightly-packed densely-populated urban areas, especially for an organisation whose main purpose is to save and defend civilians.

Simply put, we're not putting an implausible weapon into a plausible game. It would run counter to all the difficult design choices and hard work we've put in so far and it would cheapen the game as a whole.

Regards,
Winter

[Falion]

Trashman, please check your PM inbox if you haven't already.

Fal

[TrashMan]

Hehe...I can answers some of your concernes right here.

You don't need to worry about it. There is no hatchet between me and Winter to bury. I don't let things like this get to me personally - it's not a big deal for me, I discuss it for it's own merit. So you don't need to worry about me throwing a fit and leaving
I've never abandoned a project for such simple reasons - the only time I did was because the project died (coders leaving or something similar). No worries.

don't tell me I come over as that confrontational?