UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: inquisiteur2 on March 26, 2007, 12:35:50 am
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Just made a quick check of last trunk version. Dont have time for indepth comment, but regarding the minigun:
1. I am very happy that this weapon has been included
2. This weapon, in my opinion, should not be used like the heavy canon/gatling as in the original X-com, but as a real minigun; means that only 3 shots for the main trigger is not enough. I was expecting something more than the submachine, at least 15-20 shot, to have bullets raining on aliens. Of course the weapon should be very heavy with low accuracy etc..to couterbalance its power.
3. We should maybe de-animate the shooting sequence of the gatling, don't think that we can raise this weapon the same way we raise a gun. No need to texture a belt to show that the soldier is keeping it in a fixed position in front of him, but wether the soldiers fires or not, the gatling should remain straight in front of him
4. Weapon being heavy I suggest that only nano-armors wearers could handle it, or maybe soldiers having a minimum of strengh
4. I know this may be planned but this weapond deserves its own shooting sound
Any opinon ?
I have noticed the huge mass of change, will give a better feedback later, thkx a lot for the team.
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1. I am very happy that this weapon has been included
You mean chaingun probably? It is included but for multiplayer only.
3. We should maybe de-animate the shooting sequence of the gatling, don't think that we can raise this weapon the same way we raise a gun. No need to texture a belt to show that the soldier is keeping it in a fixed position in front of him, but wether the soldiers fires or not, the gatling should remain straight in front of him
Yes, that's true, maybe you can prepare such animation?
4. Weapon being heavy I suggest that only nano-armors wearers could handle it, or maybe soldiers having a minimum of strengh
Currently we even don't know if we will include chaingun to the campaign at all. I have some thoughts about heavy (and very heavy) weapons or about the exoskeletons but that's really the future, and such things needs to be carefully considered storyline-wise.
4. I know this may be planned but this weapond deserves its own shooting sound
Yes, as any weapon.
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Thank you for your answer Zenerka. I was indeed speaking about the chaingun.
Regarding animation, there is no need to prepare a new one, maybe I am wrong but at the beginning of the project the animation was less complex, soldiers didnt wave their hands before firing. It this is still in the project archives, it can recycled for heavy weapons.
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I like the idea of UGVs serving as the heavy weapons platform for these nasty weapons. I remember the old tanks from x-com, boy did they suck except for soaking up shots instead of your guys. One thing I like about AI is that the humans actually have their own decent technology and I can't wait to see what is in store with these UGVs and UAVs.
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It would take an extraordinarily strong person to wield such a weapon, much less carry a substantial amount of ammo for it. The recoil from such a weapon would be insane. Movies aside, has such a weapon ever been fielded on an infantry soldier in a real war? It seems an unnecessary addition. It looks cool, but seems out of place with UFO:AI's wonderfully realistic equipment and uniform set.
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A brief point on the "realism" of it - a smalle version of the gatling is not fisible for human for fundamental reasons. The weapon that Jessie Ventura caries in "Predator" would produce several tons (!) of recoil force. More of a personal propulsion system, really. To make that human-usable it would have to be slowed down lots, to the rate of fire that makes it any old machine gun. There is a nice article in wikipedia, if anyone is interested.
Now, anal-retantive realism aside, no reason not to have such a weapon, maybe requiring huge strength and a heavy armor. :)
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A brief point on the "realism" of it - a smalle version of the gatling is not fisible for human for fundamental reasons. The weapon that Jessie Ventura caries in "Predator" would produce several tons (!) of recoil force. More of a personal propulsion system, really. To make that human-usable it would have to be slowed down lots, to the rate of fire that makes it any old machine gun. There is a nice article in wikipedia, if anyone is interested.
Source please, and can you show the math for this? How much force is each bullet exerting? If chain\Gatling guns caused such massive recoil, they wouldn't be able to mount them on HUMVEE's, considering they aren't more than a few tons. Add to the fact that much torque force would roll the thing if fired perpendicular to the vehicles motion.
Now, anal-retantive realism aside, no reason not to have such a weapon, maybe requiring huge strength and a heavy armor. :)
The Japanese have already devloped a working power-suit (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-05zq.html) Powered Armor isn't only a possibility, it's a reality in UFOAI. What is it in the game, 2086? 78 years to perfect this stuff is pretty simple. Definitely should have massive Chain guns roaring up, blasting away.
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If chain\Gatling guns caused such massive recoil, they wouldn't be able to mount them on HUMVEE's, considering they aren't more than a few tons.
I don't think actual rotary cannons like the phalanx are mounted on the HMMVW, but rather on much heavier tracked vehicles. However, I don't think the author means literally "tons" of recoil, but rather "too much recoil for a person", which I imagine is true. Certain helicopters like the Super Cobra and some gunships carry rotary cannons like that, as do some medium armored vehicles.
The Japanese have already devloped a working power-suit (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-05zq.html) Powered Armor isn't only a possibility, it's a reality in UFOAI. What is it in the game, 2086? 78 years to perfect this stuff is pretty simple. Definitely should have massive Chain guns roaring up, blasting away.
Powered armor will be a reality, for sure, but I doubt the point will be to field such large weapons. Rotary cannons need a great deal of ammunition to be effective; no human could carry the load. Anyone who's been in the army knows that your pack, your webbing, weapon, and ammo already weigh a great deal, and lightening this load is likely the objective of powered armor, not to arm soldiers with weapons only vehicles can mount (and carry enough ammo for). Ultimately, it's just a game, but I just think it would detract from the game's excellent realism. There's advancement, and then there's science-fiction. I really like that UFO:AI doesn't have super-weapons that make the game somewhat irrelevant to the realities of squad tactics. Even if a soldier could carry the weapon and the ammo, he (/she) would not be very mobile with it, and special forces troops are typically meant to be highly mobile.
That being said, there's no reason why mini-tanks or even APCs couldn't carry such weapons. How great would it be to see a futurized Bradley IFV leading the charge against aliens? I doubt we'll see that, but mini-tanks could be made quite awesome with long-range grenade launchers, missile launchers, and rotary cannons.
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a minigun barrel(s) have to rotate for 3 to 5 seconds before the first round will fire
thats one thing to take into account when how many time units to be considered for a short burst (15 to 20 rounds) and a spray and pray of 5 seconds (200 to 600 rounds depending on the model of minigun)
That being said... the autocannon/heavy cannon idea needs to be brought back to the table and im glad someone is mentioning it.. I like the machine gun.. its a nice light machine gun..
I dont consider the machine gun a heavy weapon i consider it what it is.. a LSW(light support weapon) you allow soldiers to carry rocket launchers but not a minigun... the rocket launcher is almost useless unless you are firing at an aircraft (semi smart or smart missles) or a ground vehicle (laser guided or fire and forget) .. i dont see the use of a rocket launcher versus "people"(aliens) as much as i do the grenade launcher..
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I have to admit, i really meant "tons of force of recoil". I stand corrected on exact number, but not on spirit.
1. The Gatling guns (aka Vulcan, aka GAU family), of which a Minigun is a member, were mostly designed for aircraft and with high calibers DO produce recoil in access of 1 ton - with barrels rotating at 4,000 to 10,000 rpm. Talking about A-10 Thunderbolt here - the airplane has a second engine for the express purpose of maintaining airspeed whilst firing.
2. Flipping over a car. Great point. The high caliber ones would, for sure. The ones mounted on HUMV-s are 5.56 or 7.62 mm (.223 and .308 respectively) + the barrels rotate much slower.
3. Hand-held implementations. Tried. Primary problem - weight. The gun + thousands of round of ammo + motor for spinning the barrels + the batteries for said motor. Also, (see links) the "modest" 1,000 rpm of the barrels firing 5.56mm round produces 110kg of recoil.
Wikipedia on Minigun, with links to both craft using the weapon as well as variants of the weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun
A great site on all firearms:
http://world.guns.ru/machine/minigun-e.htm
a couple more enthusiast sites
http://cerebralsynergy.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.12
http://www.kitsune.addr.com/Firearms/Machine-Guns/GE_XM214_Minigun.htm
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In the field of infantry equipment, there is nothing -- literally nothing -- that a minigun could do better than an ordinary machine gun. The point of a fully-automatic belt-fed weapon is not to hose something down with bullets in the hope that you'll kill it before you run out. It's to keep suppressive fire on a position for a long time in order to keep the enemy pinned down and therefore unable to shoot at you through the hail of lead.
There is physically no way an infantryman could carry enough ammunition to make a conventional chemical-powered minigun preferable over a machine gun. Doesn't matter what kind of armour you put him in or if you strap bullet packs on every part of his body. You will still have a firing time measured in seconds with no reloading possible. These qualities do not make a good infantry weapon, and they never ever will.
Which is why you will never ever have miniguns in the official single-player campaign except on UGVs.
Regards,
Winter
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Winter.... Maybe you should see what a minigun does to a concrete wall after 5 seconds. you are correct its not made to hit people. but neither is a rocket.. Until the game mechanics are made to reflect structural damage (like the old x com where you could s hoot walls down with a plasma gun) I dont see much use in the rocket launcher either but its there.
Im just wondering why you allow soldiers to carry full blown rocket launchers but no heavy machine guns.. ( I consider the machine gun in the game now to be a LSW[light support weapon])
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Winter.... Maybe you should see what a minigun does to a concrete wall after 5 seconds. you are correct its not made to hit people. but neither is a rocket.. Until the game mechanics are made to reflect structural damage (like the old x com where you could s hoot walls down with a plasma gun) I dont see much use in the rocket launcher either but its there.
Im just wondering why you allow soldiers to carry full blown rocket launchers but no heavy machine guns.. ( I consider the machine gun in the game now to be a LSW[light support weapon])
1. You need to read up on what weapons are appropriate for which situations. You don't use a goddamned minigun to shoot down a wall. It's stupid and contrary to its purpose, wasting thousands of rounds of ammunition -- i.e. everything a soldier could realistically carry -- in order to make an entirely flaccid argument. The effects of a minigun on a concrete wall are entirely irrelevant to its value as a weapon to win infantry battles.
2. Infantry rocket launchers have been used for years and have a clearly defined purpose as mobile artillery and anti-armour weaponry. The aliens already have armoured robots and will be having more when the game is finished. With incendiary rockets the launcher is even useful as an area denial weapon. It adds something to gameplay, and is entirely plausible. I wouldn't mind seeing it remodelled to something more modern and less arsing huge, but its presence makes sense.
3. As a rule, heavy machine guns can't realistically be fired off-hand, and making certain weapons deployable on bipods or tripods is a bothersome complication that wouldn't do anything for gameplay. It sucked in UFO: Aftermath and it would suck here. Keeping that in mind, it's obvious that for the purposes of the game and for close-quarters urban combat, there is no use for a heavy machine gun that isn't already covered by the light machine gun we have.
That is how we have implemented everything and how we'll continue to implement everything: according to its appropriate tactical uses and its value to gameplay. We're sticking to a coherent design philosophy, as we've done for the past two years now. We don't twist logic or physics to shoehorn in something that isn't appropriate just to please the crowd.
Regards,
Winter
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Personally, I'd like something like this:
(http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/9370/vindicatorvq7.th.png) (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vindicatorvq7.png)
A bastard child of a gattling cannon and assault rifle. I suppose it would have to use caseless ammo or be energy based...one of these days I'm gonna put it in the game.
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I humbly propose that all six barrels have bayonet fixtures. Just imagine what this baby would do in hand to hand!
Oh, wait, wrong thread. Sorry! ;D ;)
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I humbly propose that all six barrels have bayonet fixtures. Just imagine what this baby would do in hand to hand!
Oh, wait, wrong thread. Sorry! ;D ;)
Ha!
Regards,
Winter
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winter i read your post and understand where you are coming from however, i have one issue to address with it.. this response here
2. Infantry rocket launchers have been used for years and have a clearly defined purpose as mobile artillery and anti-armour weaponry. The aliens already have armoured robots and will be having more when the game is finished. With incendiary rockets the launcher is even useful as an area denial weapon. It adds something to gameplay, and is entirely plausible. I wouldn't mind seeing it remodelled to something more modern and less arsing huge, but its presence makes sense.
using a rocket launcher or even a minigun against persons is against the geneva conventions.. including a minigun.. which is why i said you shoot at the wall not at the guy behind it... to us it seems like wasting ammo.. to a general its the difference between a warcrime and war....
As someone highly more experienced in using weaponry than you are Im almost 100% sure of that.. i will say several times i have seen soldiers use 1000 rounds of 50 calibre (much larger than what is in a standard minigun) to shoot the crap out of concrete walls for minutes (no more than 15 second bursts dont want to melt the barrel) until the wall was completely destroyed and all the enemies behind it dead (what was left of them)
WHY? Because according to geneva conventions its a war crime to shoot at a person with a weapon that heavy.. however.. shooting at the wall is perfectly legitimate... is it efficient hell no.. but its legal according to the articles of war.
My whole issue was that a rocket launcher is a silly weapon to have in ufo:ai because it serves no purpose with the sole exception of shooting alien MWP like the flying discs from xcom.. (which i always used heavy plasma against making the rocket launcher nill again)
Im only stating i see no purpose to code a rocket launcher.. that was all.. you guys are spot on and im humbled by the expertise in the many fields that ufo:ai entails
Please keep up the excellent work
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I have to agree with you according what you say about the Rocket Launcher. At the moment it is pretty useless, but I hope that in the future Enemies apper, that have a size of 56x56 (according to the Actor size of 24x24) being well armoured and hopefully quite easy to hit ;) Or think about very small enemys appearing in huge numbers, like ants or beetles.
Here I have to admit that the "bloodspiders" dont look like dangerous spiders spitting their venom over the map (or something like that ::)) I would recommend (if possible) to make them smaller (around 8x8) but Increase the number of them by a factor of ~4. But I guess this would result in problems with pathfinding and awful long alien rounds.
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Rocket launcher needs reactive fire. Any aliens coming trough the door would REPENT.
Also, maybe a bit more range and accuracy?
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Speaking of rocket launcher - is it me, or they do remarkably little damage to walls and terraini in general? If I could blow wholes in building and saturate hiding spots with rocket fire, I would dramatically change my tactic, at least in early stages.
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winter i read your post and understand where you are coming from however, i have one issue to address with it.. this response here
using a rocket launcher or even a minigun against persons is against the geneva conventions.. including a minigun.. which is why i said you shoot at the wall not at the guy behind it... to us it seems like wasting ammo.. to a general its the difference between a warcrime and war....
As someone highly more experienced in using weaponry than you are Im almost 100% sure of that.. i will say several times i have seen soldiers use 1000 rounds of 50 calibre (much larger than what is in a standard minigun) to shoot the crap out of concrete walls for minutes (no more than 15 second bursts dont want to melt the barrel) until the wall was completely destroyed and all the enemies behind it dead (what was left of them)
WHY? Because according to geneva conventions its a war crime to shoot at a person with a weapon that heavy.. however.. shooting at the wall is perfectly legitimate... is it efficient hell no.. but its legal according to the articles of war.
My whole issue was that a rocket launcher is a silly weapon to have in ufo:ai because it serves no purpose with the sole exception of shooting alien MWP like the flying discs from xcom.. (which i always used heavy plasma against making the rocket launcher nill again)
Im only stating i see no purpose to code a rocket launcher.. that was all.. you guys are spot on and im humbled by the expertise in the many fields that ufo:ai entails
. . . You know, I don't think the Geneva convention applies to alien invaders whose sole aim is to butcher and enslave the human race.
I wish there was an 'absolutely flabbergasted' smiley I could use at this point.
Regards,
Winter
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.... winter... you might want to read it brother... foreign invaders can be construed or understood to mean alien invaders.. :D sorry i just like you i cant help it...
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Ummm. hate to point it out... Geneva convention got effed when we reasearched gas grenades. Maybe they qualify as "non-lethal", but it is pretty well against the spirit. I think there was mention of experimenting on a living alien, too.
The aliens appear hell-bent on genocide, so ethically - they should not be covered by a convention that they violate.
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that makes me happy and somewhat disturbed at the same time :D i think this topic can be closed winter :D
btw i never signed nor supported the geneva conventions
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Your overlords did it for you, you minion.
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Speaking of rocket launcher - is it me, or they do remarkably little damage to walls and terraini in general?
You must be new here, right? Terrain in the Quake engine is all built from adamantium and will never even be scratched.
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"Terrain in the Quake engine is all built from adamantium and will never even be scratched." -- Darn
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cant buildings be damaged? Like in the old XCOM games? Toss a p-nade, blow out the first floor walls, some of the second floor floors. Make other floors completely inaccessible. Great times
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No they can't. And no, that isn't going to change.
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Ahh...kill joy! I can only guess as to the reasons (Not in the sarcastic way. Seriously, I can only guess) Then the rocket launcher is useless until there is something either big or small(in large nnumbers as fore mentioned)
The gatling gun, on the other hand. Pure awsomness. Unload near-molten lead, hundreds, or even thousands, of rounds per minute. It makes me giddy and giggle
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Yeah but who can carry thousands of rounds? Seriously - ammo is heavy. Thousands of rounds would weigh hundreds of pounds.
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Caseless ammo...you can squeeze 3-4 times as much ammo in the same space.
F'course, depending on the RoF even 1000 rounds would be depleted within seconds. A microgun can fire at 6000RPM or 100 bullets per second (for comparison, standard assault rifles usually fire 3-4 bullets per second, with some newer ones more, the M-60 fires 10 bps)
At 3000RPM (which is still hellafast! ) your minigun would spit out 50 bps ... if he were to carry a total of 1000 bullets, that would be enough for 20 seconds of max speed fire. That's why you usually fire in short, controlled bursts and have RoF settings.
Or laser miniguns....just carry a huge battery/generator on your back
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At 3000RPM (which is still hellafast! ) your minigun would spit out 50 bps ... if he were to carry a total of 1000 bullets, that would be enough for 20 seconds of max speed fire. That's why you usually fire in short, controlled bursts and have RoF settings.
The weapon would still be unnecessarily heavy, take far too long to spin up to be used as an assault rifle, and run out of ammo far too quickly to be used as a machine gun. So you're really combining the worst of both worlds in the worst way.
Regards,
Winter
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The weapon would still be unnecessarily heavy, take far too long to spin up to be used as an assault rifle, and run out of ammo far too quickly to be used as a machine gun. So you're really combining the worst of both worlds in the worst way.
Methinks the ammo would make most of the weight.
With advanced materials and minituarization you could make the gun itself far lighter. Then you can get creative with the way it fires. You can have a trigger that controls the spinning and a second one that starts shooting..Thus you can spin the gun up to full speed and carry it around spinning.
Or if you create a god enough rotor, the spin acceleration can be faster, thus shortening the time needed for a spin up/spin down.
Ammo, as always, is the biggest problem, but it's not like the army doesn't use other weapons that have ammo issues. Shoulder-mounted rocket launchers? You usually get one missile - especially with those integrated systems.
That said, every weapon has it's specific uses and employment doctrine. A minigun would be used against superior enemy numbers, preferably clustered enemies - it's not an assault rifle and shouldn't used as such, it's a very specific support weapon.
You wouldn't carry a minigun if you expected a protraced engagement, and you would have other soldiers carrying extra ammo for it when you do carry it into battle.
One would use short, controlled bursts to conserve ammo and proper RoF setting for the situation. A single 1-second burst should be enough to kill anything you're pointing at(and it's sorroundings).
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That said, every weapon has it's specific uses and employment doctrine. A minigun would be used against superior enemy numbers, preferably clustered enemies - it's not an assault rifle and shouldn't used as such, it's a very specific support weapon.
You wouldn't carry a minigun if you expected a protraced engagement, and you would have other soldiers carrying extra ammo for it when you do carry it into battle.
One would use short, controlled bursts to conserve ammo and proper RoF setting for the situation. A single 1-second burst should be enough to kill anything you're pointing at(and it's sorroundings).
You're still missing the point. There are no short controlled bursts with a minigun. It was not made for short controlled bursts and will never be able to compete with a weapon that doesn't require spinning up barrels in a twitchy urban combat scenario. It will also never be as light, as manoeuvrable or as useful as an ordinary assault rifle or machine gun in ANY role it could possibly fulfill.
Miniguns are completely unworkable as an infantry weapon and no amount of future technology wank is going to change that. Ever.
Regards,
Winter
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You're still missing the point. There are no short controlled bursts with a minigun. It was not made for short controlled bursts and will never be able to compete with a weapon that doesn't require spinning up barrels in a twitchy urban combat scenario. It will also never be as light, as manoeuvrable or as useful as an ordinary assault rifle or machine gun in ANY role it could possibly fulfill.
Miniguns are completely unworkable as an infantry weapon and no amount of future technology wank is going to change that. Ever.
Tell that to the GAU-8 avenger.. It can fire in 1 or 2 second bursts. In fact, it's customary:
The Avenger's rate of fire was originally selectable, 2,100 rounds per minute (rpm) in the low setting, or 4,200 rpm in the high setting. Later this was changed to a fixed rate of 3,900 rpm. In practice, the cannon is limited to one and two-second bursts to avoid overheating and conserve ammunition; barrel life is also a factor, since the USAF has specified a minimum 21,000-round life for each set of barrels.
regarding spinup time:
The GSh-6-23 differs from most American multi-barreled aircraft cannon in that it is gas-operated, rather than externally powered via an electric, hydraulic, or pneumatic system. Although the engineering difficulties involved in producing a gas-operated rotary cannon with such a high rate of fire are considerable, they create less of a drain on the aircraft's power systems, and they accelerate to their maximum rate of fire much more quickly. There is less "spin-up" time for the barrels than with an externally powered rotary cannon, a significant advantage in aerial combat, where the window of opportunity to place multiple rounds on target can be vanishingly short.
The GSh-6-23 has an extremely high rate of fire, with maximum cyclic rates of 9,000 to 10,000 rounds per minute. Compared to the U.S. M61 Vulcan, the GSh-6-23 fires 50-66% more rounds per minute, has a heavier projectile, but lower muzzle velocity. The rapid rate of fire exhausts ammunition quickly: the MiG-31(800 rounds maximum) aircraft, for example, with 260 rounds of ammunition, would empty its magazine in less than two seconds.
Miniguns are completely unworkable as an infantry weapon and no amount of future technology wank is going to change that. Ever.
Miniguns are not supposed to be main infantry weapons. They are specialized support weapons, like bazookas or LAWs. And apparently, they are workable.
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I'm not really too sure a mini-gun has that much of a role in such a game as this. That is just my opinion of course, but I'd rather see more alien technologies to effectively research and make into effective human weaponry.
That said, never say never, in regards to what the future may actually hold. At one point in history, the locomotive was told to the public that it would travel at more than 20-30 MPH. Many "intellectuals" held the belief that such was completely impossible...as at such a speed, all of the air would be sucked out of the train and everyone aboard would die. Of course we laugh at such today, but they really believed it. Also, at one point the US patent office, or someone involved with it I believe said, "Everything that can be invented already has been invented, and there is no further need for any more patents".
Good thing no one listened to that idiotic statement ROFL, but the point is who actually knows what future tech will allow for weapons in the future...it is pure speculation.
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Tell that to the GAU-8 avenger.. It can fire in 1 or 2 second bursts. In fact, it's customary:
The Avenger's rate of fire was originally selectable, 2,100 rounds per minute (rpm) in the low setting, or 4,200 rpm in the high setting. Later this was changed to a fixed rate of 3,900 rpm. In practice, the cannon is limited to one and two-second bursts to avoid overheating and conserve ammunition; barrel life is also a factor, since the USAF has specified a minimum 21,000-round life for each set of barrels.
regarding spinup time:
The GSh-6-23 differs from most American multi-barreled aircraft cannon in that it is gas-operated, rather than externally powered via an electric, hydraulic, or pneumatic system. Although the engineering difficulties involved in producing a gas-operated rotary cannon with such a high rate of fire are considerable, they create less of a drain on the aircraft's power systems, and they accelerate to their maximum rate of fire much more quickly. There is less "spin-up" time for the barrels than with an externally powered rotary cannon, a significant advantage in aerial combat, where the window of opportunity to place multiple rounds on target can be vanishingly short.
The GSh-6-23 has an extremely high rate of fire, with maximum cyclic rates of 9,000 to 10,000 rounds per minute. Compared to the U.S. M61 Vulcan, the GSh-6-23 fires 50-66% more rounds per minute, has a heavier projectile, but lower muzzle velocity. The rapid rate of fire exhausts ammunition quickly: the MiG-31(800 rounds maximum) aircraft, for example, with 260 rounds of ammunition, would empty its magazine in less than two seconds.
Miniguns are not supposed to be main infantry weapons. They are specialized support weapons, like bazookas or LAWs. And apparently, they are workable.
Well done, you've copy-pasted an entirely irrelevant article about a huge gasoline-powered aircraft-mounted gatling gun into a discussion about infantry weapons.
Regards,
Winter
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Well done, you've copy-pasted an entirely irrelevant article about a huge gasoline-powered aircraft-mounted gatling gun into a discussion about infantry weapons.
You never heard of a thing called MINIATURIZATION?
Besides, it's the principle behind the articles, the workings - scale can be changed. Obviously you're not gonna use 30 or 20mm shells for a infantry-based gattling cannon, and thus the weapons itself would be smaller.
Note that you said gattling weapons don't fire in bursts - I proven that they can and do.
You then said that spin up time is too long - I shown you working ways it can be improved.
You mention the ammo issue - I've show you that there are ways to store and carry a bit more ammo (not much), but more importantly, that having lots of ammo isn't the most important thing in weapons. There are so many big, single use weapons out there.
So to conclude. Gattling based weapons aren't used by todays military as infantry weapons. (probably because the government won't waste $$$ on it when it can research laz0r weapons and invest in newer jets)
That doesn't mean that they can't be used, as the technology is more or less there.
Last, but not least, the game takes place quite some time in the future, and the last attempt at infantry-carrier gattling weapon was back in the 80's.
If you don't want such a weapon in the game, fine...but don't tell me it's impossible for such weapons to work if you haven't done your homework on the subject. Half the sci-fi plasma/particle/whatever weapons are more redicolous than that (specificely, why waste money and time trying to produce something like that when simpler technology works just as effectively; and secondly, a foot soldier's firepower will always be limited - after all, what's the point of heavy veichle support and urban fighting if you're single soldier cna nuke the city he's supposed to protect?)
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miniaturisation, especially miniaturisation of weapon has its own limits. Especially, if we talk about powder weapon.
And gatling must be big and heavy weapon — it need this to be a gatling.
PS: sorry, but 'nanorounds' with 'nanobullet' is worst and foolish weapon that can be.
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miniaturisation, especially miniaturisation of weapon has its own limits. Especially, if we talk about powder weapon.
It does, but limit hasn't been reached yet.
And gatling must be big and heavy weapon
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You never heard of a thing called MINIATURIZATION?
Besides, it's the principle behind the articles, the workings - scale can be changed. Obviously you're not gonna use 30 or 20mm shells for a infantry-based gattling cannon, and thus the weapons itself would be smaller.
Note that you said gattling weapons don't fire in bursts - I proven that they can and do.
You then said that spin up time is too long - I shown you working ways it can be improved.
You mention the ammo issue - I've show you that there are ways to store and carry a bit more ammo (not much), but more importantly, that having lots of ammo isn't the most important thing in weapons. There are so many big, single use weapons out there.
So to conclude. Gattling based weapons aren't used by todays military as infantry weapons. (probably because the government won't waste $$$ on it when it can research laz0r weapons and invest in newer jets)
That doesn't mean that they can't be used, as the technology is more or less there.
Last, but not least, the game takes place quite some time in the future, and the last attempt at infantry-carrier gattling weapon was back in the 80's.
If you don't want such a weapon in the game, fine...but don't tell me it's impossible for such weapons to work if you haven't done your homework on the subject. Half the sci-fi plasma/particle/whatever weapons are more redicolous than that (specificely, why waste money and time trying to produce something like that when simpler technology works just as effectively; and secondly, a foot soldier's firepower will always be limited - after all, what's the point of heavy veichle support and urban fighting if you're single soldier cna nuke the city he's supposed to protect?)
I'm sorry but I spent 6 weeks in Germany in '89 hauling around an M249 and two ammo boxes on exercise, plus regular loadout webbing, helmet, and pack. It was heavy, and I was darned glad when that exercise was over and I could hand that weapon in. The M249 is a .223 calibre weapon, and it and its ammo are still heavy. Those advocating a gatling gun, which together with its ammo would weigh at least hundreds of pounds, need to consider more than just miniturization. A minigun is designed to take advantage of a vehicle's cargo-carrying capacity to make a heavy-yield weapon. Maybe it can fire in bursts. Honestly, so what? Unless you eliminate ammo and make the gun impossibly light, it just can't happen. You need to understand the purpose of that kind of weapon. It's too big, and too heavy for ground soldiers. And anyone's who's lugged even an M-16 plus 6 mags around on exercise doesn't need to be convinced. Even a regular squad-level machine gun is heavy. The M60 and similar 7.62 machine guns were a major burden. Machine gunners usually need a second person to carry ammo. Even the .50 cal is basically a vehicle-mounted weapon. I never saw anyone carry one while I was in the army.
Consider also that a gatling gun's extremely high fire rate is intended to concentrate rounds on a hard target. You don't need to pump a hundred rounds into an enemy soldier, even if you could manage a one-second burst and get your rounds on target. Which you couldn't, because the recoil would knock you over. A hundred rounds on target is meant to destroy tanks, hard vehicles, and incoming missiles, as in the Phalanx Close-In-Weapons-System.
The soldiers in UFO:AI are commandos; they need to be mobile and move fast. They're not intended to engage super-heavy targets for which rotary cannons are deployed. Even if you could somehow make a rotary cannon that a soldier could carry, it would waste all its ammo on one target. Plus, how are you going to aim it? Rifles and handguns, even rocket/missile launchers are fired from the shoulder - a rotary cannon would be fired from the hip. And as anyone who's been on a real firing range knows from experience, firing from the hip is almost useless. Look at the Iraq footage - soldiers there run with their weapons at the shoulder-aimed position.
My opinion: keep the gatling gun out of the game, period. It doesn't belong, it's out of place, and it detracts from the focus of the game. UFO:AI excels as a proper squad-tactics game. A gatling gun, while fun I admit, would be ridiculous.
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I'm sorry but I spent 6 weeks in Germany in '89 hauling around an M249 and two ammo boxes on exercise, plus regular loadout webbing, helmet, and pack. It was heavy, and I was darned glad when that exercise was over and I could hand that weapon in. The M249 is a .223 calibre weapon, and it and its ammo are still heavy. Those advocating a gatling gun, which together with its ammo would weigh at least hundreds of pounds, need to consider more than just miniturization. A minigun is designed to take advantage of a vehicle's cargo-carrying capacity to make a heavy-yield weapon. Maybe it can fire in bursts. Honestly, so what? Unless you eliminate ammo and make the gun impossibly light, it just can't happen. You need to understand the purpose of that kind of weapon. It's too big, and too heavy for ground soldiers. And anyone's who's lugged even an M-16 plus 6 mags around on exercise doesn't need to be convinced. Even a regular squad-level machine gun is heavy. The M60 and similar 7.62 machine guns were a major burden. Machine gunners usually need a second person to carry ammo. Even the .50 cal is basically a vehicle-mounted weapon. I never saw anyone carry one while I was in the army.
Duh.. As I said - caseless amo to reduce weight. New polymers and alloys + miniaturization = even more weight loss. Even with that, it would still be damn heavy (ammo, ammo, ammo). That's what POWER ARMOR is for. Extra muscle and stablity..not to mentions servos that are programed to counteract the recoil and wobble.
If a weapon like a minigun of some sorts were to be used, power armor should be a requirement for equipping one.
Consider also that a gatling gun's extremely high fire rate is intended to concentrate rounds on a hard target. You don't need to pump a hundred rounds into an enemy soldier, even if you could manage a one-second burst and get your rounds on target. Which you couldn't, because the recoil would knock you over.
It's also used against multiple targets, since it's an AREA weapon
And aliens have heavily armored and big targets among them.
The soldiers in UFO:AI are commandos; they need to be mobile and move fast. They're not intended to engage super-heavy targets for which rotary cannons are deployed.
Soldiers in UFO are soldiers - they need to be as mobile or as heavily armed as the situation requires. Adaptability means variability. A huge choice in weapons, equipment and tactics.
If you're defending your base you don't need mobiltiy- you need firepower to keep pesky aliens out of the corridor. And, like I said, a minigun is very effective against multiple light targets, or big armored ones.
IIRC, more ground veichles are being introduced into the game -for both sides. There's your big heavy target for missile launchers and big guns.
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It's also used against multiple targets, since it's an AREA weapon
This is actually the only real role I can see for a minigun in the game. Having a cone of bullets for clumps of aliens. Something like a SMG long burst with machinegun bullets.
However I can also see altering the MG firing options to a 12/16/20 TU set with 6/14/22 ammo usage. This would give you something very close to what you need without adding another weapon. Another option would be a heavy support laser with a very high RoF but laser pistol damage. Although for me, the grenade launcher works really, really well for this at moderate ranges.
For hard targets a LAW rocket type weapon would be best. Currently my grenadiers carry rocket launchers in their packs while snipers and SMGs carry spare rockets. Unfortunately the rockets see almost zero use because they are so large, and end up being one shot weapons anyways.
A minigun on a vehicle is fine. The primary problem with the weapons is the extreme ammunition usage, vehicular cargo capacity allows for this. It is questionable if caseless ammunition would fully compensate for that.
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The vehicles we have aren't that big. Nothing like a real tank. They aren't really big enough to carry loads of ammo.
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For hard targets a LAW rocket type weapon would be best. Currently my grenadiers carry rocket launchers in their packs while snipers and SMGs carry spare rockets. Unfortunately the rockets see almost zero use because they are so large, and end up being one shot weapons anyways.
A minigun on a vehicle is fine. The primary problem with the weapons is the extreme ammunition usage, vehicular cargo capacity allows for this. It is questionable if caseless ammunition would fully compensate for that.
Ammo is pretty much always the problem.
The question is - how much is enough. If you take a look at how many bullets aircraft or helicopters carry for their gattling cannons, you'd see that it really doesn't seem like much (ammo is counted in hundreds, not thousands).
Yet they still are used in aircraft. Why? Because you probably wont' need more, and you retreat and re-arm if you need to.
Currenlty, a solider with a rocket launcher can carry what? 6-8 rockets? That doesn't seem like much...only 8 shots and then you're screwed, right? But that's enough for almost any mission.
In the same vein, a gattling gun with 500 bullets may not seem enough, but it definately should be enough for 10+ bursts (assuming a high RoF and 1 second bursts at max speed)
And that usually means 10+ dead enemies.
Alternatively, you can go high-tech and have a LASER MINIGUN. *drools* ;D
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The vehicles we have aren't that big. Nothing like a real tank. They aren't really big enough to carry loads of ammo.
No, but UGVs with computer-assisted weapons would be a lot more efficient at conserving ammo than a human soldier, and it would actually be able to aim the weapon (unlike a human, regardless of future tech wank). Give it modern small-calibre rifle bullets like the 4.7mm -- or something even tinier -- and the prospect becomes slightly more plausible.
Overall, the only workable application for these things in UFO:AI would be on vehicles, just like in real life.
Ammo is pretty much always the problem.
The question is - how much is enough. If you take a look at how many bullets aircraft or helicopters carry for their gattling cannons, you'd see that it really doesn't seem like much (ammo is counted in hundreds, not thousands).
Yet they still are used in aircraft. Why? Because you probably wont' need more, and you retreat and re-arm if you need to.
Wrong. Aircraft cannons don't usually carry that much ammo because they're rarely ever used, missiles being by far the preferable method of engagement. Cannons have been a weapon of last resort ever since the birth of beyond-visual-range engagement. If your craft gets close enough to the enemy to use cannons, unless you're making a ground support run in an armoured Warthog, you are usually in big trouble.
Also, you've completely ignored the fact that infantry soldiers do not have the option to 'retreat and re-arm', ever. It's completely against the purpose of infantry, which is to take and hold an objective until relieved. They can't pop back to base to grab some more bullets when they run out because they're opening themselves up to getting gunned down like pigs if they retreat, and even if they survive they'll be giving up any advantageous ground they may have gained, and would then have to reclaim that ground from an entrenched enemy with heavy losses assured.
Really, don't argue in favour of things (or against them, for that matter) if you don't know the realities behind them. Go into basic training or, failing that, at least read up on things before you make these utterly baseless assertions. Whatever video games may have told you, it was wrong, and there isn't a soldier in the world current or ex-service who will agree with you.
Regards,
Winter
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Overall, the only workable application for these things in UFO:AI would be on vehicles, just like in real life.
Except that RL doesn't have power armor.
Wrong. Aircraft cannons don't usually carry that much ammo because they're rarely ever used, missiles being by far the preferable method of engagement. Cannons have been a weapon of last resort ever since the birth of beyond-visual-range engagement. If your craft gets close enough to the enemy to use cannons, unless you're making a ground support run in an armoured Warthog, you are usually in big trouble.
Aircrafts not so much, but helicopters - yes. They use those side-mounted and nose-mounted gattling often while supporting troops. You don't really need THAT much ammo.
Also, you've completely ignored the fact that infantry soldiers do not have the option to 'retreat and re-arm', ever. It's completely against the purpose of infantry, which is to take and hold an objective until relieved. They can't pop back to base to grab some more bullets when they run out because they're opening themselves up to getting gunned down like pigs if they retreat, and even if they survive they'll be giving up any advantageous ground they may have gained, and would then have to reclaim that ground from an entrenched enemy with heavy losses assured.
True, but in UFO you don't really do protraced engagments that last for hours. You don't need much ammo there. And not to mention that you'd probably cart extra ammo for a minigun if you were to carry it (there are missile launcher systems where soldier carrier the launcher and the other extra missiles).
And IF you go into protraced engagements you wouldn't carry a minigun in the first place. You carry equipment appropriate to the mission/situation.
Speaking of which, you don't go into battle with a whole squad carrying miniguns - it is a specialized weapon.
Just like soldiers carry those missile launchers with 1-2 missiles. What do you think happens when they spend the ammo? They use their *gasp* sidearms and fall back, their squadmates (with other weaponry) giving them cover. According to your logic, such missile launchers should never exist then - they are heavy and expend their ammo too quickly!
You should stop treating a gattling gun like a convetional infantry assault rifle.
Really, don't argue in favour of things (or against them, for that matter) if you don't know the realities behind them. Go into basic training or, failing that, at least read up on things before you make these utterly baseless assertions. Whatever video games may have told you, it was wrong, and there isn't a soldier in the world current or ex-service who will agree with you.
I know quite a lot, thank you very much. and what should I care IF or if not a ex soldier agrees with me or not. It's not like running around with a M-16 or swabing the deck makes you an expert on gattling cannons and their application. I rather trust the assesments of people who design and build weapons.
The Microgun can already be carried by a single strong solder (but not fired at full speed standing up). Future advancements in tech can make it somewhat lighter, and powered armor and caseless ammo would allow far greater ammo capacity, while mantaining mobiltiy.
The XM214 was first developed for aircraft applications. Later General Electric developed it into a man-portable weapon system, known as the GE Six-Pak. The complete Six-Pak system weighed 85 pounds (38.5 kg) with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, comparable in weight to some heavy machine guns. The XM214 itself weighed nearly 27 pounds, or 12 kg.
The Six-Pak consisted of the XM214, the ammunition package, and the power module, and the ammunition module consisted of two 500 round cassettes mounted to a holding rack. Linked ammunition was fed through a flexible chute to the gun; when the first cassette was empty, ammunition would then feed from the second cassette, tripping a visible signal that a new cassette needed to be added to the rack. The power module contained a 24 volt nickel-cadmium battery, a 0.8 horsepower motor, and solid state electronic controls. Unless the battery were plugged into a vehicle's power supply, the battery's charge would be depleted with 3,000 rounds.
Using the electronic controls, the weapon's rate of fire could be adjusted from 400 rpm all the way up to 4,000 rpm. Later editions of Jane's Infantry Weapons claimed a theoretical cyclic rate of up to 6,000 rpm. The electronic controls also contained a burst limiter and handled the automatic clearing of the gun after bursts.
That's 38 kg for a weapon designed in the 80's with 1000 rounds of conventional ammo.
You can halve that weight by now. The recoil is the only problem that really remains - and as I said before, there are ways of taking care of that one too.
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someone mentioned that nanoammo and nanobullets would not be good. Wrong. A speck of dust, flying at the same speed as a bullet, can still be lethal, especially in the numbers we're talking about. And, considering the size, there wont be much air resistence because of the small surface area, so range would be long, though incredibly inaccurate. But u dont use miniguns and gatlings for accuracy or range.
As for carrying a thousand or so ammo, thats where strenght comes in. You wouldnt put an extremly heavy load on someone like me (6'4", 140 lbs, 3% body fat. Imagine), the weight would crush the guy before he could get off the plane.
And having the allies around carry extra ammo is a very good idea. The gatling could be adjusted to be comapitble with many rounds, much like the IAR, which fires the same rounds as the M-4, the standard infantry rifle for the US army. The IAR has a setting which allows it to fire full auto (Never have to take the finger off the trigger to keep firing), and when the gunner runs out, he can get another clip from his teammate
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someone mentioned that nanoammo and nanobullets would not be good. Wrong. A speck of dust, flying at the same speed as a bullet, can still be lethal, especially in the numbers we're talking about. And, considering the size, there wont be much air resistence because of the small surface area, so range would be long, though incredibly inaccurate. But u dont use miniguns and gatlings for accuracy or range.
As for carrying a thousand or so ammo, thats where strenght comes in. You wouldnt put an extremly heavy load on someone like me (6'4", 140 lbs, 3% body fat. Imagine), the weight would crush the guy before he could get off the plane.
And having the allies around carry extra ammo is a very good idea. The gatling could be adjusted to be comapitble with many rounds, much like the IAR, which fires the same rounds as the M-4, the standard infantry rifle for the US army. The IAR has a setting which allows it to fire full auto (Never have to take the finger off the trigger to keep firing), and when the gunner runs out, he can get another clip from his teammate
Another "clip"? What kind of "clip" would a gatling gun use? at 100 rd/sec, what kind of clip would there be? Only link ammo in large chains would feed such a weapon, and you probably couldn't hand-feed it. Think of the logistics of the ammo! A slower-rate machine gun is already in the game. Look, I fully grant that a gatling gun would do a nice job of tearing apart enemies. But it's a game where the agents start off using modern-day firearms. By the time technology advanced to make a gatling gun possible, it would be late-game, when more powerful beam weapons would be in use, anyway. If I could roll a Bradley IFV with a rotary cannon into the mission and hose down enemies, I would. That would be possible. But you wouldn't have agents using SMGs and a sniper rifle while another agent is using some super-advanced space-age gatling gun - it would be highly anachronistic. If the developers want to deploy a late-game rotary cannon that shoots lasers, that's a little more acceptable. But the multiple barrels are only there to distribute heat from bullet friction. A good fast-firing beam weapon might not have an overheating issue.
Now, if we could deploy a good APC with a rotary cannon on it, that would be cool. Although, I must say, they don't even really mount gatling guns on vehicles, unless for air-defence. The fire rate is too fast to be useful, most of the time. Ultimately, a human-ported gatling gun is a cool idea, but belongs in a different kind of game.
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Technicly, some gattling guns use what you might call a "clip".
The Microgun in particular uses 2 boxes with 500 bullets each. Both boxes are carried on the back. Those ammo boxes have 2 openings for both ends of hte ammo chain, and the begining from chain 2 is attached to the end of chain1, so the gun feeds from both boxes. F'course, once both boxes are empty you need to replace them. But 1000 bullets is a lot of firepower thrown around.
Use caseless ammo and you can easily go to 3000 bullets with roughly the same volume and weight.
Now you shouldn't start with such a weapon. You could get an option to develop it later in-game, after your think tank fiddled with alien tech for a while. That's got to inspire whole new ideas by itself, let alone new materials and other tech that could be used.
In that regard, such a gattling cannon wouldn't be "standard" human tech (no more than the bolter rifle).
And IIRC, both X-Com AND the UFO series both had miniguns of some sort. And both games were great. So you were saying something about a different type of game?
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since you guys reignited the topic ill add my 2 cents
instead of miniaturization of powder weapons im wondering
This might be an idea for a new research proposal... rapid fire bolter weapons (based on guass or rail gun technology)
any thoughts?
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We already have all the human tech weapons we want. So no.
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We already have all the human tech weapons we want. So no.
you guys certainly arent going for 2084 earth ... ... thats all im gonna say about this....
every technology mentioned could be factory produced today... but its your game do what you want.
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Thank you, we shall.
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since you guys reignited the topic ill add my 2 cents
instead of miniaturization of powder weapons im wondering
This might be an idea for a new research proposal... rapid fire bolter weapons (based on guass or rail gun technology)
any thoughts?
Well, you already do have coilguns today - you can build a coil pistol in a garage, only it won' be very powerful (more like a painball gun, probably even weaker)
Now, of course we're talking 2084, so by that time technological advancement would have gone further.
If anything, human weapon are too low tech for the supposed time period.
But a gauss gattling cannon? Now we're talking huge amounts of both ammo AND power. Kinda hard to get BOTH to be light, reliable and portable, especially since you have to power every barrel.
Now, for me it stands to reason that you would improve the weapons you already have..I bet that half of the knowledge gained from alien plasma/particle weaponry and UFO's could be in some ways used to improve them. After all, we are clever little monkies.
I must say that a improved and miniaturized gattling cannon sounds more plausable (and it is) than half the alien weapons. No matter. I enjoy playing the game with my Vindicator..but I find it only somewhat effective, despite shooting in bursts of 10 (or 50 in full auto). Aliens have high resistance to normal bullets..
B.t.w. - what is the second number in the damage entry for weapons?
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Variation. The damage dealt is the first number plus or minus a random number between 0 and the second number. It's mainly there to make the damage inflicted vary a bit. The second number should always be small compared to the first one, or you'll get a weapon that behaves unpredictably.
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trashman.... they already effectively proved to me they dont give a damn about the power requirements
particle beam weapons are going to take a heck of a lot more power than the coil gun you mentioned
By the way.. Texas Tech has one that throws rods the size of 2 x 4s through 50 feet of reinforced concrete... and that was in 1999 the last time i saw it used...
you are telling me the military isnt 25 years advanced to that.. and this is 2084.. but as i mentioned... these guys want 1985 technology in 2084...
Its fine i still enjoy the game.. I just wont give it any credit as far as realism.
I like what they are doing with it and its like xcom with better graphics. :D however im dissapointed to hear that reaction fire will be taken from my grenadiers...
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@BTAxis - thanks. I just managed to find it on the wiki, but it's good to have confirmation.
trashman.... they already effectively proved to me they dont give a damn about the power requirements
particle beam weapons are going to take a heck of a lot more power than the coil gun you mentioned
By the way.. Texas Tech has one that throws rods the size of 2 x 4s through 50 feet of reinforced concrete... and that was in 1999 the last time i saw it used...
True to some extent.
A particle beam weapon would require a lot of power, but we are talking about single barreled designs.
A gauss minigun, as I said, would need to power all barrels, and to miniauturize the power packs to that degree...well, I guess if the aliens can do it for the plasma/particle rifles, we MIGHT be able to do it somewhere in the future.
Then again, the story states that we cannot duplicate the alien particle power cells (but we can those from the plasma guns)
On the other other hand a single barrel coilgun would require less power than a particle cannon, since it doesn't accelerate to that big a speed.
Then again, you could use far smaller bullets the faster you accelerate them for the same effect. But not too small.
B.t.w. - the US army has bot working prototypes of both coilgun and railguns, but they require quite a lot of power (they are a big calibre since they are designed for the Navy) to fulfill their true damage potential.
In other words, the smaller and more powerful power cells you can make, the more powerful coilgun/railgun you can make. Power is the main factor here, but not the only one.
The firepower a single trooper will always be limited - even if you could make guns as devastating as nukes you would never, EVER give them to soldiers.
you are telling me the military isnt 25 years advanced to that.. and this is 2084.. but as i mentioned... these guys want 1985 technology in 2084...
Its fine i still enjoy the game.. I just wont give it any credit as far as realism.
I like what they are doing with it and its like xcom with better graphics. :D however im dissapointed to hear that reaction fire will be taken from my grenadiers...
Well, if you take into account that there was some major turmoil in the world I could understand if the tech advancement was slowed down somewhat. Still, its' a bit hard to believe. Now, if you said 2048 instead of 2084...that would be more believable.
Speaking of which, granadiers already don't get reaction fire :(
Oh, and I too do hope that some gattling cannon type hybrid or something does end up in the final game. After all, it appeared in every UFO or X-COM game ever made. It's a staple of the genre as much as aliens and interception. I'd hate if the work on the model goes to waste. :(
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Trash, sounds like you've made the model already...situation is, from everything we have all read, Winter isn't remotely acceptable to the idea of such a weapon. So...that is that...as they say. Not really much sense in even debating the point, unless for some reason your able to convince him otherwise...not very likely given what I've read.
I have zero development skills as I've stated before, and as such I have no need to talk with the Dev's. However, since your becoming involved in this area...you should IRC with everyone working on this project...would seem you could throw around ideas more effectively like that.
BTW, I've only played the first XCOM and it's been YEARS since that was done...I had totally forgotten there were mini-guns in that game. But this project, as has been stated is NOT a remake of any of those games, just done in the spirit of them. My only hope, is that unlike so many open source and indie projects, that this one does indeed see the finish line...it has too much potential to be really great to fall short of that.
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If he doesn't want it in the game, alright. I can accept that altough I'd like to see the min.
But I'd rather he just flat out said "I hate the idea of a portable gattling cannon. My game! Does not go in! Period!", rather than go around with the "It's impossible to make one, it's not realistic!" statements (in the same game that has plasma pistols and particle accelerator cannons I might add).
I think everyone by now can see that you CAN make one...heck, even now...let' alone 80 years in the future with added alien tech. ::)
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You can always make a mod for the game that does include the minigun. Such a mod would only be a set of ufo configuration files. All people would need to do is use your 0ufos.pk3 as opposed to the stock one.
Of course, there's also the matter of UFOpaedia descriptions, so it'd be a little more involved than that, but you get the idea.
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If he doesn't want it in the game, alright. I can accept that altough I'd like to see the min.
But I'd rather he just flat out said "I hate the idea of a portable gattling cannon. My game! Does not go in! Period!", rather than go around with the "It's impossible to make one, it's not realistic!" statements (in the same game that has plasma pistols and particle accelerator cannons I might add).
I think everyone by now can see that you CAN make one...heck, even now...let' alone 80 years in the future with added alien tech. ::)
He doesn't simply hate the gatling gun. He's got good reasons. A gatling gun doesn't fit with the other early-game weapons. It's not a stupid idea; it just doesn't fit with the thrust of the game. XCOM games did have a gun that looked like a gatling, but of course you remember that its fire rate was similar to other firearms. I for one appreciate the realism of the current weapons load-out. Who knows what they'll have in 2084? But I like the contemporary basics of the early game. Why is everyone so fixated on having a man-portable rotary cannon? Did Jesse Ventura in "Predator" leave such a lasting imprint? I for one thought it was one of dumbest parts of the movie. Fun. But dumb, you know?
Here's an idea: why don't you go borrow a 50-pound barbell from your local gym, and just go for a walk. See how far you get before you figure that it's just too cumbersome to carry around. I bet a gatling gun with ammo, even a super-futuristic small one, would weigh much more. You have to understand that all those barrels multiply the weight. Honestly - give it a try and let us know how many hundreds of meters you walked before you had to take a break. I'm not making fun of anyone. I know that a regular machine gun with ammo was a burden, and it didn't weigh 50 pounds, which isn't THAT much, when you think about it.
And as you're walking with it, consider whether you could
1. run with it
2. storm rooms with it
3. swing it around fast enough to aim at and shoot at enemies who appear at close range
4. Hit the ground into the prone position with it, the get up again
5. hold it reasonably steady, in addition to its weight, while firing it under recoil.
Could you do these things in full body armor, with helmet, ammo, water canteen, various equipment? In the dead of winter? On a 40-degree summer day (plus humidity)? At night, with poor vision? All I'm saying is, ultimately, who could do this? You'd need an Olympic athlete, who'd get killed by an enemy sniper for being so slow-moving. What if the weapon got dirty? (Hey - it rains. Stuff falls out of trees. Sometimes you have to hit the deck). What if it gets wet?
Well, I suppose we've discussed this to death.
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Aiki-Knight: oh, "to death" does not begin to cover it. "death" was about 3 pages ago when the dev(s) said "no way" for the first time. Since then the topic has been resurrected and beaten to death multiple times. This string should be renamed "necromancy".
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But there are some miniguns in multiplayer game.
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IT LIVES! It has rizen AGAIN!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
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He doesn't simply hate the gatling gun. He's got good reasons. A gatling gun doesn't fit with the other early-game weapons. It's not a stupid idea; it just doesn't fit with the thrust of the game. XCOM games did have a gun that looked like a gatling, but of course you remember that its fire rate was similar to other firearms. I for one appreciate the realism of the current weapons load-out. Who knows what they'll have in 2084? But I like the contemporary basics of the early game. Why is everyone so fixated on having a man-portable rotary cannon? Did Jesse Ventura in "Predator" leave such a lasting imprint? I for one thought it was one of dumbest parts of the movie. Fun. But dumb, you know?
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.
*SNIP*
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.
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We never get to an agreement as people who want MG will not give up and those who doesnt want it will not either.
Now lets thing about the potential use of minigun
Only idea i got for tactical missions is to use it to lock some area with heavy fire. How would you do it?
Well the only way is to get a good spot for it- easy to defend and with good sight over the area. Maybe a rooftop- or a hill?
How to get there? You need to walk there- often assign someone with short range weapon to protect the MG gunner and clear the way.
The point is, that by that time a sniper would get there much earlier and would already kill anything he can aim. On tactical missions speed is crucial- you need to get onto position before the enemy does. And you REALLY dont need 10k rounds per minute in tactical missions. An ordinary light support gun- single barrelled medium speed and weight weapon- something with you can fall into the dust while being shoot at and than shoot back, or you can easily fetch up the stairs and take position. That will be much more useful . You are mostly fighting in the urban area! You cant just shoot around and raze the city yourself!
Aditional problem with MG is its mechanical construction- the more movable parts the bigger risk of failure. Minigun needs a good working environment to work properly- special point to place it, special handling and even than you cant be sure if a sudden wind blow wont push some dust into a rotating mechanism and lock the gun
As for the rocket launcher- it is useless at the moment until tank-like vehicles are introduced. I hope there will be a grenade alternative for rockets even then. Whatever happens the Rockets should have really high accuracy as almost every missile now has some guiding system and its relatively easy to hit a tank from quite afar
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As for the rocket launcher- it is useless at the moment until tank-like vehicles are introduced.
The rocket launcher is by no means useless. It's effectively an ultrapowerful AoE sniper rifle, and indispensible early game on the hardest difficulty. A situational weapon certainly, but useful nonetheless just like a minigun would be (unparalleled crowd control, superb versus heavily armoured targets).
Anyways, I pretty much agree with Trash-Man. There is no compelling logical reason to necessarily bar a minigun, and arguments so far offered against it have been nothing but sophistry, or baseless kneejerk antipathy.
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@Nevasith:
Actually, I'm discussing this cause I like to discuss such thing, but more importantly, because when I know something is right or wrong and I hear people say otherwise, I get a naggin' impulse to correct them...epsecially if it's about something I like or have a interest in.
Speaking of which - I used the rocket launcher quite a bit.. Far from useless. Rather accurate and packs one hell of a punch.
A minigun would be used in specific circumstances - in places where you get a good overview and where you need firepower - like base defense. You can defend the whole corridor from multiple opponents with a minigun.
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Hmmm....the idea of the mini-gun for base defense is very intriguing, it would go a LONG way to denying easy corridor access in a base assault by any would be intruders. My thoughts are changing a bit on this...as if such a weapon was to be put into the game but for "specific" uses such as this...it could be a good thing. In regards to being able to make a MG plausible, it certainly would be less difficult than in mass producing hand held laser, plasma, or particle weapons...that much is surely true. Be interesting to have a vehicle mounted MG, guarding base entrances...or even wall mounted with motion sensors if such is even possible with this quake engine.
What about it Winter, BT? Any chance of getting a MG in the single player game for very specific uses as noted above, just not for any field work?
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Hmmm....the idea of the mini-gun for base defense is very intriguing, it would go a LONG way to denying easy corridor access in a base assault by any would be intruders. My thoughts are changing a bit on this...as if such a weapon was to be put into the game but for "specific" uses such as this...it could be a good thing. In regards to being able to make a MG plausible, it certainly would be less difficult than in mass producing hand held laser, plasma, or particle weapons...that much is surely true.
No, it would be more difficult.
The current portable minigun (Microgun) has still too many bugs to be used EFFECTIVELY. You can't fire it full speed while standing up, you got to reduce the RoF by more than a half and it's a bit heavy.
Now, by 2084 they might have fixed those bugs (I explained how before) - heck I would be surprised if they didn't. Let's assume they didn't - the microgun was forgotten and nobody looked seriously into portable miniguns until the UFO's came calling.
Now, our dear Cmdr. Navare had to sift tough all the past research projects and he would probably stumble onto this. He might think "hey, 80 years have passed since this was reported and it sorta worked. Hmmm.. technolgoy has progressed by now, we even got some alien stuff in the labs. Maybe we CAN make this work!"
So this wouldn't be a starting tech. Heck, maybe this could be a late-game tech.
Either way, when you put such a thing together it won't be easy to make or cheap. Just the ammo alone will cost ya.
Now, I've been playing with this weapon modded in, and I've been experimenting with it for days. I generally only have one guy with this, since shooting costs a lot of TU's and it's not accurate at longer ranges. (14TU's for a 20 bullet burst, 30 TU's for full auto - 50 bullets). If 2-3 aliens are close together (close being relative) this thing can butcher them.
The biggest problem is getting a clear shot for a full auto. T&he aliens run away, hiding behind something, and if you move, you don't have enough TU's for a full auto. Maybe I'm making it too TU expensive...Maybe it needs another mode of fire.. Dunno, I gotta experiment a bit more. I've even considered making the full-auto expend 100 bullets...would empty the 200 bullet magazine quick, but a single agent can fit 2 in the inventory (total of 600 bullets)
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Well...if such a weapon could be made to work, say in the time frame that we are talking about in 2084. Could this not be a vehicle mounted weapon, or held by someone wearing advanced power armor for a base defense scenario. If not...just scrap the whole idea to the waste basket and forget about it totally. Sounds like it may be more trouble than its worth in the long run. Here I was just getting used to the idea, of such a weapon being used possibly / hopefully for base defense ;)
You sure it would be more difficult to produce this type of weapon ( since we already did it....bugs aside ), compared to making weapons we have no idea of how to manufacture like a hand held particle weapon? Regardless, this is my last thoughts on the issue...
I'm eagerly awaiting 2.3 ;)
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By 2080? Definately should be fully man portable.
It is now, alltough..not quite. Reducing the RoF mean reducing the main atractivenes of a minigun - weight is in reality a secondary problem.
Currently the Micorgun weighs only slighly more than a standard heavy MG.
So basicely, you focus on techniques to reduce recoil. There are some already. The VHS* rifle uses (will use, it's still a prototpye) a "air cushin" system that makes it almost recoilless, even at full auto. Caseless ammo exists for some time. There are other technological and design advanacements out there too.
So by 2080 I wouldn't be surprised if you could make a man-portable minigun that can be used effectively even without power armor. F'course, for game purposes I would make the power armor a requirement.
*
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/posejdon/puskHS.jpg)
more info:
http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galleryfiles/3000/3088.htm
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Very cool rifle indeed and does propose and elegant solution to the recoil problem. This part of the way to making a gattling protable.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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Mattn, Winter, or BT is this similar to the current Machine gun in the game?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249
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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
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I was thinking so, but thanks for the clarification :)
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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 :P
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? :D
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.
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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?
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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
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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
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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? :D
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
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Trashman, please check your PM inbox if you haven't already.
Fal
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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 :D
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? :o
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Not really Trash, things just seemed to be "heating up", and I was a bit concerned thats all ;)
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Add to it weight of the gun itself, the need for additional ammo, inability of taking a sidearm...
Uum...38 KG for everything combines...ATM..that's not much - special forces go into battle with 80kg of equipment.
not to mention that you can probably shave a few kg of weight with some improvements
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
The 5 minute number was for regular chain. That's why linkless chain was introduced. God knows what new things they'll come up with 80 years from now.
spekaing of which - if a gun jamms, that's why your sidearm is for. That's why your teammate cover is for.
Well, no. Like I said, they just contain more vague theory and irrelevance.
WTF? Vauge theories? Did you even read the stuff?
The VHS air coushin system for recoil reducing? Gas powered rotation for faster spin up and RoF? Lightweight polymers? And that's only stuff from the top of my head - there are probably more techs/methods I forgot or don't know about now. Not ot mention 80 years form now.
All of that is vague to you? ::)
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.
And you're the one to define what makes a effective weapon? You're the one to define when and how the weapon is supposed ot be used? Pffft.
What makes you think it's a clumsy weapon? What makes you think such a weapon would cancel the mobility of a power armor? Since when are you immobile with 30kg (or less) of weight?
And since when do PHALANX troops fall under a "normal military force"? They have access to power armor, unlike regular soldiers. Why not make use of everything that armor offers (namely more firepower)?
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.
More like 50%. But you could use other calibers too (4.6 for example).
A 2000 round backpack would be roughly the same volume and weight as the microgun backpack (around 10 Kg).
Note that the microgun backpack was never "too large and weighty". I don't get where you get this stuff...please, give me some source for this redicolous claim.
Weight of the weapon or the backpack were never the reason the microgun wasn't used. The inability to fire at full RoF without setup was.
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.
Where are your figures? I gave you link to articles and pointed you where to look. The microgun can be fired WHILE STANDING UP at roughly half the RoF (50 bullets per second). More than that and the kickback becomes too much.
And you really think that in 80+ years, with recoil reducing techniques and power armor stabiltiy you couldn't get around that.
I bet that in time of the first choppers, when they were falling down because of the lack of rear rotor, you'd be the first one to tell anyone that they will have no future and are stupid to consider as military weapons... ::)
[qutoe]
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.[/uote]
And what's wrong with theoretical stuff? (note that most if it isn't theoretical)
And what makes you think the same system can't be used for multi-barrels? Speaking of which, accuracy is for assault rifles and snipers.
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.
You're saying you can hold a position against a superior hostile force with another weapon? Like an assault rifle?
a) 10kg isn't that much for an elite soldier. They aren't made of jello
b) What part of team/squad are you forgetting. Whoever carriers a minigun/rocket launcher/sniper rifle is never alone. You got other squadmates to cover you while you realod. Assuming you need a reload. I barely ever reload ANY weapon in UFO:AI.
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.
I did mentionedt them. holding a passage/hallways, defending a fortified position, providing continuus fire support. Aliens are highly resistent to normal bullets b.t.w., so the more bullets in the air, the better.
I had aliens survive a full auto from a MG. From a minigun? Never.
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.
Why do you bring a weapon to a mission if it doesn't suit a mission profile? If you do, you're either stupid of complacent. You don't use the minigun to hunt aliens within a building anymore than you would use a rocket launcher.
Speaking of which, I find a minigun highly useful in my current game. There is enough open ground for that.
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.
Denying facts and possibilities is even worse, mind you. For you it's negative thinking all the way.
And as I said before, a minigun is a SUPPORT weapon. You constantly keep comparing it with an assault rifle. Talk about a logical black hole.
You seem to have plenty of stuff that don't exist to day in the humans arsenal b.t.w.
Wow, all that education, and you still have no idea about the military uses of miniguns and why they're not applicable to infantry?
Apparenlty, neither do you :D
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.
ERm...you're using high-yield plasma granades with twice the AoE range and deadliness of normal granades..you use rocket launchers and incindiery ammo. Do you see something wrong with your statement?
*also there were instances of gattling guns used in urban areas..mostly in Somalia.
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.
UFO: AI isn't plausable, not in the least. Now if you said it "feels" somewhat realistic, there I could agree with you.
Cheapen? I would say improve.
After all, you're not making the RL simulator 3000 - too many aliens (b.t.w. I use this opportunity to say I'm dissapointed with aliens autopsy description. Every single one of them seem to be a bio-engineerd warrior with redicoouls resistance. Even the think "greys". What happend to soft and squishy like humans? Why are humans the most vulneralbe of all species in the universe?)
I guess the only thing we can agree on is that we disagree ;D
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Why are humans the most vulneralbe of all species in the universe?)
Because most of us would not agree to have their innards replaced with semi medical eqipment. The aliens have breathing implants, internal plating and anything that would improve their fighting potential. Read Ortonok autopsy- their balls were removed- would you agree for such a thing if you were told it will make you a better soldier?
Aliens think in different way (wont spoil the fun of finding it out if someone didnt research it yet;p) and its no problem for them to do anything with their body. Humanity is the biggest problem here, and without a serious reason most people would never agree to have for example their limbs removed and replaced.
Tell me more about this 80 kg of equipment- what forces, where, what mission and what do they carry.
Gas from firing will never give enough energy to rotate a MG
Since when are you immobile with 30kg (or less) of weight?
not immobile, but less mobile. Try to run with such a weight- i tried
Where are your figures? I gave you link to articles and pointed you where to look. The microgun can be fired WHILE STANDING UP at roughly half the RoF
Standing up is the best way to get a bullet right between your eyes(or a particle beam)
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Because most of us would not agree to have their innards replaced with semi medical eqipment. The aliens have breathing implants, internal plating and anything that would improve their fighting potential. Read Ortonok autopsy- their balls were removed- would you agree for such a thing if you were told it will make you a better soldier?
Aliens think in different way (wont spoil the fun of finding it out if someone didnt research it yet;p) and its no problem for them to do anything with their body. Humanity is the biggest problem here, and without a serious reason most people would never agree to have for example their limbs removed and replaced.
We're talking about several different alien races here. What are the odds that all of them think the same and are perfecly fine with extensive internal surgery?
Tell me more about this 80 kg of equipment- what forces, where, what mission and what do they carry.
Special forces - specificly in missions behind enemy lines, in deserts or mountain terrains.
Gas from firing will never give enough energy to rotate a MG
A strange claim given that the fastest gattling cannons out there are gas-operated...
not immobile, but less mobile. Try to run with such a weight- i tried
You can't have everything, now can you? The question is - how much is enough. If you got power armor, how much does a minigun slow you down? Kinda hard to answer without knowing the specifics of the power armor.
Standing up is the best way to get a bullet right between your eyes(or a particle beam)
So? Don't stand up. The point is that it can be fired standing up, meaning the recoil is managable to a point even now.. let alone 80 years in the future.
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We're talking about several different alien races here. What are the odds that all of them think the same and are perfecly fine with extensive internal surgery?
Hmm- do the, odd behaviour and alien mind research- you will learn interesting things about them (hint- capture at least 10 aliens in one base)
Special forces - specificly in missions behind enemy lines, in deserts or mountain terrains.
You did not say what do they take and what missions. These are operations probably- taking some days, where they need firepower, tents, and Hell knows what else. Xcom comes to the mission area- kills/captures aliens and depart where they came from. No extended time period missions.
A strange claim given that the fastest gattling cannons out there are gas-operated...
Give me the names please. Most of MG have electric rotating engine-and i ever heard of any MG that would use gas gained from gunpowder explosion in the gun lock. But if you know of any give me the details as i am not an alpha and omega
You can't have everything, now can you? The question is - how much is enough. If you got power armor, how much does a minigun slow you down? Kinda hard to answer without knowing the specifics of the power armor.
Enough is when my soldier can keep up with the rest, get on a second floor, put his gun through the window and can carry all his ammo by himself, when he can run for a cover and hide quickly.
So? Don't stand up. The point is that it can be fired standing up, meaning the recoil is managable to a point even now.. let alone 80 years in the future.
As i said earlier it might be difficult to place a minigun on the widow, or a car behind which you are hiding- rotating barrels would clash against the surface so the mg would need some frame or stand.
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You did not say what do they take and what missions. These are operations probably- taking some days, where they need firepower, tents, and Hell knows what else. Xcom comes to the mission area- kills/captures aliens and depart where they came from. No extended time period missions.
Even more of a reason why they can carry more equipment - short missions with air transport in and out.
Give me the names please. Most of MG have electric rotating engine-and i ever heard of any MG that would use gas gained from gunpowder explosion in the gun lock. But if you know of any give me the details as i am not an alpha and omega
Here's one :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryazev-Shipunov_GSh-6-23
Enough is when my soldier can keep up with the rest, get on a second floor, put his gun through the window and can carry all his ammo by himself, when he can run for a cover and hide quickly.
And what makes you think a guy with a minigun couldn't so that?
Note that a sensible commander would never order a guy with a mining into a apartment building on the second floor in the first place trough..
As i said earlier it might be difficult to place a minigun on the widow, or a car behind which you are hiding- rotating barrels would clash against the surface so the mg would need some frame or stand.
You mean something like a bipod? I fail to see the problem in that...
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As i said earlier it might be difficult to place a minigun on the widow, or a car behind which you are hiding- rotating barrels would clash against the surface so the mg would need some frame or stand.
Jesus, I didn't even think of that. That's unforgivable in any kind of battlefield -- note that the only function for which the microgun was developed was to clear helicopter landing zones. Add 'cannot be fired prone or from cover' to the minigun's list of ways it endangers its wielder's life.
Some more hard data on microgun recoil: "Each cartridge accelerates a 4 grams (62 gr) bullet to about 850 m/s (2,800 ft/s); at a moderate rate of fire of 4,000 rounds per minute, a one second burst will accelerate 267 grams (4,120 gr) of mass. Assuming a 100 kilograms (220 lb/16 st) user, and 30 kilograms (66 lb) for the XM214 and ammunition, that one second burst will result in the gun and user being accelerated to 1.7 m/s (5.6 ft/s)."
One gas blowback-operated minigun does apparently exist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSh-6-30) in a 30mm calibre, an old thing developed by the Russians, but it was swiftly replaced with an ordinary double-barrel machine gun due to ammo limitations. The gas from a 5.56mm round or a 4.73mm round, however, would never be able to spin multiple barrels at a rate of fire higher than a standard machine gun.
Regards,
Winter
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Even more of a reason why they can carry more equipment - short missions with air transport in and out.
Stupid comment. No military unit, however big or small, can choose its own engagement times. All it can do is guess and hope.
Here's one :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryazev-Shipunov_GSh-6-23
See my previous post.
And what makes you think a guy with a minigun couldn't so that?
Note that a sensible commander would never order a guy with a mining into a apartment building on the second floor in the first place trough..
So you're saying that a sensible commander would never order a guy with a minigun to do the sort of thing that PHALANX was intended to do from the get-go and which it would have to do constantly? Do you know, I think that's exactly what I've been saying.
You mean something like a bipod? I fail to see the problem in that...
. . . Did you think about that before you said it? You can't put a bipod or tripod on a gun whose barrels spin at 4000+ RPM, for several reasons.
1. The barrels spin! There's no place to mount anything!
2. Even if there was, the massive torque from firing would tip it over.
Regards,
Winter
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Jesus, I didn't even think of that. That's unforgivable in any kind of battlefield -- note that the only function for which the microgun was developed was to clear helicopter landing zones. Add 'cannot be fired prone or from cover' to the minigun's list of ways it endangers its wielder's life.
Who sez it can't be fired prone? ???
Stupid comment. No military unit, however big or small, can choose its own engagement times. All it can do is guess and hope.
Wouldn't it make sense then to carry more equipment, just in case you might need it?
One gas blowback-operated minigun does apparently exist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSh-6-30) in a 30mm calibre, an old thing developed by the Russians, but it was swiftly replaced with an ordinary double-barrel machine gun due to ammo limitations. The gas from a 5.56mm round or a 4.73mm round, however, would never be able to spin multiple barrels at a rate of fire higher than a standard machine gun.
The point is that the technology exists and can be perfected. You underestimate human ingenuity.
So you're saying that a sensible commander would never order a guy with a minigun to do the sort of thing that PHALANX was intended to do from the get-go and which it would have to do constantly? Do you know, I think that's exactly what I've been saying.
You're saying the ONLY missions Phalanax ever does is excursions into densely populated areas?
Hmmm..you know I was sure there were many mission in rurlal and outdoor areas, even in bases and bunkers with big, broad hallways... but I surely must be wrong! ::)
. . . Did you think about that before you said it? You can't put a bipod or tripod on a gun whose barrels spin at 4000+ RPM, for several reasons.
1. The barrels spin! There's no place to mount anything!
I hope you don't work for some R&D. Total lack of creativity. Observe:
(http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/8615/vindicator2kh6.th.png) (http://img122.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vindicator2kh6.png)
Do you see where a bipod/tripod/something could be attached?
Zounds! It be dark magicks! :D
EDIT:
Speaking of minigun size..This looks incredibly big and unwieldy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gau_17_7.62mm_minigun.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gau_17_7.62mm_minigun.jpg)
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Dang...thats smaller than I would have thought...still a bit big to be hauling around on the battlefield though? Perhaps not with mechanized power armor...
Still be better to mount a system like this on some type of vehicle / UGV though...you think?
Here is more detailed info on that same weapon, with a link to a supposedly improved version at the bottom of the page:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_30-cal_GAU17.htm
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THANKS FOR THIS PICTURE! Looks really great!
Speaking of minigun size..This looks incredibly big and unwieldy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gau_17_7.62mm_minigun.jpg
Take a look where and HOW it is mounted. Yep- you would have to carry a special heavy arm and 3/4 of the gun would be outside of the window or a hole acting like a big flag "hey here i am!" Notice the fire comming from barrels
It must look great at night. Especialy from a particle canon aiming system. Light support machine guns have special construction on barrel just to hide the fire which gives away your position. Do you really think that if it would make any sense military installations wouldnt have MG installed by default?
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You're saying plasma/particle and other normal humans weapons (assault rifles, machine guns, etc..) DON'T have a visible flash while shooting? Or a bullet trace visible at night?
Erm..one more thing..if you actually were planning on using a minigun, what makes you think you would be the one doing the hiding? :D
Speaking of which the gun itself is 16kg + ~10kg for ammo = 26kg. And we're down well below 30kg with still 80 years to go to UFO:AI timeline.
80 years..think about it. If you consider when the microgun was made that would mean almost 100 years from the microgun to UFO:AI time.
100 years. Can you even imagine the technical strides made in 100 years?
Just think what we had at the beginning of this century and what we have now. And then tell me in my face you really think it's impossible to fix some small technical problems in that time span.
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another reason to stay mobile. Plasma would give short burst of light. I have seen some bulets and most of them are quite invisible while in the air- i think the glowing ones are special kind that makes easier target aiming by alowing to track the bullet way.
Read about lasers in game- there is mentioned, that its beam is invisible and thusly we need to create special doctrine of combat with laser weapons- the bright beam is just a pleasant effect just as it is with most weapons ingame.
To the contrary an operating MG spits constant fire showing its position for as long as its working.
Erm..one more thing..if you actually were planning on using a minigun, what makes you think you would be the one doing the hiding?
There is no specific reason for that. Maybe except for some particle canons hidden in buildings and on the rooftops eager to blast heads off
Its always better to stay invisible- thats why we use cover and try to sneak and snipe the enemy- you cant aim what you cant see- elementary Watson That is also why humanity sends phalanx instead of nuking every attacked area
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Laser are invisible, yes. But plasma and particle beams? Normal human weaponry? No. Quite visible.
And there is also another maxim - if you can shoot me, I can shoot you. No matter which gun you use, you have to get out of cover to get a shot.
Also, aliens seem eager to duck for cover themselves when the shooting starts.
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normal weapons are mostly invisible- short moment of shooting is visible only in SOME weapons. Plasma is visible(probably as i havent seen any in real life yet) but now you are trying to tell me, that a lighter is just as visible as a torch- you are comparing a short flash of light to a constant light from barrels. Particles moving with near-the lighspeed shouldnt be visible as well- ~25 frames per second is enough to give a human an illusion of fluid picture, and aliens shouldnt perceive much faster.
And there is also another maxim - if you can shoot me, I can shoot you. No matter which gun you use, you have to get out of cover to get a shot.
I killed quite a lot of aliens with grenades by bouncing them from walls or blowing them near an open door.
Other way to get covered alien is to surround him and attack from behind. Or- take strong position put there few good soldiers on full reaction and wait until our covered fellow shows up
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Erm..one more thing..if you actually were planning on using a minigun, what makes you think you would be the one doing the hiding? :D
Stupid comment. Snipers would take you down with a single bullet from any possible location. You won't even know they're there. Exactly why snipers are so deadly.
You cannot fire a minigun from cover or from a prone position, and not using cover is a death warrant for any soldier in any combat zone.
And before you trot our that model you made, let me point out that while it looks nice, it's also highly impractical with the front handguard. So much so that it would never survive trials; one little nudge or bend on that bottom bar and your gun will violently rip itself to pieces.
Speaking of which the gun itself is 16kg + ~10kg for ammo = 26kg. And we're down well below 30kg with still 80 years to go to UFO:AI timeline.
. . . And we've already pointed out it's not going to get much lighter due to the fact that you'd need a heavy bullet for penetration, and you'll always have an unnecessary electric motor, battery and multiple barrels in a situation where all you really need is a proper machine gun.
80 years..think about it. If you consider when the microgun was made that would mean almost 100 years from the microgun to UFO:AI time.
100 years. Can you even imagine the technical strides made in 100 years?
Yes. They won't change the laws of physics or make people stupid enough to try and field infantry miniguns when normal machine guns will be so much more effective in all stated roles. Hell, by 2084 you will probably see single-barrel machine guns capable of rates of fire above 2000 rounds per minute. So what use is a minigun again?
Just think what we had at the beginning of this century and what we have now. And then tell me in my face you really think it's impossible to fix some small technical problems in that time span.
Except as we've pointed out there are more than technical problems, there is fundamentally faulty logic in thinking that a minigun would be superior to a standard weapon in any capacity by 2084. Rates of fire for normal weapons will increase dramatically, whereas you would have to pile on yet more ammo, yet more weight and yet more volume just to keep ahead of them.
A minigun would not be preferable to a machine gun in any situation. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Higher rate of fire doesn't make up for all the drawbacks. Miniguns are very effective weapons on vehicles such as tanks, jeeps, helicopters and airplanes, sometimes even from fixed defensive positions, but will never ever work for infantry. They were never designed for infantry to use, could never be made to effectively replace an infantry machine gun, and will never be good enough at the things required of an infantry weapon. They simply weren't meant for infantry and no amount of fantasy and imagination will shoehorn them into that role.
P.S. Don't even start with "it's not a machine gun". It's right in the name, the proper military name -- "multi-barreled rotary machine gun".
Regards,
Winter
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Stupid comment. Snipers would take you down with a single bullet from any possible location. You won't even know they're there. Exactly why snipers are so deadly.
The same holds true regardless which weapon you use.
You cannot fire a minigun from cover or from a prone position, and not using cover is a death warrant for any soldier in any combat zone.
Again, what makes you think you can't fire it from cover or prone?
And before you trot our that model you made, let me point out that while it looks nice, it's also highly impractical with the front handguard. So much so that it would never survive trials; one little nudge or bend on that bottom bar and your gun will violently rip itself to pieces.
What makes you an expert? Are by any chance a weapon engineer?
And we've already pointed out it's not going to get much lighter due to the fact that you'd need a heavy bullet for penetration, and you'll always have an unnecessary electric motor, battery and multiple barrels in a situation where all you really need is a proper machine gun.
How much lighter does it have to get anyway? 26 kg is already rather light, and you can surely shave a few kg more off of that with more modern, lightweight materials.
Hell, by 2084 you will probably see single-barrel machine guns capable of rates of fire above 2000 rounds per minute. So what use is a minigun again?
There's no way to know how weapon will evolve by 2080.
Coolnes. The same as half the current weapons in-game.
It's a fairy tale that plasma and particle weapon would be so effective compared to good ol' mass drivers.
Except as we've pointed out there are more than technical problems, there is fundamentally faulty logic in thinking that a minigun would be superior to a standard weapon in any capacity by 2084. Rates of fire for normal weapons will increase dramatically, whereas you would have to pile on yet more ammo, yet more weight and yet more volume just to keep ahead of them.
Maybe. Who knows what the future will bring? I'm not diluded enough to think I know the answer to that one. You however, seems so sure.
A minigun would not be preferable to a machine gun in any situation. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Higher rate of fire doesn't make up for all the drawbacks.
And I disagree. You already proved you're mind is completely closed off to even simple solutions to many drawbacks. All you see is problems insted of solutions.
There's nothing more to say.
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The same holds true regardless which weapon you use.
Again, what makes you think you can't fire it from cover or prone?
No, the same does not hold true, because other weapons can be fired from cover whereas an infantry minigun cannot be fired from anywhere but the hip due to recoil. Trying to fire it unsupported (i.e.from a prone or covered position) will either rip your arm off or drive the gun smack into your head. There's also the issue of unprotected rotating barrels which you can't cover because they would simply overheat and melt into a puddle.
What makes you an expert? Are by any chance a weapon engineer?
No, but oddly enough I've done a LOT of research as a novelist and for UFO:AI specifically. I can easily point out possible points of failure and I know how the weapon selection process works.
By the way, one second of fire with a 7.62mm minigun costs approximately $150 in ammo, parts, specialist maintenance, etc. Want to compare that to a normal machine gun? No military could justify that much spending on an ineffective, inaccurate and technically/tactically challenged infantry weapon.
How much lighter does it have to get anyway? 26 kg is already rather light, and you can surely shave a few kg more off of that with more modern, lightweight materials.
Okay, so that's about 20kg on top of the standard soldier's loadout of for hopefully one engagement's worth of ammo. Now read this:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-15_ch11.htm
That's all from me for now.
Regards,
Winter
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Daniel you are right this is the necromancer thread.. i finished this topic off last week and came back today to find 3 more pages.. mostly with winter's *futile* arguments about how it cant be done.. and trashmans arguments about how it can be done.
What does this leave me with...
1) the administrators have never been in a serious combat situation... no one uses a fragging rocket launcher except against armor or hardened targets.. and with the quake engine here we cant blow the fragging walls up so to a real soldier the damned thing is useless
2) the administrators have no experience with weapons design and testing.. its apparent because all of the technologies trash and i have argued for not only already exist in the civilian sector. but are probably quite advanced in the military sector which I realize most of you all do not have access to.
3) they obviously hate the minigun because it owned their aliens in every scenario... im sorry its a damn good suppressive fire weapon and we all know it... special forces teams (like phalanx) have employed it in situations that you never read about.. Some of us know from first hand experience.
4) Its obvious VERY obvious its never going to be in the damned game the argument now is simply for the principle of being able to say im right and you arent..
I love this game admins... dont think this is a knock on your beautiful wonderful work.... Its just for those of us living in the real world.. in 2084 it seems fragging likely we will have some badass weapons...
Humans have always been very able and capable and even have.. made leaps and bounds in ways to kill other humans.. its quite unfortunate we cant use the same ingenuity to learn how to keep them alive for longer.
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Daniel you are right this is the necromancer thread.. i finished this topic off last week and came back today to find 3 more pages.. mostly with winter's *futile* arguments about how it cant be done.. and trashmans arguments about how it can be done.
What does this leave me with...
1) the administrators have never been in a serious combat situation... no one uses a fragging rocket launcher except against armor or hardened targets.. and with the quake engine here we cant blow the fragging walls up so to a real soldier the damned thing is useless
2) the administrators have no experience with weapons design and testing.. its apparent because all of the technologies trash and i have argued for not only already exist in the civilian sector. but are probably quite advanced in the military sector which I realize most of you all do not have access to.
3) they obviously hate the minigun because it owned their aliens in every scenario... im sorry its a damn good suppressive fire weapon and we all know it... special forces teams (like phalanx) have employed it in situations that you never read about.. Some of us know from first hand experience.
4) Its obvious VERY obvious its never going to be in the damned game the argument now is simply for the principle of being able to say im right and you arent..
I love this game admins... dont think this is a knock on your beautiful wonderful work.... Its just for those of us living in the real world.. in 2084 it seems fragging likely we will have some badass weapons...
Humans have always been very able and capable and even have.. made leaps and bounds in ways to kill other humans.. its quite unfortunate we cant use the same ingenuity to learn how to keep them alive for longer.
D'you know, I'm really tired of this? I provide well-reasoned arguments, I try really hard to change your opinions with logic and factual information, but people just ignore the hours I've spent posting and doing research with illogical "IT IS TEH FUTUREZ" bullshit. Thread locked, and any further requests for miniguns to be included in the single-player campaign will also be locked.
Regards,
Winter