SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

Series of developer diaries for Six Days in Fallujah.
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staropal0972
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

I feel it should all depend when you use enemy weapons, whether it's for fun, when you expended all available ammo with your already equipped primary, or if you were to clear weapons cache from enemy use (which just got confirmed above as I'm typing this).

There is some practicality to confiscating/picking up enemy weapons but for the most part you wouldn't really use it to replace your service rifle, especially with Marines. Since it's a game however I'd consider allowing players to pick up enemy weapons, maybe even just in co-op mode.
PostFapShame
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

I don't think we should be able to pick up an AK or RPG and be able to use it for the rest of the mission. We will start with a M16A4 which has 5.56x45mm ammo but if we pick up an AK we'll magically get enough 7.62×39mm ammo?? I think it would be fair from a fun game perspective and a more serious historical perspective if we could pick these weapons up but only have ammo that's left in the mag or one rocket for the RPG. You could even have it where if you still wanted to use the weapon then you'd have to find another weapon of its kind and strip it of ammo or find a weapons caches.
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AmperCamper
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

staropal0972 wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 12:22 pm There is some practicality to confiscating/picking up enemy weapons but for the most part you wouldn't really use it to replace your service rifle, especially with Marines. Since it's a game however I'd consider allowing players to pick up enemy weapons, maybe even just in co-op mode.
PostFapShame wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 2:59 pm I don't think we should be able to pick up an AK or RPG and be able to use it for the rest of the mission. We will start with a M16A4 which has 5.56x45mm ammo but if we pick up an AK we'll magically get enough 7.62×39mm ammo?? I think it would be fair from a fun game perspective and a more serious historical perspective if we could pick these weapons up but only have ammo that's left in the mag or one rocket for the RPG. You could even have it where if you still wanted to use the weapon then you'd have to find another weapon of its kind and strip it of ammo or find a weapons caches.
Thanks for both of your added thoughts on placing limitations on possibly picking up enemy weapons. This is very helpful for us!
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krzy
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

aggimajera wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 2:48 pm 3.) On your final note of why you shouldn't go around firing AK's to prevent blue on blue, why not let players discover this the hard way? Why not have us endure blue-on-blue as a result? Perhaps your squad mates ridicule you or straight up call you an idiot for carrying an Insurgent weapon as your primary.
No idea how feasible it would be with regards to AI in the game, but yeah, it would be interesting experience to clear a house with an AK and get suppressed by Marines who haven't seen player using enemy weapon. I guess that would be limited to other squads/teams, as I suppose player subordinates would always be pretty close by.

As for picking up ammo for AKs - maybe make it a reeeaally long animation (player's character searches through pockets of fallen enemy), so that player will start to regret his decision somewhere in the middle of the process? :lol:

This got me thinking, and I don't know how it fits into the planned gameplay/level design - if levels are made so that enemy can flank player, or even surprise him by attacking the rear, maybe enemy AI could also pick up weapons from fallen comrades and use them? Especially "high value"/ stuff like RPGs, machine guns or sniper rifles. This could add a sort of "mini-game" of player picking up weapons from dead enemies and delivering them to the rear formations.

This is sort of a wild idea, and may probably not work at all, but reading about modern counter-insurgencies (whether in Iraq or elsewhere), it seemed that "battlefield clean-up" was pretty important task.

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As for the guns themselves, I cannot help but notice that the "AK-47" is in fact an AKM. Although it has a stock with a downward slant, which is indeed reminescent of the original AK. IMO it would be better to straighten the stock on the gun, as it looks a bit wonky in it's current form. Here's a visual comparison of the stocks:
akakm.jpg
akakm.jpg (28.66 KiB) Viewed 15017 times
Apart from that, I'm kind of bummed because of the overall "generic" character of the insurgent armoury. Let me nerd out a little bit. While AK is obviously a Soviet design, it was also made in many different countries, which often made their own little changes to the design. Saddam's Iraq was know to supply rifles from Romania, East Germany and Yugoslavia, and finally began manufacture of their own line of AK-clones. Quite naturally after the fall of Saddam these guns were used a lot by the insurgents, new Iraqi Army and police, and even allied forces. IMO it may be worth to take some of the visual cues from these guns, to make the weaponry of Six Days insurgents stand out from a "Run of the mill" shooter.

Base AKM model could be transformed into a Romanian-like rifle by adding a so-called "dong" (handguard with vertical grip) and/or a wire side-folding stock (example of both). East German gun could be simulated by adding the same wire side-folder to the gun with regular handguard, although "proper" East German guns had a number of plastic parts of original design, either mixed with wood (examples) or exclusively plastic (example 1 and 2).

Step above that would be recreating a Yugoslav-pattern of AK rifle, the Zastava M70, which was also manufactured in Iraq under Tabuk name. This variant features a number of changes when compared to regular AKM: reinforced receiver (right side, left side), larger handguard with three vent holes, rifle grenade sight (flips up to fire grenades), different grip and stock. Zastava M70 and Tabuk were made both in fixed- and folding-stock variants.

Iraq also made a "sniper" variant of the Tabuk, which has became sort of a thing of legends (a look-alike was even featured in "American Sniper" movie). The sniper Tabuk has a longer barrel with SVD-like flash-hider, is equipped with Yugo ZRAK ON M99 scope that's similiar to PSO-1 (in fact Tabuk sniper can mount PSO too), and a distinctive stock. What's interesting about this gun is that (unlike SVD or American marksman rifles such as M14 EBR, Mk11/M110) it uses an intermediate 7.62x39 cartridge, just like regular AK rifles (the magazines are also interchangeable). This makes it pretty well suited to urban warfare, and despite new Iraqi Army and police receiving a lot of 5.56 guns (M16s and M4s), Tabuk sniper rifles are still being used (especially by police).

To spice-up the things even more, insurgents could use weapons such as RPD (which is more of a M249 equivalent than PKM), Zastava M72 LMG (made in Iraq under Al Quds name, also with folding stock) or sniper rifles such as Romanian PSL (a sort-of "enlarged" AK which seems to be more numerous in Iraq than SVD) or Saddam's own Al Kadesiah (a cross between PSL and SVD). Maybe some pistols, like the Tariq (would play well with my earlier idea of insurgents taking the guns from their fallen comrades).

Of course, what I described here requires a hell lot of an effort to make! So don't treat it as a request, or even suggestion - more like a collection of ideas on how to make the insurgents arsenal have a little more of Iraqi flavor. Can't wait for next SITREP! Maybe something about aforementioned traps and IEDs?
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AmperCamper
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

What a post, krzy! Thanks for taking the time to write this up for us and including links. While I'm not confirming these specific tweaks to the weapons we have available, these references are very, very helpful to us. With so much variety available to the AKs especially, there are quite a few roads we can take on this.

As far as picking up weapons goes, we're adding your suggestions to the list of feedback we've received for this SITREP. Again, there are many ways we can approach a system like this and we're open to having more ideas at the table.

Thanks!
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Kean_1
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

staropal0972 wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 12:22 pm I feel it should all depend when you use enemy weapons, whether it's for fun, when you expended all available ammo with your already equipped primary, or if you were to clear weapons cache from enemy use (which just got confirmed above as I'm typing this).

There is some practicality to confiscating/picking up enemy weapons but for the most part you wouldn't really use it to replace your service rifle, especially with Marines. Since it's a game however I'd consider allowing players to pick up enemy weapons, maybe even just in co-op mode.
I agree with this assessment.

In either case and beyond any case for reason / reality, I can't see the practicality of focusing or diverting resources on some of these other scenarios like consequences in using enemy weapons, etc. You're either allowed to for a reason or not.

As @staropal0972 mentioned, perhaps players are restricted to issued kit and co-op allows for more flexibility simply due to gameplay aspects (fun factor).

Personally, it matters more to me that they get other components of the game right like the mechanics, animations, sounds, weapons feel, AI behavior, the extensiveness of the procedurally generated map details, the number of map assets, etc. rather than trying to implement every possible scenario especially those that are unlikely. .....but that's just me.
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krzy
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

AmperCamper wrote: Fri May 27, 2022 9:05 am What a post, krzy! Thanks for taking the time to write this up for us and including links. While I'm not confirming these specific tweaks to the weapons we have available, these references are very, very helpful to us.
Thanks, and just to re-iterate: these are just some ideas. Whether you guys and gals can follow on such things, is another matter - quite obviously I can't really tell how big is overall development progress, and if time (and cash) allows for creation of new assets.

As a bit of explanation of my "rivet counting": I was involved in making Operation Flashpoint mod about Polish troops in OIF. Mod never got finished (blame dying HDD), but it led to me finding a real-life hobby that's shooting. So yeah, "guns" and "Iraq war 2003" is a bit dangerous crossroad of my interests! :D
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Re: SITREP: Insurgent Weapons

AmperCamper wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 11:51 am
aggimajera wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 2:48 pm 3.) On your final note of why you shouldn't go around firing AK's to prevent blue on blue, why not let players discover this the hard way? Why not have us endure blue-on-blue as a result? Perhaps your squad mates ridicule you or straight up call you an idiot for carrying an Insurgent weapon as your primary.
Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this one.
Amper, I believe that's a good point. As a Soldier you are issued a weapon and are expected to carry it as if it is another part of your body. I think this would be a cool concept that blue on blue could happen as Soldiers are used to hearing the weapons that they use and guns have very distinct shooting acoustics. This would be neat if it is added into the game for the realism aspect.
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