Jumpstarting the Firearm Economy

Currently, from my limited IC perspective, I do not think that firearms in the mix are too hard to find for even newer players, or even priced too high. As long as you keep your calibers to small arms, most firearms are in achievable price range for your average ganger, with the added service costs and risks of having a hot piece having to weigh up to being able to bring a gun to a knife fight. It's when you start with the hypothetical modding that the prices start to rise quickly.

But as 0x1mm pointed out on the Sleaze-Sneak Thread, they're just seemingly never used, and for some reason tend to lead to hording of firearms. Which really resonated with me about them being saved for a super special rainy day that never comes.

That being said, I'd like to suggest these ideas to help boost the firearm economy in the Mix.

1.)Please remove the word derringer from the PopPop Defender. As someone who wanted to get into guns and stuff early in the game, every description and examination of the PopPop leads you to believe you have one bullet... like a derringer. This is not the case, and it took me close to a year and [REDACTED] to find out it holds a lot more than a single bullet. Very much unlike a derringer. I think that if it was renamed to something like a zip gun or something like that, it would get the idea across that it was a viable weapon to bring to a fight, instead of a single bullet and a prayer.

2.) Give TERRA carte blanche firearms permits for 9mm and under, with shotgun permits on a per need basis. Experienced officers may even qualify for .357 and .45 with justification and good standing. Even the psychos who are joining to get their authoritarian jollies. Giving TERRA access to firearms is a quick way to add a boost to the number of small arms circulating in the mix. Yes, they will surely be robbed of their guns like their whacking sticks, but that's the point. Literally every corp benefits in some way from turning Red into a bullet hell warzone, and they're the ones making the policies, not the WJF. And I think it might be refreshing if a ganger thinks they're going to rough up a TERRA Agent suddenly to find a gun pointed in their faces and explaining to the ER how you tripped and landed on five bullets.

3.)Expand hiring opportunities for weapons specialists. Currently the website advertises Lord of War as a viable achetype that you can easily become, just like a Medic or a Street Samurai. Except there is literally one single job position in Withmore that fills this job archetype for newer players, and if you don't feel like going corp you're shit out of luck. So expansion of more positions in the Mix (or hell the game in general) that can fulfill this role would be a godsend. And possibly an appropriate addition to the TERRA force if they are militarized.

4.) There needs to be a reliable source of ammunition within the Mix that is resupplied by NPCs. At least for 6mm, 9mm, 20 gauge, and 5.67x11mm. To this day, I'm not sure whether or not having ammunition is a crime or not, but I do know that asking for ammunition for a gun I am not registered to have is going to lead to further questions. Granted there is risk but when the only commercial sources for ammunition are topside, there needs to be some source below as well.

So maybe the vendor in 100 Rads could be stocked with a clip or two of small arms ammunitions? Have it be at nose bleed costs of course to encourage sourcing from other players, but it'll give new players somewhere to start for ammunition once they've graduated from PopPops.

Any other thoughts from firearm users?

That said I wouldn't personally play another character with firearms skills because of what an endless headache it was, and would never encourage someone to use them unless it was for a specific archetype counter or they wanted to play a Judge.

1) Magazine handling is just constantly irritating with how the game manages multiple identical items. It's just fussy and frustrating and feels extraneous until you get drum mags and can forget it exists.

2) Guns dirty too fast and jam too easily in my experience, every potential conflict scenario gets prefaced with the thought: Do I have time to go back and disassemble and clean my gun if I do this?

3) Dismantled firearms are bizarre objects and it's relatively easy to brick them into being noninteractable if they're cleaned/unjammed wrong.

4) Cleaning is nice for roleplaying but dull and irritating when it comes to active gameplay.

5) Not being able to bring firearms into some locations except through more involved workarounds can be a drag. Sometimes it's a big job and that's okay but 90% of things in the game are minor and it just feels easier to not even bother or take a different person.

6) I don't feel the progression on weapons is really as meaningful as other categories and it made certain guns clearly superior in my view.

7) Long guns are too much 'and everything else goes here'.

These are not suggestions for changes or problems I would see addressed, they're just my own experiences and annoyances. Some annoyances are probably fine, but I felt in the end it was just too many. If I was going to make one change to attempt to address or counterbalance all the irritations about firearms it would probably be to make 10mm and below legal for personal protection use (extrapolating on the rifle stocks to 12ga and down?), because I don't personally feel like the firearms legal restrictions in Withmore are any kind of meaningful implementation of the in-world theme where weapons are ubiquitous and legal to carry, and feel basically like an importation of RL gun control politics.

/tedtalk

Handguns would be weapons you can hold and fire single-shot and semi-auto in one hand. Pistols, SMG not in auto-fire, possibly some sawn-off shotguns.

Shoulder Arms would be stuff that requires both hands to use and slightly different training. Rifles, Shotguns, both also single-fire.

Autofire would be less about aiming by precision but aiming by volume and be all about recoil control. This would be fully-automatic rifles and SMGs, which I imagine have less accuracy but hit way harder since the volume of bullets is higher, with obviously rifle calibes having a higher damage ceiling.

Heavy Weapons would be stuff like rocket and grenade launchers, ect, stuff that requires military-grade training to use with functionality.

(Of course, this is just a random idea and would require literally rebalancing everything in the game so it's not exactly realistic.)

Cleaning a gun improves the cleanliness, but this requires skill. The higher the skill the more clean you can get it. This is where the weapons tech archetype comes into play. A good one can get your gun to a very clean state.

Different guns also have a different reliability score. A more reliable gun is going to jam less often and be more usable even when dirty.

The dirtier they are, the higher the chance they jam.

Given what I'm seeing, I'm not sure that the complaint that they jam too often is valid. It sounds like people are just not keeping their guns clean enough.

In terms of cleaning a gun, it requires no skill to do, and only requires a toolbelt to get it over a certain point of cleanness. Which means anyone can do it without a skill investment.

However, if the gun is jammed, you need to have in unjammed before you can clean it. Anyone can clear basic jams, but if a gun gets really badly jammed it needs to be taken to someone with the requisite munitions skill to clear. This seems to reasonably mimic real life.

The original intention was that there would be a few PCs with the skill to do this and they would fix guns for a profit along with probably making munitions, both things are possible ICly now, but there just isn't a lot of interest. Which seems like it's own issue.

I'm not sure further changes to cleanliness and jamming are needed here, but I'm open to more discussion on it.

You're right of course, bricking was the wrong term to use. Rather it is that when a dirty gun is disassembled by accident while jammed, it becomes an immobile object in the room that must be unjammed before it can be reassembled and carried again. This can be simple as a character doing it themselves on the spot or as involved as leaving the firearm behind to bring back a specialist to a given location. I don't think this is a mechanical issue per se so much as something I always was conscious of avoiding.

The key issue with sniping is timing. In conjunction with not being functional past door guards (which I think is fine) the timer on target acquisition and firing was increased or possibly made to not reflect skill.

In the past, if a target was a moving, you could aim at a room/edge, fire a shoot, and then if you were able to predict your targets movement aim at another room, and fire.

Currently, if a target is moving, you don't even have enough time to fire a single shot regardless of skill/stats.