Small Arms

[MajorD]

Let's come up with weapons other than the Types I, II, and III phasers. For anti-personal work and the varied challenges of exploration they're awesome because of all their settings, you could use them as shot guns, machine guns, sub-machine guns, breaching weapon, and so on. But what if you need to shoot down a shuttle, blow up a bunker door, or disable a large group of armed badguys several hundred meters away?

I'm of the opinion that the Worfzooka is not the Isomagnetic Disintegrator but the Tetryon Pulse Launchers, because the Worfzooka fires purple pulses and didn't disintegrate anything, while the phaser rifles do normally disintegrate stuff. Secondly, Tetryons can disable directed energy weapons, which makes the very weak explosions the weapon caused and the lack of return fire make more sense. That also gives us a much more unique weapon than just a bigger phaser, not that there isn't a place for that.

Then there is the Breen CRM-114, Quark said it is, "guarantee it to cut through reactive armour in the six to fifteen centimetre range, and shields to a capacity of four point six GigaJoules." Nice stuff, that could shoot down shuttles and blow up some really heavy doors. The Federation should have a man portable Type IV that's a lot like the Worfzooka but which makes nice big explosions.

I think a grenade launcher would make sense, but it needs to be suitable advanced, not like the ones from Elite Force. It should be more like a small arm version of a mortar but even more versatile. For instance, the grenades should be seeking, and firing them ballistically should only be a way to add range to them since they have little anti-grav motors like Archer's remote control shuttle in Enterprise. The same grenade should have multiple functions; if you fire it at an object and no enemy is nearby, the grenade should stay put and wait for an enemy or a detonate command. The grenades should be smart enough to react differently based on the target; if it's a person it should explode in all directions, if it's a hard or shielded target it should concentrate the energy into the shield with almost no wasted explosion like a torpedo. Over all it should combine the functions of mortar, grenade launcher, and mine laying device. There should actually be hand thrown ones too, in fact they could be the same grenade.

You might be thinking such a grenade would be too perfect, but remember all those phaser training scenes in TNG where they would hit rapidly blinking and moving dots? What do you think that training is for, hitting people, no it's for shooting down flying seeking grenades!

The sites, on the weapons that have them, should be functional and give us target tracking icons, distance, and various optical enhancements. Let's not forget the exographic scope that was added to the TR-116 which let it see through walls. No more flashlights, except as a backup.

Does anyone have idea for additional unique weapons that fill a role not covered by the weapons above, or a modification to an above weapon that would let it take on more roles? For instance, upgrades like the transporter muzzle added to the TR-116, that can turn a phaser into a perfect sniper rifle since a phaser beam was once transported.

[11001001]

What if the Breen drain weapon was down sized so that you could hold it in a pulse phaser

[MajorD]

It wouldn't be a phaser, but it would be a great idea! The trouble will be in balancing such a weapon for ground combat, because it was so powerful and eventually became obsolete. Instead of needing only one hit to take a soldier out, perhaps it should need one hit per layer of defense and be incapable of killing. So, if you have personal shields, the shield gets taken out, then if you get a lucky hit on a weapon the weapon dies, but if its on the body then any body mounted systems die. This would make the Breen Energy dampener devastating against integrated systems such as any vehicle, but only half decent against personnel.

Other group's anti-vehicle weapons would be less effective against vehicles but more effective against personnel, not purpose but by consequence of method.

Two last balances should be, the Breen don't sell their portable energy dampener, and eventually it becomes obsolete against ship style power sources. Meaning, it's eventually useless against vehicles, but keeps working against equipment that uses batteries.

[Aresius]

Worfzooka, cracking me up!
Actually, I hated that idea from the start, we've seen type II phasers do bigger explosions.
I admit it, I'm a fan of the classics, but I also have to agree, always the same ol' phaser and dispurtor stuff may get tedious over time.
EF2 had some sort of plasma-shard gun filling the rome of shotgun and then fast-firing Klingon Tetryon Gatling Gun, doing great damage at a terrible aiming (but who cares; with masses of enemies coming at you, you hit anyways), then of course a sniper, some sort of pulse-phaser or disruptor-type gun.
And of course: The Bat'leth!
QAPLA'
 

[joe5]

type 2s should have charge

[kenneth]

Ah yes seeing the Bat'leth that would make great for the fps part.

[MajorD]

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for coming up with the name Worfzooka. 

Normal phasers cover the realm of shotgun just fine, since they can all do wide beam firing, in TOS Sulu even fired multiple pulse shots in a fan pattern. Although, the real utility of a shotgun is that they have a lot of power with little penetration, which makes it less likely they will accidentally get someone killed if you miss your target. Their ammo style also makes them very versatile weapons. In Nemesis we also saw that the normal phaser rifles are capable of rapidly firing small pulses, so they cover machine guns and shotguns in one package.

Elite Force, I can't remember which one, had the Bat'leth, but it had a problem from the perspective of fun; It had only two moves. I think you could swing or thrust, and that's it. This was right after one of the Jedi Knight games, which had an awesome sword fighting system, so the Bat'leth ended up being a huge disappointment. So, if there are swords, it is going to need some sweet moves.

While we're at it, we'll need melee with our ranged weapons, in other words bayonets! A nice series of rifle melee moves will round it out, too. The hard part is balancing melee so it's worth putting effort into making it, and worth using without overshadowing ranged combat. If defense is really strong, and you have a really strong melee, then it may make sense to run at the enemy and strike them down by hand; we don't want that, what would be the point in guns? It's alright for melee to be strong, but ranged combat should be able to eliminate anyone at range fast enough that it's not possible to just run at someone. Sneaking up on someone is fine.

We're left with another problem, Trek shields are effective against physical impact, you can't just stab through a shield. STO's solution is too extreme, they made shields permeable to physical objects. That's bad for a number of reasons, some canon, some logical. I think there should be several ways melee can work against shields, not just one way.

• Charged Weapon -- Some weapons can have a power pack which conducts energy through their edge and lets them do energy weapon level damage to shields. Since they have a real edge still, they can also be used conventionally if used against an unshielded target. Since they transfer energy by contact, this could let them transfer far more energy faster and more efficiently than by beam.
• Energy Blades --  Phaser beams are highly adjustable to the extent that you could create an extremely short continuous blade like beam. With the right setting that would give you an instant energy bayonet. I figure a short beam might use less energy to maintain, allowing for such a beam to have much higher intensity. The advantage of this is it gives you a little extra melee range and some flexibility of movement over having to directly place the muzzle of the weapon on your target. However, a thrust that results in muzzle contact should be the most powerful energy weapon melee attack.
• Shield Contact -- This one is complicated, it involves overcharging your shield on the point of contact with another shield. This damages both your shield and the other shield, but has the benefit of damaging the other shield far more than your own. This would be like brass knuckles, or allow non-charged weapons to damage shields just by having the user's shield around the weapons, be it knife, or fist, or anything else that can't project its own energy. To make it even more interesting, based on the state your shields are in it could have diminishing returns.

[Aresius]

Right, and I just remember Tuvok paralysing the whole bridge crew with a single spread phaser shot on low settings... Thing is, you cannot tweak most weapons to do so in a game. They have their fixed setting of primary fire and secondary fire and that's that...
And then there is always the question of power. I remember the scene you mention in Nemesis, now I wonder, would one of these fast pulses deal the same damage as a bullet from the Tetryon Gatling.
That's always the trouble, you cannot compary games with films. Films work on the basis of coolness-factor, games need a damage-model to make it playable.

It was EF2, although EF1 can also do so by a mod, I have both games (as well as the two last Jedi Knight games), but you would have to make an own fighting style for the Bat'leth, it woulds totally different than a regular sword (I also have a selection of regular swords and a Bat'leth replica IRL).

I can think of the classican stun-hit with a type two or any other small (pistol-sized) weapon: A hit at the head of the enemy to stun him. With a rifle or so, you can always smack the armrest across the face or so. But generally, I'd say that does less damage than a bat'leth, but has a higher chance to stun.
Oh and we always can include a real marine-knife.

You mean personal shields? The only people I can currently remember carrying personal shields are the Borg... All other species rely on armour, even the Jem'Hadar, only that they also have the cloaking devices.

[MajorD]

For a long time, FPS games only ever had one gun function, then two. Remember, games are made by programing, anything that is wanted can be done in them with a load of knowledge and a little imagination. All that needs to be done to give phasers 16 power settings and 16 beam is to connect power selection to the scroll wheel, and when holding a key have the scroll wheel change the beam settings. Because a phaser covers almost all area that the normal load of FPS would cover, you can use the normal weapon switching keys for other functions. The number keys along the top of the keyboard can be for quick select function combinations as determined by the user. It will make for an extremely flexible system. It also means each person carries only one weapon but that's fine considering their flexibility, and if the ability to switch weapons with fallen enemies, fallen allies, and living allies is thrown in then if you don't like what you have you can at least switch out.

Since you have a Bat'leth, you must know it's not a very good weapon? Even so, the show tells us it is a good weapon and we have to treat it as such, so you're right that it will need its own style of fighting.

Personal shields are just something I've always felt should be in Trek, and there is some stuff pointing to it being possible, not just the Borg shields. Remember Worf's jury rigged shield he used in TNG:"A Fist Full of Datas"? If there aren't shields, that mean singles hits will kill, and that means a good cover system will be needed. Or, combat could be a bit more like Call of Duty 4, you can take a hit but if you don't move out of the way fast then you will die, but if you do move out of the way you can recover quickly. It makes it so you can't stand in the open or run right at enemies, you have to duck behind cover and flank people, which fits well with Trek combat. I would actually like that setup quite a bit more than going for shields. We haven't seen shields in combat so it does stand to reason they don't have them, probably because of power problems or bleed through.

[Aresius]

For a long time, FPS games only ever had one gun function, then two. Remember, games are made by programing, anything that is wanted can be done in them with a load of knowledge and a little imagination. All that needs to be done to give phasers 16 power settings and 16 beam is to connect power selection to the scroll wheel, and when holding a key have the scroll wheel change the beam settings. Because a phaser covers almost all area that the normal load of FPS would cover, you can use the normal weapon switching keys for other functions. The number keys along the top of the keyboard can be for quick select function combinations as determined by the user. It will make for an extremely flexible system. It also means each person carries only one weapon but that's fine considering their flexibility, and if the ability to switch weapons with fallen enemies, fallen allies, and living allies is thrown in then if you don't like what you have you can at least switch out.

Good ideas. I usually have the wheel to switch weaponds, so I didn't take that into account.

Since you have a Bat'leth, you must know it's not a very good weapon? Even so, the show tells us it is a good weapon and we have to treat it as such, so you're right that it will need its own style of fighting.

Well, it's a bulky weapon and unless you really want to learn not hurting yourself, you should really leave it as a showcase object. A friend and I have been doing some sparring with them and eventhough it is terribly close ranged and even a dagger has more range, once you know how to wield it, it kinda has it's advantages.

Personal shields are just something I've always felt should be in Trek, and there is some stuff pointing to it being possible, not just the Borg shields. Remember Worf's jury rigged shield he used in TNG:"A Fist Full of Datas"? If there aren't shields, that mean singles hits will kill, and that means a good cover system will be needed. Or, combat could be a bit more like Call of Duty 4, you can take a hit but if you don't move out of the way fast then you will die, but if you do move out of the way you can recover quickly. It makes it so you can't stand in the open or run right at enemies, you have to duck behind cover and flank people, which fits well with Trek combat. I would actually like that setup quite a bit more than going for shields. We haven't seen shields in combat so it does stand to reason they don't have them, probably because of power problems or bleed through.

I remember that EF2 had the Idryll in the levels where they tried to seize the Enterprise had energy bucklers as shields, I kinda liked that idea. For one, a Starfleet version would make much sense in their philosophy (they could also give more cover to others, it's deployable) and it's better for the gamyplay (offering weak spots to land a heatshot for instance)

[MajorD]

If you can wear an energy buckler on your arm, what's stopping you from wearing multiple ones all over your body, even your head? That would make a really cool suit of armor.

[MajorD]

I forgot combat drones, that would be good stuff. Drop sensors.

[Aresius]

Yeah, and why don't we make ourselves a knights amrour with shields? Or what about this...


There are certain differences between a buckler and an applied shield generator on your body. Namely that you have the whole apparatus in a hand and not a half dozens of them all over your body. Those things get hot when active, you know. You only need to touch a traffo or the power converter on your computer, and I'm quite sure that threse things get hotter.
Borg don't mind that, they're having a whole body-suit of heat-generating stuff and likely equal much dissipators.

[MajorD]

Picard in a box!

Heat should be an easy issue to overcome.

[zzz]

I think it was IGN of all places during a review that said it best: "Most alien races on the show have a basic pistol and rifle type. Why can't we just use those instead of grenade launchers?"

Shotguns, SMGs just wouldn't fit. Federation hand phaser and beam rifle from TNG and the compression rifle from first contact is all you'd need for the starfleet side. Alter the recharge/overheat rate for each one. One or two shots to take down an enemy. You can take 3 or 4 shots but also have regenerative health. No need for things like personal shields or excessive equipment like that. Sometimes less is more.

[MajorD]

Sometimes more is too much, less is always less.

I'm not proposing machine guns and shotguns, those don't make sense. But a grenade launcher does make sense. It didn't make total sense in the Elite Force games because they did it in such a limited way and their understanding of the scope of phaser abilities was too limited for them to realize they could get away with just a few weapons. But, the ability to fire around corners and over obstacles is invaluable.

At the most basic, without really looking into odd weapons, all they needed were a phaser rifle, a heavy phaser, and a hand grenade. Each of those would have adjustable effects in style and degree of damage. But the Worfzooka and Breen Energy Dampener are great ideas because they break the mold of normal weapons which in FPS games tend to only be more weapon. And, like Call of Duty and as ING questioned, there would be the alien weapons with slight variations on ability.

Federation phasers are Swiss army knives, while everyone else's weapons are just weapons. In DS9 they compare the Type III and Cardassian phaser. The Type III has multiple target tracking, gyroscopic stabilization, auto regeneration, and 16 settings; while the Cardassian phaser is slightly more powerful and has two settings.

[zzz]

Federation phasers are Swiss army knives, while everyone else's weapons are just weapons. In DS9 they compare the Type III and Cardassian phaser. The Type III has multiple target tracking, gyroscopic stabilization, auto regeneration, and 16 settings; while the Cardassian phaser is slightly more powerful and has two settings.

what ep was that? sounds interesting.

[Aresius]

Season 4, Episode 14 - Return to Grace. Somewhere around 20 minutes into the show.

I have to agree with zzz, I remember in EF2, the regular Compression Rifle was able to fire long-rage ballistic explosives in a straight line and the Enhanced Compression Rifle had a small grenade-launcher below the barrel whose grenades really were good to bounce around corners, so, actually, additional grenades are not quite necessary.

[Mardoxx]

If we're talking about weapons.....

The standard level 16 setting on a type 2 phaser can be used to vaporize tunnels through rock, large enough to crawl through. (TNG: "Chain of Command, Part I") The level 16 wide-field setting can easily destroy half of a large building with a single shot. (TNG: "Frame of Mind")

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think the producers just wanted a way to cut through rock/destroy a building without having to take too long on a "normal" phaser setting OR without having to use a new weapon with a name like PULSE-PHASE-TACHYON-PARTICLE-ACCELERATOR-BEAM-WEAPON-HAND-HELD MK VII or something....

so my question is... for side arms, what settings are there going to be?

It's really hard to create a something based on a tv-series without the writers... because some of it _we_ (you) have to make up and to some people won't seem "authentic"
Are the team going to omit ridiculous things that only appear once or twice in the whole series [such as phaser level 16]?

[MajorD]

Season 4, Episode 14 - Return to Grace. Somewhere around 20 minutes into the show.

I have to agree with zzz, I remember in EF2, the regular Compression Rifle was able to fire long-rage ballistic explosives in a straight line and the Enhanced Compression Rifle had a small grenade-launcher below the barrel whose grenades really were good to bounce around corners, so, actually, additional grenades are not quite necessary.

I remember that, I remember greatly disliking the fact that they used two different phasers rifles for four functions. Realistically either one of the phaser rifles should have been able to have the role of assault rifle and sniper rifle. However, neither rifle had a grenade launcher, I think the sniper rifle based on the Nemesis rifle had an exploding, line of sight, pulse shot, but it couldn't bounce. The only bounce shot was the from grenades and Hirogen tetryon pulse rifle. The only gun to have a ballistic grenade function was an alien weapon with three small barrels for rapid fire and one large one for the big grenade like shots. They also still had the dedicated grenade launcher but with multiple ammo options. If they could fit in multiple ammo options they should have easily put in multiple phaser functions.

However, an underslung grenade launcher would be a nice modification.

What's the difference between the Type I, II, III, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, IIId? The obvious one is top power level. Except, Riker once vaporized a person with a Type I. But, the prop does seem to have one less row of LED's for the power indicator, so it may only have just one setting for each type of attack, or it might be missing a few inbetween attacks by only having stun, heat, and vaporize. All the other weapons have twenty LED's, so everything including the Type II would have all damage types or more variations depending on what the Type I is missing.

What the the Type III has is a flip up sight and multiple target tracking, the site is probably holographic like those view screen monocles the Dominion ships use. The only difference the new Type III's from the movies seem to have is that they fire pulses, in Voyager it can fire beams too, and Voyager's Compression Rifles could fire beams and pulses, too. But, Sisko adjusted a Type III classic to fire a pulse in DS9. I'm a fan of the idea that they all phasers could fire pulses equally well as the new weapons, but the long barrel may be specifically for firing pulses. So, even if you make one of the other phasers fire a pulse it won't do it as well as the newer specially designed ones. The new ones seem to be able to fire a beam just fine, though, since they don't need special adjustment to do it. Either way, only the newest phaser rifles seem have been shown with pulse shots as a basic function, so that would be its function, and I would make it that pulse shots give higher damage for slower refire depending on pulse size. Pulse size should be a matter of the beam width adjustment.

Type I: Extremely concealable, but limited beam functions.
Type II: Low profile, full beam functions.
Type III (TNG): Maneuverable, and all those special functions features, but not concealable.
Type III (new): Can fire pulses, but is less maneuverable.
Type III (EVA-space gun): Same as above but has special features for ease of with an EVA suit on.

If we're talking about weapons.....

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think the producers just wanted a way to cut through rock/destroy a building without having to take too long on a "normal" phaser setting OR without having to use a new weapon with a name like PULSE-PHASE-TACHYON-PARTICLE-ACCELERATOR-BEAM-WEAPON-HAND-HELD MK VII or something....

so my question is... for side arms, what settings are there going to be?

It's really hard to create a something based on a tv-series without the writers... because some of it _we_ (you) have to make up and to some people won't seem "authentic"
Are the team going to omit ridiculous things that only appear once or twice in the whole series [such as phaser level 16]?

I listed all the different settings above, and any left over settings would be fine adjustment of different settings, such as three different stun settings. Not that I know what the producers of the game will want to do, but I do hope they put in all the weapon effects I listed.