Moving Heavy Machine Guns

[Alex]

Heavy Machine Guns are usually stationary in most games (ex: RO2).
They can be moved in real life with the help of others, but it's not easy to do in games.
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Let's start off with an example. The Germans have a mg42 on a lafette tripod covering a tree line.
No one wants to be stuck to a crew served weapon for the sake of fun.
The Germans are getting flanked and the gunner on the '42 needs to reposition himself. The gunner is alone on his weapon, but there are two rifleman near him. The gunner wants to reposition his weapon but is unable to due to the weight.
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The gunner uses a keyboard assigned key like from Red Orchestra 2 to pull up a list of commands or requests.
He chooses the request such as (require assistance or whatever)



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Once he chose that from the selection, it will appear somewhere on the screen of surrounding soldiers from his team in the area. The two riflemen are alerted and report to the MG42. There is a new heads up display on their screen, and they must press a key from their keyboard to perform an action.


I had an idea of a display such as from Warface. This is when a player wants to get over a wall, but needs the help over another. There's an animation for them helping eachother over the wall.
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The two riflemen press the key and grab the back-legs of the lafette and the gunner takes the front.
They lift up the laffete.
The gunner has the ability to control the movement. If the gunner is a troll, the riflemen have the ability to back-out of the action. The only remaining rifleman takes up both legs but the speed of the movement is reduced.
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If you have any questions or want to add on, please do so!

 

[LuckyOne]

Nice suggestion but I can already see the pain in trying to code and animate such complicated actions...

It might be easier to add an A.I. assistant gunner that would only help the player move the gun around (if not K.I.A.) but it's still a far stretch...

Maybe an ARMA style loadout? One guy carries the gun and the other the tripod... One sets up the tripod and the other mounts the gun on it (this could even work without animations, it would just "appear" out of thin air, or you would have the soldier simply "throwing it" on the ground). Of course then you need some kind of an inventory system or the tripod needs to be an interactive object that can be carried around...

 

[Feldmeijer]

In Iron Front (A game based on the ARMA engine) you have a MG42 with tripod, one guy carriers the gun the other one the tripod.

 

[Miller786]

In Iron Front (A game based on the ARMA engine) you have a MG42 with tripod, one guy carriers the gun the other one the tripod.

Jesus please no! i have still nightmares of trying to move the darn mg42, first i couldnt move it, then i couldnt set it up and then i couldnt fire it... that game is a bug, not a game, a goddamn bug...

 

[Alex]

Keep the ideas coming I guess.

 

[VonMudra]

Easiest way to do this is just the FH style of it being a kit that you can deploy wherever you want. Always remember, when using any crew served weapon, you are representing that entire crew. No one wants to play as the guy sitting there feeding an ammunition belt or just carrying a tripod. Realism is great and all, but there are points where gameplay and fun supersede it.

 

[Koenigstiger]

I'd say just leave them in stationary positions where the whole team can set up and defend, I mean this is the Axis defending Normandy you'd assume they'd prepared ahead of time and set up machine guns for the enemy to walk into.

And anyway I think having deployable and squad LMG's would be a little OP, maybe having them deployed in a certain area only?

Don't want a meat grinder hovering over the Allied spawn now.

 

[VonMudra]

German doctrine was to constantly reposition and redeploy their machine gun teams (just like a sniper), so no, they will be very much mobile.

 

[Pjosip]

Cool idea would be to have NPC's (yes nobody likes them and they can be a ***** to code but listen up).

Let's say you are a Heavy MG gunner, you spawn with the MG and a NPC spawns with a rifle + tripod.

When you wanna place the MG, a green transparent shiluette of it appears to displaye where it will be placed and direction it will face, if it turns red it means it can't be placed in the position (sort of like placing of things in Rust), than when you confirm the position, you stand by it in a certain spot, the NPC places the tripod first, and than you place the MG on it and man it instantly (all from confirming the position untill manning is automatic).

Than the NPC takes a position next to you and feeds the belt.

It would be hard to make, but if you can pull that off it would look and feel turbo realistic and uber cool.

 

[VonMudra]

That would honestly sound to me like an assload of work that could easily go horribly horribly wrong in a multiplayer sandbox map game. You're literally saying you would need the NPC to be able to set up ANYWHERE a human could possible design to set up a MG, and would have to rely on AI to follow you and not screw up royally. It would be asking a lot from the engine and would be over-complication wrung amok.

 

[Pjosip]

Eggzactly.

 

[yourstruly]

I believe that it is necessary to sacrifice some aspects of realism for the sake of gameplay/fun.

 

[drummer93]

mmmm I think that the FH style is the best option for this. Maybe one player carry the tripod, and another the machine gun. It's required team work, but if the players can do it well, they can cause a lot of damage . And sorry, but bots in game, it's a very very awful solution :S

 

[Koenigstiger]

German doctrine was to constantly reposition and redeploy their machine gun teams (just like a sniper), so no, they will be very much mobile.

Jerry loves his machine guns :I

 

[LuckyOne]

Like I said, two man team, one for the tripod, other for the gun... The tripod guy can additionally act as a guy with extra ammo canisters/spotter/whatever.

Just make sure you don't go over the top like in ARMA and everything will be fine... Sort of like how deployable MGs work in FH now, but requiring 2 men for effective deployment and usage.

Simply show if the tripod can be placed with a "shadow image" of it on the ground - not that immersion breaking and still functional. The MG of course would only be deployable on the actual deployed tripod.

If one of them dies, someone else can pick up the tripod or the gun (IF they first throw the other thing on the ground - I assume there will be some way to throw the guns away, even if it was government property and not something people would actually do often).

Whatever you guys decide to do in the end I'm sure it will be epic!