Weapon Durability

[Capital 5]

First of all, let me start by saying, this mod/game is absolutely incredible, and a lot of the suggestions on here are great! I searched for this and there's nothing regarding it so here we go!

I am a long time player of OFP/Arma/Arma2/OA and ACE and I love the direction this game is going. Rocket was unafraid to add things like blood loss, hunger and thirst, even though these features often alienate players who prefer an easier time.

The thing I'm missing is weapon durability. Before I get jumped on, there would be concessions in my view on the design.

Here's the WHAT:

1) All weapons would be able to fire a finite number of rounds before deteriorating and breaking down.

2) The number of rounds a weapon could fire is dependent on the make and the rarity of the weapon. Military-grade weapons would last longer, civilian weapons would deteriorate faster, but it doesn't deteriorate over time, it ticks down for every round fired.

3) Numbers of rounds fired would be substantial, so it isn't unrealistic and isn't too urgent (or as urgent as food, drink and ammo). An M4, for example, might be able to fire 750 rounds before needing to be cleaned, 1000 rounds before breaking altogether. A Winchester might do 600 rounds before breaking, 450 before needing to be cleaned. Some more knowledgeable firearms experts could contribute more accurate numbers I'm sure.

4) Two new items: cleaning kits and repair kits. Cleaning kits are common one-slot items and can be used to recover 25% of the weapons durability (consumed upon use). Repair kits are VERY rare one-slot and can be used to repair a fully broken weapon back to 50% (consumed on use).

5) At 25% durability the weapon would have a chance to jam.

Okay, now here's the WHY:

1) Right now it is too easy for people to get their favorite weapon and hold on to it forever. My trusty M4 and I have been together for days now and I don't really feel that tension any more of losing my precious rifle.

2) It would make the rarer weapons more valuable due to their higher durability.

3) It makes everything finite, requiring people to continuously move around searching for weapon replacements, further reinforcing the design idea of having to constantly be on the move looking for resources.

4) It is another real-world problem that would exist in a Zombie Apocalypse, furthering immersion, realism and difficulty.

Thoughts?

[wolfmat 2]

Except for the cleaning and repair kits, this is very close to the system that was used in Far Cry 2. However, it didn't make Far Cry 2 any better; quite the opposite, weapons found in the environment were usually much less durable to make bought weapons more desirable, and that ended up being a nuisance for the most part, not much more.

So if you're making it much, much harder to get good weapons, there is a good chance that it will be too much of a deterrant. It might make people turn off the game if they're in a village and the weapon dies for good.

What I'm saying is that the weapon itself stopping to work might end up being really annoying and nothing more.

Think about what will happen: Your weapon stops working eventually, so you have to replace it with a good one by either looting or stealing from players when it comes down to it. So you stop shooting altogether at some point, you won't loot other players' weapons because who knows in what state that weapon is in. All that is left is looting a new weapon at some point.

Which makes it a nuisance. You know where to expect the weapon, you go there, has it spawned, no, so you travel to that other place, there are zombies and you die.

So the restrictive nature of the weapon has killed you although weapons usually don't do that.

That while weapons usually don't just die like that after a couple of days. Weapons are rather durable by design.

What I would like would be weapon state being affected by environmental influence, and having the opportunity to protect the weapon with appropriate stuff. I don't have the right words, but plastic things you wrap around them when it rains.

And the cleaning makes sense, but I think the malus should be negligible.

And it should take weeks for deterioration to take effect. That weapon has been passed around from bag to bag? Well, too bad!

Unfortunately, the weeks-long deterioration would make it necessary to track weapons across servers. So they'd have to be attached to player data, which has the potential to greatly affect the payload when starting and ending a character session. But that's probably something one can design around.

tl;dr: My experience with Far Cry 2 makes me say no to this in condensed time scales, but I feel like a realistic deterioration would be interesting.

[Bower 4]

Nice suggestions OP. I came into this thread with the intention to disagree with the idea as I find repairing stuff in other games is just an annoyance which adds nothing to the gameplay. However your suggestions certainly would add tension to what is already a tense game.

Signed.

[Capital 5]

Except for the cleaning and repair kits' date=' this is very close to the system that was used in Far Cry 2. However, it didn't make Far Cry 2 any better; quite the opposite, weapons found in the environment were usually much less durable to make bought weapons more desirable, and that ended up being a nuisance for the most part, not much more.

So if you're making it much, much harder to get good weapons, there is a good chance that it will be too much of a deterrant. It might make people turn off the game if they're in a village and the weapon dies for good.

What I'm saying is that the weapon itself stopping to work might end up being really annoying and nothing more.

Think about what will happen: Your weapon stops working eventually, so you have to replace it with a good one by either looting or stealing from players when it comes down to it. So you stop shooting altogether at some point, you won't loot other players' weapons because who knows in what state that weapon is in. All that is left is looting a new weapon at some point.

Which makes it a nuisance. You know where to expect the weapon, you go there, has it spawned, no, so you travel to that other place, there are zombies and you die.

So the restrictive nature of the weapon has killed you although weapons usually don't do that.

That while weapons usually don't just die like that after a couple of days. Weapons are rather durable by design.

What I would like would be weapon state being affected by environmental influence, and having the opportunity to protect the weapon with appropriate stuff. I don't have the right words, but plastic things you wrap around them when it rains.

And the cleaning makes sense, but I think the malus should be negligible.

And it should take weeks for deterioration to take effect. That weapon has been passed around from bag to bag? Well, too bad!

Unfortunately, the weeks-long deterioration would make it necessary to track weapons across servers. So they'd have to be attached to player data, which has the potential to greatly affect the payload when starting and ending a character session. But that's probably something one can design around.

tl;dr: My experience with Far Cry 2 makes me say no to this in condensed time scales, but I feel like a realistic deterioration would be interesting.

[/quote']

Yeah, I played Far Cry 2 as well and I think the way that worked was definitely tedious, but if you make sure all spawned weapons have full durability, and make sure it isn't about, time equipped but shots fired, and make those shots a fairly realistic amount without being ridiculous, then it could work and be another element of mild urgency, similar to your food and water.

The whole idea though is that it forces players to think about weapon durability BEFORE it runs out during a fight. Players generally don't start thinking about food or drink until after they're dead so it would just give the player one more tense thing to worry about.

If it's balanced correctly and doesn't wear down too quickly it could at yet another dimension to the realism and tension.

Good point about data load though, perhaps it's something that can be done WHEN the game goes official. Cuz you know it's only a matter of WHEN. ;)

Nice suggestions OP. I came into this thread with the intention to disagree with the idea as I find repairing stuff in other games is just an annoyance which adds nothing to the gameplay. However your suggestions certainly would add tension to what is already a tense game.

Signed.

Thanks! It can be annoying, but with the emphasis on realism and items in DayZ I personally feel that it fits.

[tk300 0]

good suggestion! but the cleaning kits shouldn't be a consumable item. it should be like the matches. and adding a random jam rate for every weapon like in ACE would be cool.

[predator_v2 0]

Remembers me of Fallout 3.

Maybe a damage system for weapons, but weapons should "decay" really really slow on their own. But they could take significant damage if struck by a zombie in melee (as a thought of trying to block zombie hits with the current weapon).

If you find a second weapon of the same type, you can either switch to that one or use its components to "repair" the other weapon to a specific point (dependent on the amount the other weapon was damaged). And weapons should spawn with a random number of "health".

Maybe even allow to disassemble weapons to some components (once again dependent on the damage grade) and use these components to repair your own equipment.

For example: You are running around with a medium damaged m16 and are finding a pretty wrecked (no idea with weapons are compatible with eachothers) m4, you may decide to give it a try and disassemble the m4 to get some repair parts for your m16.

[Leechman 8]

A good suggestion OP.

Not sure how it would actually fare in-game, but I would like to at least play test it.

[b00ce 5]

While I applaud you for taking the time to write your suggestion out, I completely disagree. There is no way you'd be able to fire enough rounds to see an effect in one life. Not only that, but it would likely cause more issues with the saving system.

It would also be annoying as fuck. It is in ACE.

[terrvik 2409]

I like these kind of ideas because they sort of create "sidequests" without the game itself actually giving you any. You have to be on the move, keep an eye on your supplies and plan where to go accordingly.

With this said I don't think the weapons should break, and "disappear" from your inventory. I like the idea that if you use a weapon for to long it will increase the risk of jamming. Use it long enough and the jamming will be more frequent. This way the player will be forced to find equipment to "clean" or "repair" the weapon to reset the percent of probability to jam.

It will work mostly the same way in that the player must decide if they want to find repair equipment or pick up another weapon when the jamming occurs to often and starts being a risk. Also, it would be really tense when the horde swarms you and your weapon jams and you have to fix it with an action command delaying your defense by several seconds.

Thoughts?

[HannesFury 0]

I'm for applying some sort of malfunction and durability system for the weapons used. Not sure about them breaking down though, unless they are directly damaged to a high degree by something very specifically stressful.

Jamming? Yep. Cleaning? Yep. As long as it's fair to what specific types of weapons need more cleaning. For instance: In reality, decent Kalashnikovs are just as durable and reliable in adverse conditions as they are said to be. People will never clean and shoot with, say a civilian AK-74 for years, without experience any problem or malfunction, whereas an AR-15 (civilian M16/M4) would need to be cleaned every 1000 rounds or so, because just the unburnt gun powder and carbon itself will smudge up all the little intricate parts of the upper reciever, gas tube, and what have you.

Parts that do the same thing, but that aren't even nearly similar in appearance to that of any Kalashnikov. An AK functions so well in bad conditions with dirt and whatnot, primarily because its inner parts are more loose, not very tight fitting and hardly need any lube for those parts to go together well enough for good performance, much like a Glock.

So anyhow, back from reality, each weapon should need some form of maintanance if you're equipping it or keeping it in an available quick-slot, in varying degree. Man, devs, you'll be working hard with this myriad of suggestions everywhere from everyone, hope you're getting more capable people to join your team with this recent and humongous amount of interest! God speed ye.

[naizarak 41]

i like it + 1.

[Capital 5]

Interesting points all around.

I think some misunderstood the "breaking" aspect. It isn't like the weapon is gone forever, or disappears, it is a broken weapon that needs a repair kit to fix.

The reason why the kits should be consumable, or consume SOMETHING finite is because if you get a cleaning kit and it acts like a toolkit or compass you never need to worry about this feature again. The feature becomes moot, so why bother coding it in the first place if it can be so easily bypassed? The gamey aspect, as someone else pointed out is it adds more dynamic side-quests.

Current necessary side-quests are: Find Ammo, Find Food, Find Water. Players have to constantly be thinking about this, and now they need to think about keeping their weapons clean and maintained and finding resources to do so.

Also, I completely agree that the amount of maintenance necessary should depend on the individual weapon. As someone said an AR-15 will need a lot more maintenance than a Kalashnikov.

[BannedOpinion 14]

+1 here, was redirected here by a moderator.

I think the general main points have been covered already. I think the main purpose would be to add one more thing to worry about, seeing as though someone can literally hide in a tower, stock up and leave it lying around to free up space could stay in that tower for as long as they'd like and not have to worry about much.

[Land Squid 22]

Here's the WHAT:

1) All weapons would be able to fire a finite number of rounds before deteriorating and breaking down.

2) The number of rounds a weapon could fire is dependent on the make and the rarity of the weapon. Military-grade weapons would last longer' date=' civilian weapons would deteriorate faster, but it doesn't deteriorate over time, it ticks down for every round fired.

3) Numbers of rounds fired would be substantial, so it isn't unrealistic and isn't too urgent (or as urgent as food, drink and ammo). An M4, for example, might be able to fire 750 rounds before needing to be cleaned, 1000 rounds before breaking altogether. A Winchester might do 600 rounds before breaking, 450 before needing to be cleaned. Some more knowledgeable firearms experts could contribute more accurate numbers I'm sure.

4) Two new items: cleaning kits and repair kits. Cleaning kits are common one-slot items and can be used to recover 25% of the weapons durability (consumed upon use). Repair kits are VERY rare one-slot and can be used to repair a fully broken weapon back to 50% (consumed on use).

5) At 25% durability the weapon would have a chance to jam.

Okay, now here's the WHY:

1) Right now it is too easy for people to get their favorite weapon and hold on to it forever. My trusty M4 and I have been together for days now and I don't really feel that tension any more of losing my precious rifle.

2) It would make the rarer weapons more valuable due to their higher durability.

3) It makes everything finite, requiring people to continuously move around searching for weapon replacements, further reinforcing the design idea of having to constantly be on the move looking for resources.

4) It is another real-world problem that would exist in a Zombie Apocalypse, furthering immersion, realism and difficulty.

Thoughts?

*dons his Gunsmith's hat* (Yes, I actually went to gunsmithing school after I got out of the Navy, Colorado School of Trades if you're curious.)

1: I have a French Lebel rifle that was made in 1889, saw extensive use in MENA and was acquired by me in Afganistan in 2006 and it is still fully functional. I think you are underestimating the durability of smallarms.

2: Durability is not based on rarity, but on materials, craftsmanship and end-user care and use. An M4A1 CCO SD is going to be made out of the same materials and on the same tooling as a civilian AR-15. An M24 will be made of the same materials and on the same tooling as a civilian Remington 700 (though perhaps to a more exacting standard). So this really doesn't work.

3: Realistically, you're looking at about a 10,000 to 15,000 round barrel life for an M4, longer if you only single fire it. Pistols can last much longer seeing 50,000 to upwards of 100,000 rounds before the barrel is fatigued beyond use due to the much lower pressures and temperatures to which they are subjected. Rapid or full-auto fire tends to eat barrels a bit faster. The first effects you'll see in high round count is the accuracy will worsen as the clearances open up. Throat and muzzle erosion, pitting, etc. Eventually it will make the weapon unusable because the barrel will not be able to stabilize the bullets effectively and they begin tumbling midflight (known as keyholing). Silencers (aka suppressors, moderators, mufflers and cans) will have about a 5-10,000 round life expectancy, looking at the same problems as the barrels with flame cutting, erosion and pitting on the baffles inside. As a can is shot out it will become louder. As an asside, shooting with a can on a barrel that is out of spec can have the potential to end rather spectacularly with a baffle strike. A baffle strike for the uninitiated is much like bad chinese food. It takes everything that is inside and puts it on the outside. It can be as minor as slightly bending the bore aperture on the end of the can to as catastrophic as tearing the end off and ejecting all the baffles down range. With tracer ammunition a bad baffle strike can even grenade the suppressor. Baaaad ju-ju!

Edit to Add: Just to give some additional comparisons for barrel life, an AK will probably last upwards of 40,000 rounds, while certain sniper rifles will only see 4000-5000 rounds between barrel replacements. This is especially true considering the accuracy expectations from the two different firearms, the sniper rifle might be expected to be able to shoot sub-minute of angle and the barrel will be changed as soon as it exceeds a certain threshold, while the AK would be kept in service so long as it was shooting "minute of bad-guy". However, some of the seriously overbore cartridges such as the .375-50 can see barrel life as short as 800 rounds. When you're shooting at that level though, whether for the military or in civilian competition, premium barrels become regarded as a disposable item.

Now, long before you shoot out the barrels you'll probably run into weakening springs as they are either fatigued, lose their temper, or suffer other detrimental effects. This could result in misfeeds and jams of all sorts. I've seen springs last as long as a barrel, and I've seen others where the recommended replacement is every 5,000 rounds. *shrug* Certain small parts are also subjected to stresses that tend to cause them to break first. Firing pins (remember, with every firing this little piece of metal is being smacked by something hard (if hammer fired) and being rammed into something else) and extractors are some of the most commonly problem parts and can usually be fixed in the field by even the least trained with a simple part for part replacement. I've personally seen the striker (it's a firing pin being driven by a spring, rather than being struck by a hammer) on an M24/47 Yugo Mauser torque over a 1/4 turn rendering it inoperable, and an extractor claw on an M1928-A1 Thompson shatter jamming up the action.

Finally, cleaning! Shooting is dirty business. Carbon fouling, copper and lead shavings in the action, etc. Don't clean your guns and, well, as a Staff Sergeant once explained to me during weapons training: "If you fi-fi your rifle, your rifle will fi-fi you." Give it a good cleaning after shooting to keep the gunk from solidifying and locking up certain parts (such as the free floating firing pin in the M16, you probably don't want that stuck in the forward position from carbon fouling). Give it a good cleaning every few days in hot humid weather to keep it from rusting. Give it a good cleaning in dry dusty weather to keep the action from accumulation grit. Just keep your weapon clean damnit! I'd say give the in-game weapons about 2,000 rounds or a real life week between cleanings. Past that and they should start short-stroking, stove-piping, etc. and only get worse the longer you don't clean them.

4a: Cleaning kits - Non-consumable item (you'd be amazed how long a container of CLP, Hoppe's #9 or Rem-Oil will last, and you can make patches and clothes by cutting up old t-shirts).

4b: Repair kits - Eh, more like a set of armorer's tools (which is basically a screw driver with half a hundred bits, a set of brass and steel punches, a small 4oz hammer, a rubber and plastic double headed mallet, some fine and rough jeweler's and bastard files and a few specialty tools), a suitable workbench and the replacement parts as needed, and we're not even talking about full on gunsmithing yet.

Lets see, fixing a bent barrel on an M16: You'll need a bench vice, an upper receiver block, a barrel wrench and a replacement barrel of course. Also you'll need a wrench to remove the muzzle device, steel punches and a hammer to drive out the taper pins holding on the front sight/gas block, and a special set of pliers to remove the retaining ring on the delta spring so your barrel wrench will be able to do it's work. All together probably not something you'll be able to fit into your backpack along with your beans and bandages.

Unless it's something as simple as replacing a broken firing pin, without a work shop to perform some of the more intensive tasks, let alone a machine shop well stocked with blank material to crank out new replacement parts for you (I'm assuming freighter ships full of spare gun parts are no longer showing up at the Cherno docks), you'd realistically be down to just discarding broken weapons in favor of a battle-field pick up replacement.

*takes hat off and looks at post* Wow. That wound up a lot longer than I expected it to be. *shrug*

Some minor edits to fix typos and toss in some additional info.... I hate typos.

[Ub3rS0ldat 0]

Good post Land Squid. You make a lot of valid points. Also, dirty rounds begin to double feed, not feed at all. And not taking care of your magazines also is goin to cause more stoppages.

Just saying'.

[The Killing Joke 43]

I'd love to see something like this implemented. Imagine someone picking up a gun, not checking it, and then getting ambushed by a single zombie...

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

:D

TKJ

[Capital 5]

Here's the WHAT:

SNIP

SNIIIIIIIIIIIIP :P

Some minor edits to fix typos and toss in some additional info.... I hate typos.

Holy crap, SO much amazing info! Thanks for taking the time to make this post! Yeah I certainly never claimed to have any expertise in this field, although I do have a fair amount of firearms training and I know how to strip and maintain most sidearms and rifles. But this is awesome!

Before I made my post I did look up a few statistics on barrel life and I thought that 10%-ing (or so) it would be more balanced for game-play. There is a very fine line between where the mechanic would require too much micromanagement, and not enough: definitely something that would require testing. Psychologically, you want the player to have their weapon cleanliness and maintenance on their mind, but not as urgently as food and water, for example.

As I mentioned earlier, the consumability of the kits is a gameplay concession. Perhaps, in the same way that a road flare has 10 uses per item slot, the cleaning kit has 5.

The problem is, if you make the cleaning and repair kits permanent, then the player who finds one will simply lose that feature altogether. They never have to worry about it again; if it were me, after every firefight, I'd clean/repair. It has to be a constant problem they have to deal with and worry about finding cleaning/repair kits.

The workbench idea is VERY interesting. Instead of having a repair kit that's portable, perhaps the workbenches could be statics in the world and you have to find one and use it then and there to repair a weapon from an unusable state. This could lead to some confrontation when two people/groups want to use one in the same area.

For more common weapons, I imagine most players, if they fully break them, wouldn't necessarily bother to fix them, just find another. But for the rarer weapons, like the M249 for example, they may go all out to try and fix it.

Also, I do understand that rarity doesn't pertain to the relative damage value of the weapon, but from a balance perspective, that seemed okay. But it would be interesting too, if it were realistically handled, and players would think to themselves: well I really like this rifle but it gets so dirty and jams too easily, where as this one doesn't have good optics but it does last for a lot longer.

With my M4A3 CCO (which I still have btw) I have gotten into numerous firefights and horde alerts in the past few days and in total I've spent approximately 7 30-round stanag mags for a grand total of 210 rounds fired. I'm running semi-auto of course, but I'm still nowhere near my figure of 750/1000 rounds. I think it would also encourage players to conserve ammo (quelling some rambo tendencies I've seen), take careful shots but still make them think about their weapon's durability if, as you suggested, full-auto deteriorates a weapon faster. That would be very cool IMO.

Thanks for the info again, hopefully Rocket can use it to make some good judgements on this system's implementation.

[splat! 0]

Nah.

As mentioned in real life most weapons last a pretty long time with semi-decent care.

If you make kits permanent it's just a pain in the backside, just a bunch of mouse clicks you need to remember.

If you make them one time use it's just some crap to hoard. Though I guess you could make cleaning kits a rare item so people are inclined to only use them on their favourite guns. Make snipers less reliable, most lower tier weapons more reliable and it could work.

However with the added burden of adding such functionality I don't think it's worth it.

If you made military weapons much harder to get you could still achieve a realistic blend of weaponry throughout the game. And remember you lose your inventory if you die.

[Capital 5]

Nah.

As mentioned in real life most weapons last a pretty long time with semi-decent care.

If you make kits permanent it's just a pain in the backside' date=' just a bunch of mouse clicks you need to remember.

If you make them one time use it's just some crap to hoard. Though I guess you could make cleaning kits a rare item so people are inclined to only use them on their favourite guns. Make snipers less reliable, most lower tier weapons more reliable and it could work.

However with the added burden of adding such functionality I don't think it's worth it.

If you made military weapons much harder to get you could still achieve a realistic blend of weaponry throughout the game. And remember you lose your inventory if you die.

[/quote']

I don't know man, I survived for 4 days, playing 8-12 hours a day (I know, excessive, but I'm hooked) with my M4A3 CCO.

I think if it was balanced correctly, even if it was "accelerated realism," it could add a lot more depth.

[terrvik 2409]

Yeah I really think it would add more to the game then the other way around. As a reply to how the weapons would never break I think that it should be designed so that the weapon never fully looses function but only increases jamming probability and maybe a decrease with accuracy. I know I would panic.

[DELTA2ALPHA 1]

+1 for this. I think with no actual goal other then what you set for yourself, micromanagement of items and health adds more depth and purpose to the game.

[Capital 5]

+1 for this. I think with no actual goal other then what you set for yourself' date=' micromanagement of items and health adds more depth and purpose to the game.

[/quote']

Exactly!

[harryzhe 28]

sorry if this is necropost but i strongly disagree. The upkeep for weapons already exists in the form of ammunition, which for really good weapons is quite hard to come by.

The need to keep your weapons "fed" coupled with limited inventory space has the net effect of guns you can't supply being abandoned as if they were broken anyway. Anything on top of this would be needlessly adding complexity.

On top of that, it's unrealistic. As has been mentioned.

[hexik 1]

I think the weapon shouldn't completely break, but the only thing durability could change is how much it jams. So if you want to just run full auto and spam it on a player you have to prepare a lot more and make sure your gun is fully capable of it (which would somewhat decrease pvp) And it also does kind of add a "side quest" it just gives you yet another thing to do instead of saying "Well I have a great gun, good car, lots of food and supplies, now what?" usually the answer to that is to PVP, to counter it you could add jamming. I like the idea of repair kits as well

[dreadstorm 3]

Could work as long as it's a lot of rounds before it needs maintenance. Also maybe a cleaning kit shouldn't be consumed, why would a rag and oil get fully consumed straight away? Maybe the cleaning kit has a limited number of uses, and it's effectiveness is reduced with each use.