Weapon condition, stoppages and repair

[zuel 1]

(Not sure if it's been suggested yet - I've scanned a few pages of the forum and not seen it so far. If it has, count this as a vote in its favour.)

Currently all weapons operate at 100% functionality. That's not only wonderfully unrealistic, but misses out on another potential dimension to gameplay: weapon condition.

If weapon condition could be implemented (it apparently exist in other ArmA II mods), it could represent the chance that a weapon will misfire, requiring a reload action to clear. This percentage would be very low for military weapons (say <0.5%), low for civilian weapons (say <1%) and would degrade slowly over time/shots. The rate could be set to realistic levels, but I don't have the numbers on hand. Condition could also vary randomly within a range when the weapon is spawned.

This could perhaps be represented by a coloured bar on the weapon icon in the inventory.

Improving the condition of weapons could be achieved with a new gun cleaning kit that is a rare civilian spawn and medium/rare military spawn. It could also be made as a consumable rather than reusable tool.

In terms of gameplay, it would make combat a bit more edgy and risky, and make weapon maintenance more important. It would also make cleaning kits highly valuable, thus encouraging people to take risks acquiring them.

Thoughts?

[ninthtj 1]

It's certainlly an interesting suggestion, but is it one that is going beyond the what should be considered reasonable for a game? Having to clear a jam while being mobbed by zombies will almost certainly result in your death. It seems a little overkill to me.

[EnermaX 59]

+1...

[tapp 1]

Yeah, I like this idea. But maybe instead of using cleaning kits, you could use/scavenge parts from another weapon (same type or similar) you find to repair your current one.

[BabylonUSArmy 21]

I've thought about this being implemented too, and obviously like the idea. Have it increase more slowly with normal use and much more quickly with heavy use. Say you burn through 3+ mags in a minute or two. Maybe that could greatly increase your chance of a failure to eject or failure to feed, requiring you to go through the reload animation that you suggested. So a military item, for instance, with a base .5% chance to malfunction would have that chance doubled with repeated heavy use and on and on until the weapon becomes nearly unusable. However, this should take quite a while to achieve and should be triggered by number of rounds fired, not game time played. Say after 90 rounds your chance for a jam doubles and by ~300 it's very unreliable. Even though that's not "realistic" I doubt most players would live long enough to fire 10,000 rounds through their weapons :P

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

Just implement some weapon field cleaning kit and have weapons jam/ degrade if you do not use it regularly. I'd be fine with that. Look at JA2 how its done there, works fine and makes sense.