Modified Paintball Gun

[Astral (DayZ) 2]

TL;DR: A paintball gun modified to shoot pellets that do no damage, but with varying effects based on the ammo found.

tactical sh*ts

The words in combination made me laugh, then think for a second. Out of the blue, almost as if it was a real commercial or museum entry, the following occurred to me:

"And here we see the Mossberg Tactical Sh*tgun. Heralded in the Z wars of eras past, and gruesome in its application, it had two variations: a spring loaded, hand cranked version that saw some usage by people making their own weapons of mass excretion, and a more mainline model propelled by CO2 similar to paintball guns of days long past. It enabled users to fire a foul smelling fluid, origins known only to the creator of the device itself, encased in a material similar to paintballs at foes, often prompting nearby lone zombies, if not entire hordes, to immediately seek out whatever poor sod had been pelted with it. Conversely, a misfire in a densely infested town could be deadly to the wielder, and handling of the piss pellets required great care."

The gun itself would likely be a pistol slot item, and do zero damage when fired on a player or zombie. However, the power and utility of the gun would be in the varied ammunition. Ammo effects could (depending on script limitations) fire rounds that attract zombies via smell (specifically when fired on players), cause noise similar to throwing a whiskey bottle where they are fired (similarly attracting zombies), acting as a much smaller radius and duration flare, causing whiteout effects similar to a flashbang, or even poisons that could be of varying strengths and effect a person's ability to run, aim, regain blood, or drain his food/water/blood outright. If crafting becomes present in the mod in any great degree, a player could even use a blood bag to create paintballs that would cause zombies to attack each other.

The fact that they are paintball guns would mean that they make little to no sound, or at least sound comparable to a silenced weapon with subsonic rounds. Shots would be somewhat balanced by the fact that they have less of a force behind them, meaning you have to lead targets more, and ammo would be fairly uncommon or a pain to make.

It would make for some interesting, varied playstyles, too. In a game where guns are your only weapon, why not have some (aside from the smoke rounds for a grenade launcher) that launch more than just lead at people? I can imagine a player being able to put something like this to great use, either herding zombies in more useful fashion to get at loot, using the zombies against other players or each other, or simply scaring the crap out of another player with a quick flash or sharp noise without actually harming them.

Just a thought.

[vedicardi 7]

yeah, makes their visibility and noise bars raise to 4. that'd be funny

[aLmAnZo (DayZ) 21]

Actually, I really, really like this idea. Not top priority though.

[Astral (DayZ) 2]

Another part to add: If it is possible to have weapons degrade in any sense, make it so that the CO2 versions are more powerful and give more distance on shots, but degrade over time (designating the CO2 tank slowly becoming less full), but the hand cranked iterations have a much longer reload time and a bit lower range, as the player would have to manually "pump" the air reservoir or pull back a spring mechanism.

[evans d [16aa] 3]

In the event that this dos get brought in, you don't need a degrade system to show the canister depleating. Just allow it to have X amount of "ammo" (possibly by having a CO2 canister in your inventory as a magazine) and you've got to find another one when it runs out. As for having the weapon itself become less powerful over time, I'm not sure if that's possible in ArmA II. But then again, I'm no modder and I can't script to save my life, so I have no evidence to back that up.

[Astral (DayZ) 2]

Well, the CO2 canister itself would just act as a propellant. I suppose that this version would act as just a weapon, firing steel ball bearings or something similar (needing the extra force behind it). The CO2 canister and ball bearing set would end up together as one part. I can't think of anything better at the moment due to the way ArmA2 handles ammunition, though.

The "custom" spring loaded version could have the separate ammunition types that do no direct damage but have all kinds of fun effects. Since it would shoot at a closer range, and have a much higher reload time, it ends up becoming a tradeoff for utility and versatility against range and damage.