I think its simpler than that. Its going to be a backup that you can use in case you need to reload your primary but an alien pops up.
Oh and yes, SMGs on police lead to a militarized state.. Suuuuure. Police in Europe liberally carry SMGs.
I think its simpler than that. Its going to be a backup that you can use in case you need to reload your primary but an alien pops up.
Oh and yes, SMGs on police lead to a militarized state.. Suuuuure. Police in Europe liberally carry SMGs.
It doesn't seem like the cost of carrying a sidearm is very high in terms of weight, but in a pinch can come in handy. I would be surprised if every combat hardened veteran didn't carry a sidearm of some sort.
I would be surprised if they used it over a rifle in most cases though.
PS - Hello to you too katscan.
I'm cool with a little action movie silliness - hell, I'm even cool with two sidearms dual-wielded with a perk or talent. The cost of carrying a sidearm that you hardly ever use isn't much - the cost of not carrying one that one chance in a thousand when you need one, is your life. So most soldiers want to carry one, unless it's a question of weight or regulations say you can't.Originally Posted by Spleenslitta
Multiple European countries don't even have their primary police force carry guns (see the UK). Or look at how well the Norwegians handled that massacre out on the lake (I seriously hope they wouldn't of sucked so hardcore at responding if their standard force was equipped with SMGs; not that I want their standard force equipped with SMGs). Sure some European countries might arm their standard police force with SMGs and rifles, but from what I can tell that is the exception and not the norm and is NOT a place that I would want to live. Also a lot of these places work hard to disarm their public, which imo is another mistake as it leaves one defenseless should crime find them (not to mention that a disarmed public is that much easier to oppress like we see in the Middle East). A switch to a police state or tyrannical/corrupt government typically doesn't happen quickly unless there's already been a governmental collapse. But a disarmed public and a highly armed/militarized police force both make it that much easier for those types of changes to happen.
Also I said "things like that are what lead to a police state." I didn't say that was the only thing that led to a police state, but it is a step down that road. But it is a rather large step as it makes it that much easier for a government to exert force against the population if need be.
Sigh. Everything you said is absolutely correct. Now let's get back to Xcom discussions.
I stand corrected. Discussed this issue with the Marine next door, he said standard CQB practice is to drop the rifle and draw the pistol if you're confident you can get rounds on target at close quarters - faster and more reliable at distances of around 15 feet.
Personally I'd rather clear a house with a rifle than a pistol, it gives me way more options.
Did you not see the Beserker clip? I don't think your gonna have the opportunity to shoot back if that thing hits you
Now I have to disagree here, whilst I'm not in favour of police openly carrying firearms (except tactical units) if they have to then an SMG would be better as they are far more accurate than pistols and reduce the chances of civilian casualties.
Two to the heart, one to the head! Or is it the other way around?
Come to think of it, there's also the issue of locating the heart and being certain they keep their brains in their heads...
I would agree with you in prefering to clear a house with a rifle over a pistol. And honestly I've never heard of a tactical force clearing with a pistol if a rifle was an option. Though I have heard of a pistol being better when the threat is in actual close quarters (melee range) as a shotgun/rifle is harder to maneuver and the enemy can grab the barrel to prevent you from properly aiming it.
We will have to agree to disagree then. But given how rare it is for a cop to deploy their weapon compared to how many stops they make they don't need the firepower of an SMG. Note that I'm talking about regular cops (not tactical units) and where I live all cops are armed, and I don't like the thought of all 600k+ officers in the US just casually walking around with some type of burst/fully auto weapon. I also think that them walking around with that type of weaponry would lead to even more innocent deaths for a multitude of reasons.
The saying goes "two to the chest, one to the head." I don't know about other services, but this is how the AF trains it's troops to deploy their M9 and the purpose is because the chest is the largest part of the body and thus you are most likely to at least hit the target if aiming there (and a non-vital hit is still better than a miss), while the shot to the head is in effect a finishing shot (in case you didn't kill them). This method is also known as the "Mozambique Drill" (dunno if I spelled that right) and came from a mercenary who was fighting in Africa. A hostile rounded the corner and he shot the person twice with his pistol (a double tap) but all that did was momentarily stun the bad guy. As such he ended up then aiming for the head to finish the job. After that he started training for that method of firing (double tap to chest, quickly assess the situation, then third round to the head if possible/as situation dictates) and taught it to others. I've also heard this method of firing called other things, but I forget the other names.
Interesting. Ta for that tidbit.
Well then, all of you are going to really have to suspend your disbelief since they included gamey things like the "gunslinger" perk branch which focuses on pistols and using them as your primary weapon of choice especially used when in clearing interiors..
They should name it the "Jack Bauer" perk tree
I agree with this... Always keep with the heavier weapon. unless close quarters. (naturally). though if your Heavy weapons need a rifle, time to call support! Sidearms are a great idea. Well done Firaxis!!
Though in the progression of the game, can we pick up (after reseaching) Alien weapons in theatre and use them? is that something that will follow the original. I used to like that...
I didnt see this before I posted, but yeah, anything in 20 meters, i'd switch.. dependent on how deep the Sh*t I was in..
I am not 100% sure where it comes from but it has been mentioned by the community that the loadout you go in with is the loadout you play the mission with, I personally almost never used the "pick up and use" but it's something I could see that many people would want, even if you never run out of ammo for your primary weapon.
/Yks
Yea, there is no pickup option.. already confirmed. And the aliens dont drop actual weapons or items anymore, rather "item/weapon fragments" which are tokens to exchange for research progress.
Yes, because letting your advanced other-worldly weaponry fall intact into the hands of hairless apes is just smart. S.M.R.T: Smart.
Tokens really. Come on, with the right words you can make it sound like anything you want. That's not really fair.
hehehe ;P I know.. The funny thing is that I really like the system. The crazy thing about the original game (on my current playthrough) is after each mission on more difficult settings, I make like ~$500k-$1m from selling off the actual weapons (which I have not researched, so I should have no clue what I found) that the aliens dropped, making money irrelevant. The more difficult the settings, the more aliens appear and the more powerful weapons they have, resulting in huge amounts of money made per mission. I think the fragment solution is actually pretty effective, although I would divide it a bit between item fragment, armor/material fragment, and weapon fragment. Because really, you may have no clue what you just picked up after a mission so calling it a fragment is appropriate.
Also, by using a fragment based system they can have a lot of aliens without dropping a lot of gear, meaning that they can make you chose what you want. Power armor or the plasma rifle. They don't want you to be able to research everything.
Exactly.. Its a more balanced approach to the whole system and it allows better control over the speed of research. It prevents you from 'skipping' certain things and allows the designers to pace the game better. Again, in my current game, after my first mission, I believe I can start researching heavy plasma already. Pretty silly.
If I think about it, I would LOVE for the research tree to look like Civ 5.. Multiple branches, multiple prereqs for certain things, the graphical look, the detailed information when you click on the boxes, etc. That would be very very cool.
If you've got some luck you can get the heavy plasma from the smallest ship. It's really absurd. I hope that if they're in there they implement psionics better too. They're really OP, but more than that they need to fix the lab. Build it, it takes a month, then you're going to have to wait a month to get them into the program. If they weren't OP no one would do it.
I'd understand that if bolts of blue plasma were being fired at me from an artefact.... that was a weapon! And if I'm pulling fragments from a dead corpse, that I assume would be armour... some of the other stuff, like grenades, I understand. But please don’t treat us all like Apes were supposed to have the greatest minds in science working with us aren’t we?...
I think there could be a balance of not everything being dropped shattering into fragments. If a sniper takes out a sectoid with a clean shot... either he's using a glass weapon, or that weapon should be intact. If you are using you rocket launcher to take something down, you shouldn't be bothering to look for fragments. I think KOTOR II did this well, where if you bashed your way in a locker or chest, you would destroy half the stuff that’s in there. This could work in the same principle.
I would like to see a nice balance in the game though, this is true. It seemed that with the Original, research was compounded because you didn't know you are facing when you landed, hence you always tried to get heavy weapons quickly.
Well they have fail safes obviously. DNA locks and flat-line explosive program in the weapon, possible virus to scramble any software. It makes sense.
Also, it's confirmed by way of the G.I. article that yes, you get more fragments for cleaner kills. Highly damaging kills like the rocket launcher will destroy gear. Also, having your troopers wasted in particularly destructive destroys the gear they're carrying.
Such an imagination... well done Firaxis! Or was the top half of this paragraph yours?
Two words, buddy: internal narrative. If you're waiting for Faraxis to dish out every little detail... good luck with that.
I'm glad you are here to help...
My point is it doesn't really take rocket science to figure out why the weapons fragment.
good point, wow.... moving swiftly on.....
So with sidearms, Cool downs? - Ammo on Side Arms? any guesses, 12 rounds?
Yea, looks like sidearm predictions are the following:
-Takes up no action to switch to sidearm to primary (looks like you just push the switch weapon button).
-Primarily used when you run out of ammo on the CLIP of your primary and you can't reload (threat imminent) .. although thats just speculation because there are many instances where it might be better to use your pistol
-yea, i am going to guess 12 shots +/-, although one problem with the gameplay is that there are no ammo indicators, just a bar that proceeds down to 0 as you use up your shots (do I have 4 shots or 8 shots left? who knows. The bar is 'half' full)
-could be useful if you take gunslinger perks that perk up your pistol effectiveness... possibilty of dual wielding pistols?
No cool down.
Top Stuff, thank you!
I know its a little over the top, but i might just have a Dual Wielder!
Take it from someone that has this sort of training, it's still faster to draw a pistol than it is to reload your rifle, though when you'd actually do that depends heavily on the situation, and in most real life situations you would just reload the rifle.
Drawing a pistol essentially takes three actions: Dropping your rifle, drawing the pistol, then putting it on target.
Reloading takes five actions: Dropping the mag, drawing a new mag, inserting the mag, hitting the bolt release, then putting the rifle on target.
It's a difference of only about one second with proper training, but that can be enough to get you killed if some big monster is charging you and you need to start putting rounds in his face. Better to hit him with a few pistol rounds than to get trampled before you chamber a round in your rifle.
And I have training in this sort of stuff too. My comment was talking about a video game where it takes far longer than needed/realistic to both reload and get back on target with a rifle (which I should have specified M16 and similar reloading weapons) than it is to "drop" (you're not going to just drop an 8-10+ pound rifle that is attached to your body, you're going to very quickly swing it to one side and let go) your rifle and get your pistol both out and on target. But again, part of that issue is with MW where it takes your character what feels like forever to look down the sights of the rifle. And in MW it easily takes 2-3 more seconds to reload+resight your rifle than it does to pull out the handgun. One second difference, I can see that, 2-3 seconds, not so much.
Now if you're using a rifle that has a different reload system than the M16/M4 style (such as an AK, AUG, SAW, etc) that's a different story as part of the design of the M16 was ease/speed of reloading. It is also all going to depend your gear setup. Having a snapped closed ammo pouch takes far more time than having the easy-access flak vest compartments. And a flap holster is going to be slower than something like a SERPA.
You don't get to reload your rifle for free, so there will be times when you have to decide if it's better to switch weapons and fire asap. Has anyone heard if reloading is a move action or a shoot action?
I didn't see a quote thing, but yeah.
I hope that switching to your sidearm is a free action for the simple fact that reloading was mentioned as being an action. So what would the point be in switching to your sidearm as a free action, when you could simply reload? That's the sense that I'm making out of it. Basically, I'm assuming for the time being that its a free action until Firaxis says otherwise.
If it ISN'T free...well, then I really don't see the point of a sidearm. My last point being that I swear Game Informer said you had unlimited ammo, you just had to spend an action reloading.
(I'm pretty sure I read in an article yesterday that someone mentioned moving somewhere and deciding whether to reload or not. Can't recall the article, it may have been a potential player making a remark on something, somewhere else.)
Spot on. There is only two seconds in this with someone with training, I always prefered to re-load my rifle. If yiou dont have two seconds, It's probably better to bend over and kiss your own ass goodbye.........
Yea but this is Xcom, not real life. It's a game system. If there is a damaged/weak sectoid sitting in your face, and your clip is spent, you can do the "realistic" thing and reload, only to be killed on the sectoids turn, or you can "play the game" and switch to your sidearm for a chance to kill it and survive.
That's the point of including sidearms, otherwise they are useless.
Or for instance if your sniper gets dropped upon. It's a proven fact that the sniper rifle takes a full turn to shoot (aiming and shooting obviously) so what if a muton or a sectoid closes the distance and your sniper needs to retreat. Pull out the pistol, it doesn't take the whole turn.
Although, I think sidearm might bee a misnomer sometimes. Obviously a assault trooper's side-arm is a shotgun, the heavy's is a rocket launcher. That's my kind of "sidearm"
Not entirely true.
If the heavy doesn't take the rocket launcher, they can equip a pistol as a sidearm with LMG as primary.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...ch&um=1&itbs=1
The assault soldier still carries a pistol, even with shotgun as primary. Its your choice if you want shotgun or assault rifle as primary (I would include a screenshot but I am busy at work).
Since the rocket launcher is the heavy's thing then I probably wouldn't go without it.
Still, my point is that the pistol would come in handy.
Yea.. who knows.. In close quarters missions, perhaps a pistol would come in more handy than a rocket launcher. Or perhaps there are heavy perks that make pistols more useful.
Unless it's exploding rounds I think I'll stick with the rocket launcher and LMG.
No, I get that, I'm sure that everyone would switch and not get killed.. though it would be funny if you could just put your size nine through it... that would be cool...
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