Vietnam Mini-mod: M14 kits and magazine load, reuse of M1/M2/M3 as PDW

[Jyvaskyla]

Didn't found Vietnam subforum so I post it here.

M16 and M14 kits have same amount of spare magazines. 7.62 is bigger and heavier and so are the magazines themself. While issue combat load of 1+8 mags (180rds) for M16 is correct, the M14 was most often issued 1+4 (100rds). Of course more magazines for both of rifles were carried, but most often only on longer patrols or one own's desire to do so.

M14 as a standard rifle was started to be replaced by M16 in Vietnam at 1967 and M14 effectivly became "limited standard" weapon. In practice it dissapeared from combat unit. Marines adopted M16 after Army and themself stayed with M14 longer. My Point? Remove M14 from all Army kits, retain for Marines on direct combat kits.

Automatic Rifleman and Machine Gunner for US forces are basicly the same. The idea of MG is it reflects platoon MG, a requestable kit that should provide greater specialization in field). If you bother to request kit, you should have an advantage in supression capability.
We won't change the gun but can medle with ammo loadout. 200 rounds for AR instead 400 rounds, MG keeps 400. In reality squads M60 gunner carried fraction of ammo on himself, gun weighted some and climate was hot; Substential rest of ammo belts was spread thru accompanying squad members and it is reflect in PR in one way, as droppable ammo bag for rifleman class.

Jungle combat is close combat and squad sometimes emoployed short range weapon for pointman. We have M870 ingame (not the period correct shotgun, but it's not the point of the post) but M1/M2 carbines were frequently used Vietnam by ARVN. They were there in numbers, and with 30rd mag it was a great deal for close-to-mid engagements. Sporadicly M3A1 and sometimes even M1A1 seen use by US troops. Also non-standard firearms were employed as PDW by support and rear echelon units.

Together with proposed removal of big chunk of M14, I think it makes some space for variety of auxiliaries. Universal Ammo Pouches for M14 mags and other ones. Tommies, Greasers and Carbines (albeit with 15 rounders only :/) are all in game, in WW2 mini-mod. This makes for coding work only.

Kit changes proposition:
-Breacher as arleady CQC oriented kit (M870) gets to have more prevalent of auxiliary firearms, the M1/M2 Carbine.
-Rifleman AT and Combat Enginner, both requestable and more specialized kits alltogether, thus less frequently used get M3A1 for Army and M1A1 for Marines.

Last thing, NVA MG gets PKM. This is so wrong it twists my internals. I know it's a placeholder and ending it's misery would require gettings one's hands dirty. On bright side original BF: Vietnam had RPD modelled, the proper and correct NVA MG.

What do you think Reality people?

Edit: I've heard that next patch will adjust M14 magazine load to 7, getting there but still not realf-life experience of M14's user misery.

[Operator_Max1993]

pretty nice suggestion

and speaking of the ARVN....i'd actually would like to see the ARVN as a faction

[KianaKaslana]

Then how about the M1919A6?

[dcm]

Vietnam's unpopularity has nothing to do with weapon selection, but lack of good urban maps. IA Drang is probably the most played vietnam map and it's hell for the NVA. The US gets choppers and aircraft. The vietnamese get a few cars. I cant even remember the names of the other maps because they're so shit. You want more people to play vietnam? Make better maps.

[PBAsydney]

Originally Posted by dcm

Vietnam's unpopularity has nothing to do with weapon selection, but lack of good urban maps. IA Drang is probably the most played vietnam map and it's hell for the NVA. The US gets choppers and aircraft. The vietnamese get a few cars. I cant even remember the names of the other maps because they're so shit. You want more people to play vietnam? Make better maps.

Battle of Hue would be amazing if we had someone willing to put in the work.

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by PBAsydney

Battle of Hue would be amazing if we had someone willing to put in the work.

Ye it would be an amazing map, but to do it right would be a huge amount of work and would really require a bunch of custom statics too. Even if one was just to use existing statics it's a big city so a lot of placement work is required. That said I have done the terrain work for the map and the surrounding area but it would require months of work on top still just to place all the statics etc, let alone making of custom statics it really needs too: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B1PvG9

[Brotherscompany]

Originally Posted by Rhino

Ye it would be an amazing map, but to do it right would be a huge amount of work and would really require a bunch of custom statics too. Even if one was just to use existing statics it's a big city so a lot of placement work is required. That said I have done the terrain work for the map and the surrounding area but it would require months of work on top still just to place all the statics etc, let alone making of custom statics it really needs too: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B1PvG9

Does the map have to be such a incredible replica? Cant some liberty be taken to pump it out faster having into account the effort PR takes to map and the amount of man power its available?

We need a new Vietnam map and a urban one would be simply orgasmic.

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by Brotherscompany

Does the map have to be such a incredible replica? Cant some liberty be taken to pump it out faster having into account the effort PR takes to map and the amount of man power its available?

We need a new Vietnam map and a urban one would be simply orgasmic.

Well ye, I did mention that you could try and use just the existing statics but even so, and with the terrain scaled down by 42% of its real-life size, there is a hell of a lot of placement work which alone would take someone months to do.

Personally, if I was working on the map I would focus on getting the South City done first as that is/can be its own map/battle on its own as the first few days of the battle was focused totally on recapturing the south city. So you could release that part first with the rest of the map off-limits with only a bit of detail to be viewed from a distance over the river. Then once that was done you could focus on the main part of the city, and doing touch-up work to the South City as needed, but even so that is still a hell of a lot of work.

Most 2km Urban maps take at least a years work to make. Even Muttrah v2 which is largely water, took me 17 months to make back in 2007, although I was working on multiple projects at the time, did make a few statics myself, although had a few people like Matts and Ztrooper helping me with statics who did most of them. But the most time-consuming part of that was the placement of all the statics and I didn't get it done to the detail I had hoped. With modern computers and with the terrain being mostly done, and the map being on the grid for the most part things would be quicker but it would still take someone realistically around a year of just static placement. There are ways to seriously cut down on that process like only making a set of "city blocks", then cloning those blocks over and over again but that really sucks when you are walking past the same set of streets over and over again and would be nothing like the real ancient city either, you can only slightly get away with that with some modern cities but you still need to then add customization detail afterwards not for it to look and feel totally fake.

So yes, whatever way you look at it, someone really needs to commit to a years work minimum and that's just with using existing statics, let alone any extra work someone puts on the side to make new statics.

[dcm]

Rhino I appreciate the hard work and effort you and your team put into Project Reality these 16+ years. But maybe it's time to move on from the bf2 engine? I'm no game developer. Quite the contrary; I'm technologically retarded in many regards. I'm an end user at best. But even I can see that there's no future in the Refractor 2 engine. Dont get me wrong I love PR. And I may complain; a lot. But not out of hatred or malice, but out of love for the game and hope to see it become a better version of itself.

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by dcm

Rhino I appreciate the hard work and effort you and your team put into Project Reality these 16+ years. But maybe it's time to move on from the bf2 engine? I'm no game developer. Quite the contrary; I'm technologically retarded in many regards. I'm an end user at best. But even I can see that there's no future in the Refractor 2 engine. Dont get me wrong I love PR. And I may complain; a lot. But not out of hatred or malice, but out of love for the game and hope to see it become a better version of itself.

Well everyone working on PR has their own reasons. I personally have very little time these days to work on PR, in fact, I don't think I've had time to do any significant work on PR since May last year. I still hope to be able to find the time to finish my Frigate and get the next big Falklands update out the door before I fully retire from PR but that depends on how much time I get as I've got lots of real-life work and when I do eventually have some free time I spend most of it these days playing games with mates, but hoping over the next few months I might find some time to finish off my PR work.

But this is the big reason why in my last post I was making it very clear how much work would be needed to be put in from someone to make a big urban map like Hue, as I don't want to waste my time setting someone up with it who is just going to walk away from it after trying to place a few buildings.

Even thou it's old, PR still offers something very unique and as such, people do still want to work on improving it. If someone was serious and passionate about that I would eagerly help set them up with the little time I have as even thou PR is now very old, it is still well worth developing for if you have the time and energy for it!