Heavy Weapons
Do they have a place in Sindome's future?

Adding a heavy weapon to each of the existing weapon skills is an interesting idea and would solve concerns about Heavy Weapons becoming the "ultimate weapon". Pistols might get a compact grenade launcher, smgs an lmg and rifles a RPG/railgun, heck melee could even have an adapted jackhammer if that weren't too difficult to bring in line with the other heavy weapons. It bears thinking about as an alternative to adding tools for an entirely new skill.

The following are ideas as to how Heavy Weapons could be made functional in Sindome without being game breaking. They are by no means perfect ideas and I would love to hear alternative ideas or constructive criticism.

Potential applications for the heavy weapons:

Area denial attacks: Weapons like light machine guns and rocket launchers all have the potential to be used as area denial tools via either blast from the projectile or firing so many projectiles that being in the targeted area is dangerous. Damage could be scaled down to reflect how powerful the potential to hit multiple people simultaneously could be and/or players in the affected area could roll to dodge damage entirely.

Vehicular damage/warfare: This one speaks for itself. Heavy Weapons could give players the potential to engage vehicles in vehicle-to-vehicle, emplacement-to-vehicle or person-to-vehicle combat depending on how the weapons are implemented. This would be a time intensive option as it would first require an overhaul of vehicles but a byproduct of this overhaul would be significantly more rp for mechanics, something that has been referenced as desirable in other idea threads.

Balancing factors

High Costs: If you want powerful tools you need to pay appropriately. Making these weapons expensive would prevent them getting into the hands of Joe Everyman and force Billy the Brute to evaluate risk vs reward before taking these weapons for a spin.

Highly Illegal: Another risk vs reward factor. Weapons like this are the sort of thing the WJF might not even want to see in corporate hands, making them something rarely seen outside of the WJF themselves and corporate Black-Ops teams.

High Strength Requirements: Another investment balancing factor. Heavy Weapons would be, as their name suggests, Heavy and unwieldy and therefore require investment in strength, again preventing Joe Everyman from wielding these with impunity.

Require mounting or deploying: Again, being heavy might mean these weapons need to be fixed to either a vehicle or some form of deployable mount (like a bipod). If the weapons needed fixing to vehicles that would further restrict the application of these weapons to spaces that vehicles can access and the adjoining areas (that they could shoot into from the street). It also escalates the risk vs reward aspect of the weapons use as now you are putting your vehicle at risk when you use these weapons.

Again, these are just ideas. I look forwards to hearing your thoughts and ideas. Perhaps you think we should just pull the skill and be done with it?

I like the idea of area denial. Removing the ability to target individual characters would be another good factor to look at, instead heavy weapons may only be targeted at a room or vehicle in a room. If targeted at the room, each hit to the room deals it's damage to every character in said room, not just who you want to hit.

Requiring deployment. This is a fantastic idea. In order to use a machine gun, perhaps you have to drop it and then 'deploy it' before you can use it effectively, though I believe shoulder firing should still be an option, albeit with severe penalties.

But, that's just my two chy. I have a lot of thoughts about the combat skills that also run counter to heavy weapons even being a thing to begin with.

I am aware, but let's look at this from an effectiveness standpoint. An m4 is smaller, lighter, and faster to track a target with than a SAW is. If you had a choice between the two of them, I believe that even you would lean heavily toward the M4 for CQC.

I'm just biased because I used to lug around an M249, M240B, and shoot things with the M2 and Mk19 so I when you say heavy weapons I get nostalgic and smile about all the ways you could wipe out sinn street.

As you can see I can hold this baby up with one arm, it's really not that heavy, compacted down, maneuverable, and in 2104 I'm sure they could figure out how to make it better designed :p

I favor making them a support weapon in the same sense that a sniper rifle is. Machine gunner sits on rooftop, engages, does smg damage or something if he hits. Even weaker damage that canvases everyone in s room would be kinda funny but render your support role useless.

Area denial and all that is great, but it shouldn't render right there in direct combat inept. You can direct combat with other weapons you probably don't think you can. The problem here is that weapon is logical in its response. A light machine gun can be wickedly fast and powerful. Perhaps have high accuracy penalties (but not enough to make it unusable) when not deployed in "sniping mode" ( aim lm at direction) and when in "sniping mode" it is far more accurate as it is on a bipod.

Just kicking ideas around. I love heavy weapons. It's probably gonna end up a niche part of the game, but I will still sit here and advocate for them.

Pistol shoots some weird energy bolts through walls?

Rifle becomes flamethrower? Grenade launcher?

SMG becomes area dispersal?

Just spitballing ideas