OPREP - MARKSMEN WEAPONS

I've personally always liked Noreen Bad News, because it's based on the AR platform and it offers huge power in a semi-heavy package. The Lapua Magnum round is something we hoped to introduce one day and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After we gathered some initial reference material, we prepared a quick concept of how it could look. However, we were worried that the weapon on its own would not be interesting enough to look at. That's why we took the concept a bit further, and made it a big gun, a beast essentially. 

In the concept stage, we pretty much looked at the visuals and played a bit with the biggest parts of the weapon: the barrel and the buttstock. It was shaping up quite nicely, and we decided to make some other color variants. After that, we looked at how would it work compared to other weapons in the game, which led to an agreement on the ammo that would be used for the weapon. It was an easy decision. The Lapua Magnum has very beautiful features. Once all of these decisions were made, we had our final concept.

After the concept stage, we started prototyping the model in-game. This took multiple iterations before we settled on the final shape. One issue was that the gun was too long to fit our character, so it meant we had to make some changes. However, perhaps the biggest challenge was finding the right pair of iron sights. We wanted working iron sights, and this was not an easy task, considering that the new weapons are not one-to-one replicas of the real-life counterparts that inspired them. For example, the Noreen actually doesn't have any iron sights, so the fact that our weapons are not direct copies of existing weapons affects the decisions we make about things like the available fire modes and other features. Ultimately, we make our decisions based on the gameplay value they offer.

To support this new weapon, a new scope was made. We were really looking forward to it, as the AMS is much like the DMS, which I personally think is one of the best and usable scopes in the game. We rigged everything together and tested the weapon in the game. Some details were not right and we had to iterate more than once on the size and position of certain parts. However, eventually when I tested the weapon in a simulated firefight, I was really happy. It finally felt like I was holding a gun that is worthy of being in our game!

• Inspired by the Noreen 'Bad News' - huge beast with a custom buttstock and barrel modification
• Uses .338 Lapua Magnum ammunition - very strong caliber, high impact
• Selected for the CTRG faction as an exceptional weapon, not so heavy as an anti-material rifle while still delivering massive firepower

• Draws inspiration from the SIG 556 DMR with a different shape, we added a custom buttstock and muzzle break
• We had to re-chamber this weapon to 7.62mm because 5.56 would be too weak in our current ORBAT
• A woodland variant was added as an exception to current NATO camo because we were thinking that some mission makers would like to use it for more guerrilla-oriented characters

• An easy pick: a well tested weapon that made it through decades with a few changes
• Single and auto fire mode
• We selected it as a sort of 'antique' weapon for the FIA faction

• Real-life analogues are something like the VSS and VKS with additional pistol grip on a butterfly-shaped stock
• We wanted to make something very 'Russian' - so the selection of materials was crucial
• It was easy to work on, but the shape caused quite some controversy even in our team - at one point there even was a Bullpup version in play
• We wanted something special with extreme hits, a low range, and built-in silencer

• The design is again very 'Russian', taking inspiration from the Dragunov and Saiga platforms
• We had to make a 10 round mag because of the size and weight distribution on the weapon
• We needed a counterpart for the .338 caliber rounds, so we made a very big 9.3mm round with comparable ballistic features

• This MMG was an easy pick, it's one of the few MMGs on the market and it has similar features to the SPMG
• It is similar to the HK 121 (which is indeed the MG5)
• MMGs are a very good update to our weapons list - they offers high power firing but you have to sacrifice the mobility and ability of precise hip-firing

• Inspired by the LWMMG by General Dynamics, we wanted something with lower recoil and rate of fire than the Navid
• The weapon is heavy and pretty accurate: lower recoil than standard MMGs, still next to impossible to shot precisely from the hip
• Soldiers with the SPMG may act well as a base of fire

In truth, simulating wind-affected ballistics is not the most complicated task; the real struggle comes with the way gameplay is affected by it. Little details like counting how much a bullet is affected at what speed become irrelevant very quickly. The reason is probably surprising to most looking at the company from the outside. How would we tell the player how strong the wind is? By some gadget, one might say, yes, but what if you don't have the gadget? How would you tell the player the strength of wind? Wind is so natural to people - you can feel it - but this feeling is something we can't put into the game. We also considered showing the strength of wind by particles raising up at the target you are aiming at. We had several ideas but we hit a big wall during the process.

That wall is performance. Especially in MP it would be hard to measure, show and compute all the necessary 'helpers'. Our timeframe is limited and the gameplay value is very uncertain because it would make long range shooting much harder than it is. And considering Arma already has a pretty steep learning curve, it could drive away some people that would like to enjoy the game as it is. Some people might say it could be a game option, but should we clutter the game options even more? These questions are very real and very important to us. There are too many questions that don't have very clear answers. That is why we decided not to add this feature to the Marksmen DLC. We are still positive that these can be answered, and with a not-significant amount of time, resolved.

This was another topic that we brought up in the pre-production of Marksmen DLC. However, there is one simple fact that we can't be oblivious to: weapons in Arma are merely 'shapes'. That means they contain no information about the magazine or ammunition in them. The implementation of such feature would require vast amount of time and effort and - since we already planned big features that you can enjoy (deployment, recoil overhaul, resting, audio overhaul and some basic changes to suppression) - we put the effort and gain to scales and decided to postpone this feature. Much like windage, it is not impossible to do, but again, the balance of effort to value was very disproportional - so we made a decision.