Approval on dedicated gun itemgroup for zombie / enemies that can wield large weapons

[Agoelia]

Power armor and large size lets player characters, survivors, ferals and zombies wield larger weapons than an unaugmented human would normally not consider using. Very large humanoid enemies/NPC (eg ursine mutants), if ever implemented, could also be made to spawn with these.

There is currently no item group dedicated for this, armored zombies for example spawn with a mix of standard military rifles, smgs, and shotguns, and occasionally a launcher. None of these guns are unique to them as loot drops, normal soldier zombies also drop them.

There are not many weapons that fit in this category for now, but some would be:

• Large caliber weapons (most 50. cal especially)
• M240
• M250
• M60
• RM298 HMG
• RM614 LMG

Lore-wise, a military that developed and deployed heavy power-armored infantry would also equip them with guns that maximise the increased strength and load bearing of powered armor (as well as develop dedicated guns specifically designed for heavy infantry, and that would be the second part of this addition).

Would it be acceptable to create such an item group?
I have not made contributions before, so I would like to get some kind of permission / blessing before I start spending hours on this

[chaosvolt]

Could work if we have power-armored and/or heavily-mutated feral humans/NPCs, maybe.

If they actually see use by ferals as a weapon they can explicitly use in combat, they'll have to be a more narrow selection of guns that match in ammotype to fit their monster_weapon entry, whereas it can freely be more varied if it's just dropped as a potential thing power armored zombies have on their person or something power-armored/mutated NPCs spawn with.

[dedmemdev]

I honestly don't know how to feel about going with a fallout-esque direction of giving power armor soldiers special big guns, especially since the most modern iteration of power armor (light power armor) is in game unable to fully resist 762 nato. It's also mentioned in earlier power armor models that they were too bulky and unmaneuverable to use in actual combat, meaning that rather than the walking tank type power armor in fallout, cata power armor is heavily implied to not be so much a walking tank suit as it is the next generation of standard issue armor which is still intended to be used with normal infantry tactics, meaning giving power armor soldiers large bulky weapons wouldn't be good even with power armor's strength boosting.

[Agoelia]

Could work if we have power-armored and/or heavily-mutated feral humans/NPCs

Power armor (and presumably heavily armed too) ferals might too much imo. They can open doors, are completely invulnerably to most weapons, and, assuming they tend to spawn with heavy weapons in the future, can likely one-shot characters that are not wearing power armor as well. Even if we assume their power armor battery is dead, which would makes them very slow and not have night vision.

It might be interesting as a late-game boss kinda thing, but I wouldn't want them spawning around randomly. Power armor bio-zombies are already pretty terrifying. I'll welcome disagreement here, perhaps I'm just a coward.

Besides, we already have enemies that could reasonably drop such weapons, as well as reasonably require such weapons to be fought routinely (drone tanks, juggernuts, armored zombies, etc). Anything else can come later, no?

I honestly don't know how to feel about going with a fallout-esque direction of giving power armor soldiers special big guns, especially since the most modern iteration of power armor (light power armor) is in game unable to fully resist 762 nato

That's a really good point, but key word here is "fully". Light power armor is the weakest of the PAs, and it still has 64 ballistic protection. It completely negates 7.62 nato armor pen, and then still blocks half the damage afterwards. We could abstract that as leaving a heavy bruise on the impact spot, or only penetrating on the joints. I think any military would want a bigger gun if they were to fight a near-peer enemy.

If I am not convincing, then perhaps this kind of content is better relegated to a mod?

[dedmemdev]

yeah, i think this could work better as an integration into a mod or something. You should get in contact with lonestander, he makes a mod that features all sorts of unique big guns that would be fun to use in power armor.