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Eh? So a thing has to have supernatural value to fit this universe now??

What's macical about swords then, or bows or crossbows or hammers?

How the fuck can explosive landmines fit the setting and not flintlocks?

So they've invented explosives and a way to deploy them, but not gunpowder or a way to deploy it?

Landmines were taken directly from the 20th century and thown into the game by LGS without the slightest thought to whether they fitted or not.

Your arguments agaist flintlocks are all totally inchoherant and illogical, and based entirely on 'what already is in the game fits it perfectly'

If LGS had put laser cannons in the game, I'm sure you'd all now be busting you guts trying to think of a hundred ways of justifying them.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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I remember us debating wether mines should stay in or not. Given the interesting way we came up with for the AI to deal with them, I'd be inclined to leave them out altogether anyway.

 

On one hand, we have to maintain the awe inspiring acheivments of the Mechanites.

 

On the other hand we have flash BOMBS, explosive fire arrows and mines readily available; one wonders why the power of them hasn't been harnessed yet instead of wasting so much time on steam power and magic.

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On the other hand we have flash BOMBS, explosive fire arrows and mines readily available; one wonders why the power of them hasn't been harnessed yet

 

Presumably because they ARE magic. :)

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You're leaving out the idea that gun power and guns are a recent inport from a far away land - just like they came from China to Europe in our world. It takes a while for these thing to be improved and to take over from existing weapons.

What I'm saying is that with the Mechanites existing level of knowledge, it would not take that long at all for guns to improve over existing weapons.

 

I thought from previous discussions that we want our setting to be similar to the Industrial Revolution / Victorian time periods on earth. This means a lot of mechanical/engineering knowledge is being thrown around. It's no coincidence that the end of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian era brought about the end of traditional warfare/Doctrine of the Offensive and the rise of the gun.

 

The Crimean War (1853-1855) occured around this time period, and at the end of that war, soldiers were sniping at eachother from trenches with rifles. Then the American Civil War put the rest of the nails in the coffin of the Napoleonic doctrine. People came to realise that the old bayonet charge tactic didn't work so well against the current level of rifle technology, and learned to "fight fire with fire."

 

The flintlock gun you're talking about is already a very advanced design (compared to say matchlock). It already has an internal firing mechanism (okay the hammer is external, but the powder flash pan is "locked" to the elements by a metal case). Throw in a breech-loading system and rifled barrel and you've come pretty close to a modern rifle already.

 

Again, our Mechanites figured out how to make steam powered bots with AI, and other things that are in fact more advanced than Victorian era technology. If gunpowder came in from somewhere else, and they got their hands on it, I simply can't believe that they wouldn't figure out how to make the improvements that were actually made in the Victorian era.

 

Give them a tube that uses an expanding gas to shoot something out of it, and they could easily put a hole/valve in the side for breech-loading, and easily conceive of the magazine of multiple rounds as well. This brings it up to a Victorian era rifle that had already revolutionized warfare on Earth.

 

So why no powder?

I find it much easier to believe that the chemical formulation of black powder as we know it has not been discovered in that world. It takes some reactions to go from minerals to Saltpeter, and some work to get Sulfur as well. So to me it is much more believable that no one discovered how to do that. [EDIT] Or maybe they can extract those compounds, but no one has discovered the optimum mixture between shooting the projectile 2 feet and blowing up the whole gun. The present level of Chemical knowledge could easily differ from that of mechanical knowledge, which makes this explanation believable IMO. [/EDIT]

 

That means they do have explosive compounds, but none of them are ideally suited to pushing a projectile out of a tube.

 

What about the stuff in flashbombs? That could be some sort of igniting power.

 

Yes it could be an igniting powder, but it could not be a propellant. Flashbombs would require something like magnesium that burns bright, but to go from there to a gun you still ultimately need black powder as a propellant.

 

The ancient civilizations (Greeks/Romans/Indians) had weapons that could be described as explosives, but because they were not suited to pushing projectiles out of a tube (either too slow an expansion, or too fast an expansion that would blow up the tube), they were never used to develop guns.

 

[edit: @Domarius: Fire arrows also fall into this category. Magic or not, they are an incendiary weapon. Ancient civilizations had incendiary weapons, but again, these explosive compounds were designed to fill an area with burning gas, not to push a projectile out of a tube. Very different compounds.]

 

@Oddity:

If you're arguing that our setting reached Victorian era technology without having guns around, and then all of a sudden we introduce guns from a far away land, why should we even bother to do that at all? Why didn't the guns make it over much sooner? It all seems too contrived and full of plot holes.

 

I'm quite happy with being in a setting that is on the brink of massive technological change, but I think we get enough of that from all the Steam innovations going on. Why do we need to add guns to that mix?

 

Subjective Reasons:

Finally, I think adding guns to the gameplay would take away a lot of the human aspects. I want to sneak by an archer, or an athropomorphized boiler-bot on two legs that has a primitive auto-crossbow inside. I don't want to sneak by a machine gun turret that auto-targets you, or an AI tank on treads... if I wanted that I'd play splintercell.

Edited by Ishtvan
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Man this is interesting. It's one of those discussions where I've found myself swinging from one side to the other. I'm back on the "guns are bad" side.

 

You sure know a lot about that kind of stuff Ish. I never thought explosives could be inapropriate for a gun.

 

My subjective reasons are that its like how we discussed having swear words like shit and fuck in the dialogue. I too readily associate guns with modern stuff.

Edited by Domarius
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Eh? So a thing has to have supernatural value to fit this universe now??

If you would have read what I wrote properly, you would have understood that swords, bows, hammers and other non supernatural items from that age fit the medieval fantasy genre anyway and don't need to be imbued with any supernatural or fantasy elements to make them 'believable'. Mechanical steampunk robots are supernatural fantasy so they fit, and the way they are represented in T2 means they fit into the other medieval fantasy staple of the 'monster'. Guns aren't fantasy, they're just modern, and so they don't.

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I'm also swaying but I realise that for the toolset, we must make guns only an option, if we make them at all.

 

SPECULATION FOLLOWS

 

Along the campaign front, well....we'll see. I certainly don't see every guard armed with a flintlock, but it would be a great surprise to the player if it happened occasionally (and imagine the first time....BOOM everyone's alerted)!

 

On a gameplay note, they should be very slow, almost as likely to blow up in the guard's face, length to reload, and guards have limited ammo. So they'd alert people and might kill you in the first shot (if unlucky), but beyond that pretty useless really.

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Sorry to re-post, I just wanted to respond more clearly to Oddity:

 

So you're proposing that blackpowder didn't exist on our continent, say, but it has recently become available thru trade with another land. This is believable, I'll admit.

 

However, what I was trying to argue is: Think about how long it would take the Mechanites to make a modern firearm after getting their hands on the formulation for black powder from this other land? With their knowledge of mechanics, I don't think it would take longer than a few years. At that point, guns would become the driving force of change in our setting instead of Steam.

 

@Macsen: I don't think you can class steambots as "supernatural" and guns as "not." (Unless we specifically say that steambots work with magic.. I prefer to leave it unexplained myself :) ) They are both what I'd call "alternate history." IE, modern developments that were developed much earlier in the overall history of technology than they were in real-world history.

 

The thing that makes the bots fun (IMO) is that they were developed by a Victorian society, hand crafted to look like fearsome creatures instead of say modern tanks.

 

I guess that's kind've what Steampunk is all about: earlier advances in technology that take place in a different society, with the values of "earlier" societies on our world (e.g., dueling, honor, aristocracy, fascination with the supernatural, etc).

 

[EDIT]

More reasons I don't like guns from a gameplay perspective:

Why couldn't the player use one? I know we are being stealthy, but suppose you KO one guard carrying a pistol who didn't get a shot off (so it's still loaded and ready to fire). The guard's unconscious body knocks some stuff over as it falls and alerts 5 close by guards in other rooms who all run into your room.

 

So we have a fire arrow as a "last resort" for this situation. I would think it would be completely rational for the player to pick up the dropped pistol and take a shot at the first guard thru the door, who might also be armed with a pistol. At that point tho, the game might as well be an FPS.

 

Actually I think this would be kind've interesting to play as a third party FM, if the gun was well-done, aimed with iron sights (not a crosshair) and inaccurate and everything, but I would rather keep guns out of our "standard" setting.

Edited by Ishtvan
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...and yet (continuing on from my last post) I'm still openminded to these things, and Fingernail made it sound fun.

 

But once it gets used, everyone will use it, and it won't be a surprise anymore. We'd just have to trust FM authors to use it very sparingly.

 

No doubt we'd develop another "I don't play X" missions group of players, where they won't touch a mission that has guns in it, much like some dont like undead missions.

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n a gameplay note, they should be very slow, almost as likely to blow up in the guard's face, length to reload, and guards have limited ammo. So they'd alert people and might kill you in the first shot (if unlucky), but beyond that pretty useless really.

 

In which case, there is really no point in including them at all....

 

Guns are either not good enough to compete with the other weapons, making them pointless, or they are better, making them a threat to the consistency of the setting.

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I see you've been doing some research, Ishtivan, but patching an argument together from google isn't always cohesive.

Your argument against projectiles powered by explosive powder, is that 'if they did have it, they would have developed it in to better weapons by now'

The time period we're making the game in could easily not have reached that 'now' yet, this is the beginning of the technology.

Why, in a world replete with magic and advanced steam powered robots and cameras, are they still using bows and arrows, and swords?

Technology is driven by warfare, the first things to be invented are always better ways of killing, and here are these guys still using the killing tools their cave swelling ancestors used?

Now that's what I call a major plot hole.

The simplefact is, that if you list all the tools and items and weapons from the Thief world, there is no logical pattern to them, LGS just stuck anything in there they thought benefited gameplay at the time.

You cannot argue it from this angle, or the whole world falls apart.

Guns fit the setting as much as bots or mines or mechanical eyes or submarines, the only difference is that LGS decided to put those things in, and decided not to put guns in. The reason they did that thing, is because they wre making an anti-shooter, and the single most important element of an anti-shooter, is that it contain no guns.

We're not stuck in that 1998 mindset any more, we don't need to display that blatant revolutionary streak, the point has already been made that a game doesn't have to consist of shooting everything that moves with a variety of big guns, but neither has it to be completly devoid of any hint of a gun type weapon in order to be different.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Along the campaign front, well....we'll see. I certainly don't see every guard armed with a flintlock, but it would be a great surprise to the player if it happened occasionally (and imagine the first time....BOOM everyone's alerted)!

 

On a gameplay note, they should be very slow, almost as likely to blow up in the guard's face, length to reload, and guards have limited ammo. So they'd alert people and might kill you in the first shot (if unlucky), but beyond that pretty useless really.

THat more or less what I envisaged.

I was never suggesting that every noble woman carry an uzi.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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I want to hear laughs from around the world as a gun explodes in a guard's face.... or indeed a hilarious conversation involving checking the barrel, ending up with a bullet in the foot or something.

 

Bottom line; it'd be quite a fun feature to add in later as an option for FM authors.

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That is one method, to just stick everything in that benefits gameplay, and I realise that not everyone is as anal about technology as me. If we voted to put guns in I wouldn't complain about it, I would just deal with the plot holes in the setting just as I did in T2. This was an opportunity for me to input my opinion tho, and unfortunately I'm pretty anal about technology level of settings. Honestly, if we have good gameplay, I won't care if there are guns or not, or how primitive they are in relation to the rest of the mechanical technology.

 

I don't see why guns fit in as much as submarines and mechanical eyes. You can have one without the other. I'm arguing that it could be done in our setting by saying the chemistry for making gunpowder has not yet been discovered. Why would you need to know how to extract and mix Saltpeter and Sulfur and Charcoal, and the right ratios for them, to make a submarine or a mechanical eye? That's what justifies the crazy situation of having bows/arrows/swords and not guns.

 

The whole idea of Steampunk is you have different tracks of technological development than we had on Earth. Yes, in our world and history it doesn't make sense to have bows/arrows still being used alongside more advanced technology like mechanical eyes. But that's because we discovered gunpowder before we discovered electronics. There's no reason why it couldn't have happened the other way around. There is no "right" way for technology to progress, you're just stuck on the technology development arc of our world. I don't see it as a plot hole, just alternate history of technology.

 

It's true that war drives technology, and Mechanites would probably be working on weapons like pressurized gas operated bolt-slingers, and these will become the standard infantry weapon in the future. But there is no logical reason why gunpowder and flintlock pistols as we know them should be a requirement given the other technology.

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except the already aforementioned AAAH and COOL factors...and they could be made so that one successful shot kills instantly.

 

I thought we agreed we weren't going to add new features just for the "cool" factor? That initial surprise happens only once, in a single FM. After that, it's just another weapon.

 

As for giving guards instant kill weapons, a gun wouldn't be any more instant-kill than a crossbow bolt.

 

If we want to impress players with the dangerous weapons guards are carrying in our mod, we have plenty to choose from already: fire arrows, mines, gas arrows, flaming oil, etc.

 

Enough people seem to agree that guns make the setting feel too modern that adding them for 'coolness' is probably not a good enough reason.

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It's true that war drives technology, and Mechanites would probably be working on weapons like pressurized gas operated bolt-slingers, and these will become the standard infantry weapon in the future. But there is no logical reason why gunpowder and flintlock pistols as we know them should be a requirement given the other technology.

I'm not saying that guns would definitely have existed in this universe, I'm saying that they're as likely as anything else that's already there - there's no reason as to why they WOULDN'T have been invented, since the workings of the gun is actually quite simple compared to the much more complicated stuff that's already there.

SO you can't argue against them from that angle, and you also can't argue that guns are too modern, beng that they existed in recognisable form over 500 years

ago.

They feel a shitload less modern that security cameras and mechanical eyes and submarines, that's for sure.

And we'll be making them look really antique as well, so they will fit in very well.

Of course, we could always forget the gunpowder and make them a kind of air rifle, that work by steam, if that makes them 'fit' better.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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How is a weird contraption such as the one I posted (sword with flintlock combined) too modern? It's weird and experimental and Age-of-Enlightenment-y enough surely.

Small gun daggers would probably confuse the player. Why is this man shooting bullets out of a dagger? Must be a bug!

 

I'd like to see a few potential designs before casting my vote. Not that my vote really counts, but hey. :lol:

Edited by Macsen
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SO you can't argue against them from that angle, and you also can't argue that guns are too modern, beng that they existed in recognisable form over 500 years

ago.

 

What I'm arguing is that what is "modern" and what is not depends entirely on the course of history that the particular society took. I gave an example reason why guns using gunpowder might not have been invented at the time: The mechanical workings of a gun are simple, but the chemical knowledge needed to get gunpowder is not as simple. In our world most of the advances in making gunpowder happened by accident, accidents that may not have happened in an alternate history.

 

Of course, we could always forget the gunpowder and make them a kind of air rifle, that work by steam, if that makes them 'fit' better.

 

Yes, from my perverse perspective, that would make them much more believable. :)

 

It just seems to make the universe more cohesive, that all this technological change is coming from Steam power, mechanics and hydraulics, and some primitive electronics, so they would make some kind of more advanced projectile weapon using steam, rather than "Technological change is being driven by steam power and... oops, gunpowder was just discovered right now too by some freak chance!"

 

And again, it would have to have been discovered or traded in from another continent right then, because as I said, if the Chemistry to make gunpowder existed all along, the mechanics in place to make combat bots and everything would have resulted in much more advanced guns.

 

Then it would also make sense that only Mechanites know how to make them and equip their bots with them, and you could also dream up explanations for why they aren't widely used if you don't want them to be for gameplay reasons (eg: needs a heavy pressurized gas tank or a boiler-powered air compressor to operate, needs to be individually crafted and not mass-produced, because all the valve-work and loading mechanism would be extremely difficult to build)

 

You can't really do that with a pistol... once the basic design is in place, anyone can fill a tube with gunpowder and put some flint to it. 12 year old kids make zip-guns all the time. So it would not be some secretive thing that only a few know how to make.

 

When it comes down to it, my argument is a pretty anal one and I would understand if people didn't really care about a believable state of technology for the world.

 

If we can put in some sort of advanced projectile weapon without it totally ruining gameplay, then I have no problem with it. The only real difference between guns and pressurized gas weapons is one goes "BOOM!" and one kind've goes "thwoop!"

Edited by Ishtvan
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If we can put in some sort of advanced projectile weapon without it totally ruining gameplay, then I have no problem with it.

 

Nobody is explaining why we NEED an advanced projectile weapon, beyond the fire arrow we already have.

 

I'll take one more shot at this.... There is absolutely no reason why we couldn't design our guards to be wearing cowboy hats instead of helmets. The materials to make cowboy hats exists. Hat designs in the victorian age were pretty close already. But would we do it? No. Why not? Because as soon as people see cowboy hats, they think "Western". We aren't creating a western style game. In the same way, when people see guns, they think "Shooter". And we aren't creating a shooter style game.

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When people see a historic looking flinklock they will not think 'shooter', especially since the player hasn't got one. THe things look ancient.

Here's an interesting page on how this things were operated and fired in around 1470. This one is a Matchlock, which are the oldest, so we should use them.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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