I have a request for opinions.
I'm adding a few new weapons, but don't want to complicate the skill system further. I'm trying to fit everything under existing gun skills. So I'm splitting the weapons like this: If it's bigger than a pistol, and fires only one shot per round, it's a rifle. If it's bigger than a pistol, and fires multiple shots per round, it's an assault rifle. The problem is that I'm adding a couple of weapons that aren't actually assault rifles to this category. The main issue being an SMG (submachine gun -- smaller and fires pistol ammunition). So I think I might need to rename it. I'd like to keep the name for the skill under 14 letters long. It's currently "Assault Rifle" -- 13 letters. I'm thinking about "Machine Gun" -- 11 letters. The problem with this is that the usage of the term Machine Gun to cover all fully automatic firearms may be a distinctly American usage. Otherwise it could be taken to refer to very heavy personal weapons unsuitable for LCS-scale fighting. I'd like to get other opinions about this (do you even care?), simply because I'm developing for public release, and I want people to be happy with the name for the category.
The other alternative is to add a new skill for it. I'm just trying not to inflate the skill set unnecessarily.
Edit: At the moment, what I'm going to do is just leave it Assault Rifle and let people figure out that SMGs are under the assault rifle skill in this game.
Edit again: Actually, for now I'm going to make the SMG draw on BOTH pistol and assault rifle skills. It's fairly abstracted anyway, and I like the idea of having it be influenced both by your skill with small weapons and your skill with fully automatic weapons.
Edit tres: The multi-skill system seems to be working well, and I'm comfortable with that, so unless anybody has any objections, I'll probably use it in the next version.
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]