Fire rate overhaul: one step towards breaking the dominance of full-auto weapons

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1

Hello bajtársak and fellow forumdwellers,
Enlisted is a ̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶t̶o̶r̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶c̶c̶u̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ world war II tactical first person shooter game with historical elements and mechanics.
There are many carefully modeled firearms in Enlisted, the stats of these weapons reflect their real life performance. Though some weapons have their characteristics slightly altered for balance, they are reasonably realistic in a game environment.

Take the Lanchester submachine gun as an example, historically it has a (theoretical) fire rate of 600 rounds per minute, in the game like most other firearms it can be upgraded with each upgrade slightly improving its stats.

Please take a look at the fire rate of the Lanchester submachine gun here.

stock Lanchester in game

Lanchester stock
Lanchester stock970×1080 689 KB

max upgraded Lanchester in game

Lanchester max upgrade
Lanchester max upgrade970×1080 689 KB

source for Lanchester fire rate

wikipedia

the armory life
the armory life1329×796 182 KB

Lanchester (SMG) Submachine Gun
Lanchester Submachine gun | World War II Wiki | Fandom

The second upgrade of the Lanchester increases its fire rate by 15%; 600 rpm → 690 rpm.
This 10-15% fire rate increase affects most guns in the game with the list of the exceptions being shorter than the guns affected.
This is an unnecessary deviation from historical accuracy. While in reality few Lanchesters had an exact fire rate of 600 rpm and this number could vary a little, give or take 20-30 rpm depending on various factors such as manufacture quality, wear and tear, battlefield conditions and many others. But 690 rpm instead of 600 is simply way too much and not realistic at all, such a modification would need a custom designed and made bolt.

It’s also worth considering that increasing the fire rate of a weapon A.K.A. its firing speed massively improves its squad wiping ability, this modifier heavily favours high fire rate weapons giving them a huge edge over non-automatic weapons.

Huge spread sheet incoming! It's for a quick analysis, feel free to skip it.
weapon stock
damage		 stock
fire rate		 stock
DPS		 Max upgraded
damage		 Max upgraded
fire rate		 Max upgraded
DPS		 DPS without fire rate increase
Lanchester 5.7 600 rpm 57 DPS 6.8 690 rpm 78 DPS 68 DPS
MP40 5.8 500 rpm 48 DPS 7.0 570 rpm 67 DPS 58 DPS
Pps-43 5.6 700 rpm 65 DPS 6.7 800 rpm 89 DPS 78 DPS
AVT-40 12.7 600 rpm 127 DPS 15.3 660 rpm 168 DPS 153 DPS
FG42 II 12.0 750 rpm 150 DPS 14.4 830 rpm 199 DPS 180 DPS
Type Hei auto 11.6 720 rpm 139 DPS 13.9 790 rpm 183 DPS 166 DPS
StG44 8.0 650 rpm 87 DPS 9.6 650 rpm 104 DPS 104 DPS
ZB-26 12.0 750 rpm 150 DPS 13.2 830 rpm 183 DPS 165 DPS
Bren mk.II 12.0 480 rpm 96 DPS 13.2 530 rpm 117 DPS 106 DPS
M1 garand 12.7 350 rpm 25~38 DPS 15.3 350 rpm 31~46 DPS (practical)* 31~46 DPS (practical)*
Type 4 rifle 12.4 350 rpm 25~37 DPS 14.9 350 rpm 30~45 DPS (practical)* 30~45 DPS (practical)*
Pre-war K98K 22.1 60 rpm 22 DPS 25.4 69 rpm 25~51 DPS (practical)* 25 DPS (practical)*
Mosin-Nagant M91/30 23.7 49 rpm 24 DPS 27.3 57 rpm 27 DPS (practical)* 27 DPS (practical)*

Notes:
DPS is rounded to whole number.
This is pure DPS comparison at 10m, however damage drop, dispersion, recoil, reload speed and magazine size are also important to consider!
SF rifles and LMGs only have 10% fire rate increase and the final value is always rounded.
Semi-auto and bolt-action rifles have a practical fire rate because even with semi-auto weapons the player can’t fire more than 3 shots a second without an auto clicker.
The selection is NOT random, I picked similar guns preferably from the same BR to show what a huge difference fire rate makes.

The fire rate increase of bolt-action rifles are miniscule compared to the increase SMG and LMGs get which is why their spam is prevalent in BR1-2 since most combat takes place in short distances in which SMGs are still very effective.
Semi-automatic rifles and assault rifles do not get increased fire rate, but Select Fire rifles do get fire rate increase from upgrades.
Assault rifles even without getting a fire rate increase are still prevalent and they are worth upgrading so the fire rate increase is clearly not necessary and players would still upgrade their weapons even without the + 10-15% fire rate.

Removing the 10% and 15% fire rate increase from the upgrades of fully automatic weapons (SMG and LMGs) would improve historical accuracy and improve balance at the same time, slightly decreasing the gap between bolt-action rifles and SMGs; and the gap between select fire rifles and semi-automatic rifles while also making automatic weapons with slower fire rate more viable.
Bolt-action rifles and AT rifles however should retain the fire rate increase from the upgrade as it does not affect their balance or realism drastically.

Instead of a percentage based fire rate increase, the second weapon upgrade (alongside the already existing 10% vertical and horizontal recoil improvement!) should allow players to change the rate of fire as long as they are historically accurate and balanced.
Weapons with long production runs or decentralised production without proper standardisation often had differences in fire rate, though some weapons also had their standard fire rate changed during production.
Examples:
Mp40 had 500-550 rpm.
MG34 had between 600-900 rpm.
M1928A1 Thomspon had 600-700 rpm.
Ppsh-41 had between 800-1000 rpm.

Once upgraded to 2 stars the fire rate of these weapons should be customizable with the player deciding if he wants to lower or increase the default fire rate.

Thank you for your time and attention!

3 Likes
2

It is interesting that we can adjust weapon fire rating within a certain range，but I guess it would be three options：increase，decrease and unchange.

3

Not really, since players could only change fire rate to historically accurate values so for example the base fire of the MP40 is 500 rpm in the game but historically Mp40s had a fire rate of around 500-550 rpm so players could increase the MP40’s fire rate fron 500 rpm to 550 rpm, but could not lower it from 500 rpm.

1 Like
4

Maybe, but I doubtwhether DF can do it well.

5

just need to give all semi 420 RPM upgrade and it’s cool, oh and make bolt action guaranteed OHK as well

6

I don’t really mind a fire rate reduction for most automatics given that most of them past BR 3 already have an excessive amount.

The ones that do badly need it though are SMGs at or below 500rpm.

7

agreed.
the higher the fire rate, the more they get from that 10-15%

I made this comparison for good reason. However its unlikely that only 500 rpm or less guns would still get the increase from the update so the next best option is removing fire rate increase which actually makes the weapons with lower fire rates closer in power to weapons with higher fire rate.

8

regarding MP40, I have recently checked some youtube videos about the rate of fire, and I dont quite know how to explain this, but by audio of real life guns, I feel like upgraded MP40 seems to fire perfectly fine in enlisted, while stock MP38 feels way to slow - but this could be because WW2 9mm loads were different.

That being said, every STG or MKB video I see online seems to have a noticeably slower rate of fire than MP40.

Rate of fire is indeed not as set in stone as Wikipedia might suggest - however better attention to detail would still be appreciated non the less.

more important should be guns that are massively misrepresented, 100 rpm difference can be lived with, but 200+ is bad.

9

I have my own suggestion for increased HA for RoF in particular, while keeping the current system intact. Have all guns start out just below their IRL RoF, and then have that increase upgrade “restore” the gun to its proper RoF (simulating maintenance)

10

interesting idea, though its actually a more arcady than realistic mechanic it would cool.
If fire rate difference was not very drastic (say only 50 rpm) it would be okayish in my opinion.

11

It would be a very good addition btw if DF gun modelation team have free Time they could make 3 states of the weapon (3 stars)

Damaged: weapons Will look dirty and old and You Will be able to see some imperfeccions on the mechanics parts

Mechanism cleaning 1 Star: the mechanism is clean but the gun still having some imperfections and still being dirty

Corrected imperfections 2 stars: no impefections anymore but the gun Will still look a little bit dirty

Fully restored 3 stars: the weapon Will have the same appereance as Rn previews being very clean colorfull and funtional

1 Like
12

I would court martial any of my soldiers with such a gun :sweat_smile:

3 Likes
13

low/mid BR smgs/mgs are fine as they come with weak rest stats. the real problem are BR5 ARs and rifles. those come with only OP stats, making them no brainer weapons.

these need to be nerfed, especially after the nonsensical buffs they received months ago making them even more braindead to use.

those 2 weapon classes need small aim speed, medium fire rate & high recoil nerfs. combined with damage & precision buffs; all congruent with real life stats.

this is the easy way to make the game much more realistic & interesting to play on high BR, as its boring and extremely redundant atm.
in return the green aiming speed perk can be buffed a bit by making it +12,5% each step instead of +10%.

2 Likes
14

I would say reload speed is a bigger contributer. Nearly no down time

1 Like
15

Well think. Lack of maintenance on a firearm will cause it to not run as good right? Lack of lube, filth accumulation, etc
The “RoF increase” upgrade could be a maintenance upgrade (like how the damage upgrade says it’s a “new barrel” or whatever) that “restores” the gun to its proper, IRL performance

1 Like
16

All I’m saying is realistically performing firearms would bring a welcome diversity to each faction, and finally make each one feel truly unique. As is all bolties and all semi’s are practically the same give or take visual recoil and capacity

17

All I’am saying is that the 15% fire rate increase is not necessary, maybe I should have made that much more clear in my first post.

It doesnt really add that much other than ruining part of immersion and create high fire rate meta.

18

I couldn’t agree more. This suggestion is more reasonable than making adjustments to submachine guns. For the BR5 automatic rifles, their recoil and bullet dispersion should be increased to prevent them from being like “laser beam emitters”, spraying bullets recklessly. Their current performance not only fails to align with reality but also reduces the presence of the BR4. (Meanwhile, the BR5 machine guns should be strengthened.)

19

I did note that its something to consider but my post is only about reducing the fire rate meta which might not seem like a big difference, but if you check DPS than you will see that without fire rate increase the DPS of automatic weapons is a little lower giving a tiny bit more time to react before your squad is wiped.

1 Like
20

ARs? My man ARs don’t even have fire rate increase from the upgrades, SF (select fire rifles like FG42, T20) get 10% increase…

Besides its best to be consistent and remove the increased fire rate from all automatic weapons not just the “strong” ones.