Three Borderlands Gun Classes
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 17:44
While Borderlands will have hundreds of thousands of unique guns, they aren't each wholly random and distinct. Judging from the info we have available, most guns belong to a certain class typically denoted by model number.
I've picked out a few of the more interesting examples below . Keep in mind that this is based on guns L3vi found in pre-alpha Borderlands footage so the finished product could be different.
The GGN Series
Powerful, accurate, slooooowwwwwwwwwwww.
The three most powerful guns in the Gunopedia by damage rating are all from the GGN model series. The Dahl GGN9 has a damage rating of 79 and is pictured at the top of this post; the Dahl GGN20 has a rating of 65; and the Maliwan GGN20 has a rating of 62, a level 2 electrical effect (ZAP), and is pictured to the right.
To put that in perspective, the average damage rating of the 41 guns L3vi discovered is 20.3. So the GGN's are powerful stuff.
The three GGN guns all have long stocks and a scope. This probably contributes to their impressive accuracy. Each has a 0.5 rating in this category. The average rating of the guns we've found is 3.1. Accurate stuff. (Lower numbers mean better accuracy).
The drawback? These guns fire and reload slowly. It takes 4.5 seconds to reload each of them. The GGN9 only has a magazine capacity of 3 so if you fired 30 shots with this gun, you would spend 45 second reloading. On top of that, these guns only fire one shot every 1.4 seconds.
These guns are sniper rifles so I'm betting another drawback is poor performance in close quarters or on the move. I'm guessing the guns are only accurate when using the scope. Shoot from the hip and the accuracy probably drops tremendously.
The TMP4 Series
Compact and prolific.
There are four discovered TMP4's. The S&S Munitions TMP4, the Vladof TMP4, a Vladof TMP4 that has been stripped, and a Vladof TMP4/V3 (which is pictured to the right).
They are compact guns. Sh0dan in a post on the Gearbox forums speculated that TMP stands for Tactical Machine Pistol. Sounds right.
The TMP4 damage isn't overwhelming. The four models we've seen have a damage rating between 10 and 13. Their reload time and accuracy aren't anything to write home about either.
The TMP4 series strength is its rapid rate of fire. When ranking all the guns in the Gunopedia by this stat, TMP4's hold four of the top five spots.
Worth noting on this topic is the difference between the Vladof TMP4 and Vladof TMP4/V3 models. If Gearbox is going to have basic model archetypes, how does it create enough variation to make hundreds of thousands of guns?
Different versions of the same gun by the same manufacturer seem to be one way. (Also see: "Three Ways Borderlands Differentiates 1 Million Guns") The Vladof TMP4/V3 does more damage, fires faster and is more accurate than the standard Vladof TMP4.
A final thought, if the game does allow dual wield and these are in fact pistols...well you do the math.
The SP Series
The pheasant hunter's choice.
We've found 7 guns with the SP prefix. Four Tediores, one Jakobs, and two Dahls. Most share a dubious trait: inaccuracy.
The most inaccurate gun in the Gunopedia is the Tediore SPR1, which is pictured below. Weapon accuracy: 9.3. Remember the GGN snipers? Their accuracy was 0.5. (Again, lower is better). Most of the others in the SP series aren't that far behind.
On top of that, the damage is below average, rate of fire is slow, and they take a bit of time to reload.
My conclusion from his isn't to write this bunch as awful firearms. I think the SP series shows that the stats don't tell the entire story about a gun.
Looking at the pictures, most of the SP's resemble pump-action shotguns to me. If that's the case, they would be firing shotshells, which are filled with tiny pellets. The inaccuracy then could actually be a good thing. When you're firing a bunch of little bullets at once, having them spreading out all over the place helps you hit your target. Ask a pheasant hunter.
Another note about the SP series. I have some of these listed as SPA's, some as SPR's. It's very possible they're all one or the other. It's just very difficult to differentiate an A and an R in grainy screengrabs. It also undersores that right now we're doing a lot of speculating. But until we get the actual game, I'll content myself with that.
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 22:57
#2
Where is this "x8" showing up
Where is this "x8" showing up at? I went to the Gun Database and looked up those guns you mention but I don't see this "x8" any where in the stats? I am a little blind though so if you can point it out?
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 23:26
#3
OK, got it
Ok, I'm getting it now L3vi. Thanks for the explanation. I'm thinking the easiest and cleanest course from a database perspective might be to add another column and data field called something like "Number of projectiles per shot." For most guns, this would be one, but for the shotgun this would be eight. Let me chew over it a bit, because either way it will entail a bit of new work.
This raises another questions though, does this mean we should assume all SP guns fire eight projectiles per shot? Like you pointed out, with the SPA10, we have photographic evidence. With most of the others though we don't.
And @Raider. Welcome to the site. Right now, we don't have this included in the gun database. We're still trying to figure out the best way to go about it.
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 00:04
#4
@Raider65: It was shown for
@Raider65: It was shown for only a few weapons (shotguns that stayed on screen for a long time), and BLG decided to post the numerical damage for these weapons, not the "x8", as "x8" alone is meaningless. If you go to the second E3 video, to the first crate in the iridium mines, you'll see a green shotgun. If you look at the stats, the damage switches from "11" (I think) to "x8". That's the easiest one.
BLG, if you're up for it, you can compare the damage for each of the SPA weapons to the damage of the Jakobs RV1 Steel. If it has a green arrow, then find the lowest whole number of projectiles (ceiling, round up, whatever you want to call it) that it takes to get that rating, and then add a plus. For example, the Jakobs SPA110 does 16 damage per projectile. For it to do more than 49 damage (Jakobs RV1 Steel), it needs to fire at least 4 projectiles, so you can list the number as 4+, and possibly add an "(8)" (no quotes) after that number, indicating that we assume that there are 8 projectiles fired.
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 00:10
#5
Quick comment
I think it's very impressive that they have a pellet count in shotgun shells.
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 02:00
#6
I seriously doubt every
I seriously doubt every shotgun will be buckshot. Especially considering the number of weapons.
Im kind of hoping for a shotgun that just fires slug rounds.
Do you think they would ever put a "stun" category in the weapons? i.e. Get hit with this its going to stun you for a few seconds.
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 02:05
#7
Thanks BLG for the welcome.
Thanks BLG for the welcome. I've been a visitor for a long time and thought I'd chime in if you don't mind :) .
I had a question on / for the gun database.
1 how hard would it be to list the manufactures alphabetically.
2 and list the weapons alphabetically under their respective manufactures.
It's great how you have done it already, just asking as I'm not a programmer so I don't know how much trouble this would be.
I hope you are wanting to keep this going after release cuz I want to post my super weapon that I'm going to find ;) .
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 10:02
#8
You can list the
You can list the manufactuerers alphabetically already, just click on "Manufactuerers". You can also do the same for weapon names, but only as a whole, not by manufactuerer.
Sun, 02/22/2009 - 10:24
#9
L3vi's right
Yep, L3vi's right Raider. You can sort the manufacturers column to achieve your first request. I don't think #2 can currently be acheived though.
And that's the plan. I would like to keep the database running after the game comes out. Obviously, it could never be comprehensive but I would like people to send all the really strong weapons they find. Then you could click around and find the most powerful weapons in the game.
Fri, 03/06/2009 - 05:29
#10
Wait, do sniper rifles with a
Wait, do sniper rifles with a repeat time of 0.7 fire once every 0.7 seconds? a gun that has a rating of 13 fires 13 rounds per second (christ that's fast), so logically speaking a gun that rates 0.7 should fire once every 1.43 seconds (0.7 shots per second, not 0.7 seconds per shot). Seems like something they should clean up if that's the case. Maby convert to seconds per shot and change the icon or something so people know it's a different standard.
I might be jumping the gun a bit, but once BL goes live it'd be immensely useful for the gunopedia to have a damage per second field. Expecially when comparing two similar catagories of gun (like shotgun and MG, or TMP and MG) DPS can be an immensely useful figure from a player's prespective.
Keep in mind that the SPA/SPR series are shotguns, so the damage indicated is damage per pellet, and all the guns I've seen fire 8 of these. the Tediore SPA1 listed will do 72 damage, assimg a perfect shot is scored. I recommend listing the damage as x8, assuming the 8 pellets per shell system is constant through the SPA/SPR series. I sent you screenshots of at least two shotguns that show the numerical damage and the "x8": the Dahl ZX10 Urban and the Dahl SPA10. How it should be shown in the gunopedia is questionable. Should it be the worst possible (9)? The best possible (72)? The damage per pellet with the number of pellets shown (9 [x8])? I think the best course of action is to have the weapon treated as the best possible outcome while being sorted by ascending or decending order (72), but have the column actually say "9 [x8]". As the Gunopedia is almost entirely speculative as of yet, I think we can make do with that.