#Small arms

[telogreika]

East German Miku

[ask-the-toy-box]

[historicalfirearms]

Russia's Rare A-545 in Ukraine

The Russian A-545 is perhaps the rarest of assault rifles in use in Ukraine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion last year there have only been a handful of potential sightings of the rifle which features an internal recoil mitigation system.

Check out the full article here

[lilafeuer]

Artist: @BYPOS44 (Twitter)

[ltwilliammowett]

Flintlock Naval Blunderbuss by G. Haskins, England, 1758

[slowlypalewinner]

Revy's iconic sidearm

[harmcityherald]

Unusual swamp creature was an ice age predator before the dinosaurs | CNN

An illustration depicts Gaiasia jennyae lurking at the bottom of a swamp, poised to grab its prey.

Gabriel Lio/Courtesy Field Museum

[kaecana]

for my birthday wish i want skinny arms 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

[krazykatt111]

Marky Kat from Small Arms. Seems to be a pretty obscure and forgotten game, I don't ever see fanart for it 😭 I loved playing it as a kid in 2007 - 2008 or 2009. Mained Mr Truffles (the sniper assassin pig) on it

If you don't know this game, it was a platform fighter arcade game on the Xbox 360. Had some similarities with Smash Bros, but it was stamina only and every char had their own gun (except the DLC chars who had the same weapons as 2 of the main/base cast). Guns and food were items too. Very fun game, I wish it became a franchise.

[swaps55]

Help me figure a thing out from the lore: how does the heatsink clip work into the weapon? By that I mean, from where is it inserted to how can it even fit every gun?

It doesn’t make sense to me because not only there doesn’t seem to be a dedicated entrance and exit for it (save rare exceptions, but even those don’t help), the reload animations doesn’t really help figure it out. Plus, the size of the clip is never explained… how can an universal design fit and take the required heat load from very different gun types, sizes and heat production!

Take the Carnifex, how can the clip be inserted like a modern pistol when there doesn’t seem to room for it, given the size of the grip, and then be ejected from the center of the top barrel, which by the way is right under where an optical sight might go? Same goes for the N7 Valkyrie but worse because even though there’s are dedicated insert and eject parts for the heatsink, they are in places that don’t work! The heatsink clip goes in from under the second barrel of the gun, but it’s the first barrel that fires, and the place where the clip is ejected is right under the place for the optional optical sight! And the second barrel is then supposed to be where the range finder is, but it’s close to the heatsink insertion slot… It doesn’t make sense! Please help!

This is such an excellent question, and there isn’t an easy answer. Essentially you have to choose how you want to look at it.

Mass Effect 2/3 eschew a lot of lore and hard science in the name of The Rule of Cool – which isn’t a bad design decision (even if my eye will always twitch seeing Miranda walk into vacuum with a face mask). So, what you SEE in the game just isn’t compatible with the ‘rules’ of the universe.

For instance, the optical sight you mentioned is really utterly unnecessary in a world where you have canonical smart targeting. Right from the codex:

Top-line weapons also feature smart targeting that allows them to correct for weather and environment. Firing on a target in a howling gale feels the same as it does on a calm day on a practice range. Smart targeting does not mean a bullet will automatically find the mark every time the trigger is pulled; it only makes it easier for the marksman to aim.

So, if you have targeting assist, what do you need the sight for? A manual sight is actually a step backwards technology-wise. Well, it’s in the game because it’s a modification that gives the player agency, looks cool, and adds to the gameplay.

Similarly, two of my favorite guns in the game are the Piranha and the Typhoon, the design of which make no sense from a lore standpoint. Small arms weapons in Mass Effect don’t use traditional bullets. They use an ammo block, from which an appropriate-sized projectile is shaved off the block and accelerated by magnets. Yet, the Piranha has an ammo drum and both of those weapons spit bullet casings. Why? Because look how fucking cool they are.

The animations aren’t a good thing to rely on, either, because those are also limited by game design. If you take a look at how a gun is held in a character’s hands, it sometimes looks REALLY goofy, because in Mass Effect 3, a universal gun design was used to design all the animations around. (Side note – have you ever noticed how a ME1 biotic holds their gun while casting a power? It’s wild.)

So, how do the heatsinks work? How can a universal design fit and manage heat loads from very different weapon types? Unfortunately the answer isn’t really in the game, because it didn’t really need to be. It was an in-universe explanation for a new mechanic, and the visual of it is tailored to the player: it needs to be easy to see for pickups, and it needs to facilitate gameplay, so it’s “universal.”

There is an answer here, though. A heat sink in and of itself isn’t complicated, and the laws of thermodynamics don’t change from weapon to weapon. You could think of it as kind of a PEZ dispenser. When you buy a PEZ candy roll, you get a wrapper with X number of PEZ in it that you shove into a dispenser. So, the thing that changes from weapon to weapon is how quick it goes through each candy.  A Carnifex burns through more heat per bullet than a Typhoon, so it requires more sink. And once each PEZ gets saturated with heat, it pops out of a vent.  

As for where the heat sink is located on the weapon, it would have to be somewhere easy to access and change out on the fly. And sometimes, when the weapon design isn’t compatible with the lore in the first place, it’s might be hard to actually figure out where that would be. It’s a really fascinating clash between world building and game design. If you’re writing about it, you kind of have to pick and choose how you want to confront it. Do you tone down the Cool Factor in favor of the lore? Do you handwave it? Do you just…not mention the discrepancy? It’s up to you. In my case, Sam Shepard’s favorite shotgun is still the Piranha, even if the design of it doesn’t make sense. I’m just…not gonna comment on that part of it. XD

[antonianon]

Served the American North to the Australian South, a rifle that's been through the World at War, the Lee-Enfield.

[telogreika]

Miku of the remnants of the Slovak branch of the Communist Revolutionary Army, her battle is destined to fail but she is trying

[aperolcunt]

[historicalfirearms]

Heckler & Koch HK416 In Ukraine

As the proliferation of 5.56x45mm rifles in Ukraine continues the latest rifle to begin to be seen in use is the Heckler & Koch HK416. Small numbers of the rifle have been seen in use with Ukrainian special operations forces so far.

Check out the video below:

Be sure to check out our accompanying article for this video here

[lilafeuer]

“HEY! YOU DIDN’T PAY!“ Artist: @Kinshio0 (Twitter)

[ltwilliammowett]

Arms cache with small arms aboard HMS Victory ( Pistols, grabblings hooks, boarding pikes and cutlasses) photo by Michael J. Connolly