UPDATE LOG:
31st of March 2024: Updated to 1.5. This is a simple mod, so it works fine.
5th of January 2023: Fixed a typo within the code; Added compatibility with Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Frontier (Handheld Gatling Gun affected).
21st of November 2022: Updated to 1.4.
29th of August 2022: Added compatibility with Vanilla Factions Expanded - Pirates (Warcasket Minigun affected).
28th of May 2020: Added compatibility with Vanilla Factions Expanded - Mechanoid (Charge blaster turret and Auto charge blaster affected).
12th of February 2020: Added compatibility with Apex: Rimworld Legends (Mechanoid LMG and Charge Minigun affected) and Rimlaser (Laser minigun affected).
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This mod is a spiritual successor to the Minigun2 by Techmago.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1588721300
Most players rarely touch the minigun due to its low accuracy combined with (more importantly, in my opinion) long warmup and cooldown. While you are aiming a massive gun at the enemy, it might get killed, which loses you precious seconds of aim time.
This mod aims to make minigun more attractive while maintaining the balance of firepower.
Classic miniguns have long aiming/warmup time, long burst of firing and long cooldown. My mod changes that in line with Minigun2 philosophy: short aiming time, single bullet fire instead of burst, short cooldown. The cooldown time is chosen to make a volley of fire take as much time as the vanilla burst fire, prep and cooldown included.
Regular minigun takes 2.5 of aiming time, 2 seconds to shoot all 25 bullets and 2.3 seconds of cooldown, with a total of 6.8 seconds for fire cycle. This mod makes the cooldown and warmup .14 seconds, so to fire 25 shots you would need 7 seconds. Just a touch more, but that is compensated by the ability to move away easier.
Cenipede's heavy mechanoid blaster is given the same treatment: the 1.25 seconds of warmup, 1.92 seconds of fire and 7.4 cooldown are replaced by .11 warmup and .33 cooldown. My desire for this change was the main reason I decided to actually make this mod: it felt weird that only a regular minigun would be affected by such a change.
For those who do not want this as a part of the gameplay, refer to the additional mod FRW - No Centipede Patch that removes any changes to the heavy blaster: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2281593604 (please be aware that this additional patch does nothing on its own, it only triggers the lack of change in the original mod).
Eventually, I went all in on the idea, and added support for Vanilla Weapons Expanded and VWE - Laser miniguns. Charge minigun got its 2.8 seconds of warmup and cooldown and 1.9 seconds of fire replaced with 0.13 warmup and cooldown times. Sure, it now takes 7.8 seconds instead of 7.5 seconds to fire 30 bullets, but again, you can move and change your target easily.
Laser minigun was the most challenging due to me trying to do justice to the cooldown system. Originally the laser minigun takes 4 seconds of warmup, 1.63 seconds of firing its 8 shots and then 1 second of cooldown (5.83 seconds total). However, each stationary shot reduced warmup time by .55 seconds, which eventually lead to 0 warmup time (hence the max overheat speed of 1 shot (or rather, burst) per second). This mod makes the cooldown 0.13 seconds and the warmup 0.77 seconds. This, along with the cooldown reduction of .05 per shot, leads to the same 5.8 seconds of time to fire 8 shots. However, soon the cooldown will become 0, and make the firing speed match the max overheat of an unchanged laser minigun: 1 volley of 8 shots per second (roughly).
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Total list of affected mods and guns:
- Standard RimWorld (regular Minigun and Heavy mechanoid blaster);
- Vanilla Weapons Expanded (Charge minigun);
- Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Laser (Laser minigun);
- Apex: RimWorld Legends (Mechanoid LMG and Charge minigun);
- RimLaser (Laser minigun);
- Vanilla Factions Expanded - Mechanoid (Charge blaster turret and Auto charge blaster);
- Vanilla Factions Expanded - Pirates (Warcasket Minigun);
- Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Frontier (Handheld Gatling gun).
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Again, this mod, just like Minigun2, doesn't change the accuracy of the minigun. It is still very hard to hit anything with it. However, now you can begin spraying way quicker and be less vulnerable while you're at it. Of course, it is now harder to avoid the centipedes, but that's where the crappy accuracy comes into play, as it always did.
Good luck spraying and praying to all of you!
