Guns and Warlords news

Things have been progressing well for Warlord as we near a release candidate. The past few weeks have been grueling as the game's been in closed beta - we even picked some ModDB users so far. There's a last round going out this Friday which will hopefully have more, so be sure to check your inbox later on today.

We've had a lot of balance issues in our beta, and one of the bigger things in the success of a game or at least the fun factor - is balance. What makes a game too easy and what makes it too hard? It's a fine line to walk, especially given how different every gamer's taste and ability is.

In Warlord, currently, there's a myriad of ways to change the difficulty settings. Some aren't as obvious as others. There are difficulty levels, harder maps, and different versions of play (single player vs. multiplayer, for example), but then there's the less obvious like the weapons.

An arsenal can be a gamer's best friend or a worst enemy. A bad gun will drive you crazy as you try to repel an invader, but a well-tuned machine gun might save the day. While Warlord goes through beta it becomes apparent some guns are less desirable than others (sorry, pistol, we love you and all, and we swear it isn't personal, but...) and that some are a bit ridiculous when used properly (the machine gun is always epic).

A while ago we showed you the Confederation's aresensol - the tanks that would mow you down and crush you if they had their way. Well, here's your firepower and your only hope. Below are the renders and descriptions for Warlord's most terrifying weapons. A proper rebel wouldn't go into battle without two or three or four of these at their side, now would they?

SUICIDE BOMB
Suicide bombing is a recent development unique to the Atelian war. For the first time, fanatical nationalism, the devastation of civilian populations and powerful explosive technologies have combined to make the thought of self-sacrificial attacks on the enemy a palatable one. More and more often, Atelians who have lost everything to Fahrong-led atrocities will strap on packs of dynamite and, with a howl of rage, detonate themselves in the midst of enemy troop formations.

SNIPER RIFLE
The Falcon is a sniper rifle made in Rahmos for special military applications. It’s incredibly powerful yet fast-firing due to its semi-automatic long-recoil action. The box magazines carry seven rounds apiece. Designed to damage light vehicles as much as kill soldiers, the Falcon’s 60-caliber tungsten-cored rounds will inflict grievous harm upon anything not protected within a tank’s armored shell. Rahmos provided several hundred to each of the factions in the Alliance of Atelia States for use against Confederate officers shortly before the full-scale invasion began. After the collapse of the AAS, many of the rifles came into Warlord Sahrab’s possession, either when captured in weapon caches or brought by their owners as they flocked to Sahrab’s banner. In the current war, the Falcon is one of the few weapons truly feared by Confederate leadership, and anybody captured possessing one is immediately executed.

MOLOTOV
It’s a trick as old as fire itself, but one that will never go out of style. Small glass and ceramic bottles with a flammable wick and loaded with a flammable liquid make excellent makeshift bombs, and the Atelians are eager users of them. Generally, these firesplats are made with glass bottles and filled with the same fuel used in the Salamander flamethrower – a liquid that burns hotter and longer than alcohol.

40RTE
The 40RTE is a redesigned version of the Kathos Resistance’s “40RGE” recoilless rifle. While the 40RGE was a good concept from a scientific standpoint, its slow method of loading and unloading was far from ideal in a combat environment. The 40RTE is a new take on the same idea. Using a newly designed cartridge, the 40RTE is now much quicker to load, ejects its spent ammunition canister, can be safely fired from enclosed areas, and maintains most of its armor-piercing capability. Despite being a home-made weapon, it is superior to the antitank weapons used by most professional armies in Kathos.

FLAMETHROWER
Flamethrowers have always been among the most terrifying weapons to face in war, as well as among the simplest and easiest to produce. The warlords of Atelia are no strangers to this fact, and they tend to employ them wherever they can. The Salamander is the pattern that Sahrab’s weaponsmiths produce. It’s a liquid-fueled weapon that uses pressure to mist the fuel through a screen, producing a short ranged but intensely hot blast of flame that reaches about twenty or so feet ahead of the firer. Alternately, the wielder can dispense liquid fuel through a separate nozzle that sprays onto the ground and leaves a sticky puddle that can be ignited any time within a few minutes. This alternate method of use is particularly handy for setting traps.

LANDMINE
Landmines are an old favorite for defenders. The AAS amassed large stockpiles of pressure-activated mines from Rahmos in preparation for the inevitable Fahrongi attack, and Warlord Sahrab has requisitioned a great number of them. Most Atelian soldiers carry a few around; you never know when they’ll come in handy.

MACHINE GUN
The idea of a grenade launcher is not a new one, but the idea of integrating one into a gun is. The Bretan Arms machine gun is one of the first examples of an integrated gun/grenade launcher, and it’s certainly not elegant. The weapon is large, heavy and clunky, but does well enough that Warlord Sahrab has acquired a number of them to help arm his coalition. The gun part is rather average – a moderate rate of fire and equally moderate accuracy make it an acceptable firearm for urban warfare, but the grenade launcher is what makes it useful. The specially-designed spherical grenades are self-propelled off a spigot under the barrel and are quite deadly to grouped enemies. Despite its unwieldiness, it’s one of the most versatile close range weapons in Sahrab’s arsenal.

HEAVY MACHINE GUN
Hailing from Rahmos, the Praetorian is a large mobile defensive weapon. Many were given to the AAS by their Rahmos sponsors, and have since fallen into Warlord Sahrab’s possession. It is both powerful and heavy, and as such cannot be fired by a standing shooter. It is deployed by placing the bipod on the ground while the user crouches, or on a barrier that the user stands behind. When deployed, it becomes a deadly long-ranged high-firepower weapon capable of wiping out entire squads of infantry and rendering long corridors uninhabitable. The large box magazines hold 250 rounds each, letting the gun fire continuously for long periods of time, though reloading is a comparatively slow process due to the loose belt-feed system.

SCATTERGUN
A uniquely Atelian combat weapon, this shotgun is one of the most powerful weapons made by natives. Warlord Sahrab himself commissioned this weapon during tribal wars. It uses two types of ammunition - the standard scattershot and an incendiary pellet round for the second barrel. The incendiary round is where the gun gets its name; pellets of phosphorous are blasted, delivering a blinding gout of chemical fire. The blast is utterly devastating at close range.

These guns are also individual crafted works of art, each gun engraved with Sahrab’s crest and historical scenes in their castings and woodwork.

KHAM HUNTING RIFLE
The single-shot light rifle has been a staple of the Atelian nomads for almost two hundred years. While the original weapon used loose gunpowder the modern ones have one-piece catridges and use percussion caps for ignition. This particular model is manufactured in a small artisan factory and can be found by nearly everyone in the area.

VAMPIRE SUBMACHINE GUN
The Vampire is a revolutionary submachine gun manufactured in large quantities by the Confederation for its use in conscript armies. It is one of the first weapons designed explicitly for mass production, using generic parts of lower quality. Although inferior in many ways to other guns, the Vampire serves deadly enough. Many Atelian rebels have picked them up from their fallen
Confederate enemies and used them in war.

STANDARD ATELIAN COMBAT KNIFE
This is the normal Atelian knife. These knives are generally used for hunting, but make an excellent close-combat weapon as well.

GAMONEV AUTOFIRING HANDGUN
One of the oldest handguns in Kathos, this pistol was a weapon of elite status when it was first put on sale. Originally built to specified orders, the guns were highly ornate and very complex. Within a decade, they had become popular and were seen in nearly every nobleman’s hand. The guns, unreliable due to their structure, fell out of favor and now are regarded as a poor man’s showpiece; gaudy and of limited value.