X-COM & its sequels are THE strategy PC series I played & replayed the most ever, on both PC & Android on my tablet.

No other copycats I played like Jagged Alliance came close to my love of X-COM.

I always picked my team members that's high on Psych att/def. I prefer mind control the aliens to recon & go on suicide missions than using firepower.

Reply to multiple previous comments:



Re:
"Literally no different from a pistol other than it can have better accuracy and sometimes higher caliber"

.38 (9mm), .40, .45 are the calibers you will see used by police pistols

.223 (5.56mm), .300, .308, are the calibers you will see used by police rifles

Unless an officer is using a personal firearm at work, the pistols should all be higher caliber.

The major difference is muzzle velocity damage.
The pistol cuts a tunnel the diameter of the [expanded] bullet.
The rifle leaves an exit wound multiple inches across, and at point blank will grenade the exit side of the target, painting the wall with gibs.





Re:
"Can you tell me why you believe it's "not a great idea" when the criminals already all have guns too?"

Because police should be there to protect citizens lives, at the cost of their own if needed. (Hence the "hero"/"Public Servant" status they so like to remind us of)

If they protect their own lives, at the cost of citizens if needed, then they become a part of the problem they are supposed to be solving.

Just imagine the uninvolved bystander down the street struck down for no fault of their own.

The better path forward is full head to toe level 4 body armor for police, not heavier police firepower in packed suburbs.

That way they have the option to hold fire and assess the situation without shitting their pants and hosing the place down with lead "just in case, so they minimize the risk of getting hurt".

Full L4 body armor means that when things like the VT shooting happen, the police don't pitch tents outside and wait for SWAT (who actually has armor) to show up while people are likely getting killed inside.

Full L4 body armor means that when police open a door to a bathroom with an intruder inside (or a vacuum), they don't have to be thinking "kill or be killed".





Re:
"You are assuming it's a high velocity rifle. It's likely only 9mm, meaning minimal impact and penetration"

The video shows shots of the rifle magazine. It's not a 9mm pcc (pistol caliber carbine) magazine. It's the standard form factor. Meaning it is likely to be one of common the off the shelf calibers for that form factor :
.223/5.56
.300 blackout
6.8 spc
.224 valkyrie
6.5 grendel
None are 9mm. And other than a subsonic .300 blackout variant (used with suppressors/silencers), all pack a world more hurt than a 9mm.






It's true that a faster/heavier round will pass through more walls, and more houses.

Not sure it matters though, as 9mm ball will go through plenty of sheetrock layers, and rifle ammo stands a chance at fragmenting on impact with obstacles.
Which goes farther for any given shot will depend on what each one strikes along the way, and if it's bullet is of type FMJ/ball or HP or frag or penetrator or whatever.

-scheherazade

It's boggles the mind to think that such massive firepower and horse mounted infantry (dragoons) coexisted. It seems like a plot out of a time travel movie.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

Afghanistan has a pretty damn good track record of fighting off larger military invaders while being equipped with lower tech firepower.

It almost sounds like you are arguing for allowing civilians to have access to equivalent military weaponry so we can stand a chance if our government goes rogue.

@MilkmanDan

One big problem is that different states are passing different laws. Connecticut, after Sandy Hook, made it illegal to sell guns or ammo clips that can accept more than 10 rounds and required owners of guns that were semi-automatic and could fire more than 10 rounds to register them. Additionally you need a permit to purchase a gun and background checks are required for all private sales.

Contrast that with other states like Missouri where literally anyone who is not a felon can buy a gun, doesn't have to register it, and doesn't even need a background check if the sale is private.

Legislation on gun control needs to be centralized. Until the federal government establishes uniform laws about licensing and registering firearms, which should include mandatory background checks, training classes, and a federal database that tracks all guns sold in the U.S., it's just going to be too easy to head to a state that has lax gun laws and stock up on all the firepower you need to carry out whatever heinous crime a person has in mind.

And I'm thoroughly pessimistic about it ever happening. The NRA and gun "enthusiasts" as well as the gun manufacturing industry are just too strong as a lobbying group. These kids are absolutely doing the right thing by protesting and they'll get their time in the spotlight, but eventually that spotlight will shift to something else and it will be business as usual in D.C. with politicians taking political donations from the NRA to fund their never-ending re-election campaigns.

I've already discussed why helicopters and drones are good in areas of light cover while sucking in areas of high cover. They fulfill a role, but realistically they aren't always the best option.

I also explained what happens in real combat. So called fast movers end up being tasked to do roles that they were not designed for. No plan stays certain in the face of the enemy. There will come a time when the F35 is expected to provide the same type of support as the A-10 and it is going to suck hard at it, planes will be shot down and pilots will die or be captured. I suspect this will happen especially with the forces using the F35 that are not the Air Force, such as the Marines. Here is a link to the laughable failures that the Marines had with the plane, but due to the 'cannot fail' nature of the project, they certified it anyway. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/not-a-big-suprise-the-marines-f-35-operational-test-wa-1730583428

Finally, the A-10 was absolutely not designed initially to be a Soviet tank killer. The initial A-X program was created because of the DISMAL performance of the Air Force and F4 in providing close air support to troops.

The Secretary of the Air Force contacted Pierre Sprey and asked him to come up with a design spec for a close air support plane. After consulting with the pilots we had in Vietnam, mostly the successful ones that were flying the prop driven A-1 Skyraider (which btw, destroyed the F4 JET in CAS operations), it was indicated that the ideal aircraft should have long loiter time, low-speed maneuverability, massive cannon firepower, and extreme survivability. It was only later, after the plane had been mostly designed, that the USAF asked that it be also tasked to counter the Soviets.

As I said, the Air Force has always hated providing CAS to the other branches of the Armed Forces. They constantly forget that you need to make a multi-role fighter actually function in a multi-role environment, preferring to think that they can buzz in and buzz out while the rest of the military does the 'dirty' work. However, they always get burned for it. Just like now, when they were fighting as hard as possible to kill the A-10, they discovered that fighting a force that is mobile and that hides in cover/cities (ISIS) is damn near impossible with fast planes/drones. Which is why they changed paths and rescheduled the A-10 phase out to 2028 (or beyond).

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/superior-firepower-the-making-of-aliens

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by eric3579. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*relatedto=http://videosift.com/video/superior-firepower-the-making-of-aliens

i posted this:
http://videosift.com/video/superior-firepower-the-making-of-aliens

Summer of '84, I lived just down the way from arcade, replete with stand-up machines, cocktail models, jukebox, etc., but the best part was they had an entire wall of pinball machines which ran the length of the establishment. Most of them were old models, which still used roll counters; they only had a handful of newer models. One of which was Firepower by Williams. Fell in love with that game and it's still on my list as a "get" item when I win the lottery.

@SDGundamX
This video is intended to sway people's opinions through faulty empirical results. Thankfully, intellectuals in this thread are noting those flaws.

We know concealed carry weapons sometimes save lives, as discussed above. "The rampage was ended because one person could defend himself from the cowardly nutjob. You will not see the real story in the mainstream media."


Legislation limiting firepower? Probably a fair idea. Trying to ban self-defense by responsible people, but not ban weapons used by violent criminals? Harder to make that case.