DOOM-style weapon mods

Games Halo Infinite
1

So, I was thinking of some ideas to switch up Halo’s gameplay while still keeping with its roots. I figured a more Mass Effect/Borderlands damage system where certain enemies have resistances and weaknesses to certain types of damage, would be an interesting start. I also came up with the idea to modify your weapons to meet these requirements. Basically, the idea is that there is a mod for every weapon that tailors it more towards certain enemy types. Here are some ideas as well as their intended enemy type.

Light Infantry - Grunts, Jackals, Drones
Heavy Infantry - Elites, Brutes, Hunters
Light armor - Ghosts, Specters
Heavy armor - Wraiths
Light aircraft - Banshees, Seraphs
Heavy Aircraft - Phantoms, Spirits

SPNKR

  • FRAG rocket pod. Increases blast radius but heavily reduces damage against vehicles. - Light Infantry
    *SAM missile pod. High projectile speed and damage but can only be fired when locked on to an aerial target. - Heavy Aircraft

Assault Rifle

  • M301 grenade launcher. Fires in a straight arc but uses frag grenades as ammo. - Light armor
    *Bravo Conversion. Increases rate of fire but reduces overall damage. - Light Infantry
    *Charlie Conversion. Reduces rate of fire but increases overall damage. - Heavy Infantry

Battle Rifle
*SOCOM conversion. Fires as fast as you can pull the trigger and suppresses shots, but reduces damage and fires only one shot. - Light Infantry
*Heavy Barrel. Increases range and damage but reduces base rate of fire. - Heavy Infantry

Magnum
*SOCOM Conversion. Increases base rate of fire, suppresses shots and adds smartscope, but decreases overall damage. - Light Infantry
*G2 conversion. Increases overall damage but reduces base rate of fire - Heavy Infantry

Sniper
*HEIAP rounds. Explosive bullets that pierces armor but blast radius is extremely low. - Light Armor
*SOCOM Conversion. Increases mag size by +2 and suppresses shots but decreases overall damage. - Heavy Infantry
*Stanchion AA Conversion. Fires a fin-stabilized homing round but can only fire when locked onto aircraft. - Light Aircraft

2

See, the problem with on-the-fly weapon reconfiguration like this is that it doesn’t stick with Halo’s roots. While I don’t necessarily disagree or agree with this idea, to say that it even comes close to the tree is like saying that a baseball on the other side of the football stadium is within my local area.

That said-While I do enjoy the idea of slight weapon variants that add stuff to a weapon, making it a ‘better idea’ to have a variant better at killing certain types of infantry is just… Dumb at face value, to be honest. Halo’s always had a weapon set that did more or less universally the same damage between infantry types and really only differed in how much ammo you wanted to expend on X target. That might sound boring, but the more basic resource management of deciding to use what is left of your shotgun ammo on Grunts or saving it for Elites was always simpler and never bogged down gameplay compared to this sort of sandbox bloat.

3

Sounds like something that would be better for a Halo RPG rather than a mainline title.

4

If the game takes a loot system type a deal like other threads suggest then I think this would be the best eay to do it. The modded weapons are relatively grounded. I would change the heavy barrel version to to changed fire modes, arbitrarily slower rates of fire is off putting. For example having the hbar weapons semi auto or perhaps with less ammo.

5

The hard part of weapon modularity in Halo is that you often toss your weapon after so long due to limited available ammo. Plus, the diversity of weapons - Human, Covenant, Forerunner.

6

While I think DOOM is a masterpiece and Halo can get inspired by a lot of stuff from it (feels like 2001 again), the weapon mods from DOOM definitely don’t belong in Halo. They worked incredibly well for DOOM but won’t add much of a positive element to Halo since the playstyle of both games is different.