Let me use one small example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Five-seven
The Five-seven. Low recoil. Huge magazine. High Accuracy. Armor piercing rounds. Highly tactical weapon.
Has a lot of features that are far more advanced then your average sidearm.
Ten years ago we didn't have anything like the Five seveN. The GLOCK was state of the art.
Go back even further and yeah from 1911 until the 90s the 1911 was state of the art. And before that it was the revolver and don't get me started on rifles machine guns or subs.
But we have multiple varieties of automatic shotguns and so forth. Some that even fire mini artillery shells. Why in 30 to 40 years would we not have more advanced weaponry?
I apologize for the following. I fought the urge to get involved in this, being as I just wanted to do my usual spooking without registering today. However :comma: this thread was too much, especially this comment. I personally hate being a "sharpshooter" of things that people say, but this was just a completely terrible validation. I'll try to explain why without detracting too much from the discussion I want to make later.
The FN 57 pistol offers nothing innovative or new to firearms designs. It is merely a sidearm which is
chambered in the 5.7mm NATO cartridge. The low recoil is due to the grainage of the bullet (typical military-style ball ammo being a mere 23 grains), not the design of the weapon. This can be compared to a 5.56mm bullet which typically has a grainage of 62 gr for ball ammo. The difference here is most notably important in the spectrum of energy transfer from bullet to object. For the 5.7 it is 540 Joules; whereas, for 5.56 is 1,767 J. While the 5.7 does--in theory--allow you to carry apporximately 3 times the number of bullets as the 5.56 does for the same weight, it also means that you would be required to fire 3 times as many bullets. Therefore, the advantage is nearly null and void. One should also note that the pistol itself entered production during the early 2000's. Meaning, we
did have technology like this ten years ago. More specifically, the SMG (FN P90) from which the bullet is derived entered service sometime during the early 1990's and was being designed during the 1980's. That actually means we had this sort of technology nearly 30 years ago. As for high capacity magazines, nearly every sidearm on the market today has hi-cap mags available from more than one major aftermarket manufacturer.
As for Glock being state of the art in the early 2000's, again this is not entirely correct. Aside from the internal striker mechanism--as opposed to a traditional external hammer design--there is nothing notably
state of the art about a Glock. Where Glock earns its money is in production quality and rugged reliability. The original Glock 17 hit the streets sometime in the early 1980's. Despite resistance over plastic guns and reliability concerns, it soon became quite popular. Since then virtually every prominent firearms manufacturer has scrambled to produce a similar firearm in design and quality. Quite a few of them have been successful. These companies include, but are not limited to H&K (USP); S&W (Sigma); Colt (Colt 2000); etc. All of these pistols entered the market a few years after the Glock; but none of the companies changed firearms theory with their new guns. The differences are a matter of personal preference, and while distinctly different from one another, they change only how the firearm operates but not the theory of firearms altogether. To say that an internal striker weapon is revolutionary, is much akin to saying that having an automatic transmission transforms your car into a fighter plane. It is
newer technology, but at the end of the day all cars are cars regardless of the transmission.
I want to wrap this up because I feel as though I'm beginning to rant about this specific topic; when I really want to talk about the actual original topic. The last thing I have to say about your comment is this:
Barring some unforeseen, crazy mind-blowing advancement in firearms technology there is actually quite an abundance of evidence which leads me to conclude that
no it is not probable that in 2045 weapons will have made leaps and bounds in design; however, it is
possible. I have two main points for why this is the case. The first is that as an institution, the US Army has been using the same
base weapon system since the early 1960's. Some modifications have been made, but the most significant of which were merely to make the weapon into a carbine (M4). The second is that the brass-cased, primer-fired cartridge has been in production and used at least since the American Civil War. Small advances have been made here and there to production methods, and bullet designs as far as aerodynamics and lethality, but we are still using today essentially the same theory of bullets and propellants that we employed back then. This does not go to discredit inventions such as the machine gun and like, just to point out flaws in your statement. It is imperative to remember that this particualr subject is a matter of actual science not science fiction.
The cool thing about this is, of course, that the game deals with science fiction to a degree. That being said, I would like to discuss recoil.
Several people here have mentioned that only Heavies should be allowed to carry and hip-fire LMGs. Wrong, black bear. Sorry I just had to throw in an Office allusion to lighten the mood of my post. Anyhow, I don't see how the size of a person would affect this being as that all LMGs are meant to be fired--at a minimum--from the prone position with the weapon on bipod. The way that an LMG is
supposed to be employed is as a suppression weapon. They aren't generally intended to hit anything smaller than vehicles, but if they do hit people then no one complains. The more the merrier, I suppose. In my opinion everyone should be allowed to carry any weapon they want. How well they can employ that weapon based on class and size is another thing. I think the best example I can give for this is the strength requirement in some Fallout games. You could still equip and use the weapon should you so choose; however, if you didn't meet the minimum strength requirement it wouldn't fire as accurately. I don't think that having more strength than the minimum made you any more accurate.
Another issue that has been mentioned is the way that hip-firing affects accuracy with all weapons. While personally I would refrain from this method, I would like to play the devil's advocate for a moment. There is a little activity that you can do if you so choose. Go to the biggest room in your house. For the average person of moderate means you probably don't have a room greater in length than 25m (roughly 75 feet US Standard). Correct? The largest span in my home is just over 10m. Now, with your elbow tucked tightly to your side, make an "Uncle Sam Wants You!" pose with your writing hand. Lastly, pick out any object in the room and point to it. Do you think you need a laser pointer to insure that you are actually pointing at the object you are looking at? That was rhetorical. You don't. The reason for this is that your eyes will instinctively look to the center of mass (horizontally and veritcally at least) of any object. When you extend your arms out to your front and point at that same object your hands will follow your eyes. That is, of course, unless you have extremely poor hand-eye co-ordination. If you've ever played baseball then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because of this, at relatively short ranges it isn't necessary to stare down your ironsights as though at any moment they will reveal to you the secret of the universe. This particualr method is useable by practiced shooters out to ranges of 50m; any further than that and you would really want to aim slowly and surely. Methinks the most important fact to remember here is that the majority of all shooting that takes places isn't happening in a SWAT (the crappy movie) scenario where you shoot 1/4in too low and graze the hostage. This is especially true of video games. Hip-fire is viable to an extent (such as inside rooms) but nail-driver accuracy just isn't necessary.
To be quite frank, I'm getting sick of FPSers because I feel the genre is watered down with tons of the "same game different name" products. I just want a game that can bring me back to the surreal feeling I got from playing deathmatches on Goldeneye 007 with my N64. If Brink can bring me a fraction of that enjoyment I'll support it for as long as I can stomach it. Not sure if any of this made any sense or was even somewhat relevent, but I had to say something.