I personally like the idea of building and customizing weapons. Its something that I always felt was lacking from games. The player should be able to make the weapon of their dreams if they have the right parts and technical knowledge.

To make weapons you can use the blue print method that lists the parts need to make the weapon. If the player has the plans and the parts they can build that weapon. This limits the weapons that can be built allowing the designer to deciede what can be built and balance them accordingly.

Customizing weapons should either change the weapon to diffrent weapon. Or modify stats Or add new abilites. This could be handled by limiting the number of modifiers a weapon is allowed or parts of the weapon.

For instance lets say you have shotgun, it has the following parts: Barrel, handle, firing mechanisim, magazine. If you the parts you could do one of the following to the barrel. Saw off the barrel increasing it short ranged damage, add an additonal barrel letting you fire 2 rounds at once, or lengthen the barrel increasing the range. However you can only apply one of the modifactions since they are all mutility exlusive.


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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

I say go for it. Personally, I love choosing the loadout in flight sims, configuring mechs in Mech Warrior and designing ships in space strategy games.

However, it''s important that it can have a profound impact on gameplay. If there are only minor differences at best when using the equipment, it''s not worth the effort.

Having said this, I probably won''t bother with self-built weapons in any of my own designs.

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Our only true limit
is our imagination

Aim for the horizon
but watch your step

You know, the system can always be abstracted a bit to it''s fundamental components. You lose a little bit of the realism, but you can make a system thats totally understandable, and balanced with advantages and drawbacks for each "item." This idea is a bit a kin to having a generic "Accessory" option in rpg equipment.

So like, the FORCE10mm handgun could have two open accessory places... not sure what you''d call it... And then the player picks his/her two favorite things to put on it... ACCURACY+1 and CLIP+1

If you have a PSX, find Megaman Legends for an idea how this works.