Carrion kinda hit on this point, but I thought I'd weapons-geek it up a bit and be more specific.

"Chain gun" refers merely to any semi automatic or automatic gun that is operated by a motor rather than recoil or rerouted gas. So technically you could have a chain gun that is an assault rifle or a Gatling gun that is operated by gas/recoil (these have been designed).

The big advantage of a chain gun is the fact that if a round misfires, the motor-driven mechanics can just eject it like a spent casing since it doesn't rely on the force from that round to load the next one.

So, a pro of chaingun is no jamming problems really, con is that it needs another source of energy.

Hmmm. OK, Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_gun. Therefore, change of the name to fit sprite is needed. And I will suggest a few since I have quite a lot of problems when buying something with the same name. Space order catalogue should be clear so that I get what I order!

Suggestions:
1- Twirlinator (bad start is bad)
2- Shower gun (as in bullet shower)
3- Bullecipitator (as in bullet precipitation)
4- Twirlagun (sympathetic but silly)
5- Whirl Cannon
6- Barrelalot
7- Twist-off-er Gunby (Christopher : P)

I love small factions with well-done grenade launchers... On second thought I love factions with grenade launchers cause I love grenade launchers, esp. the launchers that launch grenades which wait for the enemy to step up on them and then go KABOOM!

I was gonna go into some of that, but I figured I wouldn't waste people's time too much on the technicality, so I stopped at "one barrel".

I didn't actually look too closely at the chain gun in this before. I thought it had multiple rotating barrels, thus definitely making it a Gatling Gun, but it seems they're not animated, and only the top barrel is firing. So, maybe it is a legitimate chain gun, with some feature looking like another fixed barrel below the one and only barrel.
Or maybe it's a Gatling Gun that could benefit from animation, a new name, and maybe a weee bit of wind-up/wind-down.

I do like how the recoil can slowly slide light actors backwards with the recoil if fired at a downward angle, without knocking them off their feet. I suggest you don't change the recoil.


PS: if someone used Lua or something to make a hand-held gas operated Gatling gun that fired at an increasing rate as it fired, and then started over again when it stopped firing, that would be a neat game-play feature, with a decent excuse.

Also, recoil operated Gatling gun? I'd be interested to see that.

Bingo.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GShG-7.62_machine_gun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryazev-Shipunov_GSh-6-23

Note that they prove unreliable because when you put that many rounds through one so fast, the chance that one of the rounds will misfire and stop up the gun increases dramatically. Not that we have misfires in CC (maybe we should, with all the infinite ammo...)