- Yes
- No
- Maybe/unsure
- Yes, but not as presented here (please explain in the comments)
Those of you familiar with lang modding will know what a /short name is. For those of you who don’t know, a /short name is exactly that: a short name for a weapon. For example, here is one of the text entires in my lang mod for the AIM-9M:
The /short name is shown in things like the weapon selector, as seen here:
However, when I hover over it, it displays the standard, or “long” name:
However, gun ammunition for tanks, ships, aircraft, and helicopters do not have /short names. This means that if I wanted to give a shell its full, proper name, I can’t unless I want the text to be cut off. For example, take the M456A2 shell. It only has 1 text entry.
This means that I can either leave it as M456A2 and not give it its full, proper name, or I can give it its full name of “Cartridge, 105mm, HEAT-T-MP, M456A2,” but the text will get cut off. It would show up correctly when I hover over it.
However, the name here gets cut off:
That means that when it comes to projectiles, a choice has to be made between readability and accuracy (or whatever else you are trying to name it depending on your lang mod). You cannot have both, only one or the other. Nowhere else in the game do you need to make this choice. Pretty much every missile, gun, bomb, rocket, etc., with very few exceptions, gets a short name. Vehicles get multiple levels of names, having 4 in total, and AI units get 3 levels. Only with gun ammunition do these options become mutually exclusive.
So, to rectify this, I am suggesting that gun ammunition recieve short names. That way, people can edit their ammunition names to be as long as they want and still have it be readable. I can look at the shell quickly and just see “M456A2,” but if I hover over it to see it in more detail, I can see “Cartridge, 105mm, HEAT-T-MP, M456A2.” I am not the only person dealing with this issue. A lot of lang modders have either had to make this choice, or come up with sollutions like this (credit to the team behind IFN1’s lang mod for this following example):
Yes, that technically functions, but it far from optimal, still results in cut off text, and is a forced choice that exists nowhere else in the game, save a few rare instances like the MGM-51 Shillelagh fired by the M551, XM803, MBT70, and KPz 70. To fix all of this, just add short names for gun ammunition. Please.