RPD

"' A classic SAW, cannot argue that. But don't ask me why you don't see too much of them ... the RPK took over every single bits of success. ' - The Range's Dealer"The Degtyarev RPD is a russian Squad Automatic Weapon featured in Rodblogan Warfare.

In Real Life Developement
Earlier before the Americans, as war on the Eastern Front was still going on, the Soviets were starting to work for their own belt-fed counterpart to the MG34 and MG42. While developement started in mid-WW2 alongside the SKS, wartime stress stiffled popularity until the 1950s. Essentially, the RPD was the last of a line of machine guns that started out as the DP-27. The RP-46 was the belt-fed iteration of the DP-27 and was by all means a General Purpose Machine Gun. The next gun however would be a bit different, as this time, intermediate cartridges would be the hotness of gun design. This led to the RPD, which functionally is a scaled-down RP-46.

In a world 10 years before the Minimi, it had a lively service time, especially in the Eastern Block. However while a decent SAW, it was apparent something would beat it up. Belts were a pain in the rectum to acquire and load, the barrel was not swappable and mainly, it demanded a fair ammount of maintenance to get it running. While the RPK eventually took over, the RPD can still be seen from time to time.

In-game Developement
The RPD appeared during the Alpha and was one of the earliest SAWs to have met the very first wave of reworking, during the Kazotsky Update. Since then, it didn't had too much attention but in late Beta, the rework would eventually hit the RPD and it's batch.