[MOD] (Alpha 6) Better Guns ~ v0.06 In dev.

[ZestyLemons]

What is this?
Gunplay in Rimworld is a lot of fun, but it's sort of silly how bullet-spongy everyone is. Colonists and raiders alike just love to soak up bullets for breakfast, and walk it off like nothing really happened.

This mod aims to rebalance weapon damage to more believeable levels to add a little realism and to make firefights more fun/intense.


So what's changed?
- Weapon damage is higher than in the vanilla, to make bullets feel really deadly. It's about x1.2 vanilla.
- It's not being turned up crazy high - I'm trying to make damage reasonable too. No more unlucky Neolithic raiders smashing eyes out with their stones.

- Armour is becoming more valuable. Given the increased damage, it'll reduce the damage by more. You still can't soak up bullets, but taking an extra shot or two is the difference between life and death.

- The shotguns now have actual pellet spread instead of one giant shot sprite. It changes how the shotgun is used pretty dramatically - a solid hit can knock someone unconscious immediately, or you could hit several targets with it.


- There's a new damage type: Pulse.
Energy weapons inflict pulse damage that causes pulse burns. These wounds are instantly cauterized upon impact (meaning they don't bleed), but have a high chance of scarring and don't heal naturally without medical intervention.

- There's going to be plenty of new, unique weapons. From muskets to flare guns to gauss weaponry, I want to add a lot of variety to weapons in Rimworld, rather than throwing in loads of modern-day weapons.



Is there new stuff?
Yes! I wanted to add more, unique weapons (and some joke/odd ones). This should hopefully smooth out the difficult curve of the mod.

Here's a sample of what I've added so far:


Replaces the vanilla pump shotgun.


Because you don't care that much about collateral damage.


Four quick volleys of semi-automatic pain.


High-powered punch in a small package, with a lot of recoil.


An old, smooth bore rifle. Inaccurate, but cheap.


A police pulse rifle from a dystopian world, with built-in software in the scope to aim itself.
Specifically designed to take down armoured targets non-lethally, the pulse rounds cauterize any wounds they cause, leaving it with a high chance of scarring (but no chance of bleeding).


In desperate times, you usually point one of these in the sky to signal for help instead of pointing it at an invader. Better than nothing, though.


Some sort of prototype electromagnetic coil-based railgun that fires heavy metal slugs. Uses an immense amount of power, and has hefty cool downs between shots.


A compact and classic SMG, great for close quarters.

Is there a download yet?
Yes! You can download it here
(current public: v0.05 current in development: v0.06)

NOTE! This probably isn't very balanced (at all). This is more of a patch to fix the mod for Alpha 6

It's still not done. Here's a todo list of things I want to finish before an actual 'release'. If you have issues, find bugs, or other comments/concerns, feel absolutely free to leave feedback in the thread. Keep in mind that weapons have been rebalanced to be particularly deadly, and the mod is meant to make the game more difficult in some senses.

Red stuff isn't done/started, yellow stuff is in progress, green stuff is finished.

Stuff I need done before release:
- Finish rebalancing damage, warm-ups, cool downs, and weapon prices.
- Sounds for new weapons
- Tweak shotgun accuracy to reduce that chance they get god-shots at long ranges.
- Tweak flamethrower so it cannot have guaranteed hits for balance reasons. This means that you can maneuver around flamethrowers and dodge every flame that flies your way.

Other stuff todo, not 100% needed for release:
This is not an all-inclusive list. Not every weapon/feature/rebalance I want to do is listed here, just the ones I'm the most interested in doing.

- New bullet sprites for some weapons
- Weapon: 12 Gauge Shotgun
- Weapon: Sjogren Shotgun
- Weapon: .357
- Weapon: MP7
- Weapon: Flare Gun
- Weapon: Musket
- Weapon: Smart Rifle
- Weapon: MPR Beatrice
- Weapon: Treeby Chain Musket
- Weapon: Auto Revolver
- Weapon: Lever Action Rifle
- Weapon: Ross Rifle
- Weapon: De Lisle Carbine
- Weapon: 40mm Grenade Launcher
- Weapon: Sledge-axe
- Weapon: Dualies (guns akimbo)
- Weapon: BAR
- Weapon: Gauss Gun Railgun Rifle
- Weapon: Flamethrower
- Make the T-9 useful It's awesome now, I personally love it.
- Draft up some new defensive tools, like trenches.
- Fix and rebalance armor for Alpha 6

Changelog:
Last updated Aug 30th/2014

Code Select Expand


  ///////////
// v0.06 //
///////////
- Spent some time on improving the spread sheet, so it calculates DPS for us.
-> Simplified a lot of explanations on the sheet

-> Hopefull this will help us with balancing, as we had to calculate it manually before.

!! Reverted Human health scaling from 2.5x to 1.0x. Gun damage is approx 1.2x higher than vanilla still. !!
- Scrapped all the old values, here's a new list of damage buffs:

- Added DartToxic damage type
-> Inflicts the toxic injury
-> Very high chance of scarring

- Implemented the Flaregun, a cheap but no-so-great firearm. Sets stuff on fire
-> Also made some sounds for the flaregun, still needs a bullet sprite

- Pistol damage remains at 10 from vanilla
- Lee-Enfield damage up to 22 (from 18)
- M-16 damage up to 12 (from 7)
- M-24 damage up to 48 (from 40)
-> This means that unarmored targets are dead meat. Wear armor against snipers, it WILL save your life.

- Uzi damage up to 8 (from 5)
- L-15 LMG damage up to 10 (from 7)
- R4 Charge Rifle damage up to 16 (from 14)
-> R4 Charge Rifle now does pulse damage, causing pulse burns.
-> Pulse burns don't heal naturally, require full doctoring care. They don't bleed though due to cauterization,
so you're not in any damager of bleeding out on the battlefield.

- Improvised Turret Gun damage up to 10 (from 7)
- Minigun damage remains at 8 from vanilla
- Heavy Charge Blaster down to 16 (from 18)
-> HCB now does pulse damage, causing pulse burns like the R4 charge rifle

- Inferno Cannon damage remains at 50 from vanilla
- Charge Lance damage up to 30 (from 27)
- T-9 Incendiary Launcher damage up to 8 (from 4)
-> T-9 Launcher bolts are now explosive in a 1.2 blast radius. Great for flushing people out of cover!

- Frag Grenade damage up to 50 (from 40)
- Molotov Cocktail damage up to 15 (from 10, though they're still really inaccurate)
- EMP grenade damage remaines at 80 from vanilla

- Short Bow damage down to 7 from 10
- Great Bow damage down to 10 from 15
- Pila damage down to 20 from 30
- Handful of Stones damage down to 3 from 6

- 357 revolver damage is now 15
- 12 Gauge pellet damage is now 6 (fires 9 at once)
- Sjogren pellet damage is now 6 (fires 9 at once)
- Musket round shot damage is now 35
- Smart Rifle pulse round damage is now 28
-> Armored targets should never suffer permanent organ damage
-> Still does pulse damage/inflicts pulse burns

- Flamethrower damange remains at 1, but has regained the ability to fire five "flames" per shot
- Railgun Rifle damage is now 25
- USP Match damage is now 10
- MP7 damage is now 8

- Tweaked all of the guns base prices. Most of the vanilla guns only went slightly up in cost
(~10 silver or so except for the M24, which has jumped up), while new modded weapons went slightly down in cost
- Railgun rifle price down from 700 to 210, should be balanced enough for regular play
- Railgun rifle now has a forced miss radius, should be interesting to see how it works now

- Added 5% pulse burn resistance to the M1 helmet and Kevlar helmet. They don't do much to stop energy/pulse rounds, really
- Added 10% pulse burn resistance to the vest plate/body armor (it's better than nothing)
- Bumped gunshot resistance to 60% on the powered armor set (it was 35% before, the same as a midworld vest plate)
- Added 50% pulse burn resistance to the powered armor set, as they're built for advanced warfare
- Fixed T-Shirt not covering the arms
- Fixed Buttoned Shirt not covering the arms
- Fixed Duster not covering the arms/legs. It's a long coat, after all
-> Tweaked the stats slightly down to compensate for this, so it's not just a straight upgrade

- Fixed Jacket not covering the arms
- Powered armor now covers the entire lower body
-> Temporary until pants and stuff are introduced


  ///////////
// v0.05 //
///////////
!! Changed human health scaling from 1.0x to 2.5x. Gun damage is still 3.0x what it is in the vanilla, so this should hopefully make injuries more appropriate. I did plenty of testing on this, and it seemed to be in a good spot. This may conflict with other mods, and if it's too big of a burden then I'll just bump weapon damage down instead and leave health scaling as it is.

- Nerfed M24 from 120 damage to 100 damage. You're still dead without armor on a bad shot, but will survive major organ damage if you're wearing armor.
- Nerfed Smart Rifle from 99 damage to 70 damage. It's a police rifle, it doesn't blast arms and legs off.
- Changed Sjogren to use buckshot instead of birdshot.
- Nerfed 357 to 95% / 92% / 86% / 75% (from 100% / 96% / 86% / 78%)
- Raised Shotgun accuracy and range slightly.
- Raised the M24's touch accuracy from 50% to 60% to make the accuracy curve smoother

- Added stats for the Gauss Gun (high damange, high cooldown, medium range)
- Added stats for the Spas 12 (Faster than the 12 Gauge, shorter range, slightly less damage)
- Added stats for the USP Match (Lower damage than the base pistol, more accurate and faster overall)
- Added stats for the MP7 (Great close-quarters, awful at longer ranges)

- Added the Heavy Railgun Rifle. It's heavy, and it's a railgun. Should be pretty rare to find.
- Added the MP7, a close-quarters SMG
- Finished art for the Flare Gun, though I'm not completely happy with it. Probably will redo.
- Added the Smart Rifle, it uses pulse rounds. Can't target buildings.

- Added a new kind of damage and respective injury: Pulse and Pulse burn
-> Pulse burns have a high chance of scaring
-> Pulse rounds don't make targets bleed due to cauterizing wounds on contact

  ///////////
// v0.04 //
///////////
- Removed guaranteed hits entirely from flamethrower, flames may only happen to intercept the target.
- Gave the flamethrower some actual, playable stats. It still feels a little strong, but I'll see how it plays out in actual games.
- Nerfed shirt damage reduction to 2% from 3%.
- Nerfed jacket/duster damage reduction to 3% from 8%, but removed the move speed penalty.
- Nerfed body armor from 40% to 35%. Wearing a shirt+duster+body armor gave you 51% damage reduction originally,
which was a little a little funny seeing how big a difference wearing a jacket was. It made power armor too useless though.

- Changed power armor damage reduction to 68%, from 70%. You're probably always going to wear at least a shirt, right?
- Scrapped birdshot on the Sjogren for now. It now uses the 12 Gauge's buckshot instead.
- Rebalanced Lee Enfield price to 203 silver.
- Rebalanced M16 price to 308 silver.
- Rebalanced M24 price to 267 silver.
- Rebalanced Uzi price to 224 silver.
- Rebalanced L-15 LMG price to 356 silver.
- Rebalanced R-4 Charge Rifle damage to 356 silver.
- Rebalanced Minigun price to 564 silver.
- The T-9 Launcher has been reworked into a gun that fires explosive fire payloads. Excellent for flushing people out of cover, but not very damaging. Rebalanced the price to 244 silver.
- Rebalanced 357 price to 296 silver from 60 silver.
- Rebalanced 12 Gauge price to 282 silver from 400 silver.
- Rebalanced Sjogren price to 300 silver from 400 silver.
- Added Musket price. It's not very high.
- Added Smart Rifle price, 604 silver.
- Rebalanced Makeshift Flamethrower price to 460 silver
- Attempted to clean up some code, made some nice descriptions for the guns.
- Added a Credits.txt for sound, code, balancing, etc.

  ///////////
// v0.03 //
///////////
- Updated fire code to make shotguns feel less luck-reliant.
-> They can no longer hit every single pellet in one godly shot (but have a guaranteed amount of pellet hits on a true "hit").

- Added Musket (credits to Bog for the texture)
- Added Smart Rifle

  ///////////
// v0.02 //
///////////
- Added Makeshift Flamethrower sounds
- Added 357 Revolver fire sound
- Completely replaced vanilla "Pump Shotgun" with the 12 Gauge Shotgun.

  ///////////
// v0.01 //
///////////
- Initial version!
- Added 12 Gauge Shotgun, it's got spread like an actual shotgun!
- Added Sjogren Shotgun, an old semi-auto shotty.
- Added 357 Revolver, a high-power, high recoil handgun.
- Added Makeshift Flamethrower, a brutal and destructive that burns all in its way.
- Added Makeshift Flamethrower, a brutal and destructive that burns all in its way.


[Bog]

- Weapon: Musket
- Weapon: BAR

I have a musket and BAR texture that I developed for Project Armoury. The artwork isn't quite the same as I directly based their proportions on the real world weapons, but they be usable for you, or at the very least serve as a good starting point for drawing your own. Do you want them?

They haven't been publicly released yet, so you won't find them if you download the current version, but if you send me a private message with an e-mail address in it I can send them to you.

Alternatively you could pester Evul to get the new PA version out so that they'll be available to everybody.

PS: I also have a Sjorgen, but it seems you've already made one...

[ZestyLemons]

Absolutely, I'd love to see your art. I'm more of a programmer than an artist myself, so I don't really know if my art's any good.

Sent ya a PM.

[ZestyLemons]

Little bit of an update, I've been playing an actual game with the mod enabled. Some notes:

- It's still possible to incap people, and it happens just about as much as in a normal game, despite the damage being up 3 times.
- Defending your colony is actually slightly easier, since you tend to have the better footing in terms of cover. The upped damage means raiders usually can't overwhelm your defences just by running through them.
- Siegers are a different story. They were hard to attack before while outnumbered, and they're even harder now. Sneaking a sniper or two and taking pot-shots at their mortars can sometimes net you a lucky chain-explosion, but otherwise you're mostly stuck waiting them out.


I'm going to release the mod after I get a few more weapons in, it seems to be pretty balanced so far, surprisingly.

[Quasarrgames]

Aw Darn!

Your flamethrower is so much better than mine. And your art is better, too.

Good job. I'm off to give my gun mod a serious tune-up now. 

[ZestyLemons]

Aw Darn!

Your flamethrower is so much better than mine. And your art is better, too.

Good job. I'm off to give my gun mod a serious tune-up now. 

Thanks, I'm surprised anyone would like the art (I don't consider myself an artist at all, heh).

Going to put out an update in a day or two, I've implemented some new weapons, art, and sounds into the mod!

[Quasarrgames]

Aw Darn!

Your flamethrower is so much better than mine. And your art is better, too.

Good job. I'm off to give my gun mod a serious tune-up now. 

Thanks, I'm surprised anyone would like the art (I don't consider myself an artist at all, heh).

Going to put out an update in a day or two, I've implemented some new weapons, art, and sounds into the mod!

Well, your art is a lot better than mine, so +1 respect.

Also, you made sounds for your weapons? that's awesome! i've always wondered how to do that (i know sounds come from a sound clip folder, but i've never been able to find it)

[ZestyLemons]

Aw Darn!

Your flamethrower is so much better than mine. And your art is better, too.

Good job. I'm off to give my gun mod a serious tune-up now. 

Thanks, I'm surprised anyone would like the art (I don't consider myself an artist at all, heh).

Going to put out an update in a day or two, I've implemented some new weapons, art, and sounds into the mod!

Well, your art is a lot better than mine, so +1 respect.

Also, you made sounds for your weapons? that's awesome! i've always wondered how to do that (i know sounds come from a sound clip folder, but i've never been able to find it)

You have to make a SoundDefs folder (ModName/Defs/SoundDefs/YourSoundDefinitionFileHere.xml). Sounds themselves go under a different folder (for example in my mod, ModName/Sounds/Weapons/357Revolver.wav).

Have an example:

Code Select Expand


<DefPackage-SoundDef>
<SoundDef>
    <defName>Shot357Revolver</defName>
    <label></label>
    <description></description>
    <eventNames />
    <maxSimultaneous>1</maxSimultaneous>
    <subSounds>
      <li>
        <grains>
          <li Class="AudioGrain_Clip">
            <clipPath>Weapons/357Revolver</clipPath>
          </li>
        </grains>
        <pitchRange>
          <min>0.809239</min>
          <max>0.9788048</max>
        </pitchRange>
      </li>
    </subSounds>
  </SoundDef>

<!-- Further sound defs below if wanted -->
<SoundDef>
...
</SoundDef>

</DefPackage-SoundDef>


The only stuff you really need to change is the clippath. The maxSimultaneous tag is also something you might want to change depending on the weapon - for example, on my flamethrower I definitely only want one fire sound playing at a time (since its ticks between bursts is very low), but it could be different for other weapons, or sounds. The pitchRange is also fun to mess around, I've left mine at default values for the time being though because I want to get more weapon mechanics done.

Hope this is helpful, was sort of hard to figure out myself at first. In the future, the in-game tools will likely do a lot of this for you (right now it only supports editing sounds in the core).

[Quasarrgames]

Aw Darn!

Your flamethrower is so much better than mine. And your art is better, too.

Good job. I'm off to give my gun mod a serious tune-up now. 

Thanks, I'm surprised anyone would like the art (I don't consider myself an artist at all, heh).

Going to put out an update in a day or two, I've implemented some new weapons, art, and sounds into the mod!

Well, your art is a lot better than mine, so +1 respect.

Also, you made sounds for your weapons? that's awesome! i've always wondered how to do that (i know sounds come from a sound clip folder, but i've never been able to find it)

You have to make a SoundDefs folder (ModName/Defs/SoundDefs/YourSoundDefinitionFileHere.xml). Sounds themselves go under a different folder (for example in my mod, ModName/Sounds/Weapons/357Revolver.wav).

Have an example:

Code Select Expand


<DefPackage-SoundDef>
<SoundDef>
    <defName>Shot357Revolver</defName>
    <label></label>
    <description></description>
    <eventNames />
    <maxSimultaneous>1</maxSimultaneous>
    <subSounds>
      <li>
        <grains>
          <li Class="AudioGrain_Clip">
            <clipPath>Weapons/357Revolver</clipPath>
          </li>
        </grains>
        <pitchRange>
          <min>0.809239</min>
          <max>0.9788048</max>
        </pitchRange>
      </li>
    </subSounds>
  </SoundDef>

<!-- Further sound defs below if wanted -->
<SoundDef>
...
</SoundDef>

</DefPackage-SoundDef>


The only stuff you really need to change is the clippath. The maxSimultaneous tag is also something you might want to change depending on the weapon - for example, on my flamethrower I definitely only want one fire sound playing at a time (since its ticks between bursts is very low), but it could be different for other weapons, or sounds. The pitchRange is also fun to mess around, I've left mine at default values for the time being though because I want to get more weapon mechanics done.

Hope this is helpful, was sort of hard to figure out myself at first. In the future, the in-game tools will likely do a lot of this for you (right now it only supports editing sounds in the core).

Ah yes, thank you! i knew about the sounddefs thing, but i didn't know about the sound folder. Thank you for clearing that up

[ZestyLemons]

Hey all, for those interested, I've released an initial version of the Better Guns mod.

Some highlights for this version:
- New: .357 Revolver
- New: 12 Gauge Shotgun
- New: Sjogren Shotgun
- New: Makeshift Flamethrower
- New: Smart Rifle
- New: Musket
- Changed: T-9 Incendiary launcher. It fires explosive bolts now, great for flushing people out of cover.
- Changed: Armor is a lot more valuable. With the bullet damage as high as it is now, it'll seriously save lives.
- Changed: Dusters and jackets don't slow you down anymore. It was a little silly that they did in the first place.

There's lots more details in the v0.04 changelog, you can check that out for a full list of changes.


Sorry for not including more new weapons, I really wanted to get a baseline for pricing, and getting some feedback about that and the new weapons. They're not meant to be straight upgrades, but rather situational weapons or weapons with a trade-off.

Download!


Edit: Oh wow, Alpha 6 came out the day after this post. I dunno how the new health system works completely yet, so be warned if you try to use this mod with the game. I'll do testing though!

[ZestyLemons]

Shameless bump! Updated the mod to work with Alpha 6 (some weapons were horribly broken). Armor rebalanced not included yet, still working on that.

I also updated all the promo art, I think it's a little better than it was before.

[JibbeDahFish]

we need more stuff like this so the game is more realistic and less boring

[ZestyLemons]

we need more stuff like this so the game is more realistic and less boring

Thanks for the feedback, the goal of the mod is to really tweak the damage system to be a bit more realistic and fun, while adding some quirky/unique weapons into the game as well.

After playing around with the mod in Alpha 6 I've sort of realized that the health scaling thing doesn't work well. I'll probably be radically tweaking stuff for the next release, and re-doing some sprites.

Edit: Update for the 22nd of August: Changle/blurb update.

Currently in progress of rebalancing all the weapon damage, you can see what the numbers are hovering around in the changelog.

[Ykara]

Man, you're awesome. Love this mod, great job!

[ZestyLemons]

Man, you're awesome. Love this mod, great job!

Thanks, I'm glad someone's actually playing with and enjoying it.

Updated the changelog also, not a bunch of new content just yet:

+ Beatrice, the co-author, tweaked a lot of weapon prices again. They should be a lot more in line than before (most guns are around the same price, give or take some silver)
+ Redid the MP7 and USP Match sprites. I realized they were way too big - most guns in RimWorld aren't perfectly proportioned (I kinda assume it's meant to be that way for readability, being able to tell what gun is what at a glance), but they were just silly large. They're a little smaller now.

+ Railgun Rifle should be ready for gameplay now, it has some interesting stats. It's meant to be a sort of colonist-branded Charge Rifle.
+ Added a new damage type: Toxic Dart for an upcoming weapon
+ Added a new injury type: Toxic (it's painful and gross. Beware)
+ Armor rebalancing is finally in the works. More shirts and armor actually cover colonist arms now, and the powered armor covers everything below the neck (temporary until Alpha 7 adds a way to protect your legs and dangy bits - fingers, of course)
+ Some armor protects against pulse damage now, powered armor especially. Most midworld armor doesn't protect very well against the advanced damage type, though
+ Lots of other little changes you can find in the changelog! (under the v0.06)


I was thinking of adding some new raider groups, sort of inspired by Fallout. Maybe a group that only uses various energy weapons, or a group that only uses less-than-lethal firearms. The idea is to eventually add some specialized armor along with weapons in the future, so maybe you'd trade off defense for a powered exoskeleton of some sort that made your colonists move faster (or raiders move faster, ooo), hazmat suits or suits with built-in medical systems that help fight off toxins from toxic weapons. Stuff's just on the drawing board right now, but I think it'd be a cool escape from just bullet-based weapons.