Ludeon Forums

Long time no see Rimworlders. So I got back into Rimworld, got my ass into gear and rebuilt my weapon expansion from the ground up for B18. It took some figuring things out, some luck and a whole lot of trial and error: but here it is with a swanky new name: ARMORY ENHANCED.

What does this mod do?
Armory Enhanced was created with a single goal in mind: to preserve the feeling and aesthetic of Rimworld while adding new and interesting weapons into the game. This mod adds a whole lot of new weapons built into a tiered progression system, so as your colony becomes more advanced, so does it's armory.

This mod doesn't aim for ultra realism. It doesn't add 'real world' guns or hundreds of weapon variations with no real distinction. It creates a 6-tier system for both firearms and melee weapons along with relevant research projects to unlock them. All images are either drawn from scratch by myself or consist of heavily edited Rimworld stock images. Most are 128x128 to give them a little extra clarity.


Firearms

Early Firearms
Early Firearms involve flintlock and similar weapons. With the 'Early Blackpowder Weapons' technology you will be able to craft these with relative ease at any crafting spot. Some tribal societies have also progressed this far, and you might find these types of weapon in the hands of their chieftains or other elite warriors.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Pistol.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Rifle.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Blunderbuss.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Arquebus.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Pepperbox.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/NockGun.png)

Simple Ballistics
Unlocked with the 'Gunsmithing' technology as usual, these guns are the most basic you can craft at the machining table. Pirates and other Rimworld colonies will often be found wielding these.

Automatic Ballistics
With the 'Blowback Operation' technology, automatic firearms are developed. These are typically lighter and faster than their less advanced variants, though sometimes pay for this with minor penalties to their damage and accuracy. Wealthier Pirates and colonies will often be found wielding these as well.

Electromagnetic 'Gauss' Weapons
Crafted at the new 'Advanced Machining Table' after 'Electromagnetic Weapons' have been researched, Gauss weapons are heavy and slow, but deliver massive stopping power. These are considered advanced guns, and will be carried by more capable enemies and allies.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/d33Pistol.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/RifleGauss.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/RifleB.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Scattergun.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Cannon.png)

Directed Energy Weapons
More commonly known as Lasers, Directed Energy Weapons are able to deliver sustained bursts of firepower without sacrificing accuracy. They deal heat damage, which bypasses some conventional armors. These are also considered advanced guns, and will be carried by more capable friends and foes.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/LaserPistol1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/LaserRifle1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/LongRifle1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/LaserGatling1.png)

Railgun Weaponry
Improving on Gauss technology with the 'Rail Weapons' research, Railguns trade the raw damage of Gauss weapons for reduced weight and exceptional accuracy. Railguns are considered elite firearms, and will sometimes be carried by those with access to such weapons.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/PistolA.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/SMG.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/e7RifleA.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/343RifleB.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Lance.png)

Microfield-Contained Superheated Plasma Weaponry
Plasma weapons are a refinement on Laser weapons: dedicated to dealing raw damage. They are cumbersome, inaccurate and fire slow projectiles, but each shot has a small blast radius and can potentially deal significant damage. Plasma guns are also considered to be elite firearms, and will sometimes be carried by those meriting such equipment.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Pistol1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Pulsar1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Rifle1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Cannon1.png)

Mag-Charge Weapons
Only after researching both Rail and Plasma technology will you be able to research Mag-Charge Firearms. These weapons combine technologies to deliver focused, deadly firepower with superior speed and precision. Mag-Charge weapons are the final tier of elite firearms, and be carried only by elite enemies with the wealth to afford such rare weapons.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/26dPistol1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/PulseRifle1.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/PulseRifle2.png)


Melee Weapons

The Humble Club
A cudgel, a stick, a lump of stone barely shaped into a weapon. The club is the most primitive weapon - crafted quickly and cheaply at a crafting spot. This is the only weapon in it's tier.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/SmallClub.png)

Primitive Weapons
Consisting of the Knife, the Hatchet, the Warclub, the Ikwa and the Spear, these weapons are crafted at the crafting spot with significantly more time and effort than the simple club. They are more damaging, and some have some utility in activities other than war.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Shiv.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Hatchet.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Spear.png)

Simple Forged Weapons
Unlocked alongside the forge as usual, these weapons are refined to perform their specific purpose with greater efficiency. They include the Dagger, the Shortsword, the Axe, the Pickaxe, the Mace and the Claw.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Dagger.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/ShortSword.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Axe.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Pickaxe.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Mace.png)

Advanced Forged Weapons
Requiring the new 'Advanced Smithing Techniques' research, these weapons are further improved designes of existing patterns: the Longsword, the Battleaxe, the Greatmace, the Glaive and the Talon.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/LongSword.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Battleaxe.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Greatmace.png)(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Glaive.png)

Vibroweapons
Requiring further research and access to a machining table, Vibroweapons are crafted from Components and Steel and included blades which vibrate at exeptional frequencies to further enhance their cutting power. They include the Vibroknife, the Vibrosword, the Vibroaxe and the Vibrolance.
(Animated artwork: not yet updated - still 64x64)

Power Weapons
The pinnacle of melee weaponry - Power weapons are crafted at the Advanced Machining Table after being researched. They are expensive and slow the wielder down, but pack enough punch to take down an unarmored target in a single strike.
(Animated artwork: not yet updated - still 64x64)


Other Weapons

There are a handful of other weapons hidden away inside this mod as well - though rather than list them all here, you will need to discover them for yourself!


What is the state of the mod?
V0.9b Is my 'Early Release Candidate' build: I've done some testing and it seems to hold together well enough: raiders appear with the right equipment when they should, weapons don't fire flaming elephants and so on... though I have yet to extensively test it yet and some minor work needs doing (some artwork is still only 64x64 for example).

You can download this HERE (https://www.dropbox.com/s/r470gyjhir0rfsz/ArmoryEnhancedV0.9b.zip?dl=0)

As a request: I would ask that if anyone finds a bug, to let me know so I can squish it promptly. That, and to leave me some feedback. Did you like it? Did you not? Most importantly - why? Getting feedback lets me know that there are people using this, and keeps me motivated to continue development.


Changelog
V0.9b: Second release candidate. Light playtesting performed. Flintlock weapons artwork significantly improved. Some art still not updated to 128x128 (mainly Power Weapons and Vibroweapons).
V0.9a: First release candidate. Minimal testing performed to quash critical errors - some art not updated to 128x128.


Next Update...
...will definitely include the following:
- Slight rebalancing of statistics
- Turrets!
(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Turrets.png)

...will probably include the following:
- Updated Vibroweapon artwork
- Updated Power weapon artwork

...will possibly include the following:
- A new weapon class (Shock Weapons)
- a puppy! (probably not...)


Licence
Don't steal stuff. It's pretty simple. If you want to craft a mod based off this, go for it - that's pretty cool! Just... don't go bundling my mod (or it's assets) up with your own. And don't just go ripping my assets either: I work hard on those things! If in doubt - ask! I'm pretty protective of my work but I see myself as a reasonable kind of guy.

This extends to users of scummy Russian sites (*cough* http://lttlword.ru/rimworld-mod-dtc-weapons-expansions *cough*) trying to fill my stuff with malware and pass it off as your own. Seriously guys? C'mon, you don't even know what DTC stands for...

The above being said however, I went AWOL once and chances are I might again in the future. If that happens, here's my official authorization for somebody to pick the thing up, dust it off and continue updating and developing it for future versions of Rimworld, as long as I'm not around.

ludeon.com is currently the only place for this mod to be located, and I would like to keep it that way - at least for the time being.

Holy heck, I remember your weapon mod from A16. Very nice textures now.

Many thanks!

Yeah, I feel that the art is a significant step forward from what I had before - I've been working on getting the quality up across the board, all while trying to keep withing the classic Rimworld asthetic. Some stuff still needs updating (most of the flintlock stuff is still only 64x64 for example) but generally those haven't been redone yet because they still look pretty nice at those resolutions.

This mod looks fantastic. I wanted to have a few more choice weapons, that are actually distinct, and this looks like it's right up my alley! I just think it is a bit silly to have say, 15 different kinds of semi-auto pistols that all are essentially the same thing with maybe a few percentage points difference in stats.

Quick question - do you have an estimate or anything to the amount of different weapons added in each category? Say, 10 melee, 10 ranged, or something?

Thanks for all of your hard work, hope you had a merry Christmas, and I hope you have a happy New Year as well!

In total, I think there are a total of about... 30 guns and 20 melee weapons? Then there's 5 non-firearm ranged weapons and a flamethrower too. That's a very rough guess: I'm not at my pc at the minute.

Could the pickaxe give a mining speed modifier if equipped? I'm really looking forward to it, seems legit  ;D

Hey there Lewis, loving the fallout vibe of some of these, great job on those textures

Heh, yeah the Gauss weapons were initially inspired pretty heavily by the fallout 4 Gauss rifle, then mixed and modified. I had a lot of fun with them.

As for stat benefits - they are already there! Axes give a benefit to plant cutting with knives giving a smaller bonus, and the pickaxe gives a bonus to mining with other blunt weapons providing a smaller bonus.


Minor update: significantly improved the appearance of Flintlock weapons. Also added detailed info to the OP if anyone fancies a bit more info on the mod now.

Great job with the pics in the OP, it looks very nice. I just realized one thing I've been missing this whole time that your mod will help with - tools for jobs. It would be great if someone could make a mod to interact with something like Simple Sidearms, so that pawns could automatically swap to any carried tool for a specific job they might be going to do. Example have some of your plant cutters carry axes for when they chop wood, or a pickaxe for when they mine, a baton while wardening, etc. At least with the tools you provided I think I can have them set as sidearms, and just manually equip them. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on December 27, 2017, 08:17:58 PM
It would be great if someone could make a mod to interact with something like Simple Sidearms, so that pawns could automatically swap to any carried tool for a specific job they might be going to do. Example have some of your plant cutters carry axes for when they chop wood, or a pickaxe for when they mine, a baton while wardening, etc. At least with the tools you provided I think I can have them set as sidearms, and just manually equip them. Thanks for all of your hard work!

I think the Right Tool for the Right Job mod did something like that, although the tools still acted like weapons with perks (equipped but still). Most were cluttery.

Im personally so looking forward to the pickaxe mining boost.

Definitely looking forward to the mining boost! Mid-late game, deep in my mountain base I have a quarry (set to infinite to never run out) that my miners and builder bots can work at when there is nothing else to mine. And it doesn't matter what type of chunks they get, because I now also have the block convert mod. Slate flagstone floors for all of my hallways now! 8)

And I still haven't even gotten around to trying out the deep ore/omni drilling yet!

So, I've been playtesting this and so far... nothing of concern. Some weapons showed up a little earlier than I expected (a visitor offered to sell my a laser rifle in my first couple of weeks) but these seem to be isolated instances: just the random nature of Rimworld I guess.I'm pretty astounded that I managed to not screw up anything major as far as I have been able to tell: but it's a good thing!

In the full V1.0 release I'm going to fine tune the balance, add a couple of extra weapons (hopefully) and start working on adding turrets based on each of the more advanced tiers: Gauss, Laser, Rail, Plasma and Charge.

The intention when I'm fully finished with this is to have weapons gradually increase in power from tier to tier, but without overshadowing earlier tiers to such a point where it's pointless fighting back against enemies armed with better guns than you. To this end, while higher tiers should have better stats on average, each is given a specific purpose: for example, Gauss Weapons deal heavy damage, Laser weapons sustain higher rates of fire and so on.

As such, turrets will follow a similar structure: the Rail turret will fire powerful, long range shots similar to those fired by the Rail Lance, while Plasma turrets will have limited range and poor accuracy but be capable of suppressing an area in front of them with ease.

I also hope to redo the graphics for the Vibro and Power weapons in 128x128 but honestly, their art already looks pretty nice in 64x64 so it's a low priority.

--- UPDATE / WIP ---

Hacked together some nice looking turrets based off existing heavy weapons: the Machine Gun turret (Replaces the standard Improvised Turret), The Minigun Turret, The Gauss Cannon Turret and the Lance Turret.

(http://u.cubeupload.com/LewisDTC/Turrets.png)

Looks more interesting every day.

Love your work Lewis. I used to play A16 with your weapons all the time. I eagerly await the full release.

I definitely approve of balance that makes the new weapons only a little better than vanilla. Power increases can be fun, but due to the random nature of Rimworld, lopsided tech fights occur and need to be winnable for either side depending on tactics and not just tech.

Will this ever be on the workshop for easy updating?

Sup man. I play tested your mod, and I only have compliments for it. Your weapons blend really well with Rimworld and don't feel out of balance (saying this as someone who uses a lot of weapon mods). The gauss rifle appeared for me in the 3 raid (13 days into the game) being used by a hostile pawn from Rimsenal.
The only odd thing I've seen is that your new research tier for gauss, rail and laser appears to be prerequisites for some turrets of the More turrets mod, but it may be because of the ResearchPal mod.
Anyway, keep up the good work man.

That's probably because I repurposed some of the existing research ID's for my weapons: notably Multibarrelled Weapons and Charged Shot, which now unlock the minigun and charge tier of weapons respectively. Bad etiquette I know, but those techs were just so... cluttery.

However! As they still use the same IDs then any mods that use those techs will still work: they just appear in my panel with altered text.

(That, and the next update will add at least 6 towers to the game)

As for adding the mod to the Steam workshop? Nope - no intention of doing so. The community there is something I want no part of and I don't want to support a modding platform that tried to endorse locking mods behind a paywall. I will will possibly also upload on the Nexus in the future as a site I have used for a long time and have a lot of respect for.

Quote from: LewisDTC on January 02, 2018, 02:32:40 PM
That's probably because I repurposed some of the existing research ID's for my weapons: notably Multibarrelled Weapons and Charged Shot, which now unlock the minigun and charge tier of weapons respectively. Bad etiquette I know, but those techs were just so... cluttery.

However! As they still use the same IDs then any mods that use those techs will still work: they just appear in my panel with altered text.

(That, and the next update will add at least 6 towers to the game)

As for adding the mod to the Steam workshop? Nope - no intention of doing so. The community there is something I want no part of and I don't want to support a modding platform that tried to endorse locking mods behind a paywall. I will will possibly also upload on the Nexus in the future as a site I have used for a long time and have a lot of respect for.

Good for you man, I feel the same way as you. Honestly I used to have so much faith and love Valve, but that all started going away so many years ago. They are nothing like there were 20 years ago.

Also, with the minigun turret, will that interfere with any other mods that have one as well, or would I just have 2 seperate types of minigun turrets? I could have sworn I had the option to build it in my game, but searching through my mods I can't find out where it was coming from (290ish mods), and I'm in the middle of redownloading and fixing all of my mods so I won't be able to fire up a proper game for at least a couple more days.

Either way though, it is looking more and more like your mod will be one of the only 2-3 weapon mods that I will use. Everything looks so freaking nice, balanced, and the art style goes with RimWorld perfectly. Props to you! ;)

Shouldn't conflict at all - possibly if the mods use the same Def's, though in that case the mod further down in the load order should take priority.

In hindsight, I should go through and add a unique tag to all my Def's, but doing so would be a big change that required new safe files as it would wreck saves.

Do you have a plan to add some a new gun tier 6 and also heavy weapon?

Really looking forward to a 1.0 release. Would be fun to base a play through around this mod :).

Hey dude.  I was using this mod and all the badass mag weapons my modded scythers were spawning with (using the mechanoid extrordinare mod). Now they are only spawning with the standard R4 charge rifles.  The weird thing is that the plasma guns (the green ones) haven't changed form.  Maybe the load order is changing what they are spanwing with?

Quote from: asquirrel on January 09, 2018, 04:35:53 PM
Hey dude.  I was using this mod and all the badass mag weapons my modded scythers were spawning with (using the mechanoid extrordinare mod). Now they are only spawning with the standard R4 charge rifles.  The weird thing is that the plasma guns (the green ones) haven't changed form.  Maybe the load order is changing what they are spanwing with?

What a great idea for a mod, be able to restrict/enable any type of weapon/item/gear or whatever from whatever specific enemies you want to. They could spawn with some really crazy combinations based on what you give them too. Like tribal raiders, or raiders from a certain faction/technology, can only use forks and shields.

I've noticed that your weapon thumbnails don't display properly in the Simple Sidearms mod options.

I've been using this off and on for a while now.  Definitely my favorite weapon mod.  The quality has definitely noticeably improved since the last time I tried it before you added plasma guns and the fancy melee weapons.  I appreciate your effort with the balance, especially. 

I agree in the balance and this just being an all around great weapon pack. Exactly what I was looking for, everything feels unique. I hate when there is maybe 20-30 different kind of assault rifles, just why? It feels like bloat to me then, because it is.

But yes, do you think we can fix the "icons" or whatever it is, so that when you use Simple Sidearms, you don't get a red error? You can still use both mods, but a lot of things will just have an X for their icon, and you must hover mouse over them to read the tooltip of what pops up.

Love your weapon art Lewis!

I was wondering if you could make a small adjustment to the Gauss firing sound. It kinda sounds like a flashbang going off and grates on my ears a bit. Would it be possible to lower the relative volume of this firing sound? Or perhaps make it sound less sharp/harsh?

I can't help but keep coming back to how great this mod is. I was reading over the OP again, and I had somehow missed the "upcoming" section. Lewis, if you make your mod come with turrets, or make it as a separate mod, I will be extremely happy with it. This is because I know you will come out with something that is great and balanced, and I already know I will be using it.

Right now, I am also using the mod Rimatomics, and it has some pretty interesting energy defense weapons. However, I want to also play with the mod Zombieland, and the energy turrets won't work against them that well. That's because I will have my zombies set up to have a lot more of them on the map, but they will also be weak and easy to kill, with no regeneration. Do you think you might include a wide variety of turrets that fill different roles? I was thinking of a sort of "laser minigun" like turrets, low damage-high volume energy defenses.

There is the mod More Vanilla Turrets that does a pretty good job of what I want it for, and it's not too bloated either with just a few of everything. Something else I think would be really awesome if it were to be integrated into a turret mod made in your style would be if we had a good handful of different upgrades that we can research for different turrets. With the mod SS Researchable Stat Upgrades, Spdsktr has included a dll that will allow a research to change a thingDef's comps or verbs or something like that. So he has one research that will change the amount of bullets that a turret shoots from 3 to 4. You could also have a research that increases a type of turrets range. Also in the mod Rimatomics by dubwise, you have so many "slots" on your turrets that you can put different upgrades into that will modify each turret individually in a specific way. I haven't looked too much into these, but I would imagine you could have something like "insert this upgrade to make turret shoot quicker, this one will give this new attack, etc." I know all of that might sound like too much, but I think at least having "upgrade-able turrets" through research would be fairly easy, especially if you asked Spdsktr, and he were to allow you to use his dll in your mod. Anyway, since on your OP you said we are free to leave comments, I wanted to give you some unsolicited advice, so I wanted to say a few things ::)

I think I've essentially completed all of the content mods I will need to get a new game started again. Now I am just in the process of refining everything to my liking even better, trimming down on any fat, but also trying to fill any holes that I might have between all of the content.

EDIT: Whoops, I wanted to add - will you give us any hint of what you mean by "shock" weapons? Will these do electric damage? What I would really like to see included in your mod are a couple non lethals. I'd like to have, say, a sort of "riot control" shotgun, and maybe a stun baton, that I can have sitting in a few weapon racks, maybe near where my pawns can quickly grab them if there is a prison break, so that way they will be prepared and posted up with the right non lethal weaponry, ready to down (but not injure) the prisoners trying to break out.

Finally, I don't know how you feel about it - but what would you think about maybe a few special bows or something more fantasy style like this? Maybe they don't have to necessarily be "magical" but they could at least be interesting. Maybe a bow that shoots "flaming arrows". Or at least arrows that might do fire damage, and/or have a chance to set the target on fire. These could be "magical" fire arrows, or more of a RimWorld style where we can just imagine this archer has their arrows pre-dipped in tar and then just lights the arrow before firing it. Maybe you could have a bow that shoots arrows that can poison the enemy, either through damage over time or radiation or maybe an increase chance to gain a disease.

I ask about bows, and maybe some non gunpowder/energy weapons, because of two great mods that I think they would go well with. First, there is the huge LotR mod in the works, in case anyone doesn't know about it, and it has a huge team of some of the best modders all working on it. There is also the fantastic mod TMagic, that Torann has an awesome update for it everyweek. Right now in TMagic I think there are maybe 15ish classes, which is awesome. But I think there are only a couple of (not trying to bash anyone, but being honest) poorly implemented mods that have weapons like this.

I think if you could implement items like this, or make them into another mod but in the same fashion as Armory Enhanced, it would be absolutely superb. Stuff like mage staffs or wands (casts ultra basic fireballs, ice balls, lightning bolts, etc. depending on the wand/staff), bows (fire, ice, lighting, 3 arrows, whatever), unique and/or named swords (bleeding swords, a claw that always tries to cut peoples legs, etc.) and other weapons and stuff like this, more of the special and/or distinct/fun/interesting medieval/fantasy type weapons.

I know these are mostly all silly spitball ideas, but I figure if I can get a decent handful of them out there, then one of them might be worth considering :) Either way, thank you for all of your work, and your time of reading this. I really do appreciate it!

Also, just putting it out there - but if you did want to make something like a new mod like this but for these different types of weapons, I can help you with virtually all of the xml stuff if you'd like. I'm just terrible at art! :) But I've been learning the xml by tinkering with, and making some of my own mods over the past couple months. Mehni even let me help him with Elemental Boomalopes. I would just love to see something like this come from you, in particular, because I agree completely with your ideas behind what a weapon mod like yours should be, and I think your art is really fantastic. It goes perfectly with the RimWorld style, or at least the aesthetic I want in my game. All of the weapons are very clear to the player, there is not ever really any question of what something is, or getting two things confused with each other. Even at a glance, you can tell by the color what tier everything falls in. And there is only one shotgun, one assault rifle, pistol, etc. per tiers, just the way I like it! ;) I guess what it comes down to, is if you wanted to make the art and still be allowed to have control of the mod and all of the balance decisions and whatever else, that's fine with me. I just want to help give back by contributing some work to a project that I believe is within my skill set, and something I could finish within a reasonable amount of time, and also by being able to work with someone who's ideas of balance and other things I already agree with.

Plasma Cannon's mass is only 1.45kg, is this correct?

So I decided to give this a try, and while it looks interesting, it feels unbalanced, at least for the lower tier weapons.  Revolvers and Pistols now feel worse than short bows because of their slow rate of fire, while the increase in damage for the Assault Rifle makes it arguably more dangerous than the rail and gauss weapons.  I haven't gotten to the more advanced weapons so I can't comment yet on how effective they are.  If they seem good then maybe I'll just adjust the lower tier weapons myself to balance them.

OK, I dug a bit deeper, and I think I am going to have to do some editing to make this work.  Based on my calculations, the DPS for the Assault Rifle is 14.4/s.  The Gauss Rifle is by comparison a sad 6.15, the Rail Rifle 6.4, and the Laser Rifle 18.7.  Only the Electro Charge Precision Rifle gets a notable improvement at 26.7. 

(I didn't review the plasma weapons because they all have "forced_miss_radius" set which is a game mechanic that annoys me endlessly)

I think the progression of lethality needs to be substantially improved to make it more worthwhile to invest in the advanced weapons. 

Shurp, if you end up modifying the defs yourself, would you mind sharing them?

Sure, although I'm going to play test it first and make sure my changes seem balanced.

I guess while I'm at it I'll modify the Advanced machining table to require Advanced Machining to make.  (Not that it makes much without it - ?)

Are you going to rebuild all of the damage related values, and for all weapons, or just the ones you think are imbalanced?

Also, I've been considering turning off the flicker, I haven't decided yet, though. If I do, I'll probably want combined textures. For example, on any random plasma weapon, on any one texture, I don't think all of the areas that flicker are "on". I haven't gone through and looked at every weapon, but I'm guessing it's like this for most of them.

I'm just tweaking some of the values and leaving everything else the same.  So far I've modified the AR and LMG damage and fire rate and doubled the damage for all Gauss weapons.  Once I see how the Gauss and Laser weapons behave I'll adjust the Rail and Electro Charge weapons.  But I'm new to this mod, I haven't actually used any of these, so my mods could be seriously OP.  More to follow when I have some actual experience.

Well I've got a little bit of time today so I think I might make this a project myself as well. I've got a map with one of every weapon on normal quality. Going to screenshot all of them, because it will be easier for me to have the stat pages pulled up side by side than looking at all of the xml stats, not side by side. Going to then possibly make a spreadsheet and try to balance them out. Argh, was hoping to not have to do this, but I think my brain isn't actually ready to play RW yet, just tweak it some more :P

Also considering taking off the glow from all of the weapons.

Lewis, do you think in the future you might include a version that does not have the flicker or animations? Also I didn't know that some weapons give off heat, I think this might be worth mentioning in the OP. Well, it's probably not too big of a deal, but I thought it is at least interesting knowing weapons give off heat, and it's something I would have liked to have known, but would have never seen it had I not looked at the defs :) Anyway, I have gone through and removed most of the heatpushers out of my defs for other things too, hoping that it will help cut down on some lag late game, because the game won't have to be calculating so many little things creating different amounts of heat.

About the visuals, I sometimes like the glow and/or flicker, but being able to turn this feature on or off in maybe the mod options would be great. I understand that would require C#, and you may or may not understand it. I certainly do not, but maybe a kind soul would come along to enable this in my dream world :P Do you think having a lot of these (flicker, vibrating, glow, headpusher) could add a significant load to the CPU?

EDIT: Well, I've got all the screenshots and a save file setup. However, just getting all of the pistols stats up on only one monitor and trying to compare them is proving rather difficult. I know I could plug all of the info into a spreadsheet, but that would require work.

I feel like I'm getting quickly overwhelmed. If someone were to want to just do the "balancing" and coming up with numbers themselves, then I would be more than happy to plug them into the xml. It's just sitting here and balancing them all out is not how I really want to spend today, the more I think about it :-\ So if anyone wants to do that, or Shurp, I guess just try to post here for others, or send them to me in a PM and I'll plug em in. I guess I would rather sit here and already have my goal of just working away at xml rather than sit around and try to balance about 4-6 types of weapons across 6 tiers, and that's just for ranged!

I'm betting Lewis might have some sort of balance sheet saved somewhere on his PC, that would make it super easy to compare weapons and numbers.

I made an imgur album of the screenshots of all of the weapons stats if anyone would like to give it a shot https://imgur.com/a/ByG2R
The only things not included were melee weapons that could be made "stuffed" out of a certain material (gold club, sandstone knives, etc.) which I think is a total of 6 weapons, so not a big deal.

Well, I'm an Excel god, so attached is the spreadsheet I already created with my in-house calculations of what this mod is doing.  It's not terribly self-explanatory unfortunately :)  But it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  The left side is the weapon names ("RL" is rail lance, "GR" is Gauss Rifle, etc.).  Lots of stats are to the right.  It's not comprehensive, just the weapons I imagine I'd might use.  The "V" section is my own funky calculations as to how good weapons are under various range assumptions.  And the brown columns to the right are calculation helpers.

Note that the Assault Rifle is a fantastic ass-kicking weapon on default settings.  The long-range gauss rifle (sniper) by contrast sucks because it is so slow.



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Shurp, thank you so much for making the spreadsheet. When I was glancing over it and the stats from AE, they all looked the same. Were you just creating the spreadsheet, but didn't put any changes in to the weapons? I wasn't sure, because the ones I looked at still seemed the same.

Were any stats changed, and/or did you need me to plug these into xml for you?

Oh, I thought you were looking for the pre-change spreadsheet.  I can attach another with the changes I've made so far later today.  But if you want to make your own changes you can plug numbers in there and see what happens.  Doubling the damage on the Gauss weapons has nice results, for example.

Note that the "V" series columns are logarithmic, so an increase of 0.7 indicates a doubling of effectiveness.

That makes perfect sense. I wasn't sure if that's what you were posting it for. I really appreciate it, thank you so much, honestly :) With the formulas and everything this would have taken me seriously way too long.

OK, here you go, a simple zip file for your enjoyment!  Note that these changes are untested... I think they'll work well but I won't know until I research everything.  I will update as I playtest if anything seems grossly unbalanced.

From about.txt:
---------------------------------
Enclosed are three modified .xml files for Armory Enhanced which I think will improve the sense of progression with the weapons.  My motivation for this modification was that that Assault Rifle seemed far too powerful compared to the rest of the items. 

To use: backup your original copy of Armory Enhanced  Then copy these files into the .\Mods\ArmoryEnhanced\Defs\ThingDefs_Misc folder.  Everything should work properly.

The enclosed .xls documents the differences between the original and modified weapons on two seperate worksheets.  I highlighted the rifle comparisons to show the progression.

--Shurp

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beautiful looking weapons

Even better. Thanks again, Shurp! ;D

So I can now confirm that Forced Miss Radius weapons absolutely suck.

Two raiders jumped over my barricades and started shooting at my colonists.  The one with the gauss scattergun pumped plenty of shots into one of my pawns and took her down.  The one with the gauss cannon fired plenty of shots at another... and fired more... and more... and hit him only once before my pawns finally killed him.

Forced miss radius weapons will only hit pawns near their target, and a radius of only 1.5 won't hit much of anything.  Bigger is better.

Oh, btw, I changed my modification on the gauss weapons to only a 50% increase, and it seems to have worked well.  The gauss scattergun is a dangerous weapon without being brutal.

Oh my... why why why?

Minigun original damage: 8  Revised damage per mod: 6
Minigun original fire rate: 900 rpm  Revised: 360 rpm

Miniguns have been seriously nerfed... dps down from 36 to 16.  Which means centipedes carrying them are now trivial to kill.

[edit] OK, I take back my "Rimsenal" comment.  One thing this mod has going for it is that there's a very nice sense of progression from lower tier to higher tier weapons.  I guess I just need to put in the work to fix the weapons.  I don't know why the fire rate has been cut own so much.  But I'll fix this... especially since I don't want to abandon the colony that's using them!

Shurp thanks for putting in the work to test the balance across all of the weapons. I haven't gotten to that myself, because all I ever get around to playing are just quick little test games to make sure I don't have any mod conflicts or errors. This means I never even get around to balance testing!

Didn't the author make some specific changes to certain kinds of weapons, and isn't it possible that some of these unique effects/changes are to account for some of the adjusted numbers, for example the minigun? On the plasma weapons as well, aren't they all supposed to do a little bit of splash aoe damage, but they are also slow yet powerful?

I can't remember all of the "flavors" that were supposed to go with each branch of weapons, but I'm betting these are the majority of the reasoning behind some of the numbers being the way they are. And also possibly because not enough thorough balance testing had been done, maybe just enough tests to make sure everything works? Hell, that's all I usually ever get around to myself, anyway! ::)

Shurp, will you post your updated Defs today for us, please? I think it will be easier if you just go ahead an zip your whole defs folder, so that we (or I can, at least!) just replace the old one with the updated numbers all at once, make things a lot easier. :) Thank you!

I'm in the process of learning how to use Patches and xpaths, so what I'm going to do is pull all of my edits out of the mod files and drop them in a patch mod instead.  It may take a bit to do, but at least then it will be done right!  Hopefully I'll have something that looks decent later in the week; I'll keep you posted.

The Rail-Lance is bugged. Whenever firing at a wall and often when at a large pawn (even with 100% hit chance) the shot explodes on the ground, missing the target and most of the time doing no damage. :-\ Works fine on normal sized pawns.

So.... any chance you're around for a B19 version? Or maybe waiting out 1.0?

Just wanted to drop in and encourage updates for the new version. Patches and xpaths can be very useful, so I'm hoping you've got them down now. I really like your weapons.

I've made an initial pass at updating this mod here: https://github.com/adamjl217/ArmoryEnhanced

Needs to be tested, but on the surface, everything appears to be okay

Thanks for that update Adalah, I was just looking to see if anyone had done it yet or I was going to do it myself :D

Hope a 1.0 version comes out sometime. It's the only mod I can find that has actual tiered weapons, instead of just throwing in every weapon the authors could think of.

For what it's worth @ShEsHy the B19 version that Adalah217 posted works perfectly fine on 1.0, I have used it in several games since 1.0 came out and had no issues that I can recall.

Really? That's great then, I'll give it a try.