Gun Damage

[BattleFate]

I was thinking recently about the story from my most recent play-through. Forming the narrative in my mind. Something didn't seem quite right with it, which made me think of something.

See for yourself.

***
We lost another colonist yesterday. Roy, was one of the senior colonists. I remember him being a survivor after a raider attack and despite some objections decided to recruit him and put him to work. Turns out it was a good decision as he ended up being a valuable asset to us. I can't recall what he said he did in his childhood though...

His death is particularly devastating, as the eclipses we've been having recently have been a serious setback to our food production. Coupled with the fires from repeated lightning strikes to the growing area, we've been just shy of starving to death for a few weeks now.

I shouldn't have ordered him to the front. The raiders were closer than I thought. I pointed out some cover ahead and he ran to it, trying to get behind it under a rain of bullets. He was hit twice on his way there, but managed to stay up. He started returning fire, and things were looking better for him as some of the raiders chose more accessible targets after. Through the next few minutes I saw him get hit 2... 3... 4 more times. Finally I decided to get him out of there and called for him to come back, telling smith to take his place.

A sniper from the back of the raider group had been missing badly the whole time. I mean every shot went wide and didn't come near Roy when he was even aiming at him. But this time, as soon as I waived Roy back, he fired again, and his shot hit Roy clear in the head. He went down immediately. No cry of pain, no grunt, no stagger... just dropped where he was. That was the end of Roy. I can't even remember what his first name was...
***

That story made me think... what kind of a God is Roy where he can get hit by not only 6 bullets in a regular firefight and keep going, but it takes a final sniper shot to end him? And all this from a Farm Oaf? Then I realized that all my colonists get hit multiple times before being most likely incapacitated. And the raiders too... But they can take even more because they are less likely to fall unconscious. They just fight until they die.

So it made me think... should bullet damage be more realistic? One hit will either kill or incapacitate a target. Let it be the range, weapon accuracy, and shooter skill that determines the outcome of a fight, and not how many bullets you can take. It would definitely affect your strategy, and that of the raiders. No more running through gunfire to get to closer cover, or running to get that incapped pirate out of the middle of the fight... Cover would become invaluable. Each hit you score a major victory. Each hit you take a major loss. All weapons become very powerful, but also very dangerous to fight against.

But how would that work?

Each weapon should have a different damage distribution. Look at the chart at this link (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Nc_student_t_pdf.svg), but mirror it, so that it didn't start high and trail off, but gradually grew to a 'climax' then dropped off suddenly. The 'X' axis would be damage and the 'Y' axis would be # of shots... A sniper rifle could have a higher damage than other weapons with less deviation. So more shots hit in that 'critical' zone, with very few flukes allowing someone to survive (although they do happen). An assault rifle would have good high damage but with a wider distribution of damage, allowing more flukes that are just flesh wounds. And work your way down to handguns which would have a wide range of damages, from critical one-shot kills, to situations where he might take two or even three bullets to drop.

Of course, just weapon damage isn't enough. If you get hit by a sniper bullet and survive, you are probably still out of the fight. So we would say that sniper bullets have a 75% chance of incapacitating someone. assault rifles would be 50%, and handgun and uzi would be 30%. Shotgun would be 90%. This is of course assuming they even survived the damage, which would be distributed in such a way as to mean that most people wouldn't survive more than a single shotgun or sniper bullet, but it's possible they do... if they are lucky.

Explosive damage would have a 100% chance of causing incapacitate if they survived, and they would only survive in a very lucky situation. Fire would never incapacitate someone, as they'd be running around burning until they died (or the fire was put out).

What does anyone think of this? Would it be better to be a mod? To be implemented in the full game or is it just a bad idea?

[Hypolite]

This is the usual realism debate about weapons in video games. The thing is, realistic gunfights are not fun. Like you say, it's mostly hiding to avoid being killed. It translates badly to video games because they are supposed to be fun.

Adding realism to weapons in RimWorld would certainly add some realism to the produced stories, but would they be funnier or more interesting to read? I'm not so sure about that.

My take is that RimWorld should leave gunfights realism to the games that are built around it, like the Tom Clancy's game series, and stick to a not-so-realistic-but-so-much-more-fun weapon system.

[todofwar]

I think having a hardcore mode with drastically increased gun damage could work, but only as an option. In the modding tools Tynan is working on it looks like you will be able to adjust this kind of thing for yourself. Granted, the AI would need to know that they have to get to cover or die.

[spacemarine658]

This is the usual realism debate about weapons in video games. The thing is, realistic gunfights are not fun. Like you say, it's mostly hiding to avoid being killed. It translates badly to video games because they are supposed to be fun.

Adding realism to weapons in RimWorld would certainly add some realism to the produced stories, but would they be funnier or more interesting to read? I'm not so sure about that.

My take is that RimWorld should leave gunfights realism to the games that are built around it, like the Tom Clancy's game series, and stick to a not-so-realistic-but-so-much-more-fun weapon system.

false there are some successful games ( i.e arma, and another on i dont remember the name of) that are very realistic and do well you just have to do it right

[Galileus]

( i.e arma, and another on i dont remember the name of)

Case and point

[boomrat]

I like that my little buddies can soak a bullet or two. Means i don't need to bother with guns or nowt fancy, but i can swarm them with my farming oafs and beat the space meanies to death with 10 pairs of fists.

[theSovietConnection]

The biggest problem with making the game more realistic, insofar as gun damage, again comes back to the turrets. If raiders die in one or two hits from any bullet, I could just set up a wall of turrets to throw as much lead in any direction as possible, and never have to worry about losing colonists again.

[BattleFate]

The biggest problem with making the game more realistic, insofar as gun damage, again comes back to the turrets. If raiders die in one or two hits from any bullet, I could just set up a wall of turrets to throw as much lead in any direction as possible, and never have to worry about losing colonists again.

Agreed.

I'm not yet convinced that realistic damage would be better, but I'm not convinced it wouldn't be either. Certainly it would need balancing, along with balancing for the turrets too. But it does raise a few ideas.

Turrets:
I've mentioned in a previous thread (with no comments on this one way or another), that the following turret changes could be implemented:
Initial turrets would need to be researched. You don't just start with the ability to make them.
The first generation of turrets would be weak, and manually controlled... Essentially a gun emplacement for a colonist to man. Granting him say 50% cover while he's manning it, but he's still vulnerable to taking damage.
Perhaps the turret would be nothing more than a shell, and an actual gun, from a list of compatible ones, would need to be installed in it, making it so you need to chose to use that R4 rifle in a colonists hands, or install it in the turret.
Further turret research could include upgrades... like automation (which grants a 'gun skill' of 5 to the turret, which may or may not be better than being manned by a colonist). Increased damage, increased range, increased cover for the occupant (not compatible with automation), increased rate of fire, etc. Limit the turret to no more than two upgrades applied, and for each upgrade increase the explosion radius (however decrease the base radius for an un-upgraded turret to 1).

If you then balance the cost to build a turret and to upgrade it, then you can make it near impossible for a colony to make a wall of auto turrets. But if they do, then they probably cut other essentials out, like larger/more rooms for colonists, more energy from generators, etc.

Also basic turrets might only require a small amount of power, but upgrades could increase their power consumption, automation of course requiring the most).

Other ideas come to mind, though like turrets are not necessarily dependent on 'realistic' gun damage. One that comes to mind right now is another piece of equipment you can find... body armour.

Ballistic vest allows the absorption of 1-2 more bullet hits, or perhaps simply cutting down bullet damage so that a single sniper rifle will still likely be fatal, but a person could most likely survive 2-3 assault rifle rounds, and 4-5 pistol rounds. A ablative vest to help negate energy damage (R-4 Rifles), concussive vest to reduce explosive damage, and a fireproof vest to make the colonist immune (almost) to fire, while providing little or no other benefit to the other damage types he may face. These would be far more valuable when found in a raid (and far more devastating to lose when destroyed), if the ballistics vest increased your bullet absorption from 1 to 3 bullets than  from 5 to 8...

Which then brings up the idea of weapon categories. Ballistic, Energy, etc. Energy weapons currently only include the R-4 rifle, but could in the future include a weapon from each type... energy shotgun, energy handgun, energy grenade, etc. Energy weapons (at least projectiles) would have a higher hit rate but lower damage... Meaning your colonists may die from 1 or at most 2 bullets from an uzi, but at least they don't get hit often... Or when using an energy uzi, they'd get hit more often, but likely survive 4-5 bullets. I guess I could see it being argued the other way, with lower accuracy than bullets, but higher damage, depending on how you want to describe your weapons... an energy wave, a lightning bolt, a laser, etc.

That's enough of a rant for now, but many more ideas put forward.

[Galileus]

The biggest problem with making the game more realistic, insofar as gun damage, again comes back to the turrets. If raiders die in one or two hits from any bullet, I could just set up a wall of turrets to throw as much lead in any direction as possible, and never have to worry about losing colonists again.

I wouldn't call THAT nowhere near the biggest problem. Bottom line - turrets can be removed. Not bottom line - debuffed, changed from mechanics standpoint, balanced...

What IS the biggest problem is you loosing your colonists left and right OR raiders dying by hundreds. If you give raiders any chance, in early game you loose the game on your 1-2 raid, because RNG. Bad gameplay. If you give colonists too much edge - all raids end up being a busywork, because raiders just die on the spot. Bad gameplay. Even in mid and end game, the same problem is there. Either you loose colonists to RNG left and right (bad gameplay) or raiders die left and right (bad gameplay). You would need to MASSIVELY rewrite raiders AI to even allow them to come into play and you would STILL come across mentioned problems.

To even consider it, you would need to allow colonists to come in hundreds and turn them into cannon fodder. In short - COMPLETLY change both the scope AND the underlying mechanics of the game. This is supposed to be about colonists and their stories, and having colonists randomly die all the time and get replaced by other colonists of same longevity simply makes it impossible.

It comes down to a question: "How to implement realistic gun damage without actually implementing it's consequences?". And if you think about it, it's basically a question of "How to implement X while not implementing it". At that point you really need to sit back and think - why implement X in the first place? Whatever the positives are, are they worth it? And if you ask me - the very minimal improvement in immersion is simply not worth going against all the problems mentioned earlier.