The many-guns problem

[omzh]

- Gun progression/combat progression in general.
It doesn't make much sense to me (given it's essentially a survival game at heart) that the game gets hyper-militarized so quick. Gun-turrets aplenty are basically essential just to survive out of the gate, and both you and your enemies gain access to advanced weapons very fast. Solution: Slow it down considerably and have a much smoother curve towards advanced guns. Add "non-gun weapons". Homemade and improvised melee weapons and bows and the like that will be the stuff you first get access to. At first guns should be somewhat rare, and these low-tech improvised weapons should have low to no sell value, at least to off-world traders. Raiders at the start should also be low-tech to start off. Gun-turrets should be much further down the eventual tech-tree, so that you actually have to use some tactics, flanking ect. to survive encounters rather than gunturret chokepoints as is the current metagame. The game seems to already have workable basics like coversystems in place and its a damn shame that you never really get to use any of that in some tactical squad-combat. Having gun-turrets later in the game and not essential in the start makes it so that they can be more expensive and more powerful and more of a supplement to defense rather than the primary factor. Taking down that one raider with a lee-enfield when all you have are bows and homemade spears could get really exciting

I noticed that the first thing players often do in lets plays is build autoturrets, neglecting survival necessities like shelter. I think there should be some kind of progression with defense. For one, a more gradual curve in raider attack difficulty. The game should progressive from improvised melee weapons, to improvised ranged weapons, to manufactured weapons and then automated defenses. Autoturrets should have to be researched because like it has been mentioned before RimWorld feels a lot like a tower defense game as it is.

I think raiders should be using simple melee or ranged weapons (throwing weapons, bows and arrows, blunderbuss-type guns) at first. Then as the game progresses, they'll get rifles, machine guns, etc.

Also as it has been mentioned before, weapons dropped by raiders should break into scrap or metal every so often so that the materials themselves can be used even if they are not guns. There should be a type of structure that melts down scrap into a small amount of metal as to not flood the player with free metal.

I really think the importance of guns needs to decrease in the beginning of the game, as setting up shelter, food, water, etc. should be more vital than acquired weaponry.

[theSovietConnection]

I like the idea of scrapping the guns to advance research.

What about Turrets requiring a gun or two for each barrel?  You want that five shot auto turret, sure if you can cobble together 10 pistols or 5 Rifles.

YES like you can upgrade turrets by adding guns and diffrent gun tyeps to them
also i support the scrapping guns to research idea.

I think what might help would be start with this, but take it a little farther. As opposed to having guns be used to upgrade the turret, make guns a resource in their construction. That way, you limit the ability to build 400 turrets right out the gate and prevent every raider attack ever, and you also have a way of using up some of the excess gun pool. Perhaps you could also use guns to build tripwire traps, or something similar.

[Amaror]

Not having played the game, is there some problem just selling all of them?  Will traders only buy a small limited number? 

Onto ideas...

Most logical solution to me would be to convert them into a useful material.  Maybe just metal.  Maybe a higher quality metal for a special purpose.  Just need a forge to melt them down.    I think converting excess goods into something useful for the colony should be always be the design-approach of choice. In a survival-colony game people want to feel like they're making it on their own, living off the 'land'.  Not just turning stuff into cash to buy other stuff.  That starts to feel like organized market society, which isn't very survivorly. 

I think weapon degradation/repair is nice too but only if its handled almost automatically since I could see that being pretty tedious.  This mechanic would only really make sense if there is someway to avoid combat/getting guns since degradation is only a threat if your gun supply/raiders are not infinite.  Non-lethal raids make since here.

+1 for melting down weapons.

[Nocebo]

Having read only the first page:

I think melting down weapons should be a last ditch effort to reduce stocks. Having a better storage system would reduce the annoyance of having hundreds of weapons that you could still potentially sell.

Also perhaps consider that the planet and environment seem very hostile to the fine machinery that is a gun. Without proper maintenance I suppose a gun would breakdown in a matter of weeks if not days. So perhaps keeping guns for spare parts that get used up to maintain/repair other weapons could work too.

Parts and broken weapons could also affect trading and economy though. So there is probably a larger side to the idea than I can currently see.

[mumblemumble]

How about a weapon prefix system, similar to terraria?... Slight variations in damage, speed, and accuracy (and other stuff) between each. Raiders would tend to use slightly worse of weapons, but could also have better variations rarely.

A few stats I can think of are..

Speed to fire, speed to reload (please note, these are 2 different things) Damage, range, stun chance, handling(basically how much penalty is taken per block away the target is) Rare guns having larger bursts, piercing rounds (going through multiple targets if they line up), or countless other things (double barrel firing shotgun could be super fun.)

This way in addition to a MUCH deeper gun system, there will be guns which are worth much less to sell (and perform worse), and higher value guns which are worth more (and work better). Thus, if a bunch of raiders drop a bunch of rusty old uzis, you won't get as much for them than guns which have clearly been taken care of / tweaked for performance.

Besides that, I could see some other interesting effects...Perhaps if you get a very poor quality charge rifle, it has a small chance to light the use on fire from overheating. I could see all sorts of interesting effects coming out of this, besides addressing the "bulk" of guns giving someone too much cash.

[Galileus]

Item based trade. We've already established there are low-tech civilizations out there, maybe even capable of space-flight on scrappy, traded vessels. They would show great interest in more advanced tech they would then study or use. Obviously on-foot caravans would be more in line with the tech level, but then again space-based ones would be easier on the narrative of this specific moon and it's inhabitants.

The problem here is: what ELSE can WE trade IN; and what can THEY give us in return. Maybe they have stockpiles of other different tech-y things they gathered over the years but are not quite sure what they do? Rare materials and plants? People?

[inSayne]

using them for turret upgrades?

[Taleisin]

Hope this isn't repeating anyone's words (this is a long topic to just come in to!), but here's a couple of areas that may work:

Characters should have limits on the type of weapon they can use, potentially grouped into a Simple/Martial/Exotic style like DnD. Fixes the idea of a Medieval slave knowing how to work an incendiary launcher, and not just firing it less accurately.

I like the idea mentioned of gun turrets becoming a research based item. And also agree that the start of the game should be about survival rather than tower defence. However, I disagree that only low-tech weapons should be available at the start. The premise that many advancement levels of civilisations can be involved in this game at any one time conflicts with this idea.

In terms of actual numbers of guns, although I like the idea of sometimes dropping scrap rather than the actual weapon I think collecting a big arsenal from defeated opponents is cool. They make it too easy to become very rich though so just reduce the resale value with exception of really rare guns.

[willow512]

What is the exact problem?

Is it that the players need to micromanage the guns? -> There are only a number of gun types, set a colonists gun by drop down or inventory screen, he goes to fetch the gun from some location on his own.

Is it that there are too many guns and you need to have stores for them? -> Change the equipment racks to allow stacking of guns of the same type. For example so that one tile can accept 5 rifles and 15 pistols.

Is it that guns become the players primary income? -> Stop traders from buying them, or on ridiculous prices, and then allow players to cannibalize the guns for metal.

Alternatively and I think much more interestingly you could make guns a much more complicated data type, so they can be named, wielded and loved by specific colonists, they store their own killcount and develop "personality" traits after a while. Like "Always jams after an explosion" or "Damage increase after a kill" Weapons that have killed a colonist receive negative qualities. Reflecting that colonists don't like wielding the weapon that killed their buddy. These should not be considered magical qualities but rather the beliefs that colonists attach to these weapons.

It's psychological. But the consequence is that new weapons delivered by traders will not work as well as the existing well known weapons.

And then have the weapons degrade and require canibalisation of other weapons to retain their quality. Failure to maintain the weapon produces bad traits. Weapons will be maintained by a colonist with the existing repair skill and can be done on a workbench, which also gives you a reason to include a workbench.

[Taleisin]

Alternatively and I think much more interestingly you could make guns a much more complicated data type, so they can be named, wielded and loved by specific colonists, they store their own killcount and develop "personality" traits after a while. Like "Always jams after an explosion" or "Damage increase after a kill" Weapons that have killed a colonist receive negative qualities. Reflecting that colonists don't like wielding the weapon that killed their buddy. These should not be considered magical qualities but rather the beliefs that colonists attach to these weapons.

It's psychological. But the consequence is that new weapons delivered by traders will not work as well as the existing well known weapons.

And then have the weapons degrade and require canibalisation of other weapons to retain their quality. Failure to maintain the weapon produces bad traits. Weapons will be maintained by a colonist with the existing repair skill and can be done on a workbench, which also gives you a reason to include a workbench.

Sounds good to me!

[shokwave]

A combination of reduced drop rates (sometimes the gun a raider is using gets destroyed when the raider gets taken out), being able to store more than one gun per tile (so that armories don't get painfully large and take up too much real estate), and being able to melt down guns into a small amount of metal (if you don't want an armory, you don't have to have one) would solve the many-guns problem.

It would also make building a large armory somewhat challenging, so if a player enjoys collecting weaponry and displaying it, that's something they can try to do and actually be challenged on, as opposed to how it is now where it kinda happens easily.

[Warduke]

I think having something simple as having a % drop chance upon death that a weapon can be picked up and reused would contribute against stock piling weapons. If a person has a weapon, dies, and doesn't drop it would be considered destroyed.

Include that weapons can be purchased from traders, and have them be uncommon, would be a gentle infusion of weapons into the player's arsenal. These could also be at very high prices, and the trader may not carry everything that you want at the time (advanced weapons would be more rarely sold, as well as very expensive). On a side note, turrets wouldn't be something that you can build from materials, instead they would only be purchasable from merchants, and they too are uncommon and very expensive. The reason this is also important, is because turrets would no longer be easily replaceable based on available resources. If you lose 10 turrets due to a raider attack during a solar flare, or a few raiders have rocket launchers and knock your turrets out - you'll need to purchase them whenever a trader comes into range again, and the trader may not even have many or any at all in stock for you to buy.

This may make it so there is a 'weapon cycle of life'.. with making turrets more rare, person to person combat would be much more common, which would mean more deaths for both your people as well as raiders. With more people dying, more weapons are removed from the game because of the % chance of drop. Things you could experience would be dry spells of turrets, and dry spells of hand weapons. Your tactics may change dramatically because of this.

[NexusTrimean]

A visual Aid for those not familar with gun problem.

There are well over 300 weapons on the ground outside my base.

Raids are averaging 60-80 raiders. Each Trade ship can only buy 30-40 guns if i prioritize pistols and low end guns.  Thus, most of the guns are left where they drop, I simply do not have the space to store them. the only ones i pick up now are those in the way of building. There are enough dropped over my minefield that my stock never gets low even when I am actively avoiding picking up weapons.

A nice feature would be allowing guns to stack in the racks, say sets of 5? that reduces the space requirement quite a bit. Also Please please allow us to sort the buy/sell guns tab by either name or price. it doesn't matter which.  It takes 10 minutes to go through and sell just the pistols and such. I spend more time  sorting through the guns for sale than playing the actual game.

[ShadowDragon8685]

People tend to build up a lot of guns. While it can be fun to have a big armory, it can also feel pretty micromanagey after a while.

How do we solve the problem where people get huge amounts of guns?

I've got lots of thoughts on this but I'm curious if anyone else has any specific ideas on how this design issue might be solved.

One thing I've noticed is that guns often have low durability left after my explosive minefields are done with them. I think weapons with low durability should be fairly shite - like, 1% less accurate for every 5% durability they've lost. So a gun which is down to 35 health should be 13% less accurate.

Now, the reason for this is that a gunsmith should be able to take multiple guns of the same type and strip them down for parts - say, adding 5% health to the one with the largest remaining health for every 10% or fraction thereof that a stripped gun has. So if he has two R-4 charge rifles at 35%, he could strip one down and add 20% to the last one - raising it to 55% health.

I think this would also be important if raider guns didn't spawn at 100% health. Raiders have been slogging through god-knows-what. Their guns should be a bit crap. Only guns which have been stripped and repaired by a weaponsmith, or sold to you by an arms dealer, should come at 100%.

If someone is equipped with a weapon and he notices a weapon of identical type but superior health on the racks, he should probably automatically switch to that weapon, too.

That won't solve the issue entirely... But it would at least be a reason to build a new workshop room, which would be nice. Also, weapons in crap condition would probably sell for less - a lot less - than weapons in pristine condition. You'd need to tweak the math on this so that selling a 100% gun is always a better choice than selling like, 5 or 6 crap-condition guns.

Or, as an alternative, let us smelt down guns for metal. Guns, and metal slag, but especially guns.

[e]I'd also like to pitch in my voice for letting guns of identical type stack on the racks, with folks told to equip a certain type of weapon from the rack automatically equipping the best one they can find. I'd say they should stack like, 20 deep, though, not five.

Also, to go along with gunsmith stripping, it would be nice if a gunsmith could work laboriously to create an extra-special gun every now and then. needing a lot of parts; perhaps an R-4 that sometimes sets people on fire, or a incendiary launcher that sometimes makes a burst of flame, molotov-style. But that sort of thing is best reserved for later, I think.

[Stormkiko]

It has been mentioned already )probably a few times in this thread) But I think that there should be a way to recycle guns into scrap metal. I mean, I'm all for having a massive warehouse filled floor to ceiling with arms, but it would be nice to get some metal from them seeing as storing them requires 50 metal for every two guns, plus flooring, lighting, walls and defence. Even if it was just 5-20 metal per gun, nothing huge, just a nice small boost. Then you can build a nice recycling plant, and if you want then you can recycle some of your guns. Maybe you only recycle pistols. Personally I sell off any weapon that isn't an R-4, M-16 or M-24, I'd smelt the rest. Perhaps it's taken one step further, and akin to Towns, you can set how many you keep at a given time. So you set the limit at five which will keep five of that type of gun on hand for new settlers, and any new guns acquired will automatically be smelted down by your settlers. Just my opinion.

Also as mentioned above, not the same gun problem, but still a many gun problem, turrets should be bought from traders.