The many-guns problem

[Stickle]

I worry that if we are allowed to recycle guns into scrap metal that we'd be faced with one of two circumstances: guns either give an unrealistic amount of metal (remember how cheap very large objects are for material), or people complain that their gun yields less than one tenth of the metal that they could have sold it for. Guns aren't valuable for their raw material though, they're valuable for the machining that's gone into them. It's akin to melting your car down: you'll get a lot less metal out of it than if you had sold it (even to a scrap yard, but preferably to someone who wanted to drive it) and used the proceeds to buy metal.

In my mind, let the people complain... There is no reason to listen to stupid complaints, and that would be a tremendously stupid complaint. As it is you simply cannot sell your guns fast enough to traders, nor is there ever enough metal to buy to bring down your mountain of cash by an reasonable amount. Being able to melt down weapons is something you can do for a little extra metal, instead of building bigger and bigger armories to store an ever-growing number of weapons.

If you don't have a big surplus of guns, don't melt them down - sell them instead. If you do, and you can't sell them fast enough, then melt down the excess. Everyone wins.

And I agree, if melting guns for metal ever becomes a think, it should be a small amount of metal. It just gives us more things to build, more diverse rooms, more stuff for colonists to do, a means of getting rid of excess weapons, and as a bonus, a nominal amount of extra metal. Maybe something like 1 metal for a pistol, 2 for an uzi, and 3 for rifles or something. Or just 2 for every gun, if we want things simple.

[Galileus]

In my mind, let the people complain... There is no reason to listen to stupid complaints, and that would be a tremendously stupid complaint.

Oh, like the guys behind WarZ? No. Don't. I don't think Tynan would ever come close anyway.

And it is legitimate point. If your uzi melts for 2 metal, but sells for more metal than you could melt your whole 250+ guns collection for... then what is the point of melting again? That would be half-assed approach and would make players angry - and for a good reason. You would add a mechanic that cheats you into thinking it's somewhat useful (someone implemented it after all!) and turns out to be a huge waste of time.

How would you feel if you get the last gun in Doom, called Obliterator or something, and it doesn't work? You post it as a bug only to get a response from dev-tem: "Well, we had no gun to put under <9> so we added one!". You would only think - what a bunch of duck quacking, rubber packing ass-hats! And you would be right.

If we are to come at a solution, let it be a solution - and not a cheap way out because no one cared enough to actually see the whole thing through.

[Rysan Marquise]

Alright. So lets look at the situation.

We have a situation where the following is true.

The game creates feedback such that the more lethal you are the more weaponry you will receive. Through standard escalation and by responding to a larger population the feedback of obtaining guns rapidly outpaces use for them.

People->Guns->Guns in a feedback loop. Exponential growth here.

The problems are many-faceted.
You are gaining a rate of guns, but only care about the static stock of guns.
This is a simple enough solution. Create a new competent used in maintenance.

Call it something sciency. Gears, cogs, advanced machinery, mechanisms, whatever.

All repair takes this stuff from your stores to some degree. Likewise, weapons degrade when fired, thereby making it function as a form of ammunition in a sense as-well. It would function as a single abstracted concept between advanced technology, bullets, and so-on. This can even be further achieved by having some weapons break down faster or slower to represent the increased 'wastefulness' of those weapons, further adding to interesting choices in the game.

Reprocessing weapons or metal would be the primary way to gain these components, there-by making an interesting carry capacity of weapons for your society.

[Nasikabatrachus]

Is stacking weapons on weapon racks an option? It feels like that ought to be an option, because there's no way you'd need eight square feet, or however much space a gun rack takes up, of a room's floorspace to store just two guns.

My solution: let each tile of an equipment rack store five weapons of one type instead of just one weapon. This wouldn't add visual confusion, since you could still see the weapon's icon at a glance. If it's too difficult to let one equipment rack store two different types of weapons, reduce equipment rack size to one tile or just bite the bullet and have each rack store just five weapons. Either way, it would be monumentally more sensible and space-efficient.

On the other hand, I'd really like to see a system with customizable and maintainable individual weapons, and if this solution got in the way of that I'd rather not have this solution. If there will be, I'd suggest a special building, a workbench, that can store many weapons, where a colonist can repair weapons and scavenge parts from other weapons.

This brings up the wider problem of stockpiles and storage. Storing a hundred guns on a workbench sounds kind of ridiculous. On the other hand storage bins/crates, that store lots of things but which are not convenient to pack and unpack in a hurryâ€"convenience being the point of weapon racksâ€"would probably be a good addition to the game for more general purposes, including for weapons.

[Stickle]

And it is legitimate point. If your uzi melts for 2 metal, but sells for more metal than you could melt your whole 250+ guns collection for... then what is the point of melting again? That would be half-assed approach and would make players angry - and for a good reason. You would add a mechanic that cheats you into thinking it's somewhat useful (someone implemented it after all!) and turns out to be a huge waste of time.

You're missing the point. As it stands, after a few hours of playing you begin to accumulate more guns than you can use or get rid of. Traders only come once in a while, and they can only afford to buy a certain number of weapons from you. There comes a point where you simply can't unload all your weaponry. You can either leave it lying on the ground where it fell (but this interferes with construction and repairs) or you keep building more and more armories to store them all. Those are the only two options... Melting weapons down would allow us to get rid of all that excess, which is doing nothing but sitting in racks because you can't possibly sell them all.

It's not "you can either sell your weapons for cash, which you can use to buy metal, or you can melt them for much less metal." It's: "you can either use metal to keep building more armories indefinitely to store your exponentially increasing gun supply, or you can melt the guns that you can't use nor sell, getting some metal, saving some space, and losing nothing."

Traders don't have enough credits to buy all your guns, so it is not an either-or decision. Not to mention, selling as many guns as you can to traders will give you more money than you can ever spend on metal (this might be alleviated when other purchasable goods become useful).

And it makes perfect sense that melting a gun would yield less metal than the profits from selling a gun would buy. Of course a manufactured object like a functioning firearm would sell for more than its weight in materials.

[GC13]

How about we take the third way: simply turn off the spigot. Rarer raiders, encouraging us to fight them with fewer people, and fights with raiders that seldom turn lethal (for the raiders, anyway). Raiders raid because they don't want to work for a living, not because they want to commit Suicide By Colonist; if your colony is well-defended or is able to quickly mount a spirited resistance they should run away.

Giving us the ability to melt a gun down for three units of metal is a very unsatisfying experience that will make a player upset that the traders have so little money rather than thinking "well, it's three more metal than I would have had".

[Stickle]

How about we take the third way: simply turn off the spigot. Rarer raiders, encouraging us to fight them with fewer people, and fights with raiders that seldom turn lethal (for the raiders, anyway). Raiders raid because they don't want to work for a living, not because they want to commit Suicide By Colonist; if your colony is well-defended or is able to quickly mount a spirited resistance they should run away.

Giving us the ability to melt a gun down for three units of metal is a very unsatisfying experience that will make a player upset that the traders have so little money rather than thinking "well, it's three more metal than I would have had".

I'd be happy with that. Thing is, in the long term I think raiders will become a smaller focus of the game, once more content and events are added in. Right now they're practically the only opposition we have, with some rare exceptions, so toning them down could easily lead to an uneventful game. That's not necessarily the end of the world, seeing as the game is still in pre-Alpha and balance should really be the least of concerns at the moment, but by releasing a version of the game to the public Tynan has opened something of a can of worms in that regard. If the pre-release version of the game stops being satisfying for a significant period of time while undergoing major changes, he's going to have thousands of angry voices yelling in his ear.

Melting metal objects, whether they're guns, metal slag, or other future objects, could make a good feature regardless. It could even be tied into reclamation in general (I'm hoping that the sell function is a place-holder for actually reclaiming/deconstructing objects). Implementing a forge or something to melt metal objects doesn't seem like a terribly difficult thing to do as far as new features/buildings go, and in the short term it could be used to solve the gun problem. In the long term it might be solved by toning down and re-working raiders so they don't mass suicide against a heavily fortified colony (and in turn give us a good reason not to use all our colonists in defense - the idea to make combat abilities affect ability to take cover could be a good change, for example). Either way the 'forge' or recycling center, whatever you want to call it, would still be useful, I would never support a stop-gap feature whose only purpose is to temporarily solve a problem during alpha/beta, only to be removed when the 'real' solution is implemented.

[BoxOfDoom]

Well, how about letting weapons that lie in the dirt exposed to weather and the like just degrade? They already have health. Let them take damage if left lying around outside. More damage if it rains. More advanced weapons take more damage due to sensitive tech.

They degrade until broken and then can just be hauled to a dump, or sweeped up like filth?

(This should also apply to corpses, but i digress)

[DarkThug]

While I don't think gun melting is an answer to too many gun problem. It need to be there. The same goes with recycle in general. We need a way to get rid of excess gun, excess body, excess slag or any debris.

The fundamental issue with too many gun, however, is we get too many gun too quickly.
The direct solution would be getting less gun. This can be done by

1. less raiders in general
If raid is really not a focus of the game, It can stand to be less common.
Some player may be disappoint though. Raid is what make Rimworld feel dwarf fortress-ish especially if medical care system is added later on.

2. less lethal raid
Average raider should start running when thing start to go badly, taking too much damage or morale too low. They shouldn't fight to death unless they are veteran marine deserter. They should use hit and away tactic as a raider they are. Grab stuff they want and gone. Players should have problem chasing them down if they want to raid these raider stuffs. It is currently another way around. Raiders come to GIVE you stuffs.
I prefer this solution myself however I suspect it will need significant AI improvement to make raider act less sucidal first.

3. less gun drop
Death raider drop metal scrap instead of functioning gun. Working gun should be rare drop. Or only damaged gun is dropped which need repair. Or only gun part is dropped which need to be research and manufacture (AKA X-com) 
This should be an easiest approach. However, unless we have research&manufacture system in place, It may annoy some player though if they fend off waves after waves of M-16 raiders with a few pistols and all they got is some scraps of metal.

4. gun degrade over time
Gun become consumable resource and not last forever. Players is forced to get their hand on new firearm or scrap excess ones for repair.
A reverse solution. We don't get less gun. We still get a lot of guns and lost as many. More thing to manage. Some people will like it. However, I suspect it will be prone to micromanagement issue. Just like ammunition issue.

[GC13]

Assuming someone in your colony knows how to maintain guns then I doubt that degrading guns over time will be an issue. Life isn't like Fallout 3: guns don't degrade over a timescale of hours, as literally dozens of rounds are put through them. Since the game is only going to last for many months and not many years, gun degradation should never be an issue.

It's also kind of silly for a gun to be scrapped when it's dropped. Sure, X-COM does it, but there's a good story reason put in for why it happens. Real guns can survive being dropped from a few feet in the air.

[Workload]

I'm not a fan of over time maybe done like BoxofDoom posted or could add some little worms that eat metal and other things that are dead but only on dirt/sand. For the guns when you get them it makes sense that they can be damage cause the raiders could have used them before and during the fight vs you. Raiders have stories too

As for how much metals you gets back it should be less then selling it but good thing about it don't have to wait around for a trader and sometime you need fast metals.
Or make gun parts a different class off item     like food/metals/gun parts     
Already has crafting in the skills or repair could work but could mess up the priority. Gunsmith table could be made. Just don't know how to go about it. 1 idea I got is there's 4 or more slots on a GMtable kinda like equipment rack. Or instead could just pile up and go into a list, displayed by left clicking the table. Then a person set to repair/crafting or maybe a new one gunsmith.... I rather not tho. Anyways can repair them if placed on the table but there could also be a auto repair button that tells your people it's ok to haul guns if there gun is low hp. If off you just tell that person to haul it there like a equipment rack. I don't know about taking them apart, maybe a different item would be used for that or right click on a gun and pick scrap when on ground/racks/equipped and they bring it to the table.
Haha this sound like a lot of work tho

[jpheep]

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.

These could be:
-Economy adjustments
-Changes in how guns are acquired
-Variations on gun degradation
-Other ways to get rid of useless guns
-New AI behaviors to dump/destroy useless guns automatically
-Changes in how guns are dropped or acquired
-Don't solve it, just let it happen, it's awesome!

I'm interested in your thoughts. Let 'em fly!

Multi-Part Suggested Solution:

Guns retain health per damage they receive.  Guns of the same style can be used to repair existing guns.  Energy can repair energy, rifles, rifles, etc.  Gun gets hit by too many explosions/fires then you lost it.  Why do you care about losing a generic gun?

Because guns should be 'owned'.  This is Bob's rife.  There are many like it, but this is his.  Make colonists gain small bonuses to sticking with a weapon over time.  Allow them to have a personal store of items in their rooms.  Make them use a new weapon and they have to get used to it, get to know all the little operations.  Why should guns be owned?

Because they should have to be maintained.  If you just fire a gun all the time and drag it around with you while you dig through rock, dirt, and sand then it will not work well.  Poorly maintained weapons should start to jam and misfire.  Why does this help reduce guns?

Because the maintenance of the weapons you want will need parts from the guns you don't want.  Now you are not selling every gun you come across because you need some to maintain your defender's preferred weapons.  How do i manage this new process?

Add a gunsmith station.  Colonists with high shooting will be more apt for this.  As colonists guns degrade they can drop them off to have them worked on as long as there are enough spare parts for that model.  Though this station you can manage your arsenal, assigning the number of a certain weapon to keep in stock or to take some of the existing stock to break down for parts.  High shooting skill?  Good change of getting stuff from the weapon that is being broken down.  All weapons will 'drop' a few parts for that weapon type that can be used to maintain/upkeep another weapon of the same type.  Better skills will usually get more of these parts than a lower skill would.  High enough skills and you start to get unique parts from different weapons.  Salvage pistol grips that can be added to other weapons for stability/fire rate.  Chances to get the scope to add to a different rifle, rifle stock to add to a pistol, clips to extend magazines, add bayonets, etc.

These special parts can then help you improve everyone's personal weapons.

Raiders need to have different behaviors.  They all just want to annihilate your people.  It seems odd.  They should have different objectives, either take some/all of your food, weapons, metals, etc.  Having raiders steal some of your weapons would help as well.

Don't arm every raider either.  Go Russian tactics.  As the waves get larger, have several unarmed that stick around their buddies to pick up their weapon when they go down.

Require weapon parts and special parts in order to create certain defenses such as the turrets, charges, traps, etc.

[Galileus]

Idea of maintenance by "eating" other weapons of same kind starts to grow on me as best scenario presented - as long as it's highly automated and streamlined so that player can check it all out with few clicks and as minimalistic info as needed. Choose the colonist, hover over his weapon and a tooltip pops up with it's stats. Next to HP? Total HP that can be recovered from other weapons of the same type. So if you see 70 (230) then you know you can repair it to full and will still have 2 full repairs at disposal.

Owned guns? It feels very meh. What's the reason? And I mean gameplay reason and not RL reason. I do get (and aprove) skills in certain weapons (AR, pistols, SMGs and so on) or general aptitude (Assault, Sniper, CQC); but weapon ownership? I can see much more problems with it than it's worth. Want to change someone equipment? But it's not his gun, he's gonna learn it all anew! Want to test out new toy? Need to let someone learn it before you see it's full potential. Want to upgrade someone's weapon? He needs to learn it. Switch weapons in combat? He needs to learn it. Pick up weapon on ground when your rifle breaks? He needs to learn it. Want to have any kind of elasticity? Nope, because everyone knows exactly one gun and cannot be bothered to use any else. It produces a very rigid system that actually discourages player from experimenting and keeping his gameplay fresh. The game would slap him every time he wants to try out something new. It's like forcing someone to stay on the same level of Mario when he beat it 100 times already. Infuriating!

As for weapons parts - this seems way to robust. I'm a HUGE maniac of guns modifications. But this will once again force us to restrictions - namely in amount of different guns. Can't have too many types of weapons or too many models of weapons, because player will quickly be buried under all these different parts. Not to mention the scope seems off - again, any change in equipment and you have to go through all these modifications and crafting recipes like it was a jRPG. It would be much easier to create weapon variants with additional upgrades on them (like some SMGs come with red dot), but just one upgrade and kept under control (so that we don't change every single part). Maybe create unique weapons with these attachments? I would LOVE to see them in game, but not as a fully blown crafting system. Create them with metal? Buy them from traders? Fair enough. But strip three different weapons to then create one attachment to then strip other four to create a gun that can use it...

I would love some additions and depth to combat system (sprinting? changing fire modes or aiming stances?), but not too far. I believe there will be more than enough micromanagement in finished game to not want additional weapon management on that scale. Weapon attachments? Go ahead. Unique items from guns, stripping them for individual parts, crafting lists and recipes? Too far.

[majesty]

i think there should be degredation, but with that, there shouldbe some form of modifyng and repairing the weapon to keep it at peak efficeincy and to make it a better weapon. useless weapons should also be melted down for metal.

[Littlemule]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I saw that guns have a health bar, so would it be reasonable to say that unless picked up they degrade overtime. Thinking of corrosion of the barrel etc
yes no ?