The many-guns problem

[jpheep]

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.

The point of the owned weapons is that it would present cost benefit analysis.  Pistols are crap right?  Not really, they fire fairly fast and acquire targets faster.  I don't want all of my colonists using 'the best' weapon because there isn't one.  But if you already have several experts with their weapons and you lose your short range guy in the last raid, it is a choice to force a replacement now for a long term gain in the ability to fill in your stopping power at short range or stick with your currently more powerful longer range expertise.

The parts salvaged from weapons would only be meant for repair/maintenance and should be placeable in stockpiles.  The unique salvages wouldn't be a bonanza of upgrades for all the items, they would be specific limited combinations.  For example, the scope wouldn't go on a shotgun but rather on other rifles.  An additional pistol grip would only be something that could be added to shotguns/smgs. This also wouldn't be a apply all possible but just an apply one.

I was also trying to get the point across that colonists could own several weapons through their personal inventory, so it would just be 'knowing' a single weapon at a time.

Creating new weapons really wasn't anything i was going for, only maintenance and slight modifier upgrades.

I honestly don't see how this is different that the current situation where your dedicated miner/farmer/repair colonist dies or is injured and you have to send in the b team to take over. 

My understanding of rimworld is that it was supposed to be a less forgiving experience where you have to scrap everything together to survive.  Not a game where you didn't mind losing  someone/something.

[Galileus]

The point of the owned weapons is that it would present cost benefit analysis.  Pistols are crap right?  Not really, they fire fairly fast and acquire targets faster.  I don't want all of my colonists using 'the best' weapon because there isn't one.  But if you already have several experts with their weapons and you lose your short range guy in the last raid, it is a choice to force a replacement now for a long term gain in the ability to fill in your stopping power at short range or stick with your currently more powerful longer range expertise.

But how is that better than specific weapon / aptitude skills or perks? It presents tons of hindrances and forces player's hand where it shouldn't. It forces power creep - because if the new weapon is JUST better than the last one, who would want to train his colonists in this new specific weapon? And if you have power creep you end up with picking best weapons for all your colonists anyway, just having to go through busywork and hindrance of training them.

There is a choice of mix-and-match already. Do you want more M24? Do you want to throw a shotgun in there? The addition of weapon owning system would actually work against it - your choices will be limited, because there is no free choice - ANY change in your loadout and you're punished for it. And the choice of long-term benefit? Throw in a shooting range, that is something player would enjoy instead of hating. He lost a guy? He'll understand - the replacement never held a gun before. He may not like it - but he'll understand. People being bad a shooting because of their stats for that kind of category - player will understand. A guy techno-magically becoming crap with his new, super-powerful pistol because it's the first time he holds this specific pistol? Player won't understand. His guy not being able to hit the wide side of the barn with another pistol of the same model? Enjoy the bitching. I'll join it

And there's another low kick in there, too. We are supposed to care for our colonists, and for that we need to grow with them. We need to feel and enjoy their progression, both economically-survival...ly...cally... and in their combat abilities. Forcing a downgrade every-time you change a gun will work against it! We will actually see our guys getting worse every time we want to help them out and make them better. It's almost as bad as world levelling up with the player in RPGs! And there's more! Enjoyment of getting new guns would be completely in shadow with the ownership system! Just imagine that:

<Player, mumbles> Darn it, Joe is dead, Alice is dead, half of my complex is burning... You better have something good in these crates, you stupid little raiders... As if, I can see it already, 20 food! I bet! Joe, I bet you died for 20 food! It wouldn't be worth it if it was 20 frelling million food! Let's see the shame, what do we... HOLY FRELLING MOTHER OF DRAGONS, M82A2!?!? Holy... Holy shit! Holy shit! Ok, ok, easy now... +10 damage!? WOW! Who can shoot snipers, now, come here! WHO CAN SNIPE!? JOE! Oh, yeah, he's dead. Who cares? M82A2, woohoo!

Now, imagine this:

<Player, mumbles> Darn it, Joe is dead, Alice is dead, half of my complex is burning... You better have something good in these crates, you stupid little raiders... As if, I can see it already, 20 food! I bet! Joe, I bet you died for 20 food! It wouldn't be worth it if it was 20 frelling million food! Let's see the shame, what do we... M82A2. Heh. Would be nice to use it. +10 damage? And let me guess, 10 days of training? Will find something better by then. I'll care if it's +20. Maybe. Joe, you died for nothing.

You want player to enjoy the game. You want him to beat it - not without a fight, obviously. But you need to convince him to fight. And what better way the developer has than to throw goodies at the player, when he wins some really tough challenge? Now, of course you could just go on with power creep and make sure every next model has this +20 or +200 dmg. And you now need DOZENS of raiders, and then tanks or whole fleets of spaceships to fight colonists when they reach over 9000 DPS. You tie even your own hands!

Now, weapon owning in a way where there is a chance that with X kills colonist's weapons "upgrades" into his personal firearm of choice? An unique version? That's neat. And player will understand it and appreciate it, at least if it doesn't happen too often. He'll feel badass and believe his men - the special few - are badass, and he will cry when he looses them to a boomrat. Or when Joe looses this M82A2 he loved so much and named Alice. Of course he can now use +999dmg one, but it was Alice! I love that idea - two, maybe three owned weapons per whole game? Hell, this is something you'll remember. And if someone calls his rifle after his lover you failed to protect? Damn, touching!

Global weapon ownage (and global suckage)? I'll pass, thank you.

My understanding of rimworld is that it was supposed to be a less forgiving experience where you have to scrap everything together to survive.  Not a game where you didn't mind losing  someone/something.

There is a huge difference between hard and punishing. Hard is fair, punishing is just trolling. One of ways a game can be punishing is by not upholding established rules - and this is what RimWorld does by leveling shooting skill. It establishes a rule - this guy shoots goood! Maybe in soma later version it'll be - this guy shots goooood with pistols! Then you replace one weapon with another, the same model, and suddenly that guy doesn't shoot that good anymore. This is breaking the rules. And of course there can be some clause hidden in rulebook or even printed right under the title - RimWorld: Never Ever Change A Gun. Doesn't matter. You can write "rule #872 - sometimes you spontaneously die for no reason" and it doesn't make it fair or hard - because this is a rule made by a rulebook and not by the game and it's gameplay.

PS. Damn, I'll have to get into this idea of unique owned weapons. There is some frelling good stuff to be done with it!

[ShadowDragon8685]

That would be a complicated system, but it might not be so bad. However... If I were to implement it, and I'm not saying I would, here's how I would do it.

I would say that you should have three types of skills.
1: Shooting. Someone who's just plain good at shooting. Can pick up any weapon and fire it well. Levels very slow, but does level.
2: Divide into Long Arms/Automatics/Pistols/Thrown. Levels faster than the Shooting base category, slower than individual weapons. Anything can be fitted into those categories; if it fires once and uses two hands, it's a Long Arm. Lee-Enfields, M-24s, T-9s and Shotguns currently fall into this category, for instance. Automatics are things which fire repeatedly: M-16s, R-4s, Uzis. Pistols are things which are, well, pistols. Handguns and maybe, if they ever get implemented, revolvers, would fall into this - anything you hold in one hand and fire once. Thrown is self-explanatory, hopefully.
3: Divide into specific weapon types. This would level up fast.

Add up the total of all three relevant skills - Shooting, Subcategory, Specific Weapon - to determine how well a person shoots. This would allow for some more granularity, while still letting you move on to a different weapon in the category your guy is best at without losing too much ability.

[Galileus]

I would probably enclose it into a separate "aptitude" perk (tree) gained automatically with enough shooting skill or that some classes start with. So Sniper (or marksman, rifles / pistols for first or rifles / assault rifles for second), CQC (shotguns / SMGs / melee), Assault (Assault Rifles, Pistols, heavy weapons), Support (Pistols / shotguns / thrown) and so on. This would be much simpler and tidy than whole new skill trees and allow for more "human" feel to pawns. We would think of a guy as a CQC specialist instead of "a guy with high shotguns skill" - and there would be a difference between trying to "force" an aptitude (by subjecting colonist to specific weapons) and people who already start with an aptitude.

Feel fancy? Add ability to gain second aptitude at very high shooting skill or even randomized perks gained every few levels of skill - like traits, but aptitude specific. A sniper that aims longer but shoots better, a CQC shotgun monkey who has a habit to double tap, an Assault who duct-tapes magazines together for faster reload or a fast-draw guy (no aim time on first pistol shot, penalty to aim). This would be out of players control of course - so that it's not a RPG levelling up system. Impact on characters customization? HUGE!

Feel even more fancy? Add such systems to other skills A crafter who always seems to have some parts left-over (build 3 for the price of 2! ) or build faster but in lower quality (50% build time, 50% quality). A doctor with great bed-side manners or a potty mouth. A cook who makes better for more or one who's cooking is darn bad, but hey! He seems to be able to feed everyone with one serving of rice. Or maybe no-one wants to eat anymore after tasting it? A miner with a nose for ore! And so on

Eeeeh, another topic I need to work on

[Workload]

I went through the post and kinda pick what i think works nicely and not to crazy.

Degradation can work and makes sense. Being left in dirt/sand and rain would bring its HP down but no more than 50% because i can’t see a gun melting away from rain. When killed raiders drop their guns they should have random amount of HP, cause the raiders could have use their guns before and while fighting you. Grenades/Mines should damage weapons in people’s hands.

A gunsmith table would be needed for gun repairs pretty sure. Someone set to repair or crafting or construction would work the Gun crafting bench.

Wanna keep it simple as possible. Guns would only be auto repaired when someone is using that gun and if there’s the same gun on an equipment rack they go grab it. Can’t have them auto repair guns on a rack or they would fix everything and waste your Gun Parts/Higher Metals. Also drafted units won’t get their guns repaired. The crafting or repair skill would matter how much they could repair a gun, So every 1 skill point is 5% to the max they can repair it. So if you have someone at 10 ponits in the right skill the max they can repair is 50%. But if that’s to mean could have 30% the lowest it can be and go up with higher skill.

Now taking guns apart this you have to manage yourself a little unless someone can think of another way.
-One would be a gun menu list then check what you want like haul/repair/scarp. It would help people also find the start pistol and find other guns dropped by raiders without looking around.
-2nd would be selecting the gun it’s self and picking scarp this taking more work the first one and us but less work for Tynan

Gun parts/Higher metals would be one item type. Not pistol parts, Shotgun, etc. and barrels/stocks/etc.  That be a lot of work but if wanting to do it i can’t stop them haha
As for mods, I’m not touching that.
Remember most of this was picked out of this whole gun post.

[killerx243]

I'm gonna chip in my 2 cents worth from a thread I created before I knew about this one. I can see that most of it is fairly common but I think there are a few interesting possibilities.

I've been playing around with Callie. At the beginning and middle I was struggling to arm my colonists with weapons that can defend from sniper wielding raiders. My most successful colony is well able to defend itself and I now have the problem that I have too many guns. I used to make money selling food but now I buy as much as I can from industrial and combat traders just to get rid of my excess weapons. My idea is pretty simple:

Weapon Crafting:
After some research a gun crafting station would be unlocked. The station is used for repairs to weapons and create them with metal after they have been researched.

Dismantling and Wear and Tear:
Being able to melt down the excess weapons into precious metal would give us some metal from the raids and a way to get rid of weapons without buying out every trader with them. Weapons eventually break down and their only use would be to get melted down. At 100% durability they would only give 90% of the cost to create them and goes down as durability goes down.

Guns can be repaired but it does not mean they last forever. They can be repaired less and less with each repair until they need to be melted down (task is initiated automatically at 0%)

[ShootyFace]

I hate, hate, hate the idea of durability. However, I do like the idea of melting them down for small amounts of minerals. I also like hoarding hundreds of them, but can see how it might affect performance, and not everyone wants to have a Matrix-sized armory.

[killerx243]

I don't want it to seem like the guns last a week, my idea is you would be able to use them for several bandit raids with no maintenance and then should consider upgrading your wares. But I think it would be good to have a small penalty for using damaged weapons (accuracy and the potential for jamming). This wouldn't be much of a problem until around 40 - 50% durability which is about lets say 6 bandit raids with no maintenance. At that point you would amass enough weapons of mixed durability to rearm your forces with the best there or melt them down and make some brand new ones. Now with maintenance their effective usefulness could be doubled.

Some interesting ideas for weapon creation is at the weaponsmiths bench he can dismantle weapons to make blueprints (could take several weapons) and there would be a chance traders have blueprints for sale.

[serge89]

Hi there,

I think every little enemies will drop all kind of misc stuff instead of the guns they holding. Those stuff could be foods, medkits, gun parts, and schematics perhaps?

If you really wanna solve this issue, why not make the limit the enemies drops? Instead of one full & complete weapon. (Too good to be true in survival game as I am playing this game, I got M-24 at first wave of enemy invasion...)

But this gonna be a lot more work for you since you need to define those parts and add in another system just for this. Gonna be more challanging for sure, at least it solve "too many guns" issue.

Nonetheless, if you played over a very long period of time, you still might able to craft out tons of guns, then this is where the melting your guns/parts into the big furnace and recraft into something better. Maybe from a blueprints/researches/schematics?

I am pretty sure you will develop those heavy mechanic enemies like robots or mammoth tanks etc later on (We are talking about space invasions & drop pod here, c'mon). Because I see the shells and missiles in the game which aren't much useful atm.

Or even you can developed some quests system in the game later on? Some people will require you to give up some equipment so they will trade in some better stuffs.

Anyway, I am slowly getting out of this topic. 

[Merry76]

Gnomoria has it so the goblin invaders drop "worn" items (many suggested that this would get another name, but that is far down the priority list) that cannot be equipped, but melted down for a fraction of what normal stuff can be melted down (its something down the line of 1/20 of what you would need to produce something of equal value (but not "worn")).

While not perfect (tbh, far from it), its a playable workaround that has "Gamelogic because of Balancing" written all over it. Its certainly better than drowning in stuff you cant get rid of.

Back to Rimworld: Smelting down weapons is hardly fitting, but should be a thing (and soon - clogging isnt fun). Make it something low, like 1-5 scrap per weapon - the "get rid of trash" is the main focus of this suggestion, not the "get rich quick" scheme (afterall, the colonies that suffer from this problem are already as rich as they get).

Maintenance, wear and tear would actually benefit the setting. Remember that in the Firefly-inspired world we play in, perfect gear is probably rarer than virgins in a pleasuredome. Probably not even weapons dealers sell perfect gear. Especially the old guns, which where invented 3 thousand years ago!
So it makes sense that we (colonists, raiders and weapon merchants) start with weapons that have 30-60 durability (heavily worn), and fix them up by switching out working parts from scrapped guns to a point where we have to research on how to get closer to perfect condition with just old parts (this could be a viable research field in my opinion) - or even better, how to overclock our energy rifles so they pack better punch but detoriate at an alarming rate (if the pulse rifle starts to glow and beep, its a grenade -> throw it!) for extra Fun.

[deadbeat88]

dunno if this has been suggested already but can we have a weapon smelter to convert guns into metal? I hate to mine a mountain for that..

[Galileus]

dunno if this has been suggested already but can we have a weapon smelter to convert guns into metal? I hate to mine a mountain for that..

Just in the post right before yours. And one hundred others, too ^^'

[Workload]

If you think about it the guns you get off raiders they would have low durability so they sell for very low price anyways. also I agree with not like it melting down into metals rather something else. Gun scraps/Spare parts/etc
Even traders wouldn't have max durability weapons, most of the time.

If a Weapon repair bench is made maybe a Weapon Menu can be added also to aid in the least amount of micromanagement I can think of.

The menu would list every weapon on the map or just the ones you marked not forbidden/equipment racks, rather it be everything on the map.
1st Row would have the weapons name
2nd Next one to the right would be the weapons location, On the ground/equipment rack and if someone has a weapon on them it will say there name. Not raiders tho. If you click on the weapon name it will go to the spot.
3rd row has weapon durability
4th row - Haul this you check a box on/off
5th row - Scrap/Melt/Take apart    also a check box on/off
6th row - Repair also a check box on/off
7th row - Not forbidden button. this is only added if all weapons don't need to be marked/found by the player.

So it be           - Name -- Location -- Durability -- Haul -- Scrap/Melt/Take apart -- Repair -- Not Forbidden -

Let me know if this sounds nice and not too much micromanagement

Also how good your colonists are at making and repairing weapons should depend on how high there skills are.

[king komodo]

I personally like the idea of using old/multiples of "outdated" guns to create better ones much like real life we didn't get to the M16 by simply interacting with aliens or that sort of thing we made it by wanting a machine gun in a lighter package, which we got to because we wanted a gun that could shoot more than 1 round with 1 trigger pull, etc. So why give our colonists the easy way on this although we should have that chance as well but it's fun to say that you got there yourself.

[Jaxor]

I just got here so I apologize. I like how Fallout 3 dealt with the issue, using other weapons to repair weapons. Maybe even have repair skill in research.