The many-guns problem

Started by Tynan, October 22, 2013, 12:41:38 AM

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SleepyFox

Gun degradation is already somewhat in place. Every entity has an HP level. Guns get destroyed by fire/explosions. Factor the gun's HP into how they act? The lower the gun's HP, the higher the chance of it jamming (causing an automatic 'missed turn' in combat), making it less accurate, or if the AI is feeling cruel and the gun is almost entirely broken, exploding in their faces.

Every gun could have a base metal value for meltdown purposes, and the Fallout 3 option could work with it too, where if you've got a pair of pistols that are in crappy condition, you could slap 'em together and make one pistol of slightly-less crappy condition.

Putting in a somewhat more detailed maintenance skill on colonists could help this also, where it affects the upper limit of how good the shape of your weapons are (and probably adds one more task for your little antfarm to worry about.)

Actually managing it should probably just involve a 'manifest' screen of your current inventory of weapons in the colony. Stick it in a colony UI tab and make it sortable by gun type when you start getting too many. Colonists already have a similar tab in place with the Overview, just put 'Armory' on another tab and you could see all the weapons you've got in the colony, their condition, and who is wielding what.

With a simple tab, it could mean less micro, and maintenance priorities could be a click away. Got a bunch of pistols that are all damaged? Click the one on the list and check the 'repair' tab. Other pistols will be prioritized over that one to be pieced out to fix that particular pistol (Because Skoodge the Assassin likes that one best.) with a checkbox that lets you mark which guns are allowed to be salvaged out and which ones are to always be maintained in the colony.

This way, it's both semi-automated but requires the player to do some work. Huge raid coming and your best rifle is looking rusty and you don't have any rifles to fix it with? Tough titty! But wait! Maybe you could slap it on a bench and use some of your scrap to enact some good ol' duct tape repairs at a cost of the weapons maximum durability?
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Semmy

I completely agree. The weapons tab should be the same as the normal trade window and should just say pistols * 12 or something like that.

I do like the fallout aproach for weapon.
I got 1 pistol and 12 spare pistols. I go to my workshop and construct them into 1 desert eagle for all i care.

Another more likely thing would be to make them into scrap (weapon parts) with enough weapon parts and research this means you could scrap a bunch of pistols get some research drop in some metal and build your own rifle.

Maybe really maybe we could make weapon traps. I loved those in DF making traps with awsome quality weapons and than using them on enemies.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

CustodianV131

I can see guns getting damaged in the fight when the owner gets taken out, especially if its by grenades or fire.

So why not use that and make it a chance that a weapon drops or if "story: the weapon is destroyed" a certain amount of money.

You would have less guns to worry about and can buy the ones you need with the money drops. Cuts out a lot of MM.
Gamers are young at heart and creative thinkers. Shall we play a game?

Semmy

Quote from: CustodianV131 on October 22, 2013, 05:11:35 AM
I can see guns getting damaged in the fight when the owner gets taken out, especially if its by grenades or fire.

So why not use that and make it a chance that a weapon drops or if "story: the weapon is destroyed" a certain amount of money.

You would have less guns to worry about and can buy the ones you need with the money drops. Cuts out a lot of MM.

instead of destroying the guns. giving them a whole lot of damage wich can be repaired by combining multiple guns would be a good thing.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

British

Quote from: Semmy on October 22, 2013, 05:18:40 AM
instead of destroying the guns. giving them a whole lot of damage wich can be repaired by combining multiple guns would be a good thing.
Possibly, but for this to be meaningful, the weapons would have to be very scarce.

staffy50

#20
Quote from: Tynan on October 22, 2013, 01:20:15 AM
I like this. Perhaps you could melt them down or cannibalize them for use in a workshop to make higher-quality weapons. Reminds me of the Fallout 3 repair system, which worked very well in solving the classic RPG variant of this problem.

Whilst in reality you cant take two pistols etc and mix and match any working part ie barrel or firing pin but if your not too bothered about realism you could always combine two pistols to make a better one? Melting them down doesn't make much sense to me, with any current gen of weapon you wont get anything of benefit. If your talking about the sci fi weapons, then maybe you could take the power core out or somthing.

Quote from: Semmy on October 22, 2013, 05:18:40 AM
g them a whole lot of damage wich can be repaired by combining multiple guns would be a good thing.

Its very unrealistic though. Firstly weapons don't get damaged from firing (to any big degree) and you cant mix and match working weapon parts (Sure you can change the butt or magazine, but the internals all need to stay with the same weapon)


If you have any questions on weapons realism that you cant find out, im in the Military and would be happy to help.


miah999

Quote from: staffy50 on October 22, 2013, 05:32:17 AM
Its very unrealistic though.... ...you cant mix and match working weapon parts (Sure you can change the butt or magazine, but the internals all need to stay with the same weapon)

That's not entirely true, I'm an armorer certified for M16/AR15 and I work extensively with the AK47. While it is not recommended to exchange internal components from one weapon to another (it has to do with wear patterns and reliability/safety). It is not physically impossible. If I was stuck on a planet and I had two guns damaged by a grenade blast, and I could cobble something together out of them I'd use it. This is especially true of the AK which has very lose tolerances, and is often built form spare parts throughout the world. Also almost any AR pattern upper receiver, can be fitted to any lower; we switch them all the time.

So I'd support a system that allowed damaged weapons to be made into one. I'd also support recycling them. I've mentioned a Molecular Recycler before, that would turn guns and scrap into metal, and corpses into food.

Another solution would be a super rich trade ship event, that would allow you to sell dozens of guns at once. Right now the average trade ship can only buy one or two.

Of course making guns really rare would help as well, making raiders more melee focused would greatly reduce the number of guns a player has. To balance this out the turrets would have to become far more expensive, maybe even 1000 metal each.

Also grenades/cocktails should be limited use, maybe 5 or so and then their gone. That may also encourage players to use them. As using them will get rid of them.

Gazz

If guns degrade individually you need a system to repair them... and before that to keep track of the condition of every individual gun.

Heaping on more micromanagement / maintenance is probably not a good approach to solving the proposed problem. =)

Besides, as has already been mentioned, while guns degrade with use, they remain operable for years with even moderate maintenance.
The degradation as seen in some action RPG (or even JA2) is overdone by a factor of ahelluvalot.

Turning guns into scrap metal (and ploughshares =) is probably the most logical and easiest to implement solution.
Can always find a use for metal...

staffy50

Quote from: miah999 on October 22, 2013, 06:05:51 AM
That's not entirely true, I'm an armorer certified for M16/AR15 and I work extensively with the AK47. While it is not recommended to exchange internal components from one weapon to another (it has to do with wear patterns and reliability/safety). It is not physically impossible. If I was stuck on a planet and I had two guns damaged by a grenade blast, and I could cobble something together out of them I'd use it. This is especially true of the AK which has very lose tolerances, and is often built form spare parts throughout the world. Also almost any AR pattern upper receiver, can be fitted to any lower; we switch them all the time.

Fair enough. We are always told not to mix parts, as its will decrease reliability and may lead to a breach explosion. Maybe that could be a random event if you cobble weapons together, every now and then it blows up in your face.

miah999

Quote from: staffy50 on October 22, 2013, 06:59:24 AM
Fair enough. We are always told not to mix parts, as its will decrease reliability and may lead to a breach explosion. Maybe that could be a random event if you cobble weapons together, every now and then it blows up in your face.

That could be interesting.

Spike

Quote from: Tynan on October 22, 2013, 12:41:38 AM
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!

A big part of the solution will depend on how you envision other aspects of the game, such as resources.  Mainly questions like "is metal the only resource that will be used for everything".  Also it would tie into your plans for Research and Manufacturing.

So...


Acquisition:
Currently, the only way to acquire guns are to buy them or loot them from pirates.  If you will be able to build them, then what will it cost to make?  Generic metal?  "Weapon scraps", gained from "deconstructing" owned weapons?  Tweaking the drop rate would be a balance issue, comparing what the player has versus what the raiders bring - both what you have to defend with/against, and what you can potentially gain.

Disposal:
Currently, selling is it.  Which is important, because the only resource (metal) is limited and you will eventually be forced to get all metal by buying from traders - if you have to buy, you need a steady source of money.  Otherwise, the colony will wither and die.  Which means the resource question above is a very big part of the weapon solution.

The easiest method to implement as the game is now would be to break unwanted weapons down for metal.  But that would seem odd, as you could not build a 5' section of wall out of one pistol.  So how useful would that really be?

If weapon tech is added to the research tree, then it would make sense to "consume" a weapon for the research.  Again, this is up to you; how robust do you envision the research system and any manufacturing system? 

Research could also be an answer to the "Turret Defense" problem.  You start with one pistol, and might be able to destroy it to research how to build them - but then you have no pistol until you build more.  Raiders show up, and drop a shotgun.  Again, research to build.  Destroy another pistol to research other "pistol improvement tech" ideas - range, power, burst, etc.  Eventually, along with other items in a robust research tree (sensor, etc), you can build a variety of turrets roughly equivalent to pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc.

Other:
As for gun degradation, ammo, or repairs...  I think I'd be against it in general.  I like the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid); buying, selling and tracking ammo or weapon "hit points", along with tracking skill & resource usage to repair weapons seems like it could get complicated for the player.  Yes, great idea in a single player game like FO3 - not so great in a sim like this (unless you go the overly complicated Dwarf Fortress route).


Personally, I would like to keep the drop rates & usage mostly as it is now.  On top of that, add in a robust tech tree with a variety of Weapon Tech upgrades that let you build or improve weapons, that "consume" weapons as part of the research.  This would let you choose to use the "crappy" raider weapons, sell them for cash, or destroy them for research.  But then you'd have to destroy more in order to build the upgrades.  In this way, dropped weapons would be a "currency" used for researching and building better weapons.  It would also affect other aspects of the game - what if you needed to destroy one "long rifle" to build a turret?

Blitz

I am glad Ty is thinking about this. This is one of the biggest problems I have with the game right now.

I like Semmy's idea of the guns being combined to create better guns, but I think we could leave the names the same and give them a level bar. Say you need to combine 20 guns into one to make it max level of 10/10 (like all of the skills). The gun may have 200% recharge speed or something like that. It would give you a reason to think about what you are doing with the weapons. You could sell them to get the quick cash, combine them to make a better gun, or spread them out to the colonists. It would also alleviate the need for as many turrets and funnel points. Pirate leaders could carry leveled up guns as well.

I am not a fan of the degradation at all. I feel like it would be one more thing to micro manage.

I guess I am going in to the second big problem I have: repairing structures. If we created a workbench structure to combine guns, we could give the colonists another skill called technician (or something like that). The technician would be in charge of combining all of the guns and repairing the structures. This would make it so the builders did not prioritize repairing something on the other side of the map and leave his job to go do that.

Gazz

Quote from: miah999 on October 22, 2013, 07:02:23 AM
Quote from: staffy50 on October 22, 2013, 06:59:24 AM
Fair enough. We are always told not to mix parts, as its will decrease reliability and may lead to a breach explosion. Maybe that could be a random event if you cobble weapons together, every now and then it blows up in your face.
That could be interesting.
How often would this happen? If weapons exploded all the time it would be pretty silly. Because they don't.
How many guns with breach explosions have been returned to you personally?

If it's a 1x in 20 hours of play event, it may just as well not be a feature at all.

Super low chances of something occurring sound good... on paper.
Alas, they make crappy gameplay elements.
You can't realistically plan for them so you can't make an informed decision.
Gameplay is all about making decisions.

Enjou

I'm not a big fan of the scrap to repair mechanic since that likely means you need to keep track of gun maintenance. I don't want that level of micromanagement. However, scrapping guns is a good idea in general. I would add my voice to those who would have them scrapped into parts rather than just metal. Parts could then be used to craft better guns or upgrade existing ones, or also be a requirement for making turrets - it doesn't make much sense that you can make a turret but can't make your own guns. Parts could even be divided into types, (basic, heavy, advanced, etc.) giving you a new resource to manage.

Aerouge

Okay what to do about too many guns?

1) Solution: Spawn less guns
Implement some close combat weaponry. This way you would have less guns. Too simple though, as than you´d have the same amount of useless melee weaponry.
2) Solution: Implement wear and tear on weaponry
Have guns degrade by x% every time they fire. This way you get an itemsink into the game.
2a) Depending on how complex you want to design this you could salvage raider-weapons for parts to repair yours (Pretty much the same idea Gnomoria uses when Robobob switched the Goblins weapons from "normal" to "worn weapons" which are unusable by gnomes but can be smelted into metalbars).
2b.) Fallout 3 System: Dont use parts but "combine" two guns at 50% to one gun with 100% state
3) No wear and tear on weapons but salvage excess weapons for metal (and thus ending the problem with metal as a limited "map ressource"). This can currently be archived by selling the guns and buying metal from the funds.
4) Keep it as it is. Guns pile on and can be sold to traders.
5) Implement ammo. This way a pile of guns would be useless. If you would have the ammo only available by traders you could "force" the trade of weapons for ammo and thus lower the weaponstockpiles.

I would prefer the wear and tear with salvaged weaponparts for repair as well as the need for ammo. This way you could start implementing crafting elements in the game (who currently do not exist (Based on Youtube Let´s Plays)).