The many-guns problem

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

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Gazz

#30
Quote from: Enjou on October 22, 2013, 11:08:04 AMParts could even be divided into types, (basic, heavy, advanced, etc.) giving you a new resource to manage.
A superfluous distinction IMO.
Who wants to build inferior guns?
Right. No one. As a result, the only thing you are ever short of will be "advanced" parts, meaning you have 2 resources in abundance which makes them pointless as gameplay features.

Instead:

  • Scrapping any and all weapons gives you x "weapon parts".
    Scrapping an advanced weapons does not return a greater number of parts.


  • When building weapons, the cost in "parts" scales.
    A simple revolver takes 3 but an AK-47 requires 20.


  • You can achieve the exact same "shortage of materials when building advanced guns" with a single resource... and you don't burden the player with a lot of junk that has no purpose.


  • You can offer fancy weapons with small boni at outrageous "parts" prices... that the player will want anyway.
    That's how you create a shortage of the resource without offering a lot in return. =P


Q: Why not handle "weapon scrapping" as turning them directly into scrap metal?
A: Because "Weapon Parts" are a tech resource, not raw material.

An assault rifle doesn't take so much more metal to build. It takes a lot more technology.
That's what the weapon parts represent.
A mixture of research points and raw material.

With this approach I would not allow to build "weapon parts" from regular metal.
That wouldn't work because you couldn't easily enter "technology" into the equation.
Well, unless the output in weapon parts per unit of scrap metal changes with your "tech level".
Then it would all make sense again.
Early on 4 units of scrap metal get you enough parts for 4 revolvers or 1/2 SMG. Later on, 4 units of scrap metal get you enough parts for 2 SMG.
It's still not ideal because it mixes the wrong kind of concepts...
Makes a lot more sense if you buy complete weapons and the weapon parts are an unsellable commodity.

staffy50

Quote from: Gazz on October 22, 2013, 10:21:16 AM
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.

I've seen two lads who had breach explosions, not from cobbled weapons but rounds cooking off in the chamber, so not really the same.

However we don't cobble weapons together, which was the original point.

If you don't want a breach explosion, then a messed up/misaligned weapon would no doubt also suffer from stoppages. 

Enjou

Quote from: Gazz on October 22, 2013, 11:37:08 AM
Quote from: Enjou on October 22, 2013, 11:08:04 AMParts could even be divided into types, (basic, heavy, advanced, etc.) giving you a new resource to manage.
A superfluous distinction IMO.
Who wants to build inferior guns?
Right. No one. As a result, the only thing you are ever short of will be "advanced" parts, meaning you have 2 resources in abundance which makes them pointless as gameplay features.

That could be solved in a number of ways. If parts are introduced as a tech resource, they don't necessarily have to be useful for only one thing. Parts could be required to build anything technical, like solar panels, food paste dispensers, etc. and possibly be required to do repairs on damaged tech. Basic parts could be required to make most stuff and repair any technology, but higher end stuff could require more advanced or more specified part types that are less plentiful to build initially.

Spike

Quote from: Enjou on October 22, 2013, 12:07:40 PM
That could be solved in a number of ways. If parts are introduced as a tech resource, they don't necessarily have to be useful for only one thing. Parts could be required to build anything technical, like solar panels, food paste dispensers, etc. and possibly be required to do repairs on damaged tech. Basic parts could be required to make most stuff and repair any technology, but higher end stuff could require more advanced or more specified part types that are less plentiful to build initially.

Drifting off topic, but I could see breaking various items down into generic resource types - Electronic, Mechanical, Weapon, etc., to be used for building different types of structures or items.

Back on topic, I think I like the idea of breaking weapons down into generic "weapon parts" that could be used to build any weapon or turret, once you have researched or gained the ability to make that type.  It doesn't make sense to break weapons down into just "Metal", to me.  However, scrapping 5 pistols and cobbling together a shotgun (with a few bits of metal) does make more sense.  (Relatively speaking, that is. :P)

GC13

Every raider should have a gun, unless you add in tools like nets that they use to capture your colonists (in which case by all means give a couple of raiders those). The problem is that right now you need to swarm us with raiders to challenge us, leading to gun spam. You have to turn off the spigot.

We need two things:
1) Reason to limit the number of colonists in combat. This will allow you to dial down the number of raiders. I recommend making is so combat skills not only make you more likely to hit an enemy, but less likely to be hit. If my four hardcore combatants, who have low colony-growth skills, can handle the five raiders and probably won't be seriously hurt, why would I risk the eight people who keep my colony running and are far more likely to be seriously hurt without doing much?

2) Raiders can sneak up on us. So long as they announce their presence, raiders will always be terribly unrealistic. At some point potential raiders will take note of the mass grave on the outskirts of the colony and figure that those probably aren't colonist corpses in there and decide to go somewhere else. Stealthy raiders will result in more fragmented engagements where raider casualties are less likelyâ€"exactly what they'd plan for.

harrix1911

Think of this:

Guns is still trade-able, but also can be tear apart and recieve scrap metal(yes, fallout). scrap metal is much cheaper than guns(or even cannot trade it with merchants), but it is the resource for building and maintain machines. Player should congsider it carefully before sell them and have nothing to repair a broken turret, or simply tear them apart and ramain too may useless scrap matel.

British

Quote from: GC13 on October 22, 2013, 01:32:48 PM
I recommend making is so combat skills not only make you more likely to hit an enemy, but less likely to be hit. If my four hardcore combatants, who have low colony-growth skills, can handle the five raiders and probably won't be seriously hurt, why would I risk the eight people who keep my colony running and are far more likely to be seriously hurt without doing much?
But then you'd be amplifying the problem you're trying to solve: if we need less colonists to take down raiders, then we either (a) need to be sent more raiders to make it interesting/challenging, or (b) stop sending raiders, as they're not a challenge/threat anymore...

The sneaking would be nice, but that probably won't work without a dreaded fog of war... or raiders with advanced technology like an invisibility field or somesuch.

There has to be a way to alleviate the abundance of guns without altering too much the way raiders are managed, though...

Spike

Quote from: British on October 23, 2013, 04:11:01 AM
There has to be a way to alleviate the abundance of guns without altering too much the way raiders are managed, though...

A part of the problem with too many guns is that the game seems to be throwing a large amount of pirates out pretty fast.  The reason we get so many pirates is because as it is now, they aren't too much of a challenge.  The reason they're not much of a challenge is because we can toss up a few turrets along with some generators to easily kill them.

Basically, the player has a lot of defensive power available almost immediately.  If the rate the player gains that is decreased, then the rate of attackers (and influx of weapons) can likewise be decreased.  Which doesn't get rid of the problem, but it would make it less of one.

GC13

Quote from: British on October 23, 2013, 04:11:01 AMBut then you'd be amplifying the problem you're trying to solve: if we need less colonists to take down raiders, then we either (a) need to be sent more raiders to make it interesting/challenging, or (b) stop sending raiders, as they're not a challenge/threat anymore...
Well, the idea is that if I have fewer people on defense, you can challenge me with fewer raiders. You're sending five raiders up against me, rather than the ten you would have sent otherwise. If people decide "lol twelve on five I like those odds" then you should punish them by making raiders attack the people they feel they are most likely to be able to hurt (i.e. the ones who look like they have no idea how to protect themselves in a fight).

Also, another thing to help turn off the gun spigot: turrets need to be less helpful. Maybe shrink their model and reduce their damage and range so they're used to protect the colony once the perimeter has been breached, rather than keep it from being breached in the first place.

Spike

Quote from: GC13 on October 23, 2013, 12:00:58 PM
Well, the idea is that if I have fewer people on defense, you can challenge me with fewer raiders.

Right, that was my thought too, with the idea of slowing down how quickly the player can put out turrets.  If you have to take some time to research and build them, which requires you to have guns to tear apart, then it takes longer to get a solid defense up.  Which means that the waves of attackers can be smaller, which limits how many guns (and recruits) the player can get.

DarkKenji

I like being able to have a huge armory, so I hope the solution doesn't effect the drop rate. I usually sell off the cheapest guns to get all the money I can from the tradeships. But having 20 guns for every 1 colonist is basically just for show, I could probably sell them off if I bought tons of random stuff from the traders.

But again that huge armory looks cool (Maybe it could increase colonists happiness to see that they have so many weapons? I know it would make me happy if I was them, lol).

Having the option to break them down into metal would be the perfect solution though.

Ford_Prefect

I think gun degredation from use is a bad idea... too much micro... no fun.  In fallout 3/Vegus it was just a chore... oh my gun has degraded for killing these bandits.  I'll just use these 5 guns to repair it and sell the other 30 for money.

Guns that are damaged should have degraded stats/price is a neat idea. 

Reclaiming metal from guns is interesting, would solve issue of useless weapons.

Being able to tell your people to grab the best pistol/rife/shotgun/rpg/etc, is a good idea.



Roach

Well, some ideas.

1. Reverse engineering to unlock a research which allows you to manufacture your own type of weapon (skill tree fashion), the more weapons you dissemble the more experience can be put into this weapon's skill tree.
2. Modified raider AI, instead of simply charging your colony they are more likely to shoot at you from a distance for a long period of time, raiders can now "run out of ammo" or "patience". Furthermore they could also be more likely to retreat if facing heavy resistance/casualties thus giving you less corpses but still a challenge. A further extension would be them hiding around in the "neighborhood" and setting up camps which forces you to clear/scout the nearby area if you desire safety.

Machine

I like melting down for metal. That would work real nice.

Vonriel

Quote from: Gazz on October 22, 2013, 11:37:08 AM
An assault rifle doesn't take so much more metal to build. It takes a lot more technology.
That's what the weapon parts represent.
A mixture of research points and raw material.

I feel like this didn't get enough commentary, and I want to expand on it a bit.

What if weapons research were to be made separate from the rest of your research?

Something that bothered me in general about the Fallout idea was that our people miraculously know how to disassemble any gun, replace its parts, and reassemble it into a working machine. This just doesn't really sit well with me, especially since technological levels are supposed to be so vastly different between worlds. Why does my potentially-Industrial-worlder know the inner workings of an AK-47 well enough to perform spot replacements? He shouldn't. However, after collecting a few and experimenting with them, he should be able to generally figure out how to create one from parts laying around.

So, the idea is that when you find a gun, and we'll use pistols as a general example for now, your colonists can pick it up and start using it immediately. When you find three pistols, though, you can choose to have your colonists instead break them down and learn how pistols work. This would unlock research into pistols, and from here we return to Grazz's weapon parts idea. Once you've unlocked a branch of research, weapon parts in general can be used to advance that type of gun. So, our colonists now know how pistols work and can reproduce them, as well as modify them for the better. Our plucky colonists aren't satisfied with merely having the ability to create pistols from repurposing parts, though, and instead want to make better pistols. Greater pistols. Pistols that can stop a rampaging Muffalo in one shot. So our colonists start using weapon parts to test methods of improving upon the base pistol design. This takes us further down the pistol research track, allowing us to upgrade inferior pistols (for a small weapon parts cost) and build new pistols (for a greater weapon parts cost)

As part of this, once a research track is unlocked, weapons start being categorized into two or three types. Inferior, normal, and possibly advanced. Inferior weapons can still be used, but are tagged as such in order to let the player know that he should probably consider upgrading them as soon as possible. Normal weapons are ones that are at the tech level the player is at and can only be cannibalized. Advanced weapons, if included, could be used normally and would provide combat boosts, or can be cannibalized if some number is obtained and used to advance the research track for that weapon type. If advanced weapons aren't included, say for simplicity's sake, then normal weapons would also include those above the current tech level. Normal and advanced weapon types should be exponentially more rare than the previous tier, especially as their research track advances, such that the player might only get a few advanced weapons over the course of a game. If a weapon track isn't unlocked, the colonists won't know the specifics of how the weapon works, and therefore can't gain the extra benefit from using advanced guns.

Included in the weapons research menu would be several options. One would allow for the automatic cannibalization of weapons in order to unlock research tracks. Another would allow either the automatic upgrading of inferior weapons so long as more pressing matters aren't at hand and the weapon parts stockpile is above a given threshold, or to cannibalize inferior weapons to increase the stockpile of weapon parts. A third option would be to automatically cannibalize advanced weapons in order to advance the research track. For players who wish to handle it manually, the tracking of the numbers of each category of gun would be available, and all players would also be allowed to unlock a new research track by expending a number of weapon parts.

If a research track is unlocked by cannibalizing guns, you're returned a random amount of guns and weapon parts. The number of guns would vary from 0 to the number required to unlock the track, which might be three, or five, or ten. The amount of weapon parts would be largely dependent upon how many guns you didn't get. The idea being that you wrecked a certain number of guns used to determine how they work, but you now have the knowledge to create more from the destroyed parts. If the track is unlocked through expending weapon parts, then you're returned one gun of the type of the research track you unlocked.

Advancing the research down a track could be as simple as "Pistol research X" and need not be an entirely new tree. Each weapon type could be given a specialty, and then be made generally better with each new tier, as well. For instance, pistols could be highly accurate, but low damage and moderate fire rate. Assault rifles could be a middle-ground of medium fire rate, medium accuracy, and medium damage. And so on. This would allow for the individuality of each type of weapon to be preserved, but if the track is advanced far enough, the pistols your people use could simply completely outstrip the assault rifles the pirates use in every category.

The economy aspect of what to do with the guns could be preserved, since your peoples' highly advanced weaponry would be worth a premium price to any merchant who knows how to value such things. Almost every merchant would know the value of having spare weapon parts around, though, and those who have no compunctions against selling weaponry would be willing to deal in parts.

The only reason I go into all this, though, is to provide the answer to the question: What do I do with all my guns? The answer: break them down into parts in order to fuel research into how to make bigger and better ones, of course!

There's only one last thing I want to cover, and I appreciate those of you who are still with me. Wear and tear on the guns is pretty needlessly complex. Guns that have been damaged, by explosives for instance, could be simply downgraded to inferior status and need to have some amount of weapon parts put into them to make them wholly operational. Is this realistic? No, but some amount of realism must be sacrificed for ease of play. Adding in a new, generic resource such as weapon parts shouldn't be too bad since there are only a small handful of resources as-is. However, requiring people to constantly lose weapon parts to repairs, or to have to keep the parts sorted out by weapon type, or any number of other minutiae that could be added would merely detract from the game. I think having a generic stock of weapon parts wouldn't overburden the player, and I don't think you would break suspension of disbelief for the majority of players by allowing a pistol piece to be repurposed into a shotgun piece. I do think, though, that having 1 metal be produced by breaking down a pistol and then being reused to construct a wall at least as wide and thick as I am is a bit much.

Woah, this got long, fast. Oops.