[B18] ARMORY ENHANCED (Formerly LewisDTC's Weapon Expansion)

Started by LewisDTC, December 25, 2017, 09:04:32 PM

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KaiserThurston

Sup man. I play tested your mod, and I only have compliments for it. Your weapons blend really well with Rimworld and don't feel out of balance (saying this as someone who uses a lot of weapon mods). The gauss rifle appeared for me in the 3 raid (13 days into the game) being used by a hostile pawn from Rimsenal.
The only odd thing I've seen is that your new research tier for gauss, rail and laser appears to be prerequisites for some turrets of the More turrets mod, but it may be because of the ResearchPal mod.
Anyway, keep up the good work man.

LewisDTC

That's probably because I repurposed some of the existing research ID's for my weapons: notably Multibarrelled Weapons and Charged Shot, which now unlock the minigun and charge tier of weapons respectively. Bad etiquette I know, but those techs were just so... cluttery.

However! As they still use the same IDs then any mods that use those techs will still work: they just appear in my panel with altered text.

(That, and the next update will add at least 6 towers to the game)

As for adding the mod to the Steam workshop? Nope - no intention of doing so. The community there is something I want no part of and I don't want to support a modding platform that tried to endorse locking mods behind a paywall. I will will possibly also upload on the Nexus in the future as a site I have used for a long time and have a lot of respect for.

Harry_Dicks

Quote from: LewisDTC on January 02, 2018, 02:32:40 PM
That's probably because I repurposed some of the existing research ID's for my weapons: notably Multibarrelled Weapons and Charged Shot, which now unlock the minigun and charge tier of weapons respectively. Bad etiquette I know, but those techs were just so... cluttery.

However! As they still use the same IDs then any mods that use those techs will still work: they just appear in my panel with altered text.

(That, and the next update will add at least 6 towers to the game)

As for adding the mod to the Steam workshop? Nope - no intention of doing so. The community there is something I want no part of and I don't want to support a modding platform that tried to endorse locking mods behind a paywall. I will will possibly also upload on the Nexus in the future as a site I have used for a long time and have a lot of respect for.

Good for you man, I feel the same way as you. Honestly I used to have so much faith and love Valve, but that all started going away so many years ago. They are nothing like there were 20 years ago.

Also, with the minigun turret, will that interfere with any other mods that have one as well, or would I just have 2 seperate types of minigun turrets? I could have sworn I had the option to build it in my game, but searching through my mods I can't find out where it was coming from (290ish mods), and I'm in the middle of redownloading and fixing all of my mods so I won't be able to fire up a proper game for at least a couple more days.

Either way though, it is looking more and more like your mod will be one of the only 2-3 weapon mods that I will use. Everything looks so freaking nice, balanced, and the art style goes with RimWorld perfectly. Props to you! ;)

LewisDTC

Shouldn't conflict at all - possibly if the mods use the same Def's, though in that case the mod further down in the load order should take priority.

In hindsight, I should go through and add a unique tag to all my Def's, but doing so would be a big change that required new safe files as it would wreck saves.

Warlord27

Do you have a plan to add some a new gun tier 6 and also heavy weapon?
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ChJees

Really looking forward to a 1.0 release. Would be fun to base a play through around this mod :).

asquirrel

Hey dude.  I was using this mod and all the badass mag weapons my modded scythers were spawning with (using the mechanoid extrordinare mod). Now they are only spawning with the standard R4 charge rifles.  The weird thing is that the plasma guns (the green ones) haven't changed form.  Maybe the load order is changing what they are spanwing with?

Harry_Dicks

Quote from: asquirrel on January 09, 2018, 04:35:53 PM
Hey dude.  I was using this mod and all the badass mag weapons my modded scythers were spawning with (using the mechanoid extrordinare mod). Now they are only spawning with the standard R4 charge rifles.  The weird thing is that the plasma guns (the green ones) haven't changed form.  Maybe the load order is changing what they are spanwing with?

What a great idea for a mod, be able to restrict/enable any type of weapon/item/gear or whatever from whatever specific enemies you want to. They could spawn with some really crazy combinations based on what you give them too. Like tribal raiders, or raiders from a certain faction/technology, can only use forks and shields.

props

I've noticed that your weapon thumbnails don't display properly in the Simple Sidearms mod options.

JohnLG

I've been using this off and on for a while now.  Definitely my favorite weapon mod.  The quality has definitely noticeably improved since the last time I tried it before you added plasma guns and the fancy melee weapons.  I appreciate your effort with the balance, especially. 

Harry_Dicks

I agree in the balance and this just being an all around great weapon pack. Exactly what I was looking for, everything feels unique. I hate when there is maybe 20-30 different kind of assault rifles, just why? It feels like bloat to me then, because it is.

But yes, do you think we can fix the "icons" or whatever it is, so that when you use Simple Sidearms, you don't get a red error? You can still use both mods, but a lot of things will just have an X for their icon, and you must hover mouse over them to read the tooltip of what pops up.

Ashnal

Love your weapon art Lewis!

I was wondering if you could make a small adjustment to the Gauss firing sound. It kinda sounds like a flashbang going off and grates on my ears a bit. Would it be possible to lower the relative volume of this firing sound? Or perhaps make it sound less sharp/harsh?

Harry_Dicks

#27
I can't help but keep coming back to how great this mod is. I was reading over the OP again, and I had somehow missed the "upcoming" section. Lewis, if you make your mod come with turrets, or make it as a separate mod, I will be extremely happy with it. This is because I know you will come out with something that is great and balanced, and I already know I will be using it.

Right now, I am also using the mod Rimatomics, and it has some pretty interesting energy defense weapons. However, I want to also play with the mod Zombieland, and the energy turrets won't work against them that well. That's because I will have my zombies set up to have a lot more of them on the map, but they will also be weak and easy to kill, with no regeneration. Do you think you might include a wide variety of turrets that fill different roles? I was thinking of a sort of "laser minigun" like turrets, low damage-high volume energy defenses.

There is the mod More Vanilla Turrets that does a pretty good job of what I want it for, and it's not too bloated either with just a few of everything. Something else I think would be really awesome if it were to be integrated into a turret mod made in your style would be if we had a good handful of different upgrades that we can research for different turrets. With the mod SS Researchable Stat Upgrades, Spdsktr has included a dll that will allow a research to change a thingDef's comps or verbs or something like that. So he has one research that will change the amount of bullets that a turret shoots from 3 to 4. You could also have a research that increases a type of turrets range. Also in the mod Rimatomics by dubwise, you have so many "slots" on your turrets that you can put different upgrades into that will modify each turret individually in a specific way. I haven't looked too much into these, but I would imagine you could have something like "insert this upgrade to make turret shoot quicker, this one will give this new attack, etc." I know all of that might sound like too much, but I think at least having "upgrade-able turrets" through research would be fairly easy, especially if you asked Spdsktr, and he were to allow you to use his dll in your mod. Anyway, since on your OP you said we are free to leave comments, I wanted to give you some unsolicited advice, so I wanted to say a few things ::)

I think I've essentially completed all of the content mods I will need to get a new game started again. Now I am just in the process of refining everything to my liking even better, trimming down on any fat, but also trying to fill any holes that I might have between all of the content.

EDIT: Whoops, I wanted to add - will you give us any hint of what you mean by "shock" weapons? Will these do electric damage? What I would really like to see included in your mod are a couple non lethals. I'd like to have, say, a sort of "riot control" shotgun, and maybe a stun baton, that I can have sitting in a few weapon racks, maybe near where my pawns can quickly grab them if there is a prison break, so that way they will be prepared and posted up with the right non lethal weaponry, ready to down (but not injure) the prisoners trying to break out.

Finally, I don't know how you feel about it - but what would you think about maybe a few special bows or something more fantasy style like this? Maybe they don't have to necessarily be "magical" but they could at least be interesting. Maybe a bow that shoots "flaming arrows". Or at least arrows that might do fire damage, and/or have a chance to set the target on fire. These could be "magical" fire arrows, or more of a RimWorld style where we can just imagine this archer has their arrows pre-dipped in tar and then just lights the arrow before firing it. Maybe you could have a bow that shoots arrows that can poison the enemy, either through damage over time or radiation or maybe an increase chance to gain a disease.

I ask about bows, and maybe some non gunpowder/energy weapons, because of two great mods that I think they would go well with. First, there is the huge LotR mod in the works, in case anyone doesn't know about it, and it has a huge team of some of the best modders all working on it. There is also the fantastic mod TMagic, that Torann has an awesome update for it everyweek. Right now in TMagic I think there are maybe 15ish classes, which is awesome. But I think there are only a couple of (not trying to bash anyone, but being honest) poorly implemented mods that have weapons like this.

I think if you could implement items like this, or make them into another mod but in the same fashion as Armory Enhanced, it would be absolutely superb. Stuff like mage staffs or wands (casts ultra basic fireballs, ice balls, lightning bolts, etc. depending on the wand/staff), bows (fire, ice, lighting, 3 arrows, whatever), unique and/or named swords (bleeding swords, a claw that always tries to cut peoples legs, etc.) and other weapons and stuff like this, more of the special and/or distinct/fun/interesting medieval/fantasy type weapons.

I know these are mostly all silly spitball ideas, but I figure if I can get a decent handful of them out there, then one of them might be worth considering :) Either way, thank you for all of your work, and your time of reading this. I really do appreciate it!

Also, just putting it out there - but if you did want to make something like a new mod like this but for these different types of weapons, I can help you with virtually all of the xml stuff if you'd like. I'm just terrible at art! :) But I've been learning the xml by tinkering with, and making some of my own mods over the past couple months. Mehni even let me help him with Elemental Boomalopes. I would just love to see something like this come from you, in particular, because I agree completely with your ideas behind what a weapon mod like yours should be, and I think your art is really fantastic. It goes perfectly with the RimWorld style, or at least the aesthetic I want in my game. All of the weapons are very clear to the player, there is not ever really any question of what something is, or getting two things confused with each other. Even at a glance, you can tell by the color what tier everything falls in. And there is only one shotgun, one assault rifle, pistol, etc. per tiers, just the way I like it! ;) I guess what it comes down to, is if you wanted to make the art and still be allowed to have control of the mod and all of the balance decisions and whatever else, that's fine with me. I just want to help give back by contributing some work to a project that I believe is within my skill set, and something I could finish within a reasonable amount of time, and also by being able to work with someone who's ideas of balance and other things I already agree with.

Harry_Dicks


Shurp

So I decided to give this a try, and while it looks interesting, it feels unbalanced, at least for the lower tier weapons.  Revolvers and Pistols now feel worse than short bows because of their slow rate of fire, while the increase in damage for the Assault Rifle makes it arguably more dangerous than the rail and gauss weapons.  I haven't gotten to the more advanced weapons so I can't comment yet on how effective they are.  If they seem good then maybe I'll just adjust the lower tier weapons myself to balance them.
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