New wealth system in B19

[Nafensoriel]

What a hell? I just discovered that health now don't affect weapons accuracy and armor protection. So you can have 10% hp weapon and armor and be just as good as having 100% hp weapon and armor.

I think that's a very bad change. Interesting why Tynan did that.

To be fair though it makes more sense. An old battered AR-15 is still going to shoot the same bullet as a brand new one. It just might jam or flat out critically fail on firing.

No it doesn't. First of all it greatly upsets balance. Now you don't need to keep your weapons health. Secondly, health in Rimworld represents damage to item. So 10% hp AR-15 is like bended beaten thing. In B18 that thing would fire with less accuracy. I don't see a reason why it's make less sense than firing as good as new.

I repeat. A 5.56 round is a 5.56 round. It doesn't matter if the barrels bent or not the damn things going to expend its energy somewhere the moment that primer fires. The "health" of the gun only equates to its capacity to function. A bent barrel doesn't exclude the weapon from throwing a round lethally at a target. It does alter its accuracy and safety, however.

It makes logical sense to remove weapon damage from health... even for balance. There does have to be a "cost" to a poor gun unless the meta is being shifted that "health" is "functional health" not "total health". IE the period of time when no maintenance is needed for proper operation. Though I honestly haven't toyed with B19/1.0 enough to know if there are new systems like jams in place.

[BLACK_FR]

In previous system health affected accuracy and didn't affect damage. Are you sure new system where condition of weapon doesn't affect it's accuracy makes more sense?

[Drewski]

I don't imagine that realism is the goal here. If you want realism, you'd have to handle sharp melee, blunt melee, bows, and firearms differently, and obviously there's no realistic answer to worn-out sci-fi weapons. I'd assume it's to make weapon management more accessible, so you don't need to check the individual stats on weapons when deciding what to equip, possibly with a spreadsheet open on the side. That's fine with me, but I'm a more casual player than some. I can definitely understand the desire for a more detailed system, which would also be fine with me.

If I were doing it with realism as the goal, I'd probably set sharp to do more damage but lose penetration, leave blunt unchanged, have bows lose accuracy and damage, and make firearms have a chance to not fire equal to the damage%. Sci-fi weapons I'd make explode at the damage% rate, mostly because I'm a jerk.

[Nafensoriel]

@black_fr
Accuracy even if going for hyper-realism would be a straight up "it depends" so I personally find it a poor metric.  Ideally, a weapon's condition should alter its ability to consistantly discharge. Let's face it beyond the barrel the parts of a weapon which are most likely going to fail do not significantly alter the weapons ability to shoot straight. They might alter your ability to handle the weapon or sight properly, however. Both of these could infer accuracy penalties to the user's skill and make far more immersive sense as they would be a critical failure, not an assured condition. I'd rather a weapon's condition equate to a jam or, in a poorly made low health weapon, a straight up catastrophic failure... A REASON to use better weapons without penalizing the story aspect of accepting a risk in a last-ditch defence using pipe guns. A pipe gun firing a 7.62 WILL kill.. and if you can rifle the sucker it will be surprisingly accurate as well. It also damn well might kill the user. THAT is a good story to see over "poor gun misses a bunch" and it wouldn't be too terribly inefficient to code.

@drewski
This is personal opinion but sci-fi has to go one of two ways. It either goes 10% real and 90% absurd or 90% real and 10% absurd.(starwars vs startrek)

In rimworlds case, we already have enough simulated realism in food, sleep, location-specific wounds, wounds that alter a pawns health semi-realistically, etc to fall more to the latter of the two spectrums.
To give an example of both in context:
10% real: A raygun shoots hardlight lasers powered by a quantum tunnel to the heart of a star.
90% real: A railgun shoots a 5mm dart using a microfission pack.
Both qualify as sci-fi and both have their place. A good absurd scifi is just as good as a "hard sci-fi" when told well.

Since rimworlds main selling point is the story maintaining the illusion of realism helps to humanize your pawns and invest player interest in them... That's why when Tynan hears a story about someone having to dig up their dead for food to survive the winter it makes him happy. Not because of the morbidity of the story but because the player sitting behind that session had to invest themselves enough in the product to choose to engage in that kind of action.. and that the game provided a means.

In short, it doesn't matter if the 10% absurd is "sharp, blunt, etc" provided the means to reach those calculations is seated in a manner which drags the user into not giving a crap about why they are absurd. Ideally, a weapon's quality should alter the pawn and not itself. A garbage gun in a sharpshooters hands will perform better.. but that weird cribbed on bolt on the stock is still going to make it darned uncomfortable(-15mood 30min upon firing) to fire for anyone. It would also open mod options and simplify some calculations...

[BLACK_FR]

@Nafensoriel
I'm more concerned about balance than about realism. I think current wealth system is kinda bad. I'm going to win this game with only starting pawn on merciless naked brutality with all good events disabled. There is no need to consider base design. Just execute wealth control, relax and watch seasons pass by without hard challenge.

I would like that on highest difficulties you would need micro-managing and squeeze every advantage you get. I needed it in the start. But when I made all basic stuff I can just chill like on peaceful difficulty. I prognose that only challenge would be 15 days after launching a ship. But if there are no challenges in period before you research electricity and moment you start ship - then you know that it's something wrong with current balance.

B18 was harder in that regard because time was the issue.