Flat damage resistance values for armor and walls

[RawCode]

Currently high tech power armor as vulnerable to bows and stones as everything else, 35% resistance is joke, IRL bow may not harm ever medieval armor and can harm only if hit unprotected area (like head).

IRL handguns may not harm stone wall, no matter how many shots performed - wall will stand.

Similar issue was in Fallout 3 where play can assemble "gun" from toy parts and kill power armored enemy units just fine.

Also currently naked prisoner if go psychotic can deal with iron door and leave just, same with kung-fu raiders who can break doors with bare hands.

Suggestion is simple - support for flat damage resistance for modding and possibly flat damage for "vanilla" armors and objects.

[Shinzy]

So you could wall yourself in early game and be virtually untouchable
by early bandits, tribals and crazed animals
and be able to punch horde of tribals to death and hunt muffaloes with your fists while wearing a powerarmor? =P

lot of the burst guns would be rendered useless aswell by flat damage res
how would you make it balanced?
I'm not saying your suggestion is bad but I feel like it would need lot work so you couldn't exploit it somehow =P

and give your prisoners some clothes my good man! they're gna get flu

[bjo0rn]

Different damage and armor types is hardly a new concept in gaming. I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Bunkering could be countered by equipping attackers with tools to break walls, e.g. torches, explosives, rams, picks, etc.

It is in fact a bit ridiculous having to rebuild stone and metal walls after defending against bowmen.

[RawCode]

IRL many civilizations crafted walls against tribals and animals...
some of that walls still stand.

armor can have flat and float resistance, weapons may have damage and armor penetration (flat and percent).

like high tech laser with damage 5 and armor penetration 50, will be useless vs tribals due low damage, but extremely useful vs mechanoids and armored units due huge penetration.

burst weapons can be balanced same way - by adding some armor penetration.
Armor penetration can be negative, like shrapnel grenades dealing 50 damage with 0(-200%) armor penetration, such weapons will kill unarmored units in few hits, but useless vs armored targets.
Currently there is no easy way to mod such items.

As for generic balance - Gnomoria fixed issue with "too much loot" by marking 90% of drops from enemy units as broken (or reducing items directly to some dust) and only option to smelt them.
Same with RimWorld, armor from raiders should be broken, same for weapons, broken items can be disassembled and new weapons assembled from harvested components.
Current tech tiers will allow to make things very simple - low tech items assembled from lowtech components and dissambled to lowtech components, same for other levels (actually this is possible at this time, will try to mod something like this)

actually this will turn into "disassemble 5 broken armors and get assault rifle" or "craft rifle from 3 pistols" but this much better then current system involving "space merchant ans silver".

[sirdave79]

I agree. Im just watching vids atm but power armour doesnt seem that great. I question the "medieval missile weapons couldnt penetrate medieval armour" statement. Whether or not an english longbow could defeat the best plate is a bit up in the air, but im pretty sure crossbows could regardless, and I strongly suspect a warbow could sometimes penetrate decent plate. But the effect of any bow should be significantly less than kevlar vests (im assuming here and basing it on a bullet from a gun being harder to stop than a dart from a bow) or powered armour.

Armour penetration sounds like a good option for "adding a single property" to acheive the goal. I should think heavy weapons like a light machine gun or a sniper weapon system should slow a character down significantly and using them strategically with your peoples moving around them would be the way to use them. Not too sure why "burst wepons would be nerfed too much out of the box". Im fairly sure a modern assault rifle fires all bullets in an auto burst at the same speed as single shot (am I wrong ?). The lasgun and the frag grenade examples illustrate the mechanic already described above nicely.

Also armour should possibly have a penetration defense rating as well as flat damage resistance. Also, although its much less common, melee damage is a bit different to missile damage. Id think that that plate armour and powered armour would be highly resistant to melee damage. Not sure about kevlar vests but I suspect that actually they wouldnt do an awful lot against getting battered with a baseball bat (ignoring coverage). Which brings one onto non blunt melee damage. Getting chopped with a  great big axe or stabbed with a powered sword.

Speaking of medevil plate, wouldnt armour of that tier be a useful addition to the game? Possibly thicker front facing only super heavy unpowered plate (im thinking ironmans prototype suit from ironman 1) if bullets would be deemed to make regular plate worthless apart from against bows and pilum.

I would very much like to see the crafting of armour and weapons. Id like to the ability to craft "metal armour" sort of corresponding to medieval plate or plate/chain/metal inlaid garments, even if powered armour couldnt be crafted by colonists. this armour might provide less protection to missile fire (lower penetration defense) than kevlar but more melee protection.   Is everyone satisfied with a single armour peice ? Its nice and clean the way it is but helmets would be nice.

Although someone has posted "who'd want to buy second hand sweaty rags" on the topic of selling raider clothes to traders, since our colonists would be glad of the protection and not complain I think they should sell for a low value.

"get your authentic tribal garb here !".

Maybe just "dusting" or destroying clothes with a character death is the way forward. At the minimum allowing cremation of clothes (possibly also custom items here, allowing anything the player deems unworthy of being stockpiled to be cremated).

Also can powered armour be obtained in the game without the colonist creation mod being used ? Ive never seen it drop off a raider.

EDIT reading back I realise ironmans prototype suit is more powered than unpowered. Bad example, despite the visuals fitting.

[Shinzy]

IRL many civilizations crafted walls against tribals and animals...
some of that walls still stand.

But.. IRL is dull =P
anyhow you've convinced me on some level. It would be nice see having some reasons
to switch weaponry and have variety of different armour and using different tactics
depending on the enemy somewhere down the line

just so you don't end up with an army of 'clones'

still I haven't had any problems with having to repair walls nearly ever
the stone walls seem to withstand turret fire really well and
life would get really dull if the tribals wouldn't be total dinguses punching out my remote thermal generator huts every frikking time they come around

and if I'm completely honest I prefer feeling your colonists are vulnerable to whatever.
Say in games like X Com the endgame lost lot of flavour for me with my team being nigh unkillable, you know? So I'm bit concerned with these kinda things =P

But adding support for this for modding, that I can get behind!

And SirDave! the power armors do drop! the raiders don't start to wear them until very late, the outlander down faction guys can be seen sporting them much earlier on though. But you'll end up having one for each colonist eventually =P
and if you're real lucky you mite end up finding one in real fancy colour

I have a purple.. and green one, I'm very proud of them *beams with pride*

[sirdave79]

Ive played a lot of xcom and I savescum too much. Has always felt (original and modern remake) that losing even 1 of your best soldiers is "too much" to come back from (for me). But I do know what you mean when the little guys get geared and skilled up.

I dont think they ever become invulnerable (or close). My recollection is that your soldiers are always vulnerable to a good shot if they step into the open in the wrong spot.

Plus I think youd invest story-wise even more in one of your rimworld colonists (they just do more stuff!) than in an xcom soldier. So I still think they need more help in surviving battles (hopefully successful ones).

Speaking in df terms success for me is being able to defend my base without taking casualties. It is my goal to keep everyone alive.

[RawCode]

to prevent "army of clones" issue - armor and weapons can have different expected use and top armors should be extremely hard to get and maintain.

Closes game at this time is Gnomoria;
Closes game with longrun planning is StarSector;

Ever if 10 riders in top power armor and energy weapons come and you managed to kill them all (lucky mortars or insane micro management) all drops are beyond repair and only option to disassemble them.
Result will be like 2 high tech weapons max if really skilled engineer present.

Powered armors and weapons should require some kind of ammo, probably energy cells or something similar.
Projectile weapons also should require ammo, for bows it can be arrows that crafted from wood, for normal guns - bullets crafted from iron.
Max ammo pool for items should be relatively large, like 200 arrows or 300 bullets and follow same rules like generic items - if raider is killed all items and ammo damaged beyond repair.
All weapons should have some kind of internal health and require maintenance over time.

Colony should have option to produce everything self, but only if highly skilled engineers are present and process should be long and require large amount of infrastructure building.

In such case you will be forced to keep power armor and powered weapons for hard enemy invasions.
Wont waste superhightech laser of death on boomrat.
And will actually pass tech levels over time when your colony expand.

Because if you waste all energy cells\ammo on random tribals, you will have problems when high tech enemy came.

Result will be something like:
UI button like "green alert, orange alert, red alert" and corresponding setup for colonists.

In case of green alert colonist A pick pistol, all other colonists ignore alert.
In case of red alert colonist B pick power armor and laser of doom, all other colonists hide in safe location.

After combat damaged gear dropped for repair\reload\refuel on specialized workstation, then returned to personal armory (bound to colonist "permanently" like bed).

If no maintenance performed - items degrade over time and eventually break completely, if no reload\refuel performed - colonists will go melee.

If large pool of free items exists, colonist will drop item for maintenance and pick same class "free" item as replacement.

[BetaSpectre]

I agree with the OP, but I feel like this should be a later game concern when quality of enemies matters more than quantity.

After all Power Armor (not combat armor) should be rare
and we should have more sets of clothes like medival stuff, and more varied factions.

[Halinder]

I still think gunfire should do damage to stone walls. I mean, it's not like the walls are reflecting the bullets, they will crumble very slowly. Your colonists aren't building the Great Wall or something out of medieval times, they're building a six-foot wide and perhaps eight-foot tall closely packed array of stone bricks. As for doors, whilst it might be realistic to not be broken down by naked prisoners/melee pirates, removing their ability to escape or break in would severely damage the game's balance, as was said before. Perhaps if a maintenance level was added to structures and not just weapons, this would make more sense -- a poorly maintained door or wall collapses easy, whilst one with perfect maintenance wouldn't go down. It'd be balanced since you'd have to man that area to keep prisoners in or pirates out. As for items the same goes for armor. Poorly maintained power armor is going to do terribly against gunfire or even arrows at low amounts.

Oh god. Ammo? Maintenance itself is already consuming in terms of colonist work, but having to worry about ammunition could cripple any early colony. Think of this real quick. In the first few days you have to get a food source, structures for your colonists, power generators and batteries, and then a plan forward regarding research and expansion. Perhaps if you started with a lot of ammo this wouldn't be as bad, but considering the third raid is when things usually ramp up (except for Phoebe Friendly) it'd be pretty hard to keep ammo reserves going. It'd have to be really cheap and fast to make or the game would simply receive an unnecessary ramp in difficulty. Perhaps regular ammo could be unlimited, but colonists could construct special ammunition that does extra damage or is more accurate.

[RawCode]

If colony can't support large supply of bullets - it should use bows and arrows.
Sawmill station will fit bow and arrows production perfectly.

Really, why hunt muffalo with rail gun when you can craft bow and arrows and use them?
Bows also can be made with "bonus damage property" versus animals, or keep more meat inside dead body of creature, like muffalo killed by bow gives 500 meat and muffalo killed by gunfire only 150.

When colony grow and expand, it will have option to produce conventional ammo, then high tech\energy ammo.
This will allow player to decide - rush or tech, just like all PvP strategy games works.

Walls should be resistant to normal guns, special weapons designed to breach walls can be given to raid parties to break walls around colony.

[BetaSpectre]

Ahem just in case you don't remember raiders might just attack in groups of 90-270 after not too long and if you happened to not have unlimited rounds of sniper ammo I'm as good as dead maybe not in the first raid but its gonna be pretty soon Especially if the sniper and its ammo is rare for "balance".

The system as is I would say just needs a few minor tweaks to be fun, but the game would need a huge amount of reworking to implement limited ammunition for basic weapons.

unless it is easy to make and there's a way to carry it (ahem backpacks) then each colony should have a life expectancy of a few months to weeks.

I like the idea but until raiders stop needing ludicrous amounts of firepower to repel (when not uber seiging that's easy) it's probably best to not go though with the idea not saying that it isn't nice or that its bad but the game as is wouldn't support it very well.

Gun maintainence and price adjustments make sense, although things don't degrade quickly without use so guns should IMO should not need reloads to be used but a certain amount of durability to fire which degrades with each shot. the "not reloading" then essentially becomes repair your gun in the fight. With the addition of backpacks for food, medicine, and more guns broken weapons will not become too much of a burden.

And this way "useless" fighters can be used to "reload" that is repair your weapons in the field.

Now in a battle guns don't just break so should drop as deteriorated as is, armor does so if an enemy dies its armor should be 100% of the time damaged or broken unless it sustained only melee damage or the wearer died from one shot (impossible) which for the benefit of the doubt just meant you punched his face till he died or got dropped.

When a gun reaches 30 durability it should stop shooting and now require repairs all the way back to at least 80. 3000 work seems fair for 30 to 100. (skill not needed IMO)

If this kind of reloading gets implemented then new Generic Ammo items could be common and needed for repairs, and we'll also need everyone to have their own inventory.

Durability should play a larger role IMO, it decreases protection for armor, and for guns after a certain threshhold they'll stop firing. (raiders should carry packs of generic ammo to continue to fight, but if killed will be good loots not to mention their other equipments like food)

[RawCode]

Best method to implement limited ammo\durability for weapons and ammo will be:

1) Each colonist have "backpack" inventory.
2) Backpack can store LARGE amount of food\medicine\ammo\whatever, max amount defined by player, supply in most cases evenly split over all colonists, second weapon also allowed.
3) Armor and gun health can't regenerate mid combat, but top durability of weapons should be larger then single colonist can spent at single run.
In case of something special - secondary weapon can be used.

if you maintain your stuff, it wont break mid combat, no matter how long combat is.
4) Ammo is unified, lowtech ammo, mid,high and probably energy.
5) Colonist have no max for ammo stored, by default ammo split evenly and limited to 1000, mid tech ammo and can fire ANY mid tech weapon.
6) Small arms drain minor amount of unified ammo per shot, like 1 or 2.
7) Large arms drain much more.

same rules for raiders, who in most cases does not have large pool of ammo and unmaintained weapons, this will give edge for properly operated colony.
Few colonists with perfect condition weapons can deal with raiders who wear same weapons but not maintained properly.