Weapon parts / Armor scraps

[Phazen]

What if instead of enemies dropping the weapons/armor they are carrying, they dropped parts or scraps? These could then be used in crafting to create weapons/armor usable by the player. This could be used to draw out the difficulty curve in that once you kill a character using a decent weapon, you don't have a sudden free spike in power by just grabbing his gear, this could also help with late game situations in that enemies could have weapons that the player has no hope of ever obtaining, in order to create an increase in difficulty without having fps killing 200 man raids of bows and arrows or low-tech guns.

[Ednac]

True, but be reasonable I killed a guy with a gun wait a minute... what happened to his gun? Guess I just proved the law of conversation of matter wrong. I understand scraps of stuff like Armor vest after killing them but the there should be a selection for people to turn off low tech tribal gear drops that would be nice, so that way the people who like that stuff can use while people with weak machines or just overpowering game on perfect res and ludicrous world size is could turn it off or on.

[BetaSpectre]

If you ask me if you're tough, strong, and smart you shouldn't die suddenly in the endgame or have to resort to crazy OP maze traps to succeed.

I think fights should be capped at 3x enemy forces never too many more. We aren't fighting a war we're just defending a small town.

Also the colonists should have access to the best equipment.

[Phazen]

The problem with colonists having the best weapons is that it effectively makes you unstoppable, since with the nature of the game you will always be on the defensive, which allows  you to control choke points, which makes a number advantage nearly useless, and to be honest there needs to be a challenge for end game other than enemies running into your death hallway with weapons that you will always match after the first time finding them

[BetaSpectre]

I never liked the fact that as a tiny village in the middle of no where you find lots of people willing to kill you. it'd be ok if you were the raiders or stumbled upon lots of resources but as is that's not the case

As for enemy tactics that can defeat your defenses

There are sieges, if they aren't clumped or suicidal in holding their positions are one counter
Then there's the encounter where they just drop on you.

A bug issue for me is immersion, attacks aren't something that make sense on such a large scale for now. The warefare waged on your colony is simply not done realistically but instead is basically a grind no matter how it goes. Instead of better equipment enemies need better tactics and a better reason for their attacks like if you took several people prisoner or aided their enemies extortion is also something that makes sense.

inter faction relations need alot more development.

[Damien Hart]

Rather than weapons and armor inexplicably falling to pieces the moment their owner dies, maybe weapons and armour being crafted from a set of components, that have basic modifiers like "broken" etc. with raiders' equipment consisting of mostly poor quality components. Players can then disassemble items to obtain the quality components and use those to reassemble quality weapons and armor in their own time. Raiders with actual quality weapons/armor would be a rarity, restricted to characters like the leader of a party.

Giving the player the option to use the low quality items would help bridge the gap between obtaining the items and crafting them into something usable, which, depending on situational time constraints, could be quite some time.

The player should always have access to high quality gear, how else would eight colonists ever hope to overcome sixty or more raiders. That being said, it definitely shouldn't be easy; players shouldn't be able to pick the spoils from a few battles and be set for life, they need to really work for it.

As BetaSpectre mentioned, sieges are part of a move toward mechanics to force the player away from their carefully designed choke points, and I'd rather go in the direction of enemies employing better tactics than being restricted to poor equipment to increase difficulty.

[Phazen]

Damien, that would be a good way to expand upon that, rather than being just generic "parts".

As for the higher quality gear on npcs, I was thinking less of a seige type scenario, and more of a highly specialized group that requires you to adapt to them, other than just a cookie cutter solution, something like a group of 3 units, 2 with explosive CQ weapons, and one with a high powered long ranged weapon.

Types of encounters like this would force a colony to adapt to it, rather than just waiting it out  behind walls, as it would force you to come out and deal with it tactically or else the 2 members would demolish your colony along with the people hiding behind it's walls, I feel the mechanoids are a good step in the direction of being small groups of highly dangerous foes, but it could be improved upon.

[Damien Hart]

A few high quality NPC's might make an interesting rare event, but the idea of some sort of elite group of well equipped raiders seems even more unrealistic to me than giant groups of raiders attacking every other week.

I'd like to see something more in the way of more regular attacks, and not so much all out assaults as an actual proper raid. Small groups coming in to shoot out defenses, trade rounds with colonists for a few minutes, and then retreat. Something that a small group of colonists can hold off effectively, allowing the rest of the colonists to continue with their normal tasks - albeit away from the raiders.

If the raiding party happens to come across some thing worth taking - food, incapped colonists, dropped weapons/armor, but not things like metal, wood or stone, which wouldn't be viable for a small party to haul away - they grab it and go.

Large raiding groups should be much less common, and only come from civilised factions (tribes, towns, etc.) as I don't really see bands of pirates rallying together to form an army - more men means smaller shares of the loot.

[RawCode]

items from raiders should drop in poor condition.
like 10-20% of max durability, and player will have option to reduce such items to base components and use that components to maintain limited amount of guns and armors in perfect condition.