Raiders as a source of income

[Aristocat]

Does anyone think it would nice if *raider weapons destroyed on drop? And maybe clothes raider using should be sell lower price or also destroyed on drop?

[Thorin]

No... not really for a vanilla mechanic, make a mod for it. Then people can decide for themselves if they want the extra difficulty.

[Japzzi]

Does anyone think it would nice if *raider weapons destroyed on drop? And maybe clothes raider using should be sell lower price or also destroyed on drop?

I see where you are going and the idea is not entirely bad.. I hate having tons of guns and clothes laying around and the selling them for insane profits. But I think that if they get destroyed on drop then you will have a hard time getting guns for your settlers since weapon trading ships dont pass by daily. But if it were so that Tynan would make all items raiders/tribe people carry destroyed on drop I would be up for the challenge. It just seems like there is no real need to sell food or buy weapons anymore since you get plenty of from the raiders.

[Aristocat]

Does anyone think it would nice if *raider weapons destroyed on drop? And maybe clothes raider using should be sell lower price or also destroyed on drop?

I see where you are going and the idea is not entirely bad.. I hate having tons of guns and clothes laying around and the selling them for insane profits. But I think that if they get destroyed on drop then you will have a hard time getting guns for your settlers since weapon trading ships dont pass by daily. But if it were so that Tynan would make all items raiders/tribe people carry destroyed on drop I would be up for the challenge. It just seems like there is no real need to sell food or buy weapons anymore since you get plenty of from the raiders.

That was supposed to be my mod idea(ICraft already make weapon and armor craftable), but next patch add weapon smithing bench so it wouldn't be really problem, I think.

I think weapons should repaired in order to use, even in vanilla game.

[Japzzi]

Sounds great with crafting! I always wanted to give my medieval lord a sword xP

[Goo Poni]

Does anyone think it would nice if *raider weapons destroyed on drop? And maybe clothes raider using should be sell lower price or also destroyed on drop?

I think if that became the status quo for vanilla, difficulty would have to be tweaked. Maybe guns are rarer and hard to build. If all raiders are gonna snap their guns in half a split second before they die, I don't want to see 20 man raids with M24s, M16s and R4s when I then cannot salvage any of those. Not in the combat system right now. Combat basically comes down to who has the most bodies with the most guns at high range. Damage is completely random. Bloody tortoises can bite eyes out. What the hell is a colonist doing laying on the floor in front of an angry tortoise? It's a tortoise. Stand behind it. Flip it over. It's like a fifth your size, it should not be able to bite any part of your upper body. Any combat with guns is the same. Took a hit? Okay, pick a body part at random, roll for damage save, inflict damage if not saved. Staring a big ol' 6-piece Centipede? Okay, you're in front of it then, right? Why are you shooting the 6th and final body segment instead of the huge gray face? Why are you shooting anywhere but the huge gray face from the front? It's all you can see.

[Sion]

Does anyone think it would nice if *raider weapons destroyed on drop? And maybe clothes raider using should be sell lower price or also destroyed on drop?

I really hate games where the  enemy has for example a gun and shoots you a lot without any kind of problem like jamming or so, witch means that there obviously is nothing wrong with the gun, but when you headshot the enemy and pick up hes gun it have somehow degraded like 200 years in 30 seconds and is (almost) unusable.
or even worse, the enemy doesn't even drop it.

I think that if the enemy can use something, then you should be able to use it as well.

[Timber]

I think the biggest problem with using raiders for income is selling all the damn loot. It gets so tiresome to drag every vest and pistol and what have you that eventually I just don't bother.

[Tynan]

This is a problem with the game. I'm considering ways to solve it.

It's already one of the reasons enemies will try to flee from combat if they're losing.

I may also add a system where clothing can be ruined if someone dies wearing it. This would be symmetrical, so it would apply to colonists as well.

[Sion]

Tynan, maybe you could improve or automate parts of the trading interface?

Improvement:
* add a "select max amount" and "min amount"-button
* be able to type numbers instead of having to drag, example: just type 3000 instead of dragging for 2 minutes

Automation:
* make a bill in the "trade station"-thingy witch says something like:
** sell berries until you have less than or equal to 200
** sell all apparel of type leather
** sell all pants
** buy medicine until you have 75 or more
* and next time a traders visit you get a message that says something like:

** "a trader is near, execute all this bills?"
** and a list (like the mod list in the main menu) is shown with red X or green V's where it says something like:
** V sell berries until you have less than or equal to 200
** V sell all apparel of type leather
** X sell all pants
** V buy medicine until you have 75 or more
** Cost/Profit: -234 silver (the minus sign here means that the colony needs to pay 234 silver to afford this deal)
** [Abort] [Execute]



another alternative for the interface would be like this:
** "a trader is near, execute all this bills?"
** and a list (like the mod list in the main menu) is shown with red X or green V's where it says something like:
** V selling 463 berries
** V selling 3 leather jackets
** V selling 2 leather pants
** V selling 15 leather hats
** X selling 7 pants
** V buying 20 medicine
** Cost/Profit: -234 silver
** or possibly: Cost/Profit: -234 silver (can't afford) (if the colony doesn't have 234 silver)
** [Abort] [Execute]

(obviously, if the trader wont accept some kind of goods it wont be sold, regardless of what the bill says, maybe pop up another message that summaries what happen in the transaction)

ps. should I also post this in the suggestion forum?

[Chibiabos]

How about merely a tactics change for raiders?  To me, a 'raid' is attacking a settlement to try and get its resource ... how about some raids that take this to its most basic, the raiders come in seek to take whatever resources of /yours/ they can quickly grab and run off with, instead of a grinding assault?  Food, mined good weapons, anything ... and the more you have outdoors, the more these kind of "smash and grab" raids might tend to occur (influenced quite a bit by the Storyteller, of course).  The possibility of the enemy being able to deconstruct your buildings or whatnot might seem horrible, but its my understanding Tynan has already worked into the current build a nerf to deconstructing speed, so that might help make that better (perhaps deconstructing something to extract resources should possibly be considered as taking /longer/ than merely destroying it with weapons or melee pounding on it ... it takes longer to strip a RL building for scrap than it does to smash it down with a wrecking ball when you don't care to recover anything from the rubble).  To me, this seems sensible that this might be simpler and more consistent with my impression of the basic the gameplay model/premise than the proposed 'cause whatever the enemy drops when killed to be largely if not totally unusable to the player' ideas.

These fast looting raids that don't aim to destroy your base would be fend-offable, of course, depending on how well you have turrets and how ready-to-fight-at-a-moment's-notice your colonists are, but I'd suggest balancing them to make it difficult (BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE) for the looters to get smited without careful planning before such a looting raid incurs, through a combination of raider tactics and maybe even a filter on what kind of raiders and the gear they would bring (designed for speed more than firepower in a fight, no peg-leggers to slow them down, equipped with lighter armor that doesn't nerf unit speed so much, and preferring weapons that fire and reload quickly more than range or punch).  This kind of raid should never, of course, be 'wait for awhile and then attack' ... these looting raiders should always immediately attack (though with probably worse-than-siege inaccuracy in drops, they may not necessarily land themselves in an ideal position to loot-and-run).

They would probably be most drawn to your storage zones with comms assuming there's decent loot in those zones, but to really make these looting raids nasty, they may also just take the resources scattered over the map that are far from your base's defenses.  They might even have a variety of targets ... maybe one looting raid will concentrate its focus on looting your food, another your medicine, another your weapons and armor, etc.

[tommonius]

raiders are a great source of weapons, clothing and of course food and sometimes prisoners to be brainwas... converted *ahem*

In fact I often like to view my colony as evil and the raiders are trying to defeat us, as soon as we can use bones as a crafting resource I am making a royal room for my lord-ling leader out of raider bones!

[skullywag]

You need to check out Shinzys Abra macabre mod. Bone furniture everywhere.

[Unwitnessed]

It seems like it would be useful to add a mechanic into combat where weapons and armor could degrade when the person who has it equipped is hit in certain areas:

A shirt would acquire a tear/bullet hole/etc if the colonist is hit in the torso or arms.
Pants would acquire these if the colonist is hit in the legs.
A gun or weapon might take damage if the colonist is hit in their main weapon arm.

When they take damage the weapons/clothing would lose value/armor points/damage points and eventually disintegrate.  A partially damaged weapon or clothing item could be repaired by a person with repairer set to restore armor points or damage points, but the item's value would not go up again (used/previously damaged item).

[Goo Poni]

Not sure if I would like that. More maintenance. More metal sinks. A quicker race against the clock to jam everyone in a ship and piss off ASAP. I prefer building a colony to stand the test of time so having to fend off the fully equipped raiders with worse and worse equipment while you shoot all their stuff to shit would either go back to building a killbox to maximise killing speed and minimise exposure to gunfire, or just roll over and die after an arbitrary amount of time dictated by how much your colony's basics fall apart.