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AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
Oh I absolutely realize that guns are mostly pointless when compared to melee. My last game was a melee focused character with a Broadsword and fencing; within the first year I was literally just walking through cities and cutting down everything with absolutely zero effort required and zero damage taken.

Hell, this current character lucked out and found a Halberd in a pawn shop super early, and with only 4 Str was still one shotting zombies from two tiles away with zero weapon skill and two melee. :v:

But I've just never played a gun focused character before, so I figured it would be fun to try for once. I've always just disregarded firearms entirely other than having a shotgun strapped on my back for hitting acid zombies and hulks.

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Kayle7
Mar 19, 2012

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind.
I wonder who it is that's pushing all these stupid realism changes. The gun poo poo, the vehicle poo poo. Like, which dev is it?

Fayk
Aug 2, 2006

Sorry, my brain doesn't work so good...
Since I always have a weird scarcity complex, I've been mostly hoarding guns (honestly, guns aren't very rare, but ammo is stupidly rare and since in the default game you an't make hulls/casings no matter your skill, WELP) but I'm surprised to hear they aren't good, partly because several of the not-guns ranged weapons are surprisingly decent --

Pneumatic weapons, throwing, nailguns (esp with flechette ammo) etc all seemed surprisingly decent.

Sure, you can't do them for 100% of your work, but you can take out zombies as they approach and clean up in melee. With autofire I've taken out hulks with them without having to ever get in hand to hand range.

Kayle7
Mar 19, 2012

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind.
I really like the vehicle mounted guns, too actually. Not very far into the game, you can make yourself the super bolt thrower that has to be mounted on a vehicle, and drag it around on a shopping cart frame. Hop in when you want to gently caress up some zombies

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
I assume it's self-reinforcing. If a plurality of people making changes are doing so to reinforce this idea of 'realistic scarcity', however warped, it's more likely to attract like-minded changes.

And, yes. Non-guns are AMAZINGLY good. This is a sort of distortion in the game's design philosophy that dates back to the original dev and the stable versions; vehicles are difficult and guns are poor in order to enforce a certain level of difficulty and scarcity you have to overcome. This somehow ignores that it's almost trivially easy to become a super-powered cybermutant self-taught Legolas with a perfectly-accurate laser rifle strapped to your back powered by literal sunshine and happiness (alcohol). This is fine and fun to play, but for some reason guns, which already have enforced scarcity in finding them and appropriate ammo, are inherently inaccurate for shooting further than across the street, are incredibly rare in rural America, and without turning on the appropriate mod, thankfully bundled with the most recent experimental I tried, firearm ammo CANNOT even be reloaded by default.

You could probably make a shockingly difficult challenge character based on firearm use, since you're literally better off clubbing things with a cudgel after wearing them down with a stickbow. It's weird to me so many people think it's fun to be Wolfman Palpatine and run around using force-lightning on zombies, and it's fun to be Mad Max and shooting home-made launchers out the window of your rusty killdozer, and it's fun to be literally Adam Jensen and fire a ridiculous cybergun powered by your cybernetics, but somehow it's not fun to be run around as an absurdist FPS protagonist pastiche hotswapping between a half-dozen guns as you level towns through sheer volume of fire.

Marenghi
Oct 16, 2008

Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you

Kayle7 posted:

I wonder who it is that's pushing all these stupid realism changes. The gun poo poo, the vehicle poo poo. Like, which dev is it?

Mugling did the vehicle overhaul which introduced gear's, physics for their motion and greatly increased fuel consumption/lower efficiency. No idea who decided guns should have their own magazines that are required for reloading.

AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
Someone on the development team doesn't know the difference between .22 LR and .223 Remington because 30 .223 Remington requires you to use 30 .22 LR casings. :allears:

Mzbundifund
Nov 5, 2011

I'm afraid so.

AbrahamLincolnLog posted:

Someone on the development team doesn't know the difference between .22 LR and .223 Remington because 30 .223 Remington requires you to use 30 .22 LR casings. :allears:

See, this is the thing. There's a lot of things I don't know much about, but whenever the devs decide to make something more "realistic" on a topic that I DO, (vitamins, basic chemistry, etc) they invariably screw it all up. I don't know anything about real world firearms, but whenever anyone who DOES shows up then it's patently obvious that all the tedium they added to ammo management isn't even realistic there either.

AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
I don't think it was an attempt to make it more realistic, it seems like a legitimate error. Someone probably just typed "item needed = .22" instead of "item needed = .223". Because a week ago this wasn't happening, I could happily use .223 casings no problem.

On the off chance that it was intentional, here's why it's really silly:



That's a .22 on the left, and a .223 on the right.

There's absolutely no loving way you're fitting all the poo poo that is in a .223 into a .22 casing. Neverminding the fact that a .22 is rimfire and a .223 is centerfire and so even if they were the same size you won't get a centerfire primer into it.

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

Bullet alchemy. :colbert:

Xand_Man
Mar 2, 2004

If what you say is true
Wutang might be dangerous


Turning lead into brass.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

AbrahamLincolnLog posted:

There's absolutely no loving way you're fitting all the poo poo that is in a .223 into a .22 casing. Neverminding the fact that a .22 is rimfire and a .223 is centerfire and so even if they were the same size you won't get a centerfire primer into it.

And that you can't reload rimfire at all because the firing pin crushes the rim of the case.

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
There are people selling crimping/molding tools to do just that, but I only know just enough about firearms to say that sounds like a silly and dumb idea, especially when such kits are sold on the premise of nationwide, worsening scarcity in ammo supplies. My local Wal-Mart still stocks .22 LR by the loving pallet, so I kind of doubt it's going out of style that badly.

AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
.22 is definitely not out of style, and the only reason there is a shortage RL is because of the "LIBERALS GONNA STEAL OUR GUNS!!!" types who hoard it; and because of them hoarding it, scalpers come along, buy up the rest, jack the price up 2x or 3x and say "look, rare ammo, come buy it!". Which people buy by the truck load because "LIBERALS", and so on, so forth, repeating cycle.

It's mostly died down now though. I honestly don't know why you'd bother home reloading .22 LR in RL but whatever, getting off topic.

palamedes
Mar 9, 2008
The .223/.22 thing is because the casing from a .22 is the right size to make the jacket for a .223 round. The .22 casing takes the place of the copper tubing in the reload recipe. Look on youtube and you'll see a few videos of people shooting bootleg .223 reloaded like that.

I agree with the complaints about the game's direction, but this is a case where grognardy realism increases your options.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

guns have always been a good panic option. i killed a tank on the first day with a tec9 i found on a dead drug dealer. just make sure to hit 5 to steady your aim before shooting.

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

palamedes posted:

The .223/.22 thing is because the casing from a .22 is the right size to make the jacket for a .223 round. The .22 casing takes the place of the copper tubing in the reload recipe. Look on youtube and you'll see a few videos of people shooting bootleg .223 reloaded like that.

I agree with the complaints about the game's direction, but this is a case where grognardy realism increases your options.

That makes sense. The impression I got from the poster above was that the game let you use .22 as the casing for .223, rather than just acting as a jacket for the projectile.

AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
Because that's what I thought it was, but I'm dumb. I didn't notice that the recipe also required .223 casings.

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Roobanguy posted:

guns have always been a good panic option. i killed a tank on the first day with a tec9 i found on a dead drug dealer. just make sure to hit 5 to steady your aim before shooting.

I always carry one or two guns as an emergency option, but if I want a ranged character I go not-guns. The shortcomings have been well elaborated on already. I hope one day they become more viable again though.

Mzbundifund
Nov 5, 2011

I'm afraid so.
I generally use a giant crossbow, not because it's the best option, but just because giant crossbows are neat.

Slime
Jan 3, 2007
Cataclysm has always done stupid, unrealistic things in the name of realism. Guns are super loving deadly, they'll gently caress you up. We've made these things to not only kill eachother but to kill things bigger and meaner than we are. Plus they're already limited by scarcity of ammo. And speaking of resource scarcity...the truth is, if you look at the game world, the player should be loving drowning in resources. The vast majority of humanity is loving dead, and zombies don't go looting. I can see a bunch of food and some tools and weapons and such being picked up in the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse, and sure some of that food would be eaten. But tools and weapons would be goddamn everywhere. And yet you need to comb through house after house to find a laptop. There's multiple of them in a house these days! They would not be hard to find!

MLKQUOTEMACHINE
Oct 22, 2012

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill

Slime posted:

Cataclysm has always done stupid, unrealistic things in the name of realism. Guns are super loving deadly, they'll gently caress you up. We've made these things to not only kill eachother but to kill things bigger and meaner than we are. Plus they're already limited by scarcity of ammo. And speaking of resource scarcity...the truth is, if you look at the game world, the player should be loving drowning in resources. The vast majority of humanity is loving dead, and zombies don't go looting. I can see a bunch of food and some tools and weapons and such being picked up in the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse, and sure some of that food would be eaten. But tools and weapons would be goddamn everywhere. And yet you need to comb through house after house to find a laptop. There's multiple of them in a house these days! They would not be hard to find!

In terms of guns, at least in an American context, every fifth house should have at least three guns.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

Slime posted:

Cataclysm has always done stupid, unrealistic things in the name of realism. Guns are super loving deadly, they'll gently caress you up. We've made these things to not only kill eachother but to kill things bigger and meaner than we are. Plus they're already limited by scarcity of ammo. And speaking of resource scarcity...the truth is, if you look at the game world, the player should be loving drowning in resources. The vast majority of humanity is loving dead, and zombies don't go looting. I can see a bunch of food and some tools and weapons and such being picked up in the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse, and sure some of that food would be eaten. But tools and weapons would be goddamn everywhere. And yet you need to comb through house after house to find a laptop. There's multiple of them in a house these days! They would not be hard to find!

guns really arnt that hard to find. once you get a set of lock picks you basically have infinite guns/ammo, what with how often gun stores spawned. honestly, i wish most guns you found were damaged, and while still good for a few magazines, are better served to be scrapped so you can make the homemade guns, because right now there is no purpose to that poo poo with how easy it is to get a factory made gun.

balance it by making guns be more deadly to give you a reason to use these guns also. right now guns are good panic weapons but you need like 7 gun/7 gun type skills to actually be any good at shooting them beyond 7 tiles.

make the rare gun safe a treat because you know you'll find a mint condition factory made weapon.

Roobanguy fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jan 10, 2017

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

What about repurposing the vehicle creation screen to support guns, so frankensteining a gun out of a salvaged receiver, furniture, and a crappy pipe you turned into a smoothbore or whatever is a thing, and you get the opportunity to play with and grow attached to 'your' gun?

Something, something, shotgun of Theseus.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Bilal posted:

Guns just don't seem good. At all.

I wanted to toy around in the latest unstable with a cheat character, just to see some of the new content. I understand why each gun has proprietary, separate magazines now, because everything has to be realistic and annoying and tedious, but it does fit the survival theme I guess. Anyway, I gave myself maxed stats and a full arsenal of guns and... with maxed stats and high skill levels and fully modded out they honestly just aren't that powerful. Melee and martial arts make guns seem like a joke, the only reason you need ranged is to deal with shocker and spitter zombies.

I actually just tested this just now, to refresh my memory. For example, my cheat character has like, 36 skill in SMG and maxed stats. I gave myself a P90 and went to kill some normal zombies. I fully aimed in on each shot so I had max steadiness and max confidence.

While I could usually kill a zombie in 2-3 shots at medium range, sometimes it would take 5-8 shots. Even with my skill jacked up to cheat levels, I would still miss shots. To compare, in the much older versions when I played years ago, if you cheated your stats up that high and let rip with a full auto burst, your character would fire bullets in a crazy 360 degree arc and headshot everything like you were ragehacking in CS or something, it was awesome.

A while ago, I think it was in 2015, I made a mod that substantially buffed guns, but there's been so much content and changes since then it'd be way outdated by now, I'm not sure if it would even work.

edit: I just tested it, and yeah. Trying to load the mod in the recent unstables just gives an error message. I'd have to rework it from the ground up.

It doesn't matter how good you are you can't make the gun more accurate than it is.

If you want to 360 noscope people you need a pinpoint accurate gun to do it with.

Otherwise guns are usually quite good at killing stuff right the gently caress now regardless of what it is, it's just woefully inefficient.

But every character should carry a pistol or short shotgun as a :frogout: option.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 10, 2017

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

Anticheese posted:

What about repurposing the vehicle creation screen to support guns, so frankensteining a gun out of a salvaged receiver, furniture, and a crappy pipe you turned into a smoothbore or whatever is a thing, and you get the opportunity to play with and grow attached to 'your' gun?

Something, something, shotgun of Theseus.

thats a cool idea and i kinda want that now.

Fayk
Aug 2, 2006

Sorry, my brain doesn't work so good...

OwlFancier posted:

It doesn't matter how good you are you can't make the gun more accurate than it is.

If you want to 360 noscope people you need a pinpoint accurate gun to do it with.

Otherwise guns are usually quite good at killing stuff right the gently caress now regardless of what it is, it's just woefully inefficient.

But every character should carry a pistol or short shotgun as a :frogout: option.

I must be misunderstanding, you can both accurize™® them with a firearm kit (or whatevber the otherone is) as well as load them with some ridiculous tacticool set of mods.

For me, base game, ammo is the problem, never ever guns. Even though the cataclysm happened 'yesterday', looting an entire gunshop results in like maybe 80-100 bullets spread across fifty types.

But you end up with like a dozen random firearms.

I mean I get that it's a videogame and common bullets would be 'easy' but given how many zombies there are, I feel like you could triple (or more) the number of bullets you find and it'd still be finite enough people would totally care about saving their bullets, etc.

One of my chars has survived over a year now, and has I think maybe 200 9mm total, having fired zero shots ever. Low numbers of everything else. I haven't been specifically targeting gun shops but I've still hit a couple.

It feels like the most common source of bullets would just be running around ripping ammo off mounted guns or disabling turrets.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

Fayk posted:

I must be misunderstanding, you can both accurize™® them with a firearm kit (or whatevber the otherone is) as well as load them with some ridiculous tacticool set of mods.

For me, base game, ammo is the problem, never ever guns. Even though the cataclysm happened 'yesterday', looting an entire gunshop results in like maybe 80-100 bullets spread across fifty types.

But you end up with like a dozen random firearms.

I mean I get that it's a videogame and common bullets would be 'easy' but given how many zombies there are, I feel like you could triple (or more) the number of bullets you find and it'd still be finite enough people would totally care about saving their bullets, etc.

One of my chars has survived over a year now, and has I think maybe 200 9mm total, having fired zero shots ever. Low numbers of everything else. I haven't been specifically targeting gun shops but I've still hit a couple.

It feels like the most common source of bullets would just be running around ripping ammo off mounted guns or disabling turrets.

it really is saying something that .50 is the most common ammo type if you are using the vehicle mods.

nftyw
Dec 27, 2006

It is a game... where you will put your life on the line.
Lipstick Apathy
After your character bites it the next survivor will find a lovingly crafted worn out piece of poo poo gun with marks and carvings in it alongside homemade sights and a scope made from half a pair of binoculars

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

nftyw posted:

After your character bites it the next survivor will find a lovingly crafted worn out piece of poo poo gun with marks and carvings in it alongside homemade sights and a scope made from half a pair of binoculars

You need to aim higher. Clearly your survivor should purposefully set off alarms and hunt the eyebots, then use their lenses and a sharpie for your rifle optics.

break-up breakdown
Mar 6, 2010



#19275 is that big vehicle overhaul

AbrahamLincolnLog
Oct 1, 2014

Note to self: This one's the shitty one
Holy gently caress yes. Can I go back to having multiple engines now?

Dreamsicle
Oct 16, 2013

break-up breakdown posted:



#19275 is that big vehicle overhaul

Huh, I'm surprised it was him of all people who reverted. Wasn't he the one who put in bad ideas like nutrition and filthy clothing? In any case, I'm pretty happy about it, guess I should update soon then.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Fayk posted:

I must be misunderstanding, you can both accurize™® them with a firearm kit (or whatevber the otherone is) as well as load them with some ridiculous tacticool set of mods.

For me, base game, ammo is the problem, never ever guns. Even though the cataclysm happened 'yesterday', looting an entire gunshop results in like maybe 80-100 bullets spread across fifty types.

But you end up with like a dozen random firearms.

I mean I get that it's a videogame and common bullets would be 'easy' but given how many zombies there are, I feel like you could triple (or more) the number of bullets you find and it'd still be finite enough people would totally care about saving their bullets, etc.

One of my chars has survived over a year now, and has I think maybe 200 9mm total, having fired zero shots ever. Low numbers of everything else. I haven't been specifically targeting gun shops but I've still hit a couple.

It feels like the most common source of bullets would just be running around ripping ammo off mounted guns or disabling turrets.

You can modify it a lot but it's still an SMG so the game models it with videogame SMG accuracy which is probably poo poo. It will never get more accurate than the weapon's dispersion rating because the rationale is that you literally can't make the bullets go more accurate than that.

You can put a scope on it but that only helps you aim it, the game uses the higher of sight dispersion and gun dispersion, if your sight dispersion is bad, it's cos you can't aim the gun, if the gun dispersion is bad, it's because the gun physically can't shoot straight. Skill factors in somewhere but doesn't make the gun itself more accurate.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

always raid museums because sometimes you'll find this.



alongside a real top tier melee weapon, in this case a rapier/katana.

e: also if you find the foldable poncho you basically never have to worry about being wet during the rain again in the early game. it has 0 encumbrance so you never have to take it off and basically makes the rain coat pointless.

Roobanguy fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jan 11, 2017

Mzbundifund
Nov 5, 2011

I'm afraid so.
Wow I didn't realize fitted plate armor was only 10 encumbrance, that's really good for 24/24 95% coverage.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

Mzbundifund posted:

Wow I didn't realize fitted plate armor was only 10 encumbrance, that's really good for 24/24 95% coverage.

yep.

its basically always in my endgame set alongside the rivtech power armor if i get lucky with plutonium cells. you are basically invulnerable to everything but a tankbot/chickenwalker with only 25ish encumberance of you include a backpack.

DeusExIgnis
Aug 21, 2014

How do I set up a blacksmithing operation again? Alternatively, where do hacksaws spawn?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Grimman007 posted:

How do I set up a blacksmithing operation again? Alternatively, where do hacksaws spawn?

hardware stores and garages (both the garage building and the thing attached to some houses)

take my advice: do NOT set up a blacksmithing operation for a hacksaw. it is a humongous pain in the dick. just pack what you need to get to the next town and start walking.

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Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
Blacksmithing can be done using the vehicle parts progression (makeshift welders and heating elements and such to set up a vehicle forge, might need a welder first), but you'll need middling to high skills and the recipe will probably have to come out of a book. If you're looking for a hacksaw in the first place, that might be a difficult route. Alternatively, you could potentially find an electric forge in a jeweler's or pawn shop. Either way, you'll also probably need to find or forge some of the support items (metal tongs, swage and die, anvil, crucible, etc.).

For finding a hacksaw directly, they seem to be available in garages (both house and commercial), and occasionally in places like hardware stores. More reliably, if you can get into a lab, medical rooms have them in their relatively small item pool. Oh, and I think hacksaws are also in the loot pool of boomers, like most other tools, but that's sort of a long shot.

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