Armored enemies and melee weapons

[halberdsturgeon]

I prefer to leave skill rust on, as there’s a mechanic within the game for overcoming it. Acquiring the enhanced memory bionic and skilling your character up beyond what you’d normally be able to achieve is a good long term goal.

[Weyrling]

I prefer to leave skill rust on, as there’s a mechanic within the game for overcoming it. Acquiring the enhanced memory bionic and skilling your character up beyond what you’d normally be able to achieve is a good long term goal.

This is a good point, since there aren’t a lot of long term goals now.

I’d like to see a skill system where you return to your previous maximum skill faster after it has rusted away, as even though you might forget how to do something it’s still far easier to remember how it went than actually learn it again, maybe have it cost less XP to raise a skill back up to a level it’s already been at before rusting away.
Real skills might get rusty but they don’t just disappear, setting 1 is a good compromise but it isn’t quite the same.

[Sheb]

So you’d keep your skills, but get a rust modifier to them if you don’t use them for a long time? I could get behind that.

[KA101]

[quote=“TurningBreeze, post:20, topic:1024”]1. Skeletons also cause this issue. Wolf spiders too, and both are common. Just get a Glock with +P+ rounds and you’ll be fine. The firearm skill you’ve accumulated will help carry you (and let you prepare ammo). I would guess that anything with 8+ cutting armor will bounce wooden arrows (in which case, add hulks and scarred zeds), although I think I’ve shot giant centipedes before, so…

3. Pipe bombs are a cheap solution - a pipe, 6" string, some gasoline. I’d save the EMP’s for scarier stuff as they’re pricey. Otherwise, yeah, put some spikes on your car and GTA them.

4. Cooking makes purifier at level 9 I believe, and drugs by 6. Recall that both electronics and mechanics contribute to bionic installation success (likely up to a soft cap). Elsewise, 8 electronics for a teleporter and 12 mechanics for extra engines in your car. I think survival can craft everything at 3, but butcher success probably feels the influence of 4 or more.[/quote]

4. Yeah. You typically won’t get leather from butchery until Survival 4-5 or so. Not so much a soft cap on bionic-installation, as the fact that mechanics only provides half its level in bonus. Electronics is 1.5xlevel & First Aid is a straight bonus. Cooking also makes mutagen at level 8.

FTR it’s possible to get Cooking 8 or so with skill rust on, just incredibly tedious and metagamey. Especially with the individual bionics now, I wouldn’t hold my breath looking for an Enhanced Memory Banks.

[Reservoir]

Skill rust is horrible. My char had to stay 3 days in its house cause he had a cold, and I lost almost all my skills.

Back to the armor on hulks, I have no idea how they are bulletproof. I mean, its flesh.

[KA101]

It’s tough, leathery flesh, and lots of it. Their arms are as big around as a trash can for fae’s sake. Wooden arrows & 9mm are only going to do so much against something that huge.

[halberdsturgeon]

Especially with the individual bionics now, I wouldn’t hold my breath looking for an Enhanced Memory Banks.

I’ve gotten it with two characters thus far, and I’ve seen the CBM more than twice. Uncommon CBMs aren’t prohibitively difficult to find as long as you diligently butcher shocker zombies. It takes work, but that’s the entire point of long term goals in games.

[Flare]

It’s tough, leathery flesh, and lots of it. Their arms are as big around as a trash can for fae’s sake. Wooden arrows & 9mm are only going to do so much against something that huge.

There’s only so must material resilience that it allows for swift movement. Flesh is not a very good material for stopping sharp or fast moving objects. A trashcan full of absorbent fat or animal hide isn’t going to stop a 9mm that’s for sure. Hollow points might not have much penetrative power, but even then stopping that much kinetic energy does a great deal of damage to the surrounding flesh. Bullets don’t only wound by making things bleed out through their direct entry path.

Keep in mind this probably won’t drop a hulk very fast, but it sure as won’t cause no damage whatsoever like the current game’s bullet proof hulks.

[halberdsturgeon]

I’ve repeatedly killed hulks with 9mm bullets.

Wooden arrows/bolts though, no.

[Sheb]

Well, try to shoot down an elephant with 9mm. Have fun.

[TurningBreeze]

Not so much a soft cap on bionic-installation, as the fact that mechanics only provides half its level in bonus.

Sure, but what I mean is that the tedium (even sans skill rust) of grinding 10+ in a skill becomes prohibitive, whereas the actual success rate of installation never reaches 100% and in some cases doesn’t get that good anyway because of the “4*install difficulty” term in the success rate formula.

Example using the wiki’s formula:

[spoiler]Enhanced Membanks CBM (difficulty 8)

14 intelligence, 0 electronics, 0 first aid, 0 mechanics; 30% install rate
14 intelligence, 3 electronics, 3 first aid, 3 mechanics; 56% install rate (+26)
14 intelligence, 6 electronics, 6 first aid, 6 mechanics; 68% install rate (+12)
14 intelligence, 9 electronics, 9 first aid, 9 mechanics; 75% install rate (+7)
14 intelligence, 12 electronics, 12 first aid, 12 mechanics; 79% install rate (+4)
14 intelligence, 15 electronics, 15 first aid, 15 mechanics; 82% install rate (+3)

Now consider the difficulty of going from 0->3 relative to going from 12->15.[/spoiler]

And I realize cooking makes mutagen, but I assumed that interest in mutagen and purifier is mutually inclusive. If you play with mutations, level 9; if not, drugs are the next thing down the list.

Enhanced membanks? I’ve found them twice across two long-term characters, which is more than I can say for power source CBMs. They’re still uncommon of course, something on the order of 8% as likely as a power storage CBM.

[Flare]

Well, try to shoot down an elephant with 9mm. Have fun.

Given that people used to hunt them with arrows, I’d say it’s possible if you know where to shoot. In the base of the trunk for instance.

[Sheb]

Do you have sources on that? It seems hugely impractical.

[TurningBreeze]

But yeah, if we’re talking about our ancient African ancestors, the modern “one shot, one kill” narrative probably didn’t play out. Their low powered weapons might have been used to harass or draw blood, but I’d guess that those crazy old Africans could have found an easier meal.

[Flare]

Do you have sources on that? It seems hugely impractical.

www.ajol.info/index.php/jpc/article/download/71860/60818
Downloadable PDF

Page 4-5

Granted, you probably won’t be able to stop a charging elephant with early human bows, but it is possible to kill them.

Then of course there’s stories like these

Environment

No idea if it dropped dead immediately or not, but it is possible if you know where to shoot I guess.

[Sheb]

I looked at modern hunting, and what I gathered is that:

1. You need composite bow with great draw strength and special, heavy arrow. Not a piece of wood and two strings. A Hulk got 8 armor, and a wood arrow do 8 damage, but a composite arrow does 12, so you should be able to kill Hulks with that (If I understand the armor correctly).

2. Even so, most of those kills are finished with a large caliber weapon.

3. And they’re not usually one shot. Except if you get the arrow in the eye or something.

Just looked at your Ghana paper, the evidence if fairly thin. Sure, they found elephant remain in an occupied site, but it could have been scavenging of a dead animal, or maybe they used traps.

So, while it may be possible to down an elephant with a primitive bow, it requires a lot of luck, and I wouldn’t count on it to protect you from a charging bull. Same with hulks, if you count on your bow to down them, you’re doing it wrong.

Maybe if we had some sort of sneaking/sneak attack where you can get close and get a really good shot it’d be possible to eye-shot them.

[Weyrling]

Of course you can kill an elephant with a decent bow, the real questions are whether or not the elephant can attack you, how many arrows it takes, and how long it takes, not whether or not the arrows will bounce off its hide.
Using a crap bow without a terrain advantage, you’d be lucky to even hurt the thing before it got within angry trampling range, of course.
Very few things are resistant to puncture wounds, a giant hulk composed of muscle and rage might be fairly resistant, as would giant ants and such due to their carapace.

It might be more realistic to give things a range of armor, rather than a single value. You don’t always hit in the same place, and nothing is equally armored on all points except maybe mechanical things like a tankbot, or turret.

[halberdsturgeon]

I did a little experimentation with a hulk I recently found - an archer can easily drop them, just not with wooden projectiles. A compound bow with carbon fiber arrows does an average of 30-40 damage to a hulk with a headshot. A crossbow with steel bolts does upwards of 100 damage with a headshot. My character has 6 points in archery. Not difficult.

Mechanical enemies are tougher, as you’d expect. Trying to kill them with any kind of bow is more or less pointless. A crossbow with steel bolts can still trash a secubot in two shots, though.

[Flare]

Maybe if we had some sort of sneaking/sneak attack where you can get close and get a really good shot it’d be possible to eye-shot them.

Eye holes are a possibility, but a bigger hole is often in the middle of the face. The nose of most mammals often has the fleshy soft parts go straight into cranial, spine, or the throat area depending on the angle. There’s a very big difference between fleshy soft movable resistance, and metal. Longer, heavier arrows, loosed from much more powerful bows can punch right through an unarmored human body.

You know, I’m not sure that there are that many methods of killing any creature instantaneously. Even for hollow points that stop in a body, depending on the location of the hit, with enough determination the person might not be down and out. An arrow passing through a person might not actually kill them. Dueling transcripts and autopsies where a fighter has been stabbed in the heart do show that they seem to be able to keep on fighting for a fair bit after that. These wounds might be fatal, or be made fatal by the person forcing themselves back up, but by no means do even humans die very easily.

A bear, an elephant, or a bull are no different. If your character can kill a zombie that doesn’t feel pain, or require most of its organs, why not the same treatment for a hulk? I don’t think skin can be much thicker than a centimeter or two out of practical reasons.

[Sheb]

Yup, but could you down an elephant with a simple wood arrow and a longbow? Because it has been shown you can do it with a composite arrow.