Battery system sucks, esp with welders

[Bladerock]

Ah, yeah, but if you are using metal to give it a frame, you can probably just weld the two engines’ shafts together and avoid belts entirely.

[Stevensonz]

or we study how portable generators work and their materials so we can achieve crafting balance and balanced requirements

[Bladerock]

If you spin an electric motor backwards, it creates an electric charge. You are using the gas powered engine to do this.

[vultures]

You’re braggin’ 'bout comestibles again, aren’t you?
I’m thinking about fusion power, advanced construction and builder bots. It’s merely a question of putting computer skill and those damned PDAs into work. I think that having some prerequisites for recruiting henchmen could prove vital in NPC development. If you have a base to defend and some chow to spair, they’d appear.
Other than that, I’m still fired up for self-sustainable homes, and also have a strong opinion that it shouldn’t work without high elec/comp skillset bundled up with a secondary survival.

[grisamentum]

lots of good posts in this thread

couple things i havent seen mentioned yet:

1. we have solar panels and storage batteries in-game already. if we’re going to have gasoline generators, of course we should have solar-powered ones as well.

2. every single gasoline engine IS a generator. car electrical systems run off of the alternator, which creates electricity from mechanical energy created by the gasoline engine. can you run a lot of stuff off of a car engine, like a refrigerator or laser cannon? probably not. can you run a radio, lights, air conditioning, maybe an electric stove? easily.

(also, in answer to original post in thread: integrated toolset bionic means you have a welder installed in your character that runs off of personal power supply, and is recharged however. actually in Sunny weather and personal solar panels bionic, your power will recharge far, far faster than you use it up. metabolic interchange also makes welding trivial. internal furnace means you can power it by eating wood. etc.)

[Morrigi]

Looking at welders, there are three different types: Arc welding, which does indeed utilize electricity, gas welding using flammable liquids or gasses such as propane, acetylene, or gasoline (generally stored in different canisters for obvious reasons), and fancy shit like laser or electron-beam welding and combining the above laser with arc welding. If the ingame welder does actually use lasers or electron beams, using it as a makeshift weapon would be awesome. Of course, this all assumes that future batteries have fricking ridiculous energy density, which they probably do.

[grisamentum]

hell, if we’re talking makeshift weapons, an old oxy-acetlyne welder would be a hilarious makeshift weapon. heavy to lug the tanks around, though, and you wouldn’t get much time out of man-portable tanks.

[DWC]

I assumed the welder was just an ordinary stick/ arc welder and it was adapted to run off batteries instead of needing to plug it into the wall.

You could probably do some useful welding in real life with a cheap 110v stick welder plugged into an inverter running off a car battery. If you can use a car battery why not a vast series of soda cans filled with rain water and bits from a refrigerator coil?

I wouldn’t mind gasoline powered welders, but gas is really abundant in the game and rightfully so. It might be sorta unbalancing if you can just siphon gas off the car into the welder you are using to convert said car into a 100 ton killdozer/RV.

Also, using the welder as a weapon would be awesome, especially if the welder is some futuristic plasma-jet cutter or something.

[Zaweri_Runewright]

About batteries, a good resource are labs. Depending on how thoroughly you scavenge and some luck you might end up with somewhere between one and two thousand.

I have found about 4000 batteries in an electronics store (Unloaded all the items that had batteries).

[Vorpal2]

I use integral toolset + internal furnace. Unlimited power, really. And solar panels and crafting outside on a sunny day is even more unlimitederer.

[Stevensonz]

gasoline powered welders won’t imbalance anything if they have a higher cost to use anyway, looking at the CBM’s yes those options provide unlimited power making battery welders obsolete. so really it’s just another way to do welding and makeshift weapons is plausible.

[Jimbo_Jamerson]

All a power generator is is an engine, they are very simple pieces of machinery really. I’ve identified a number of pieces of coding that with a few tweeks should be able to produce the effects (all source code, those JSON files are far too simplified to achieve a goal that isnt cheating)

I think a good start is as was suggested to me stealijng some pieces off the UPS code, except change “Player is wearing power armor” to “player is wielding welder” and some sort of additional constraint to do with proximity or whether or not you have applied a power cord to both ends of the equations.

I think the hardest part will be the coding of the logic for power cords.

The welder i am trying to make is an arc welder not an acetylene torch or something where heat is the driving force.

And i can easily chomp through over 10000 battery charges without getting close to finishing the vehicle designs i like to make, i generally transform a Mack truck into a fully fledged (heavily) armored, multiple engined SWAT-like bus with enough storage to have highly organised and compartmented storage for anything and everything i may need or encounter (which is probably around 10 trunks, all used regually for different missions)

When i say i exhaust near on EVERY tin can or aluminium can in the quest for more batteries, i am not over exaggerating, and believe me, every last charge i use is needed, after all, the goal of such super dooper rigs is to have a mobile missile bunker basically.

The apocalypse is a dangerous place, i dont plan on dying (yet it happens?)

Oh well, off to have some fun with code…

[grisamentum]

[quote=“Jimbo_Jamerson, post:32, topic:1797”]All a power generator is is an engine, they are very simple pieces of machinery really. I’ve identified a number of pieces of coding that with a few tweeks should be able to produce the effects (all source code, those JSON files are far too simplified to achieve a goal that isnt cheating)

I think a good start is as was suggested to me stealijng some pieces off the UPS code, except change “Player is wearing power armor” to “player is wielding welder” and some sort of additional constraint to do with proximity or whether or not you have applied a power cord to both ends of the equations.

I think the hardest part will be the coding of the logic for power cords.

The welder i am trying to make is an arc welder not an acetylene torch or something where heat is the driving force.

And i can easily chomp through over 10000 battery charges without getting close to finishing the vehicle designs i like to make, i generally transform a Mack truck into a fully fledged (heavily) armored, multiple engined SWAT-like bus with enough storage to have highly organised and compartmented storage for anything and everything i may need or encounter (which is probably around 10 trunks, all used regually for different missions)

When i say i exhaust near on EVERY tin can or aluminium can in the quest for more batteries, i am not over exaggerating, and believe me, every last charge i use is needed, after all, the goal of such super dooper rigs is to have a mobile missile bunker basically.

The apocalypse is a dangerous place, i dont plan on dying (yet it happens?)

Oh well, off to have some fun with code…[/quote]

uhh i mean no offense but then is the goal here really just to give you enough welding power to do whatever you want? as i explained above the game already has that. go find an integrated toolset and a metabolic interchange.

if we’re going to overhaul welding, it shouldn’t result in a welding system where you’re easily able to get infinite welding resources.

i thought this was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic survival game, not a kerbal vehicle simulator.

[Jimbo_Jamerson]

Have you been reading at all? It’s not just about welding, a power generator is useful for a lot of things, and saying “Go get a intergrated toolset and a metabolic interchange” is hardly helpful, should i just magic one out of my ass? Use the debug menu? they are not all that common, i have never encounted both while also having a high enough skill to install them myself. Plus it’s a but like saying “what do you want a car for you have feet!”, sure they BOTH let you move but there are more factors then just merely going from a to b

I’m talking about increasing options and playing styles, a large garage is just one use of many for such a tool as a generator, use your imagination dude, forget about welding, i assume you can think of some purpose that a large amount of electricity could be used for both FUN and FUNCTION, but then again you know what they say about assuming (or so i assume you do heh heh)

[Stevensonz]

Indeed players should have more options like gasoline powered welders heck you should be even able to use them to cut through metal doors given they take some time to do and more features that concerns power furniture’s and items (Refrigerator,Stereo System,Portable Computers for Hacker type characters)

[grisamentum]

Have you been reading at all? It’s not just about welding, a power generator is useful for a lot of things, and saying “Go get a intergrated toolset and a metabolic interchange” is hardly helpful, should i just magic one out of my ass? Use the debug menu? they are not all that common, i have never encounted both while also having a high enough skill to install them myself. Plus it’s a but like saying “what do you want a car for you have feet!”, sure they BOTH let you move but there are more factors then just merely going from a to b

well i mean, HAVE YOU been reading at all? i actually posted above with a couple good suggestions about creating solar powered/battery generators that you could hook your welder up to (maybe like a mig/tig setup), and the fact that you should be able to charge a storage battery off of a car’s alternator.

I'm talking about increasing options and playing styles, a large garage is just one use of many for such a tool as a generator, use your imagination dude, forget about welding, i assume you can think of some purpose that a large amount of electricity could be used for both FUN and FUNCTION, but then again you know what they say about assuming (or so i assume you do heh heh)

yeah i mean my problem here, and i didn’t realize this until later is that you start out saying

It is such an up hill battle to set yourself up a fully functioning car garage and build/maintain awesome vehicles when the only way (at least that i know of) is to charge your welder with batteries.

so the point of the Integrated Toolset thing is to correct your first misapprehension, but then later youre complaining:

And i can easily chomp through over 10000 battery charges without getting close to finishing the vehicle designs i like to make, i generally transform a Mack truck into a fully fledged (heavily) armored, multiple engined SWAT-like bus with enough storage to have highly organised and compartmented storage for anything and everything i may need or encounter (which is probably around 10 trunks, all used regually for different missions)

at some point maybe you need to re-examine your playstyle and realize that the game isnt really supposed to make it easy or even necessarily viable to do whatever you want. i mean what if i was like “guys im trying to RP a Masai tribesman survivor who only drinks milk, can we invent an entire generator setup for refrigerators and also a livestock system with animal husbandry and cow milking so that i can survive just on milk? it’d be super cool and allow a lot of options and playstyle choices.”

is there anything wrong with that? i mean, not necessarily. are you crazy? probably.

ultimately, suppose we do get a good system of gasoline-powered generators that you can hook up to a welder. the gasoline consumption should be high enough that you STILL shouldn’t be able to build your ridiculous death machine.

gasoline is too common as it is, and so are batteries. i have thousands and thousands just sitting on a shelf, and i have a half-decent car that i’ve upgraded a little.

if “challenge” or “difficulty” is going to be a part of this game AT ALL, then resources need to be scarce. you shouldn’t be able to use them wastefully creating ridiculous ego projects.

[Jimbo_Jamerson]

is there anything wrong with that? i mean, not necessarily. are you crazy? probably.

Heh heh probably not too far off the mark mate

[Stevensonz]

@grisamentum well if you want a higher difficulty then don’t use CBM’s that provided you unlimited power or picking android trait to start with said CBM’s gasoline powered isn’t bad it’s a good direction as it allows versatility (and of course acetylene torches cutting through metal walls but takes longer than using the computer or explosions)

[grisamentum]

@grisamentum well if you want a higher difficulty then don’t use CBM’s that provided you unlimited power or picking android trait to start with said CBM’s

you don’t balance a game just by asking players not to do the unbalanced things.

[Stevensonz]

[quote=“Stevensonz, post:38, topic:1797”]@grisamentum well if you want a higher difficulty then don’t use CBM’s that provided you unlimited power or picking android trait to start with said CBM’s

you don’t balance a game just by asking players not to do the unbalanced things.[/quote]

gasoline powered stuff won’t also imbalance the game in regards to power as we already have an unbalanced unlimited power supply from CBM’s and Toolset welding. It would just give people a new play style option but like I said power costs should be higher than batteries but not too high like CBM rates.