Are there any plans to do this without trivializing the game? The current CROWS aren’t really fun to play with, as either you have a gun that outranges them by 1 and now you have effectively infinite ammo and they are no longer a challenge at all, or you don’t outrange them and have to find a gun that does. It just feels like a box you have to check instead of a challenge like other enemies pose.
Well turrets are one thing.
The other thing is that the ammo you are most likely to find in bulk in New England, is probably not gonna change your ranged combat life drastically.
Its gonna be .22 and 9mm that youd find everywhere, most likely.
1 Like
The pull is fine but doesn’t change that turrets are pretty boring to essentially be THE late game adversary. Adding 6 range (while does make a lot of sense because they should have the stats of the gun they have) doesn’t really do much other than require you to find a gun with six more range in order to make the turrets trivial boxes of free ammo.
If thats what they are, thats what they are.
The game asks the question : “what would a person really do in the apocalypse?” and if the answer is “use a sniper rifle to take out turrets that have an M249 so I can get their ammo”. then thats the answer!
If turrets make boring late-game enemies, then the game needs more late-game enemies, it dosnt need unrealistic turrets.
4 Likes
PKs and Magicalysm are doing/did great jobs adding new threats, and I really like the newish kevlar hulks, but other than that fun enemies haven’t really been added too recently. The game does need late game enemies, but my issue with the turrets is that with one turret kill, you get ~1000 bullets. (Obviously this is subject to change with the random bullets PR) which if its 223 is around 300 potential zombie kills, and if its .308 more than 500. Thats just in insane amount of value from killing one enemy, that is killed not by outsmarting it, not by having a exciting shoot out with it, but by finding a gun that has more range than it. You are giving an ungodly amount of value and incentive to kill an enemy that isnt fun or hard to kill. If it gave 50 223/308 that would be fine, but even having it be 100 is pushing it IMO because of how much value you are exchanging.
The problem there lies in that a good strategy for taking out lab finale rooms was often to just wait until the turrets spent their ammo on the constantly-resurrecting zombie security guards that are always down there with them, which is honestly what I believe was the major impetus for drastically increasing turret ammo capacity.
Increasing their max firing range was a mistake. Realistic, it might be, but from a gameplay perspective this will frustrate newer players and probably some experienced players as well.
In addition to the robots instantly wiping out characters now the turrets will be doing it a lot more, too.
I like that cataclysm strives for realism, but sometimes it feels like there’s not enough work going to balance realism with gameplay. I feel those changes are a big mistake from a gameplay perspective, especially for newer players.
As was all the ammo for turrets. It might be closer to real world standards, but pooping out 1500 rounds unbalanced gameplay and to my knowledge hasn’t been addressed yet.
5 Likes
if you ask me, all of this would be just fine if the amount of ammo in a turret was randomized. It’s like all these turrets were freshly serviced and reloaded minutes before the cataclysm started and were left fully undisturbed since o.O
I also remember reading (on discord I think?) that there were plans to lower turret spawns, but place them more sensibly.
I agree. Either a player is going to read the changeling and remember it, and the turrets will still be completley trivial, or you won’t read/remember the change and just die. I mentioned above turrets aren’t a good enemy, just something to check off on a list of things. (Do I have a gun with 37 range? If yes, turrets are irrelevant)
This is a good bandaid, but doesn’t really change how lame it is that the end game enemy is turrets and that the end game location is so easy to start looting. I like the new robots (especially the ones with a FLASH on them lol) but there really needs to be more enemies that are interesting. Labs should also probably get more difficult as you go lower, or split up labs into different tiers and difficulties.
There’s actually quite a few new, very challenging enemies added over the last few months, both robotic and biological. The “early game” has gotten easier (IMO), but the “end game” has been seriously extended. First time I play a character that becomes a rivtech equipped, super-mutant-cyborg and I don’t immediately get bored with it. Even as a demi-god, it’s the first time I had a mission so difficult I had to retreat (all beat up 
), and return later, not with better gear, but with a remote controlled combat drone I had to design specifically to deal with the new threats, as exposing my character directly was clearly suicide and there was no way to put enough lead in the air to stop the threat short of 2 machine guns or a small army of NPCs o.O
All that said, if you think more end-game monsters is what we need (And I’d be tempted to agree with that), monsters have been fully transformed into JSON, so no need for programming skills to add news ones. If you got a good idea for mobs you can just throw together a JSON definition (It take roughly 5 mins when you know where you’re going, maybe 30mins on your first time to read about it) for the new monster, drop it in your game folder to test it, and the contribute it into the core game or a mod, depending on how well it fits the core setting.
2 Likes
Turrets aren’t end-game, they’re mid-game at best. Even now you can kill them with a good sniper rifle, or a bookcase and an EMP grenade.
Heck, turrets can be taken out with bone bolts and a makeshift crossbow, provided it’s dark and you have decent night vision.
1 Like
TBF, is there anything you can’t kill with a good sniper rifle?
Where do you get end game loot other than labs? National guard isnt mainlined, bunkers and outposts are turret guarded. NPC locations don’t have good loot other than HUB 01. Centeral labs are just bigger labs. Research facilities don’t have mutagen themselves or bionics/guns. There are dozens of enemies stronger than turrets obviously, but they aren’t the main thing preventing you from being a god that can one shot everything, unless Im missing some other end game area?
It’s understandable if the C:DDA definition of end game is that period where you are essentially a demigod amd you just kinda screw around looking for artifacts and things to kill yourself with.
Try the new mi-go stuff, it’s a party. Still haven’t figured out a way of handling it short of just exploding the whole thing with ANFO (including all the loot and goodies 
). One of the newer missions in particular made me go “htf am I gonna do this? (the answer to that being the aforementioned dual-MG combat drone)”
and that’s just the stuff I know about, I suspect more
1 Like
bone bolts?, are they a thing or is from mods?
They were a thing, but are now mod content it would seem. Probably cataclysm++ or something. You may be able to achieve the same effect wjth the simple metal bolt, but you’d need a tad more bolts.
I have done the migo stuff and it was fun mostly did it just by ramming it with cars to create sightlines and take them out one by one. But afaik there isnt any loot other than some nice NPCs to get unless I didn’t do it on a recent enough build, but I also used a few grenades. Have not seen any combat drones as of yet other than the helidrone from PKs which is pretty cool.
combat drone is a custom, remote controlled vic. 3 tiles of heavy duty, mil composite plating + armored wheels and m249 on both end. runs on a small electric motor and still goes 80km/h offroad.
I’ve not been able to get my hands on the stuff yet, but there’s resin pods in the towers (maybe encampments too, haven’t been to one) that you can use to build your own resin walls (see the constrution menu). They can take a C4 blast without flinching o.O Good base building material