It suffers from the same problem as the electric weapon - a weapon with damage based around contact length doesn’t really do much to support a weapon based around swing speed.
An actual flaming weapon works (or probably SHOULD work) because it’s likely to light the target on fire and continue doing “contact damage” after the swing is done.
But getting burned isn’t actually likely to accomplish anything that cutting into person hasn’t already accomplished quicker.
What would be interesting, however, would be if the burn effect somehow acted as an inhibitor for the zombies regeneration… then it might make sense. Rather than causing additional damage, it simply makes the wounds “stickier”…
On further thought, I think maybe for an electric powered sword I may start instead with a vibro blade; a cutting weapon that’s designed to vibrate at an ultra-high frequency to “slice” right through things. This sounds like an idea that would be viable at Cata’s tech level, and avoids a lot of the complexities of dealing with a weapon that uses raw energy to deal damage, which are beyond my ability to code in.
All this talk of electrical weapons makes me think of Electrolasers, which is something that would totally be around in Cataclysm time. They’re essentially a more high tech stunning device that instead of using two prongs with wires attached use a laser to create an ionized path for current to travel through, giving them a longer range, and making it easier to hit a moving target. They’d make a great weapon for copbots to have, to be honest. That, and the already existing tactical tonfa.
[quote=“ChristopherWalken, post:24, topic:4558”]I don’t really care for them either way, I wouldn’t use them and I am not brought into a frothing rage when I see them.
I do however think a “special” category in the crafting menu might be a good addition to put such things into.
EDIT- Alternatively “other” would be okay too I guess.[/quote]
I’m with CW on this one. Their existence doesn’t make me hemorrhage.
I consider them “too silly” to take them seriously. They’re in the “Dead Rising weapon silliness” category for me.
Moving them to their own tab in the crafting menu (and/or allowing people to move stuff themselves) would be nice. … or, if they’re going to be put in a book, make the book obviously about those weapons so I can skip leaning the recipes.
Eh, too much stuff is being moved to books these days. It’s really crippling Illiterate characters and no-cities mode. I mean, I guess I can see a decent argument for the heatblades in particular, but in general it’s not a trend I approve of.
Well, it’s pretty much never worth taking now, because of all the important stuff locked away in books, and how efficient book-based skill training is. There should be a way to learn to read, or reverse-engineer recipes, or some alternate method. Maybe even get NPCs to teach you recipes in exchange for doing quests for them, or something.
[quote=“Rivet, post:28, topic:4558”]Illiteracy is a flaw.
Particularly in the modern age.
I have zero sympathy for those of you who take the illiterate flaw then complain that you can’t read books.[/quote]
An argument could be made for upping the points earned by taking illiterate because of all the recipes only found in books now, but … yeah … as Rivet says, its obviously a huge flaw to take. Holding back on good game mechanics (making recipes require scavenging to cranking out crazy good crafted gear, which gives more purpose and goals to characters) because of a single huge and self-imposed character flaw feels silly.
Having NPCs teach recipes would be good. It gives reason to do things for them.
… and with all due respect the “no-cities mode” argument falls in the same category as the illiterate argument to me. You’re purposefully choosing to generate the game outside its “as expected to be played” (ya know, with cities as they exist in the NE of the USA, and with zombies in those cities) then asking game mechanics not evolve because of a self-imposed special play style.
Eh. Personally I think that if it’s an option in the game, it’s a viable playstyle that ought to be considered and helps establish a baseline.
And I’m not saying that it’s not a good idea, just that shifting all the higher-tier recipes to books seems a little forced, and results in a relatively same-y mid-game, where everyone loots the local mansion/library/school, finds a corner and holes up to read. It certainly won’t hurt to have alternate methods, you know?
Note that this is at least planned. Both reverse engineering to acquire specific recipes and “designing” your own things to acquire survival recipes are stuff we want to be in the game, and it’s been outlined. The moving of recipes to books serves a dual purpose - one: it creates a situation where the implementation of the desired functionality is actively desirable on the part of potential developers who play the game (meaning it is a lot more likely to get done) while also alleviating at least some of the problems with the previous system.
The current work is transitionary - hopefully, it is a transition that will be finished, but I feel it’s already at least a bit better than it was.
Regardless - that isn’t what this discussion is about, so please try to bring things back on topic.
I don’t think it makes sense to have any of these novel and improvised weapons as book recipes.
Alright, on topic, I don’t really dislike the heatblade, and kind of wish we had more crazy weapons like that. We have zombies that shoot lightning, spit acid and resurrect the dead, I feel like the heatblades at least keep up with the arms race of craziness. Anyhow, the rebalanced stats look fine to me.
Personally, I kind of wish there were acid-based melee weapons, and maybe an ice-based one from ice labs, but those might be too hard to justify.
Thematically, we want to keep the crazy stuff “alien”. We want human technology to be, if not realistic, at least reasonable - it can be advanced, but it should seem mundane, not magical or special except in a ‘technological’ way.
There’s a bit of an overlap here, specifically with tech that makes use of alien elements and properties (like the teleporter technology and mutagens). If you really want the player to have absurd, inexplicable, and unreasonable weapons, that’s the acceptable thematic way to do it - justify those attributes by making a major component of them work with or come from the absurd, unexplainable, and unreasonable subprime world.
@Inadequate
Now that you mention wanting some more unusual weapons, this feels like a good time to mention my latest idea;
The Endothermic StunBlade!
The basic idea is some crazy person (me) found a Heat drain bionic and a Electroshock Unit bionic lying around, and said "I don’t want to cut myself up to use these, so I’ll weld them to this sword instead!"
This bizarre weapon has two modes, “Drain” and “Shock”.
In “Drain” mode, striking a warm-blooded target absorbs their body heat, adding cold damage, small slowdown, and stores the resulting energy in the weapon.
In “Shock” mode, striking a target expends some of the weapons energy to shock the target, adding electrical damage, and stunning them.
The blade may also have a few other internal tools that can be powered by the stored energy, like a flashlight and a soldering iron. By the way, this item doesn’t use batteries; the ONLY way to power it is to bean something over the head with it.
I may also make a large, hammer-version of this that has an odd twist; It doesn’t have any shock damage parts, but it DOES have a very large energy storage capacity, and also standard UPS connections. Basically, it’s a UPS that you charge by beating people with it!
I know these sound a little out-there, but they’re really no more odd than the bionics they’re constructed from, IMO.
That sounds fine to me, although I guess it might be too much for others. Actually, there could be an interesting weapon made out of the sonic resonator bionic, like a shockwave cannon or something. The description made it sound like it could blow apart enemies like robots and such, and I was quite disappointed to find out it didn’t.
And being able to rig up two-way teleport traps from teleporters would be fun too.
Made from a sword and a teleporter, when you strike the enemy it teleports randomly and causes no damage, but has a small chance of the enemy getting ‘stuck’ in an alternate dimension. ( Essentially a random chance of a one-hit kill without leaving a body )
Uh, that one might be a little too cheap, you know? I mean teleportation traps are already a thing, but an offensive teleport weapon like that? I could only see it working if it teleported you randomly too, without the instakill chance. Unless the Netherrealm is properly implemented, and the thing has an even chance of randomly teleporting you/your opponent there.
(Man, all the people who thought the heatblades were too silly must be getting really annoyed at the turn this conversation has taken)
Why would it need to teleport the player also? Hit the monster, now he’s 6 tiles south of you, hit him again, now he’s 9 tiles northeast of you, hit him again, poof, rng comes to the rescue with a one-way trip to nowhere. I think it would be awesome. Certainly different from normal weapons. C:DDA needs balanceable one hit kill weapons, and with this weapon not doing damage on any hit but the slight chance of a one-hit, this weapon would be the perfect candidate.
I know, I shudder to think of the responses I would have gotten if I mentioned these ideas in the original thread that had prompted me to make this one asking peoples’ opinion on the heatblades. The shockwave cannon could be viable, as could the electrolaser. An offensive teleport device may be possible, but I doubt it could be used on anything not directly adjacent to you, and would have no more chance of beaming someone into a wall than the current teleporter has. Also, I’m not sure how long the current teleporter takes to actually activate, and a hulk is unlikely to wait patiently while you fiddle with the controls.
