Seems like a simple idea. With very high Mechanics, a gasoline tank, machete, lighter, pipe, wire, and handle could be crafted into a melee weapon that ignites and drains stored gasoline when activated, and sets enemies and terrain on fire when something is hit in combat or smashed.
Could be used as a heavier standard machete when not ignited to fight in fire-sensitive areas or cut stuff, and perhaps also be used as a cooking implement.
The backpack-gas tank thing could be refilled like any gasoline container.
I don’t know how fire works in Cataclysm - can enemies be ignited or only an area?
If so, the potential to accidentally burn down half a town seems like a great positive.
We’d need a new weapon flag for melee to set enemies on fire, but I’ve been planning on adding that for torches anyway. So a shishkebab isn’t out of the question.
It…wouldn’t really work. If you want something to hold flame, wrapping it in kevlar and soaking it is much much better. But to actually make someone set properly on fire from hitting them, you’d need something that gouts fuel onto them.
A whip that’s been soaked in fuel, when cracked, will vaporize the fuel nicely though
How about this, you basically turn the handle of the sword into a short-range flamethrower, the impact of the blade triggers a short burst of fire that sets the target on fire. holywood physics + real physics!\
Beware, making flaming monsters set adjacent monsters/items/terrain/ALL THE THINGS on fire is on my list of things to add to the game
But also a “fireproof” suit that allows you to be on fire while taking minimal damage, and an action to try and put yourself out if you’re on fire.
Ugh, I’m fine with the whole Hollywood physics > real physics where appropriate, but that weapon was just /so stupid/.
If we’re going to do /anything/ of the sort, we should have a shock blade that combines a sword with an electrical source and causes fire through arc action! (And has an associated crackle pop sound whenever you hit something with it)
[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:6, topic:121”]Ugh, I’m fine with the whole Hollywood physics > real physics where appropriate, but that weapon was just /so stupid/.
If we’re going to do /anything/ of the sort, we should have a shock blade that combines a sword with an electrical source and causes fire through arc action! (And has an associated crackle pop sound whenever you hit something with it)
Actually no that’s pretty stupid too.
I’m gonna go with nay.[/quote]
You’re right, I wouldn’t want anything unrealistic in my game with zombies walking around and giant otherworldly monsters warping in when you eat a deformed foetus and accidentally get teleport sickness.
I’m sorry, but what? I never said I thought it was unrealistic or that I cared if it was.
I said I thought it was stupid. ALL the junk weapons from Fallout 3 were stupid.
It’s not unrealistic, it’s farcical. It’s a joke weapon, and not a good one.
If I wanted “realistic”, I wouldn’t be playing Cataclysm. But that doesn’t mean “anything goes”. It’s the weapon equivalent of suggesting a tiny clown car that spits out a hundred clown zombies. The problem isn’t that it’s unrealistic, it’s that it’s jarringly stupid. It’s about tone. Cataclysm is not realistic, but it’s also not a parody or farce or over-the-top-action-movie-wish-fulfillment. It’s not Dead Rising 2, the tone is completely different. And crap like this detracts from that. I’m not asking for realism, I’m asking for a bit of quality and internal consistency.
If you’re going to add joke weapons, though, at least keep them as jokes, and don’t treat it like Fallout 3 did, where any character with a melee build was expected to humiliate themselves continuously by using it since it was such a high tier weapon.
I…I really don’t think they’re too stupid. I mean, not as a ‘flaming’ weapon a la flaming sword of wrath, but it could be a blazingly hot cauterizing weapon (which you can imagine a lot of uses for in a futuristic world - from rock cutting to medicine) and with that have a chance of setting a zombie’s clothes/apparel on fire. Similarly, you could say that the slime that’s reincarnating them is moderately flammable.
I just think that setting zombies on fire is immensely cool, and has some interesting game play effects such as having the possibility of setting you/surroundings alight.
However, I’d still be all for making Cataclysm a more ‘down to earth’ survival game.
The problem is that the weapon being discussed is very much a “flaming sword of wrath” style weapon, and the description is of that style.
I wouldn’t mind some sort of super-heated weapon with the ability to cauterize on strike or ignite more flammable enemies, but the initial proposed concept is, as I said, just silly.
Were I to include it, it would probably be something akin to a melee flamethrower, you pull a trigger type mechanism which douses the enemy and blade in gasoline, which is then ignited electrically. It wouldn’t strictly be the Fallout Shishkebab, where the flame just wraps around the blade somehow.
While not quite the same, being able to throw gasoline on enemies and then ignite them somehow (possibly through an electrical weapon/taser/torch whatever would be great, and a melee flamethrower that does that in one would be a natural progression.
I do agree with GlyphGryph that it does become a bit of a mythological flaming sword if it gets taken any further in the fallout direction.
