Flamable Arrows 0.6

[Stevensonz]

[quote=“ejseto, post:17, topic:1894”]Heh, for some reason they burn flesh better than paper.

if (z.made_of(“veggy”) || z.made_of(“cotton”) || z.made_of(“wool”) ||
z.made_of(“paper”) || z.made_of(“wood”))
z.add_effect(ME_ONFIRE, rng(6, 6));
else if (z.made_of(“flesh”))
z.add_effect(ME_ONFIRE, rng(10, 10));

You don’t need to use rng() if both numbers are the same btw.

Come to think of it, are there even any monsters made of cotton, wool, or paper?[/quote]

flesh targets doesn’t seem to burn that easily so I gave it a higher range. those veggy monsters seem to die fast before 6 six turns though. It’s basically a copy from incendiary effects, I’m not sure about monsters made of cotton,wool or paper maybe they are planning to those types? or it could also be based on armor being worn by you/npc’s

[Ember]

[quote=“Bladerock, post:13, topic:1894”]"Increasing of the weight factor for arrows is intentional as a balancing method "

“Simply put we reduced how many arrows you can carry at a time because of the higher weight.”

I hope i don’t need to explain how this is just as artificial as giving them a hard cap.

“nothing is stopping you from carrying many arrows as long as your carry weight and volume can handle”

And i hope i don’t have to explain how “balancing” them to be harder to carry a large amount is completely ineffective when you can just carry a large amount anyway.[/quote]

a hard cap of only carrying an X amount of arrows is a hard cap, the wight limit isn’t a hard cap as you can carry a lot more if have 20 strength compared to 10 strength

[Bladerock]

@Ember

a hard cap of only carrying an X amount of arrows is a hard cap, the wight limit isn’t a hard cap as you can carry a lot more if have 20 strength compared to 10 strength

It’s more effective in controlling the behaviour without interfering with other aspects of the game. You can base the hard cap on whatever you want, be it strength or intelligence or whatever.
The idea is that the “Let’s make this stupidly heavy and huge so the player can carry less of it” affects things other than the item, leading to further unrealistic situations and side effects.

For example, if you add in the future an item that increases how much weight you can carry, then the item is undoing your balancing, and now you have to either, rebalance the extraweight lifter around the arrows (reducing it’s effectiveness for everyone just because of them, probably making it useless for anything but carrying the extra arrows) or further increase the weight of the arrows to compensate (Which would make it so a player without the extraweight lifter being weaker after the release of it, without guarantee of obtaining it.)

Each arrow is also reducing your capacity to carry unrelated items due to their extra bulk. Nerfing unrelated items by limiting your ability to carry them (And, if you keep going to this solution, you will also change the weight and volume of this other affected item so “you can carry more while holding the arrows!”. Which complicates everything by now making it much easier to carry in bulk by the people who are not using the extra heavy arrows).

The clean solution is to implement a cap that only affects the arrows in a vacuum, that way, their “overpoweredness” is contained without unnecessarily affecting other aspects of the game which are currently considered to be balanced.

[i2amroy]

Personally I’d like to see balance without changing the weight/volume of an object away from a realistic amount. There are plenty of other factors (range, recoil, accuracy, damage, crafting difficulty) that can be modified to make something balanced without needing to make something unrealistic, and those are the factors that should be balanced.

[kevin.granade]

@i2amroy

Personally I’d like to see balance without changing the weight/volume of an object away from a realistic amount. There are plenty of other factors (range, recoil, accuracy, damage, crafting difficulty) that can be modified to make something balanced without needing to make something unrealistic, and those are the factors that should be balanced.

100%

[Morrigi]

This is just silly. Sure, it might weigh more than a normal arrow, but this is clearly ridiculous. For example, a traditional arrow for a longbow probably won’t mass more than 600 grains (or around 40 grams) and be about 30 inches long. Now, modern arrows are far lighter, often around 300-400 grains or just under 20 grams. From looking at this site, you can see that the minimum mass of an arrow needs to be about five grains per pound of draw, and that for every five grains over this one FPS will be lost.

Now, let’s look at the fire arrows. Five arrows weighing ten pounds, giving a mass of two pounds per arrow. That’s fourteen thousand grains, or 900 grams. Now if you’re shooting that from a bow with a 60lb draw weight, let’s do the math.

Now, from the IBO* standard mentioned above, you need a minimum arrow mass of 300 grains for a 60 pound bow, and that for every additional five grains you lose 1 foot per second of velocity. Now, giving the generous assumption that the arrow is traveling at 300fps, let’s see what happens.

14,000/5 = 2,800

That 2,800 is a loss of over nine times the initial velocity of the arrow. See the problem?

Now, all hope is not lost. There is still a way of balancing flaming arrows. While I have not messed around with the arrows in question yet, there are some logical, common-sense assumptions that can be made.

1. Flaming arrows will do relatively little damage on impact, and most of it will be imparted as blunt trauma due to the soaked cloth wrapping.

2. They will be far less accurate than normal arrows due to the irregularities of the incendiary portion, not to mention being on fire.

3. They will be shorter ranged than normal arrows due to their increased mass.

4. Having a backpack full of bits of cloth and wood soaked in gasoline can be a terminally bad idea near sparks and especially an open flame. Perhaps one would need to craft a specialized leather quiver to reduce this risk…

So long as these three common-sense things are met and their weight is brought to something somewhat reasonable, they are as balanced as one can logically get. Exaggerating any of these effects is quite unrealistic, annoying, and rather silly.

Now, can these arrows be crafted with liquor like vodka? If so, it would make sense to remove this recipe due to ~40-50 abv alcohol’s low burn temperature. Gasoline, oil, or animal fat would be much better choices for an effective incendiary device.

In the end, we have less accurate, somewhat heavier, shorter ranged, higher weight and volume arrows that are more difficult to craft and can set you on fire if you mess around with them next to an open flame. Is that not balanced?

EDIT: Kevin Granade, y u so ninja?

[Bladerock]

[quote=“i2amroy, post:24, topic:1894”]Personally I’d like to see balance without changing the weight/volume of an object away from a realistic amount. There are plenty of other factors (range, recoil, accuracy, damage, crafting difficulty) that can be modified to make something balanced without needing to make something unrealistic, and those are the factors that should be balanced.[/quote]I figured you guys already tried this and it didn’t work, so that was why they went with the limiting access route. Hah, shouldn’t have assumed things.