Guns you find out in the field have likely been dropped rather forcefully. Guns are fragile. Drop a shotgun on its (wooden) stock and it will likely break/crack.
Or they’re just dirty and prone to malfunctions… unless you happen to pick up an AK.[/quote]
The concept of guns damaged to worthlessness doesn’t make sense in these locations:
Gun shops of various kinds, military bunkers, in people’s homes and FEMA camps.
It does make sense in these scenarios:
On zombies of all kinds, around corpse drops, in survivor camps.
As for “all guns in easy reach would be taken or damaged”, what you’re working against is gun statistics. No state in the continental US has less than 10% gun ownership rate, and only six states are under 20%. Once population loss from the pre-cataclysm exceeded 50%, there were literally more guns than people, and the post-cataclysm reality is that there are thousands of pre-cataclysm guns for every survivor. That’s ignoring the pre-cataclysm lore stating that firearm ownership and production skyrocketed in the years leading up to the cataclysm.
It makes sense to take some steps to restrict gun availability, but factoring in most of what you’re talking about regarding gun destruction only gets us down to the levels of guns that are currently in the game. It would never make sense to bring the number of guns available down to the level where it makes sense for a typical lone survivor to spend the time and energy to cobble together a gun.
If you really like the no guns scenario for some reason, feel free to put together a “scarce guns” mod and I’d be happy to include it, but for the base game it simply doesn’t make sense.
I think that part of the problem is that our hand made weapons only fire 9mm and .45mm, and firearms for those calibers are very, very common. However, i’d certainly craft and make use of a pipe rifle that shot some of the less common rifle rounds.
Gun shops of various kinds, military bunkers, in people's homes and FEMA camps.
Mass looting? They'd take everything that works and leave everything else behind. They might have tried to make a last stand inside the shop; or there might have been a firefight in the shop between two looter groups. Currently, Cataclysm doesn't simulate gun wear, so implementing that might be something to work on later.
I was actually thinking of making a mod for this, but I was waiting for the new stable to come out.
Gun shops of various kinds, military bunkers, in people’s homes and FEMA camps.
Mass looting? They’d take everything that works and leave everything else behind. They might have tried to make a last stand inside the shop; or there might have been a firefight in the shop between two looter groups. Currently, Cataclysm doesn’t simulate gun wear, so implementing that might be something to work on later.
[/quote]
Matter of fact, guns do degrade with use (and abuse). We have it set pretty slow for Rule of Fun purposes.
Nontraditional pipe weapons, sure. Air guns are an option, though I’m not familiar enough re compression tanks to opine on 'em.
Would it make sense for people to actually get time to go looting? It barely took a day for martial law to take effect, and by Day 3 90% of New England is gone. If anyone had a chance to do something at all before they were overwhelmed or shot, it would be to get the hell out of dodge.
Well, yeah. AFTER everyone died, the few people who could get to safety started working together. Plus, those bases are restricted to defensible forts and refugee centers.
[quote=“eatdembeanz, post:7, topic:7782”]Maybe make the spawn rate of basements absolutely littered with guns and ammo significantly lower, and add safes and locked cabinets that contain guns.
To make it seem less odd that someone would store an unloaded gun in their house, maybe add low-caliber ammo to the spawn lists in bedroom bookshelves?[/quote]