I can't see the difference between Firearm and Gunsmith Repair Kits

Game Talk The Garage
1

Exactly what it says on the tin, really. Beyond nebulous “game balance” reasons (which I freaking abhor,) the Gunsmith Repair Kit seems anomalous:

Both it and the Firearm Repair Kit (which is craftable,) have Fine Hammering 1, Fine Metal Sawing 1, Fine Bolt Turning 1, Fine Screwdriving 1, and Metal Chiseling 3.
That all makes sense for the Firearm Kit, being that it incorporates a screwdriver set, wrench, metalworking chisel, hacksaw and hammer - in fact, I would go so far as to say that they are both missing Hammering 3, Sawing 2, Screwdriving 1, and Bolt Turning 2, qualities of the base items which presumably have not all Voltron’d together into some conglomerate, less-capable device but are in fact simply packed together along with some miscellany.

What’s getting me is the jump from Firearm Repair Kit to Gunsmith Repair Kit. I don’t like “no you cannot craft this, scavenge or die,” especially for non-hypertech things. I mean, gunsmithy has been around longer than the steam engine, and although the tools and techniques are specialized, they are not unknown. With as many tools, manuals and such as I have, I should be able to make a gunsmith repair kit.

So, what’s in it? Should it include a cordless drill (and with it, Drilling 3?) What exactly differentiates a Gunsmith kit from a Firearm kit, other than using 1/4 the charges to fix my weapons, and being nearly four times the weight.

2

Firearm repair kit is craftable and significantly more common, it uses more battery charges for crafting and repairs and cannot be used to craft suppressors. But other than that the they are essentially the same.

3

Yes, but that is my problem.

What exactly is the difference between Firearm Repair Kit and Gunsmith Repair Kit?
Is it just extra, specialized tools? If so, given that towards the end of the Fabrications chain you can make cordless power drills, you should be able to make those specialized tools. And why does it not seem to have the implement properties of the tools which went into making it, given that the Gunsmith Kit clearly incorporates the Firearm Repair Kit, which itself lacks some of the properties it should have.

4

This kind of argument is invalid for several reasons.

  1. Just because there’s a contradiction i.e. “cordless drills and gunsmithing tools are equally hard to make, but we can only make cordless drills” doesn’t imply that the correct action is allowing crafting of gunsmithing tools, it’s equally likely that craftable cordless drills were a mistake.
  2. You provide nothing to back up the assertion that gunsmithing tools and cordless drills have anything to do with each other.
5

1: Only if you’re either literally picking apart debating logic alone, without analyzing the context of the assertion, or if you’re asserting that you intend to remove the recipe to create cordless power drills as somehow being beyond the mettle of a fabrications genius.

In the context of the larger debate, the intent is clear; we have the ability to craft power tools (cordless power drills and circular saws,) which are machine tools of approximately similar complexity and difficulty to manufacture as the tools one might find in a gunsmithy; ergo, one might reasonably assert that a survivor should in fact have the capability of assembling a gunsmith’s kit.

2: Very well.
Firearm Kit weighs 2.56 Kg; Gunsmithy Kit weighs 10.
Firearm Kit has a volume of 1.5L; Gunsmithy Kit has a volume of 2.5L.
They both share the same list of Qualities and purposes, so it’s pretty clear, then, that the Gunsmithy Kit comprises the same tools as the Firearm Repair Kit but more. It’s also clear that the remaining litre of tools is dense, which adequately describes the situation if the kit consists of additional tools; of those additional tools, a cordless power drill or something of similar nature is most likely, since rotational force applied to a long-and-thin object is more likely to be useful when working on a firearm - say, reboring it - than narrow-and-broad such as that of a circular power drill.
Additionally, the cordless drill has a volume of .75L, with a weight of 2.86 Kg. Together, the two weigh 5.42Kg. A selection of useful bits - as in drill bits - made of hardened steel, and some more miscellaneous specialized tools which meet the description of ‘thin and heavy metal’ seems like a pretty reasonable guess to fill out the remaining quarter-liter, assuming that the kit is in fact packed densely and efficiently. (This could be even more true if the Firearm Kit included a now-redundant hand drill, or other redundant tools, which can be discarded.)

But then, that was just a conjecture. I am sure a good gunsmith and fabrications expert can find a way to augment their gunsmithy with a cordless power drill, but what I was asserting was not necessarily "Firearms Kit + Cordless Power Drill + Scrap = Gunsmith Repair Kit.*

  • I will go ahead and assert that such is a plausible recipe. But not necessarily what it must obviously be.

What I am asserting is that "given that a high-end Fabrications character is capable of fabricating everything from electromagnetic accelerator weapons that somehow are both combat-effective and don’t fly apart, to power tools (such as drills and circular saws,) then fabricating the difference between the Firearm Kit and the Gunsmith Kit should not be beyond the ken of the survivor.

6

All I’m asserting is that you haven’t met the burden of proof of your argument. You seem to be assuming that the ability to craft a cordless drill is either justified by its inclusion in the game, or obviously correct, it is neither.

To adress your erroneous statement though, yes removing the cordless drill recipe is a possible outcome. The main issue, from a brief glance at the recipe, is that it simply incorporates a “motor_small” as the motive force for the drill, I haven’t checked, but it’s quite possible that the definition of that component doesn’t meet the needs of a drill. Another glaring omission is a drill chuck of any kind, which is not a particularly simple item to fabricate.

This significantly weakens the other prong of your argument, which is that the drill is an exemplar of sophisticated fabrication, the recipe literally represents jamming a pre-existing motor into a plastic housing along with a power supply, and attaching (not sure how, nothing in there makes sense to do it) a screwdriver (or a butter knife!!!) to the motor’s drive shaft.

In other words, it’s a terrible recipe, it’s a terrible example to follow, and in general, asserting that existing recipes provide justification for new recipes is erroneous in part because of the existence of recipes like this.

The question was what does crafting a cordless drill have to do with crafting specialized gunsmithing tools. You seem to be making an argument that the part missing from the Firearm repair kit is an actual cordless power drill, in part due to comparing the weight and volume of the items.

So, I’ll reply in kind, “bannana”.

That assertion is exactly what I’m challenging yes. You’ve provided no sensical argument that it’s valid.

7

Gunsmithing Kits use 25 batteries as opposed to 100 per use. Its clearly just more efficient. I don’t think it’s stated what makes it more efficient.

8

How? Why?! What is the sodding difference, besides the things which I mentioned?

Since hardness and realism is so important to you, @kevin.granade I put the question to you: what, exactly, is in a gunsmith kit, that makes it so much better than a firearm repair kit that it’s four times more efficient and can be used for one (and so far as I can tell onlyone thing,) that the Firearm Kit cannot be?

What tools, or devices, or specialized implements in that kit are so unique to the magical little pack of “ahhhhhhh-hallelugah! Firearms!” that they can neither be replicated, nor understood, nor unpacked for use in other purposes? Is it the contained essence of John Moses Browning? (And yes, there were two; they were both gunsmiths however, even if the son far outstripped the father’s fame and influence.)

9

Don’t care about the firearm kit thing, seems like a kind of pointless thing to get hung up on. I was just refuting your (non-)argument about craftability.

10

Ever heard of David Gingery?

Man wrote basically the Cataclysm bible, goes from a bucket of sand and a box of scraps (though no cave,) to a working machine shop, with nothing more than unpowered hand tools, a coffee can, barbeque charcoal, and a salvaged electric motor.

Frankly, all of that is stuff you can find in the average house in CDDA.

11

Feel free to write up some recipes based on his work. In order to take advantage of it we need the intermediate tools and recipes needed to bootstrap that machine shop, as well as infrastructure for supporting those tools in the game.

I look forward to your contributions.

12

the point is, what makes the gunsmith kit so magically battery efficient?

13

That is my immediate concern.
What exactly goes into the gunsmith kit? What’s so magical about it? What tools or gadgets are in it that differentiates it from the Firearm Repair Kit, which itself needs a few extra Qualities to bring it into line with its actual ingredients.

Or is it really just the addition of a 1-litre, 7.44kg jar containing a tiny bit of the distilled soul of John Moses Browning?

[quote=“kevin.granade, post:11, topic:14636, full:true”]
Feel free to write up some recipes based on his work. In order to take advantage of it we need the intermediate tools and recipes needed to bootstrap that machine shop, as well as infrastructure for supporting those tools in the game.

I look forward to your contributions.[/quote]

Honestly, I was thinking about this, and it occurs to me that one way to implement such things might be to expand the Quality scope; the real bitch, though, would be having specific items which have unique properties that differentiate them from the exemplar of their type.

For example, whilst a screwdriver set you just put together might have screw-driving 5; fine screw-driving 3, a professional set as found in a huge tool-chest might be screw-driving 10 and fine screw-driving 5, whilst you can continuously upgrade your own kit by finding new screwdrivers that cover the gaps you have, so your personal set would go up to screw 6; fine screwing 4, then screwing 8, fine screwing 7, etc.

This would allow for iterative improvements on a machine tool with that tool, which is exactly what a Gingery set does; as I understand it, it’s based around improving the lathe; using the lathe to improve upon itself, then being able to build more specialized tools, which can build parts that improve the lathe, which improve the specialized tools…

Presumably this could be abstracted to some degree with tool upgrades, either found and scavenged, or - when you either can’t find what you need to make the next jump, or you simply have more scrap and patience than desire to fight another horde of zombies to loot another machine shop - just build the next bits and incorporate them into the tools in your shop.

The main hitch as I see it is that I don’t think CDDA currently supports that kind of iterative upgrading of specific item-examples.

14

The reason it’s not supported is it’s easier in every way to simply have different item definitions that represent the upgrades, and have the upgrade process simply replace the base version with the upgraded version.

The only counterindication for this solution is if the variants form a graph instead of a line or tree, i.e. if upgrades can be applied in arbitrary orders and must play well with one another AND the number of upgrades is significant AND the upgrades must be applied to the same item for some reason.

If you’re talking about a complex fixed tool like a lathe however, the simplest thing to do is model it as a vehicle, which already handles multiple components occupying a single location in the map and interacting with each other. You’ll want to do that anyway since that is the solution for attaching a fixed power-consuming tool to an electrical infrastructure.
You’d model the capabilities of the lathe as distinct qualities, and various upgrades you add to the lathe would supply those qualities. The upgrades themselves would be modeled as components that are added to the lathe.

15

well, the issue is not enough granularity for it. would need lathing 1, and then use the lathe and make upgrades till you get lathing 10 or so. some items don’t need that granularity like hammering. fine hammering can be thought of as “has the proper hammer shape rather then being a hard blunt object”.

for that drilling issue you can also just add granularity. have any crafted drill have drilling 1, but you can make “common bits” and combine them for a drilling 2 “drill with a set of common bits” and “specilized bits” to add and make a “drill with a large selection of bits” aka drilling 3. obviously each “level” of them would require more skill and tools to make.

16

There’s nothing stopping you from making lathing 1-10 or even lathing 1-100.
Also I doubt you want a linear scale, there are probably various capabilities of a lathe that you want to add as distinct qualities.0

17

Woooo, quoting me from a thread three days ago. We need Gingery love. I own hard copies of his entire series. Original run too.

18

@kevin.granade can a construction become a vehicle part like a fridge can be converted to a dc fridge? That would handle handle building Lathe 1.0 and getting it ready to be vehicle mounted and treated like an engine with upgradeable flywheels, chucks, motors, and tensions arms.

19

Small diameter pipe, three bored and tapped holes with set screws, end cap counter treaded to the motor shaft. The handle and power switch is a SPST switch in an assload of duct tape around the motor wired to a motorbike battey.

Edit: todo: mod in a Fastenal building
Edit 2: add Tap and Die quality tool as well

20

Yes, that’s the idea.

Exactly, that is three types of my tools we don’t currently have. Simple is in relation to the cordless drill recipe.