I don't understand the Nerf to Musems

Hey, been playing Cataclysm on and off for the last few years, one of the few games I’ve actually done that with. Ive been playing recently and starting with the “Surronded” start for some (hopefully) free points. A go to strategy was to either hoof it out of town ASAP, or rush to the nearest museum and hope there’s some armor/weapons I can use. I just tried to do that and noticed two things.
One:
All items in the displays that could be broken was.
And two:
There’s “fake” weapons, with lower damage values and whatnot.
What i want to understand is, why?
It seems a bit overkill to include both at the same time, not only am I getting sub par weapons, Im getting them damaged. Can anyone really give me an opposing view on this? I think its kinda silly to do both.

The reason for museum pieces being severely damaged is based on the real world: almost everything that’s actually old has been dug out of the ground, and so been effectively destroyed from a functional perspective. Now, if you’re an American and thus think Lovecraft old (200 years or so “incredibly old” buildings) is old, that’s not even halfway to what’s needed to reach the middle ages.

Fakes are harder to justify, but I can think of three reasons:

  • Fake items end up in collections all the time because (more or less gullible) collectors accept fake items in more or less good faith from providers who can be both crooks and unwitting. These fake items obviously should be in a condition allowing them to be confused with original items.
  • There are reasons why a museum might want to display what they think originals looked like, but in that case the fakes shouldn’t be damaged.
  • The real items are so sensitive that they can’t be put up for actual display, so replicas are made in their place, intended to look exactly as the original piece looks like today. A large scale example of this is the Lascaux cave II, which is a replica “tunnel” complex of the original created when it was realized the humidity etc. brought in by visitors damaged the cave paintings more in 20 years than the previous 20000 years had done.
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I guess its the double whammy that kinda gets me. There’s a line of logic I don’t wanna admit that sees some of these new updates as trying to aggressively re-balance some of the “meta”, I don’t think that’s exactly whats going on but there’s some stuff that kinda irks me and the buncha fakes is kinda unnecessary i guess.

Maybe a vault hold some of the actual valuable antiques, still damaged of course, but still there in a semi usable condition?

Sounds like its still a viable strat though, just a more limited one. You’ll have to start with a high enough fabrication and either a profession that starts out with an arc welder or hope your museum spawn starts near a garage as well.

I was thinking more safecracking/hacking. This is all idle talk so im keeping my expectations low, but safecracking seems kinda pointless outside a few very potent loot spawns (gun stores, pharmacies, etc). Id kinda like to see a bit more use out of the proficiency.

Nah I meant the real stuffs can be repaired by the arc welder along with some appropriate metal.

I don’t see the logic behind possessing the real thing but getting a copy of it to put behind glass. It could only make sense if the antiques in question are getting damaged somehow by being in an unsanitized location. Its not like its the cave thing mentioned here which is a big place itself that’ll be too hard to protect from curious visitors wanting to rub its crevices.

It could make sense for pawn shops or for the houses of collectors to have them behind secured containers that’ll need safecracking though.

A lot of ancient items are rather sensitive to just about anything. Sunlight may damage some (such as old paintings), while moisture and microbes is what damages Lascaux, not outright vandalism.

This is the reason there is currently a tendency to return organic material to where they were found, as e.g. bog mummies deteriorate faster even with the best preservation than they did in the bog, and the same goes with ships in locations where the wood doesn’t get eaten by worms (basically fresh-brackish water).

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So true!

Loot does need to be tweaked a bit, though.

Have not seen a museum in a long while in my map gen, but I have always thought they would have failed the Civ 6 theming test in the past.

What kind of display has a Japanese replica sword, ornamental European Armor, and an American Revolutionary War era musket in the same display room?

But I do agree with these being damaged and many unusable.

My family has an American Civil War era confederate officer’s sword that has been passed around for a bit. I am sure it would still hurt someone if you ran someone through with it or bapped someone up side the head with it.

But the leather straps to it are dust, the scabbard has rust, the hilt sucks, and the thing is is about as sharp as a butter knife.

And that one’s only around 200 years old. I could imagine a medieval ninja sword or great sword from the late middle ages being worse.

If I HAD to use an ancient weapon, I would trust the stuff coming out of the Society of Creative Anachronisms and the better Renaissance Faire vendors.

But running into a trove like that would be rare, rare. The number of people that make quality old school USABLE melee weapons nationwide probably numbers in the low triple digits. Katanas? Double digits.

Its probably doable to make an alternate loot spawns to fit museums themes. Just gotta wait for someone to do it.

The Pull Request to change it is public on the github, it was quite literally just a guy coming in saying “this isn’t right, museum stuff tends to be in pretty rough condition” and fixing it. No coordination or anything, and not really a balance thing. Same guy earlier in the year pushed a change that significantly increased the odds of finding a gun alongside compatible ammo and magazines for it, significantly buffing your chance of early firearm use, so I don’t think nerfs were his intent.

The problem is really that museum gear is, even for WW1/2 museums, a century or more old. Weapons and armors are consumables in all practical design - they’re supposed to deal with tough conditions, but nobody was making them intending for them to survive 500 years. Doubly so for museum pieces, which are often buried with a corpse at a mass grave somewhere in Europe, and dug up hundreds of years later. The “Pristine, always in a collection” stuff is extremely rare, and generally only in the most prestigious of museums. The one in some middle of nowhere town is gonna have to make do with half a rusty cuirass with a few musket holes in it, some old civil war swords, and whatever else they can scrounge up. Gotta remember we’re not raiding NYC or the Smithsonian out here.

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Yeah, now I understand. Guess the expectation of “getting a sick ass sword early” was a bit unrealistic.

Well, if you want the “sick ass sword” early, there is always the ninja profession start.

You get an actual katana though you need self defense training hobby to actually get ninjitsu style.

Before you say it’s overpowered, think again, Yeah, the katana is fearsome weapon that can slice through most unarmored Zs. But if you get grabbed/surrounded you are still going to have a bad day.

Also, this start costs points if not going freeform and may cost you in other areas.

Also, swords break. You may have a katana, but you will be unlikely to repair or make another one for a long, long time if ever due to (rightfully) high requirements.