I think throwing weapons is kinda flawed

[iezymihuke]

What makes throwing weapons deadly?

Their ability to hit a critical organ hard enough to cause the target to cease being an immediate threat OR to cause the target to bleed fast enough to cease being an immediate threat.

AFAIK a critical hit in CDDA is landing a hit on a target’s head, but unlike The Walking Dead’s “one and done stab to the head”, in CDDA it seems you have to damage a head enough to turn it into ground meat OR sever the head in order for the target to stop being a threat.
Another “AFAIK”, zombies do not have “critical organs” AND they won’t die as a result of bleeding out.

In CDDA there’s really no such thing as a skilled “one hit” that instantly kills anything, unless you have used something that’s overkill.
Pretty much by the time you are done beating a zombie for it to stop moving, it should already be “pulped”.

So throwing weapons shouldn’t be worthless against targets that have “critical organs” AND/OR can bleed, like other NPCs or something similar, but they should be mostly worthless against your average zombie (unless you turn it into a porcupine of thrown weapons).

[Myst]

…What? Are we Bethesda now?

I meant that the existence of a feature does not justify it being in the game. Granted, I’m convinced now that it should be, the hunting argument is very compelling. But your justification was nothing more than “it’s in there now, which is why it should be fixed”. That is not a very sound argument in and of itself, IMO.

The point is the enemies that you wouldn’t want to get close to as a melee character are fragile, so throwing something at them would save ammo, and I could pick it back up. This isn’t a primary offensive tactic. It’s an option.

Good point. And I get that throwing stuff as an option should be in the game. But I was just wondering if it is a mechanic that needs to be optimized to be a viable offensive option. I’m sure that even though it’s possible to wield a chunk of meat and bash zombies with it, nobody actually worked out the physics of using pieces of meat as a weapon as nobody in their right mind would rely on chunks of meat to reliably serve as a weapon. Same goes for throwing. Unless it’s a weapon specifically meant to be thrown, I would in real life situations not depend too much on a regular knife to do a lot of damage when thrown.

In any case, all things considered I concur with this:

A simple solution to this is to make a flag for weapons designed for throwing, therefore random junk is less accurate and does less damage.

[ecchi_squid]

Throwing (Calculations, strategy, etc)

So I’ve taken a liking to throwing based characters, namely because of how stupidly fast you gain skill in it. Can I hear a detailed explanation of how throwing range, damage, etc, is calculated? It seems the throwing skill got changed significantly from the original Cataclysm. How does damage and range scale with skill level? Also what is “Throwing Bonus” for the Dexterity stat? Is that applied to “To hit” or applied to damage directly like the strength melee bonus? All I’ve noticed is that…

From what I gather, using the railgun cbm doubles the effectiveness of the weapons bash damage and not its cut damage.

[NiwerSpkrin]

So why not to add two ways of throwing - one-handed and two-handed?
Do you think I can’t throw a stone with one hand? I can. But then, my stone or what is thrown inaccuretaly, without big force. It’ll not fly far away and probably will not do any damage. Thus one-handed throwing takes some (big) penalities to damage, range and accuracy.
There are items which do not benefit from two-handed throwing. They have a form and balance suited for one-handed throwing or too small to wield them with two hands, or both. They should take either no penalites or the smaller ones for one-handed throwing.
There are items which need accuracy more than any other stat. Think of acid-filled glass bottles. At close distances they could be one-handed thrown in such a way that they always break unless our char is really weak or the floor, which breaks our ammo, is particulary soft. Such mechanic and a few (2-3) bottles of acid could be used to kite zombie brute to death, making him step into artifical poodle of acid again and again.

[redxlaser15]

I’d probably be terrible at this whole thing in general IRL. I suck at throwing sooooo badly.

This conversation has also reminded me of a time where I heard that you could kill a creature in dwarf fortress by throwing underwear at it.
In Minecraft I’ve also killed several mobs with a feather.

Yay for video game logic. While there should generally be a sense of realism, you’re always going to run into some cases where things make absolutely no sense other than due to game balance.

[Mantar]

CDDA zombies don’t require headshots, actually. And in fact they’re less resilient than living people – just try beating down a regular Z versus an NPC. The NPC is much tougher.

Given their slow movement, lousy dodging, and the fact you only have to damage them enough to disable them to the point that the blob will start repairs, throwing stuff seems like a reasonable choice to me for anything short of a hulk/juggernaut.
And given the cinematic tone created by things like the kung fu or mad max deathmobile systems, the notion of being “throwing knife guy” seems to fit into this world just fine.

[Mantar]

I’m not sure what we’re talking about here with “one-handed” versus “two-handed.” Axes can be thrown with a two-handed overhead toss, but knives, rocks, and baseballs are better thrown with one hand.

If we’re talking about offhand encumbrance, then yeah, you shouldn’t be carrying a massive duffel bag full of stuff in your off hand, so 100 encumbrance is right out, but something like 15-20 encumbrance from a catcher’s mitt should not have any noticeable effect.

[kevin.granade]

So why not to add two ways of throwing - one-handed and two-handed?

Because this:

It’ll not fly far away and probably will not do any damage.

I’m not interested in spending development time and making the code more complicated for a feature that is completely useless.

[psyxypher]

When I think of throwing weapons, I’m really not concerned with throwing weapons with enough force to kill whatever I’m throwing at…but rather throwing something far enough and hoping it’s killed by whatever I’ve thrown at (read: Grenades). Throwing is the Pistols of Melee Skills; read, useless, and by design. The appeal shouldn’t be throwing knives, it should be throwing grenades.

That’s my thoughts on the matter. Now the issue is that you need to actually wield something to throw it, which caught me off guard a few times…

[NiwerSpkrin]

Hmm… Well, this topic is related to two-handed weapons, which afaik are “no-no” to add as they demand fundamental changes to all weapons (at least), which can’t be done as there are other tasks for developers to do. So one-handed throw is “no-no” too. I can understand it

Though I think fast weak close-range throwing can offer some tactical effects to the player and is not useless. Creating pool of acid from two glass bottles of acid is one example, the other can be blinding Zds with clothes (not with those on zombies though) for a turn. The third can be stunning Zds for a turn with a thrown rope through a lucky hit (it wraps around their legs). The forth can be oiling or watering the road or floor, making it very slippery (you’ll probably try keeping your balance as if you were moving in a rubble). The fifth is +20 STR CBM, which, I think, should make almost any (probably skilled) throw deadly, thus making quickness tempting choice. Etc, etc.
Well, 3 examples are not present in the game and probably will not be implemented. Only in a mod maybe. Yeah. But I’ve written those examples to show that it’s not that one-handed throwing is useless by itself, it’s useless because currently in the game throwing mostly does damage and does not provide (supporting) effects except few things like acid bombs, throwable fire extinguishers, molotov cocktails and (flash) grenades.

I’ve gone pretty to far from the topic of the thread and will not argue anymore there.

[TheZoneWizard]

I think the idea of allowing certain items to be given a tag to throw them with a good hand, while holding the item you are carrying in the off hand is a good idea. In terms of coding it was changed to do more work than we had. So how would it be more work adding a tag to a list of items and a debuff to throwing skill as we had until recently a problem? True. I wouldn’t be doing the work. I am on the other hand still curious, as we really did not have the swap/drop function until recently.

Kevin. Assuming that picture is you irl. I would be totally befuddled if you couldn’t throw a knife or a golf ball from your good hand at least 20 feet with reasonable strength, WHILE holding something in your off hand. Being gimped is perfectly acceptable. I would use a knife as a distraction to do a small amount of damage while loading a revolver a bullet or two. Strength and accuracy would be great and the skill gain would as well. It would all come together to make the character get better at the throwing. Using it as a tactic for distractions/last ditch(1 hand with debuffs) or as a primary(2 hands) for stalking. Hunting. Stealth. Each a validation for this topic.

Ordinance is a primary thing most would also use. Swapping and/or dropping my pistol when I can put my pistol in my off hand and use my good hand to take out the grenade. Pull the pin with the pistol hand(only takes 1 finger) and throw seems both reasonable and logical. Heck, I would like small weapons to have the tag to throw. But this would be a tactic not a full fledged ninja system.

[Daeros13]

Not trying to muddy the waters, but there were many uses of items made specifically to throw. The one I like is tying ordinance to it so it sticks in your target and explodes (I know, pre-cursor to hand grenades) I just wonder if (like previously mentioned) the distance and damage could be tied to the throwing skill and only throwing skill?

Some food for thought (15 min long for peeps with short attention span BTW)

NINJA TRUTH Episode 3: Shuriken - 15 Minutes - Video On Demand - NHK WORLD -...

[4AMChocolatePudding]

I actually made a character with the specific intent on using mostly throwing weapons only and the Railgun CBM for end game. Maybe even add in the Hydraulic Muscles CBM for extra fun once I eventually found it. In the end I shelved the character right after finding and installing the Railgun CBM due to disappointment. I do hope to load it up again one of these days.

I’m still somewhat confused on how exactly everything is determined even after checking the code and using debug to play around. The CBM text states it will double the throwing range and damage for iron/steel yet it seems Railgun just doubles your strength value? Even that seems inconsistent as some items get double range while others want to cap out at 50 range. They will however surpass that cap if you debug in double your strength to simulate Railgun, but it’s a moot point as you’d be throwing items outside of your reality bubble at that point.

I have more trouble following throwing damage, especially when factoring in strength. Items seem to have a damage ceiling they cap out at regardless of what strength levels you achieve via CBMs or debugging stats. I’m not sure if it’s linked to item weight. Bashing/Cutting/Piercing damage values are also a very large factor and bashing damage is heavily favored compared to cutting/piercing.

I’m not sure if anyone else has more knowledge or input that might make more sense of the situation. I guess there’s always the novelty factor of throwing around lightning blasts.

TL;DR - I wanted to have fun doing superhuman throwing shenanigans and instead got

[ootdega]

I know reading any responses to me will just make me angry, so I’m just going to press End and put this here.

If anyone from the future is reading this thread actually looking for a viable throwing weapon that can be carried easily:

Carry a 1911. Throwing a 1911 does 30 damage. Don’t even need any ammo, throwing it does as much damage as shooting it.

Virtually anything you can pick up off the ground will do more damage than throwing a knife, but you can put a 1911 in a holster and it works with Railgun. A Desert Eagle or Smith & Wesson might be even better, I dunno, but a 1911 is easy to find.

The system is directly weighted against anything that could even concievably be used as a passable throwing weapon actually dealing damage. Throw a pair of pants instead, I guarantee it will hurt more. Because realism.

Of course, this might change in the future, but somehow I have doubts. Call it a hunch.

[darktoes]

I think what Kevin’s getting at, and what would be most useful to players and the game as a whole, is that the current system is badly flawed, and tossing arbitrary damage bonuses on various things with the mentality “yeah this should do damage if thrown” isn’t going to make this better (though it might be a step in the right direction).

What’s really needed is a reasonably simple set of standards that detail how much damage and range a particular item should have, which can then be applied to various dedicated throwing weapons to generate consistent and reasonable stats. For reference, you might look at the design doc for melee weapons on Github. It details each of the main stats of a melee weapon, and what real world characteristics and features would determine each stat (e.g a proper handle substantially increases the to-hit of a melee weapon, but only being 6 inches long, like a dagger, decreases it). Without some form of standardised guideline, any attempts to “fix” throwing weapons are going to be vague shots in the dark at best.

That said, the only truly effective thrown weapon I can think of is thrown spears or javelins. Knives and tomahawks rarely have the penetration to cause serious damage, and most blunt thrown weapons are essentially equivalent to a strong punch. Shurikens are interesting in that every reasonable source (That “Ninja Truth” video seems extremely Hollywood) I’ve looked at suggests they were a backup or emergency weapon. Either as an easily concealed emergency knife, to distract someone, apply poison, or be dropped on the ground to act as caltrops. Just from looking at them you can tell that it would require massive amounts of power behind them to cause any serious damage, unless you got exceptionally lucky and hit an artery.

That said, I wonder if that would be the correct way to go with thrown weapons. Pathetic base damage means they’re in no danger of becoming overpowered, but high critical damage (If you assume zombies need blood and/or intact brains to function) would make them reasonably useful.

[kevin.granade]

I think what Kevin’s getting at, and what would be most useful to players and the game as a whole, is that the current system is badly flawed, and tossing arbitrary damage bonuses on various things with the mentality “yeah this should do damage if thrown” isn’t going to make this better (though it might be a step in the right direction).

I endorse this summary

[iezymihuke]

Knives and Tomahawks vs the Meat Target

[Mantar]

I’m not sure how much stock I would put in that guy’s “duct-taped pork chops in a t-shirt” dummy. The guy upthread at least used ballistics gel.

[Daeros13]

The vid was a bit hollywood, or more, but made the point of multipurpose throwing. Damage done not so much via weapons thrown as what you add to it before the throw.