Item creation: multiple ammo types; typical process for pricing of items

[ThinkInvisible]

Is there any way to allow an item to shoot multiple types of ammo? Is it as simple as "ammo": ["type1", "type2"]?

Also, the game balance file doesn’t say a thing about many of the stats. In particular, I’m having trouble figuring out price - how should I go about creating a price for an item? Specific damage and ranged stats (bash, cut, ranged dispersion, dispersion, recoil, etc.) are also unexplained.

[KA101]

[quote=“ThinkInvisible, post:1, topic:8666”]Is there any way to allow an item to shoot multiple types of ammo? Is it as simple as "ammo": ["type1", "type2"]?

Also, the game balance file doesn’t say a thing about many of the stats. In particular, I’m having trouble figuring out price - how should I go about creating a price for an item? Specific damage and ranged stats (bash, cut, ranged dispersion, dispersion, recoil, etc.) are also unexplained.[/quote]

One type of ammo per weapon, but more than one ammo can have the same type. 5.56 is a .223 variant in-game, so guns that take one can take the other.

Price is in cents, with the baseline value being real-world pricing (so google it: it’s what I did for just about every currently-existing armor in the game).

Dispersion is in minutes of arc, and I’m not sure how best to calculate it, so I’d estimate from existing guns; it’s the firearm’s fundamental inaccuracy, with sight-dispersion being less-than-perfect sights (Kevin set some numbers for sight dispersion IIRC, but I’m not sure where). Same for recoil. Bash/cut, to-hit, etc is for use as a melee weapon, and all items can be used as melee so those are NOT optional.

(Deleting those lines can crash the JSON parser.)

[ThinkInvisible]

Well, I’m trying to implement a spear-thrower/atlatl, which
A: does not have a real price. Wooden ones, anyways, which haven’t been around for a long time; plastic ones might be found in sporting goods stores. A survivor might be able to find a wooden one in a museum or craft one with a heavy stick and a knife after reading about them in a book.
B: should be able to throw a large variety of items - pebbles, sticks, hockey pucks, pipes, arrows, fishing spears, etc. Anything that’s at least a little aerodynamic and smaller than the weapon is probably fair game (with varied success, if possible). For now, I’m sticking to either fishing spears or arrows, but if there’s some way to do this…
C: depends on the wielder’s skill in throwing for accuracy and range; I don’t know how the dispersion and range stats would factor into that. I guess I could try borrowing some stats from the sling.

[kevin.granade]

The ranged attack system doesn’t support that yet. what seems to make the most sense for an atlatl is equipping it, then throwing an item, the code handling throwing would check for a throwing aid and adjust the parameters of the attack Generally damage and range would go up, time to fire would go up, not sure what it’d do to accuracy.