Mod Proposal: Megalo box style Gears

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So, ever since I started watching Megalo Box, I’ve been getting the itch to make a mod that adds Gears to the game.

What are Gears you ask? This:

junk-dog-01.jpg450×550 44.2 KB

Ghetto power fists (and not-so-Ghetto as well), used for the purpose of boxers beating the shit out of each other in the ring.

The part that has me stumped is that they are clearly something you wear, and should interfere with encumbrance, but at the same time they are something you punch with, and should make you punch harder.

How the heck do I do this?

Apart from that, I wouldn’t mind some feedback:
Balance: In terms of damage per hit, it should be somewhere between say, a cestus, and being hit in the face with a shovel/crowbar/bat/whatever.

Availability:
It looks craftable, probably needing a welder, maybe some usually vehicle-related parts?
I haven’t messed with buildings so far, but either adding it to the boxing gym’s list or adding an alternate ‘augmented boxing’ ring don’t look too hard.

  1. Would you rather see it appear on the boxing gym or as a new building?
  2. If the later, how common should such a building be?
  3. What do you think the recipe should contain?

Naming: I’m not entirely sold on using ‘Gear’ or ‘Boxing Gear’ as names, but nothing else seems to crop up to my mind. Any ideas?

2

Just add the artifact strength bonus to the on version, that will improve your unarmed damage.

3

It looks craftable, probably needing a welder, maybe some usually vehicle-related parts?

The tubes are most likely pneumatic cylinders. I count 8 of those. Don’t use bottle jacks for parts; those are hydraulic and slow. Just need pipes and chunks/scrap for parts. Rubber hose to run the length of the arms, from the cylinders to the backpack.

The disks and elbows are joints, to articulate the force.

The backback is an air compressor. It needs two stages. The compressor and a holding tank. It fills the tank in the time between uses. A punch would rapidly empty the tank into the appropriate pneumatic cylinder. Wearer has controls (like Spider-Man’s web slinger triggers) in the gloves. We’ll have to believe that it Just Works™.

Make it buildable from whole parts at something like mechanics 6-8. Make its individual parts buildable at mechanics 8 and fabrication 6-8.

Guess you’ll be adding the air compressor item, so it appears in mechanics shops and hardware stores.

Very small chance that a completed item appears, but it wouldn’t be in a proper boxing gym. It should be more special than that. In boxing it would be illicit. Underground fighting circuits, though…

4

For the sake of fitting the junkyard feel, I’d like it to be buildable from pieces of different things with relatively middling skill, but requiring significantly more for it to be craftable from scratch.

For example, taking your breakdown, slapping in a couple electronics stuff, then making the backpack part something that was repurposed from some other machine with a couple additions, or from a couple different machines. The problem is what to pick.

Something like power armor or hydraulic muscles would work, except that you shouldn’t be downgrading from those to ghetto power fists, so that isn’t too viable.

Perhaps whatever rare part can be obtained from disassembling some of the robotic enemies? Not manhacks, but maybe skitterbots, copbots, chicken walkers, and tribots?

5

One way to do it would make it be just scavenge-able. Currently you can take apart basic power armor and get back just the armor, what if you could take it apart and get just the armor, but also get a full powered exoskeleton as the other product.

Take the leg bits off and you have basically what you show in the picture.

Making an exoskeleton like that would be HARD. If you want powered assistance strong enough to make a difference it has to be perfect, have a lot of limits, and have incredibly precise controls, or it will just break your arms off.

My idea would be to have the exoskeleton be scavenged from power armor, then make a craftable power fist type thing that’s craftable. The power fist could be found in illicit boxing rings, the exoskeleton could rarely spawn in hardware stores and stuff like that.

Looking at that Gear thing, it looks like it weighs a metric fucktonne. Not having a full exoskeleton is going to give you a Bad Time.

6

Search “fast air compressor”. They’ll be found in mechanics shops, hardware stores, department stores, warehouses, garages, and in vehicles.

The wearer will need electrical power, either from the reloadable battery “charge” system, or from the CBM power system.

Electronic scrap from dismantled terminals should suffice. It doesn’t need an intelligent or powerful processing unit. Technically, it needs no electronics. Can be based entirely on power tools.

Power tools can be found built (or can be modified) to use DC current directly from batteries, without transform to AC.

Something like a 12-volt compressor with pressure gauge, used for car tires and found carried in car trunk/boot for emergencies. Little to no modification for the purpose.

That’s the junkyard craftable version, anyway. Hydraulic arms CBM seems to cover the fancy alternative, although that CBM could be modded here for style.

Think I agree that the exoskeleton should be this difficult to come by. That difficulty of engineering is what had me setting the bar so high for manufacturing the thing.

7

That’s why I was thinking on blaming most of the ‘hard’ part on the control unit at the center, which regulates the pressure and movement.
If it’s taken from a robot, then it’s far smarter than what the Gear would need, which, in turn, would let it compensate for imperfect construction with software by regulating the pneumatics.

It’s actually not that heavy on the series, which I’m going to blame on a fairly light frame. Not sure I should reflect that on it’s fragility: while the back and shoulders would break easily, the forearm parts are tough and made to take a beating, and if I give it the blocking ability, then the entire thing would receive damage when that happens.

On the upside of that, if it’s used while Boxing, then the STR from the suit would aid the STR from the player in negating damage blocked.

I figured you’d suffer from having to reload it with charges, then with better electronics, you’d install swappable batteries, or being able to charge from vehicle, or finally, an UPS conversion. Once you hit that point is where you can use it pretty much permanently as a weapon without worrying about ‘ammo’, so even if you scavenge/build it ‘early’, it’d be more of an emergency weapon until then.

8

In terms of ultimate strength in the as welded condition, the 150% thicker aluminum plate comes to roughly 58.5k psi “per square area” which is again very close to steel for a structure designed to an “equivalent” standard.

One might then argue in favor of steel which has very slightly higher values, except that the resulting structure will still be roughly 1/3 lighter in aluminum than in steel.

The obvious design solution is to increase the scantlings so that deflection is kept within the allowable range. With aluminum, this is very effective, and does not incur much of a weight penalty.

Scantling
Scantling is a measurement of prescribed size, dimensions, or cross sectional areas.

Aluminum salvage required to forge your own frame. Forged from both steel and aluminum; primarily aluminum.

9

Thinking about it, if you wanted to make a power fist type thing you could just have it set up as a gun with a range of 1, maybe using Unarmed skill, and using UPS or compressed air charges to fire. That way you can punch normally or choose to actually use the thing.

Alternatively you could do it as a reach attack, but I’m not sure there’s a way to have it use a charge that way, other than just having it deplete while on like a chainsaw.

10

Tentative item and recipe. The recipe so far is for making it from scratch.
As I said earlier, I might add a recipe where the difficulty is lower but uses an intermediate item or two.

gear.json 
[
  {
    "id": "megalobox",
    "type": "TOOL_ARMOR",
    "category": "armor",
    "name": "hydraulic boxing gear",
    "description": "This is a description.",
    "weight": 7500,
    "volume": 24,
    "to_hit": -3,
    "price": 250000,
    "max_charges": 500,
    "rand_charges": [ 0, 360, 500 ],
    "ammo": "battery",
    "use_action": {
      "type": "transform",
      "msg": "You turn the gear on.",
      "target": "megalobox_on",
      "active": true,
      "need_charges": 1,
      "need_charges_msg": "The gear's batteries are dead."
    },
    "material": [ "steel", "aluminum" ],
    "symbol": "[",
    "color": "light_gray",
    "covers": [ "TORSO", "ARMS" ],
    "coverage": 20,
    "encumbrance": 22,
    "warmth": 0,
    "material_thickness": 4,
    "environmental_protection": 1,
    "flags": [ "BELTED", "BLOCK_WHILE_WORN", "STURDY", "WATER_FRIENDLY" ]
  },
  {
    "id": "megalobox_on",
    "copy-from": "megalobox",
    "type": "TOOL_ARMOR",
    "name": "hydraulic boxing gear (on)",
    "name_plural": "hydraulic boxing gears (on)",
    "color": "blue",
    "description": "This is a description.",
    "revert_to": "megalobox",
    "turns_per_charge": 1,
    "warmth": 10,
    "encumbrance": 10,
    "use_action": { "menu_text": "Turn off", "type": "transform", "msg": "The gear turns off.", "target": "megalobox" },
    "artifact_data": { "effects_worn": [ "AEP_STR_UP" ] }
  }
]
Recipe 
[
  {
    "result": "megalobox",
    "type": "recipe",
    "category": "CC_WEAPON",
    "subcategory": "CSC_WEAPON_BASHING",
    "skill_used": "mechanics",
    "skills_required": [ [ "fabrication", 5 ], [ "electronics", 5 ], [ "computer", 5 ] ],
    "difficulty": 7,
    "time": 120000,
    "using": [ [ "soldering_standard", 20 ], [ "welding_standard", 40 ] ],
    "autolearn": true,
    "qualities": [
      { "id": "SAW_M", "level": 1 },
      { "id": "SAW_M_FINE", "level": 1 },
      { "id": "SCREW_FINE", "level": 1 },
      { "id": "WRENCH", "level": 1 },
      { "id": "WRENCH_FINE", "level": 1 },
      { "id": "HAMMER", "level": 3 },
      { "id": "GLARE", "level": 2 },
      { "id": "CHISEL", "level": 3 }
    ],
    "tools": [ [ [ "mold_plastic", -1 ] ] ],
    "components": [
      [ [ "steel_lump", 1 ], [ "steel_chunk", 4 ], [ "scrap", 12 ] ],
      [ [ "xlframe", 1 ], [ "material_aluminium_ingot", 4 ] ],
      [ [ "plastic_chunk", 4 ], [ "hose", 2 ] ],
      [ [ "circuit", 5 ], [ "e_scrap", 7 ] ],
      [ [ "processor", 1 ] ],
      [ [ "RAM", 1 ] ],
      [ [ "cable", 5 ] ],
      [ [ "motor_small", 1 ] ],
      [ [ "small_storage_battery", 1 ], [ "battery_motorbike", 1 ] ],
      [ [ "metal_tank_little", 1 ] ]
    ]
  }
]

Going to test it a little, then maybe work on the building that would spawn it, perhaps add a recipe book as well and remove the autolearn.

Thoughs?