PK's Rebalancing Mod

Game Talk The Lab
161

[quote=“mco, post:160, topic:11323”]These trapdoor lairs are awesome!

I was just driving across a field when suddenly BOOM both my front wheels get destroyed. I go out to investigate and see a spider. Well, nothing i couldn’t handle with plated leather, leather trench and iron greaves, right? WRONG. Suddenly a bunch of other spiders emerge and oh god they can grab, and i literally got shredded to pieces.
When i read about it in patchnotes i thought “meh more annoying sinkholes”, but the way it works in the game is completely genius, thumbs up for keeping the game challenging![/quote]

thanks. im worried about too strong too.

Ive been using the grab flag as ‘clutching at’ and the grab attack to mean suppression/restricted movement.

as in: they use their limbs to block you and pin you and their bodies to impose themselves.

grab begs an agility/dodge check to place and a strength/(maybe) agility check to break, so its not too far off.

162

Ive modified the name ‘space marine xx’ to reflect a more accurate title. to avoid confusion.

Triffids got 2 new surface homes, and i may alter the subsurface eventually. i already did back in the begining.
Spiders and triffids no longer attack each other; many spiders spawned below ground and were promptly murdered.

added a megabear cub and ant male. helps complete the mating seasons.

megacub flees from close things who arent his mumz.
even other bears during mating season.

added a giant giant wolf spider.
considering adding some human bones or dirt mounds to trapdoor lairs. a chance spawn.

Want to do my doomlab now, and i suspect if i can get my hands on the id codes of the actual labs ill have an easier time.
for instance, triffid groves are created in c++, not json. but they have an id.

163

Okay.

Today, while Im waiting for things on git to update, is going to be me making new acid bombs and perhaps fixing up the acidhacks and firehacks.

I love my acidbombs. They have recently glitched in that they never stop making acid, and they splouge acid over a 3x3 area. You can use a flask (1 volume) or a glass bottle (3 volume) to make them the volume is always 2 and the effects is the same. Plus, some code I saw looked like it was poising to take over the iuse function of the acid/fire grenades. So if I can do that now I could probably even upload them into the base game.

But yea guys. I reccomend using fire copiously and using acidbombs too. Incendiary grenades are pretty rare, and molotovs are somewhat unreliable, but handheld lighters and flamethrowers are just magical. Acid bombs are cheap and effectively silent (compared to other wepaons). And many, many things, even in endgame, are not especially resistant to acid.

164

,{
“id”: “acidbomb_large”,
“type”: “AMMO”,
“category”: “weapons”,
“ammo_type” : “thrown”,
“symbol”: “",
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “large acidbomb”,
“description”: “There is enough frothing fluid inside this acidbomb to coat a relatively large area with sprays of acid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 280,
“volume”: 3,
“bashing”: 8,
“to_hit”: -1,
“flags”: [“ACT_ON_RANGED_HIT”, “CUSTOM_EXPLOSION”],
“use_action”: {
“type”: “transform”,
“target”: “acidbomb_large_act”,
“target_charges”: 0,
“active”: true
}
},{
“id”: “acidbomb_large_act”,
“type”: “TOOL”,
“symbol”: "”,
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “large acidbomb”,
“description”: “A thrown acidbomb, in the process of loosing its liquid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 180,
“volume”: 3,
“bashing”: 6,
“to_hit”: -1,
“max_charges”: 1,
“initial_charges”: 1,
“turns_per_charge”: 1,
“flags”: [“BOMB”],
“category”: “weapons”,
“use_action”: {
“type”: “explosion”,
“power”: 1,
“distance_factor”: 0.5,
“sound_volume”: 8,
“sound_msg”: “glass shattering”,
“no_deactivate_msg”: “Its a bug that you can see this, but that doesnt mean it won’t kill you. Throw it!”,
“fields_radius”: 1,
“fields_type”: “fd_acid”,
“fields_min_density”: 2,
“fields_max_density”: 3
}
},{
“id”: “acidbomb_medium”,
“type”: “AMMO”,
“category”: “weapons”,
“ammo_type” : “thrown”,
“symbol”: “",
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “medium acidbomb”,
“description”: “A glass jar filled with caustic chemicals. When exposed to the air they will spray out in every direction, creating modest fields of acid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 280,
“volume”: 2,
“bashing”: 8,
“to_hit”: -1,
“flags”: [“ACT_ON_RANGED_HIT”, “CUSTOM_EXPLOSION”],
“use_action”: {
“type”: “transform”,
“target”: “acidbomb_medium_act”,
“target_charges”: 0,
“active”: true
}
},{
“id”: “acidbomb_medium_act”,
“type”: “TOOL”,
“symbol”: "”,
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “medium acidbomb”,
“description”: “A thrown acidbomb, in the process of loosing its liquid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 180,
“volume”: 2,
“bashing”: 6,
“to_hit”: -1,
“max_charges”: 1,
“initial_charges”: 1,
“turns_per_charge”: 1,
“flags”: [“BOMB”],
“category”: “weapons”,
“use_action”: {
“type”: “explosion”,
“power”: 1,
“distance_factor”: 0.5,
“sound_volume”: 8,
“sound_msg”: “glass shattering”,
“no_deactivate_msg”: “Its a bug that you can see this, but that doesnt mean it won’t kill you. Throw it!”,
“fields_radius”: 1,
“fields_type”: “fd_acid”,
“fields_min_density”: 0,
“fields_max_density”: 3
}
},{
“id”: “acidbomb_small”,
“type”: “AMMO”,
“category”: “weapons”,
“ammo_type” : “thrown”,
“symbol”: “",
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “small acidbomb”,
“description”: “A small glass flask filled with caustic chemicals. When exposed to the air they will spray out in every direction, creating modest fields of acid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 280,
“volume”: 1,
“bashing”: 8,
“to_hit”: -1,
“flags”: [“ACT_ON_RANGED_HIT”, “CUSTOM_EXPLOSION”],
“use_action”: {
“type”: “transform”,
“target”: “acidbomb_small_act”,
“target_charges”: 0,
“active”: true
}
},{
“id”: “acidbomb_small_act”,
“type”: “TOOL”,
“symbol”: "”,
“color”: “i_green”,
“name”: “small acidbomb”,
“description”: “A thrown acidbomb, in the process of loosing its liquid.”,
“price”: 0,
“material”: [“glass”],
“weight”: 180,
“volume”: 1,
“bashing”: 6,
“to_hit”: -1,
“max_charges”: 1,
“initial_charges”: 1,
“turns_per_charge”: 1,
“flags”: [“BOMB”],
“category”: “weapons”,
“use_action”: {
“type”: “explosion”,
“power”: 1,
“distance_factor”: 0.5,
“sound_volume”: 8,
“sound_msg”: “glass shattering”,
“no_deactivate_msg”: “Its a bug that you can see this, but that doesnt mean it won’t kill you. Throw it!”,
“fields_radius”: 0.5,
“fields_type”: “fd_acid”,
“fields_min_density”: 2,
“fields_max_density”: 3
}
}

^^ This is a success, and theres no iuse involved. There only small issues I have with them is that they dont make a shattering noise when used.
I could make them have a charge of 1, so that they would ‘explode’ in a noise of glass, but then fast characters would be able to act before they did.m If people would rather have the glass noise I could give them it. It would sometimes just be you acting before your bomb hit the ground and exploded.

Firebombs need to be tackled with more care, since for some reason people care more about them than acid.
Because in the 2050s the rain is so polluted it possible to refine caustic acid from rainwater, but theres no way to make a decent firebomb.

165

Blacklisted acidbombs from the mod, and added 4 new ones.

Sizes 1-4
Requires progressively more string, and some rags to make sure the glasses stay stopped and dont break from clinking together.
size micro, small, medium, large.
size micro does 1 tile of a little acid.
sizes small, med, large do more acid, culminating with large doing normal acid.

This is effectively a nerf of acidbombs, because to get the same bang for your buck you need a bomb 2ce as large, but its certainly more plausible than half a liter of acid making a 3 meter by 3 meter pool of thick acid.

Also, also also also, you can use micro bombs to place 1 tile of weak/moderate acid. NPCs could be given these as grenades. IDK if they use thrown weapons. I could test this. Or perhaps make a basic gun/lobby tool for them or you.

I want to do something with the 3L glasses and acid. The issue being the size and weight. And that, well, it wouldnt spread as well as a 1 liter bottle. or 4 glass flasks tied together.

pedit:

Going from the top left and going clockwise:

micro acidbomb, small acidbomb, medium acidbomb, large acdibomb. On the bottom is the everlasting acidbomb in the game currently.

166

(my bolding)

Can we get a version without the sinkholes? Random instadeath is not fun to me.

167

Ive been toying with the idea of adding telltale dirt mounds and/or human bones to the surface. 4 rolls, 1/4 chance each.
the lairs are so infrequent ive stumbled across 1 in my games.
Did you walk into a sinkhole? I was under the impression they rekajiggered perception and trap checks . . .

Ive tried adding those acidbombs to the core game. mostly acceptable results.
Ive also designed a cemetery that I intend to add to the main game. Ive have a larger one Im sitting on.

Ive been looking at evo times for zombies.

pedit:

Ive made a chance for dirt mounds to spawn on the site of the trapdoor spider lairs and Ive added 2 33% chances for human bones to spawn. I hope I set it up to spawn a pile of them, but so far Ive only seen singular bones on any tile. Still, a white bone should be a tipoff.

168

Here is a patch that adds dirt mounds and human bones to spider lairs.

Update

It also has the aforementioned acid bomb tweaks and cemeteries.

Be aware that if I successfully integrate the acid bombs into the core game Ill need to update again.

Ive removed the grab tag from trapdoor spiders too.

Ive done minor balancing stuff. Im considering spreading out the evo timelines a bit.

Male ants are a thing, dwarf coyotes, juvenille megabears, infant megabears, mating megabears, some of everything.

I want to make a few items too. Animal death drops that can be crafted, etc.

169

How about Megabear skull helmets?

170

I suppose I could.

{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “bot_fungal_boil_egg”,
“category”: “CC_WEAPON”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_WEAPON_EXPLOSIVE”,
“skill_used”: “fabrication”,
“skills_required”: [[“fabrication”, 3], [ “survival”, 3 ]],
“difficulty”: 4,
“time”: 6500,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn”: true,
“autolearn” : [ [“fabrication”, 4], [“survival”, 5], [“cooking”, 3] ],
“book_learn”: [[“textbook_anarch”, 7], [“adv_chemistry”, 5], [“recipe_labchem”, 4]],
“qualities”:[
{“id”:“CHEM”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“components”: [
[[ “canister_empty”, 1 ], [ “can_food”, 2 ], [ “can_drink”, 2 ], [ “clay_canister”, 2 ]],
[[ “veggy_tainted”, 2 ], [ “marloss_seed”, 1 ]],
[[ “string_36”, 1 ]],
[[ “fertilizer_commercial”, 2 ], [ “fertilizer_liquid”, 2 ]]
]
}

I mentioned him before, and even showed off a picture or two.  Basically, you craft it, incubate it for 36 hours, and then can release it in a random square.  It has a basic notion of hostility and will gravitate towards you or your enemy (depending on if you passed your survival check) and wait to die or plant itself, or suicide itself.  Many spores result, both speeding up colonization and providing more killing potential.

,{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “megabear_skull_clean”,
“category”: “CC_OTHER”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_OTHER_OTHER”,
“skill_used”: “survival”,
“skills_required”: [[“fabrication”, 1]],
“difficulty”: 4,
“time”: 21500,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn” : [[“survival”, 6], [“fabrication”, 3], [“cooking”, 3]],
“book_learn”: [[“survival_book”, 5], [“textbook_survival”, 6], [“scots_cookbook”, 6]],
“qualities” : [
{“id”:“CUT”,“level”:1,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“BUTCHER”,“level”:7,“amount”:1},
[ {“id”:“SAW_M”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}, {“id”:“SAW_M”,“level”:1,“amount”:1} ],
{“id”:“COOK”,“level”:3,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“BOIL”,“level”:2,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“CONTAIN”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“tools”: [
[[ “hotplate”, 60 ], [ “toolset”, 60 ], [ “fire”, -1 ]]
],
“components”: [
[[ “megabear_skull_unclean”, 1 ]],
[[ “soap”, 2 ]],
[[ “rag”, 2 ]]
]
},{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “helmet_bone_megabear”,
“category”: “CC_ARMOR”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_ARMOR_HEAD”,
“skill_used”: “fabrication”,
“skills_required”: [[“fabrication”, 3], [ “survival”, 4 ]],
“difficulty”: 5,
“time”: 17000,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn” : [[“fabrication”, 5], [“survival”, 5]],
“book_learn”: [[“survival_book”, 5], [“textbook_survival”, 6], [“scots_cookbook”, 6]],
“qualities”:[
{“id”:“CHEM”,“level”:1,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“HAMMER_FINE”,“level”:1},
[ {“id”:“SAW_M”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}, {“id”:“SAW_M”,“level”:1,“amount”:1} ],
{“id”:“BOIL”,“level”:1,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“CONTAIN”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“tools”: [
[[ “hotplate”, 30 ], [ “toolset”, 30 ], [ “fire”, -1 ]]
],
“components”: [
[[ “megabear_skull_clean”, 1 ]],
[[ “salt”, 25 ], [ “salt_water”, 3 ], [“saline”, 25], [“chem_hydrogen_peroxide_conc”, 1], [“chem_hydrogen_peroxide”, 5]],
[[ “rag”, 1 ]]
]
}

The recipes tell more of a story than the helmet.
Kill a juvenille bear, scoop out the meaty bits, boil it down. Then take it to salt/h2o2 town and then mold its basic shape. Then, using your tools, put the finishing touches on it.
Takes 6+ hours to do, but it does have a slight encumbrance bonus over the standard bone helm… But I also realized we dont have a recipe to distill hydrogen peroxide. dumb. Ima do that, looking like a massive increase, a 10/1 recipe. 5 to 1 recipe, to reflect the established ratio in-game.

{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “chem_hydrogen_peroxide”,
“byproducts”: { “id” : “chem_hydrogen_peroxide”, “charges_mult” : 4 },
“category”: “CC_CHEM”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_CHEM_DRUGS”,
“skill_used”: “cooking”,
“skills_required”: [[“firstaid”, 3]],
“difficulty”: 4,
“time”: 6000,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn”: true,
“book_learn”: [[“recipe_labchem”, 3 ], [“textbook_chemistry”, 3]],
“qualities”:[
{“id”:“BOIL”,“level”:2,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“CHEM”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“components”: [
[[ “chem_hydrogen_peroxide_conc”, 1 ]]
]
}

171

kkk.

Ive added some more recipes, made the doomy arachnotron deconstruct into stuff, and added some more fungal stingers to the world, quantity wise.
On those, Im going to likely try to make you distill biolantte blossoms into sap organ. And then you can also mix that with jelly to make a 2 jellies. And maybe stamina potion down the road.

The fungal fighter stingers will be somehow drained of their poison and made an extract. You apply that to items, which unfortunately cannot be melee in nature. Then, you can toss these items, or shoot them from primitive guns (slings, bows, crossbows, etc) at funguses for luls. And npcs, they get affected by parastings too.

Now, how do I go from a needle-like barb to a jar of poison you can use?

172

Ive made the tesla coil gun and Im done.

Its large size and weigh and relatively low ammo supply (2400 batteries/recharge and for that its 100 a shot) and low individual zombie damage makes it ideal as a mounted weapon, not a handheld one.

FX6Rr9P.png901×464

But, if you felt the need to double its capacity and take it out, it does support a few modifications. Such as a shoulder strap.

Don’t expect it to be a fantastic zombie killer, but its good for crowd control and as a defense for your vehicle, since it will

1: wake you up (i hope)
2: stun the invader
3: hit his friends
4: 100 battery charge per shot isnt so bad when its got 2 or more vehicle batteries to draw from
5: several of them will only increase the killing power
6: they are very accurate, as wide bouncing electric balls
7: they will kill things eventually.
8: while its range is only 5 tiles, its bounce can easily triple that.

173

Just stopping by to say Im still a fan of having these guys, and having them less signposted (like minefields are).

I6kVQ0F.png774×501

^^ I was waiting out my detox and they came on over. They only have 5 vison at day so they either heard the truck through the trees (possible) or they chased a critter over here. Anywho, they laugh at sling pellets. Maybe marbles or bearing could pierce them.

I havent done too much since I made some recipes. I will continue to make those. Im currently doing doomy laboratory things.

pedit: Im happy to report that Ive spotted 3 lairs, and 1 in the dark, from either the dirt mounds, the human bones, or the spiders tunneling.

174

With the addition of the new acidbomb sizes, all thats left is to create a incendiary grenade substituite for the firebomb hack. And change the sizes/weights/payloads of all the explosive hacks. A mininuke hack is 1 volume, but a minunuke is 3. :expressionless:

Anywho, I got this one off an elite grenadier. Yes, I gave them the ability to spawn these, but they are statistically unlikely to. They do drop them though.

MKnq3eW.png769×585

And ohh, man did it feel good to drop it on the soldiers. Im here to kill zombies and hopefully find either popular mechanics or UTH, so I can fix up this humvee. It spawned with a damaged gas tank by a hospital. Boomers were menacing it, and all I did was steal it, drive it around the corner of the hospital and smash off the offending tank. Due to my foresight of taking a glass jar of diesle with me I simply filled up the remaining tank and drove off.

175

Made and used my first organic acidbombs tonight.

raiding fema camps in this world of small cities and huge empty areas. so large that i saw a city that dead ended. last stop.

i needed a welding google or duct/medical tape. i got some glass flasks of blood and melted sone batteries down. .3 micro and 1 medium from 750 batteries.

i used them on soldiers at another fema camp. a bunch of scientists all loosed the manhacks at once to create unplessantness so i had to let them hit me while i pulled out a gu to deal with the jajillion hacks and watching theirevery move.

.because i really need to see them skirmish me instead of moving the game along.

Anywho, them shot, i was able to watch the scientists punch my now raw body one at a time. fighting hordes has become MGS.just watch the blinking ascii. instead of moving on.

Those dead, soldiers come to the fence. since they stayed do nicely the medium did the trick well. then the microat the stragglers.

i wasnt dissapointed in their performance, and would argue that i used more acidbombs. thats good, balance wise. they worked without being overdrawn

176

Updated.

-Contains the recent AI pathing flags, some more tweaking, and some frequency nerfing of the spider pits.
-Has the acidbombs, has some files that are halfway finished and thus not used by the game itself, has some of the recipes and doodads I tlaked about above.
-Whitelists smoky bear

Im going to have to do something about the zombie horses. They pack a real wallop. I dont mind them, but I suspect that they (and the wolves, who are quite effective. I may actually make a mutated wolf that has the statline of these base wolves they are so effective) may overwhelm some unprepared peoples.

The reason why they are so good is a decent dodge skill and arseloads of stabbing damage. It makes me question how stabby is calculated, tbh, but they can certainly hold their own against run of the mill zombie hordes. Being so fast they strike multiple times against their slower enemies.

Speaking of, some upgrades and some nerfing of the doomy critters has happened. I saw imps getting pwned by soldier zombies, and 2 or 3 of them even took down a hell knight. Which isnt terrible, I nerfed them because they were massacring everything. Which, again, wasnt a bad thing per se.
Buuuut, all the same, this way they are weaker. Still plenty capable of putting down a new survivor who isnt kitted for bear though.

MDn7pUR.png631×579

^^ check this out. This, utterly massive city, easily a size 14-16 city, (about as large as the game is willing to gen them), is flanked by a vault city that has had a hell castle spawn in the middle of it. Hell is not fighting fortified monsters, no, its trying to get into that thing with Zlevels turned on.

177

Im happy to say that 90% of this is in the core game.

Ill still be maintaining my own files, since I still have more to merge and often make changes and tweaks in batches before doing anything (and imagine the devs irriation if I updated every change individually as I had the inkling to), but aside from missing some items and locations its more or less up to date.

Ill probably keep this and an unitegrated version around, periodically updating this thread with new thingiemabobs.

178


^^^ so, on principle, we could fill a bag with, well, not propane, but perhaps gas? and they should create hefty fires if they dont burst?


And this was just fun to see

179

I think the last few experimental updates may have broken the lab challenge start with this mod enabled. Specifically, the game cant seem to find a lab anywhere with this mod enabled. I hope you can fix this soon bc messing around with all these additions to the game really makes it come to life in a brutal way!

180

if you can try a lab start without the mod.

my mod doesnt do anything to labs but reduce their frequency from,iirc, 9 to 6