Is there some sort of mechanism one can use to determine quality within CDDA’s engine?
I was thinking that a character with high enough fabrication / applied science skill, should be able to create reloads that are on par, if not better than factory loads, maybe barred by proficiency, a book, and some extra tools, but currently, IRL a ~$400 reloading kit contains most of the tools to make match grade ammo, and I myself have reloaded hundreds of rounds without any sort of issue. In fact, my rounds have had fewer failure to fires (FTFs) than Winchester White boxes out of my .45. I’ve even tuned my ammo to my rifles and gotten better performance out of it than what is possible with factory load ammo. to the point where I can increase range if I am shooting 700y out, or increase the bullet weight for more stopping power.
I can get that you want to make it less desirable than hunting for factory loaded rounds, and maybe the crazy man wearing a top hat with rat claws and a rabbit nose in a tattered tuxedo in the back of a van PROBABLY isn’t creating the most reliable rounds, but I figure if you can make RDX you can probably make good enough rounds given enough time and materials.
Actually, it is a good question.
Just assuming that your character, no matter what, will craft ammunition that is worse compared to factory ammo is not right.
Tell me if I am wrong, but the only problem with creating overpressure match grade ammo, for example, would be sourcing a match bullets. And, if you dont have any - a scale + some number of common bullets you get from disassembling regular ammo will do the trick, you just pick the bullets of similar size and weight. Yeah, match grade bimetal bullets can be a problem to create from scratch on your own (copper jacket + steel penetrator, for example), but otherwise - in real world hand loaded ammo can outperform factory loads in many ways.
For match grade ammo, if you had a source of copper, an electroplate machine, a lead melting pot, and a bullet mold, you could make whatever you wanted. Bullets like hollow points might be harder to complete without some other rather specialized tools, but technically still doable. You don’t really need the copper or electroplate either, it’s just to reduce lead fouling from straight lead ammo. Copper work is already in the raws, so I don’t think it’s too far out there to make jackets.
I started looking into doing it, but it seemed like too much of a task for me to do as my first project. The ammo JSONs are a mess. I was looking into programmatically generating them for each caliber after I posted this. None of them are standardized on names or stats. some of the cartridges are actually wrong (.380 has nothing to do with .38 special, for example).
The main thing I saw was every reload has the tag ‘reloaded’ which means it’s has a chance to misfire. Removing the tag helps, but still has the problem of increased dispersion and in some cases lower damage. So I want sure what to do to fix it. Probably could do with more love than I can provide.
Also, I don’t see any reason why the 22lr can’t be reloaded, it’s more difficult than installing a new primer, but it’s not impossible. There are also a lot of strange things that have already been written about such as increasing / decreasing damage based only on the length of the barrel or for example cartridges reloaded with black powder that have ridiculous damage.