Tank Mod issues with weapon strengths

Game Talk The Garage
1

Hello,

One thing I have noticed is that with the official tank mod enabled, the various cannons seem to not be that effective at all. As a test, I spawned a light-tank with the 120mm cannon outside of a bandit cabin for the Old Guard quest and just kept firing. After at least 25 shots, the occupants still weren’t dead and I saw at least one HEAT round detonate right in front of a person and while they were wounded, they didn’t die, nor did much of the furniture around him get destroyed.

I understand HEAT are anti-tank rounds, but they are still High Explosive, at 120mm that is still a lot of energy being directed outwards from the explosion.

With the howitzer, with FRAG rounds, I noticed too that it takes a lot of shots to kill zombies, whereas the mounted .50 caliber is usually killing zombies left and right with a single shot. It seems like only whoever was directly at the tile the round goes off receives the damage, with all of his mates receiving only small amounts of damage.

2

That’s odd, must be a recent change. Just before D came out I vaporized a hulk into nothing but meat splatter in a single howitzer round. Though I can confirm have found the 120mm cannon 100% useless on my current playthrough which I also thought was strange.

3

The howitzer does seem to vaporize whatever is on the tile the round detonates at, but at least for me it seemed to do vastly reduced damage on every other tile.

4

All explosives are pretty useless as far as Area damage go unfortunately. You should see how little damage the 40mm grenade launchers do, it’s pretty disappointing. The dev’s don’t like aoe damage I think, the only thing aoe seems to kill is me.

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5

I suppose I understand the weakness of conventional grenades. Not only are these zombies, but zombies taken over by black-goo that tends to reside throughout the body. This means that concussive force probably doesn’t do the damage it would to others, and since even scorched zombies can be revived, or even skeletons, I can buy that.

To me, regular NPCs and non-infected animals should be pretty weak to shrapnel. I mean a grenade blowing up in front of you in a cabin is a bad day, a 120mm shell is probably a sign to give up your current vocation and take up fishing.

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6

Firing into a crowd? 8505-50 seemed pretty much a splatterfest. No longer?Would be a bug then for sure.

7

Well, I did notice that I took torso shrapnel damage from a match head bomb from a quite a few tiles away from where the explosion reached, as of March 8th update, which is sure damn realistic compared to only being affected by its explosion. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added more realistic damage to explosions, meaning firing off something in the wide open air than exploding it in an alleyway of sorts, which would be a nice addition to keeping things realistic in game.

8

Could be and that would be interesting. Like a shockwave outside is hazardous and all. But in a alley or a hallway…you turn into meat confetti. Hard to imagine. I mean I haven’t seen it in real life. But I understand it. Damn physics…you scary! 0_0

Although You remind me of something. How exactly does a matchhead “bomb” work do you think? Those in a pile or a jar or whatever wouldn’t explode. Just fizzles and burns. This is done a ton on youtube vids.

Anyone know if this is just an old code thing of a crap item?

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9

7 40mm grenades to kill a swimmer zombie in a swimmer zombie pool group. I don’t know if they were better before but that’s what my poor grenades took. I want to consider it a waist of ammo but right now that’s like say you can waist a .22 bullet. A 40mm grenade may as well be .22 atm for all it’s help.

10

Most explosions are just rapid heat expansions happening about the same time in rapid succession, so if you were to load a jar full of matches, with almost no way of air to get out once it lits on fire, then it would probably explode in the jar because of the change in pressures. The shrapenal from the glass would most likely be near-molten too, adding to the effect of the explosion…

11

I can’t find a great example of how explosions vary, and I can’t seem to find the correct one I was going to mention, but the “20 July Plot” (Bomb that almost killed Hitler) is very well the best example I can give atm of how an explosion can be affected by placement and most importantly if the bomb is able to bounce off walls or not…

12

A matchhead bomb would presumably be a really basic IED of a bunch of match-heads around powder or something flammable. I doubt it would be a big boom, but it would either be used to start a fire quickly or, with powder, make some noise and knock some things around. I doubt it would be powerful enough to create shrapnel of any useful velocity. Given that a lot of things are attracted by noise and light, it would be an even more ghetto molotov cocktail that would be unreliable as all hell

13

Well, if the glass would be completely vaporized, you would still have the metal lid too, but I’d doubt the heat of a match head bomb would get to the point of carbonizing glass to dust…

14

I tried out a 40mm frag and found that it is oddly much more effective than the large-caliber munitions, since a single shot is usually enough to tear apart most zeds, and kill NPCs/yourself pretty well.

With further testing, the 30mm chaingun seems to also be more effective, especially on full-auto since ammo-efficiency be damned it turns most things into a pulp, which is handy with zombie revivification.

I also found, though this may be by design, that most 120mm cannons are heavily damaged and drop their ammunition after a few turns, meaning that using the cannon is sometimes impossible depending on the design. The requirement of a lift is awkward, but makes sense, but after I got a lift and removed the thing I found that even with a gunsmith repair kit, there is no way to repair it unless you equip it.

So to fix a cannon you need to use a lift, drop it in the vehicle, pick-up the cannon and repair it before reinstalling it. Then it will no longer drop ammo, but I have some things to note

1.) Despite some vehicles clearly having a turret, with a gunner/loader position, there are no controls in this sections, meaning that presumabely the gunner is unable to actually fire the gun.

2.) Due to the use of belts, its usually impossible to reload any of the machine-guns since while the vehicles spawn with the bullets, they never spawn with belts, and only some have belts have ready to go for the MGs.

3.) some vehicles seem to be unable to handle the larger shells, so when you go to pick-up some more, you will see a lot on the pavement where the ammo rack. Since its hell actually repairing any of these vehicles, this isn’t much of an issue, but it does mean that it is a lot of work to get moving since you’ll drop ammo everywhere.

4.) while these vehicles are largely well protected, some have armored hatches and others don’t, with no real rhyme or reason. This tends to create a weak-spot to the rear, which is fine but it strikes me weird on some vehicles.

5.) Would it be possible to have more ammo variety? I’ve seen the standards SABOT and HEAT/FRAG rounds, but I think being able to have WP, Canister, or more makeshift ammo types (ranging from glorified nail bombs to things like acid rounds)

15

Check this out. Dude tossed 1000 match heads in a glass coke bottle and used a sparkler down the middle as a “wick”

I’m thinking as a distraction it works fine. HOWEVER! You would have it shatter if thrown. But if you used a plastic bottle. It would melt and do nothing at all. I know. I’ve tried this.

So I am thinking it isn’t a bomb at all and it really doesn’t do anything. If covered/corked some how. It would just crack the glass…assuming it did anything at all. Fire needs air. So corking it for pressure may not do much more than pop the cork or split the glass. But explode? I really doubt it.

edit:

Just watched a few more vids that do pretty much the same thing. Slo Mo Guys for example. I think the object would work a little better as a distraction but I do not know what the code would make it function as such be. It wouldn’t be like a fire cracker or a bundle of those. It just kinda fizzles and gets hot. Crackling and pissing fire.

A tin can sealed up maybe, to prevent a bottle cracking. But even then. Not sure this item in game even makes any sense at all. Thoughts?

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16

I think objects can be set to perform a certain amount of noise. A good thing to with ant-hills, for example, is set off an explosive either where you want the ants to go. I haven’t tried this tactic with a matchhead bomb yet, but presumably this could be the benefit.

As it is, a matchhead bomb might be just a really unreliable fire-starter. Which means that a 120mm matchhead round would be the perfect combination of useless.

17

Soooo…we should remove it from game or change the recipe to use a metal can for a noise distraction that can be thrown?

18

It could be used in a metal/aluminum can as a noisemaker, perhaps with the potential to ignite flammable material on the tile it is on.

The two things I see that if in an open cup/bottle, a matchhead bomb does produce a fair amount of fire jetting upwards, which would do a great job causing a firestorm indoors. It also seems to eject still burning materials up and out, which would make it a good way to start fires.

As far as utility, matchheads are more common than gasoline, depending on the area, so it could be a good, droppable fire-starter. Sort of something to use in houses or maybe trrifid zones to start a fire.

Within an aluminum/metal cup, I don’t know how much noise it would make. I think for a tin/aluminum can bomb, it should have pebbles/marbles/bearings so that it will create a lot of noise with the rattling. I think if we’re going that direction, a "Can trap’ would be better.

Just have cans with things inside them either attached to a wire fence or hanging from a rope, and anything that passes that tile will produce noise from knocking into it/knocking it down. That way, it can act as a warning or lure.

tl;dr:

1.) Matchhead bomb is an open buttle/cup (maybe with fuse) that is ignited to potentially set the tile it is on inflame, especially if indoors.

2.) Can traps could be implemented as noisemakers, using metal cans, filled with objects like pebbles or bearings, that are attached to a wire. If something brushes up against it, it will rattle. Creating enough noise to be heard, for defense, but probably not enough noise to bring the attention of the entire city.

19

I think the general usage is not a practical one though. It really makes only a low amount of noise. Cannot be thrown(irl and expected to not break). Be quick enough to flash burn a building because of processing all of those matches.

I’m inclined to ask for it to be removed unless somebody has a better function of it?

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20

That is strange, I do not seem to encounter any of the listed problems.

I have to admit I do not use 120mm gun and avoid it altogether. So cannot comment on this. But .50 cal, 7.62, 5.56 turrets unload belts properly and are never bugged for me. 30mm chaingun as well.

Are you sure your mods are not conflicting with each other? My game seems to be working fine with those components.

I install turrets just fine.

Also, it’s not really obvious but you can shoot turrets manually. You need to stand at the tile seat or just turret mount is, wield nothing, and press ‘f’ to fire just as you would with normal gun in your hands. So that is not a bug, just a way all those mounted guns work.