I fell behind on updating the game, and just discovered the welding upgrade.
Very nice! I haven’t used it much yet, but conceptually very nice, especially for repairs. Careful driving and shock absorbers just became a thing for me. Well done and thank you!
I do have one suggestion. I appreciate the 3 options for rods required for steel frame vehicle repairs (brazing rod, welding rod, welding wire), but since they all have the same use requirement for a particular job, it may be better to just have a single rod consumable with 3 recipes. That makes it MUCH easier for the user to know their options. They could simply search for welding rod recipes and see which ones are available and which are not. As it stands, there is no single search term to see all three options (“rod” gives 2, “weld” gives 2, nothing gives all 3). Remember, it is the character that has the welding expertise, not the player, so make it easy for the player to know the options that the character knows. So I suggest steel welding rod and aluminum welding rod - signifying the material the rod is used on, rather than worrying about welding vs brazing and rod vs wire.
Sure you lose some realism points when you reduce the number of welding consumables, but every field is much more complex than is presented in-game. I was a carpenter for many years. The game only uses nails for carpentry. I used screws much more often, reserving nails for situations where I needed the shear strength they offer, such as joist hangers, or ease of removal, such as normal finish trim and shingled roofing (lots of reasons, but I generally needed a reason to NOT use screws). I used nutted bolts and lags for more situations than I did nails. And of course non-metallic fasteners like glues, biscuits, pegs, and lashing exist as well! My point is that level of realism simply isn’t necessary until it really IS necessary, like a “Lord of the Flies” type scenario where metallic fasteners simply do not exist.
