The Niche for Pipe Guns

[Logrin]

Just a thought, but pipe weapons suffer from the fact that from the point you can make them, you’re very likely to have a trove of purpose built pre-fall firearms. Making for an odd dynamic of wanting to make them better than they should be to justify crafting. That might be the wrong approach.

Perhaps instead pipe weapons should be ubiquitous with bandits, a hostile faction that could come to populate our apocalypse. If the ‘let me pulp this’ action could be moved to them it would be possible for them to clear out towns organically, growing hostile if players stick around/look wounded or attack them. (They’re prioritizing looting after all.) Plus you’d get to see the tables turn as zombie evolution kicks in.

Maybe even give them the ability to convert NPCs same as the player?

Thoughts?

[Aluminumfoil]

Many items and recipes in the game are just there because they can be, not because they have any intended niche.

Take a region like the US northeast where there’s about one gun for every human and remove 99% of the people, and you’re left with 100 guns per surviving person… and that’s just counting civilian firearms.

A decently maintained firearm can remain functional for centuries. Ammunition should rapidly become scarce after the end of industry, but not guns. People will be recycling perfectly functional rifles for their steel long before anyone bothers to make a pipe gun in postapocAmerica.

Heck, they might even probably be using rifle barrels as makeshift pipes

[kevin.granade]

The bandit idea is fine on its own, and towns or outposts full of them would be a nice change from the typical zombie infested locations.
Still dint see pipe weapons being worth a damn, they just don’t make sense.

[Noctifer]

…Still dint see pipe weapons being worth a damn, they just don’t make sense.

I just assumed they were zip guns. http://truthaboutguns-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/oneshot_shotgun.jpg

[kevin.granade]

I don’t mean their mere existence doesn’t make sense, just that it doesn’t make sense to make one in the dda scenario since factory made guns are if anything easier to come by.

[Coolthulhu]

We need 'Straya or Euro mode mapgen conversion mod. Or at least Feinstein mode.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Just a thought, but pipe weapons suffer from the fact that from the point you can make them, you’re very likely to have a trove of purpose built pre-fall firearms. Making for an odd dynamic of wanting to make them better than they should be to justify crafting. That might be the wrong approach.

[quote=“Aluminumfoil, post:2, topic:11738”]Many items and recipes in the game are just there because they can be, not because they have any intended niche.

Take a region like the US northeast where there’s about one gun for every human and remove 99% of the people, and you’re left with 100 guns per surviving person… and that’s just counting civilian firearms.

A decently maintained firearm can remain functional for centuries. Ammunition should rapidly become scarce after the end of industry, but not guns. People will be recycling perfectly functional rifles for their steel long before anyone bothers to make a pipe gun in postapocAmerica.

Heck, they might even probably be using rifle barrels as makeshift pipes :D[/quote]
The problem with pipe guns is that most in-game firearms never receive damage from rust, overheating, or extended use. Most real-world guns developed after the handgonne are made with springs that tend to weaken after heavy use. Also, guns must have their barrels replaced after x number of bullets have been fired, due to barrel wear. Because of this, pipe guns, especially the Pipe Rifle: x caliber series, lack a strong niche. If a weapon repair system similar to the version in Fallout 3/New Vegas were implemented, then homemade guns would become useful after most reliable sources of factory guns have been exhausted.

I don’t mean their mere existence doesn’t make sense, just that it doesn’t make sense to make one in the dda scenario since factory made guns are if anything easier to come by.

A fix for this would be for the game to check the age of the world when generating new terrain and reduce the amount of technological spawns as the world aged, with exceptions for the areas surrounding functioning communities that preserved or restarted industry.

[kevin.granade]

The number of rounds fired by a typical survivor isn’t really enough to bother tracking, you’re usually talking thousands to hundreds of thousands of rounds before a barrel needs replacement, and with the huge surplus of guns it would still be fairly trivial to just switch to a new one.
I agree that over time old world guns in working order should get steadily harder to come by due to rust and similar aging issues, but we’re talking many years into the game, which is simply not something we’re focused on.
Even with all that taken into account, it should still be easier to acquire an old world firearm in working order than to make a comparable zip gun for decades.
Most likely the lack of ability to manufacture modern “gunpowder” woild be what drives people away from old world guns rather than lack of working guns.

[Wally-kun]

I often end up with more guns than I even know what to do with. I’m terrified to use them when they’re valuable, because the ammo is so precious and the noise is so huge, and by the time I’m confident enough that the idea of attracting attention doesn’t scare me, I don’t even need the guns at all. Almost all of my games have a big cabinet full of loaded weapons on a stockpile of (limited) ammo that will never get used, just because I’m safe in my tank suit and can face roll entire hordes with customized melee weaponry.

Failing that I have pneumatic bolt launchers, which are basically superior to guns in every way. They do more or less comparable damage, are totally silent, and their ammo is renewable. Hell, you could break down the guns they replace and use them as projectiles if you feel so inclined.

Guns are just…inferior, really. Nice for mowing down something fat fast or a lot of smaller stuff fast, but if you need to rely on guns you’re probably in a pretty delicate spot to begin with, and likewise probably can’t afford to use them save for saving your own skin at the cusp of death.

Basically they’re what you whip out if you round a corner and find a Hulk to save yourself. Any other time I find they’re more trouble than they’re worth or unnecessary.

[MormonPartyboat]

Because of this, pipe guns, especially the Pipe Rifle: x caliber series, lack a strong niche.

Problem’s more that guns in general are already very niche weapons. They’re good for killing other things with guns and OK for killing things like hulks, and that’s about it. Doesn’t help that pistols is the only gun skill worth grinding up.

[Belteshazzar]

I can agree, I feel like pipe guns sorta belong to a setting a decade or two after the fall (muskets sorta fall into the same situation.)

I mean, logically because of the ease of making them there’s no reason NOT to have the weapon in game (and at least their presence and niche is more logical than several other bloat weapons that are only coded because their caliber exists IRL.)

However this is honestly the case with a lot of the ‘homemade’ weaponry, melee or ranged. Just finding a combat knife, crowbar or baseball bat absolutely out-purposes 80% of the stuff you would need some level of skill or materials to craft.

I can’t think of an honest reason to justify their removal, but they are essentially part of the appendix to a setting that doesn’t justify their existence.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Problem’s more that guns in general are already very niche weapons. They’re good for killing other things with guns and OK for killing things like hulks, and that’s about it. Doesn’t help that pistols is the only gun skill worth grinding up.

I think rifles in the game had their range limited due to an engine issue. In real life several of the rifles are supposed to have a point blank range* greater than the maximum range listed in game.

[quote=“Wally-kun, post:9, topic:11738”]I often end up with more guns than I even know what to do with. I’m terrified to use them when they’re valuable, because the ammo is so precious and the noise is so huge, and by the time I’m confident enough that the idea of attracting attention doesn’t scare me, I don’t even need the guns at all. Almost all of my games have a big cabinet full of loaded weapons on a stockpile of (limited) ammo that will never get used, just because I’m safe in my tank suit and can face roll entire hordes with customized melee weaponry.

Failing that I have pneumatic bolt launchers, which are basically superior to guns in every way. They do more or less comparable damage, are totally silent, and their ammo is renewable. Hell, you could break down the guns they replace and use them as projectiles if you feel so inclined.

Guns are just…inferior, really. Nice for mowing down something fat fast or a lot of smaller stuff fast, but if you need to rely on guns you’re probably in a pretty delicate spot to begin with, and likewise probably can’t afford to use them save for saving your own skin at the cusp of death.

Basically they’re what you whip out if you round a corner and find a Hulk to save yourself. Any other time I find they’re more trouble than they’re worth or unnecessary.[/quote]
Ammunition scarcity is a problem, but I don’t think crafting smokeless propellant is so difficult that a survivor cannot do it on any scale.

Noise is only a problem at that point if someone is shooting back or the entire population of New England is chasing you.

*Here defined as the range at which the shooter can reliably hit an object they aim at without elevating the barrel, compensating for windage, drag, the rotation of the earth etc…

[MormonPartyboat]

I think rifles in the game had their range limited due to an engine issue. In real life several of the rifles are supposed to have a point blank range* greater than the maximum range listed in game.

If you made rifles 100% accurate on anything in the reality bubble and doubled their damage and let them shoot through walls like the railgun in Eraser they still wouldn’t be much more than a niche weapon. A lot of the problems with guns tie to the wounds/hp system being too abstract, but that’d be an unholy amount of work to change.

[kevin.granade]

A major problem is that melee weapons (and atmor) are too good. The original balance of the game had a very roguelike/fantasy sensibility, and we haven’t really changed that.
Please do some reading, smokeless powder is both quite complicated and dangerous to make, which is why it is and will remain uncraftable.

[Logrin]

Guns are already pretty deadly. Deadlier than melee. You just need more enemies that shoot at the player. (And maybe put power armor strictly in the places those enemies are)

Also XEDRA could make an appearance late game.

[ChJees]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:14, topic:11738”]A major problem is that melee weapons (and atmor) are too good. The original balance of the game had a very roguelike/fantasy sensibility, and we haven’t really changed that.
Please do some reading, smokeless powder is both quite complicated and dangerous to make, which is why it is and will remain uncraftable.[/quote]

Aren’t CBMs and Mutagens complicated to make too :P? Just saying.

Anyway, could become craftable if a player decide to setup base in a ammunition factory i guess.

Just like that lab machine that let you craft diamond edged gear.

[Szara]

Speaking of which it would be interesting if some more of the environments were a bit more interactive. Like that ammunition factory ChJess mentioned. Now I actually have no idea if gunpowder is generally manufactured in the same facility that it is used to assemble a cartridge in (but that’s vaguely irrelevant to the point I’m starting here), but I do know those things take power. Probably lots of power, and the electrical grids aren’t looking the best after the world ended. What about those plutonium generators we find at military outposts, perhaps one of those could be disassembled (which results in a minireactor or something similar instead of scrap and plutonium), and set up in a factory, power it for a few days or so until something breaks down (possibly with Cata-strophic consequences). For that matter a jury-rigged series of car engines to act as generators, or otherwise provide motive power, say replacing the engine part of an on-site generator which is no longer working… Or could with quite some skill, luck, and resources, be restored to working order.

Right now the use for ingame locations are pretty much- What can I loot here? Can I sleep here? And that’s about it, you don’t really use them to do anything… And there I think I went off topic right into feature suggestion, whoops.

Straying from that, as far as guns go I’m a lot like Wally-kun, saving them for when I absolutely need them because of complications with ammo and magazines. How slapshop the loot results are doesn’t really help. You can easily find a gunshop or a home or an armory with one type of gun, some completely different magazines, and ammo for neither. All of that mess is taking up a not insignificant part of my deathmobile storage, though I recently went through and started sorting through them all, trying to keep just one or two weapons of each caliber. Most of which I’ll never use because I cannot reliably craft the ammo, I’ll just keep my laser pistol or laser rifle nearby for shooting corrosive-type zombies or whatnot. Or my railgun, heavy rail rifle, the over-engineered one. I took that with me the first time I went into a Strange Temple a few weeks ago. Yes I’d managed to avoid reading spoilers except for the part about what you need for the pedestal.