I can upgrade that to a “definitely.” It was an attempt to shoehorn dual-wielding into AD&D’s highly abstracted combat system, which didn’t have a lot of room for stuff like extra actions and things, so the folks who came up with it went with an option that worked from a gameplay standpoint, but wasn’t very realistic or sensible. Since then it’s kind of hung around even though modern D&D’s much more elaborate combat system has stuff like action economy and so forth that would make your suggestions above workable.
Good arguments in favor of dual-wield, just have to make that to the devs and have someone ready to implement it. Right now you can kind of hack it in via making a custom ‘weapon’ that represents something in each hand, and you can tweak most things available in JSON to represent what you want in terms of bonuses/penalties/techniques. That’s not terrible, but it’s not the level of simulation that mainline content insists on.
Which reminds me - shields should be counted as a weapon for Medieval Swordsmanship and bucklers for Fencing. Shields are as much weapon as defense, moreso for things like bucklers which are maneuverable and punch HARD.
Particularly in a zombie apocalypse where you’re dealing with large numbers of relatively squishy opponents, smashing things with your shield would be a constant tactic, doing some damage, stunning, or pushing enemies away when crowded.
The big wall shields would be impractical for fighting zeds however. Too much encumbrance and terrible mobility.
Less useless and more situational. 28 Days Later, Frank’s introduction, he’s using riot gear and a big ass riot shield to deal with the infected. It works because he’s got limited space around him, they can’t flank or the like. You could easily do that in CDDA by planting yourself in a doorway with a wall type shield and swinging over it. The shield should let you tank a bit while regaining stamina. But you’re right for general purposes - it’s big, heavy, and hard to move, so it’d be useless for raiding or open combat against a horde where they swarm you, knock you down, and punch you through cars.
Some ideas to smooth out playing with proficiencies:
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Practice project recipes for each proficiency. These wouldn’t be auto-learned, since knowing what makes good practice is part of already knowing the thing. If you want to get good at sewing buttons, you don’t need to sew the rest of the thing, too.
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Better handling of “in-progress” items (deconstruct, continue with alternate materials). Gaining proficiencies is gonna take a while, so interruptions should be handled more fluidly.
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NPC teachers who help proficiency acquisition. Maybe teaching as a social skill.
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Scale the crafting-time increase down, as the proficiency’s percentage goes up.
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I have an idea about Black helicopters
after Maybe Half a year has passed in game deer should be a small chance for a chat message to appear saying you se a black helicopter land Northwest to you
somewhere if you go there there should be supplies and a few armed government people guarding it
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Is there ‘multiple eyes on stalks’ mutation? That’d solve this problem 
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There should be natural disasters especially now that nobody is maintaining critical infrastructure. Things like rivers flooding, storms wreaking havoc and huge fires burning down portions of the map. These should be rare but should have a huge impact when they do happen possibly trapping the player or forcing them to migrate or hunker down for a time.
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So one historical reason that you missed for two-weapon styles:
- taking advantage of the reach of different weapons, such as having a long rapier for stabbing a foe at an arm’s distance and a short main-gauche for stabbing the guy when he was grappling you.
At some point in 0.F, I hope to re-implement how we track what its in your hands so that you can wield two weapons, and at some point after that I’ll implement accuracy penalties for melee weapons that are unsuitable long for the space that you’re in. Polearms and to a lesser extent spears will have penalties when you’re under a roof at all; long swords and axes will have penalties in narrow hallways; knives and short blades will almost never be penalized.
After that’s complete, walking into a house with a broadsword in one hand and a combat knife in the other, and attacking with the broadsword when the zombie attacks you in the living room and the knife when another zombie attacks you in the 1 tile wide hallway, will be a reasonably intelligent thing to do.
But carrying a broadsword and combat knife in the middle of a street and expecting to get twice as many attacks as you would by carrying either weapon alone? That or anything close to that is not going to happen.
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Maybe make size also play a similar role. So as a huge mutant you can’t very easely fight in tight or narrow spaces.
I once read of Landsknechts using long two-handed swords in narrow streets and passageways, sort of in the manner of a spear to keep enemies at bay. That probably wouldn’t work so well on something with no sense of self-preservation, though.
So there are some techniques like extreme half-swording where you grab your sword by the blade with your left hand and go stabbing fools. That’s probably going to be a static buff for the Medieval Swordsmanship martial art in that kind of situation.
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Complex sword techniques
MUR-DER-STROKE!
MUR-DER-STROKE!
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Here’s the guide for 1st time contributors. You’ll want the sections on new items and new recipes. Good luck!
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One thing this thread reminds me I wanted to do is make food you are allergic to or unable to digest show as red in the crafting menu. Bloody hell is that annoying to not have and ALL my characters are allergic or unable to digest stuff so call it a personal pet peeve I want to rectify. Should be a good way to get more C++ practice in before diving back into getting amputation working in C++ atleast to the point of spawning missing a limb for fun challenges. Had way too much fun with my janky hack to make it work back in the day to not let everyone else enjoy that type of gameplay shift. Also on my list is taking a look at mutations and making them shift nutrient requirements toward the nutritional requirements of whatever creature you are turning into to end the multivitamin reign of terror on mutants, and the health stat too for that matter if that’s still an issue. Gonna have to find a shield ingame and see if that suggestion of shield bashing ever got implemented. If it’s not I love shields so expanding shield mechanics sounds like a fun thing to do.
Working up quite a list for myself though, guess I’ll have to see what rises to the top and actually gets done.
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I guess it could be justified in game by the “blob psychosis”, but I think you should have knowledge of more of the map than what you have at start . At minimum, the location of your work place and residence. Even if these are many overmaps away.
Much like the reveal of the refugee center when using the terminal of a evac shelter.
Exception would be if you are from out of state and this would be thousands of overmaps away, you start in your work place or residence, have multiple residences, or you don’t have either of these.
Would make sense. Often wondered why the mutant starts are just in the middle of nowhere instead of knowing or being near the lab they escaped from.
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You should be able to quarter zombie corpse. This is impossible right now since you need to fielddress them first but they have no organs.
That sounds pretty easy to fix actually
Probably tiny mod territory, but I’ll stay away from intentionally getting mutations (including by not using sufficient protection) until there’s a way to control mutations. Something along the lines of:
- Super Purifier: A purifier improvement that allows you to remove mutations that are currently not reversible. Either crafted from two purifiers or one purifier plus components acting as enhancers.
- Genius Purifier: A Smart Purifier improvement that only removes the selected mutation, and not any others. Either crafted from two smart purifiers or one smart purifier plus components acting as enhancers.
- Super Genius Purifier: A purifier that removes exactly one mutation of any kind, combining the effects of the ones above. Crafted from the two purifiers above.
The reason for why it would probably have to be an optional mod is that it would reduce the gambling aspect of mutation considerably (there’s still the gamble to actually get the ones you want, and when there’s only one wanted mutation left among a sea of unwanted ones you’re in for a lot of attempts), and I assume a lot of people wouldn’t like players to have more control.
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