New (End Game) Ranged Weapon...

[Khan_Drichthyes]

So....  no 40mm Bofors Bear Blaster?

[Skelegutplays]

I would prefer artillery only over a shotgun or revolver.

[Doc Feral]

32 minutes ago, Skelegutplays said:

I would prefer artillery only over a shotgun or revolver.

Trebuchet. 10 birch saplings, 8 guts, 1 bedroll, 5 scrap metal, 2 deer hides and15 stones.
Can be loaded with 5 stones for grapeshot, 1 pot and 1,5 liters of lamp fuel for incendiary or weighted nets for trapshot. Weighted nets can be crafted with 1 climbing rope and 10 stones.

[BareSkin]

Just now, Doc Feral said:

Trebuchet. 10 birch saplings, 8 guts, 1 bedroll, 5 scrap metal, 2 deer hides and15 stones.
Can be loaded with 5 stones for grapeshot, 1 pot and 1,5 liters of lamp fuel for incendiary or weighted nets for trapshot. Weighted nets can be crafted with 1 climbing rope and 10 stones.

You made me laugh!

[deathbydanish]

On 11/2/2018 at 10:46 PM, Doc Feral said:

There was a topic months ago about throwing hatchets or knives, and I repeat that hitting something with the right end of a spinning choppa is almost impossible unless you're extremely well trained, and that's with a specifically designed item and a still target.

As for having more firearms, I'm the blade type and have no knowledge about guns apart from a book I still have to read, so I'll stay out of the technical discussion. But if there were more alternatives for guns you'd need to significantly raise the chances of finding some, in order to have a decent share of each type, and in the end this would bring too much firepower in the game.

The hunting rifle technically has a large amount of power already, IRL the rifle it is based off of was used by the British empire to hunt just about every animal on the planet (you wouldn't catch me trying to use one on an elephant or rhino though :p)

I have also contemplated additional native or 1st nation's weapons, I think I have proposed the Atlatl in the past as well, some initial research indicates that its use was prevalent throughout the native peoples of the American continent, so it wouldn't seem out of place to use it here.

 

[Doc Feral]

1 hour ago, deathbydanish said:

The hunting rifle technically has a large amount of power already, IRL the rifle it is based off of was used by the British empire to hunt just about every animal on the planet (you wouldn't catch me trying to use one on an elephant or rhino though :p)

I have also contemplated additional native or 1st nation's weapons, I think I have proposed the Atlatl in the past as well, some initial research indicates that its use was prevalent throughout the native peoples of the American continent, so it wouldn't seem out of place to use it here.

 

I meant that if there are X rifle spawns and Y ammo spawns and you add another kind of gun, you'll need to at least double the ammo spawn to prevent the "why I always get the wrong bullets for my gun" syndrome and giving luck an overwhelming influence on gameplay, but this would mean the TLD world would be flooded with ammo.

[deathbydanish]

1 hour ago, Doc Feral said:

I meant that if there are X rifle spawns and Y ammo spawns and you add another kind of gun, you'll need to at least double the ammo spawn to prevent the "why I always get the wrong bullets for my gun" syndrome and giving luck an overwhelming influence on gameplay, but this would mean the TLD world would be flooded with ammo.

I sort of thought that was the line of thinking the developers were going for, the scarcity would mean that any firearm is not a guarantee of safety. Even IRL, firearms are not a guarantee of safety, people mistakenly think that 10 rounds in a Lee Enfield = 10 guaranteed wolf/bear kills. I just unloaded the ammo in the game, and they always seem to be 100% condition. I just opened a box of 1953 vintage 8mm Mauser ammo and found dull, lightly tarnished ammo, I fired some a few weeks ago and not all of them went bang on the first shot. I saw where the firing pin hit the primer and if it were recently made it most likely would've gone bang (cheap modern day ammo has that problem with bad primers though). 

I propose that .303 ammo you find should exhibit similar behavior, after all the Lee Enfield hasn't been a primary military firearm for decades as well, I don't doubt that a lot of the ammo for it is likely in beat up shape as well. Failures to feed would be an accurate low skill problem to have, since .303 is rimmed and if you don't load them correctly, you will cause it to not feed or jam. The rounds being old as well, their primers should also have a chance to fail to to fire, requiring you to eject that round and hope the next one fires on the first try.

[Direwolves]

23 hours ago, deathbydanish said:

I propose that .303 ammo you find should exhibit similar behavior, after all the Lee Enfield hasn't been a primary military firearm for decades as well, I don't doubt that a lot of the ammo for it is likely in beat up shape as well. Failures to feed would be an accurate low skill problem to have, since .303 is rimmed and if you don't load them correctly, you will cause it to not feed or jam. The rounds being old as well, their primers should also have a chance to fail to to fire, requiring you to eject that round and hope the next one fires on the first try.

This could be a really good way to prevent the fear of players becoming OP with the shotgun early on in the game - if you've got a gun with a relatively high chance of not firing at all, it's not going to be first choice for self-defense when facing down a charging wolf, bear or moose! You'd have to improve your skill using the rifle first, or limit your use of it to when you're hunting from a spot you can reasonably get away from quickly (like most people do with the bears). That would push its use to later on in your run I reckon, a great idea for balancing out its potential to be too OP especially early on.

I'm do really like the idea of a shotgun, and I'm intrigued to see where the discussion goes!

[deathbydanish]

33 minutes ago, Direwolves said:

This could be a really good way to prevent the fear of players becoming OP with the shotgun early on in the game - if you've got a gun with a relatively high chance of not firing at all, it's not going to be first choice for self-defense when facing down a charging wolf, bear or moose! You'd have to improve your skill using the rifle first, or limit your use of it to when you're hunting from a spot you can reasonably get away from quickly (like most people do with the bears). That would push its use to later on in your run I reckon, a great idea for balancing out its potential to be too OP especially early on.

I'm do really like the idea of a shotgun, and I'm intrigued to see where the discussion goes!

I'd say any ammo (hunting rifle, the upcoming revolver, and anything else forthcoming) in general that is not stored properly and exposed to the rough conditions present in The Long Dark should have degraded condition and thus lowered reliability or lowered stopping power. That might be one nuance that a lot of non-firearm people don't consider, I would never leave ammunition just sitting outdoors subject to the elements, I'd keep it in some kind of sealable container in a temperature (and if possible humidity) controlled environment.

I think in some recent discussions a shotgun was brought up, it had the benefit of not being implausible for a rural Canadian setting such as in the game. I had suggested though limiting it to the weakest kind of shotshell available, which is birdshot. It would be enough to kill a rabbit, but at distance it would be laughed off by deer, wolf, bear, and moose. Someone else wanted to bring slugs/buckshot in, but IRL wildlife officers often use them to dispatch bears, which could break the game. So I suggested using an old Depression era technique where you would take a knife, cut the plastic covering of a birdshot shotshell in a certain way. In the game you should be able to do this, but with a low firearms skill you should mess it up a lot, only getting to a reasonable amount of success when you have maxed out your firearms skill. When you fail, it will fire out as regular birdshot, but when it works, it should fire out as the entire mass of the cut portion of the shell. IRL they do not hit with the same force as a legit slug, but for the game it should be should be better than a bow and arrow, but below the hunting rifle. Additionally your accuracy should suffer with a cut shell since it will no longer travel in a relatively straight fashion, IRL when they hit, it is not uncommon to see them hit sideways instead of head on like normal slugs.