Advanced Maintenance: Item parts degrade

[Willy Pete]

I had this idea as I was walking through Mountain Town looking for revolver cartridges and other overlooked loot: what if tools had different parts that degraded?

For example: hatchets and knives have two parts: the handle and the blade. Each of these parts have their own condition, meaning you can have a handle with a lower condition than the axe head/knife blade. The tool would still have an overall condition that is an average of both, but upon further inspection you would see the individual parts of the tool.

This would also change what tools break down into. Instead of just scrap metal and wood, they would break down first into their base components leading to the potential of being able to take a hatchet with a good handle and one with a good axe head and combining them to make a hatchet with higher condition than before.

As for repairs, blade items would still be repaired with whetstones. Handles could be repaired either with tools or with wood to make things easier.

This would also apply to the rifle and revolver. To keep it simple I'd say three major parts: lock (action), stock, barrel with maybe the magazine as well. The lock and barrel would be repaired with the cleaning kit with the stock being repaired with tools or wood just like knives/hatchets.

The hacksaw would still probably be the same as is, requiring tools and scrap to repair the blade and handle. For the hammer, would the head even realistically degrade? It's more or less just a lump of metal so it'd probably be the odd tool out.

All in all, I feel like this would make maintenance a little more challenging and time consuming but could be a way to revamp the maintenance skill to something more than just a number. 

[Moll]

I can understand this mechanic for simple items, like hatchet, but not sure about complex firearms.

Rifle with cracked butt can shoot as well as non damaged counterpart (in TLD you shoot at tenths of meters anyway). If your rifle fails due to cracked locking lugs, or revolver with exploded cylinder, you wont repait it anyway, so its basically ruined. You could probably swap bolt or cylinder from another boom sticks, but why you would do that when you have those working firearms already.

Maybe mechanic that your gun can jam so heavily so you need a work bench for returning gun into a working condition would be better. And simplier.

Also yur system would require a hell of new items for repair. Those items wont serve any other purpose, so devs probably wont burn their time for it.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Moll

[ManicManiac]

It's a nifty idea to think about. 

[deathbydanish]

3 hours ago, Moll said:

I can understand this mechanic for simple items, like hatchet, but not sure about complex firearms.

Rifle with cracked butt can shoot as well as non damaged counterpart (in TLD you shoot at tenths of meters anyway). If your rifle fails due to cracked locking lugs, or revolver with exploded cylinder, you wont repait it anyway, so its basically ruined. You could probably swap bolt or cylinder from another boom sticks, but why you would do that when you have those working firearms already.

Maybe mechanic that your gun can jam so heavily so you need a work bench for returning gun into a working condition would be better. And simplier.

Also yur system would require a hell of new items for repair. Those items wont serve any other purpose, so devs probably wont burn their time for it.

Just to share some personal experience the only time I found that I had a bolt action malfunction that I couldn't deal without in the field was a stuck case (I've got one of those 7mm to 7.62 conversion Spanish Mauser rifles). Other than that, TLD's choice in firearms are ones that tend not to have problems if they were already fine to begin with. That Spanish Mauser I mentioned is well over a 100 years old now, if something were to break it would've done so by now. That's the beauty of these old surplus military rifles, they were built well and having no wars to fight they just sit unused not being abused so they remain as strong as ever.

[Moll]

Yep, but author suggested mechanical failures in action. They can occur, but i dont think we want broken rifle firing pin or cracked revolver hammer spring problem in TLD. I think serious jam due to sticky case, or jammed cylinder blocked by loose projectile is better thing to implement and its understable (and can be removed only in workbench area). Just keep game mechanic simple and easy to present. Its not a fetish for a gun guys. 

But for hatchet, why not. However i think that improvised hatched will be better, because it has metal handle. Also it breaks uniformity, because some tools just dont break, because its too dofficult to prepair them (broken saw blades are no-go).

[deathbydanish]

2 hours ago, Moll said:

Yep, but author suggested mechanical failures in action. They can occur, but i dont think we want broken rifle firing pin or cracked revolver hammer spring problem in TLD. I think serious jam due to sticky case, or jammed cylinder blocked by loose projectile is better thing to implement and its understable (and can be removed only in workbench area). Just keep game mechanic simple and easy to present. Its not a fetish for a gun guys. 

But for hatchet, why not. However i think that improvised hatched will be better, because it has metal handle. Also it breaks uniformity, because some tools just dont break, because its too dofficult to prepair them (broken saw blades are no-go).

Yeah I'm not down with the failures down to that level, not just because it would not be in line with what the expected audience wants, but because again TLD picked firearms that tend to have a low instance of failure down to that level. I get the impression that the revolvers in this game will show far more carry wear as opposed to internal wear. The only way I can think of to even force internal wear is to fire several thousand rounds of the hottest +p ammo or  .38-44 level ammo in a short period of time. The ammo spawn rates wouldn't be in the thousands so its really hard to come up with reasons to explain why a revolver, which has the reputation for minimal issues and maximum longevity, would start to have problems from just firing one or two cylinders worth of ammo.

[Willy Pete]

@Moll As per this idea, they wouldn't be that advanced. Stock and barrel would decrease accuracy, lock would increase risk of jams. The magazine, if broken, would simply force the user to use it as a single-shot rifle. The revolver wouldn't have a magazine on account of it being necessary for it to function. Would probably just have it be lock, stock, and barrel with the same effects of the rifle.

The point of variable damage in weapons would be that maybe you come across a rifle with a shoddy magazine and another with a more functional one but a busted barrel. Swapping out the parts would mean that you could have one fully functional rifle over two partially functional ones. This would also never be more than those simple parts, this isn't Escape From Tarkov.

 

[Guest kristaok]

I'm sorry it's a no from me. It sounds too confusing. 

[Moll]

No, keep dismantling guns away from this game. You are not a gunsmith and SMLE have not interchangeable parts anyway (even bolt head is set up for exact receiver to keep propper headspace).

Condition based function works fine, guns just get dirty, their dont break mechanically. Its pretty simple. Whole compotent-separated damaging system would require a hell of work, so probably its better how it is. One condition per item. If you can break handle, you stick with useless head. And wont be probably able to get a new samplig for handle, because your axe is broken and no saw around. So system to make your axe operational due to whetsone and ignoring handle is more player friendly. Also it can lead you can find axe's head alone. Thats not a good design.

 

[Willy Pete]

@Moll Oh, didn't know that about the SMLE. I've got a Mosin-Nagant and I can (and have had to with the bolt head) swap out more or less any part with any other mosin part.