Wat, no pls no!! It's finally viable and makes an actually good end game melee weapon for Int build. It's not very good at all without perk investment, and even a single one isn't that great by itself. If I put 8 mods into 2 junk sledges, set them up so they can actually hit stuff, and have an entire magazine line + 10 points in int + 5 points in the turret perk, they SHOULD actually be as strong as they are now, as their current level is mostly just "These are useful in some niche situations and I find myself actually using them sometimes in a PoI" but they aren't that crazy outside of horde bases built solely around them.
For any kind of large horde, you still use Junk Turrets, and on horde night even if you build your entire base around junk sledges, they won't do anything you couldn't do 400 times better with pipe bombs, which are basically free to craft and have been blatantly OP since they were added. Every horde strategy I've seen including Madmole's is just "Stand on bars and throw molotovs and pipe bombs down at the horde"being the crux of your damage to the horde, regardless of build. There's no point in even investing in explosive perk, rock candy + their base damage out classes every other weapon type.
Having new alternatives are a good thing imo
Explosives are definitely OP and have been since the skill rebuild. I expect them to be nerfed eventually. I'd rather they be close to as strong as they are now if you're perception build and weaker for everyone else. Because right now they are just top tier for everyone and cheap to craft.
If I was to spitball changes for molotovs, pipe bombs, grenades, and etc within the current system:
- Reduce the AOE of baseline explosives.
- Add increased AOE to the perception skill.
- Nerf their damage slightly.
- Increase their crafting costs significantly.
- Increase their cost at the trader moderately.
- Give perception's explosive's skill a reduction to crafting costs matching the baseline crafting cost increase.
TBH though I feel like explosives have a bigger issue. They feel tacked onto perception and perception has a few things that don't fit. They take away from spear/sniper rifles defining the line IMO. Perception, IMO, should be about spears/snipers/looting. Animal tracker is good in perception, lock picking is good in perception. But I feel like demolitions expert and infiltrator do not it in perception. Infiltrator loose board delay should be part of agility stealth skill and the mine pickup should either be a book or go to a new skill that helps mines not suck.
IMO we should to create a new attribute that focuses on explosives and other stuff: I'll call it "Cunning" for the interim:
- Focuses on explosives and flame weapons. Melee and Ranged focus on fire, demo skills is moved to cunning and includes the changes I mentioned above.
- Levels of Cunning increase damage to perk weapons, increases headshot damage, increases decap chances, and increases fire DOT damage/duration. Successive ranks lower the chance of zombies setting allies (including you) on fire with melee attacks. Complete immunity granted at rank 5. Enemies set on fire do 5%/10%/15% less damage at ranks 5/7/10
- T1-T4 melee are similar to clubs with their own unique designs that are on fire. Not a stealth weapon. Similar to stun batons they differentiate themselves with how they play. They require animal fat or oil to crafting depending on tier but repair normally with repair kits.
- Regular attacks have a chance of fire, Melee power attacks cause a small burst of fire that does a small amount of AOE damage (no block damage from AOE) and has a chance to set nearby enemies on fire. The AOE size, initial damage amount, and chance of setting nearby enemies on fire with AOE burst goes up with skill rank. Friendlies are not set on fire/damaged unless hit directly. There is a short cooldown between AOE bursts where the weapon's flame will be less intense for a time.
- Just like blades have bleed chance but accept the bleed chance mod, melee has fire chance but accepts the fire chance club mod.
- T1 ranged weapon is primitive thrown firebombs, T2 is a single shot grenade launcher firing incendiary shells with small AOE, T3 is a multishot grenade launcher firing incendiary shells with small AOE, T4 is a flame thrower. Friendlies can be damaged or set on fire.
- Ranged weapon skill increases damage, AOE, range/projectile speed, and reload speed.
- General balance of melee and ranged weapons is that they are weaker single target damage but generally good in AOE.
- General damage profile is weaker up front damage but superior damage over time, similar to the bleeding with knives.
- Focuses on 1 time use non-electircal traps including mines. The existing spike traps and then ideas for other traps include deadfall traps, pitfall traps with spikes at the bottom, swinging log traps, etc. These should all be able to be implemented using current code bases and mainly just needs custom graphical assets and numerical balancing.
- Spikes break and need to be rebuilt, deadfall traps and swinging log traps activate once and then need to be reset/repaired, pitfall traps activate a set number of times and the graphics change to show a pit with a few bodies in it and must be repaired. "Resetting" could just be a repair that uses less resources than normal.
- Non-electrical traps including mines have a skill that make them much cheaper/faster to craft when fully invested...as well as increases their durability and damage of traps it applies to.
- Mine damage to blocks is decreased with skill rank, you get the ability to pick up mines with middling rank, and mine damage resistance scales with skill rank. People in your party (including you) cannot set off the mines you place.
