PC Has anyone actually made these?

LuckyStar

LuckyStar

New member
I keep thinking back to every alpha I've played [since A10 I think].

Not once, not ever have I made Scrap Armour.

Seriously.... not one single piece of it.

Now you need Recipes AND Duct Tape?

By the time you have enough to make a set you're already on Iron.

Isn't it time TFP either got rid of the useless stuff or stop gating it behind recipes?

Duct Tape... fine. We can boil bones to make tape. But come on! Aaaaand recipes?

[Even then it's still bad. I'd rather wear Leather and save my tape for the minibike.]

Who is risking their life sneaking into Book stores desperately hoping for Scrap Metal recipes?

Anyway, as the title suggests:


Does anyone actually make this stuff?

 
There are only two instances when I find it useful.

1) Very early game before I find iron armor recipes and/or have trouble finding a workbench.

2) During PVP when you need to make something okay, while on the fly.

I would be kosher if they just deleted cloth and leather amors. I have never found a use for those.

 
I never make the blunderbus. Am I missing out or are we all missing out?
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It sucks in vanilla, but I modded mine to have:

  • 2 Shots
  • Extremely Large Spread
  • Extremely Short Range
  • Super High Damage vs Wood (For Breaching)


And it's pretty great. The magnum I never use because I never find enough parts to make a whole one and the hunting rifle is all around awful compared to a pistol in my opinion.

 
I only used to make armor in vanilla when I was "bored" and had nothing else to do. Blunderbuss has a sweet model, but since the wooden bow is the better weapon, there is no reason to use it, if not for aesthetic reasons.

 
I actually do make it. Simply because I like the post apocalyptic look of it. That was until they decided to introduce kevlar armour and such and I tend to just use those if I get it. If not, I actually do use leather armour more now because I like the look and it does provide more of an incentive to not face tank zombies when fighting them in melee.

That said, I never make the blunderbuss since its completely useless. The Hunting Rifle and Short barreled-shotty would also be never used if I did not modify them (made the Hunting Rifle hold 5 rounds per reload instead and the short-barrel shotty to have the same spread as the normal shotty but holding only 2 rounds with a faster reload).

PS: My sniper rifle is modified to hold 15 rounds instead of just 5.

 
I never craft armor period, I just buy it, though later on in game once I get some recipies, I craft some 25 quality pieces to repair my ql 500+ ones in a16. Tried the blunderbuss once or twice usually after a patch, thought it was a piece o'crap, never touched it again. Doesn't do nearly enough damage in vanallia for how long its reload time is and how you bascally have to be kissing the zombie with the barrel for it to hit anything, and even then it'll often take several shots to actually kill anything. Yeah its a 25 quality bluderbus, but a 25 quality wooden bow still kills way faster.

 
Scrap armor is okay for the early stage of a nomad playthrough, imo. But I agree, that in its current state it's useless most of times. Was a bit better when the recipes for all parts were locked by the not-too-rare McGyver book.

Cloth and leather armors really aren't worth it however.

 
As I have been told a lot:

“its alpha! Its not supposed to be balanced!“

There are more things unbalanced then balanced in this game. Blunderbus, armortypes and melee weapons are only a small part of all the unbalanced stuff in this game.

You HAVE to wait till beta before you can talk further about this. :D

 
I don't think I've used scrap since a13. Even then it was only a temporary step that was extremely short lived. Rarely did I get a full set even before switching to iron.

Now I just go nekked until I find good bandit gear.

 
Seems I am the outlier here. I just wear the best armor I can find/produce, if that is scrap armor, so be it. But because the trader has too much of the better armours available practically from the start I have better armour in many slots very fast.

So I would say it is the unbalanced trader that makes the lifetime of all the low armour types short.

 
I have a few times when RNG didn't like me. I think there were a few times prior to a16 that I made it when my base was in the snow biome. Scrap armor had better heat insulation iirc.

 
I keep thinking back to every alpha I've played [since A10 I think].
Not once, not ever have I made Scrap Armour.

[...]

Anyway, as the title suggests:


Does anyone actually make this stuff?
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I probably made a piece or two just to see what it does and looks like, but it is not useful in SP that much. Its place in the overall progression is all wrong. You either need to be able to obtain it earlier or it needs to offer more protection, or something else. As it stands right now, it makes no sense to create it in SP, as your efforts and mats are better spent elsewhere.

 
Armor, people actually use armor? *lol*. Kidding aside, i never build any armor. Maybe one or two times and was disappointed by how weak the armor was compared to standard fiber clothing.

Its one of those useless perk / skills, where you are just better off finding good armor from soldiers and using that. For the first weeks i run mostly in the starter clothing and switch to armor pieces as i find them.

There is a reason why people always picked the same skills in A... A16, because the rest are limited use or useless.

Its like leather armor, why wast valuable leather on armor, a forge is much more useful and powerful in your gameplay. Duck tape is again more valuable for other items then armor crafting.

Iron scrap is much more useful for upgrading your defenses because you get more bang per dollar out of it. Let alone the whole being gated by books or skills.

A lot of the game mechanisms simply get ignored by the players because they do not add a lot of value to the player. A large part is because by the time you find the books or unlock the skills, you already are on iron or are focused on your base.

You can say the rarity of some base elements makes it so that people simply ignore content, as they do not want to wast it on those low efficiency items. The blunderbuss is also a example of useless. When you start you pack only the really needed stuff that you find. Nitrate tends to get removed because its benefit is only very late on. So by the time that you are settled, your bow is plenty and you probably already found a few guns in toilets. So why wast resources on a blunderbuss.

Its the same now with wood buildings. The upgrade path is so weak, that you will only use wood for frames, doors, cooking, ... and at worst for a day 1 or 2 mini stilt base. After that you switch to flag/cobble for a more permanent base. The increase in wood rarity on harvesting simply makes wood useless for anything besides the basic or ultra required stuff.

Wood club? You make it for the quest, first day item, then you quickly go in to iron reinforced club, bypassing wood club and spike club.

Bow, ... skip anything ... crossbow ... skip anything ... AK ... The only 3 real valuable weapons in the game ( in my eyes ).

Hell, people even skipped iron, for steel in the past. Until it got gated. And still people only build the pure essentials in iron.

TFPs forget, if you make something hard to get, people will only use it on the most essential items. In the end, this bypasses a lot of lower level content, as the people move into iron or higher content ranges. People are plenty smart to not wast good resources on items that give them less benefit.

Its a survival game, it stands to reason that people will skip useless or bad resources heavy items or too late in the game items, when they can have better return of investment.

 
The Problem with scrap armor is not a new one. While it has a theoretical place in a progression from leather to full iron the resources gating the access to them ... Well they weren't exactly well planned out.

In older alpha versions the only reason to ever craft scrap armor was to fill in slots that were missing among your full iron armor list. Mainly because the scrap book gave you all scrap armor recipies at once and you had to find every single iron armor book individually.

Nowadays it is a simple question of efficiency. If you don't have to purchase a skill - you won't and opt in for the later ones. It isn't a new problem for the gaming industry and so far there aren't many brilliant ways to avoid it

Option 1) The old - gate higher tech with lower tech ... usually ends with grumpy players b_tching about it on the forum because you take the freedom of choice (or better the illusion of choice) away from them

Option 2) Is also nothing new. It goes with the concept of offering a skillpoint discount if you already know lower tech variants. As in 'So you want to research Iron armor? That will require 100 tech points. You get a discount X points for knowing scrap iron armor and Y for leather armor'

You see that option 2 is basically option 1. Just with a more complex unlock system. Yet players usually don't rage blindly against it. They don't really have an option to avoid low tech options. But their main concern (wasting resources) gets addressed because they won't lose anything for learning lower tech variants.

 
I never make the blunderbus. Am I missing out or are we all missing out?
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Blunderbus is actually a pretty strong backup weapon in Alpha 16 if you're willing to invest enough points into the skill that governs its efficiency.

As for the scrap armor, I always craft the parts for which I don't have enough iron for making the iron armor OR simply the parts for which I'm still missing the recipe. While I rarely crafted scrap iron helmet, simply because I prefer the mining helmet because it has the light, I almost always end up crafting at least one scrap armor part before I get the full iron armor.

 
The armor types and progression definitely needs some love. I occasionally find a use for scrap armor, but hide (not leather) armor... never.

I'd like to see the armors get a bit more diversified:

First, clothing should not provide armor bonuses, just for the sake of simplicity. (Exception: the leather duster, which should become a leather armor piece) And hide armor should be deleted outright.

cloth armor - no movement speed, melee/ranged or stealth penalties, but very little armor rating (no perk required to craft)

leather armor - no movement speed, melee/ranged or stealth penalties, medium armor rating (perk required to craft)

scrap metal armor - small movement speed and melee/range penalties, huge stealth penalty, medium armor rating (no perk required to craft)

(potentially scrap metal armor might have better armor than leather, but not hugely, or perhaps be better against piercing but not blunt, etc)

iron armor - large movement speed and melee/ranged penalties, huge stealth penalty, highest armor rating (forge and/or perk required to craft)

kevlar/military armor - no movement speed, melee/ranged or stealth penalties, armor rating between scrap and iron, uncraftable

So you could craft cloth or scrap armors from day 1 depending on materials and which attributes are most important. Leather and iron armors are both better in different ways but require perks, and military armor is something you only get by scavenging.

 
cloth armor - no movement speed, melee/ranged or stealth penalties, but very little armor rating (no perk required to craft)

leather armor - no movement speed, melee/ranged or stealth penalties, medium armor rating (perk required to craft)
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I also like to point out something because that comments how leather needs more armor rating then cloth, how wrong it is. If we look at historical usage of leather armor, their is very few.

Movies tend to depict people in full leather or other combinations, when most of historians agree that leather was almost never used as armor ( beyond a few pieces ).

Padded armor like Gambeson is better than leather armor and has more usage.

So cloth armor = Gamberson actually needs a buff and in this context needs a stronger armor rating then Leather. Yes, it sounds alien or strange in people their minds but its most miscast movie information that makes people think that Leather is so good.

There are several reasons for this. Gambersons or layered cloth actually protects better against multiple types of weapon attacks. Its flexibility also allows for better weapon handling. Its cheaper to make because in actuality then leather types of armor.

Technically, we need to have Cloth armor. Cloth + mail. Cloth + Iron. Iron ( full plate with less cloth below it )...

Frankly, in the zombie apocalypse give me a Gambeson above any leather armor. The added benefit from not only preventing Zombies from biting in your skin, easier to repair, flexible in tight rooms, easier weapon handling, silent ( compared to iron ), good heat protecting in Winter. Leather armor is hard, transfer kinetic energy way too much ( zombie hitting you ) and leaves easily more open spots. Let alone the manufacturing process for Armor.

So its kind of ironic that actually the best material is considered the lowest on the totem poll. If we have bandits with weapons in game, then things indeed change because you need to deal with different attack vectors ( bullets, knifes vs kinetic/bites/scratching/... ).

Yes, it is very off-topic. :fat:

 
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