(finished) Inferior Weapons Patch

[evilexecutive]

People have been talking recently about how relatively powerful the medieval weapons are in this game, and some ideas have been thrown around to see how their issues can be fixed. One such idea was to make the medieval weapons far less likely to spawn, which would encourage players to make their own. However, I also had the helpful idea of making "inferior" versions of the Medieval Weapons, that are not outright fakes, but just so happen to be considerably less durable.

This patch seeks to help counterbalance the Medieval Weapons mod by introducing a small number of medieval weapons that are made out of low grade steel. They are indistinguishable; statwise, from the actual weapons, but their inferior material makes them less than battle-ready. Generally my idea is that in the modern day, the vast majority of weapons advertised as "Battle-ready" are often made from things like inferior grades of steel, and have very poor construction choices such as rat-tail tangs.

I'll add in more weapons to use later, and likely update the welder to also repair Stainless Steel.

Done So Far(this list is more for me than anyone else really):
Wakizashi
katana
zweihander
jian
scimitar
longsword
arming sword
battleaxe
cutlass
broadsword

[Malkeus]

Missed a comma here, and the 3 lines below this.

[kevingranade]

I fully support your endeavor. Real mideval weapons should be vanishingly rare.

[Coolthulhu]

Are they supposed to be unrepairable?
This makes sense - if they were repairable, it would be tedious (not hard) to keep them working.

[evilexecutive]

I'm currently mulling over having them be repairable. I've also changed the material name to budget steel, as per a suggestion on the IRC. I'm not quite sure yet, as part of me feels like it would be an exercise in futility to try and get these weapons to retain their edge.

[Malkeus]

You can barely put an edge on bad steel, let alone maintain one. And it will be gone the first time you cut something with it.

[Coolthulhu]

Leaving them unrepairable would make the whole thing much more significant.
If they were repairable, you'd only need to solder them after more serious fights, which would defeat the whole purpose.

[Malkeus]

I like this. Suddenly hording all the things will be an asset and not just a compulsion. I'll break all the swords til I find one that isn't fake.

[Malkeus]

commas

[Malkeus]

commas are the single most important thing in the entire game. next is brackets and braces.

[illi-kun]

Are you sure this way of material definition works?

[illi-kun]

double spaces.

[illi-kun]

Double spaces required.

[illi-kun]

2x spaces.

[illi-kun]

2x spaces.

[illi-kun]

2x spaces.

[illi-kun]

2x spaces.

[illi-kun]

2x spaces.

[SeanMirrsen]

Don't know how correct it is to ask, but I have to wonder - why double spaces? I mean, beyond the "apparently that's the way it's done" thing, because I've no idea if some text formatting mechanic depends on it or it's just a thing that you people do.

[illi-kun]

@SeanMirrsen please see discussion in #5414. Summary is

Single space after periods is for proportional fonts.
Double space after periods is for fixed-width fonts.
We use fixed-width fonts.

[chaosvolt]

That summary technically does not explain the actual WHY, but as far as I can tell the reasoning is for readability and (secondarily) to maintain consistency.

[kevingranade]

To make sentence breaks stand out. This has been the standard English practice for typesetting literally as long as there has been a standard for typesetting.

[chaosvolt]

Which would fall under readability, yeah. XP

[evilexecutive]

I've removed the content that didn't contribute to the original purpose of this PR, now it purely deals with Inferior Weapons type. I'd keep the other stuff to a seperate PR, if I ever decide to do anything with them.

[evilexecutive]

So, for putting up Replica/Fake for the Fake and Inferior Items, I honestly wouldn't bother with that. The point being that if you enter a building and just give a cursory glance over the contents, you aren't making a close inspection of all the items in it. To that cursory glance, Fakes, Replicas, and genuine swords all look the same to you. It's when you pick it up and examine the item do the differences show up.

[Coolthulhu]

'V' takes zero time. It will reveal whether the items are fake or real.
The only things same names will cause is annoyance of having to read stats and not just the name, making meta knowledge more important. Gimmicks like that are good maybe for one playthrough, if that.

[chaosvolt]

Hmm. So I'm not sure if it'll really do anything except add a little annoyance. However, unlike some additions, the annoyance has already been present, via the cheap-ass aluminum versions.

So in practice the net effect is making the real deal less common relative to the knockoffs.

[Skidborg]

"It's already a little annoying." Does not justify making it more so. Having the fake and real items share a name is already a bad design.

[chaosvolt]

True. But like I said, this is by no means the worst idea to date. :V

[illi-kun]

Please capitalize the "A" in "asian".

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

The M and E in Middle Eastern too.

[chaosvolt]

That would be my fault. Doh. @_@

[illi-kun]

I've never seen this parameter before, what's supposed to do?

[Coolthulhu]

Probably an old value for old drop system.
Should be removed as it doesn't do anything nowadays.

[illi-kun]

I found the same parameter in archery.json, melee.json, and tools.json and I'm going to remove it in separate PR.