(Ready) Heatblade Remodel project

[NaturesWitness]

Doing a remodeling of the Heatblades:

Heatblades do same cutting/bashing damage as base weapons, -1 to hit less than base

Louisville Slaughterer does slightly less damage than baseball bat
A Louisville Slaughterer that runs out of fuel turns into a "burnt out Louisville Slaughterer"
Louisville Slaughterer now requires Nomex, for insulation from burning the bat
A "burnt out Louisville Slaughterer" can be rebuilt into a normal one with fuel and rags, no additional Nomex is needed

Was going to make some additional weapons, but I'm somewhat busy ATM and may not get to it for a while. So I decided to just finish this part up so it's ready to land.

[dwarfkoala]

Will fireblades set your surroundings on fire yet?

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 11:00 AM, NaturesWitness
notifications@github.comwrote:

Doing a remodeling of the Heatblades, and making a few new things.

Current Heatblade changes:
tweaked some values. heatblades now do 10% less cutting damage than their
base weapons, but do 10% more bashing damage. The new flaming weapon code
adds damage on it's own, so bonus cutting OP. Inactive heatblades have -1
to hit compared to base, active ones have -2 to hit compared to base.

New stuff in progress:
Vibroblade: Cutting weapon that uses batteries to generate ultra-high
frequency vibrations do deal bonus cutting damage and prevent getting stuck.
Electro-Fist: Modified cestus that can shock enemies. Will start out just
having stungun function, eventually will be switched on/off to do electric
damage on every punch.

Please leave your comments on these changes and new ideas!

You can merge this Pull Request by running

git pull https://github.com/NaturesWitness/Cataclysm-DDA heatblade-remodel

Or view, comment on, or merge it at:

#5145
Commit Summary

• Rebalance stats on heatblades

File Changes

• M data/json/items/tools.jsonhttps://github.com//pull/5145/files#diff-0(48)

Patch Links:

• https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5145.patch
• https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5145.diff

[NaturesWitness]

Unfortunately not yet, that's going to take a little thought, probably something in the iuse similar to the chainsaws random chance to rumble and make noise, but will be a random chance to make a small fire field in an adjacent square.

[Nickboom1]

I dont feel like this is needed, maybe have the negative hit to bonus, but other then that I wouldnt nerf them. Because of the fact you need the mats, skill, and now a book to craft these.

[desrik]

By 'heatblade' and 'fireblade' are you guys referring to the firebrand? If so, the description reads: "The blade is glowing with heat." When I read this, I picture a sword with a blade that is glowing white from being heated, much like the steel would look when making a normal sword. In which case although the blade would be hot enough to set things on fire if you were to put the sword against said thing for a long enough period of time ( Give it the ability to be (a)ctivated to start a fire? ), just walking with it in your hand, it would not be able to set anything on fire. ( Besides perhaps webs? )

If it wasn't the firebrand you guys were talking about then I'm lost because I searched for 'heatblade' and couldn't find it.

EDIT::OFF-TOPIC::@NaturesWitness - Got the ammo check working ;)

[NaturesWitness]

The firebrand is one of a category of weapons I made called "Heatblades". The idea is in fact to have them be superheated, not "on fire" with flames spewing everywhere. Perhaps the real problem is I didn't write the descriptions well enough, and people think these are sword-shaped flamethrowers. You can in fact use these to start fires manually, it's one of the options when you "use" an active Heatblade.

For reference, the full list of Heatblades is:
Shishkebab
Firebrand
No. 9
Rising sun
Louisville Slaughterer (actually a Heatbat, but similar concept)

[desrik]

@NaturesWitness No your description on the firebrand is perfect. Like I said, "the description reads: "The blade is glowing with heat." When I read this, I picture a sword with a blade that is glowing white from being heated, much like the steel would look when making a normal sword."

aka. superheated, not on fire :)

[desrik]

How about a description somewhere along the lines of ", when active, glows near-white, as if being superheated from the inside."

[dwarfkoala]

Also, while you're at fixing heatblades, why not make the louisville
slugger require an aluminum bat instead of a regular one, so it won't burn
the bat, and lower the stats of the unlit slugger as the rags and stuff
attached to it will reduce the power of the weapon?

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 11:52 AM, desrik notifications@github.com wrote:

How about a description somewhere along the lines of ", when active, glows
near-white, as if being superheated from the inside."

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/5145#issuecomment-31036770
.

[desrik]

Or make the Louisville Slaughterer require a metal bat and a heating element, and take batteries as ammo. Then you could stay in the lines of a superheated weapon instead of implying that is emitting a flame due to the gas-soaked rags.

[dwarfkoala]

For that matter, you could make the heatblades have a heating-element based
heat system instead of a flamethrower based one...
Given that flaming weapons do not set your surroundings on fire, I think
that might be better...

[NaturesWitness]

The Louisville Slaughterer was actually going to be part of a set; There was going to be an aluminum-bat version of this that functioned more the way you described, I just never bothered making it :)

The reason I didn't make the Louisville Slaughterer vanish when it was used up was that I based it off the torch, and the torch in Cata leaves behind a burned-out torch that can be used to make a new torch. I thought this was a little odd, but I figured nobody seemed to mind so I went with the same system; when the bat runs out you get the base item back, and you can rebuild it.

I do like your suggestion that the Louisville Slaughterer do less damage due to the rags padding it, I'll get a commit with that in soon.

I'm not sure if I want to move all the Heatblades to using batteries, I don't think batteries would provide enough raw energy to produce the desired result. These are meant to more resemble the burners out of a gas grill set on low than a torch, they don't spray fire every which way, the flame ports (and the flames) are pretty small, there's just a lot of them all along the blade. The flames are there, and they hurt if you're dumb enough to put your hand directly on them, or the metal of the burner itself, but other than that they're not going to jump three feet away, or even three inches, to set the kitchen table on fire.

Now that I think about it though, I would like these to start fires If you're dumb enough to drop one when it's turned on (or if it gets stuck and pulled out of your hands). This would be a good feature to add to regular torches as well, does anyone have any ideas how it could be implemented?

[dwarfkoala]

If not batteries, then what about UPS?

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:05 PM, NaturesWitness notifications@github.comwrote:

The Louisville Slaughterer was actually going to be part of a set; There
was going to be an aluminum-bat version of this that functioned more the
way you described, I just never bothered making it :)

The reason I didn't make the Louisville Slaughterer vanish when it was
used up was that I based it off the torch, and the torch in Cata leaves
behind a burned-out torch that can be used to make a new torch. I thought
this was a little odd, but I figured nobody seemed to mind so I went with
the same system; when the bat runs out you get the base item back, and you
can rebuild it.

I do like your suggestion that the Louisville Slaughterer do less damage
due to the rags padding it, I'll get a commit with that in soon.

I'm not sure if I want to move all the Heatblades to using batteries, I
don't think batteries would provide enough raw energy to produce the
desired result. These are meant to more resemble the burners out of a gas
grill set on low than a torch, they don't spray fire every which way, the
flame ports (and the flames) are pretty small, there's just a lot of them
all along the blade. The flames are there, and they hurt if you're dumb
enough to put your hand directly on them, or the metal of the burner
itself, but other than that they're not going to jump three feet away, or
even three inches, to set the kitchen table on fire.

Now that I think about it though, I would like these to start fires If
you're dumb enough to drop one when it's turned on (or if it gets stuck and
pulled out of your hands). This would be a good feature to add to regular
torches as well, does anyone have any ideas how it could be implemented?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/5145#issuecomment-31041575
.

[NaturesWitness]

I suppose that could work, although I think if I make any electric Heatblades, they'll be in addition to the gas-powered ones, not replacements.

[desrik]

@NaturesWitness Well, with the addition of my rechargeable battery pack mod, it could be recharged in a vehicle trunk. See #5054 to see the merged PR.

[NaturesWitness]

I guess my real problem is I don't want to remove the gas-powered Heatblades entirely; I'm fine with making some electric-based alternates though. Does that sound like a good solution? The electric ones will probably have a few neat tricks of their own, and they will need different resources and skills to make.

[dwarfkoala]

Of course!

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 2:07 PM, NaturesWitness notifications@github.comwrote:

I guess my real problem is I don't want to remove the gas-powered
Heatblades entirely; I'm fine with making some electric-based alternates
though. Does that sound like a good solution? The electric ones will
probably have a few neat tricks of their own, and they will need different
resources and skills to make.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/5145#issuecomment-31045418
.

[NaturesWitness]

I'm wondering, should I add a "burnt out Louisville Slaughterer" item, that can be rebuilt like the "burnt out torch" item can, just so it doesn't seem like the bat is magically brand new?

[desrik]

Hm... Is it possible to revert to a bat with the burnt tag?

[KA101]

Huh. My understanding of the heatblades was that they were flaming. So much for that.

Maybe add a Nomex requirement for the Slaughterer which insulates the actual bat, so the bat itself doesn't burn?

[NaturesWitness]

They are flaming, just not a huge ball of fire. The flames stay close to the weapon, they don't fly all over the place. The Nomex idea is cool, I'll look into that.

[NaturesWitness]

Decided to forget the "starts fires when dropped" thing for now, I may try to implement it in the future. With all the current Drama with realism going on now in the forums, I think I may hold off on making any new things for a while until things calm down. My stuff tends to be a little off-the-wall, so I'm just going to leave this with the Heatblade rebalances only. This should be ready to merge, if any other tweaks occur to me I'll do them in a new PR.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

That's odd. I just tried to merge this yet it didn't actually merge. But the commits list for the main C:DDA repository lists that it was merged.

Confusing.

[desrik]

@Rivet-the-Zombie Kevin merged one of mine not to long ago and the same thing happened. He said it was merged even though it didn't update. #4923

[GlyphGryph]

Closing. This has been merged, just a git hiccup.

[kevingranade]

As for lighting things on fire when it's dropped, it would need to check if
it's on the ground rather than held, there might be a way to do that from
the iuse.