CDDA Frequent Community Tweaks

---

If you need to force people to play with your mechanic to get feedback[,] you probably need to go back to the drawing board on the mechanic. --u/Hilde_Garde_Party

Wanting a toggle is the only feedback this situation needed. --u/Raven776

One thing devs might be missing is the fact that what made this game fun for a lot of people is how the experience was for the user. We could personalize our experience to our hearts content. --u/Kurt_Wolfgang

---

Let's give players more choice to play CataclysmDDA however they want. The purpose for this guide is to be a repository for commonly requested community tweaks that the developers have explicitly chosen not to provide toggle options for. Pull requests and additional tweak guides are welcome.

This reference guide is written to help players who aren't familiar with CDDA modding. With any luck, this guide can help demystify the task of implementing some basic tweaks to your CDDA installation. For more advanced tweaks, I highly recommend that you check out the CataclysmDDA Modding Documentation.

Disable Portal Storms

Fix Source

I guess the difficulty with this idea is just that portal storms are controversial; some people are happy for a reason to need to fortify bases and that's fine.

However, portal storms kill types of easier agrarian play that were viable before (particularly if they go back to slaughtering your livestock,) and fans of the game that like those playstyles aren't going to like that, period.

I don't think it's possible to make a compromise version of the event that would satisfy both the "I want to do a fortress defense" people and the "I want to live in a lean-to all summer" people, so "just play it and give feedback" won't fix the problem.

--u/Martian_Astronomer

We can delete the Effect on Condition (EOC) that causes portal storms to appear:

1. Head to data/json/portal_storm_effect_on_condition.json and open it with your text editor of choice.
2. Look for the json definition with the ID EOC_PORTAL_STORM_WARN_OR_CAUSE_RECURRING.
3. Delete the whole def, including the brackets around it.

This is the code that causes portal storms to randomly spawn. Deleting it will stop them from happening while keeping the code in the game so nothing breaks.

Note: Scenarios with portal storms active (like Splintering Reality) will still have the portal storm at the start, but no other ones will happen. This will obviously cause some balance issues with the scenarios about more frequent or stronger portal storms since they just turn into free points, but you can just not use 'em.

Disable Proficiencies

Fix Source

The inclusion of proficiencies adds drawn-out practice requirements to fully craft many recipes. The extended time and resource costs brought on by the proficiencies system may help round out the gameplay for a more comprehensive long-run experience, but it also negatively impacts the creativity that is possible in most challenge starts.

Option 1: Use the debug menu

We can use the debug menu to learn all proficiencies.

1. Open the debug menu using your keybind of choice (Unbound by default).
2. Hit p / Player
3. Hit p / Edit player/NPC
4. Hit 1 / You
5. Hit P / Edit proficiencies
6. Hit 1 / Toggle all proficiencies

Downsides for this option:

• It will clutter your @ menu.
• It will disable achievements (but you can easily re-enable them in the debug menu under Game > Enable achievements)

Option 2: Remove proficiencies from all recipe files

We can remove the proficiencies from every recipe in the CDDA JSON. This is most easily done by iteratively running a sed command on all of CDDA's recipe json to remove the proficiency lines.

1. Navigate to data/json/recipes/ in your terminal
2. Run the following command in your terminal: find . -name "*.json" | xargs -I{} sed -i 's/proficiencies/\/\/proficiencies/g' {}

Downsides for this option:

• You will have to apply this tweak every time you update your game
• You need to have the GNU core utilities on your machine to run the above command. Windows users are out of luck unless you use WSL.

Disable Skill Rust

Fix Source

I extremely dislike skill rust. I dislike the concept, I dislike the implementation, and trying to account for and prevent it is unpleasant.

I don’t have much time to play games, so I want to make progress in them when I do. The concept that by spending time in that game some of that progress is undone makes me not want to play it.

--u/PsychoTexan

We can use the skill antirust mod to add a zero-point positive trait (ID: SLY_YEETRUST) that disables skill rust. This trait can be chosen upon character creation or added via the debug menu on an in-progress save.

The way this mod works is by making a copy of the Good Memory positive trait and setting the skill_rust_multiplier property to zero. This property controls the multiple by which skill rust occurs, so when it is set to zero skill rust never accumulates.

If you do not want to use a mod, you can open up your data/json/mutations/mutations.json and create your own copy of Good Memory and modify it as you wish.

Disable Welding Rods

Fix Source: me

The inclusion of welding rods adds significant overhead to the ability to craft or modify vehicles. While the gameplay style encouraged by this feature is preferable to some, it removes the freedom to alter and experiment with vehicle designs without expending a limited resource. The removal of this freedom significantly changes the pacing for players who enjoy spending their time doing Mad Max adventures and iteratively tweaking their vehicle builds.

Note that both of the below fixes do not actually prevent welding rods from spawning. Rather, so as not to overcomplicate things, we just remove the requirement from recipes to make them into a useless item.

Option 1: Use a mod

We can use the no welding rods mod to overwrite recipes to not require welding rods.

Downsides for this option:

• CDDA is goofy about recipe overwrites for existing recipes. I've noticed that sometimes the overwrites don't apply properly, particularly for vehicle-related part installations.
  • I have no idea why it's like this. If you make the same json edits to your base game instead of putting them in a mod, it works fine.

Option 2: Manually edit json

We can manually remove the welding rods from the required components in crafting recipes.

1. Open data/json/requirements/toolsets.json in your text editor of choice.
2. Remove the [ [ "welding_rod_steel", 1 ], [ "welding_wire_steel", 1 ], [ "brazing_rod_bronze", 1 ] ] components from the following four IDs:
   • welding_standard
   • welding_alloys
   • repair_welding_standard
   • repair_welding_alloys
3. Note that JSON will get mad if you have a comma on the last item in a list.
   • IE, if you delete the entire components line from welding_standard and welding_alloys, make sure to remove the comma at the end of tools or your game will crash when you try to launch.

Downsides for this option:

• You will have to re-apply this tweak every time you update your game.