Remove completely unrealistic gunpowder recipe. #12655
Conversation
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I dig this, but we really need a replacement before we tear this out by the roots, else firearm-using characters will never be able to reach a means of sustainability. The current recipe requires a chemistry set, so at least it's not just being cooked up on a stovetop. I'm not really sure what more could be added as a requirement to make it any more realistic (which is a really variable thing in DDA crafting anyway, since we can make stuff like a nuclear UPS or CBMs from scratch). |
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Perhaps make gunpowder itself more common in gunstores would be nice to offset this change. |
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@Soyweiser : +1. |
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Could be interesting btw, as you cannot make a lot of ammo anymore, you need to diversify or go into town, loot, and avoid most of the critters. (If all the gunstores have guaranteed gunpowder). But I have no idea how most gunusers play tbh. |
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Firearms not necessarily being sustainable is kind of the point. Either you find a large enough cache of ammo to use, or you make do without that particular resource. |
Gun stores and sporting goods locations really ought to have more gunpowder/brass/primers/etc. on hand. Even places like Walmart tend to carry lots of reloading supplies. |
Remove completely unrealistic gunpowder recipe.
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In my experience, gunpowder isn't a limiting factor for gun-primary characters. Generally, you're better off focusing on one or two calibers (ideally a caliber with recoverable casings, since those are really the main limit on your ammo) and just disassembling all the other ammo you run into, which will result in a massive excess of gunpowder and lead. I find that the major limitations on gun characters are casings (since they effective act as a character's max ammo) and primers (especially if you're using calibers that share primer requirements e.g. 5.7mm and 5.56 NATO). |
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Yeah creating gunpowder from scratch isn't realistic, but - to use the oft quoted comparison - neither is building a laser cannon, coilgun, barrel extension mod that can fit any gun from a few bits of pipe, etc. In fact, on a scale from 'completely realistic' to 'completely impossible' (with an added dimension for sci-fi based things so we can still have some fun) making gunpowder from scratch is really not the most unrealistic thing you can make in this game. Rather than just pulling rank and completely deleting the recipe as you've done, maybe we should have had a longer discussion on the merits of suspending our disbelief for a little bit to keep a useful and very mechanically rewarding recipe in the game. But oh wait, you did just delete it from the game - oops. |
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Since the discussion is apparently still ongoing, I don't think making smokeless gunpowder is THAT hard, by video game standards. Apparently, you just take some nitrocellulose and add stuff to it to make it more stable. Nitrocellulose can spontaneously explode, but it doesn't do it every time. It was apparently at one point considered stable enough to use in photographic film. The additives are things like nitroclycerine and petroleum jelly, or ether and diethylamine. Nitroglycerine and diethylamine are both quite unsafe to work with, but not completely beyond the reach of a sufficiently reckless amateur chemist. I get that there should be explosions when you fail to craft something like this, but the crafting system can't handle that right now. All the recipes have have insanely simplified consequences, from the vegetable pickling that can permanently destroy your glass jars, to the miniature plutonium fission bomb that can't hurt you in any way unless you successfully craft one and then deliberately activate it. If you want to remove it, though, I can think of a couple replacement ideas. Firstly, black powder. It's weaker than smokeless propellants, and the soot will mess up the precision mechanics of most firearms, but that isn't always a problem. Things like pipe rifles simply have no precision mechanics to damage, and the more complex things can be cleaned and fixed. Blackpowder variants of most ammunition, and a mechanic to damage the gun if they're used don't sound like they should be overly difficult to implement, unlike a detailed chemistry simulation. Another option is adding some kind of sci-fi variant. Extradimensional bullshit gunpowder. The future things are exempt from making sense. How about a plant that grows natural explosives? |
This made me laugh. I agree that we should probably have a replacement for this recipe, it just needs either: A, an addition to the crafting system whereby you can catastrophically fail a recipe and blow yourself up - or B, to be locked behind some seriously onerous tool/material/skill requirements in order make handwaving the danger away a much less obvious and silly thing. |
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The discussion is in fact over, Rivet hit the key point, so I'll just |
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Ow, I think as always, your are allowed to write your own mod. And I think it is not a stretch that it can be included in the next release. Especially if you add even more content. (Not just "only readded the old recipe lollllsssssszzz!!!1!!"). |
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There are shotguns, revolvers, and bolt-action rifles that predate the wide adoption of smokeless powder in the 1880s. Though black powder might be a bit dirty for use with modern semi-auto and automatic fire weapons, modern revolvers and shotguns seem like they would take black powder loads just fine. Firing a Ruger .38 revolver with black powder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O31ArgWi2jY Loading and firing a 12ga shotgun shell with black powder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZHN_ermCz8 |
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I wanted to look at extending crafting/bullet-pulling anyway, so I'll have a go at this area once I'm done fixing Cmake/Clion integration & docs. @mightyagrippa - the dirt doesn't seem the problem, more like the pressures involved are too low to properly cycle the action, with corresponding increased risk of jams. Kind of akin to what happens if you convert a 9mm handgun to 22LR - it works, but (among other things) the slide won't lock on the last bullet fired because it doesn't push it far enough back. (Admittedly I'm a noob when it comes to the mechanics of modern pistols, but I've seen several youtubes, okay) |
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@karlnp - You're probably right. That's why I restricted my points to certain firearms; you don't need blowback to chamber the next round in revolvers, breech-loading shotguns, pump-action shotguns, or bolt-action rifles. Plenty of those are in the game right now. In the early to mid game I use the Remington 700 rifle for clearing turrets at range and a sawed-off double barrel shotgun as a holstered problem solver. Personally, I wouldn't mind a doable recipe for modern gunpowder given that the setting happens after several more decades of scientific progress. But if that's not in the cards I do like the aesthetic of giving old-school guns their time in the sun. People would use the rare and powerful modern rounds carefully but go back to 19th century tech for renewable use. |
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I looked into it a bit and quickly consulted some chemist/gun aficionado friends - basically trying to make smokeless gunpowder without a significant infrastructure & educational system is very insane and suicidal. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily out of the question to attempt - but if I made that as a mod, it would be almost exclusively as an entertaining method of unwitting suicide rather than an endgame strategy... if only for the reason that doing it properly would require decades of extremely careful remote handling and precision machining at a minimum, even with future technology. The current primer & powder manufacturers with such an infrastructure still can't do it absolutely safely, so you can imagine what a risk a lone survivalist would be taking. Given that early powder rusted barrels, I also like reloading with blackpowder as a way to accelerate attrition and encourage improvisation in the mid to late game, since I've noticed that tends to be when people get bored because nothing is a threat. |
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Just add a mutation: Poops Gunpowder. Hurts morale for obvious reasons but very useful! More seriously, what do you think would be a workable way to deal with the differences in ammo usability between guns? For example, you could have manufactured .44 rounds, reloaded .44 rounds made with modern powder, and blackpowder .44 rounds. The Ruger Redhawk and Desert Eagle could both use any manufactured or reloaded rounds, just like in the current state of things. But blackpowder rounds would only be safely usable for the Redhawk revolver. Would this be an ammo restriction on certain guns categorized by their action? Or a higher risk factor for any guns with a non-manual action? I do like the risk you mentioned in using blackpowder for extended periods without maintenance. It should be mitigated by proper maintenance and cleaning (a real use for those repair kits!) but it suggests some good stories. "I shot the zombies until my AK ran dry, then I shot them until the barrel of my revolver exploded, then they ate me." |
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I haven't looked at the gun code (and I'm a little scared to) but my first impulse would probably be to just make them into single-shot firearms that need to be manually cocked in a process similar to firing a shortbow for underpowered rounds. For really hot rounds... well, if there isn't a catastrophic malfunction event yet, there definitely should be. I've got a lot of research to do in the meantime, though. |
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Not sure that would be realistic, double action revolvers rely on the trigger for re-cocking. They're powder agnostic. But there is the dilemma of that one autorevolver... Anyway a quick looks suggests that sadly each ammo is coded as a single specific caliber and each gun accepts any round of a given single caliber. You could kludge in a new ammo type for each caliber of black powder round and a gunsmithing recipe to convert any compatible gun to one that takes blackpowder rounds. But that's ugly and it interferes with swapping between powder types in the field and it's ugly. Enjoy the gun code! |
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It'll likely be a mod that extends the crafting system in general, since there's a bunch of nice-to-haves that I'd like to implement & which are further-reaching than a typical pull request. Further discussion probably doesn't belong on this issue, though. And thanks, I will! |
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The point about simple/old school actions allowing black powder loads is a
good one, we could add a 'black-powder' flag to some guns, and apply
something similar to black-powder ammo (which should also be lower power
than the smokeless powder rounds), and when reloading check for a match.
Then it's a simple matter of whitelisting the revolvers, shotguns, and
similar guns with no cycling action to accept them.
Special effects like emitting smoke clouds when firing and fouling barrels
could also be attached to the flag.
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Paul Vieille did it in 1884. He probably had quite a high cooking skill, and the finest laboratory equipment available in Victorian-era France, but you don't need advanced robotics or anything like that. |
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Yes, and it was unpredictable and two French battleships exploded as a result. |
I was reminded of this recently and took another look around. The consensus I see everywhere I look is that modern gunpowder is not a reasonable thing to make without extensive expertise (professional chemist at least) and equipment (laboratory level).
Before discussing this, read at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder#Manufacturing to familiarize yourself with the process.
Short version of why it's dangerous, several intermediate products in the creation of modern gunpowder combust violently on mere exposure to air. Extensive measures are required to keep this from happening.
In order for this to be a recipe the player can use, it needs to either be reworked to require the level of expertise and equipment necessary to perform it without significant risk of explosion, OR it needs to have that risk of explosion. Separate safe and dangerous recipes would be perfectly fine.
If there is a recipe that a player can reasonably use on a hotplate, or similar improvised equipment, please link to a source describing the equipment and process required.