What is everyone's opinion on biocoded weapons?

[KalkiKrosah]

1.1 introduced them, its not tied to the royalty DLC content. Essentially a biocoded weapon can only be used by one person, generally some invader. So in order for you to make use of that biocoded weapon you need to recruit the owner as well. Minor inconvenience when its a smoke launcher or a machine pistol, but could be infuriating if its a doomsday rocket launcher your sniper got for you with their expert headshot. Do you guys like this change? Do you think its fair and adds depth to the game in any way?

[Rooty Tooty]

Tynen did many things like sappers going around killboxes, infestations digging into your own bases. Drop pods in the middle of your bases. In the royalty dlc they add things like Mecanoid clusters where you have to assult a defensive position on your own territory. As well as ship crash were you have to defend outside of your killbox. Don't forget adding the ship launch ending were you have to survive an onslot of raids for 15 days. Saying that Ludeon is never trying to fix core issues is misleading. They can't just figure out new inventive things all the time. So they ballence out some things where people exploit and gain tons of money

[Wolfguarde]

I never said they're not trying to fix issues, I said they're trying to apply solutions that don't address the problems. Ludeon has a clear issue with people being able to cheese raids, but rather than make the raids themselves more complex or difficult, they instead prefer to nerf pretty much everything else. Emergent gameplay is best addressed by rolling it into the game, as opposed to punishing people for it.

[Omega Epsilon]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Smelly Fish in a Hazmat Suit:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Omega_Epsilon:

Yeah they don't have any monetary value, can be smelted into metal, main problem is, I don't wanna see an industrial era pump action shotgun biocoded, seems like the charge would have that, but industrial and under should not, maybe instead of a shady Biocoded explanation its, "Oh in the battle It got shot ruining the weapon" or maybe, "The gun was about to break just that those raiders used the last shots," and to emphasize this the gun will have a really low health affecting both price and accuracy.

There is a guy who made a gun with a fingerprint lock so "biocoding" for industrial weapons could just be renamed for something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueZubd_S2o

Yeah rename it fingerpring locked and it might work, but they did it because they have the tech, I doubt a pirate band will have the tech and know how to do something like that kid, mainly they are more concerned with killing a person then if the gun gets taken, but then again I ain't no expert in survival. Maybe make industrial down fingerprint locked where it can be undone, but biocoded and up can't be undone.

[Jigain]

I mean, you can get weapons from quests that get biocoded to the pawn you assign to equip it. Why is it so outlandish to believe pirates also can acquire the same stuff? Either by actually doing assignments for the Empire or just by raiding and stealing them.

[The Last Helldiver™]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Jigain:

I mean, you can get weapons from quests that get biocoded to the pawn you assign to equip it. Why is it so outlandish to believe pirates also can acquire the same stuff? Either by actually doing assignments for the Empire or just by raiding and stealing them.

Considering pirates will raid anything not bolted to the floor, this is likely.

Corruption, black arms dealers, "making extra on the side" etc is also not unheard of.
From a lore standpoint, it could even be a group of people that started out just like you did, then over "creative differences" decided to start ransacking everyone and everything.

[Morkonan]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Wolfguarde:

I never said they're not trying to fix issues, I said they're trying to apply solutions that don't address the problems. Ludeon has a clear issue with people being able to cheese raids, but rather than make the raids themselves more complex or difficult, they instead prefer to nerf pretty much everything else. Emergent gameplay is best addressed by rolling it into the game, as opposed to punishing people for it.

^--- This.

I took the plunge and finally updated to 1.2. Why? Why do that when 1.0 was just friggin' fine? I dunno, I'm stoopid I guess...

Biocoded weapons are what I refer to a "hamfisted" developer tactic. Further, they are in the game for no practical or worthy gameplay or progression reason. None. They "seem to be" there to solve a problem that exists only in the mind of the person who insisted there was a "problem."

I just don't get it...

I do not understand the mindset of someone who decides they are going to fiddle with something that is not "broken." What that sort of person is doing isn't fixing something, but willing to endanger the functionality of something only in order to put their own mark on it or to fulfill some desire that is usually incompatible with the continuing function of said "thing."

As far as I have seen in my few hours of 1.2 play so far, "Biocoded Weapons" have no further functionality in game mechanics other than to increase the threat of Raids. There are no secondary or tertiary mechanics that combine with that item attribute to enhance or progress a different play mechanic. Even capturing a Raider "because" they have a biocoded weapon isn't worth the inclusion of that in the game - It's just another "risk" element added to pump up the drama.

If, let's say, one could use biocoded weapons in another game mechanic to then gain an affix or attribute or unique "thing" that can't be gained in any other way, one could say that game mechanic enhances or adds to gameplay, so it has some justification.

As it is, as I have experienced it in 1.2 without Royalty... it's just a case of someone hamfisting a solution to a problem that didn't exist in the first place just because they wanted to poke something with their own stick.

"Royalty DLC Note:" I have read that with the Royalty DLC, there's a mechanic that allows a colonist to "bond with" a Biocoded Weapon. If so, then that's another hamfisted attempt... This time, at pushing DLC. "Naow u can uz teh kool weepons if u by teh DLC omgolz!" Shameful and desperate.

General: There are issues in 1.2 that I feel are not balanced for new players. And, I feel that the intent is to... make the game more difficult, overall. All that does is push players out to the Workshop. "Difficutly" in Rimworld these days is an outright "choice" that Ludeon can not work around. They'll "increase gameplay difficulty" all the way to alienating new players. 1.0 was just fine as it was in those terms.

PS: Sure, I don't like it when someone messes around with whatever my "favorite thing" happens to be. However, there's an issue here that bears considering and, more importantly, needs some very serious... looking at - How much can a developer continue to wonk around with developing a game after it's release before they get to a point where the game the player originally purchased is no longer that game? And, what are the rights of the consumer in regards to having "their game" changed to the point of it being something they may not have purchased? This is a Modern World issue and needs consideration for all PC/Console games in general, not just Rimworld.

[Hykal]

Biocoded weapons serve one very important purpose: it keeps the wealth value low.

Ten raiders with pistols attack your base. You kill them with your charge rifles and miniguns and the weapons do nothing because you've outgrown them. It raises the colony wealth just a bit. Not much but a lot in the long run.

Ten raiders with pistols attack your base but half of their pistols are Biocoded. They die but half of the pistols are worthless save for being smelted. This keeps the colony wealth low and does address the problem of high level raids bringing high value loot but you don't use them.

You clearly haven't gotten your hand on the player persona weapons and don't understand them. A persona weapon, in the past, was a weapon that bonded to your pawn and only your one pawn. A persona monosword, plasmas word, zeushammer are stronger versions of those vanilla weapons and are, barring a doomsday, the strongest weapons in the game.

This makes the pawn, and the weapon it has, very very valuable. In the event the pawn dies, the weapon becomes useless, and makes it so finding a revival serum much more enticing. You want your pawn back not because he was the colony's best grower, but JUSTICE BRINGER is just there gathering dust. It fits the storyteller goal that Tynan wants.

What you may not know that these persona weapons have personalities of their own. One may give your extra psyfocus after a kill, another makes you angry after a long while without killing. One may bring happy thoughts and another may bring sad thoughts. There's a list on the wiki.

So not only are persona weapons the lightsabers of the game, they also are characters in themselves.

I galk at Biocoded weapons when they were first introduced, but as the game gets patched and upgraded, I came to value them for what they bring.

[Supahz]

Biocoding is an interesting concept, but it's irritating, and it usually doesn't affect my game at all. Getting silver is easy. Once you have silver, getting weapons is easy. At early stages, it's harder to get quality weapons, but not very far down the road it becomes commonplace.

If biocoding is supposed to serve towards game balance, it seems like a waste of time. "Weapon value" is a very small part of what makes my colony wealthy. I doubt that weapon value has much of an effect weighed against everything else (i.e. tech advances allow the creation of many items far more valuable, and usually not too far into the game).

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Hykal:

You clearly haven't gotten your hand on the player persona weapons and don't understand them.

"Clearly". I have no idea what that is. Not everyone has the DLC... which I have zero interest in because of the subject matter. This is not relevant for a (probably large) number of us.

[The Rabid Otter]

Is there a way to remove biocoding from captured weapons? Or can we break down captured weapons for scrap? I thought we could only melt down weapons into scrap in the smelter...

[Hykal]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από The Rabid Otter:

Is there a way to remove biocoding from captured weapons?

No.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Supahz:

"Clearly". I have no idea what that is. Not everyone has the DLC... which I have zero interest in because of the subject matter. This is not relevant for a (probably large) number of us.

Morkonan whined and mocked the concept of persona weapons as they have no idea how it worked. If you don't own Royalty, it has no effect on you and is therefore irrelevant. Why are you quoting this, when I am also, very clearly, replying to Morkonan?

Treat biocoded weapon as scrap material. That's all. It's not a big issue as people make it out to be.

[The Rabid Otter]

@Hykal TYVM. Just checking. Evidently I can smelt them down but not disassemble them for components.

Anyone know of a mod that lets us disassemble weapons, preferably also including biocodedones, for part of their components?