Ammo for the stun baton/chainsaw

[Limdood]

So, two unrelated thoughts/issues that have a very very similar solution:

 

1) the stun baton is quite lacking in damage, and performs among the very lowest of the melee weapons while at the same time not having ANY higher or lower tier options. It could use a bit of love.

 

2) the chainsaw is an ICONIC zombie-trope melee superweapon that utterly calls short of the mark in 7dtd gameplay as a weapon.

 

Solution?

 

alternate swings with ammo usage.

 

Keep the primary action of both items roughly the same.

 

Make the secondary action of each item an ammo-consuming special attack.

 

For the stun baton, give it ammo. Make it electricity. "reloading" the stun baton can drain some of a car battery into the baton in order to give it electric charge (no going the other way and "unloading" charge...batteries can already be recharged in a powered battery bank, which fits beautifully with the intelligence tree and theme). Make the secondary action consume 3 or 4 or 5 "charge" and AUTOMATICALLY launch an electricity attack. Make the primary action the normal swing that exists now, but instead of a certain number of entity hits fully charging your baton, each entity hit with primary action gives you 1 charge.

 

This makes the stun baton MORE powerful if you load charges in with the battery....capable of chaining electric attacks together, but using up "ammo." BUT the stun baton would still work roughly as it does now (except no power attack)...you could charge it up like you normally do with primary action attacks (and even overcharge it to be able to chain some electric attacks together), but now you'd have full control over when you release the electricity...you know...as you already should.

 

 

 

For the chainsaw, again, primary attack works exactly as it already does....the pulse, 1-gas-use to deal the small damage it already does.

 

For the secondary attack, a powerful, high dismemberment-chance, stamina-using swing that uses 10 gas (or whatever number TFP decides is fair). You know, like in the movies - SWINGING the chainsaw through the target and dealing brutal damage and lopping off limbs. (yes, I know there is no real correlation to swinging the chainsaw and using ten times more gas, but it would be a significantly powerful attack, and it should have a corresponding cost..."ammo" seems the most suitable). This makes the chainsaw into an iconic, but maybe not ultimate (since it wouldn't be perked), melee weapon that players at mid-late or end-game can use for "smash the door" style play when they have the resources to maintain the playstyle.

 

 

 

 

TL;DR - seriously? It's the suggestions forum. To have a valid suggestion it'll need to be thought-out, reasoned, and explained, which, in this case, means reading the whole thing is kinda mandatory.

[Stahl]

Wouldn't a better solution be just buff their entity damage.

[Limdood]

Wouldn't a better solution be just buff their entity damage.

 

which, in the case of the stun baton would make it a flat-copy of the club. If you look at all the various melee weapons, they all do wildly different amounts of damage per swing, damage per second, etc. - but each one has it's niche. Except the stun baton really, since the knockdown effect on the club and sledge does the same crowd control, with more damage. My aim was to make the baton more relevant as well as making it unique and thematically appropriate with the other "tech-y" INT tree stuff.

 

In the case of the chainsaw, buffing entity damage would either keep it useless or catapult it into unstoppably OP. With the crazy fast attack speed of the primary action on the chainsaw, there is no middle ground. You either trickle damage in while getting hit, or do enough damage to perma-stagger and quick-kill