Hello again! :)

Let me bring up my (subjective) gripe with the early stage weapons:


If I don't have a spaceship wreck near by and/or if the first few rounds of scavenging don't produce (enough) scrap metal for a trap-maze, I'm dead. I need 20 fabric, 20 scrap to research weapons, and then a few more to craft bows and spears.
Depending on the difficulty and planet, I may only have 3 days to have a functioning maze. (Insane / Chaos difficulty)

Suggestion: Let me craft sharpened sticks. Less damage than a spear, less durability, but gives me a fighting chance.


I like the resource concept behind these guns - scrap metal for a (s)crap weapon - but right now, they just don’t hold up as viable tools in a world where survivors can craft compound bows and advanced machinery.


Gameplay-wise, the blunderbuss is worse than the compound bow:

Less than half the range

3x slower fire rate

Even a combat 10 survivor only hits ~60%, while the basic bow hits up to 80%, and the compound bow would be at 99%.

In a testfight with 6 survivors vs. 2 Junos it’s tactically better to kite with bows. The blunderbuss misses too often and fires too slowly to justify its use, even at close range.

Lore-wise, crafting a compound bow (cams, pulleys, machined parts) implies a level of engineering that makes muzzle-loading weapons absurdly outdated. If I can build a compound bow, I can absolutely rig up a crude iron sight or reticle to make the blunderbuss hit something reliably.

Right now, these guns are not upgrades, mostly due to their low firing speed and accuracy. As far as I can tell they are also not "shotgunny" like the pulse rifle or automatic shotgun much later.

I understand that I don't NEED to learn archery to build firearms (I think?) but the very low resource requirements for compound weaponry makes this almost mandatory, so I have to compare the Tier1 firearms with compound weapons.

I don't really have a solution. From history, a skilled crossbow archer can fire 3-4 shots per minute, a cartridge loaded scrap weapon should be able to fire off a round just as fast.

So maybe that? considerably faster (6-8 seconds?) firing time, much higher accuracy - 65-80% perhaps.

Coach gun as the next logical upgrade should be 5-7 seconds, much higher damage (to simulate the "double shotgun").
Both weapons should have a damage cone, especially the coach gun, if I already create grapeshot cartridges for it.

This will be even more skewed when I consider the powered bow / crossbow, which are also easier to craft. Or rather, they are faster to craft. I don't need to ferment, I just need to find electronics - a given with the wrecks around.


Overall, I feel, either firearms / modern bows coexist as sidegrades to each other, or they get more distinct roles.
Maybe you only craft shotguns until your machining becomes good enough for rifled barrels? I don't think, for example, a wood-powered furnace could realistically craft the steel to make a bolt-rifle barrel?

Happy to discuss!

Based off of your feedback, I'm going to add base tier weapons that don't require scrap metal/metal, and they'll be available right off the bat with no research needed. A stone spear, wooden club, and if I can get it to work right, a stone sling that functions like the grenades do in that you initiate a manual throw. The sling would just affect a single target and would briefly stun. Damage for all of them would be real lousy against robots (with the club being better), but still better than nothing.

Top of my head thoughts on how to resolve the Musket/Blunderbuss issues while keeping them fairly historically accurate:

Muskets will get a range and damage increase, as that was one of their big advantages to bows and crossbows. They shot farther and hit harder, being able to pierce armor. They were also terribly inaccurate and took a long time to reload just based off of how they functioned. In 16th to early 19th century war, it was basically a long line of soldiers doing an ancient version of "spray and pray" since hitting your target often involved more luck than aim until proper long rifles with barrel groves came along.

So, those elements still need to remain in a way that doesn't make them comparatively worthless to bows and crossbows, and I think having them one-hit kill early enemies from better range will do the trick. I could institute a short stun period on impact for those that do survive as well to compensate for the longer reload times.

Similarly the Blunderbuss is an ancient spray and pray weapon with very long reload times, but with the shorter range cone damage of shotgun types as that was it's function back then. Since that differentiates it from bows and crossbows for overall damage and crowd control, it shouldn't need larger changes, but I'll review it so it's useful for the early game. All shotgun types have cone damage set, but the cone ranges may need tweaking if the early ones aren't doing their job effectively for their tier.

Regarding the Powered Bow/Crossbow from NET, that's something that was already on my list. You can just easily leap to that once you find scrap electronics, and not even bother with Gunpowder weapons for a while which will largely be inferior until you get to tier 3. Some ideas are to move it to OET (makes more sense there to be honest), change it to be crafted at the Soldering Station instead thus requiring power, and change it to require Electronics to have been researched rather than just being discovered. Requiring a tier of Ballistics to be researched is also an option, but it's also nonsensical since they don't use gunpowder.

Love the T0 sticks & stones! Great addition.

But why are Tier 1 firearms tied to historical accuracy in a sci-fi survival setting?

Your survivors aren’t roleplaying as 18th-century French line infantry, they’re smart engineers stuck on an alien world. If I can craft cams and tension systems for a compound bow, I can absolutely weld a crude reticle onto a pipe gun. Think Stargate SG-1 crash-landing: they’d build what works. Historical accuracy wouldn’t even enter the conversation.

So here’s a thought:


Increase fire rate and accuracy (and spread..I didn't notice any, but I only tested it twice)

Reduce damage, make them effective only against those flying insects.

Gives them a niche where bows underperform, especially before pulse rifles or shotguns are available


Slow-firing, decent accuracy

Heavy single-target damage, high stagger

Overkill against hatchlings, but makes first Junos or Brood Queens much less of a panic moment

The damage, firing rate and accuracy of the bolt action rifle and shotgun is already outclassing bows.

Maybe tiny explosive tips or poison? the electronic component make it easier to fire with the difficult to aim arrows.


Not every weapon needs to be a linear upgrade — but each one does need a role.

Right now, there are lots of options, but many don’t justify their build time or resources. Especially in the early game, time is everything — and if I can craft three bows in the time it takes to build one blunderbuss, I’ll take the bows every time.

Make firearms slower to get, sure. Make them harder to maintain, fine.
But when they come online, there has to be a clear, noticeable advantage over easier alternatives — otherwise they’ll just keep gathering dust.

Happy to test or keep brainstorming if it helps!

Since there's plenty of other old timey basics in vanilla that need to be researched in order for colonists to use them, including basic bow and spear weapons, food fermentation, coffee, etc., I think it's makes sense within the game's logic to have figure out old timey weapons and then ramp up to more advanced tech.These just fill in a logical gap between those basic bows/spears and then tech stuff, which is it's intended purpose, and the linear upgrade path is more fun IMO.

Without getting too much into historical accuracy nitty gritty, adding sights or reticles onto muskets and blunderbusses wouldn't make a difference. The way they were made inherently makes them inaccurate even if you, as the wielder, had perfect aim.

Shotgun/pulse class weapons are all already pretty effective at anti-air/anti-swarm weapons. The Blunderbuss/Coach Gun, as early shotguns, will be significantly better at that role now with the recent buffs (the damage was actually just straight up way too low towards organics on accident), but still inferior to the Pump Action Shotgun as intended.

The Musket is now more in line with an early big-game killer as you recommend. If it hits, it will likely one-hit kill weaker organic enemies and do okay against robots. There's also a small chance to one-hit kill organics regardless of enemy strength on a successful critical hit.

The Powered Bow/X-box got some changes so you can't leap right into it and skip other tech/weapons like before. It now requires the Soldering Station to craft (and thus up and running power and Electronics research completed), and also a power cell. That way if you do leap, it's still a steeper climb and you're unlikely to have a bunch of power cells lying around at that point unless you're playing Guardians.

Anywho, really appreciate all your feedback and suggestions! Let me know what you think once you've done a playthrough with those changes I made last night.

Loving the stonespear and club. This will make surving the first wave doable.

With that said, I tested it:

I have 5 survivors with combat 8-10: 1 scavenged pulse rifle, 3 compound bows, 1 powered bow. I have 125 flying insects, 30 bloated and 3 Juno attacking me in 6 hours, I don't have turrets yet, so I can't turtle in.
With some kiting and micromanagement I managed to kill them off with some minor injuries.

Replacing 2 bows with 2 coach guns I get overwhelmed with 42 flyying and 11 bloating overrunning me, probably because the coachgun lacks applicable damage.

Both guns have the same range as pistols, and more range than the pulse gun (15m), which I feel is off. Reducing the range (10m? 7m?) and increasing the accuracy to reflect the fact that you really can't miss anything at such a range if you just point it in the general direction would make them probably more feasible as point-blank system.

Musket will be nice as a singular big game killer, so I'll have 1 scavenged pulse rifle, 3 bows and 1 musket.

Food for thought: any chance to have *ANY* 4 weapons from T1 as resource req? In particular, I feel a musket is the more logical predecessor of the next rifle. Or maybe 2 of each? 2 coach, 2 cartridged muskets.

I'll noodle on your thought for the blunderbuss and coach gun.

Both attack flying enemies with the same damage as organics on the ground, so they should be doing good damage to or flat out killing those weaker Hummingflies.

My logic for the range being longer than the pulse rifle 1.0 is the projectiles would travel further than base tier pulse energy, and also as compensation for the accuracy being low. If it were up to me, I'd have the accuracy scale based on how close the enemies are to you, but unfortunately that's not a mechanic the Mod Editor allows currently in an easy fashion. That said, it might be possible with some Lua Code and a Reaction entry, but those are tied to survivor traits and not to weapon objects...I'll look into it. Could potentially have our cake and eat it too. Good inspo!

For the Ballistics T2 Research requirement I'm going to change it to two Cartridge Muskets and two Coach Guns, which just makes more sense and follows the logic of the other upgrades. That's a holdover from when I was getting the weapon nomenclature standardized as it was a bit all over the place and easy to confuse what was what, especially on the backend. Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to do variables where you can have any amount of specific items or resources for crafting or research costs, they're hard set to need a fixed amount of a fixed resource/item.