(5/3/2012): Added concept arts by me, I am doing the concept art for fun, and might be doing them for all fighter types, as I have realized this thread lacked pictures. I also added shop system for a way to make gold coins for shopping at villages and hiring fighters. (4/28/2012): Added NPC village types. And:
It should Change the limit on number of testificates that can be in a house. I find it stupid that they all crowd into one house in one corner playing with one door. There should be a limit to the amount of testificates per house, e.g. testificates will not hide in a house that already has 3 testificates inside. This way you need to build more houses.
Also uploaded a pictures. More pictures to come.
(4/27/2012): Added weapon/armor stalls. Tell me if it is good. Servant mobile storage is removed, because I prefer pull carts as mobile storage. (3/x/2012): There should be outlaw testificate camps scattered throughout minecraft. These camps have chests and a campfire.
You can kill them for loot or hire them. If you open their chest without killing or hiring them, they will attack you.
"Day in and day out, we are attacked by literally stinking zombies. If its not the physical hits that kills you, its their stinking stench. Every morning, rotten meats litter the streets. Someone has got to get rid of them. We can't just keep hiding in our homes and squeezing a clothespin against our nostrils. Not to mention the children, think of the children! Nancy's daughter was butchered by a zed last night! We have had enough, we need to rise up in arms! I find it funny how our ancestors never thought of fighting back." -Andy, the Mayor of Testificate Town.
I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that testificates are supposed to be pacifist. Well yes they generally are, a great percentage as a matter of fact in the case of this suggestion. However, some testificates will take up arms. They are non-pacifist, which include outlaws and testificate fighters who defend villages along with iron golems.
Onto the Suggestion:
Firstly, dual wielding should be universal in the game by now, then here is my suggestion for what comes next:
I want testificate warriors you can hire with gold, thus you get testificate warriors AND a new use for gold as currency with testificates.
Since gold is rare, I decided to make it such that there is a shop option. You can chop down woods to sell to villagers for gold coins. You can also craft gold coins with gold ingots, by smelting them in the furnace. Each gold ingot makes 10 gold coins. So every time I say X gold ingots in my post, I mean multiples of 10 gold coins. E.g., 7-10 gold ingots is equal to 70 to 100 gold coins.
So, this suggestion makes use of the renewable ore resource of gold, which drops from zombies, which spawns infinitely, and it also adds new enthusiasm to the game.
Basically, in order to hire them, you would smelt gold ore into gold ingots.
When hiring, you approach a testificate warrior with gold ingots, then right click on a testificate warrior using gold coin as if you were to try to tame a wolf or tame a cat.
After hiring a testificate warrior, it will behave like tamed animals by following you around and teleporting to you when you get too far away from it.
Also, I am also advocating for humanoid NPC different from testificates. I am not saying to take out testificates, but it woul dbe cool to have human NPCs that can have conspicous gender differences. You can have female or male mercenaries.
The specifics:
Village Type:
None of these locations may be within, let's say, a certain hundred blocks of each other.
Testificate Stronghold:
Testificate strongholds are basically testificate villages surrounded by a cobblestone fortress. Chances of testificate/NPC fighters appearing there are increased.
The rarity of Testificate Strongholds are rarer than the rarity of testificate villages. Testificate strongholds have at least 15 villagers.
Inside the the stronghold are at least 2 iron type fighters you can hire, along with one stone golem, which is because the village population is at least 15.
Testificate Outpost:
These are made up of a watch tower, a small patch of farmland, and one or two houses. Furthermore, the houses are surrounded by a small wall of cobblestone or fence. The area of testificate outposts are general about 15 blocks by 15 blocks. You will always find at least one testificate fighter, equipped with leather armor and wooden swords or bows, at the outpost.
Outposts are signs that you are close to a testificate Stronghold. Strongholds are usually 500 blocks away from an outpost.
Testificate outposts comes with 1 or 2 regular villagers. You can expand testificate outposts like you expand a testificate village.
Outlaw Camp:
These are camps of outlaw testificates. They won't attack you unless you try to open their chest or attack them. They are surronded by small tents and at the middle is a fireplace. There are chests underneath a small wooden roof (made of stairs), supported by fences.
Within the chests at outlaw camps will always contain at least one gold ingot, and other rubbish.
These outlaws can be hired. Outlaws usually have crappy equipments. They wear leather armor and wooden to stone swords or bows.
The rarity of outlaw camps are rarer than regular testificate villages.
Furthermore, the new item "fireplace" can be crafted by the player. You craft it by surrounding the middle space with sticks. Then you put it down, use flint and steel to light it, and the fireplace will light forever.
Types:
Armor types (the defense is the same given as when the player wears these armors):
1. Leather armored testificate/NPC mercenary: 4 gold ingots
2. Iron armored testificate/NPC mercenary: 6 gold ingots randomly (much like taming wolves or cats)
3. Diamond armored Testificate/NPC Champion (rare encounter): 10 gold ingots.
Weapon types (partially inspired by battlegear mod, and please implement dual wielding for the player too!):
1. Archer: Low HP, low attack speed, medium damage, greater range. It Behaves much like skeleton archers and has infinite arrows: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
2. Sword/axe and shield: greater HP, medium attack speed, and medium damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
Here is a drawing:
3. One handed sword/axe: Low HP, greater attack speed, and medium damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
4. Two handed sword/axe: medium HP, low attack speed, and greater damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
Crushing type: Extra damage against skeletons.
5. Sword/axe dual wielder: Medium HP, greater attack speed, medium damage: +2 to 3 gold ingot to armor type.
6. Spearficate/spearman: Medium HP, medium attack speed, medium damage, medium ranged type. +2 to 3 gold ingots to armor type.
Mercenaries are more likely to spawn in hard mode, then in normal mode, and more likely to spawn in normal mode than in easy mode. Mercenaries spawn rarely in peaceful mode.
In normal mode:
Wooden mercenaries: common, max 3-4, per 15 testificates. About 1 per 5 testificates. Iron mercenaries: rare, max 1-2 per village, per 15 testificates. About 1 per 10 testificates Diamond champion/heroes: very rare, max 1per village, per 15 testificates.
And the rarity decreases in all 3 categories in hard mode, and increases for easy to peaceful mode.
Furthermore, +0 more gold ingots if weapons are made of wood or leather, +1 more gold ingot for iron weapons, and +3 more gold ingot for diamond weapons.
You increase the probability of mercenaries spawning by building barracks. A barrack is defined by a door, with a room containing weapon stalls and armor stalls. You can craft weapon/armor stalls at the crafting table. Weapon/armor stalls can be used by the player to store weapons. You don't need to select weapons/armors from weapon/armor stalls like you do from a chest. The player simply right click a weapon/armor stall, and the player gets the weapon in his inventory.
Testificate villagers will sometimes convert into a fighter. It will take a weapon randomly from your weapon stalls. In your barrack. This will only have a chance of happening if the testificate stays at the barrack for a night.
Weapon/armor stalls are also used for decoration. You can also put pickaxes, shovels, hoes, and axes on it.
Dying:
After a fighter you hired dies, they will drop their items and disappear. Afterwards, there is a higher percentage chance of that fighter type respawning in the village you hired it from, which you can hire again.
Interactions with player :
The player can improve the armor of the testifiate warriors by manually "feeding" weapons and armor types to the mercenaries.
-If the mercenary wears wooden or leather armors and weapons, the player can upgrade it by making iron equipments and "feeding" the testificate, like you would tame a wolf or cat, and the equipment will change.
-The mercenary drops the item not being switched off.
-When a mercenary dies, it will drop its equipments. The equipment will have decreased its durability depending on how many times the mercenary was hit.
Signs of low health:
-The player can heal the mercenary, like they heal ingured wolves, by feeding them cooked food. Red specks of blood and chipped/tathered armor denote injured mercenaries.
Movement/behavior:
-Change the limit on number of testificates that can be in a house. I find it stupid that they all crowd into one house in one corner playing with one door. There should be a limit to the amount of testificates per house, e.g. testificates will not hide in a house that already has 3 testificates inside. This way you need to build more houses.
-When a fighter/mercenary's HP is low, It will usually run into a nearby house. So make sure you build a house for your mercenaries near your own house, so they can hide.
-The mercenary will stand still when right clicked just like right click wolves or cats to sit. This is only particuarly useful for archers and soso for spearmans during combat, but not for melee units.
-The mercenaries will target any creature that you aggravated or is coming after you, so you don't have to make the first hit them to have the mercenaries fight. I don't know the game mechanics, and so I am not sure if this will work, but I have a backup:
-If the former targeting system doesn't work, we can probably have the mercenaries to attack mobs that are hostile and certain blocks away from them.
-When attacking creepers, the creepers won't blow up near the mercenaries, they will still only blow up near the player.
-Rest is the same as tamed cats or wolves. E.g., hired fighters teleports to you when they are following you and you are too far away.
Epic things to do:
-Did you ever notice how empty your castle walls are? Well how about positioning some of your testificate fighters there? Like a boss...
-Fending off zombie invasions
-Once you have hired enough mercenaries, the overworld becomes boring because you might have become too powerful, but there is the netherworld and the world of the ender dragons and enderman, and this also includes future mobs and challenges that you can overcome with your mini-army!
-Maybe goblins are yet to be implemented, and if they are hostile, we can raid their villages with our mini-army.
Extras
-Golems have ranged attacks, they can hurl boulders at enemies too far away, but it will run towards an enemy not too far away. This makes it easier for it to fight flying enderdragons. The melee units can fend off waves of enderman, while ranged units can hit dragons.
-Having a mini-army sounds fun, but gold is moderately rare, so it will take some time before you can get a few good mercenaries. If you equip the mercenaries yourself, you will have to spend iron and diamond to give them better equipments, which also takes time to find. So hopefully this gives it more balance.
-The player does not keep track of the amount of gold ingots to use. The player simply has to bring a lot of ingots and "feed" it to a mercenary like they tame wolves or cats, which accept random numbers of bones and fishes.
If you have any ideas or suggestions you want to point out or to improve upon what I have here, feel free to reply.
Hi moderator, I updated my section on muskets and bayonets: (4/24/2012): Types of pellets added, and new alchemy. (4/22/2012): Interruption of ranged weapons, see below. (4/21/2012): Musket butting at range of 2x>range>0x, where x is the range of the sword. 2x is the only effective range of bayonet. Read suggestion for full specifications. Also decreased approximate reloading time of muskets. (4/20/2012): Bayonet melee specified further below. (4/19/2012): Added alchemy as power ups for ammunitions. (4/18/2012): Added new things
Some ideas for guns, but should not be considered the ultimate solution:
I am advocating muskets as a different style of combat.
Why should gun be added instead of any other weapon? Well what other infantry weapon can you add that existed around the same time that the bow was massively used as a range weapon? Crossbow comes to mind, but that is too similar to the bow. What other candidate than the gun for a more different combat style?
Napoleon had greater firing power, greater numbers, and thus greater rates of fire. But when he tried to invade Spain, as I recall, guerilla militia of Spain, units armed with muskets or some other weaponry, inflicted heavier casualties upon Napoleon through guerilla warfare. Same thing happened in the Vietnam war, although casualties might be different. I am using history, as basis for the guerilla warfare style of musket and bayonet, which although slow, as proven in history, can still be fatal when one uses it tactically.
Throughout history, the most different ranged infantry weapon, from the bow, around the medieval era (circa 500 A.C.E to 1500 A.C.E)was the gun, which was not used widely. So it makes sense, that a different weapon style should be of the gun. No other infantry weapon existed, that was different from the bow beyond that of a crossbow (I am not saying crossbows should not be added).
There is a reason why bows and guns exist in the real world, which is because of their different uses.
Bow and arrows are least effective in close encounters, such as in caves which is because they require to be drawn back, and does not have a way to deal melee damage, so you always have to carry a sword. When it comes to guns, it doesn't mean it has have to be more OP than the bow, it can be a different style of fighting.
I will also be using x as the range of the sword or knock back rates relative to another item, and any multiple of x are only suggested magnitudes and not strictly imposed as the ultimate outcome of the musket and bayonet, because this is up to the person who writes the algorithms for mine craft.
Styles of Fighting:
Style 1: Use sword and bow
Advantages:
-Cheaper to make
-Because it is cheaper than the musket-bayonet, it is best for grinding mobs.
-Most suitable for open terrain combat, e.g, plains and deserts.
Disadvantages
-Swords and bows don't stack with another, so takes up more space.
-Need to search inventory for bow or sword to switch between melee and bow.
Style 2: Use musket and bayonet.
Advantages:
-Requires less inventory space than sword and bow, because bayonets are attached to the musket.
-Can change between melee and range very fast with left mouse(jabs bayonet) or right mouse(shoots bullet).
-With more room, you can have one more stack of cobblestone in your inventory during mining, so this style is especially suited for combat during mining.
-Most suitable for non-open terrain combat, e.g., forests and narrow caves.
Disadvantages:
-Bullets require iron and gunpowder.
Interruption Mechanics(First suggested by AnonTheMouse):
A player using a ranged weapon can be interrupted based on the amount of damage done. The higher the damage, the greater the chance of interruption. Interruption causes the ranged weapon to go back to before-drawn-mode for bow, so as to have to draw the bow again. For muskets, if a musketeer is interrupted during reload, then the musketeer has to reload again.
Because bows fire faster than muskets, it seems unfair because bows can continuously interrupt musketeers trying to reload on open terrain combat, and leaving the musketeer almost no chance to reload. To balance this, interruption would then be based off of damage dealt from a single attack, where the higher the damage, the higher the chance of interruption. Since muskets do 2x the damage of bows, they have a higher chance of interruption per shot, but because bows can deal more attacks per time, they get chances to interrupt based on number of shots, while muskets get to interrupt based on attack power of shots. This allows both combat styles to have a chance on any terrain, even the ones where they are at a disadvantage.
Furthermore, melee weapons will always (100%) interrupt ranged drawing of bow or reloading of musket.
The Bayonet:
You don't have to reload to use the bayonet, so once you knock back a creeper with your shot, you can jab it with the range on the bayonet, without having to reload yet. You can reload after you killed the creeper.
Bayonets will have 2x the range of the sword, because muskets designs are long, but does less damage than a sword.
The bayonet can be made of wood, stone, iron or diamond. You can attach to a musket by combining the bayonet with the musket on a crafting table.
The bayonet will break after a certain amount of uses with it attached to the musket. You can repair the musket with a new bayonet by combing the musket with a new bayonet at the crafting table.
If your rifle has its bayonet broken during combat, your melee mode switches to rifle butting, which is still the left click of the mouse just like left clicking to attack with bayonet. This is until you get a new bayonet.
Bayonets have longer usage times because it is smaller than the sword, which makes it more compact.
The bayonet does 0.5 the knock back distance of a sword. Sword will not be useless because it does more damage. During PVP, If you can hide behind an obstacle, such that people cannot attack through walls, you effectively have the higher dps when you fight around obstacles. Imagine yourself in a cave, 2x distance of bayonet is useless if the person being hit is against a wall, so that person using a sword can kill the guy who is using a bayonet due to higher dps.
Further more, a bayonet can only hit players or mobs 2 blocks away from them. If a mob or player is within 0x<range<2x where x is the range of sword, or if the mob or player is at a range>2x, then the bayonet won't be able to hit the player or mob. The bayonet only hits mobs or players at a block distance of range equal to 2x the sword. So it takes some skill to use a bayonet.
Had I removed the range requirement of bayonet to be exactly at 2x of the sword, then no sword user can ever have a chance against bayonet users. I have argued with someone about this matter. I conceded that this would be unfair to sword users, so I constraint bayonet range to be at 2x of sword. With the use of musket butting in 2x>range>0x, sword users have a chance to do 4x the damage done by musket butts during an exchange of hits at close range. If bayonets worked on 2x>range>0x, sword users cannot have a chance to out damage bayonets, because they would be constantly knocked back. But, through skillful maneuver, when the sword user was to come below 2x range of bayonet, the sword user can hit the bayonet user, dealing 2x the damage of bayonets or 4x damage of musket butt to ensure sword users a chance to out damage bayonets using skill. Then in that range, the musket butting comes in, that is if the sword user ever closed in the range on the first place to deal 2x damage of bayonet, or 4x damage of musket butting. This is also because bayonets are supposed to be doing 0.5x damage of sword, and to decrease that damage to compensate for sword users, I put musket butting as attack that does 0.25x of sword at 2x>range>0x. This also adds more features and animations to minecraft.
Musket Butting:
At a range of 2x>range>0x, where bayonet is ineffective, musket butting would automatically used as melee. Musket butting would also occur when you do not have a bayonet attached at a range of 2x. Butting does 0.25x the damage of the sword, but does the 1x the knock back of the sword. If you move back and rifle butt at the same time, you would be approximately at a range far enough to damage the opponent with bayonet. Then the opponent would be forced to use a bow, so now the musket man hides to reload.
The musket:
Musket bullets will be LESS affected by gravity per distance traveled because of higher projectile speed.
Musket bullets can be retrieved as iron bullets stuck on the ground, unless it hits the mob or goes off too far away. Gunpowder is still consumed because it is ignited to propel the iron bullet. After the mob dies, they drop your iron bullets you shot them with, because iron is not renewable and uncommon, unlike flint, wood and feather, which are all renewable for arrows of bow.
A musket and bayonet DOES NOT have to be drawn back like a bow, you just press a trigger for instantaneous fire. At the same time you can melee. The only downfall is like the realistic counterpart in real life, where it consumes gunpowder and iron for each shot, since they serve as bullets and propellers. They also take very long time to reload. If you know muskets in real life, the reloading is actually a series of steps. So primarily, it would be useful as a melee weapon, and only fire when you NEED to fire, such as a creeper being next to you.
The shot fires as soon as you click the mouse, and the damage of the shot does 2x more damage than a bow, and has 2x the knockback of a bow. Then you will have to reload it, where the reloading time is 3x as long as drawing back the bow to its maximum extent, to shoot again, but you can use the melee musket bayonet to jab the creeper to death after it has been knocked back considerably far, without having to reload. So muskets are good for close encounters.
The musket has its own different life, or the amount of uses. The green use bar for musket is on the bottom of the musket and bayonet icon, and the bayonet life bar is on the top of the musket and bayonet item icon.
The musket barrel can ONLY be made of iron or diamond. Diamond muskets have longer life spans, as opposed to iron.
Each fire and rifle butt using your musket depletes the musket life bar.
You make pellet and propellant by combining iron ingots and gunpowder in your crafting table. The icon is a picture of iron pellets and gunpowder. Having this items in your inventory is required to fire a musket.
There are two settings on muskets. You can fire single bullets or multiple bullets. Multiple bullet mode does splash or area of effect damage, but less damage than the single shot mode, which as the name implies shoots one iron bullet.
Bullets
There are a few types of bullets you can make. Keep in mind that all bullets shot can be recollected after the mob is killed (except for wooden bullets), in which case the mob drops the bullets you shot it with.
-Wooden pellets: Does no damage, but sets enemy on fire. Made from wood. Is not recollectable.
The wooden bullet does no damage, but it does set the enemy on fire. It will also set the ground on fire, but the fire is small and won't spread. The light effect is the same as the light from the torch. You can use this bullet to shoot at dark areas far away from you to see what is there. This is like a flare, but made of wood. The fire burns out after some time. You can use this to explore deep ravine if you cannot use lava, which requires buckets and cannot stack.
Or if you caught at night in the ocean and it is too dark to see. You can try to see if land is in front of you by shooting your wooden bullet, such as to avoid crashes.
The bullet being made of wood and is burnt, is thus non-recollectable after being shot. This is okay because wood is renewable.
-Stone pellets: Does half the damage of iron bullets. Made from cobblestone.
-Iron pellets: 2x the damage of a bow: Made from iron.
-Exploding pellets: Does 3x damage of a bow, and explodes like a mini-TNT, but does not destroy blocks. Made from combining iron pellets with gunpowder. Gunpowder is used up after firing.
-Diamond pellet: Does 2x the damage of a bow, just like iron, but passes through multiple targets to a maximum of 5, doing knock back to all of the mobs it passes through. Made from diamond. If there are no more mobs to receive the shot, then the bullet will eventually hit the ground and get stuck there for you to pick it back up. KEEP IN MIND: If you shoot a player, and the player escapes, you cannot get your diamond bullet back.
Diamond bullets do the same damage as iron bullets. Diamond bullets can hit an ender dragon 5 times per shot, due to the ender dragon's size. This means greater damage against bigger mobs.
Diamond pellets stuck on the ground will be conspicuously blue, and will twinkle.
Power Ups
I also have an idea for alchemy. The Bow would be primarily powered up through enchantment, but the gun would be primarily powered up through alchemy.
Alchemy power ups added to wooden bullets only gives the effect, but still no damage. Flameburst potion stacks damage with wooden bullets, in that damage over time from fire is increased.
All alchemical power ups are stackable with the piercing multi-shot effect of diamond bullets.
You combine:
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc + 16 potion of poison = 64 poisoned shots.
-Poisons enemies
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc +16 potion of strength = 64 power shots.
-Extra damage against enemies
-Increased knockback
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc + 16 potions of slowness = 64 crippling shots
-slows enemies
And a new alchemy potion: The Flameburst Potion:
You make flame burstpotion combining potion of poison with blaze powder. Flame burst potion sets anything on fire around the area you threw the potion.
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc +16 flameburst potions = 64 flameburst shots, which sets enemies on fire when you shoot them, as well as do damage of the iron bullet.
Furthermore, the bullets that drops after you killed a mob, is not the alchemical bullet, but the regular iron bullet, as the alchemical effects have been consumed.
And a new alchemy potion: The Explosive Liquid:
Combine flameburst potion with gunpowder. This amplifies the damage of explosive pellets. This effect is also stackable with the piercing multi-shot effect of diamond bullets.
For explosive diamond pellets, it would pass through multiple targets, each hit causing a small explosion that does not destroy blocks. If there are no mobs to receive a hit, then the pellet hits the ground, which causes another explosion.
-Damage output of both styles on average should be the same, but the styles are useful for different occasions.
Who doesn't like more fighting styles? Sword and bow gets boring after a while.
What also makes using musket and bayonets cool is that there should be sound effects, that happens when reloading as well as when firing, such as clinking noises. The musket will disappear off-screen to be reloaded, and you can hear the process of reloading, which takes 4 times as long as fully drawing back a bow.
Conclusion:
We get a new fighting style without having to resort to magic attacks.
If you don't like musket style, use your lame-same sword and bow. See how much fun it is to use it forever.
Are we really to discriminate against the use of guns because its propellant is a different type of chemical reaction than the bow? The bow just uses biological energy as its propellant, while the gun uses gunpowder, WHICH MINECRAFT HAS AND TNTS TOO.
To be honest, I'd rather have Jeb work on having testificates chop tress, mine, and etc, other than play with doors. This idea also doesn't seem to have a lot of uses for some people, but testificates doing something such as chop trees and putting them in chests is.
Behind these walls lies my testificate village, and it is pretty safe... yup. If only there were mercenaries that I can hire to man these walls... I guess I can put my wolves and cats up there lol...
I am building a fortress around it. Then I add houses outside the fortress just like in the medieval ages, when peasants lived outside the castles. I am also making a lot of farms outside the fortress.
Here is my work in progress. This is all done legit in survival mode, no mods.
I found another testificate village over the desert to the west. I will build a fortification different from the style here for them after I am finished building the current one.
However, the bowman has twice the chance to hit as the musketeer in addition to his ability to take cover. Assuming the playing field is equal and assuming they both use similar tactics; I find it difficult to imagine one being superior over the other, see expanded example below.
Unless the bowman is equally cunning at his tactics. I didn't say that either. As far as I knew, you only stipulated that it would be different without explanation or example. This wasn't sufficient for me. However, I find that a bow and arrow user is just as capable at guerilla warfare as a musketeer, just a musketeer must rely on taking cover where the arrow user has a much wider grace period.
Let's use a theoretical example. If it takes 1.5 seconds to fully charge a bow, it would take 3 seconds for a musket user. The bow user must cover after every shot, but has an extra 1.5 seconds to reposition and ready his aim on where the musketeer will be. The musketeer has no such advantage and must move from cover, take aim once again, and fire, hoping his attack doesn't miss.
What this means?
+ more damage
+ more range
- accuracy
- tactical advantage
Even if the primary goal of the gun is for tactical use, the bow is still much more forgiving. Given the above scenario, the bow user can possibly get in 2 or 3 clean shots before the musketeer can target 1 shot which throws the chips in favor of the bow user.
No, your impression does not make it a strawman, you arguing facts that I didn't place DOES make it a strawman. If I didn't say something, don't use it in an argument against my point of view.
You consistantly argued that I "never" this or "don't" that when I haven't stated as such. I can't get much simpler than this: If I didn't say it, I didn't mean it. Do not assume I did.
Yes, but in order for this suggestion to work, it has to be translatable to those who DO write the algorithms and balance the game. This means that you have to have more than a pipe dream, you actually have to have working figures with a laundry list of positives and negatives. Saying how cool an idea would be is wonderful but doesn't do you any justice unless you can fairly list all of the negatives as well. This shows that you understand the risks, downfalls, and shortcomes of the suggestion but feel that the net-gain is greater than the net-loss. I haven't seen anything besides preaching your suggestion like it's perfect with no room for improvement or any downfalls.
Even the best suggestions have cons, even objects entered into the game are controversial (wolves, the nether), my suggestions are not immune, and neither are yours.
How about just removing the minimum range of the bayonet?
What have you heard about assuming? I'm not mad, I just think you shouldn't talk out your ass. If you don't know whether something is true or not, do not assume it is. It makes you look like an idiot if you're wrong, and it makes you look like an asshole if your right. ... WHAT?! Where? YOU'RE the one who brought up COD and HALO, YOU'RE the one that made a soapbox about how you don't play those games but played CS. Don't even TRY to pin that on me. I don't even know where you BEGAN to think I tried to use other games as a standard. This is one of the worst arguments I've ever seen you use. This is why it's called strawmanning. You set up a strawman in the guise of your opponent and begin to attack the strawman as though it hurt the actual point of contact. Not only that, but you're projecting your OWN PERSONAL VIEWS onto a completely different entity.
I'm going to say this, and it's your job to prove me wrong. You're an idiot. It's not for the fact that your suggestion is bad (it's actually good, just has problems), it's for the fact that you can't adequately argue for your suggestion.
This may have evaded your cognitive grasp as you seemed to be tunnel-visioned into the "my way or the highway" option; but I actually AGREE with some parts of your suggestion. There are other parts which I feel requires some work, there are other options which I feel need major renovating, and there are others that are completely abhorrant.
I gather from our discourse, that you don't want to see "This needs to be improved" but complete solidarity with your personal opinion. I'm sorry that I can't deliver.
Strong words, especially when I outlined how you could also fail to win given the nature of the bow vs nature of the gun.
Which is why I don't argue. I discuss. These forums are all discussion forums where you try to reach a compromise. You seem to be ignoring this fact.
Bombs. timed devices with no cooldown that can be thrown the distance of a snowball or fired from a dispenser that destroy a small radius.
That is because of the nature of guerilla warfare, not the nature of the rifle. The Apache have used guerilla warfare to alarming success with STONE weaponry and bows. The success of combat was based off of geographic knowledge, differences in combat style, and the element of surprise. This is something that line infantry and cavalry have great difficulty counteracting as they have not been trained for it.
They all existed as evolutionary upgrades from the bow, though the arquebus is most directly related to the arbalest and not a bow.
A concept I would like to present is, why not simply ignore the history of our world and create another ranged weapon with radical differences compared to a bow. Perhaps a boomerang or chakram weapon which can be thrown out at a predictable arc and returns to the player.
You still can't use the weapon while thrown, but you can hit multiple targets with a single throw.
Sigh... It is still an argument. Why do you deny this is an argument? I believe arguments fall into the category of a discussion, so discussions can be in the form of arguments. You seem to think discussion cannot be arguments.
"Perhaps one of the most difficult points with advocating guns is how trite and uninspiring they can be when trying to make them unique compared to bows. Seriously, in any modern sense, guns are so overused in the video game industry that they are actually more mundane and less practical that bows with recent games."-yoshi9048
This is where you used other video games as a standard for what is subjectively acceptable in minecraft. If you read what Anonthemousse said, you will see minecraft has multitudes of duplicates of functions, but guns are not as redundant to the bow as iron pickaxe to diamond pickaxe. Your main argument dealt with how boring it is to have two objects with the same function. Well, although my suggestion of gun is ranged, it does not work the same way as bows, so the ranged part is probably comparable to the bow as having the same function, but everything else is more different, more different than wood swords to stone swords.
Ultimately, this is a thread about guns, crossbows, etc, not your "boomerang". I can easily have argued against your "boomerang" using what you have used to argue against my suggestion. But, this is not a boomerang thread.
I never said bow can't win against musket. Everyone commits strawmans, even you, but you don't see me repeatedly saying "strawman this, blah blah blah...strawman that". A person can also interpret a strawman out of an argument.
If you don't want to use the gun, then don't, no one is forcing you so use your bow even if guns are implemented. Simple as that. It is hardly fair you want me to write a suggestion that can easily be translated for the people who do the coding, do you see any other suggestions that puts as much effort as I do on average into a suggestion?
Had I removed the range requirement of bayonet to be exactly at 2x of the sword, then no sword user can ever have a chance against bayonet users. I have argued with someone about this matter. I conceded that this would be unfair to sword users, so I constraint bayonet range to be at 2x of sword. With the use of musket butting in 2x>range>0x, sword users have a chance to do 4x the damage done by musket butts during an exchange of hits at close range. If bayonets worked on 2x>range>0x, sword users cannot have a chance to out damage bayonets, because they would be constantly knocked back. But, through skillful maneuver, when the sword user was to come below 2x range of bayonet, the sword user can hit the bayonet user, dealing 2x the damage of bayonets or 4x damage of musket butt to ensure sword users a chance to out damage bayonets using skill. Then in that range, the musket butting comes in, that is if the sword user ever closed in the range on the first place to deal 2x damage of bayonet, or 4x damage of musket butting. This is also because bayonets are supposed to be doing 0.5x damage of sword, and to decrease that damage to compensate for sword users, I put musket butting as attack that does 0.25x of sword at 2x>range>0x. This also adds more features and animations to minecraft.
I am starting to think you taking this personally. I used big, bold, red letters, and you assumed I was mad. You said I was "talking out of my ass", and I assumed you are mad, but for some reason it is a biggie that I am assuming things, when you do just as much. I rarely call you out for assuming things. Plus, try using less name callings in arguments, or discussions. It doesn't make an impression of the fact you are not mad.
Lastly, I don't recall bombs and your so called "timed devices" to ever be used as main infantry weapons around the time bows were massively used.
I'm just saying given all of the required materials and tools, by almost any stretch of logic is it possible that someone could make something (EDIT: without having instructions on how to)? In most crafting recipes, like say the iron sword, it would be possible for someone to make with very little knowledge on how to make a sword. It would, however, require some way to melt the iron together and make the edge, but that is left out for simplicity. The diamond is more of a stretch, but, being only 1 tier of tools that would not be realistically made, with others that could, it is ok. I'm not saying "strict realism" so it is not invalid, if anything I'm saying surrealism and logic, catering more toward "what works" in a video game.
Confined in a room to make resourceful use of given materials is not surreal. Do you even know what surreal means? And what do you mean by "logic", a lot of things in minecraft are not logical within the real world. Why do guns have to be limited to real world logic then? Again, your argument is invalid, but to play along, I will tell you how I would make a projectile and propeller system based on gunpowder, A.K.A. the gun.
I would be able to make a simple gun if I was given the materials. I would have a mold for the gun barrel, make a hollow cylinder. At the end of a hollow cylinder would be a hole for lighting the gunpowder. I would make small round iron balls as well. Then I make the stock, which supports the barrel, or anything that is good for holding. Then I throw some gunpowder down the barrel, and use it to cushion the iron bullet. Light the gun powder through the hole in the back, and bam, you got a propeller and projectile system based on new chemistry from the bow. The chinese did it at around 1000 A.C.E., and I believe they called it "fire lance".
The bayonet would just be a stick protruding out of the stock, which is simple to do as well.
It is also obvious you don't know how guns work, so you say you cannot hand-make guns in a confined room, and that you believe guns to have this magical quality that separates them from things you do understand in minecraft.
FYI, if you want realism, bows require mastery, and guns don't require as much. The process of learning to use a musket and bayonet can be a few weeks, while the process of learning to master the bow can be a few years. This is why muskets and bayonets took over the battle field. Death of a bow man is the death of a guy who took very long to train, which is worst than the casualty of a musket and bayonet user.
Furthermore, the reason why guns did not take over earlier is because of their poor accuracy and range in their early models. Ammunitions were also not massively manufactured. A hundred bow man could fire several shots before a musket user could even come within range of fire.
So ask yourself, why is it so easy to shoot a bow in minecraft? If you gave a bow to a man in a confined room, how long would it take for him to master archery? A few years realistically, so why so fast in minecraft? Thus your argument is invalid both ways.
Gun reload/cooldown is a horrible gimmick to distance itself from it's contemporary.
1) For the duration of the cooldown, you are basically a sitting duck. This makes them ineffective when facing a group. Bows do not have this problem and a skilled player can remove the group before it becomes problematic.
2) If you MISS, you are even worse off.
3) Generally this cooldown is to balance off a 1-hit kill scenario (you really can't balance that).
4) If you bring a second gun that would have a seperate reload time, then you still would have to have 2 guns to equal the effectiveness of a bow.
Knockback of a gun on a cooldown would likewise be pointless as any extra distance you would've gotten would be squandered waiting for the damn weapon to reload.
Adding spread would be a death sentence for a weapon with a load time, not only do you have to WAIT after your shot, but the chances of you missing the target are increased. Lord help you if your errant bullet hit an enderman aimed at that skeleton.
Bayonet sounds like an interesting idea, but I'd prefer it have the same range as a sword at the half damage, it already has a benefit of being attached to a gun making it a competent ranged and melee item, there's no reason to give it more benefit than it needs. My greatest fear is that the gun would form nothing more than a spear because the ranged aspect is abyssmal at best.
Oh, ok, jeez man, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you was the only person posting on this thread. My bad.
BadPrenup is in charge of this thread, if things are found to be repeated, have him add it to OP instead of screaming in size=7 red text.
They still fire toward a target in a straight line from A to B without deviation outside of the Y.
My response is above.
Incorrect, sir. My definion of new mechanic is "if a bow IS CURRENTLY implemented to do the same thing, then you are not adding anything new". If Bob creates a toaster and Jim, 3 years later, creates a slotted device with variable settings to brown breakfast breads, who is innovating? Bob already created the toaster, why is Jim doing the same thing? To show "me too!"? Well, that's good and all, but it doesn't change the fact that the device has already been invented to take care of that convenience. If you give the toaster a paint job, it doesn't very well change the fact that it is a toaster.
1) because that's not my logic, and 2) that defies game design principles. Yes, I do. Which is precisely why I don't use it.
As far as I was aware, the only thing I presented was that REMOVING THE BOW to facilitate a clumbsy and less effective firearm would be ridiculous, not borderline, but would be developmental suicide. You're right. Wood is totally used in everything, Mojang has totally over-milked that, let's remove wood and replace it with discarded snake-skin. Who cares that it is inferior and flimsy comparatively.
Except adding reloads would be self-defeating toward any other possible mechanic in addition to WASTING the player's time. Unfortunately, the reloading mechanic is the linchpin that holds your suggestion together, without it, you have no balancing mechanism for improved damage (which isn't new, it's that new color on the toaster I was telling you about) or improved knockback.
The bayonet idea is still solid, but it's not a means to redefine gameplay, just to supplement existing gameplay.
I'm against guns, I'm not butthurt, but I hope I've given you at least ONE good reason why the concept needs to be further improved. In fact... You know what... I've been here for nearly 2 years. After that much time, anyone would grow tired of beating the same tired drum on why guns are bad. After the 5th or 6th time explaining your position, it kind of gets old.
Please read the previous gun threads with my personal reasons why I disagree before lumping me in with everyone else with the presumption that I don't think about things. I am only saying this because despite the dozens of other posters besides myself, I pretentiously think I'm the only one here that matters.
You get the point? How that makes you look like an asshat? Don't do that. It makes you sound insipid, petulant, and myopic.I thought I wrote a 2 paragraph speil about my point of the word "no" as a criticism. It's kind of hard to find though, I think it's buried somewhere in the STICKIES. Here, lemme do an exhaustive search of the top of the forum for you, no really, I insist.
1. lolpierandom was directly attacking my suggestion, so it makes sense that he should have read my suggestion first. It was also directed to anyone thinking of arguing against something in this thread that has already been stated. Anything about guns in other threads don't matter, because this is the official gun thread. I thought this was a pretty important matter and required big, bold, red letters, which i intended it as a matter of typographic design choice, not an expression of anger.
2. Bow is not wood. My impression of your logic still holds true. The only similarity between a musket and bow is that they are ranged. Since bow is already ranged, you say there can't be possibly any better use for adding another ranged weapon, which is where you are wrong.
3. You DON'T have to be a sitting duck. There is something called taking cover and running to reload. When fighting against a melee opponent, you can use your bayonet to keep him at bay, which you need to do skillfully as I have mentioned in my suggestion. Depending on how well you use the bayonet, sword players may or may not be able to attack you. Depending on how sword players play, they may or may not beat a bayonet and musket player, e.g. sprinting can close the sword user within 1 block range such that bayonets are ineffective and does no damage.
4. I never said I was the only one posting in this thread, that is why the "suggestions" I wrote is PLURAL.
5. Exactly my point, no is not a very helpful argument, yet you are advocating the side that uses no as an argument. Your main argument is subjective, in that guns are lame, boring, overused in gaming, and uninspiring(Well, someone has been playing too much call of duty and halo). I, myself, have never played a halo or call of duty game. The only FPS I have enjoyed and played for a long time was counter strike several years ago.
You are also arguing from the standpoint that people cannot run and hide and sprint. You assume that all combat is head to head, everyone stand in place, then fight each other, which is not how it works. Given people can sprint, hide, and run, everything works out a bit better.
A mix of bow, sword, and musket and bayonet is also good, but comes at a price.
Furthermore, the musket and bayonet is not even in the game, how can you so easily presume how it works. For the suggestions, we are only suggesting how something would work. The musket is to knock back the opponent to a range where you can deal with them with your bayonet. If your opponent uses a sword and is 1 block within range of you, you can't attack him with your bayonet because he or she is too close. Then you would have to knock him or her back with your musket to a knockback of 2x of the bow, which should be more than enough range of about 2 blocks. Than you can attack him or her with your bayonet melee, and he can't touch you if he just runs at you constantly. If he runs and hides, or sprints, then he can close the gap back to 1 block, then the musket and bayonet user has to run and sprint away. This is quite balanced.
Yes, I want you to miss when using a musket and bayonet, I want you to have a long reloading time, so that it takes more skill to use it than your sword and bow. But if you know how to use a bayonet and musket with skill, it can be more tactically rewarding than the sword and bow.
Of course you would have gotten most of what I had to say here if you read carefully, what I suggested, hence I had it in big, bold, red letters.
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(5/3/2012): Added concept arts by me, I am doing the concept art for fun, and might be doing them for all fighter types, as I have realized this thread lacked pictures. I also added shop system for a way to make gold coins for shopping at villages and hiring fighters.
(4/28/2012): Added NPC village types. And:
It should Change the limit on number of testificates that can be in a house. I find it stupid that they all crowd into one house in one corner playing with one door. There should be a limit to the amount of testificates per house, e.g. testificates will not hide in a house that already has 3 testificates inside. This way you need to build more houses.
Also uploaded a pictures. More pictures to come.
(4/27/2012): Added weapon/armor stalls. Tell me if it is good. Servant mobile storage is removed, because I prefer pull carts as mobile storage.
(3/x/2012): There should be outlaw testificate camps scattered throughout minecraft. These camps have chests and a campfire.
You can kill them for loot or hire them. If you open their chest without killing or hiring them, they will attack you.
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"Day in and day out, we are attacked by literally stinking zombies. If its not the physical hits that kills you, its their stinking stench. Every morning, rotten meats litter the streets. Someone has got to get rid of them. We can't just keep hiding in our homes and squeezing a clothespin against our nostrils. Not to mention the children, think of the children! Nancy's daughter was butchered by a zed last night! We have had enough, we need to rise up in arms! I find it funny how our ancestors never thought of fighting back." -Andy, the Mayor of Testificate Town.
I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that testificates are supposed to be pacifist. Well yes they generally are, a great percentage as a matter of fact in the case of this suggestion. However, some testificates will take up arms. They are non-pacifist, which include outlaws and testificate fighters who defend villages along with iron golems.
Onto the Suggestion:
Firstly, dual wielding should be universal in the game by now, then here is my suggestion for what comes next:
I want testificate warriors you can hire with gold, thus you get testificate warriors AND a new use for gold as currency with testificates.
Since gold is rare, I decided to make it such that there is a shop option. You can chop down woods to sell to villagers for gold coins. You can also craft gold coins with gold ingots, by smelting them in the furnace. Each gold ingot makes 10 gold coins. So every time I say X gold ingots in my post, I mean multiples of 10 gold coins. E.g., 7-10 gold ingots is equal to 70 to 100 gold coins.
So, this suggestion makes use of the renewable ore resource of gold, which drops from zombies, which spawns infinitely, and it also adds new enthusiasm to the game.
Basically, in order to hire them, you would smelt gold ore into gold ingots.
When hiring, you approach a testificate warrior with gold ingots, then right click on a testificate warrior using gold coin as if you were to try to tame a wolf or tame a cat.
After hiring a testificate warrior, it will behave like tamed animals by following you around and teleporting to you when you get too far away from it.
Also, I am also advocating for humanoid NPC different from testificates. I am not saying to take out testificates, but it woul dbe cool to have human NPCs that can have conspicous gender differences. You can have female or male mercenaries.
The specifics:
Village Type:
None of these locations may be within, let's say, a certain hundred blocks of each other.
Testificate Stronghold:
Testificate strongholds are basically testificate villages surrounded by a cobblestone fortress. Chances of testificate/NPC fighters appearing there are increased.
The rarity of Testificate Strongholds are rarer than the rarity of testificate villages. Testificate strongholds have at least 15 villagers.
Inside the the stronghold are at least 2 iron type fighters you can hire, along with one stone golem, which is because the village population is at least 15.
Testificate Outpost:
These are made up of a watch tower, a small patch of farmland, and one or two houses. Furthermore, the houses are surrounded by a small wall of cobblestone or fence. The area of testificate outposts are general about 15 blocks by 15 blocks. You will always find at least one testificate fighter, equipped with leather armor and wooden swords or bows, at the outpost.
Outposts are signs that you are close to a testificate Stronghold. Strongholds are usually 500 blocks away from an outpost.
Testificate outposts comes with 1 or 2 regular villagers. You can expand testificate outposts like you expand a testificate village.
Outlaw Camp:
These are camps of outlaw testificates. They won't attack you unless you try to open their chest or attack them. They are surronded by small tents and at the middle is a fireplace. There are chests underneath a small wooden roof (made of stairs), supported by fences.
Within the chests at outlaw camps will always contain at least one gold ingot, and other rubbish.
These outlaws can be hired. Outlaws usually have crappy equipments. They wear leather armor and wooden to stone swords or bows.
The rarity of outlaw camps are rarer than regular testificate villages.
Furthermore, the new item "fireplace" can be crafted by the player. You craft it by surrounding the middle space with sticks. Then you put it down, use flint and steel to light it, and the fireplace will light forever.
Types:
Armor types (the defense is the same given as when the player wears these armors):
1. Leather armored testificate/NPC mercenary: 4 gold ingots
2. Iron armored testificate/NPC mercenary: 6 gold ingots randomly (much like taming wolves or cats)
3. Diamond armored Testificate/NPC Champion (rare encounter): 10 gold ingots.
Weapon types (partially inspired by battlegear mod, and please implement dual wielding for the player too!):
1. Archer: Low HP, low attack speed, medium damage, greater range. It Behaves much like skeleton archers and has infinite arrows: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
2. Sword/axe and shield: greater HP, medium attack speed, and medium damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
Here is a drawing:
3. One handed sword/axe: Low HP, greater attack speed, and medium damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
4. Two handed sword/axe: medium HP, low attack speed, and greater damage: +2 gold ingot to armor type.
Crushing type: Extra damage against skeletons.
5. Sword/axe dual wielder: Medium HP, greater attack speed, medium damage: +2 to 3 gold ingot to armor type.
6. Spearficate/spearman: Medium HP, medium attack speed, medium damage, medium ranged type. +2 to 3 gold ingots to armor type.
Piercing type: Extra damage against zombies.
Trading
Raw wood: 1 gold coin each.
Pork or beef: 2 gold coins each.
Iron: 5 gold coins each.
Chicken: 1 gold coin each.
You use gold coins to hire fighters.
Spawning
Mercenaries are more likely to spawn in hard mode, then in normal mode, and more likely to spawn in normal mode than in easy mode. Mercenaries spawn rarely in peaceful mode.
In normal mode:
Wooden mercenaries: common, max 3-4, per 15 testificates. About 1 per 5 testificates.
Iron mercenaries: rare, max 1-2 per village, per 15 testificates. About 1 per 10 testificates
Diamond champion/heroes: very rare, max 1per village, per 15 testificates.
And the rarity decreases in all 3 categories in hard mode, and increases for easy to peaceful mode.
Furthermore, +0 more gold ingots if weapons are made of wood or leather, +1 more gold ingot for iron weapons, and +3 more gold ingot for diamond weapons.
You increase the probability of mercenaries spawning by building barracks. A barrack is defined by a door, with a room containing weapon stalls and armor stalls. You can craft weapon/armor stalls at the crafting table. Weapon/armor stalls can be used by the player to store weapons. You don't need to select weapons/armors from weapon/armor stalls like you do from a chest. The player simply right click a weapon/armor stall, and the player gets the weapon in his inventory.
Testificate villagers will sometimes convert into a fighter. It will take a weapon randomly from your weapon stalls. In your barrack. This will only have a chance of happening if the testificate stays at the barrack for a night.
Weapon/armor stalls are also used for decoration. You can also put pickaxes, shovels, hoes, and axes on it.
Dying:
After a fighter you hired dies, they will drop their items and disappear. Afterwards, there is a higher percentage chance of that fighter type respawning in the village you hired it from, which you can hire again.
Interactions with player :
The player can improve the armor of the testifiate warriors by manually "feeding" weapons and armor types to the mercenaries.
-If the mercenary wears wooden or leather armors and weapons, the player can upgrade it by making iron equipments and "feeding" the testificate, like you would tame a wolf or cat, and the equipment will change.
-The mercenary drops the item not being switched off.
-When a mercenary dies, it will drop its equipments. The equipment will have decreased its durability depending on how many times the mercenary was hit.
Signs of low health:
-The player can heal the mercenary, like they heal ingured wolves, by feeding them cooked food. Red specks of blood and chipped/tathered armor denote injured mercenaries.
Movement/behavior:
-Change the limit on number of testificates that can be in a house. I find it stupid that they all crowd into one house in one corner playing with one door. There should be a limit to the amount of testificates per house, e.g. testificates will not hide in a house that already has 3 testificates inside. This way you need to build more houses.
-When a fighter/mercenary's HP is low, It will usually run into a nearby house. So make sure you build a house for your mercenaries near your own house, so they can hide.
-The mercenary will stand still when right clicked just like right click wolves or cats to sit. This is only particuarly useful for archers and soso for spearmans during combat, but not for melee units.
-The mercenaries will target any creature that you aggravated or is coming after you, so you don't have to make the first hit them to have the mercenaries fight. I don't know the game mechanics, and so I am not sure if this will work, but I have a backup:
-If the former targeting system doesn't work, we can probably have the mercenaries to attack mobs that are hostile and certain blocks away from them.
-When attacking creepers, the creepers won't blow up near the mercenaries, they will still only blow up near the player.
-Rest is the same as tamed cats or wolves. E.g., hired fighters teleports to you when they are following you and you are too far away.
Epic things to do:
-Did you ever notice how empty your castle walls are? Well how about positioning some of your testificate fighters there? Like a boss...
-Fending off zombie invasions
-Once you have hired enough mercenaries, the overworld becomes boring because you might have become too powerful, but there is the netherworld and the world of the ender dragons and enderman, and this also includes future mobs and challenges that you can overcome with your mini-army!
-Maybe goblins are yet to be implemented, and if they are hostile, we can raid their villages with our mini-army.
Extras
-Golems have ranged attacks, they can hurl boulders at enemies too far away, but it will run towards an enemy not too far away. This makes it easier for it to fight flying enderdragons. The melee units can fend off waves of enderman, while ranged units can hit dragons.
-Having a mini-army sounds fun, but gold is moderately rare, so it will take some time before you can get a few good mercenaries. If you equip the mercenaries yourself, you will have to spend iron and diamond to give them better equipments, which also takes time to find. So hopefully this gives it more balance.
-The player does not keep track of the amount of gold ingots to use. The player simply has to bring a lot of ingots and "feed" it to a mercenary like they tame wolves or cats, which accept random numbers of bones and fishes.
If you have any ideas or suggestions you want to point out or to improve upon what I have here, feel free to reply.
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(4/24/2012): Types of pellets added, and new alchemy.
(4/22/2012): Interruption of ranged weapons, see below.
(4/21/2012): Musket butting at range of 2x>range>0x, where x is the range of the sword. 2x is the only effective range of bayonet. Read suggestion for full specifications. Also decreased approximate reloading time of muskets.
(4/20/2012): Bayonet melee specified further below.
(4/19/2012): Added alchemy as power ups for ammunitions.
(4/18/2012): Added new things
Some ideas for guns, but should not be considered the ultimate solution:
I am advocating muskets as a different style of combat.
Why should gun be added instead of any other weapon? Well what other infantry weapon can you add that existed around the same time that the bow was massively used as a range weapon? Crossbow comes to mind, but that is too similar to the bow. What other candidate than the gun for a more different combat style?
Napoleon had greater firing power, greater numbers, and thus greater rates of fire. But when he tried to invade Spain, as I recall, guerilla militia of Spain, units armed with muskets or some other weaponry, inflicted heavier casualties upon Napoleon through guerilla warfare. Same thing happened in the Vietnam war, although casualties might be different. I am using history, as basis for the guerilla warfare style of musket and bayonet, which although slow, as proven in history, can still be fatal when one uses it tactically.
Throughout history, the most different ranged infantry weapon, from the bow, around the medieval era (circa 500 A.C.E to 1500 A.C.E)was the gun, which was not used widely. So it makes sense, that a different weapon style should be of the gun. No other infantry weapon existed, that was different from the bow beyond that of a crossbow (I am not saying crossbows should not be added).
There is a reason why bows and guns exist in the real world, which is because of their different uses.
Bow and arrows are least effective in close encounters, such as in caves which is because they require to be drawn back, and does not have a way to deal melee damage, so you always have to carry a sword. When it comes to guns, it doesn't mean it has have to be more OP than the bow, it can be a different style of fighting.
I will also be using x as the range of the sword or knock back rates relative to another item, and any multiple of x are only suggested magnitudes and not strictly imposed as the ultimate outcome of the musket and bayonet, because this is up to the person who writes the algorithms for mine craft.
Styles of Fighting:
Style 1: Use sword and bow
Advantages:
-Cheaper to make
-Because it is cheaper than the musket-bayonet, it is best for grinding mobs.
-Most suitable for open terrain combat, e.g, plains and deserts.
Disadvantages
-Swords and bows don't stack with another, so takes up more space.
-Need to search inventory for bow or sword to switch between melee and bow.
Style 2: Use musket and bayonet.
Advantages:
-Requires less inventory space than sword and bow, because bayonets are attached to the musket.
-Can change between melee and range very fast with left mouse(jabs bayonet) or right mouse(shoots bullet).
-With more room, you can have one more stack of cobblestone in your inventory during mining, so this style is especially suited for combat during mining.
-Most suitable for non-open terrain combat, e.g., forests and narrow caves.
Disadvantages:
-Bullets require iron and gunpowder.
Interruption Mechanics(First suggested by AnonTheMouse):
A player using a ranged weapon can be interrupted based on the amount of damage done. The higher the damage, the greater the chance of interruption. Interruption causes the ranged weapon to go back to before-drawn-mode for bow, so as to have to draw the bow again. For muskets, if a musketeer is interrupted during reload, then the musketeer has to reload again.
Because bows fire faster than muskets, it seems unfair because bows can continuously interrupt musketeers trying to reload on open terrain combat, and leaving the musketeer almost no chance to reload. To balance this, interruption would then be based off of damage dealt from a single attack, where the higher the damage, the higher the chance of interruption. Since muskets do 2x the damage of bows, they have a higher chance of interruption per shot, but because bows can deal more attacks per time, they get chances to interrupt based on number of shots, while muskets get to interrupt based on attack power of shots. This allows both combat styles to have a chance on any terrain, even the ones where they are at a disadvantage.
Furthermore, melee weapons will always (100%) interrupt ranged drawing of bow or reloading of musket.
The Bayonet:
You don't have to reload to use the bayonet, so once you knock back a creeper with your shot, you can jab it with the range on the bayonet, without having to reload yet. You can reload after you killed the creeper.
Bayonets will have 2x the range of the sword, because muskets designs are long, but does less damage than a sword.
The bayonet can be made of wood, stone, iron or diamond. You can attach to a musket by combining the bayonet with the musket on a crafting table.
The bayonet will break after a certain amount of uses with it attached to the musket. You can repair the musket with a new bayonet by combing the musket with a new bayonet at the crafting table.
If your rifle has its bayonet broken during combat, your melee mode switches to rifle butting, which is still the left click of the mouse just like left clicking to attack with bayonet. This is until you get a new bayonet.
Bayonets have longer usage times because it is smaller than the sword, which makes it more compact.
The bayonet does 0.5 the knock back distance of a sword. Sword will not be useless because it does more damage. During PVP, If you can hide behind an obstacle, such that people cannot attack through walls, you effectively have the higher dps when you fight around obstacles. Imagine yourself in a cave, 2x distance of bayonet is useless if the person being hit is against a wall, so that person using a sword can kill the guy who is using a bayonet due to higher dps.
Further more, a bayonet can only hit players or mobs 2 blocks away from them. If a mob or player is within 0x<range<2x where x is the range of sword, or if the mob or player is at a range>2x, then the bayonet won't be able to hit the player or mob. The bayonet only hits mobs or players at a block distance of range equal to 2x the sword. So it takes some skill to use a bayonet.
Had I removed the range requirement of bayonet to be exactly at 2x of the sword, then no sword user can ever have a chance against bayonet users. I have argued with someone about this matter. I conceded that this would be unfair to sword users, so I constraint bayonet range to be at 2x of sword. With the use of musket butting in 2x>range>0x, sword users have a chance to do 4x the damage done by musket butts during an exchange of hits at close range. If bayonets worked on 2x>range>0x, sword users cannot have a chance to out damage bayonets, because they would be constantly knocked back. But, through skillful maneuver, when the sword user was to come below 2x range of bayonet, the sword user can hit the bayonet user, dealing 2x the damage of bayonets or 4x damage of musket butt to ensure sword users a chance to out damage bayonets using skill. Then in that range, the musket butting comes in, that is if the sword user ever closed in the range on the first place to deal 2x damage of bayonet, or 4x damage of musket butting. This is also because bayonets are supposed to be doing 0.5x damage of sword, and to decrease that damage to compensate for sword users, I put musket butting as attack that does 0.25x of sword at 2x>range>0x. This also adds more features and animations to minecraft.
Musket Butting:
At a range of 2x>range>0x, where bayonet is ineffective, musket butting would automatically used as melee. Musket butting would also occur when you do not have a bayonet attached at a range of 2x. Butting does 0.25x the damage of the sword, but does the 1x the knock back of the sword. If you move back and rifle butt at the same time, you would be approximately at a range far enough to damage the opponent with bayonet. Then the opponent would be forced to use a bow, so now the musket man hides to reload.
The musket:
Musket bullets will be LESS affected by gravity per distance traveled because of higher projectile speed.
Musket bullets can be retrieved as iron bullets stuck on the ground, unless it hits the mob or goes off too far away. Gunpowder is still consumed because it is ignited to propel the iron bullet. After the mob dies, they drop your iron bullets you shot them with, because iron is not renewable and uncommon, unlike flint, wood and feather, which are all renewable for arrows of bow.
A musket and bayonet DOES NOT have to be drawn back like a bow, you just press a trigger for instantaneous fire. At the same time you can melee. The only downfall is like the realistic counterpart in real life, where it consumes gunpowder and iron for each shot, since they serve as bullets and propellers. They also take very long time to reload. If you know muskets in real life, the reloading is actually a series of steps. So primarily, it would be useful as a melee weapon, and only fire when you NEED to fire, such as a creeper being next to you.
The shot fires as soon as you click the mouse, and the damage of the shot does 2x more damage than a bow, and has 2x the knockback of a bow. Then you will have to reload it, where the reloading time is 3x as long as drawing back the bow to its maximum extent, to shoot again, but you can use the melee musket bayonet to jab the creeper to death after it has been knocked back considerably far, without having to reload. So muskets are good for close encounters.
The musket has its own different life, or the amount of uses. The green use bar for musket is on the bottom of the musket and bayonet icon, and the bayonet life bar is on the top of the musket and bayonet item icon.
The musket barrel can ONLY be made of iron or diamond. Diamond muskets have longer life spans, as opposed to iron.
Each fire and rifle butt using your musket depletes the musket life bar.
You make pellet and propellant by combining iron ingots and gunpowder in your crafting table. The icon is a picture of iron pellets and gunpowder. Having this items in your inventory is required to fire a musket.
There are two settings on muskets. You can fire single bullets or multiple bullets. Multiple bullet mode does splash or area of effect damage, but less damage than the single shot mode, which as the name implies shoots one iron bullet.
Bullets
There are a few types of bullets you can make. Keep in mind that all bullets shot can be recollected after the mob is killed (except for wooden bullets), in which case the mob drops the bullets you shot it with.
-Wooden pellets: Does no damage, but sets enemy on fire. Made from wood. Is not recollectable.
The wooden bullet does no damage, but it does set the enemy on fire. It will also set the ground on fire, but the fire is small and won't spread. The light effect is the same as the light from the torch. You can use this bullet to shoot at dark areas far away from you to see what is there. This is like a flare, but made of wood. The fire burns out after some time. You can use this to explore deep ravine if you cannot use lava, which requires buckets and cannot stack.
Or if you caught at night in the ocean and it is too dark to see. You can try to see if land is in front of you by shooting your wooden bullet, such as to avoid crashes.
The bullet being made of wood and is burnt, is thus non-recollectable after being shot. This is okay because wood is renewable.
-Stone pellets: Does half the damage of iron bullets. Made from cobblestone.
-Iron pellets: 2x the damage of a bow: Made from iron.
-Exploding pellets: Does 3x damage of a bow, and explodes like a mini-TNT, but does not destroy blocks. Made from combining iron pellets with gunpowder. Gunpowder is used up after firing.
-Diamond pellet: Does 2x the damage of a bow, just like iron, but passes through multiple targets to a maximum of 5, doing knock back to all of the mobs it passes through. Made from diamond. If there are no more mobs to receive the shot, then the bullet will eventually hit the ground and get stuck there for you to pick it back up. KEEP IN MIND: If you shoot a player, and the player escapes, you cannot get your diamond bullet back.
Diamond bullets do the same damage as iron bullets. Diamond bullets can hit an ender dragon 5 times per shot, due to the ender dragon's size. This means greater damage against bigger mobs.
Diamond pellets stuck on the ground will be conspicuously blue, and will twinkle.
Power Ups
I also have an idea for alchemy. The Bow would be primarily powered up through enchantment, but the gun would be primarily powered up through alchemy.
Alchemy power ups added to wooden bullets only gives the effect, but still no damage. Flameburst potion stacks damage with wooden bullets, in that damage over time from fire is increased.
All alchemical power ups are stackable with the piercing multi-shot effect of diamond bullets.
You combine:
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc + 16 potion of poison = 64 poisoned shots.
-Poisons enemies
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc +16 potion of strength = 64 power shots.
-Extra damage against enemies
-Increased knockback
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc + 16 potions of slowness = 64 crippling shots
-slows enemies
And a new alchemy potion: The Flameburst Potion:
You make flame burstpotion combining potion of poison with blaze powder. Flame burst potion sets anything on fire around the area you threw the potion.
64 regular iron bullets, cartridge, etc +16 flameburst potions = 64 flameburst shots, which sets enemies on fire when you shoot them, as well as do damage of the iron bullet.
Furthermore, the bullets that drops after you killed a mob, is not the alchemical bullet, but the regular iron bullet, as the alchemical effects have been consumed.
And a new alchemy potion: The Explosive Liquid:
Combine flameburst potion with gunpowder. This amplifies the damage of explosive pellets. This effect is also stackable with the piercing multi-shot effect of diamond bullets.
For explosive diamond pellets, it would pass through multiple targets, each hit causing a small explosion that does not destroy blocks. If there are no mobs to receive a hit, then the pellet hits the ground, which causes another explosion.
More alchemy ideas may be added.
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Generally:
-Gives you a reason to grind on creepers.
-Damage output of both styles on average should be the same, but the styles are useful for different occasions.
Who doesn't like more fighting styles? Sword and bow gets boring after a while.
What also makes using musket and bayonets cool is that there should be sound effects, that happens when reloading as well as when firing, such as clinking noises. The musket will disappear off-screen to be reloaded, and you can hear the process of reloading, which takes 4 times as long as fully drawing back a bow.
Conclusion:
We get a new fighting style without having to resort to magic attacks.
If you don't like musket style, use your lame-same sword and bow. See how much fun it is to use it forever.
Are we really to discriminate against the use of guns because its propellant is a different type of chemical reaction than the bow? The bow just uses biological energy as its propellant, while the gun uses gunpowder, WHICH MINECRAFT HAS AND TNTS TOO.
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This is my house:
Testificate Stronghold:
Behind these walls lies my testificate village, and it is pretty safe... yup. If only there were mercenaries that I can hire to man these walls... I guess I can put my wolves and cats up there lol...
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Here is my work in progress. This is all done legit in survival mode, no mods.
I found another testificate village over the desert to the west. I will build a fortification different from the style here for them after I am finished building the current one.
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Sigh... It is still an argument. Why do you deny this is an argument? I believe arguments fall into the category of a discussion, so discussions can be in the form of arguments. You seem to think discussion cannot be arguments.
"Perhaps one of the most difficult points with advocating guns is how trite and uninspiring they can be when trying to make them unique compared to bows. Seriously, in any modern sense, guns are so overused in the video game industry that they are actually more mundane and less practical that bows with recent games."-yoshi9048
This is where you used other video games as a standard for what is subjectively acceptable in minecraft. If you read what Anonthemousse said, you will see minecraft has multitudes of duplicates of functions, but guns are not as redundant to the bow as iron pickaxe to diamond pickaxe. Your main argument dealt with how boring it is to have two objects with the same function. Well, although my suggestion of gun is ranged, it does not work the same way as bows, so the ranged part is probably comparable to the bow as having the same function, but everything else is more different, more different than wood swords to stone swords.
Ultimately, this is a thread about guns, crossbows, etc, not your "boomerang". I can easily have argued against your "boomerang" using what you have used to argue against my suggestion. But, this is not a boomerang thread.
I never said bow can't win against musket. Everyone commits strawmans, even you, but you don't see me repeatedly saying "strawman this, blah blah blah...strawman that". A person can also interpret a strawman out of an argument.
If you don't want to use the gun, then don't, no one is forcing you so use your bow even if guns are implemented. Simple as that. It is hardly fair you want me to write a suggestion that can easily be translated for the people who do the coding, do you see any other suggestions that puts as much effort as I do on average into a suggestion?
Had I removed the range requirement of bayonet to be exactly at 2x of the sword, then no sword user can ever have a chance against bayonet users. I have argued with someone about this matter. I conceded that this would be unfair to sword users, so I constraint bayonet range to be at 2x of sword. With the use of musket butting in 2x>range>0x, sword users have a chance to do 4x the damage done by musket butts during an exchange of hits at close range. If bayonets worked on 2x>range>0x, sword users cannot have a chance to out damage bayonets, because they would be constantly knocked back. But, through skillful maneuver, when the sword user was to come below 2x range of bayonet, the sword user can hit the bayonet user, dealing 2x the damage of bayonets or 4x damage of musket butt to ensure sword users a chance to out damage bayonets using skill. Then in that range, the musket butting comes in, that is if the sword user ever closed in the range on the first place to deal 2x damage of bayonet, or 4x damage of musket butting. This is also because bayonets are supposed to be doing 0.5x damage of sword, and to decrease that damage to compensate for sword users, I put musket butting as attack that does 0.25x of sword at 2x>range>0x. This also adds more features and animations to minecraft.
I am starting to think you taking this personally. I used big, bold, red letters, and you assumed I was mad. You said I was "talking out of my ass", and I assumed you are mad, but for some reason it is a biggie that I am assuming things, when you do just as much. I rarely call you out for assuming things. Plus, try using less name callings in arguments, or discussions. It doesn't make an impression of the fact you are not mad.
Lastly, I don't recall bombs and your so called "timed devices" to ever be used as main infantry weapons around the time bows were massively used.
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Confined in a room to make resourceful use of given materials is not surreal. Do you even know what surreal means? And what do you mean by "logic", a lot of things in minecraft are not logical within the real world. Why do guns have to be limited to real world logic then? Again, your argument is invalid, but to play along, I will tell you how I would make a projectile and propeller system based on gunpowder, A.K.A. the gun.
I would be able to make a simple gun if I was given the materials. I would have a mold for the gun barrel, make a hollow cylinder. At the end of a hollow cylinder would be a hole for lighting the gunpowder. I would make small round iron balls as well. Then I make the stock, which supports the barrel, or anything that is good for holding. Then I throw some gunpowder down the barrel, and use it to cushion the iron bullet. Light the gun powder through the hole in the back, and bam, you got a propeller and projectile system based on new chemistry from the bow. The chinese did it at around 1000 A.C.E., and I believe they called it "fire lance".
The bayonet would just be a stick protruding out of the stock, which is simple to do as well.
It is also obvious you don't know how guns work, so you say you cannot hand-make guns in a confined room, and that you believe guns to have this magical quality that separates them from things you do understand in minecraft.
FYI, if you want realism, bows require mastery, and guns don't require as much. The process of learning to use a musket and bayonet can be a few weeks, while the process of learning to master the bow can be a few years. This is why muskets and bayonets took over the battle field. Death of a bow man is the death of a guy who took very long to train, which is worst than the casualty of a musket and bayonet user.
Furthermore, the reason why guns did not take over earlier is because of their poor accuracy and range in their early models. Ammunitions were also not massively manufactured. A hundred bow man could fire several shots before a musket user could even come within range of fire.
So ask yourself, why is it so easy to shoot a bow in minecraft? If you gave a bow to a man in a confined room, how long would it take for him to master archery? A few years realistically, so why so fast in minecraft? Thus your argument is invalid both ways.
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1. lolpierandom was directly attacking my suggestion, so it makes sense that he should have read my suggestion first. It was also directed to anyone thinking of arguing against something in this thread that has already been stated. Anything about guns in other threads don't matter, because this is the official gun thread. I thought this was a pretty important matter and required big, bold, red letters, which i intended it as a matter of typographic design choice, not an expression of anger.
2. Bow is not wood. My impression of your logic still holds true. The only similarity between a musket and bow is that they are ranged. Since bow is already ranged, you say there can't be possibly any better use for adding another ranged weapon, which is where you are wrong.
3. You DON'T have to be a sitting duck. There is something called taking cover and running to reload. When fighting against a melee opponent, you can use your bayonet to keep him at bay, which you need to do skillfully as I have mentioned in my suggestion. Depending on how well you use the bayonet, sword players may or may not be able to attack you. Depending on how sword players play, they may or may not beat a bayonet and musket player, e.g. sprinting can close the sword user within 1 block range such that bayonets are ineffective and does no damage.
4. I never said I was the only one posting in this thread, that is why the "suggestions" I wrote is PLURAL.
5. Exactly my point, no is not a very helpful argument, yet you are advocating the side that uses no as an argument. Your main argument is subjective, in that guns are lame, boring, overused in gaming, and uninspiring(Well, someone has been playing too much call of duty and halo). I, myself, have never played a halo or call of duty game. The only FPS I have enjoyed and played for a long time was counter strike several years ago.
You are also arguing from the standpoint that people cannot run and hide and sprint. You assume that all combat is head to head, everyone stand in place, then fight each other, which is not how it works. Given people can sprint, hide, and run, everything works out a bit better.
A mix of bow, sword, and musket and bayonet is also good, but comes at a price.
Furthermore, the musket and bayonet is not even in the game, how can you so easily presume how it works. For the suggestions, we are only suggesting how something would work. The musket is to knock back the opponent to a range where you can deal with them with your bayonet. If your opponent uses a sword and is 1 block within range of you, you can't attack him with your bayonet because he or she is too close. Then you would have to knock him or her back with your musket to a knockback of 2x of the bow, which should be more than enough range of about 2 blocks. Than you can attack him or her with your bayonet melee, and he can't touch you if he just runs at you constantly. If he runs and hides, or sprints, then he can close the gap back to 1 block, then the musket and bayonet user has to run and sprint away. This is quite balanced.
Yes, I want you to miss when using a musket and bayonet, I want you to have a long reloading time, so that it takes more skill to use it than your sword and bow. But if you know how to use a bayonet and musket with skill, it can be more tactically rewarding than the sword and bow.
Of course you would have gotten most of what I had to say here if you read carefully, what I suggested, hence I had it in big, bold, red letters.