Alternatives to welding

[T3hBoy]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Hello, love the game and this branch of it even more. One of the things I love about it is the different ways to craft something, makes it less dependent on loot RNG and allows you to work your way out of any situation in case you missed a tool or find yourself in a pinch.

Which leads me to the idea of introducing another alternative to welding since sometimes finding welding equipment or fuel for them can rely on luck, or you want to go for a more 'Innawoods' type run.

Describe the solution you'd like

https://www.acra.com.au/alternatives-to-welding Now, I'm no blacksmith or have a lot of knowledge in the field, but the above link proves there's less advanced but still useful workaround methods.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Maybe in-game you could craft pieces of metal at the forge to use to mend steel together, as for balancing and not make regular welding obsolete, you would need a good number of pieces depending on how big the project is.

Additional context

Not a game designer or anything, just spitballing and throwing a suggestion, hoping the team to read it and see if it's possible or doesn't clash too much with their plans for BN.

[Coolthulhu]

I don't think the current system would support the general case well. It supports simple alternatives, but here we'd need to do something like

• Welder AND welding goggles
• OR alternative to those

Meaning that we'd need to duplicate the recipes or keep the requirement for goggles. Doing it just for select few options would be reasonable. Doing it for every welding recipe would heavily bloat the menu with duplicates. The problem with doing it for select few options would result in questions about "why those and why not the other ones". We'd need some reasonable-enough answer for it.

Proper multi-element alternatives would be great to have, but it's not an easy task.

[Zireael07]

Can't welder AND goggles be rolled into that quality thing, welding quality 2 or something?

[T3hBoy]

@Coolthulhu I see, it's about the limitations of the code atm, well that's a shame, even though my idea leaned more towards the vehicle crafting side of things but I understand why adding it to some but not every item needing welding would raise some questions.

@Zireael07 Although Zireael makes a good point, it's not unheard of to make kits for a certain craft, and since you almost always need an item with 'glare protection' you could make it so you need to make a 'welding kit' to properly weld things, although the 'acetylene torch' works with different charges compared to the rest of the tools

[Ker-Nes]

A bit of an annoyance of merging the glare protection into the welding quality is that it'd also mean rather more crafting labor for something that should be possible to reuse if you decide to have more than one welder/torch for some reason (maybe you want one for car installation, one for base, one for carrying around when you expect that you might come close to needing it, one modified to use vehicle batteries for when you expect to really need it, etc.)

Another issue is that you might have a different source of glare protection, one that might be either "inherent" (the glare protection CBM) or that you aren't willing to sacrifice for the sake of making the welding kit (maybe you got a PBA mask for general usage in cases of smoke, gas and the like, and also use it as your source of glare protection 2).

Honestly, I'd just go for duplicated recipes instead, unless someone figures out how to make a recipe "If using tool A, also require tool B, but not if using tool C" without making two different recipes.

For repairing stuff, I'd go with a "metal repair kit" that uses some metal thing (maybe some sort of rivet?) as a charge for repairing items of some metals without requiring glare protection.

Car repairs are where I don't think this approach would work, but at that point I think we might as well just have that the damaged part needs to be removed and repaired as an item then reinstalled instead. It's a very innawoods way of doing things if nothing else.

[MochaModifier]

Edit: I tried to tidy this response up a bit, as I thought on this

Tl;Dr Summary:

• Glare protection is only needed for high temp welding. Brazing is low temp, no glare protection is needed.
• For balance, could require brazing rods.
• Consider adding a tool quality "Metal Joining". Quality 1 is Brazing, Quality 2 is Welding.
• All current welding tools Quality 2.
• New brazing tools Quality 1.

So the issue seems to be the Glare Protection. Because welding is a task that's so hot, it generates UV radiation - which is why you need it in the first place...

Stop Welding. Try Brazing.

Brazing is a process where you joint two pieces together with a third metal that has a lower melting temp. This isn't a procedure that is "weaker" than welding - in some cases it's actually stronger and preferable to straight welding. It's ideal for light duty work, or when working with thin gauges of steel; jobs where welding could actually weaken the steel.

We could use Brazing as a lower end entry to metal working - and pretend that welding is for higher end stuff then. In exchange for not needing glare protection, I expect there should be some gameplay trade off; Brazing Rods could fit.

Brazing rods are crafted from metals with a lower melting temp than steel - aluminum, copper, silver, these all work. Could be similar to solder in a way, acting as a material requirement so that welding remains preferable if it's an option.

To go further, you could declare that Brazing requires a tool with atleast Metal Joining 1 quality. To weld, you need Metal Joining 2 quality. All welding gear is Metal Joining 2 qualty; and can also be used to braze, even arc-welders can braze because it's a setting where cyborgs also exist - an arc-welder than that also be an arc-brazer isn't impossible.

We could add in something like a propane torch as a Quality 1 (typically used by plumbers, artists, chefs and campers)

The fuel could be found at gas stations, groceries, craft stores, hardware stores, in RVs, camps and homes. Fuel could be found as small 1L and 2L bottles, 10, 20, 60, 100L+ tanks etc. Sort of like Gasoline in that you can siphon it. Too much trouble? Just have gasoline as the fuel - we're apparently using it in place of butane for lighters anyways.

This allows 'lower tier' metal working to be done without hitting the jackpot. You can make some metal repairs, vehicle mods etc. early on - and it's sustainable through all stages as long as you scavenge the propane and the brazing rods (or metals to make the rods). When you're at a point you are making a killdozer - acquiring brazing rods shouldn't be to difficult; and you're probably welding more than brazing anyways.

So again, for recipes that take Quality 1 Metal Joining, drop the glare protection requirement and instead make brazing rods a material. "Why are some recipes brazing and not others? Do we need duplicate recipes" No, Because welding can weaken steel - especially light duty tasks, low quality or thin steel; even if you had a welder you don't always want to weld. Lower the temp and braze it. That is literally one of the reasons brazing is used instead of welding - and why braze-welders exist. No duplicate recipes needed (unless we really want them)