Energy swords welding

[B-Kirill]

About the PR

Adds a welding function to an energy sword and similar weapons

Weapon	Speed modifier
Welding tool	1
Energy pen	0.8
Energy dagger	0.7
Energy sword	0.5
Energy cutlass	0.4
Double-bladed energy sword	0.4

Why / Balance

It is quite logical that a weapon with such a high temperature can weld metal. To prevent this from being unbalanced, the welding speed for each type of weapon has been changed. By the way, it still requires eye protection.

It even has a logical rationale:

• Energy dagger - small, low-power (compared to other types), ideal for welding, although it requires a little care.
• Energy sword - not very good for welding, the length of the weapon gets in the way a little, and you need to control the force so that you don't just burn through the metal.
• Energy cutlass - like an energy sword, however, it has an uneven blade, which also interferes with welding.

Media

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.

Changelog
🆑 B_Kirill

• add: Some melee energy weapons can now work like welding tool.

[Cojoke-dot]

1. It's really powerful, infinite repair on nukie Borgs and the ability to seal off airlocks from sec while still being a powerful weapon
2. Logically have you ever tried to weld with a sword. I could agree that an epen may work but a full on sword?

[B-Kirill]

1. It's really powerful, infinite repair on nukie Borgs and the ability to seal off airlocks from sec while still being a powerful weapon
2. Logically have you ever tried to weld with a sword. I could agree that an epen may work but a full on sword?

Well yeah... then I can remove the welding from the double sword altogether, and make the debuff even stronger for the regular one, so it will be better.

[B-Kirill]

I have greatly reduced the welding speed of the sword and cutlass. I also removed the ability to weld with a double sword.
Although maybe I should have given it the minimum time as a cutlass, too?

Upd: I will do another rebalance tomorrow and update media

[TeenSarlacc]

is there a way to make it so you can only unweld doors with the swords, or not allow them to repair borgs?

[keronshb]

This would be really busted with borgs that have an esword.

[shamblestf]

I think this would make nukie borgs really oppressive, even if you remove the desword welding

I think it wouldnt be bad to keep on the E-Dagger specifically, at half speed. Might be interesting to see the edagger purchased by nukies as an infinite welding tool that isnt too fast, and it would make some nice utility for traitors on an otherwise bad weapon

Generally i would try to avoid buffing items that nukies already purchase commonly

[Entvari]

To all complaining about nukie borgs, you guys are aware nukies have welders right?
Making E-Swords weld would make literally zero difference to nukie borgs as in this PR they're slower than standard welders, therefore you'd have no reason to use it over a base welder unless you're terrible at prepping.

[RedBookcase]

Do Eswords/Edaggers have the ability to act as a cutting tool already? If so, are there any cases where giving energy weapons both cutting and welding functionality would cause issues?

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

They should at the very least get a big penalty to tool efficiency if this gets merged.

[B-Kirill]

Do Eswords/Edaggers have the ability to act as a cutting tool already? If so, are there any cases where giving energy weapons both cutting and welding functionality would cause issues?

Nope

I wonder if people at least read the PR description

Nope

[B-Kirill]

I think the speed penalty is perhaps a bit too harsh? Like, there's literally no way anyone would ever use an esword as a welder if it's 5 times slower than a normal welder (which you can find anywhere in like 30 seconds).

Hmm, that makes sense.

[Samuka-C]

I feel like it would make more sense if energy blades could unweld stuff, but not weld

like, you can use to unweld a door but not weld it

[walksanatora]

no I think a e-blade could melt the door down the middle to weld it shut. since welds even by a welder are not paticulary clean.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[slarticodefast]

Personally I would prefer to keep weapons and tools separate items. These really don't need any buffs, especially for borg ops.

[B-Kirill]

Personally I would prefer to keep weapons and tools separate items. These really don't need any buffs, especially for borg ops.

Considering the welding speed, this is not even a buff, but a joke. It's just for a variety of mechanics, it's really hard to call it something out of balance.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[SlamBamActionman]

So we discussed this in a maintainer voicechat and there were mixed opinions, mostly the concern being
a) Infinite fuel for Nukies with assault borgs
b) Swords are pretty large and unwieldy; feels unintuitive that they would be used to weld things when they really are for cutting (which you can already do while hitting).

As such, we feel that it's probably best to limit it to only the energy dagger, which is otherwise a relatively underutilized item and smaller in size. It also makes it match the cybersun pen (which has screwdriver utility). We'll have to keep an eye on this for the future if it ends up being a meta choice that empowers infinite sustain assault borgs, but otherwise it has approval.

We discussed this a bit more (I was a bit fast typing my first response!) and came to the following conclusion:

Ideally we'd want to see a separation between "repairing" and "welding shut"; for the sake of consistency it'd probably be better if all energy melees have the "welding shut" functionality and "repairing" is exclusive to the welding torches.

Additionally, is it necessary to have the WelderComponent?` It might be possible to achieve welding by using a ToolComponent, since that wouldn't require keeping track of fuel usage. It seems excessive to add 3 new properties to the component to achieve the desired behavior.

[slarticodefast]

Yeah, WeldingComponent right now is only there for keeping track of fuel consumption, so the energy swords should not have that in the first place (rather than disabling it with three different datafields). And ideally the component would be refactored into a more general ToolFuelConsumptionComponent.

[B-Kirill]

Changes:

• Switched completely to using ToolComponent, old problems have been fixed, apparently.
• Had to add AutoNetworkedField for UseSound in ToolComponent because ComponentToggler was breaking the sound for the client.
• Removed the welding option for the hypereutactic-blade as it is strange for a weapon of this size.

I am still thinking, maybe I should remove the welding option for borg ops?