Lorebot

This has been happening to me all day so far...it's pretty annoying. It's also a bit frightening when I think about getting banned for repeatedly getting kicked like this when I'm not actually cheating...

I would like to have more melee weapons in the game, but the current inventory system would needs serious revision before any melee weapon (including the currently available hatchet and crowbar) becomes seriously viable for anything other than emergency purposes. On a side note, you may not know this, but Hollywood has abused and fictionalized the actual functionality of a chainsaw for decades. A chainsaw really wouldn't be that great of a weapon to use in a zombie apocalypse for a few reasons: 1. It's LOUD, as loud or louder than most gunfire. And it has a distinctive sound that any player would recognize and know to engage you from range instead of attempting to sneak up on you. 2. Chainsaws don't Cut, they Tear. That's a big deal when you're dealing with a soft material like flesh. It won't go through flesh as easily as a knife would, and it wouldn't come away from a wound easily. It also doesn't do its work quickly. An axe will chop a limb in 1 clean stroke if delivered accurately and forcefully enough, because a chainsaw tears not cuts it requires a lot of time to get through something. 3. Most modern chainsaws have a specialized clutch system that is built to disengage the chain from the motor when the saw meets a specific kind of resistance. Namely that of flesh. This is a safety measure that was devised and widely adopted by manufacturers in the 90s and it limits the amount of damage a chainsaw can do to a non-wood substance. Unless you know how to disable that clutch mechanism no modern chainsaw will do anything more than superficial wounds to your target. 4. Chainsaws are heavy and unwieldly. If you've ever used one big enough to actually cut down a full grown tree you know it probably weighs in excess of 20lbs and is extremely unbalanced. It's made for careful precision cutting, not the type of swinging that would be required of it in melee combat. Chainsaws are also not built to take the kind of abuse they'd be subject to in melee combat. You'd more than likley bend the chain guide in a few minutes of swinging it around as a weapon, then the chain would come lose and you'd probably injure yourself more with the loose chain than you would anyone or anything else. 5. Chainsaws only have 1 cutting edge, hit someone with the wrong side and you're going to have the saw buck and kick in a way you wouldn't expect it to because the chain is travelling the opposite direction on the back side of the blade.

Uh, I own 4 firearms. An M1911A, a .357 revolver, an M14 and a double barrel shotgun. I inherited them from my father and before owning them I had never cleaned or maintained a gun. I hadn't fired a weapon since I was 18, more than a decade prior. It took me about 2 minutes to tear down the 1911 with no prior experience, another hour to clean it and reassemble it, and an hour after that I was at a local firing range target shooting with it. No training, no tips, no handholding. I was still able to hit a target reliably around 50m within the first 10mins. I also inherited his 80lb pull composite compound pulley bow. It's not very fancy, no sights, no bells or wistles. I took that bow to a local archery range to give it a try, after an hour of practice with some tips and training provided by the range employees I could reliably hit a target at about 30m. I've since had the bow modified with a set of sights and my accuracy has improved greatly, but it still requires far more expertise and effort than using the 1911. I'll admit I'm probably smarter than most people, and I'm experienced with mechanical operation and repair so I had a bit of an advantage over your average person. But if you think about it...your not playing an 'average person' you're playing a 'Survivor'...average people became Zombies...'Survivors' are the ones that were smart or lucky enough to not get infected.

Using guns is pretty simple. Fixing guns is complicated, so is making or modifying them. Point and shoot, reload when empty, easy. Fixing cars is a lot simpler than most people think, all you need to do is find out what's broken and replace it. You're not rebuilding parts from scratch, you're just swaping a broken part for a working one. If you can follow a set of instructions to assemble a home appliance you can fix a car. Carving a wooden bow from scratch is very complicated and more of an art than a science You need to pick the right wood. It needs to be the right size and shape, it needs to not have flaws or knots. You need to know how to treat it so it bends and flexes properly, It needs to be able to store the energy of a draw without snapping or deforming. If you're making a compound bow you need to know how to work with non-wood materials like bone or metals. If you're not making a compound bow its effective range is going to be 30-50m, and that's if you're an ace shot. A compound bow MAY get your effective range to 100m. Or you can go to the local sporting goods store and grab a compound pulley bow that would put anything you could make out of a piece of wood to shame. And right next to it you could find some really awesome fiberglass or carbon composite arrows and serrated steel arrow heads with extremely durable synthetic fletching. Your call...

Without a decent amount of training and/or experience making a bow that would fire more than 10 ft effectively is nearly impossible. You're a Survivor, not a Fletcher...unless you are...which would then make some amount of sense except for the fact that the occupation has been pretty much dead for more than 100 years. You'd be much better off looting a sporting goods store for such things, not only will it be better made, it'll be faster than trying to make it yourself.

This idea is actually why I registered on the DayZ forums. The current functionality of the Hatchet and Flashlight is almost unbearable, not to mention silly. You have enough room in your 'toolbelt' for a Axe, but you can't sling your rifle over your shoulder to hold it? You have to holser your pistol to hold a flashlight? There are many well known techniques for holding both steadily. I'm not requesting special models or animations, just functionality. Let it look silly, but let it work intelligently. There's no reason I can see that the game can't run a check on the tools section of your inventory to see if the flashlight and hatchet are present when you open the scroll menu for weapon changing and add options for switching to them without dropping your weapon first. Heck, I've had a bug provide this functionality to me at one point when I used my middle mouse button to pick up a Hatchet off a dead survivor who'd been using it as a weapon. It wasn't in 'tool' mode but the script for it treated it as one so I was able to pick it up and use it as a weapon without dropping my rifle, when I later dropped the Hatchet my rifle was still in my main weapon slot and my character immediately switched back to it.