A Sling

[Auxxua]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could make yourself a sling? Not a slingshot, mind you, but a sling. Two strings (cloth) and a pouch (cured leather) stitched together (sewing kit) and you have plenty of ammo to go around (rocks).

Sure it's not powerful, but it has been used to scare wolves away from herds, and it's quite inaccurate, but you could train with it. I made myself a sling out of 2 strings of paracord and a jean brand mark thingy made out of leather in 30 minutes, so it wouldn't really be that weird to implement it into the game.

[Mroz4k]

Except it is rather unnecessary.
Throwing stones is adequate, in fact, could even be more useful - because you can throw rocks in a specific way with decent precision once you practice for a little bit. It is enough to hunt rabbits (seriously, stone hunting rabbits right now is ridiculously easy) and distracts wolves by leading them where you want them, or just hitting them instead and forcing them to run. If it were easier to switch from rocks to bow I might even be using stones to put wolves into a position I want them in for a kill-shot with a bow.

And you don't get to waste resources this way or drag along yet another weapon. You want "strings"? Cured gut, definitely. Cured leather is okay but I can see people being pissed - and since this would be mainly used to hunt rabbits, why not rabbit pelt instead?
Still, hardly necessary since stone throwing is rather efficient. 

The only particular advantage I see is probably the speed of the projectile, slingshot would be a lot faster than a stone throw.

[Fyn]

Definitely a good idea, the blueprint should be learned from a book though, it's not immediately obvious how to make one. Slings were used in ancient warfare since neolithic times by the greeks and egyptians mostly, making shots powerful enough to kill a man, so I can see it killing a wolf. They were used in medieval times as well.

Rocks were shaped into "bullets", making them fly easier.

It would be a great addition, and I would like it to be a skill you can level up, and for it to be deadly and accurate at level 5.

[Mroz4k]

Do what you want, you would not kill a wolf with a sling. And just about everyone knows how a sling looks, so I don't think the book knowledge would be necessary, on top of that once you get a bow, the sling would become widely unnecessary.

It is still a waste of time and resources to make one in TLD. Stone throwing is really easy to do with hands only, and making it "easier" would just defeat the purpose of "game challenge". It would be yet another weapon to put on the Weapons shortcut, next to just regular stones - meaning it would really just be an extra weight to carry around.

[Boston123]

20 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Do what you want, you would not kill a wolf with a sling. And just about everyone knows how a sling looks, so I don't think the book knowledge would be necessary, on top of that once you get a bow, the sling would become widely unnecessary.

It is still a waste of time and resources to make one in TLD. Stone throwing is really easy to do with hands only, and making it "easier" would just defeat the purpose of "game challenge". It would be yet another weapon to put on the Weapons shortcut, next to just regular stones - meaning it would really just be an extra weight to carry around.

Incorrect, in almost all aspects. If you don't know how something actually works, please don't comment on it.

A pigeon-egg-sized stone, which is pretty much the stones in-game, have the same impact force as a .45 pistol round when loosed via a sling. And ammunition is everywhere, and reusable.

A sling is part of my survival kit. It weighs, what, a few ounces, and allows me to kill game at ranges I could only dream to hand-throw a rock. 

The sling, the spear, and the club are the three 'survival weapons" everyone should know how to make. 

[The Wanderer]

I've used slings and they are not very difficult to use. Within a couple of hours I was hitting cans about half the time at ~40-50 feet (10-15metres.) When the stones hit, the effects were quite devistating. My buddy, the owner of the sling, could use it with an accuracy that seemed magical to me. He would make them from a single piece of rawhide in just a few minutes. This is a fantastic wishlist item, I wish I had thought of it myself!

[Mroz4k]

7 minutes ago, Boston123 said:

Incorrect, in almost all aspects. If you don't know how something actually works, please don't comment on it.

A pigeon-egg-sized stone, which is pretty much the stones in-game, have the same impact force as a .45 pistol round when loosed via a sling. And ammunition is everywhere, and reusable.

A sling is part of my survival kit. It weighs, what, a few ounces, and allows me to kill game at ranges I could only dream to hand-throw a rock. 

The sling, the spear, and the club are the three 'survival weapons" everyone should know how to make. 

 

I have quite a bit of survival experience and even wider knowledge, and unlike you, will back it with references. So take that arrogant attitude and stuff it some place else, I am not some city kid to allow you insult me with such remarks.

I would like to see you back that claim with some study that proves you right. (maybe you will because that statement might actually be true, but it proves NOTHING as I prove below with my statement, backed up by references)

I used slingshots before. I won't lie to say I am good with them but I know well enough it is not that difficult to get better at it in relatively short time practicing. Any and all hunting is illegal where I live, so I can only dream of being able to go with a sling and kill my supper with it (not that I don't feel like doing it anyway, now when you place that idea in my head).

BUT

Comparing force with a high-velocity weapon such as guns shows how much you actually know. Both can be used to hunt effectively. But the physics behind them work entirely differently. (as can be seen in this article on a slingshot forum) The article brings a perfect point I want to make, using a simple example, which I am loosely paraphrasing: "try to slap your belly with all your might - it will hurt but you will live. Now do the same with a sharp stiletto knife and you probably won't live to regret it."

The slingshot travels slowly, the bullet travels quickly, slingshot does not splinter but the bullet does, slingshot utilizes blunt trauma whereas bullet penetrates with its sharp edge. Now the impact force could be similar, true, but the effect of both weapons is widely different. Slingshot can only be used to penetrate soft tissue, and is used to hunt for rodents because those little bastards don't have that thick of a hide, and are of small body mass and specific shape that makes it possible for the sling to make a hole in them, even through them, because the blunt trauma caused by the hit is dissipated over much smaller area. 

You would not use a slingshot to kill a wolf unless you got INSANELY lucky by drilling it through some soft tissue and mortally wounding it. Whereas you could easily poke a hole through him with a bullet. Why? Because the slingshot blunt trauma would be greatly reduced by dissipating the force over the entire size of the wolves body, as the "force" would make a "wave" on his body in all directions. Same happens with rabbit but the rabbit is of small size, the wolf is much bigger, and on top of it, its hide is definitely thicker. If you got lucky you could make a wolf bleed by hitting its soft parts, but you would also incredibly piss him off.

Ancient Greeks used slings in battles against other men - guess what? People are very fragile and have soft skin, and even then the slings would often cause blunt trauma rather than penetrative one, or at most, fractures. There is evidence that slings punched a hole in through a skull - that is also possible. Bones are a different material than skin or meat, meat acts partially like a liquid, the skull is a bone, but a thin, hard bone which shatters relatively easily (I know what I am talking about, I had a cracked skull as a kid). Blunt force trauma against hard but thin bone can be more easily penetrated than a flexible muscle, especially if covered by a leather armor Greeks would use.

Never did I say that slings were a bad survival tool, or useless in real life!!!

I said they were useless in The Long Dark and I firmly stand behind that statement! Because stone throwing is easy in the TLD, there is no need for slings. It is simple logic. As much as we would love for it to be that way, TLD =/= real life! Now I understand the comparison to real life, but you have to realize when that comparison makes sense and when it doesn't. 

If you were able to throw stones like the person in TLD and after just 10 minutes of practicing you were able to use it to kill 6 rabbits, ask yourself, would you require to have that sling? If you are honest with yourself, the answer will be "no". 

So, a sling would make it even easier - but is that something we want? Do you want to play a game where you can kill rabbits without any effort at all? I don't because I am not only looking for "realism" in that game, I am looking for some challenge that will keep me playing, it is a game after all! I want to enjoy it.

Would I like to see it in the game? Possibly, but what would be the point? Hand throwing is easy enough, only use I can see in it is that it will kill the rabbits instead of stunning them, which makes it just easier and at the same time, more boring. 

Finally, I took a liberty of adjusting your quote and highlight a particular sentence with italics. You have answered yet another issue that is wrong with that suggestion - the accessibility to ammo. Ammunition is everywhere and is re-usable. This means the sling would be readily available in-game as a weapon with ammo which can be gotten everywhere with no effort and even re-used... taking away any sort of challenge one might find in the hand stone hunting, which has the same ammo, but is significantly more challenging.

Next time, be very careful whom you call out on "not knowing anything about a subject".

Bottom line: Slings are pointless in The Long Dark.

[Boston123]

36 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

I have quite a bit of survival experience and even wider knowledge, and unlike you, will back it with references. So take that arrogant attitude and stuff it some place else, I am not some city kid to allow you insult me with such remarks.

I would like to see you back that claim with some study that proves you right. (maybe you will because that statement might actually be true, but it proves NOTHING as I prove below with my statement, backed up by references)

I used slingshots before. I won't lie to say I am good with them but I know well enough it is not that difficult to get better at it in relatively short time practicing. Any and all hunting is illegal where I live, so I can only dream of being able to go with a sling and kill my supper with it (not that I don't feel like doing it anyway, now when you place that idea in my head).

BUT

Comparing force with a high-velocity weapon such as guns shows how much you actually know. Both can be used to hunt effectively. But the physics behind them work entirely differently. (as can be seen in this article on a slingshot forum) The article brings a perfect point I want to make, using a simple example, which I am loosely paraphrasing: "try to slap your belly with all your might - it will hurt but you will live. Now do the same with a sharp stiletto knife and you probably won't live to regret it."

The slingshot travels slowly, the bullet travels quickly, slingshot does not splinter but the bullet does, slingshot utilizes blunt trauma whereas bullet penetrates with its sharp edge. Now the impact force could be similar, true, but the effect of both weapons is widely different. Slingshot can only be used to penetrate soft tissue, and is used to hunt for rodents because those little bastards don't have that thick of a hide, and are of small body mass and specific shape that makes it possible for the sling to make a hole in them, even through them, because the blunt trauma caused by the hit is dissipated over much smaller area. 

You would not use a slingshot to kill a wolf unless you got INSANELY lucky by drilling it through some soft tissue and mortally wounding it. Whereas you could easily poke a hole through him with a bullet. Why? Because the slingshot blunt trauma would be greatly reduced by dissipating the force over the entire size of the wolves body, as the "force" would make a "wave" on his body in all directions. Same happens with rabbit but the rabbit is of small size, the wolf is much bigger, and on top of it, its hide is definitely thicker. If you got lucky you could make a wolf bleed by hitting its soft parts, but you would also incredibly piss him off.

Ancient Greeks used slings in battles against other men - guess what? People are very fragile and have soft skin, and even then the slings would often cause blunt trauma rather than penetrative one, or at most, fractures. There is evidence that slings punched a hole in through a skull - that is also possible. Bones are a different material than skin or meat, meat acts partially like a liquid, the skull is a bone, but a thin, hard bone which shatters relatively easily (I know what I am talking about, I had a cracked skull as a kid). Blunt force trauma against hard but thin bone can be more easily penetrated than a flexible muscle, especially if covered by a leather armor Greeks would use.

Never did I say that slings were a bad survival tool, or useless in real life!!!

I said they were useless in The Long Dark and I firmly stand behind that statement! Because stone throwing is easy in the TLD, there is no need for slings. It is simple logic. As much as we would love for it to be that way, TLD =/= real life! Now I understand the comparison to real life, but you have to realize when that comparison makes sense and when it doesn't. 

If you were able to throw stones like the person in TLD and after just 10 minutes of practicing you were able to use it to kill 6 rabbits, ask yourself, would you require to have that sling? If you are honest with yourself, the answer will be "no". 

So, a sling would make it even easier - but is that something we want? Do you want to play a game where you can kill rabbits without any effort at all? I don't because I am not only looking for "realism" in that game, I am looking for some challenge that will keep me playing, it is a game after all! I want to enjoy it.

Would I like to see it in the game? Possibly, but what would be the point? Hand throwing is easy enough, only use I can see in it is that it will kill the rabbits instead of stunning them, which makes it just easier and at the same time, more boring. 

Finally, I took a liberty of adjusting your quote and highlight a particular sentence with italics. You have answered yet another issue that is wrong with that suggestion - the accessibility to ammo. Ammunition is everywhere and is re-usable. This means the sling would be readily available in-game as a weapon with ammo which can be gotten everywhere with no effort and even re-used... taking away any sort of challenge one might find in the hand stone hunting, which has the same ammo, but is significantly more challenging.

Next time, be very careful whom you call out on "not knowing anything about a subject".

Bottom line: Slings are pointless in The Long Dark.

-facepalm-

1) Do you know what the difference between a 'sling' and a 'slingshot' is? You seem to use the two terms interchangably, and they are not. They really, really aren't.

2) Physics don't change depending on the object they act on. Physics are physics are physics.

A sharp object (a stiletto, in your example) will penetrate a target easier than a blunt object, yes. That is because you are focusing the mass and velocity of the object into a shallow point. 

 On top of that, a stiletto and a hand weigh about the same. A better comparison would be a stiletto and a cinder-block.

Now, keep in mind that Force = Mass x Acceleration

Bullets are so lethal because they travel so fast, because they have to make up for being so light in weight. Most bullets, even the bullets fired from large-caliber rifles, are going to be at most a couple hundred grains, aka a few ounces. If you slung a bullet from a sling, and a pigeon-egg-sized stone from a sling, the stone would perform infinitely better than the bullet.

Sling-stones don't have to travel so fast, because they weigh so much more, and they impact with surprising force because of it. Pigeon-egg-sized stones will kill a man if they impact him in the chest, and a tennis-ball-sized stone will annihilate whatever it touches. There are reports from the Conquistadors in Aztec Mexico, where the sling-stones of the natives impacted their steel armor with the force of musket balls, leaving dents and wounds that were identical.

Now, yes, a sling-stone doesn't leave a wound similar to that of a bullet. Chances are you won't see blood, or at most some heavy bruising. However, because the sling-stone won't penetrate, it transfers almost all of the energy from the sling into the target. The impact is something akin to swinging a hammer into the target, after a solid wind-up. Can a hammer to the head kill a wolf?

In animal-terms, humans are considered to be roughly equivalent to mid-sized animals. The representative game animals on the North American continent are deer and wolves. If a sling-stone will kill a man, it will kill a deer or a wolf with little issue.

Of course, actually hitting the target is the issue here, not so much the damage a sling can do. Using a sling is insanely difficult, and takes many weeks, if not months and years, of practice.  If you hit a human or a wolf/deer in the head with a sling-stone, they are dead. Hit them in the limb, and you will shatter the limb. Hit them in the torso, and you will rupture organs.

3) I don't really give a damn about in-game balance. This is a game where almost everything is so far removed from reality, you can very well say games like Rust are just as realistic. Where people say that spears, the simplest and oldest weapon in mankinds arsenal, would be a foolish thing to add.

 

 

[Mroz4k]

I used both the terms, but I was talking about slings, thinking that the slingshot was a term to use for the stone, being hurled out of the sling, basically considering it a bullet for the sling. Whatever.

I do not consider using slings to be that difficult, but that may be just a personal assumption. 
Also, it was an "example" for easier understanding so attacking it for precision to say that using a "cinder block" would be more accurate is pointless. Bash yourself in the stomach with a cinderblock, then - you will have some blunt force trauma but unless you cause yourself some internal bleeding you will be fine in time. POINT to make was what you said - that a stiletto, being a sharp object, would utilize bigger pressure on a smaller area.

That was the whole point with the slings and bullets as well. 

There is a biiiig difference in between what hide people have and what hide a wolf has. I made a reference that a wolf would be closer to man, clad in a leather armor, and I stand behind that statement.
Rock-loaded slings would hardly cause a skin penetration on a wolf because unless the man was hit in the head, the slings were not that deadly. Their deadliness came from the ability to cause massive internal bleeding through blunt force trauma. Leather armor would greatly reduce that, but metal wouldn't. In fact, you could argue that metal armor made. On bare skin, it will cause internal bleeding and fractures but it will rarely pass through the skin.
Was not talking headshots. If a headshot kills a man, it will kill just about any other animal - because the skull is right below the skin, so hit it real hard and it splinters right towards the brain... death.

And by the way, hammers are a weapon you can use to even fight a wolf... but you probably won't kill it if you do.

Let us entertain the idea that a sling CAN, in fact, kill a wolf: So, now you have an EASILY made weapon, which has ammunition EVERYWHERE and is simply difficult to use... and it can, in fact, kill deer and wolves. You have yourself answered why that weapon can never make it into the game, as it takes away any sort of balance.

And finally, if you are correct about sling shooting being so damn difficult, then you should remember that the player in TLD is your average Joe, who would not have used a sling in his whole life before.

And finally, game balance is far more important than the realism.
All of those in comparison, it should not make it into the game.

[Fyn]

Boys, boys, you got too serious, cmon. Look, I get the idea behind the statement "this would make the game too easy" . Yes, you can kill a wolf if you hit it with a sling stone on the head, probably a deer too, and if that doesn't kill them, it will leave them so screwed up you can finish them with a spear or a club.

If the devs consider that a sling would be too OP, fine, that's reasonable, but it's undeniable that it's a great weapon, powerful and easy to make. This is the reason why I would love modding to be supported. So, stop fighting you two haha

[The Wanderer]

Wow, where to begin... Arrows are piercing projectiles. They are designed to pass through flesh and organs while continuously cutting to cause massive bleeding and death. ANY bowhunter will tell you that a very common target on large game animals is the lungs. A lung shot causes massive bleeding that will effectively drown the animal in it's own blood, eventually. Bowhunters tend to be very good trackers because of this. Deer can travel quite far before succuming to blood loss. That's a piercing weapon.

Projectiles fired from a rifle aren't really that different from those launched from a sling. They both use kinetic transference to kill. Sure, a bullet will penetrate into a body. Yes, it will make a hole more readily than a sling. But it's the shockwave of the impact that kills, not the hole. I mean, the giant, ragged, gaping, hole doesn't help, but it ain't the star of the show. Most hunting rounds are designed to deform into a mushroom shape to exacerbate the shockwave. Sometimes hunting rounds through defect or interference by hard materials such as bone will shatter. You actually don't want that. Copper and lead don't go well with braised venison. You'll just have to trust me on that one. Now, the shockwave will cause massive trauma all along the bullet tract. It will rupture organs that the bullet never even touched, unlike a piercing weapon. I sling works the same way with the following caveats. Rifles and handguns, are clocked, in feet per second, or fps. A .45apc round could travel around ~2000fps. So, you're right, it doesn't travel at the same speed as a sling bullet. Yes, the proper name for a projectile purposed for a sling is called a bullet. Rifle bullets are actually named after them hence the speech. But gun bullets are weighed in grains and sling bullets are weighed in grams. But to make it easier lets say a bullet from a gun weighs 100 grains, that's about 6.5grams. Doesn't sound like much, but speed it up to 2000fps and you got a party. Now a sling bullet might weigh as much as maybe 200grams (that's just under a quarter pound for those using Imperial.) Even if the sling bullet only travels at lets say 350fps (the speed of a paintball firing,) it could cause damage easily as lethal as a gun fired bullet. Broken ribs, skull, subdermal lacerations from the shockwave, dermal lacerations from tearing. Oh, and rocks do shatter all the time. That's how we get smaller rocks. Rocks shatter, mountains become sand, and stop ruining my happytime. That's my daughters job.