Armor Up! A mod to make armor more better. New PA Utilities pack!

Game Talk The Lab
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This is a (for now) pair of mods starting to implement some advanced armor options for players.

Current packs:
Survivor Expansion
Power Armor Utilities

Survior Expansion adds:
Survivor Skinsuit
So in my current run I’ve got top of the line survivor armor on every bodypart and every layer. Except the next-to-skin layer! Why? Because my goddamn Fire-Resistant Suit tore off! There’s currently nothing comparable to survivor armor for the skintight layer, and that’s stupid! Unless you kevlar reinforce your underpants, but that’s stupid too!
At 7 tailoring level you’ll be able to make a Survivor Skinsuit. Basically just a cotton-lined kevlar bodysuit so you can Armor Up! on every layer and coordinate your whole outfit without some grabber tearing it off you while somehow leaving the armor on top perfectly intact.

Armored Backpack
I probably don’t need to tell you why you need this…
Just a version of the existing Survivor Backpack made out of kevlar and a little metal to stop it from being the only thing that gets damaged in combat and dropping your new books all over the floor. A little more encumbering, and a level higher in tailoring than the normal version.
If people like it (and it works properly) I’ll consider making armored versions of the other survivor backpacks, but we’ll see if there’s any demand for it.

Survivor Environmental Skinsuit
How many times have you thought “Dang, my Heavy Survivor Suit makes me almost invincible, except for those damn shockers and acid spitters!” well screw that!
This is a very lategame (tailoring 9) next-to-skin layer suit over most of your body. Made from a whole bunch of plastic chunks, a cleansuit, some wire, and assorted fabrics, it’s basically a rubber suit with a faraday cage built in to protect against acid and electricity. Quite warm, so be careful of overheating.
This is what I’m most worried about in terms of balance, considering it’s basically a hard counter to the two main zombie specials that can threaten a lategame charater. If you use it a bit and it seems overpowered, feel free to let me know, especially if you have a good idea to help balance it.

Superalloy Plate Armor
We all know how awesome plate armor is, and how much superalloy we have lying around in our resource piles. With the same book that lets you make Plate Armor you could make Superalloy Plate Armor. Basically the same thing, but a bit lighter and less encumbering. A bit more difficult, but a bit quicker, to make.

Survivor Plate Armors
Survivor versions of both steel and superalloy plate armor are a bit more encumbering but have 100% coverage and slightly better protection.

Power Armor Utilities adds:
A sheath, scabbard, back scabbard, holster, back holster, and a magazine bandolier. They’re simple to craft and can be worn with power armor. There may be a bit of weirdness on account of how power armor is handled by the game, so let me know if something weird happens and I can TRY to fix it.

Finally, if anyone who uses the mod has a good suggestion or a comment, feel free to let me know. I’m very susceptible to flattery.

Get them here!
Survivor Expansion
Power Armor Utilities

Coming Soon:
(Maybe, if I ever work out a way to do it nicely)

Power Armor
Modify power armor to be a bit more viable. Lower energy cost, a substantial strength boost (and possibly small boosts to other stats, depending on the variant), and some improvised attachments:

  • Improvised Carrier Frame: A bunch of pockets and straps to increase your carrying capacity at the cost of some torso, leg and arm encumbrance. Can be worn with or without the Hauling Frame.
  • Holsters, sheaths and scabbards to attach weapons to. With little or no encumbrance, since most would involve magnets welded to the side of the armor. Possibly multiple variants.
  • Heaters/Insulation: Just some extra warmth, to let you get to the bottom of those ice labs in comfort.
  • Extra/External plating: Almost certainly not necessary, but might be handy for extended use, since you could put it over the main armor and repair it as needed instead of having to take off the main armor.
  • A “firestorm” kit: Basically just the artifact ability of the same name. Activate it and it spawns a bunch of fire around you.
  • Tesla Coil/Fusion Beam/Coolant Purge Kit: Like the Firestorm kit, just uses the lightning/fireball/acid ball artifact ability. Activate to throw a lightning bolt/fireball/acid blob.
  • Enhanced Servos Kit: A set of extra servos and wiring to give you a speed, strength and dexterity boost.
  • Enhanced Computers Kit: A set of extra computers to give you a boost to Intelligence and Perception. Possibly also add Psychic Shield or anything else that makes sense.
  • Toolkit: Basically just the Integrated Toolset CBM as a piece of power armor. May or may not actually be possible.

Each of those kits would be quite rare to find, and might be craftable with high skills, semi-rare materials, and the usual endgame books.
In fact, it might be best to make power armor fully modular, using a system similar to Fallout 4.

Another idea is to add internally-powered Power Armor. A small nuclear or fusion reactor mounted as a backpack to provide indefinite power to the suit. This would have to be a separate item and you’d need to craft it with expensive, rare materials (a minireactor and a few dozen plutonium rods or some hydrogen cells, at least). Semi-makeshift, so some extra encumbrance and reduced armor. Will leak radiation into you if damaged. Might even have multiple tiers depending on what materials are available to you.
If people like the modular system it might be one of a number of wearable power packs or frames which act as the base of a suit of power armor, and is the thing you actually turn on.
Might just be a special UPS, like a mk3, that automatically refills over time or when you activate it.

RM13 Combat Armor
Modify RM13 combat armor to use normal batteries so it can be converted to UPS as wanted, as well as adding a Dexterity and/or Perception boost while wearing it powered. From there I’d like to “specialise” it in two ways and have three modes you can switch between a la Crysis:

  1. Full combat focus: Increase armor rating substantially. Reduce the full radiation protection to partial, and disable some of the excess attachments (clock, swimming goggles, etc.) Small strength boost, higher dexterity boost, reduces perception.
  2. Enviro suit: Full everything-else protection, uses substantially less power, a rebreather effect. Extra perception boost, psychic shield, speed boost, drops your strength and dexterity. Probably some other stuff I can’t think of now.
  3. Standard: As it is now, but with armor rating somewhere between current powered and unpowered rating. Isn’t actually powered, is basically just a full coverage suit of kevlar armor. Possibly lower encumbrance and/or higher carrying capacity.
    Maybe even a sniper, stealth, survivaltist or engineer mode?

Basically intended to be a jack-of-all-trades competitor for the Power Armors tankiness and modularity. Would have to be made substantially rarer and probably won’t include everything in the list. Can’t be modified in any way, since it’s a cutting edge technomagic suit. Might even be made a type of power armor or heavily encumbering, since you can currently wear RM13 with other clothing.

Pre-Cataclysm Armor
So most Pre-Cataclysm armor sucks. Hard. How can a military-grade bulletproof vest be that terrible? Well maybe in real life they have gaps and all, but not having usable protection in a game is pretty silly. Most, if not all, armor vests will get higher coverage and armor rating (not quite Survivor grade, of course). Perhaps also with a survivorised variant with added plates and fabric, to provide 100% coverage (but for more encumbrance than a proper survivor suit). That way the armor you find in crashsites can stop being useless, and those running the No Survivor Armor mod can have reasonably reliable protection.
Might also include the addition of some more armor, a powered exoskeleton, a bomb disposal suit, stuff like that.

Get them here!
Survivor Expansion
Power Armor Utilities

8 Likes
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Power armor is already stupidly OP, if this game needs something it’s extra difficulty, not ways to make it easier.

You’d be better off making a mod that creates end-game content requiring power armor.

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Ehhh that sounds like a lot of work. Plus, if it’s already broken, I can’t break it more!

In all seriousness, I use power armor very rarely ingame since it uses so much power. This is basically just a method of making it more versatile so it’s practical earlier in the game, and truly overpowered for lategame when it really doesn’t matter how massively overpowered it is.

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Uh, I’ve just first tried my power armours yesterday and I was like :face_with_raised_eyebrow:???

Can’t really see the point. I thought power armour is supposed to be a piece of bulky junk without power supply, but it’s really only a bit bulky (still not as bulky as my former outfit) without power and turning it on does exactly what? Turns on the servos so that it’s not encumbering? Or what? This is frustrating, honestly. And where is my ‘monkeys on speed © CDDA Wiki’ mobility? I do get 0 encumbrance with light power armour set, but that does not make me better, faster, stronger. Heavy armour still drains all my stamina even while powered. This is stupid, really. I know it’s OP, since it’s so protective, but what’s the point in the whole system?

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Making it “practical” to use early game does in fact break it more. Rarity of armor sets and high power consumption are the only things that make it less than totally broken. Take power consumption away and it becomes, “oh I found a helmet, game over”.

I mean do what you want in a mod, but it will be ridiculously OP if you drop the power consumption.

The extended/improvised cargo options also directly negate the only persistent down sides of power armor.

Same thing with making RM13 powered by UPS, removing the only significant resource cost of using it doesn’t make it “better” in any meaningful way, it’s just ratcheting up how powerful it is.

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Normally I respectfully disagree with Kevin on what constitutes “Balance”. Not here. Power Armor is strong enough, if you ask me. Besides, Joint Torsion Ratchet (one of the best cybernetics) and Power Armor Interface MKII give enough of a power supply to charge Power Armor for a good amount of time.

RM13 should only be powered by Plutonium or similar high-power fuels, because it projects a freaking forcefield.

IMO, the real problem is with the UPS. It could stand to hold a large charge than just 1,000, considering how quickly that gets drained. I gave Noble Culver’s first UPS an Extra Battery mod to increase power storage.

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That all being said, I’d love to see some survivor armor that uses Superalloy in construction. I just have all this lightweight, flexible, memory-plastic infused aircraft grade metal sitting around, taking up space…

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Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.

That’s exactly what I’m trying to fix. Most of the endgame armors are just boring for how difficult they are to get.

The general consensus seems to be that power armor and RM13 are both already powerful enough, and reducing their power consumption will make them overpowered. That’s fair enough, so, new plan:

All three power armor variants get their unpowered encumbrance bumped up to 100 or so. That should (more or less) stop finding a suit of PA from being an “I WIN” button on your first day. Also should slow you down if you decide to toss on a suit and rampage your way through a city with a butter knife, and will make it really dangerous to run out of power mid-combat. I might even look at giving it the electronic handcuffs effect so it practically immobilizes you, but I don’t know if that’s possible.
Probably also increase powered encumbrance by 5-10 points.

Basic power armor will get it’s power usage dropped a bit, to the point where you can just about power it from a Torsion Ratchet. It won’t get all the extra bonuses, and it will lose full radiation, environmental, and electrical protection. Might get partial radiation protection?
Basically just a thick suit of armor that holds itself up, intended to be kind of a patrol model for extended use without heavy combat or dangers. Since it’s no longer an invincibility button, it shouldn’t be OP with reduced power usage. Should be moderately useful for midgame to early lategame, but not endgame.

Light/Heavy variants will get various bonuses, but also have their power usage upped significantly. More for endgame, they’ll be for really heavy combat, radioactive areas, or anyone willing to run a metabolic interchange indefinitely for invulnerability.

The fusion powered variant will still work the same way, but again, it’ll have very high skill and material costs. May also only be available for the heavy variant. Ideally I’d like it to require specialized parts from a number of locations, but that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

The improv carrier can have significant encumbrance, and I’ll probably add a little bit to the hauling frame, so “kitting out” your PA has a downside.

RM13 is difficult because I really want it to be cool and useful, but I just can’t bring myself to use it when it uses a nonrenewable power source. That said, raising power consumption of the powered modes substantially (twice the consumption of heavy/light PA, for example) should help keep it in line, and each mode will have disadvantages as well as advantages. The unpowered version will be fairly nondescript, basically just a survivor suit.

I think encumbrance should be a fair bit higher, since I see it as a full armor outfit for spec ops or whatever, so that should prevent it from being the obvious best choice. I’d like to make it power armor as well so you can’t wear anything else with it, but then it could have the enhanced servos, fireball launcher, etc, and that doesn’t make sense.

Superalloy Survivor Plate Armor should definitely be a thing. I’ll add that to the list.

I’d like to make things balanced without being useless, so if anyone has any suggestions for that, go ahead.

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Actually, power consumption isn’t anywhere near as much of a hassle as it looks:

  • The only real penalty is encumbrance, meaning it can be turned off for travel and easy fights (ie. 95% of them). Most fights will just take more time without being even the slightest bit more risky.
  • Power storage bionics are still infinitely stackable and semi-farmable
  • “bio_furnace” is still a thing. Snack on a 2-by-2 and you have few minutes of action more. And you can drag a whole cart of those behind yourself.

For as long as you’re invincible, it doesn’t matter that you move slowly. PA is barely less overpowered than it would be without power consumption.

For power consumption to really matter, PA would have to stop protecting from regular enemies (ie. not hulks) when unpowered. And not just from being grabbed and “set up” for a hulk smash.
Not sure if that’s doable in “realistic” way. Unpowered walking tank is still a steel can. No air filtering meaning vulnerability to poison? Weak joints that can be overpowered when the armor is underpowered (ie. zombies doing wrestling moves that bypass armor but only against multiply-grabbed targets)?

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20 posts were split to a new topic: What is power armor anyway?

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FINALLY actually put something together after (apparently) over a month.

Basically, I just put together the extra survivor armor stuff, an armored backpack, and the superalloy plate armor. Changes no existing items, so perfectly compatible with existing saves.

RM13 and Power Armor are untouched as of yet, and will probably remain that way until I find a way to put climate control on a normal item or make a use function that lets you pick which item to transform the activated item into. Or I might just do the best I can and let people try it.

Hope everyone enjoys.

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First of all, your mouth encumberance has been maxed out, which means you will suffer stamina loss constantly from being unable to breath (you’ll not suffocate to death, don’t worry about it.)
Just wear light power armor, I’m sure every character can wear these with ease.

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We should have more light/heavy leather betwixt kevlar garments with varying low encumbrance. Adding in the Liquid Armor Treatment for no encumbrance and slight armor gain. With optional rubber/plastic infusion methods for acid and rain. Making base garments is great and all. But I have a beef with the lack of upgrade options beyond sewing thick layers and adding huge encumbrance and leaving it at that =/

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Please make your power armor concept (plan on mod) bc I love your idea… If the admin (the higher up - sorry if that what I thought) oppose your idea/concept… Make seperate mod… Everyone will be happy

Sorry if my language is messed up… English isn’t my primary language

Love from indonesia.

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I actually PRed the climate control change so there’s a good chance I’ll eventually pick this back up and make it a thing, but we’ll have to see how long that takes.

There’s already plenty of useless light armors in the game, we don’t need more. LAT would be interesting, but I’m not sure a homemade version would work that well. Also, can’t be done through a mod. Requires hardcode.

Also can’t be done as a mod, and might break balance a bit. Talk to Kevin.

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Well I think LAT should be uncommon in Military bunkers(because, ya know…storage I guess?) and Labs. You can get a hold of the stuff from several companies last I recall. But my memory is fuzzy and I don’t care where irl anyway. It makes sense to me for the game. It would provide only a couple points unless anyone thinks it deserves more credit. But I like my light gear. Crap or no! So it would be great to have =D

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I hope you find the time to comeback to work on this mod. It sounds amazing. Especially your ideas for the different power armor enhancements.

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I’d like to, but I currently have a lot of other stuff to work on. That said, I’ll probably just show up and smash it all out some random day.

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I’ve been trying to do similar mod. But I’m unsure where to start. Especially with having power armor change stats based on whether or not it is activated. Or having other actions occur (such as an active defense shield) when the armor is turned on is really throwing me for a loop. I don’t want to incovience you, but any advice on where to start would great!

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Armor changing stats when activated can be handled with the transform use_action (see data/json/items/tool_armor.json). The transformed item’s stats do not have to be the same as the untransformed item.