50 bash prot and 90 cut prot, which is better than power armor. Every other ballistic vest/plate carrier is less than half of that. I remember this being brought up before and people saying it would get patched, but it still hasn’t been.
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Just drop it, it’s useless. When I voiced same concerns on github, I was talked down with some inane BS like “but power armor isn’t the be-all end-all protection from bullets, why do you compare the almighty ESAPI with it”.
This is a complete mis-representation of what happened and what our plans are.
The ESAPI situation KEEPS getting brought up.
Its values are correct for what it needs to do, stop bullets, the problem is, we need to eventually have a system for bullets being a different damage type, to have more granularity in what an armour can protect from, and how it degrades.
Comparing to power armour dosnt really apply, power armour values were pulled out of thin air back in the mists of time, ESAPI vest was based on ballistic data of what damage a bullet does in-game, and what an ESAPI vest can stop irl.
In other words, its the other armour thats wrong, and we cannot change everything in one go, its a piecemeal process.
I.e an ESAPI vest should protect from 308 type caliber, … once… or twice.
After that its no good, it becomes non-effective, we need a better system for that to occur.
This is not a situation of us saying " The ESAPI vest is correct and we stifle all attempts to tell us its wrong"
we are saying that " This is a work in progress with an attempt to make armour values correct across the board based on actual ballistic data that we researched, but is relying on further features and tweaks to make it seem more consistent and weve said this so many times on reddit and on github that we have little patience to continue doing so every time it comes up"
Further reading : https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/38912
Hope that clears it up.
12 Likes
My only hope is it is rolled before 0.F hit, because current situation you described is like this:
-power armor values were taken out of nowhere (so please shut up already about it, we’ll rebalance it when we have time (or just shove PA into aftershock because it is too scienc-y and let aftershock maintainers deal with it));
-current ESAPI version makes sense… well, if you take into consideration multitude of systems like new damage types and armor durability vs those damage types and whatnot, which will be implemented in the game some undefined time in the future;
-therefore, PA and ESAPI current values are okay (well, if you consider we’ll balance them in light of aforementioned planned mechanics).
My gripe is not that it is unbalanced, it is that it could be left with old, sane, values, until all those new mechanics were actually rolled in. Then it would be perfectly fine to add bajillion DR to it because it would not be OPAF as it is now, when those mechanics are NOT in the game yet.
This, again, comes up time after time.
We do not operate like other commercial games where things are worked on in the background then added all in one go when its ready for release.
We do continuous development, which means you get incremental updates, by volunteers, who can often pass the torch on to others, leave after one contribution, or get busy and come back to things later.
Also in the experimental version, we add experiments to see how it pans out, we cannot and will not hold back on everything until every after system is in place, because that would be impossible to herd all those cats because we are not a company giving tasks to its workers.
Often, deliberate breakage is also done to spur development, unrealistic things are removed to spur contributions from others to make better versions, otherwise broken things stay in for ages, untouched, someone has to break some eggs to make other people want to make omelettes, and slowly piece by piece, things get settled over time, a look at the 7+ years history of the project should show you that, things stood out as OP or over-nerfed, then were tweaked, added, removed, and over time it levels out.
So yes, please do “shut up already about it, we’ll rebalance it when we get around to it”, as you so eloquently put it, that is exactly the situation, yes the ESAPI vest makes sense when given the context of new mechanics that are waiting to be added.
This is the only way this game can be developed, anything else is completely unfeasible and unworkable if you gave it some thought.
5 Likes
I could understand it if not for some tiny little detail: ESAPI in its current unrealistical version is in stable 0.E. Not in experimental, but in stable.
Yes, unrealistical, because until those damage types/interactions are impemented, it makes absolutely zero sense.
Also, regarding “we cannot and will not hold back on everything until every after system is in place” - why only ESAPI vest then? Why only this one armor? And also, why did Kevin roll back fixes to it that totally made sense in current situation? Say what you want, for those who watched how it changed it doesn’t make any sense except for the version that someone wanted there to be exactly one OP armor for some unimaginable reason.
Yeah, updating one single piece of armor to new values depending on new yet-to-be-implemented mechanics while leaving all the rest as they were is the only way this game can be developed.
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Then I guess you do not understand incremental development. Despite my attempts to explain it.
If we reverted every single incremental change that rustled some peoples jimmies, then nothing would ever get done, forward progress means leaving these things in there, even if they look out of place, everything will be ok, despite the chip on your shoulder weighing you down.
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Hey, remember that time they added new hunger mechanics, changed turns to one second, or when NPC’s were so bare bone but they were in the game? There is never only “one” item especially when you consider that this game is update up to three times a day, there are many many items that need re balancing at any point in time.
Actually along those lines were the martial arts, which were in 0.D and were unbalanced as they could be, some did nothing, and then drunken boxing.
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hilariously broken
I don’t know about that. I feel like 85% coverage means I have to class the ESAPI as garbage. If one out of every six bullets/strikes goes clean through the armor then I don’t care how good it was against the other 5 bullets/strikes, I’m still going to die.
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Stable versions are just glorified translation milestones. They contain unfinished features and bugs despite your expectations.
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I hate these post. Let me shoot you dicks down. Real hard.
For one it sounds like you all are playing on vanilla builds with no mods.(Sarcasm drips.) Assuming the esapi vest protects the way it does. I see no flaws. Think about hitting with your fist a person wearing a SIMPLE ar-15 plate carrier…, your hand would hurt, this translates into zombies hitting it, dealing 0 damage… makes PERFECT sense. You could argue that you need to find the " impact" plate to put behind it, which would pretty much mitigate the blows from zombies to 0. Now moving on to other protections, head, arms, limbs. Those can STILL get damaged AND pretty much END your life. Unless you’re legitimately wearing a Esapi vest + power armor helm, you’ll end up looking like the black knight in Monty Python.
" Tis but a flesh wound " until you’re in a cycle with 25 speed watching yourself slowly die. Plus I can almost find any weapon, any character, anything and spin the same bullshit. IT’s OP NERF NERF NERF OMG SO MUCH AMMO NERF NERF NERF BALANCE BALANCE. Meanwhile you can walk outside and get mauled to death by child zombies on day 1 and have to restart. To further this statement, a lot of the people complaining are already playing smart and have experience under their belt that makes the game almost " easy" I routinely have characters make it to the 1-2 year mark.
What I consider “OP” is something that makes the game where you CAN not die in ANY situation.(Unless I set my OWN settings to where the zombie spawn rate is 0 or something) The only thing that even comes close to this would be a heavy exosuit + helm even then you believe it or not can be killed in it.( Plus the lack of storage space makes it so you have to return AGAIN to recover your goodies…)
IN ADDITION to all of this, if you feel like something is " too" op or " broken" my suggestion is then up the spawn rates / evolution rates of zombies. I’m sure you will find that things are not as OP as they seem.
TLDR: Complaining about a LEGITIMATE chest rig that protects ONLY the torso and NOT other body parts AND DOESN’T PROVIDE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS is = dumb.(BTW the Esapi is only better than the basic exo field suit…without its environmental protections other ones have higher protections) To add to this rant, go to the bottom of a mine.
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I think I agree with you, but it’s hard to tell amidst all that.
Also, theres no need for the insult to preface.
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Why do you think we use 0 as a prefix?
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well, listen to a simp (aka me)
OP armors weapons and items appear in every game once in a while
if you really dislike that stuff simply don’t use it so it causes no anger
I too know some ways to make the game insanely easier and i choose not to use them
or I make up some personal rule to make the game harder
1 Like
Yes, I don’t use it for exactly that reason. It still boggles the mind why it was implemented when it was implemented. I mean, if you need to test something, why roll it out in the main game? Even if you do, why roll out exactly one item? What purpose could it possibly serve?
Just compare these:
ex1(hypothetical): “we want to rethink crafting/construction system, so as the first step we’ll add couple dozen tools which currently serve no purpose but will be given new qualities and added to recipes in the future”.
ex2(what really happened): “we want to rethink armor/damage system so we’ll add an armor which is almost an order of magnitude better than anything else in the game, and some time later we’ll implement systems which will actually make it not bonkers”.
Do you see the difference here?
Please show me any piece of chest armor with better physical protection that [ESAPI ballistic vest] (maybe you didn’t understand what we are talking about? it’s that one chest armor).
That was really pathetic, btw.
See previous post. Rethinking hunger mechanic didn’t make it so you did not need food anymore. Changing turns for 1s… I joined after turns were already changed to 1s so can’t comment here. I doubt NPCs were so OP they could, say, clear a city with 1 hand tied behind their backs in any time of their development cycle. Same for healing mechanics, actually. But this, it just does not compute. I’m not against the armor itself, I just don’t get why it was added at the time when I’m sure it was obvious to those implementing it it would be out of place for months.
I haven’t even found an ESAPI vest yet so I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but that seems like an easy question to answer.
Cataclysm is a community project established and maintained entirely by volunteers. Everyone is free to come and go as they please and work on whatever they want. The ESAPI vest just happened to be the part of the projected plans that someone decided they wanted to work on.
From what I gather, it’s part of a larger project to revamp the functionality of armor, at least in the context of bullets, but building a single piece of armor is probably exponentially easier than reworking all of them.Think of it as someone having a massive list of household chores that they’re trying to Tom Sawyer out; they’re more likely to get someone to take out the trash than they are to get them to whitewash the fence because taking out the trash is easy in comparison. Easy things tend to get done faster, especially when contributors are volunteers rather than employees, ergo the ESAPI vest was done before the armor (partial?) rework.
It should be pretty easy to blacklist until the rework is entirely done, but you might start seeing whatever it’s intended to protect against before that times comes as well.
1 Like
Jesus Christ, who pissed in your cheerios? You need to see a therapist, man. You got some serious anger issues.
You are making wrong assumptions on how CDDA development works.
if you don’t like it, it takes about a minute at most to make a blacklist mod and delete it, or a mod that changes it’s values, anyone who can read basic english can json mod, plenty of younger teenagers json mod.
2 Likes