I find this surprising, as that means framework to keep track of what storage space belongs to which clothing piece and tracking what items are actually in it. That’s a lot of work to implement, and last I heard it wasn’t happening on the grounds of it being too big of an overhaul. Not that I wouldn’t mind it being implemented, as then that’s framework to go all Jagged Alliance 2 on it or implement a grid based visual inventory. To be honest, my dream Cataclysm game DOES involve a JA2 1.13 + shaped grid inventory, but I think my original suggestion is both more practical and still in the vein of what Cata is.
Right now we have tracking of which clothing items are “above” others, so I don’t think it’s too hard to add a bit of code to implement either the complete (only outermost blocking item has storage space) or partial (% reduction by coverage % of above item) reduction of clothing storage. Hence I’m shilling this pretty hard, as I still think it’s the most important part of my suggestions and very reasonable to implement.
Just increasing all item encumbrance ratings across the board? That would mostly work in regards to addressing game balance now that removing clothing actually takes time. The real catch to that though is ranged vs melee, where you can have free arms but look like a utility-vest-golem given life with bare sprinting legs; or just max out your pants, and let them come to you to smash things silly.
So you can have ultra high encumbrance and still eat hulks for breakfast, having your proverbial 200+ storage cake and eating it, regardless of high encumbrance.
The thing is I do kind of like the options available for “character builds” in that regard, so I don’t really want to get rid of the two min-max options for King-of-Pants and Living-Trenchcoats. However the maximum possible capacity needs to be nerfed and a third option of balanced encumbrance should be desirable (player must spread out storage items to truly max storage space). Capping the clothing storage to just the outermost (excepting otherwise minor and limited [OUTER] flagged items IE holsters and slings) items and capping the player to only having two shoulders achieves this. I also like the decision of whether to have your fragile storage clothing exposed outside of armor layer or not because right now it’s a no brainer when it could be a decent tough player decision/call. Actually, given that, non armor clothing is too durable as it is. In conjunction, they should be more fragile.
Oh!
KA101: That gives me an idea for the new mutations expansion suggestion for the ongoing overhaul. The HUUUGE mutation that makes most clothing unwearable? Have it provide the player with more shoulder space, allowing more than two single [SHOULDER] items and up to 2 (or more?) both [SHOULDERS] items. Being able to easily haul multiple duffel bags or larger would be a pretty decent tradeoff to the whole limited-clothing penalty AND the insane carrying capacity goes really really well with the gigantic strength carrying-weight boost that comes with it.
