What was changed with armor nerf, and what was its purpose?
The goal wasn’t a nerf, it was a code cleanup, but there was no objection to it having that effect.
The thing I like most is that there’s actually some incentive to use clothing modification now. I mean, it’s only going to affect myself and the dozen other people who play with Survivor Armor disabled, but it’s a start.
Cool thanks Kevin.
The changes to the clothing modification look awesome.
I used the clothing modification if I needed either really warm clothing(guess what that’s for) or for certain items like shields where more protection is needed at certain times such as trying to get close enough to an anti-material turret to use a laser rifle.
The nerf involved dropping a 1.5 multiplier on armor that was there since ancient times and only existed to satisfy some even ancient-er multiplication due to how math was handled.
I did want to add some buff to compensate at first, but I didn’t have a good idea of what could that be, and others decided it’s fine for the nerf to be just a nerf. Armors are still vital, so it’s not like we exchanged “all armor all the time” to a nudist paradise.
Here’s an updated list of “what to wear”:
A really good thing happened: leather is now generally better than cotton at protection. This wasn’t intended, but it’s good because now leather actually exists instead of being only a material for survivor meme armor while being outclassed at other applications. No more hoodie-wearing thugs everywhere, we Mad Max now.
It would be nice if there’s some way to improve coverage. At the moment, for example, I was very pleased to find a reason to wear SWAT armor now but its still pretty annoying that it only has 95% coverage. If there was some way to get to 100%, I’ll actually feel able to rely on it.
That is something that I wondered a lot for stuff like that. What is the missing percent that doesn’t cover.
What is SWAT armor supposed be? a Kevlar suit they put around their uniform or its a full gear like this? (minus weapons)
What is SWAT armor supposed be? a Kevlar suit they put around their uniform or its a full gear like this? (minus weapons)
The only clear answer is whatever Kevin says it is. Full-body bullet-resistant suits aren’t employed in the real world because it’s too much extra bulk for little improvement over a bullet-resistant vest, which does the job of protecting your vital organs from what would have been a fatal wound and giving you the chance to duck into cover.
A more plausible “SWAT armor” would be a suit specialized for CQC, with lightweight polymer/plastic plating to take the edge off of melee blows, absorb, and distribute the impact; worn in tandem with a bullet-resistant vest. I’m not a professional though so take that for what you will; that’s just my best guess.
Edit: just looked at the json entry, apparently it’s made up of at least a ballistic vest, ballistic shins, and load bearing equipment.
IRL armor have no reason to have 100% coverage, however, in our cataclysms, there’s shouldn’t be anything that stops us from using the universal solvent known as duct tape to heal all ills.
Mostly it feels weird to rely more on turnout coats than SWAT armor.
It actually makes alot of sense in the case of SWAT armor as it is designed more to keep bullets away from vital points than anything else. Now Riot Gear (which is not currently present in the game as a suit) would definitely be 100% coverage.
Still nothing that shouldn’t be fixable by liberal application of the God Element(duct tape).
What is SWAT armor supposed be? a Kevlar suit they put around their uniform or its a full gear like this? (minus weapons)
That’s pretty much it yea, you can see the gaps at the waist and under the arms, which is why it’s not 100% coverage. Even if those areas were covered by e.g. kevlar, they wouldn’t be as thick as the main areas, therefore they don’t count as covered.
And duct tape for armor… really?
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
More specifically, I meant jury-rigging protection over its vulnerable areas.
Why not? If anything, Mythbusters proved you can use Duct Tape for literally anything. They built a bridge over a canyon, they built hammocks, boats, hats, and if you put a few layers of ducttape together they can actually be strong enough to withstand bladed weapons and axes - at least for a while (there are some videos out there for that too. People using several roles of ducttape to make a duct-tape wall of some description, which can withstand quite a few things, shockingly).
I actually have to ask: Why not Duct-tape armor? That needs to be a thing, a shirt as a base with several layers of ducttape around it. It’s definitely not comfortable and it might get a bit hot, but that’s the price of armor!
In real life, almost no non-flexible armor[1] is going to be 100% coverage because you need mobility at the joints, particularly the shoulders, elbows, and hips. Historically, this was solved with cloth or mail voiders, which I’d love to see either as a craftable inner layer with 100% coverage or potentially as an armor enhancement to increase coverage.
I’d also like to see skill (melee, or maybe dodge) influence how likely you were to take an uncovered hit. There already is that with armored arm and leg blocks, but it seems like if I’m wearing a suit of SWAT armor with 95% coverage and I have decent skills it should be easier for me to take a hit on a plate rather than the unprotected squishy bits, even if I can’t properly dodge or block, than the raw coverage of the armor might suggest.
It seems like, especially post-early-game, a big part of armor choice isn’t ‘how protective is it’ because there’s normal zombie attacks (which are fairly easy to stop unless you’re getting torn apart, when armor won’t help) and guns (which are rare and hard to stop, period) and not that much in between, but ‘how much coverage does it have’ because even one or two normal attacks that bypass armor are enough to bring you from ‘doing ok’ to ‘getting torn apart’.
[1] and bullet-resistant kevlar doesn’t count as flexible
I think that’s exactly the issue. The difference for even one attack slipping through and causing a variety of Nastiness is such that 100% armor is always the best option, and it gradually moves to limit a variety of other choices. From a feels perspective, too, having rare SWAT armor feel less valuable than a turnout coat I can find from any zombie firefighter after washing seems a bit of a gip.
Survivor suit includes duct tape in components.
This is how I think about it as well, I’ve pondered ways to make different armor overlap constructively, but haven’t come up with anything yet. The best we can do right now is some kind of armored bodysuit that does have 100% coverage and moderate protection.
This is another feature I’ve wanted to add for a long time, dodging should only prevent hits that were close to missing already, mostly it should make attacks hit less vulnerable areas.
I’m not sure that’s a problem, because that’s really what you want given the scenario.
Another thing we don’t model is vulnerable points. If an armor has 95% coverage, but hitting the 5% area that’s exposed won’t kill you, then that’s nearly perfect protection.
I almost wonder if what we want to do is divvy up the surface of each body part into ~100 zones, and have armor state which zones it covers. The down side is that makes the coverage stat suddenly much more complex, and defining new armor is much harder. The up side is it resolves this sort of thing.
Your choices for “best” are fundamentally limited anyway, if coverage didn’t dominate, something else would.
SWAT armor is only particularly good in its own niche, which is that mobility is highly valued, and you expect people to be shooting at you. If you remove the getting shot at part, it becomes unecessarally bulky.