It would be cool to see the “modification” system expanded. At the cost of encumberence etc I could easily see the use case for reinforcing with plastic for acid resistance and/or waterproofing (tallow/wax treatment?), nomex for fire protection or sewing on bulky but convenient pockets to improve volume.
I’m not sure whether your current system is formulaic or would require hand tuning values for every item but this could be a way to enrich the “cobbled together” philosophy and improve player choice. I could easily see one making “poor man’s” bulky survival gear by opting for all the options on a trenchcoat.
While we’re at it, if I recall there are environmental and acid resistance numbers. Is the same true of fire resistance or is it a tag? It would be nice to see all the numbers as a player if there is any variation there.
One other item: As a player I would like to see repair/refit be the first tailoring option. It bugs me that for a routine task I have to slow my key presses to check where repair/refit falls on the list over the more unusual task of modification. I have accidentally lined things with wool/leather from lack of caution.
Pockets won’t happen until someone invents a really good formula that works for most items and can’t be exploited. So far nobody managed that.
In fact pockets were added with the clothing modification system, but then removed due to stupid things like sewing extra pockets on backpacks.
Fire resistance isn’t a thing yet. Nomex items won’t burn, but currently they don’t offer any protection from fire.
Acid resistance could be a thing, but I’m not sure if it would work in real life. Someone would have to get some data about waterproofing clothing with plastic.
I’m really not trying to be rude or start an argument here, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but… why is that stupid? I’m looking at my backpack right now and I could sew a pocket on one side of it big enough to fit a couple of cola cans and a knife or two. Plenty of backpacks have a fist sized gap between the part that rests on your back and the first zipper.
Vorchar covered the main reason for not including it, which is that it adds power creep for no real benefit.
As far as it being “silly”, the reason is there is almost certainly a reason that adding pockets to a particular backpack is going to be a problem, either it makes the backpack unwieldy, or it puts too much strain on the fabric, or who knows what. Sure some backpacks might just have unused space, the main thing I can think of is the designer not making it maximum capacity due to style issues, which you’re not going to care much about in an apocalypse. Allowing addition of pockets on clothes by default means every backpack has room for additional pockets, even when it’s obviously absurd, like adding them to a high-end hiking pack or a military pack that is very well-designed to have as much storage space as is feasible.
