Tailor's kit feedback and ideas

[Murphy]

I tried out the tailor’s kit, and I’d like to express the following concerns and ideas.

1. Aesthetics. Things like “reinforced cargo pants (F) (K)” look kinda ugly, perhaps “reinforced cargo pants (FK)”?

2. Material oddities.
   I can sew pockets onto my light power armor! Should probably require that the item’s main (first) material is on the list.
   Also, it makes little sense to have leather improve protection values. Can you really make a kevlar vest better by padding it with leather? Without increasing encumbrance? (Leather could instead improve coverage, see below.)

3. I propose the following list of modifications (first 4 replace the existing ones, others are new):

• sew pockets: increases storage capacity, takes rags and the item’s main material.
• improve coverage: increases coverage, takes leather and the item’s main material.
• line for warmth: increases warmth, takes wool or fur (choose if possible).
• armor with kevlar: makes the item sturdy and more protective. Takes kevlar.
• waterproof: makes the item water-friendly and increases environmental protection. Takes plastic.
• fireproof: increases fire protection. Takes nomex.
• custom-tailor: makes the item varsize. Takes any of the item’s materials (as when repairing/reinforcing).
• refit for mutated anatomy: must be varsize, must include torso. Requires another identical item.
• embroider: makes the item fancy. Takes a lot of thread.
  All modifications except embroider and custom-tailor should increase the item’s encumbrance by 1.

[etgfrog]

* custom-tailor: makes the item varsize. Takes any of the item’s materials (as when repairing/reinforcing).

I can see it now…custom-tailor survivor duffel bag.

[OzoneH3]

I like your ideas. Balance wise there should really be a downside for all the benefits you get.
Those modifications should also need a certain amount of time and skill.

[Barhandar]

[quote=“Murphy, post:1, topic:8912”]* improve coverage: increases coverage, takes leather and the item’s main material.

• armor with kevlar: makes the item sturdy and more protective. Takes kevlar.
• waterproof: makes the item water-friendly and increases environmental protection. Takes plastic.
• refit for mutated anatomy: must be varsize, must include torso. Requires another identical item.[/quote]
  How exactly would leather increase coverage?
  Kevlar doesn’t make it more or less sturdy than leather. Useless, kevlar is better as it is now, and STURDY can be a different modification.
  …and doubles the volume, given you’re essentially sewing a raincoat into it, instead of, uh, actual waterproofing (oil/tallow).
  There’s exactly ZERO point for it requiring varsize, and out of what exact absolute pointless nowhere comes the “must cover torso” requirement?

…and the item’s main material.

There isn’t a “main” material, all of them, however many you stuff on an item, are equal.

All modifications except embroider and custom-tailor should increase the item’s encumbrance by 1.

Geee, I wonder why all my items are fancy, fit me, and NOTHING ELSE.
The bonuses would need to be VERY considerable to justify increasing encumbrance, both for gameplay and for realism. My leather jacket’s padding doesn’t make it more or less encumbering.

[Murphy]

I’ll go point by point.

How exactly would leather increase coverage?

By reinforcing places where the original item wasn't protecting you. Better collar, joints, sleeves, whatever.

Kevlar doesn't make it more or less sturdy than leather. Useless, kevlar is better as it is now, and STURDY can be a different modification.

Really? I wonder why motorcycle chaps are made with kevlar then! As it is now, it just adds some more protection for free.

...and doubles the volume, given you're essentially sewing a raincoat into it, instead of, uh, actual waterproofing (oil/tallow).

Fair point. We can drop the plastic option entirely, I mean it's a tailor's kit after all. Just for some reason it mentions plastic, so I figured it should have an option to make use of plastic chunks.

There's exactly ZERO point for it requiring varsize, and out of what exact absolute pointless nowhere comes the "must cover torso" requirement?

The cover torso is there so you can make your ANBC suit fit a huge mutant, but you can't make your cargo pants fit tentacles. Because large cargo pants still won't fit tentacles. The varsize requirement is there so you're further limited. It was stated many times that XL variants shouldn't be easily avaliable for all armor. Though we can think of a better restriction, yes.

There isn't a "main" material, all of them, however many you stuff on an item, are equal.

Okay, still you shouldn't be able to sew things on something made out of plastic and superalloy. Perhaps exclude plastic from the list?

Geee, I wonder why all my items are fancy, fit me, and NOTHING ELSE.

???

The bonuses would need to be VERY considerable to justify increasing encumbrance, both for gameplay and for realism. My leather jacket's padding doesn't make it more or less encumbering.

My light power armor just went from 16 to 61 storage. It is VERY considerable. With zero drawbacks it just cheapens storage space and everything else.

What I’d really like to see is that advanced sewing shouldn’t repeat what can be achieved by swapping your survivor’s suit for a heavy or winter survivor’s suit, or swapping your backpack for a duffel bag. It should help you in other ways, hence the thoughts about improved coverage, waterproofing, sturdy flag etc.

[Coolthulhu]

Balance wise there should really be a downside for all the benefits you get.

This.

At the very least, there should be a big penalty to layering reinforced items. Preferably also coupled with a static encumbrance penalty proportional to protection provided. A fur-padded t-shirt is no longer thin, a kevlar/leather-padded pair of silk gloves no longer bends easily enough to be 0 encumbrance.

Padding bonus should not depend on coverage or even should be inversely proportional to coverage. You can’t really pad an armor that is already designed to protect you completely (survivor armor, for example), while adding some extra material here and there would help a plate armor a lot.

Fur padding shouldn’t double warmth, but instead provide a static bonus or maybe even bonus scaling down with existing warmth. Padding a shirt with fur will help it much more than padding a space suit that already keeps 99% of your body heat on the inside.

Maybe prevent items being both reinforced and modified. Reinforcing involves padding already. Warn player that doing the one will ruin the other.

There could be also an ability to salvage the modifications, but this is low priority - nerfing tailoring is much more important than buffing it right now.

Also, a small coding suggestion: you check for 2 modifications with a big block of logic code (furred && leather || furred && kevlar etc.). You could simplify it instead simply by adding the number of modification (count(“furred”)+count(“kevlar”)+… >= 2).

[PropaneSoup]

So I’m the guy that made the tailor’s kit, so I’m all for hearing balance suggestions. That said, being able to modify power armor wasn’t intended. The code checks to see if it is even just part plastic, which light power armor is. It goes along with the bug that you can pocket an MP5, because it’s part plastic.

I decided that increasing encumbrance on modified clothing was overkill, because having +1 torso encumbrance for maybe +4 bash and cut resist wasn’t worth it, but I could see multiple layers of padded clothing could add up encumbrance.

Maybe prevent items being both reinforced and modified. Reinforcing involves padding already. Warn player that doing the one will ruin the other.

The problem with this, is that reinforces it increases the item’s health as well. I didn’t think of reinforcing like padding, I thought of it more like strengthening hems and joints in the clothes to make them less likely to tear, the protection increasing was just a side effect.

Also, a small coding suggestion: you check for 2 modifications with a big block of logic code (furred && leather || furred && kevlar etc.). You could simplify it instead simply by adding the number of modification (count("furred")+count("kevlar")+... >= 2).

Where was this suggestion when the PR was still open?

[MormonPartyboat]

I noticed two minor bugs, both relating to using the kit to do normal repairs/reinforcing.

The first is that it checks to see if the item has been modified twice, and if so you can’t repair using the kit (it throws the “You can’t modify this more than twice” message).

The second is that when you do repair an item with the kit, it queries for an item to repair twice (use kit, select damaged item 1, it asks what you want to do with the kit, select repair, it asks what item you want to repair, select damaged item 2, it repairs item 2).

[KA101]

Missed the double-modified; didn’t think the double-ask was enough of a problem to be a dealbreaker, especially with all the nitpicking that’d gone on already.

I’m in favor of encumbrance going up, yeah.

As for suggestions not being given in time, well, that’s happened to me more often than I care to recall. :-/

[Rivet]

I decided that increasing encumbrance on modified clothing was overkill, because having +1 torso encumbrance for maybe +4 bash and cut resist wasn’t worth it, but I could see multiple layers of padded clothing could add up encumbrance.

I like this. The increases are usually pretty small, so it really shouldn’t be increasing encumbrance.

The problem with this, is that reinforces it increases the item’s health as well. I didn’t think of reinforcing like padding, I thought of it more like strengthening hems and joints in the clothes to make them less likely to tear, the protection increasing was just a side effect.

I like this too.

[Coolthulhu]

The problem with this, is that reinforces it increases the item’s health as well. I didn’t think of reinforcing like padding, I thought of it more like strengthening hems and joints in the clothes to make them less likely to tear, the protection increasing was just a side effect.

At least nerf reinforcing then - make it not increase armor. Reinforced joints shouldn’t be enough to boost armor.

Then there’s the issue of stronger+weaker materials being sewn together. IRL it can sometimes result in weaker material getting ripped by the (more rigid) stronger material. Maybe make it so that reinforced items still have their old resistances when considering being damaged by attacks?

I decided that increasing encumbrance on modified clothing was overkill, because having +1 torso encumbrance for maybe +4 bash and cut resist wasn’t worth it, but I could see multiple layers of padded clothing could add up encumbrance.

Scale it with something. Armoring a backpack shouldn’t encumber, but armoring a t-shirt should.
Coverage would be a good candidate for the variable to scale encumbrance around - high-coverage clothing doesn’t need a boost from reinforcing, low-coverage could use one. Also, it would be realistic in that kevlar loincloth wouldn’t encumber our tactical barbarian, while a kevlar cloak would.
And scale the armor bonus around something other than coverage and volume. Low coverage already sucks a lot - by making attacks ignore the armor altogether.

And if you don’t boost encumbrance, at least boost layering penalty, negate the “(fit)” effect on 0 encumbrance items or something like that.

Boosting the high-coverage, unencumbering-yet-armoring items is what caused power creep multiple times in the past.
The worst kind of power creep at that - the one that keeps freshly starting characters weak, while boosting 2 day old characters a lot. This kind of power creep is hard to balance without making early game a RNG-fest.

[Rivet]

At least nerf reinforcing then - make it not increase armor. Reinforced joints shouldn’t be enough to boost armor.

I disagree with this. If your armor is harder to damage/pierce through, then it should protect you a bit more, plus the ‘padding’ options of the tailor’s kit don’t work for everything, and reinforcing does.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:11, topic:8912”]Scale it with something. Armoring a backpack shouldn’t encumber, but armoring a t-shirt should.
Coverage would be a good candidate for the variable to scale encumbrance around - high-coverage clothing doesn’t need a boost from reinforcing, low-coverage could use one. Also, it would be realistic in that kevlar loincloth wouldn’t encumber our tactical barbarian, while a kevlar cloak would.
And scale the armor bonus around something other than coverage and volume. Low coverage already sucks a lot - by making attacks ignore the armor altogether.

And if you don’t boost encumbrance, at least boost layering penalty, negate the “(fit)” effect on 0 encumbrance items or something like that.[/quote]

It doesn’t even provide an actual improvement to a lot of the lighter stuff. I’m fine with it not increasing encumbrance; the current two upgrade per item limit is a good limiter.

[KA101]

One thing that got garbled in the PR process: I had pocketing pegged to coverage. (No adding 10 storage to a nanoskirt.) Unfortunately, I think that got applied to armoring too. Armor checks coverage whenever you take a hit, so a fixed armor bonus makes sense.

Agreed with Rivet on the reinforcing-boosting-armor question.

Encumbrance: I wanted pockets to add encumbrance as they’re making the gear bulkier. Linings, varies based on the clothing.

[MormonPartyboat]

Coverage would be a good candidate for the variable to scale encumbrance around - high-coverage clothing doesn’t need a boost from reinforcing, low-coverage could use one. Also, it would be realistic in that kevlar loincloth wouldn’t encumber our tactical barbarian, while a kevlar cloak would.

Something that would probably need to happen for things like this to add encumbrance is a bigger granularity for encumbrance in general. Multiply all current encumbrance values by 10, divide all effects by 10. Then you can have items that are slightly more or less encumbering - under the current system, I might be willing to take .2 more encumbrance for kevlar reinforcement than leather reinforcement, but I certainly wouldn’t be up to take 1 more encumbrance.

[Rhodri]

Doesn’t this belong in the Drawing Board?

[KA101]

Doesn’t this belong in the Drawing Board?

Discussing a merged feature, so here works too.

[Abbysynth]

Encumbrance: I wanted pockets to add encumbrance as they’re making the gear bulkier

You also have to consider that items don’t change volume or weight when you’re talking about containers. Not only do you have to consider the added padding, stitching, and so on, but also the items the volume represents. Wearing a pair of jeans is not much more encumbering than wearing sweatpants, but 10 volume can carry a lot of small items (guns, infinite pills, etc) and all that stuff jammed in your pants would certainly make it a lot harder to run around in them.

[Nioca]

Speaking of weight, wouldn’t adding weight be another way to try and balance it out? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d be far less inclined to kevlar-plate everything if I was having to deal with the weight of the aforementioned plates adding an extra 20 pounds on my worn equipment.

[Rivet]

Weight increases are a good idea, but twenty pounds is a lot considering how much Kevlar it’s actually adding to your stuff.

[Barhandar]

The problem with adding encumbrance is that currently bonuses are pitiful. Having +1 encumbrance for the amazing addition of 4 (FOUR) storage?[sup]*[/sup] No thank you, I’ll just wear another backpack for significantly better results.

[sup]*[/sup][size=8pt]Equivalent of four pockets on the in-game pants. Seriously? If I’d sew pockets and straps on my pants, they’d get to be cargo and have +10 to storage.[/size]

If the upgrades provided more substantial improvement, and worked intelligently (adding pockets to underwear? Enjoy your encumbrance. Adding pockets to outerwear? Naw, free to move.) then I’d agree with adding encumbrance. As it currently stands, it would just make tailor’s kit never used.

P.S. Also, maybe in the far future upgrades will be jsonized? I’d kinda like being able to, say, add chainmail upgrade as low-tech kevlar alternative (dangers of getting shot through chainmail notwithstanding), or a stronger version of pockets that adds encumbrance. It could take any parameters ARMOR and TOOL_ARMOR types have, and ignore the absent ones, and modify the clothing’s parameters accordingly. Or have a second set of parameters that are multiplicative and are added to item first. E.g. “storage”: 4, “storage-mult”: 1.1, add to cargo pants, 10*1.1=11, 11+4=15 storage as result.

Oh, speaking of embroidery! If it gets added, it simply must include being able to add a customized description of what you’ve embroidered/emblazoned!
[i]A thick leather full-length duster without sleeves, leaving your arms unencumbered. Has plenty of storage space due to its many pockets. It’s emblazoned with United States commonwealth flag on the back.

This piece of clothing fits you perfectly.

This piece of clothing is fancy.[/i]