[The Final Mod Pack] Personnal Armour part

[Human Ktulu]

Hello,

The goal of this project is to make huge community modpack well balanced with multi-language adds for strings (en-GB, en-US and fr strings for begining).

I have indexed all existing mods and classified in the following way :

[HERE] - core : the main tech tree
[HERE] - vessel : improved fighter, longrange fighter, ultimate fighter ...
[HERE] - personnal armour : combat uniform, jump armor ...
[HERE] - basic weapon : sniper, shootgun, grenades, machinegun, knife, ...
[HERE] - advanced weapon : plasma, gauss, railgun, laser, dart-rifle, FushionTorch ...
[HERE] - hwp : all tanks and overtanks, sectopods, ...
[HERE] - misc : maps, new units, custom rulset's, gfx/sfx improvements, ...

Of course I will not included the totality of the existing mods, but to choose most interesting and to balance them in the game.

Thanks for your support !

[Human Ktulu]

==============================
FMP_addon_ExtraArmor_v0.9.3
==============================

I used  "Combat Uniforms Armor" and "Jump Armor". I would give some protection in game beginning and improving diversity in personnal armor using.

- Basic Uniform (woodland version) : New entry in Ovnipedia. All new recruits use standard green army uniform. Simple vestment give more mobility and accuracy.
- Kevlar (urban version) : Standard protection of army and police operations. It's incrase yhe chance of survive.
- Dragonskin (desert version) : This heavy protection is used for defusing bombs. Only strongest soldier can use it.
- Jump Armor : After some research you can manufacture it. Weaker than Personnal Armor but give an unquestionable advantage.
- Psionic Armor : Improvement of Personnal Armor. After research of Psi-Lab, you can gine some protections to psi attack. Unfortunately this feature is not compatible with Power Suit and Flying Suit. (need sprites, I see somewhere a modified personnal armour with new helmet like knight of the zodiac :p )
- Power / Flying Suits : Now this armor give bonuses to stamina and combat melee.

[Human Ktulu]

EXISTING MOD :
- armored vest
- Combat & Uniform Armors
- Jump Armor
- Power Suit Helm Off

Sorry about double-posting, but this would be confusing otherwise.

So, I started working on the armour concepts. I haven't coded anything yet, and honestly I think it would be best to leave it to you, Human Ktulu, since you already started doing this. I focused on what to do with the armours we have.


First, we have the beginning armours: Uniform, Combat and Dragonskin; in other words, light, medium and heavy. These gave me a headache, since they should be either useless or overpowered. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Earth armours - plasmas mostly ignore them anyway; but apparently you want them and people certainly like having tactical options, so I did my best to make them usable and balanced. I talked with Dioxine, and here's what we decided:

No armour: no changes. Vanilla items should stay as they were, because the game was balanced with them in mind.
Combat armour: armour values 28/12/16/12; it is the most generous we can give without becoming unrealistic, based on what these armours can do in real life. Also none of the damage reduction % nonsense, except for armour piercing attacks, because that's what they were made to do. And a little acid bonus. Also -5 to TUs, Stamina and Reactions (that last one because of the helmet). Weight 8.
Dragonskin: 35/16/30/12. Similar profile, Melee damage bonus since it's metal (it won't do anything against Reapers anyway ), bigger Stamina penalty, weight 12.

Yes, I know these armours aren't so good. Still, this is the best the 1999 technology can realistically offer. They would be much more useful if we fought enemies with human weapons (because again, that's what they were made for), but they still offer some marginally better protection than the uniform for the cost of mobility and reactions. I suggest giving them reasonably low prices.


Then we have the second tier of armours: Alien Alloys. We have the Personal Armour and let's not change it if we don't have to. Then there's my Jump Armour, which is generally a Personal Armour with smaller armour values, so there's not much to talk about either.

And finally there's the Psionic Armour which... well, I don't really know what to do with. I don't want it to simply be a Personal Armour with better Psi Strength, because that's kinda dull, and also why not a Psionic Armour based on a Power Suit or a Dragonskin as well? I would like to see something more imaginative, but I haven't found anything yet. Or we can just scrap that idea and make a "Carapace Armour" - a heavy armour made of Alien Alloys, with some penalties but better protection than the Personal Armour (something like a better Dragonskin).


Finally, the best armours. We have the Power Suit and the Flying Suit, which I don't really want to modify for the same reasons. But since we already have 3 early armours and 3 medium armours, why not make 3 armours here too? I dream of a Terminator Armour - an Elerium-powered, ultra-heavy monster with some big-ass weapons that normal suits can't even lift.


Anything else? Well, I'm loosely thinking about a separate branch of armours caused "synthmuscle armours", which don't offer as good protection as normal armours (thinner, lighter plating), but give some good stat bonuses (because you have some excessive strength left). It's just an idea though.

Naturally, all new armours (psionic armour or its equivalent, as well as the "terminator") would require new sprites, which is a pain, but maybe we can steal and alter some of Dioxine's designs. It'll still be a lot of work though.

I'm attaching an .xls file with all this information. It consists of two spreadsheets: one (Normal) is with the armours as they are now, the other (Proposed) contains new values I came up with. Please have a look at it.

Regarding armor. I downloaded existing mod 4 or 5 days ago and tweaked it according to my feelings, and the result is almost the same as Solarius Scorch described but i think those weight are a little too high, im using 7 foor dragonskin, 6 for combat armor and 4 for kevlar, and they are still quite cumbersome for rookies, so leaving them without any armor is a viable alternative. I already tweaked the armor values, making them generally weaker than alloy armor and frontal armor always the strongest.

I dont think reaction penalty is a good idea, since x-com soldiers reactions already suck.

I also have some new ideas which im about to test, but i dont have experience in creating new sprite sheets, i cant release new armor without new graphics for public:)

Im going to add:
Assault armor: early game, researchable and manufacturable. Strong frontal armor, weak sides and rear, high weight. I suppose this armor will help keeping your engeneers busy if you play with long research mods, before you start using alien alloys.

Fire-Acid-proof beam-deflecting armor: early game, researchable and manufacturable. Light armor with low armor values, fire immunity, 50-80% acid resistance, 15-40% laser resistance, 10-20% plasma resistance. Or so. Lets you use a lot of incendiaries in close quarters.

Biomechanical suit: based on live muton research and personal armor. Provides a bit less frontal armor, more rear armor, adds some TU, stamina and strength. VERY expensive production.

My idea for psi-armor is that it must isolate psi-activity: lower psi-skill and raise psi-strength, to avoid boosting psi-capable soldiers even further.

Quote from: Human Ktulu on April 30, 2014, 08:33:19 pm
    For the Psionic Armor, the goal is to help the weakest  soldier's in bravery and psi strengh resist a little more at psi attack, sort of mind shield. I wanted to avoid giving too much advantage by equipping the energy and flying suits with this function, but to give the chance to the soldiers who have only 10 points of bravery.

I understand, but the problem is that it seems to be more of an item than a suit - something to be used separately, like a passive Psi-Amp. It was much better in some other games, like UFO: Aftershock (where helmets were separate from the armour) or UFO: Extraterrestrials (where there was actually a special slot for "mind shields" - basically tinfoil headgear.

Having said that, I don't think soldiers with Bravery 10 need any help - they will improve with time. It's worse for those with low Psi Strength, as there's nothing we can do for them, but I also don't think boosting their Psi Strength with an item would be fair. The only honest application of this feature would be to enhance Psi Skill, but psionics make the game super-easy already and I don't want to make it even worse. (I might change my mind since the "line sight only" psionic attacks option has been introduced recently, but I haven't checked it yet.)

Quote from: Human Ktulu on April 30, 2014, 08:33:19 pm
    Best armours : I never use or produce Energy suit's. Why ? It's just a flying suit in less better.

I do use them. The Flying suit is goddamn expensivei n terms or Elerium, and especially with the Plasma Beam Mod (where Elerium is needed as ammunition).

Quote from: MFive on May 01, 2014, 07:10:02 am
    a few questions regarding the armours in the .xlsx file
    what are 'Under' and '% none'? i assume the none is simply a blank, a nothing percent(why add it to the .xslx?)

"None" damage denotes damage with no associated type, or "type 0" in terms of the ruleset. See description for damageType flag in the Ruleset Reference.

Quote from: MFive on May 01, 2014, 07:10:02 am
    and that 'under' refers to the armour underneath the soldiers, and if this is true, why list it for non-flying armours? the only time that you would otherwise take damage is grenades that land directly at your feet.

Or up to 1 tile away, then it also hits your under armour.
Which is what happens, like, every mission.

Quote from: MFive on May 01, 2014, 07:10:02 am
    also, why are the % modifiers different for the powered armours and the personal armours? they are made of the same material, so wouldn't they be susceptible to the same damage types?(the exceptions being smoke and stun)

It's how it was in the vanilla game, so I didn't want to change their properties withoug a good reason. Well, the material is the same, but the technology is probably quite different. I think we can accept this.

Quote from: MFive on May 01, 2014, 07:10:02 am
    what is the benefit for dragonskin armour? same 'under' rating and a worse AP rating, combine with worse acid rating, it seems far worse than the generic combat armour

It protects better against APs than the Combat Armour. Frankly, I don't understand this question. Are you referring to the fact that it's 80% instead of 70%? But the difference in armour values more than offsets this, so I don't think that's it?

Quote from: MFive on May 01, 2014, 07:10:02 am
    just some questions and thoughts i had about this, this project seems amazing, keep up the great work guys! i might also recommend keeping a change log and newer files in the OP, makes it easier for people to find all of the latest parts.

Thanks! It's all more of a preparation phase now, but yeah, we made a few things already.
I agree about the changelog, but I'll leave it to Human Ktulu, because it was his idea. (Please, pretty please!)

PS. I know that the Plasma Tank doesn't work for some reason - it has 0 ammo when taken on a mission. Id didn't even work in the original mod where I took it from. I'll fix it soon.

EDIT: I fixed the tank, but now I'm thinking of making plasma ammo for plasma tanks... So I'm not uploading yet.

Quote from: civilian on May 03, 2014, 02:52:38 pm
    About the armors, here is what I use in my personal mod:
    Uniform mod (almost no protection), buyable from start
    Personal Armor (boost bravery +10)
    Jump Armor (boosts reaction+10) using your original stats
    Power Suit (armor stats from original Flying Suit) no flying, midgame
    Flying Suit (armor stats from the original Power Suit ) flying, but weak +adds 20 PSI-Defense, mid- to-endgame
    Ultimate Suit (Sunfire armor with sligthly better armor than the Power Suit), flying and adds 20 PSI-Defenses, final game
    I am very content with this settings. Every armour served a purpose during the game. And it forced me to make tactical decisions when equipping units.

Maybe it is tactically diverse and even balanced, but it makes little to no sense.
Bonus to Bravery? I assume it has a blind visor?
Jump Armor +10 Reactions? Does it have neural injectors or something? If so, why other armours don't have it?
Flying Armour +20 Psi Defense? Why other armours don't have it if it's possible?
I actually like switching around Power Suit and Flying Suit's stats. It makes sense.
The Ultimate Suit is certainly worth considering.

[Solarius Scorch]

I quickly made a "new" armour, I'm sure you'll recognize it.

I have no idea what it could be though... Probably some sort of chemical protection (I called it "hazmat armour").

[Human Ktulu]

Harkonnen trooper ? 

[Solarius Scorch]

Harkonnen trooper ? 

A bit too shabby for a Harkonnen armour.

[Falko]

you have "loftemps: 3" in your rule file it should be "loftempsSet: [ 3 ]"
the other thing you changed some things in the original armour
you only need to edit the changed values you do not need to copy their definition
deleting the storeItem,corpseBattle, frontarmour,... lines should make no difference there

[Warboy1982]

you have "loftemps: 3" in your rule file it should be "loftempsSet: [ 3 ]"

actually, either will work, they both amount to the same thing

[niculinux]

May we have some screenshot, please

EDIT: in the meantime, no linux working:

[Solarius Scorch]

Here's the current state of planned armours. See the attached xls. (Read comments for comments.)