I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

[Ewokgod]

OK, I thought that if devices could be limited to a stat or rank, then implementing the different flavours of voodoo would be a straightforward question of working out a desired rarity and how powerful to make the devices.

I guess that it would be possible to simply strip voodoo powers from the regular gals and implement voodoo gals as separate entities, but that might take it too far.
Unless it could be disguised.
When the player makes out the order on the black market for, say, 20 gals, can the game randomly roll for each gal and, if lucky, replace her with a voodoo gal? If the gal looks and acts exactly like a regular gal until the power is unlocked, the behind-the-scenes-maths would remain hidden and the player would assume he was just lucky.
Devices can be made that only work on some units, right?

[ohartenstein23]

You should start learning modding, and see how far you can take this idea.

[Dioxine]

Devices can be made that only work on some units, right?

Only in a very convoluted way - armor locked to an unit type, equipped with a fixed weapon.

[Yankes]

I think I could add script for testing usability of weapon by unit.
This will allow to limit items to armors (minigun need power armor to shoot or some laser need armor with batteries).
As this will be script it could check state of unit like, this will allow e.g. that some weapons can't be shoot when unit is flying.

[Solarius Scorch]

Interesting. But it would require adding triggers other than start of turn. How viable is it?

[Yankes]

Right now I see it that it will check only when you try use weapon, if you have correct condition you can shot it. You will be able to equip but use will be limited.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Sounds like this leads to situations like in vanilla TFTD with torpedo launchers and hydrojet-minigun.

Unless you read through all items and armors closely (multiple times as you unlock/loot more stuff) you will run into a situation for a perfect set-up for the weapon you wanna use BUT failed to add the correct armor and now you need a plan B for the one hand that can't use his weapon.

Sure it's logic that a gatling laser needs a 'battery-pack' to run but no need to make a perfectly fine engine more complex. This ristriction will affect the player only unless the new 'rules' are linked into the loadout of the enemies.

[Solarius Scorch]

Sure it's logic that a gatling laser needs a 'battery-pack' to run but no need to make a perfectly fine engine more complex. This ristriction will affect the player only unless the new 'rules' are linked into the loadout of the enemies.

I agree. But an engine option does not determine how it works in the game. For example I think weight + STR bonus on amour is good enough for restricting heavy weapons from us on non-powered armours, The battery situation Yankes described can indeed be a noob trap, but if this mechanics is prevalent throughout the mod, then the player will catch on quickly. And we could also have, for example, a whole array of psi/cyber/whatever weapons that require special suits...
To sum up, it's a promising feature and it's up to the modder to make it easily understandable.

[Yankes]

One simple solution I see is add small hit, like color border of hand slot change to red if unit can't use item (because of underwater, psi or new scripts).

[legionof1]

On the subject of border change for "invalid combination" how about extending it to include things like two-hand only but other hand is full situations and tech blocks like steller empire weapons. Make the color change universal for "you cant use this currently."

[Ewokgod]

You should start learning modding, and see how far you can take this idea.

I give you fair warning. I have some irons in the fire already and I haven't done anything like programming since 1986 so I may be some time getting back to you with any results