I agree that the multi boost is overpowered related to the other boosts. Rather than get rid of it I think the other Boosts should be increased in general - there may be a few exceptions. I like the idea of all armor been able to be made with slightly better versions been able to be found. I would like to see armor be of different types all of which are best for different situations instead of a clear progression from weaker to stronger . Each of which could be boosted in Waze that do not add to the primary effects of the suit so as to not become overpowered in that particular area.Each suit might have unique effects. Four instance different suits might be Stealth Builder Armor Survival Ship Command Space walk
I would like it very very very much if these tiny little squares called "boosters" could be piled up instead of eating up inventory slots. I shouldn't have to use a whole container to store a little bag of crackers...
I just finished clearing Akua on normal difficulty, and my set of Medium armor didn't last. It ran out of health and repairs during my efforts to take the bottom of the Drone Base. The last 3 repairs didn't last very long. I had one armor boost and two multi-boosts. My impression is that you don't need to both limit the number of repairs AND reduce the maximum durability. I'd recommend getting rid of the maximum number of repairs. The rate of armor durability decay is just a touch too fast, at least with light and medium armor. I've not had Heavy Armor to try. So far, weapon and tool decay seems okay. Maybe its just a touch too-fast on the T2 Pistol. Or, maybe I should be opening more doors with explosive charges.
After 50+ hours of alpha 6, I have to agree with much of the above criticisms of the armor/booster system. I do think it is more interesting than what we had before - but with the added mechanics and aesthetic appeal there is a great degree of makework and RNG reliance, generally devoid of proper decision making. If you encounter a hostile environment and you have the relevant booster, you go and slot it in. There's no decision making involved, unless you happened to have not rolled a EVA booster or whatsuch. Then you are just waiting on the RNG to give you what you want/need. You unslot the booster when you're done, or when the weather changes. The adverse conditions the booster combats dont alter your gameplay in this case- they just make you jump through a hoop and waste a few minutes to become immune to the problem. **** BOOSTERS I suggest that boosters can mimic the positive aspects of creating a build in an MMO. Powerful boosters with unique effects only available by equipping that booster would create noticeable differences between two players, even if they are wearing the same armor. Ideally, a booster would have both a survival and a combat relevant effect. For example: Jetpack Booster (Limited Antigravity Unit) Improves jetpack performance. Allows long duration jetpack skimming across the top of water surfaces. Take reduced damage in midair. Mobility Booster (High Efficiency Exoskeleton) Increases run speed. Allows terrain skiing, similar to the Tribes games (forward only). Armor Booster (Nanite Armor Augments) Improved Armor amount. Defeating aliens grants a small amount of armor durability repair. O2 Booster (Advanced Life Support) Increase Oxygen tank by 50%, No O2 loss in Water, passive heal-over-time up to 350 hp. Insulation Booster (Advanced Heat Pump) Increases temperature tolerance. Reduces range & reaction speed of automatic turrets against player. Vision Booster (Improved Optics) Improves range of flashlight. Grants native night vision. Increases headshot multiplier. Radiation Booster (Radiation Screens) Increase in radiation resistance. Grants a temporary barrier that soaks both radiation and incoming damage. Recharges when not in use. *** ARMOR RACKS i feel that there's a bit too much interacting with menus in Empyrion, and the armor lockers are particularly bad for this; you have to swap armor out, put it in your inventory, go over to the repair thing, repair your armor, put it back in your inventory, go back to the armor locker, and then put the armor back on. let alone swapping around boosters since a locker doesnt have near enough space for even a small MP factions booster collection and armor suits. there's also a tendency to pretty much live in your armor suit, which is the status quo but i think it'd be nice to break it up a bit. this might be a lot of effort, but what i'd really like is an armor rack block - you interact with it, and it takes your armor off. you see a visual representation of your armor racked on the object, and the rack itself slowly repairs your armor. I think this has a lot of potential in multiple directions... first, it's relatively easy to use, with good visual feedback, and without relying on menus. second, it creates design considerations for players - even in single player, you may want an armory of multiple racks, holding armors that are pre-specialized for different tasks (such as heavy combat or EVA). Third, there is potentially some gameplay interaction - a player that's taken off their armor suit and is editing their base may suffer an airtightness breach from a drone attack, and must spring for their armor quickly. creating situations where players may take off their armor also serves to emphasize the benefits that armor gives you relative to not wearing it, making players appreciate it more. *** Durability... I haven't settled my thinking on this topic, but IMO Empyrion really doesnt have a handle on death penalties or what armor durability really is for. Death in Empyrion is mostly inconsequential since you can easily pick up your stuff - the primary penalty is inconvenience, causing you to rearrange your inventory again. But if you cant recover your stuff death can be catastrophic - the variability here is not great. Armor is (relatively) rare and necessary for survival, so it is apparently exempted from loss in this manner, but then you have durability to i guess still emphasize it? except mostly its just annoying? and you dont even know when your durability runs out? it's all pretty confusing. More later.
How about a magnetic boots module or a personal artificial gravity module? Floating around the inside of space bases and ships without an artificial gravity is rather ragged, mostly because doors assume you are correctly oriented.
Armor level (light / medium / heavy) is far too big a factor on insulation and radiation protection compared to boosters. Heavy armor makes other classes obsolete. Even with full radiation boosters, medium armor is not enough for some planets, they need heavy armor to resist the radiation. This means that heavy armor is mandatory and removes all player choice. Heavy armor should be slow but well protected. Radiation and Heat resistances should be determined by how it's configured with boosters. This design flaw is evident with Masperon start as you're given Heavy Armor from the beginning. This is kind of cool, but means there is no progression in terms of better protection vs enemies. Even after going to a less hostile world, I don't see why I would use medium or light armor. They would let me move around faster, but I go everywhere in vehicles anyway. Light and medium need niches. Repair mechanics are really bad now too. Luckily hitting 0 durability seems to do nothing, but right now if your armor gets too damaged you can't repair it anymore and finding armor is so rare that you can't get any more. For Ningues or Masperon this means you can't go outside anymore. Drop the "maximum number of repairs" mechanic and make it cost materials to repair armor and weapons instead.
I was thinking the same thing at the beginning then I tried a few of them. I do see a difference when I play with a mobility and jetpack boosters. But I agree 100%, some armor boosters need to be tweaked in my opinion especially the Insulation boost which is really almost useless.
Radiation and insulation boosts seem largely useless. It would be nice to be able to recycle them into blueprints as well so I don't have whole crates of them that will never be used. Also the information on stats is very vague. It doesn't explain what any of the stats specifically do or what the result is of modifying them. It would help if you could at least mouse-over it and get a tooltip with more info. Also it would be a massive boon to be able to name armors. It's very hard to keep track of which armor has which boosts when there is no way to identify them.
I would have to agree with the feedback in this thread so far. I love that the mechanic is in the game but it does produce a little too much micro management at the moment as TheDeadlyShoe described above. I would suggest three things: 1) Make the Boosters craftable (as others have suggested above). This would allow us to become self sufficient as the game progresses and we level up, also giving us room to experiment since we are not solely dependent on loot drops. 2) Have the Booster consumed when inserted into a piece of armor. We would then have a few premade suits in our lockers when we travel instead of entire bins of mods, cutting down the micromanagement (we would simply swap suits for different conditions). 3) Allow as many Boosters as we like to be installed in one suit. That would require balancing the negatives of each booster. For example we could put 10 Armor Boosters into a suit if we want, however the movement penalty with Armor Boosters would make it so that we could no longer move when wearing it making that build unviable. I think adding these three things would force us to make decisions about and add variety to our suits. Also keeping the repair mechanic as heavy handed as it is currently will have us making suits and consuming resources at a steady pace as we continue to raid bases. Do you guys think that would work? PS: Also way more color and style variety so we can customize the looks would add a lot IMO
I'm more of the opinion that things like medium and heavy armors, weapon kits, and the like, should be lootable blueprints. It makes literally zero sense to me that the large constructor comes preloaded with a recipe for a warp drive but somehow can't craft a scoped assault rifle. This is silly. Not knowing the blueprint is one thing, not being able to create the thing at all is... illogical. Improve the mods, maybe reduce the stats of medium and heavy armors a bit, and make them something you can craft. I'm sick of being forced to blow up a base from the outside with tons of artillery because the last heavy armor I found is reduced to zero durability and repairs (which reduces the actual armor value provided by it to zero regardless of what the tooltip says, I've tested it against enemy fire and mobs) instead of being able to invade on foot. Running through a deathtrapped POI with a decent chance of survival if I'm careful is fun, but when everything 3-4 shots you with automatic weapons (light armor being the only craftable is BULL) and your only viable strategy is sit back and shoot it til it's a swiss cheesed husk is boring, expensive, and un-fun.
Heavy armour: Terrible, the jetpack, even with two boosters can barely move me around. I don't want to explore with this. Light armour: Terrible, the weak stats make it useless for actual work. Boosters: Uniformly terrible, underpowered and straight up worthless outside of EVA. Remove multiboost, make all other boosters 10x stronger. Min. Make them actually able to handle what they are meant to do.
I'm inclined to say: KEEP the multiboost, but make the other boosters noticeably stronger. The armor booster, for instance, compared to the multiboost, is actually good. If I'm invading a POI I typically try to have at least one Armor boost in addition to multiboosts. True, with 4 armor boosts you're a snail, but nothing HURTS you unless it's a turret, and even those become semi survivable. Other boosts should be commensurately better than the multiboost. Make a rad boost give 6 points of radiation protection. Make heat and cold boosters give 30 degrees leeway apiece. A heavy armor with 4 heat boosters SHOULD be able to walk around on lava for a few minutes. Mobility boosters should be able to give you actual maneuverability. And give us a jetpack booster! Something that can be used to fly on a limited basis like in creative mode. More of them increases the flight time, and it uses the jetpack stamina bar. Light armor should be king of maneuverability, heavy should be protection, and medium armor should be multipurpose for everyday use. Make them all 3 mod sockets and craftable- but epic variants can have 4 mod slots.
I would replace the requirement for an armor locker to change / remove armor with a simple interdiction to remove / change armor when enemies are nearby or when the player is engaged in combat. This armor locker forces a "medieval" requirement where players need assistance to put gloves and boots... This is very impractical when getting stuck somewhere and not being able to "change clothes", and it replaces the tactical inventiveness of players with a requirement to learn some POIs layouts by heart to know what armor is needed or is to be avoided to prevent getting stuck somewhere.
I think it makes sense, honestly. Space suits and full-body armor generally need extra hands to put on, and the armor stations look like some kind of pod that helps suit you up. Honestly, if you're going into combat, you generally want heavy armor anyways, but it does become very crippling to lose so much jumping power. I'd rather have something like a consumable jump jet tank rather than ruin the armor system, though. Or maybe add some way to change boosts, possibly with some limits (maybe it takes 5-10 sec to swap one out without a station).
I think an armor locker that has the capacity to help the player put his suit on could also spare him the cooking and go to combat in his place. I can remember in one of the 1st "realistic" sci-fi movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dave Bowman puts his space suit on all by himself, or in Alien (the 1st) where Ripley puts herself in her suit silently and without help in the same room the critter is hiding. I think since the player is alone at the beginning of the game that having a magical locker that replaces the "helping hand" is far fetched. That's why I mentioned "medieval requirement". Being unable to even remove the suit anywhere because magical locker is not there makes no sense other than forcing the player on a bad mechanic.
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/how-do-you-put-apollo-spacesuit tl;dr: "If these procedures sound easy to you, imagine that on the ground, the astronauts put on their suits and equipment with the assistance of technicians and it took them a little more than an hour." Very realistic.
Oh, this part-time "realistic" issue again... But what about warp drives, weightless inventory, & co ? I thought this was a game where fun was a part of it. Shouldn't we see hands operating the machines with the fingers wrapping around handles or something to prevent this game from being boring ?
Or, maybe we have a jetpack that works as an actual jetpack, even in heavy armour. And thus, we're able to move around like normal. Even with boosters, it's hard to get 2 blocks height out of the jetpack in heavy armour.
