Serious Suggestion to make Battle Suits useful.

[____________Meligant]

Let me start by saying that the last set of changes to Tank Armor and Battle Suits were good starts. However, I would like to add the following comments and suggestions.

No one likes %nano cost increases. As you can tell in the Tank Armors, only the 0-5% add ones are being used, the ones that add to nano pool, or the ones that can be taken off while buffing. In the 50-130 level range everyone needs outside buffs or temporary implants to put on “a good set of armor”. If it has too high a % nano increase then it doesn’t get used period. So suggestion #1 – Cap ALL % nano increases on Tank Armors and Battle Suits at 8%.

There are at least 5 better choices of Back items I could use so why should I use Tank Armor? Add more tank armors or add a trade skill enhancement that makes the Tank Armor “better” and more useable so it can compete with the newer cloak items.

Battle Suit ACs add up to about the same total as a full set of the same type of armor. This is just not good enough. Buff all the Battle Suits ACs by 10%-20%. The disadvantage of not being able to swap in Clan Full Auto Sleeves, MA Armor, Smuggler’s Den Boots that you got or a slew of other pieces of armor with Nano, NC, or HP buffs on it far out weights the advantage of the “all-in-one” suit of armor.

Finally, add 1-9% ReflectAC to all damage types to the Battle Suits. With more ACs and better protection, players might be willing to take a 1-8% nano cost increase and a –50 defenses to use the suit.

PS – also please make sure that the battle suits can be used with vehicles and the grid without causing crashes. Thanks.

[Flapsie]

There is a trade skill thingy that makes Tank Armours better, it is temporary yes, but it last 48 hours of playing time, some people have managed to get from lvl 1 to lvl 100 in that time...
So it may actually be quite useful...

Check out
http://www.anarchyarcanum.com/
for how to do it

Regards
Flapsie

[____________Meligant]

Originally posted by Flapsie
There is a trade skill thingy that makes Tank Armours better, it is temporary yes, but it last 48 hours of playing time, some people have managed to get from lvl 1 to lvl 100 in that time...
So it may actually be quite useful...

Check out
http://www.anarchyarcanum.com/
for how to do it

Regards
Flapsie

Agreed that those are in game and better, however I'm mostly concerned about Battle Suits

Thanks for the link on the trade skill part for tank armors.

[Redrazors]

Agree with what you say about battlesuits - increase the acs or ditch the penalties.

Fix the vehicle problem.

Fix the invisible gun problem.

I've got one of my soldier at the moment but its such a bother I'm going to have to go back to regular armour.

[Swing]

Battlesuits could be the coolest thing around. If some changes were implemented, that is...

*Eleminate the absurd equip time. 10 seconds I can handle, 60 is over the top.

*Weapon grafix! Its fairly obvious that the base mesh of a battlesuit is taken directly from the Atrox model. And most every Atrox I see wields a weapon of some sort; how hard is this to implement?

*Fix the attack bug. You know, the one where you just kind of shudder for a bit, doing no damage, then make 4 hits in a row? What the heck is this?

*Integral weapons. Certian suits could have weapons built-in. Of course, you'd then have weapon skills you'd have to meet in addition to the attribute reqs, but its a fair trade. Lets see some =real= heavy weapons, like the XM man-portable laser with much faster speeds, but only avalable mounted on a battlesuit.

*Raise the ACs conciderably. At least by a third. As it stands, you can match or exeed the protection offered by a battlesuit with a fairly good set of normal armor. This is silly. A battlesuit is (should be) virtually a walking tank as far as armor goes, up the ACs to reflect this.

I wouldent mess with the nano penalties, the do make sense. A little harsh, I'll admit, but if these changes were implemented, a small price to pay. On standard suits. However...

*A special battlesuit designed for nano-casting troops. One with lower ACs but correspondingly lower nano penalties. Perhaps even limited to profession. Overtuned battlesuits, anyone?

[Warlock]

Originally posted by Meligant
Let me start by saying that the last set of changes to Tank Armor and Battle Suits were good starts.

What changes are you referring to? I must have missed some patch notes or something?

[uburoi]

If they fix BattleSuits...

Please make it a tradeskill thing

[Blackwing]

up battlesuits chem armor.

one of the most used damage types in the game - more often then energy if you do 100% order missions and battlesuits are so super air tight but unfortunately apparently made from plastic the chem spoons of doom of meta mobs eat right through.

[_____________Gyrmyth]

It's really a question of balance. Battle suits are designed to be large, bulky, and extremely difficult to maneuver in. The nano cost increase is a logical balancing point to balance out the HUGE benefits gained from battle suits.

[Flapsie]

Perhaps make it possible to combine battlesuits with nano wire to lower the nano cost modifier...

[Coldbird]

*Integral weapons. Certian suits could have weapons built-in. Of course, you'd then have weapon skills you'd have to meet in addition to the attribute reqs, but its a fair trade. Lets see some =real= heavy weapons, like the XM man-portable laser with much faster speeds, but only avalable mounted on a battlesuit.

While some other ideas posted have been good, I think that this alone - properly implemented - could ressurect Battlesuits overnight.

Simple, easy explanation for battlesuit to be required.

Alternative: Introduce weapons that have a polymorph requirement: battlesuit form. This may be easier to implement (codewise) than something which occupies both the back and the weapon slots. Make them all require Heavy Weapons, some for that only but perhaps introduce others with hybrid reqs into other weapon skills.

Of course, if they're hybrids, they'll have to have better stats than the basic ones if anyone's going to bother with them but it wouldn't be that different from balancing normal weapons. However, this would add another level of dynamism to gameplay while not requiring a huge time investment in balance/tuning and coding that I don't think would be terribly difficult.

[_____________Losobal]

Add jumping capabilities/boosts I wanna be able to jump over walls before I have my attribs maxed out.

[jankypirate]

A few points:

*Tank Armor is much more useful to Enforcers and Soldiers, who use few Nanos and need all the ACs they can get. Most Tank Armors have much more AC than similar QL cloaks.

*Battle Suits were not designed for NTs or MPs etc. They are large bulky armor suits made for brute force characters who use few nanos.

*The large nano casting penalties on the suits are needed to help balance the game.

*Definitely increase the ACs on suits! They are a redundant item that few use, many (understandable) penalties, but NO serious advantages. A suit of similar QL armor provides roughly the same protection, and probably some special bonuses too.

*Tank Armor is currently pretty balanced, don't mess with it.

*Eventually, the idea about weapons requiring that you be in a Battle Suit, and all requiring Heavy Weapons skill, is Very good. If it also introduced hybrid skill requirements, this would be even better. Also, this would give some purpose to the Soldier profession, which is arguably useless right now.

*Suits with build-in weapons aren't such a good idea in my opinion, would be better to get a suit, and then be able to find one of several weapons designed only for use with battle suits.

[Betablue]

Give battlesuits the ability to hover or whence the ability to fly. You could purchase from the store..

HCAT Battle Suits (Hover Combat All Terrain).

Allow a base pilot skill of 100 vehicle air requirements on every one regardless of level using the "run speed" bonus of yalms in that skill category. When wearing it you hover about 10 feet off the ground and float as if suspended and can go into battle. If you right click and hit the "special use" button you can get a nano program cast on you which is similar to quantum wings with the bonus run speed as per the suit.

While flying you cannot fight but if you unclick the flight nano effect you will soar and fall to the ground and bounce on the invisible 10 foot air pocket that maintains the base hover jet mark taking no damage.

As for the rest of the skill reqs - they are identical to battle suits except for a few things.

*Increase the ACs of all considerably.
*Place a negative to nano use on them considerably.
*Increase bonuses for strength/stamina.
*Increase the bonuses for physical/melee/ranged initiatives as the suit is a containment unit which augments speed and enhances combat (not detracts)

Make the cost of the suits according to QL which would mean a cost of 100,000 credits per QL of the suit.

So a QL of 100 would cost 10,000,000 credits and a ql 200 would cost 20,000,000 credits in the stores.

[____________Bartleby]

here it is in its most logical form:

what was said about suit benefits not being equal to their disadvantages is right on the money. Solution:

1) make ACs on battlesuits much higher. A ql200 suit should give an average of 6000 ACs in the main areas and at least 4000 in the secondary ones. Counteract this benefit by making runspeed decrease by at least 300 and evades by 100.


2) Make several versions of suits; 1 that has very high ACs (around 6500 in ALL ACs) but debuffs runspeed by 400 and evades by 150, 1 that adds a health buff but doubles nano cost increase, 1 with special "weapon attachments" (see #3), etc.


3) make a version with a "weapon attachment" - a sort of cannon that can be seen on th shoulder similar to the one in the movie Predator. This cannon could work much in the same way as a wen-wen (if they ever actually do work)

4) as a solution to simply adding all of these variations as new items and thus making the old 1s just more crap to sell to the armoror in tir grid, make these variations all tradeskill items - i.e.; 1 tradeskill addition (perhaps carbonum plating) turns regular suits into the "high AC suit", a different addition gives it the gun, etc. These items should only work on the unaugmented suits, so that there can only be 1 augmentation per suit (so as to prevent a suit that gives 2k health, 6.5k ACs, AND a cannon) All additions should additionally up the ACs of the suit to 6000 and reduce the evades by 100 regardless of type.

When taking into consideration the loss of benefits of such armor pieces as MK II, carbonum, third eye, gaily hood, etc. these augmantations are not really that much to ask, and should be substantial. The health suit should give at least 1000 max health (to make up for the basic evades/runspeed/nano cost debuffs), the cannon should do at least double the damage of a wen-wen, and the high AC version should give higher ACs than is possible with any combination of regular armor.
All suits should have nano cost modifier reduced considerably.

[aiwass777]

Originally posted by Gyrmyth
It's really a question of balance. Battle suits are designed to be large, bulky, and extremely difficult to maneuver in. The nano cost increase is a logical balancing point to balance out the HUGE benefits gained from battle suits.

Omni battlesuits are the only half-way decent ones... There are no 'HUGE' benefits that a clanner will see from wearing a battlesuit.

[_______YourName Here]

Yes, this is a complaint of mine.

Things that significantly change a player's "skin" are way cool IMO, battle suits chief among them. Now that's what I call cool looking armor.

Pity about the disadvantages that make it unusable except maybe the highest level ones. ;p

As you say, battle suits don't stack up well enough against a full set of other armor/back items, especially when bonuses are considered.

[______________Atreyu]

I don't think the need for bigger better guns is required for the battle suits, just make them make sense.

If the thing is supposed to be similar to a power suit or power armor then they should convey some sort of bonus to STR and STA (which should also be the requirements of the armor, not STA and AGI) as the servos in the suit would help with the work. If the armor is supposed to be slow and bulky then the speed hits are fine.

Since weapons are based on skill instead of ability they should give some sort of bonus to the hard to carry heavier weapons. For simplicity sake you could consider this things like heavy weapons, assault rifle, 2 hand blunt and 2 hand edged.

They should provide considerably more AC than existing sets of peicemail armor, as they have penalties that the other armors do not, such as not being able to equip any stat or skill boosting clothing, grafts, rings, bracelets etc.

The nano costs should stay the same...docs, mp's, nt's and other casters shouldn't be wearing Battle Suits.. An alternative to nano cost modifiers would be make them profession restricted.

The Battle Suit should be speced with the purpose of enabling the biggest guys to carry the biggest guns with the most protection. In order to wear it you trade versatility for specialization, and it should do its specialized purpose well. Skills and weapons that require more dexterity should be prohibited, things like pistols should not be weilded by a guy in a battle suit. Nobody is going to equip a tank with a 9mm pistol as its only weapon. Only the big guns or clubs or swords should be wielded as the manipulators on the suits are too cludgy for the smaller weapons. The big weapons fired or swung from a battle suit should have a higher damage (in the case of melee) or accuracy (which translates to damage in the case of ranged) then identical weapons fired from non suit equiped players.

A Battle Suit wearer should not be able to equip a yalm, but instead should be able to equip some sort of item that would enable their suit to be more maneuverable...possibly an anti-gravity pack that would function the same as a yalm (can't fight, can fly, can't cast nano's etc.), but much slower. No spiffy graphic would be required.

A Battle Suit wearing individual should be something fearsome, not a joke. I realize that with play balance some of the above are a bit out of whack, but by making the requirements of the suit, or its penalties more extreme I think at some point the trade off would be adequate to make Battle Suits truly terrifying IF you could get them on and could afford to do without nanos.

Possible disavantages of Battle Suits to account for their superiority in armor, damage and other advantages
Current Nano hits
Current speed hits
Complete Nano restriction
Reduced Medkit effeciency (you are healing a person inside of an airtight armor)
Reduced Nano recharger effeciency (as above)
Small weapon restriction
Yalm/Vehicle prohibition
High Sta and Str requirements
Have them require Vehicle Ground in order to operate (they are after all a suit that has its own motors and locomotion, even though your legs are inside the armor the servos would assist in walking, thus there would be some need to learn how to move in it)

Those are just some thoughts.

In any case if changes are to be made, please make a Battle Suit something WORTH the trade offs for. Right now I think that most people that use them do so because they look cool, and that is worth enough to them to take the penalties.

[_____________Brandon]

I like your ideas. I disagree on the BS reduction in nanocost. BS should have that penalty and the description makes sense