Update materials for survivor suits

[PlutusPleion]

Summary

Balance "Updated survivor suits to utilize the material thickness system and renamed to jumpsuits"

Purpose of change

Survivor suits armor_data is outdated and not yet in line with newer armor. An attempt to balance heavy survivor suit.

Describe the solution

I think it's good to keep survivor gear at 100% coverage because it fits a niche but also nerf the material coverage.

What's the difference? With 100% coverage, we always ensure we get some defense while wearing survivor suit even if we fail at steel material roll. With 95% coverage on kevlar chainmail, you get full resistance 95% of the time and no resistance 5% of the time.

There are 2 separate tempered steel layers(stronger than the generic) with 0.6 thickness at 90% because it allows for more nuanced variation rather than copying a flat 95% that most other gear have. In terms of realism it can mean nearer to joints there's 0.6 thick steel layer and at more important/central locations the 2 steel layers overlap.

Pockets were removed to be more in line with jumpsuits and the increased encumbrance from carried volume was removed.

Survivor suits were renamed to be more descriptive(light kevlar jumpsuit, kevlar jumpsuit, steel-plated kevlar jumpsuit). Light kevlar jumpsuit is slightly weaker, kevlar jumpsuit is stronger, and steel-plated kevlar jumpsuit is weaker compared to originals.

Steel-plated kevlar jumpsuit is still very strong but is now updated for the material layering and still holds a niche.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Testing

• No errors
• Changes reflect in game

Additional context

Is there a precedent for using multiple layers of same material? yes. example

No, I don't dislike heavy survivor gear. I'm using it on my current character.

updated fire,winter and wet variants as well.

[bombasticSlacks]

So as a preface the current plan is to get rid of the heavy survivor suit entirely. However this redesign actually makes me at least feel like it could stay in.

A few suggestions
The Chain Armor is OUTER not NORMAL

The other survivor suits also had their pockets removed and moved to a strapped armor storage https://nornagon.github.io/cdda-guide/#/item/survivor_rig. I didn't bother doing it for this armor since it was planned for removal. So moving down the encumbrance on this guy to match doesn't make sense unless you cut the pockets.

So I would suggest giving this armor no encumbrance scaling with volume [16, 16], reducing the pockets to match the other survivor armors, and making it OUTER layer.

I think with that it would be a strong, light outer armor.

Also I think it could be renamed to something like "Survivor Armor" to make it obvious it's not the same as the Survivor suits.

[Testudo-Cultu]

So as a preface the current plan is to get rid of the heavy survivor suit entirely.

The main purpose for the heavy survivor suit (or any of them) is just to act as a crutch for the coverage system being inadequate. I'm glad that we're getting a new system, because it's sad to always have survivor gear be your ultimate solution to armor (not including power armors).

[PlutusPleion]

So as a preface the current plan is to get rid of the heavy survivor suit entirely

Oh ouch. It would be really nice if we could keep them in the game in some form.

The specific gear I was comparing it to was the kevlar chainmail armor which has an active that switches it between normal and outer layer.

I've taken most of the pockets out and made it more in line similar to "winter survivor suit". I still like the idea of it being in the normal layer because it still goes with the "light, standard, and heavy" variants we have.

After all the "survivor" series of gear is iconic to this game and would not mind "nerfing" them a bit more to let them stay in the game.

[bombasticSlacks]

The specific gear I was comparing it to was the kevlar chainmail armor which has an active that switches it between normal and outer layer.

The underlying gambeson it is made from has that function but it, in my copy of experimental and on HHG does not have a transform to and from outer/normal.

Pocket changes look good.

People are looking at removing most the survivor suits in favor of more interesting and nuanced armors. So there will still be survivor clothing it just wont be 6 different best in slot jumpsuits.

I do want to keep a Kevlar Lined "Survivor Suit" on the normal layer which will be that iconic armor you want to keep around (it's a favorite of mine as well) but on normal layer you can't just keep making things thicker. If something is thicker than a Jacket it should really go on the OUTER layer.

I think this would be solid as outer armor as you have designed it that would work as a flexible, jack of all trades suit.

I know your trying to come from a "min-max-y" but still balanced position on a lot of these balance changes. Trying to find things powerful niches and I can appreciate that, it should feel good to use lots of different stuff. Fundamentally in this case the game is moving towards where you get most of your protection from the OUTER not NORMAL layer. Here's the relevant issue #52514

For example under the assumption outliers like the Heavy Survivor are going away, some really powerful platemail has been added recently as well as the Hub 01 Modular Armor.

[PlutusPleion]

The underlying gambeson it is made from has that function but it, in my copy of experimental and on HHG does not have a transform to and from outer/normal.

Oh my mistake, I must have confused the two in my head.

The thickness argument makes sense as well. I tried changing the thickness for leather to 0.5 and kevlar to 1.5. Changing it to this would only be giving slightly better stats than the normal survivor suit.

For now I think the current one is a good compromise/stopgap and could be a nice test to see how everyone likes it.

Although it seems like some time away since it's a full rework of all gear, I look forward to the future system that's envisioned in the discussion you linked.

Edit:

I tried to update light and normal survivor suits as well. If there's interest in this I can add it to this PR as well:

old

Light now has 4 total thickness (2 cotton, 1 kevlar, 1 90% kevlar)
Standard has 5 total thickness (2 leather, 1 kevlar, 2 90% kevlar)
Heavy has 6 total thickness (2 leather, 2 kevlar, 2 90% steel)

Light is now very slightly worse than original (-10% a kevlar layer)
Standard is better than original (-10% a kevlar layer, +1 90% kevlar layer)
Heavy is slightly worse than original (-10% on two steel layers)

[bombasticSlacks]

I know it makes them worse but I think if all the jumpsuits had their leather / cotton moved to .2mm and probably were all cotton for that base layer which is the thickness of the jumpsuit that this would be a good solution and wouldn't get push back. That way also its thematic in that you are reinforcing a real jumpsuit (or the equivalent) with this padding. This also doesn't effect the armors too much while still getting this in a sensible thickness range to be worn under other clothing.

So I'm not the final authority but I think if you made the above .2mm change and added the light and normal to this PR that would be an acceptable change.

I would encourage you as well to make the heavy suit you are adding a new version: "hsurvivor_jumpsuit" and put it in "custom_bodysuits.json". This is so people with current heavy survivor suits wont have a bunch of stuff fall out of their pockets on updating because you changed the pocket sizes. I've done a similar thing with the light and normal, where the new "jumpsuits" are in "custom_bodysuits.json" and the old suits are in "cuttingroom.json". Then I just swapped the crafting recipes to output the new suits not the old.

[PlutusPleion]

Made changes as suggested.

Loading existing save will cause error messages regarding missing recipe because of the migration of the recipe end result from "hsurvivor_suit" in "cuttingroom.json" to "hsurvivor_jumpsuit" in "custom_bodysuit.json". A workaround is deleting the "hsurvivor_suit" variants from "learned_recipes" in save file. Game still continues fine after pressing space or ignoring the message.

Updated (old now):

I think survivor gear is very reasonable now and in a good position to remain in the game.

[bombasticSlacks]

add

  {
    "type": "recipe",
    "result": "hsurvivor_suit",
    "obsolete": true
  }

to the bottom of recipe_obsolete.json so that error goes away

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• XL kevlar firesuits
• XS kevlar firesuits
• kevlar firesuits

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[PlutusPleion]

All "survivor suits" updated:

older

Only suits are updated. Boots, gloves, hoods, backpacks, weapons, etc are untouched.

[Drew4484]

This looks good to go, are you ready to have it merged?

[PlutusPleion]

Yeah all good as long as no one else has further concerns on it.

[kevingranade]

This pull request has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/survivor-suit-recipes-dont-show-up-for-me/27797/3