[Suggestion] Armors

[sarge945]

I've only unlocked the EXO suit in my game, I am mainly going off this: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Armor_(LW2)

So it seems a little strange to me that Medium armor gives the best protection.

I understand the direction Pavonis was going with it though

Light armor is for mobiity and extra abilities
Medium armor is for straight armor/HP
Heavy armor is for the weapon slot

Although from a lore perspective, it seems weird. It doesn't make sense that I move slower for carrying a single grenade, but I can wear a giant hulking suit of power armor with no mobility issues. Also the heavy weapons don't seem THAT useful in comparison to more armor, since most of your heavy-weapon damage will be handled by your technicals and grenadiers.

Wouldn't a mobility bonus/penalty make more sense? Like this

Light Armor: Mobility bonus, abilities
Medium Armor: No Mobility change, Decent armor/HP
Heavy Armor: Large mobility penalty. Amazing armor/HP and a heavy weapon slot.

It would make sense to put your tanks in the super heavy armor at that point Also, it would make sense to increase the Armor bonus given by all the armors but lower the HP given. Giving straight armour and giving more aliens armour piercing rounds, I think, would increase the strategic depth of using armor, rather than just being straight up more tanky. Now you might have to decide to devote resources to taking out their guy with AP bullets shooting at your tank, or the guy who's about to flashbang 3 of your guys

[Clibanarius]

You can edit the .inis to tweak the stats of armors to your liking. I have, personally, changed heavy armors back to being more heavily-armored and more costly.

[LordYanaek]

Although from a lore perspective, it seems weird. It doesn't make sense that I move slower for carrying a single grenade, but I can wear a giant hulking suit of power armor with no mobility issues.

Powered armor visually have some sort of "servos" to help you run and carry your heavy weapons so that's how i understand them. They are not "heavy" armor for me. They are specialized armor designed to offset the mobility penalty for carrying those heavy weapons (now you could ask how the Techs can carry heavy weapons with no movement penalty, let's imagine it's part of their special training).

Also the heavy weapons don't seem THAT useful in comparison to more armor, since most of your heavy-weapon damage will be handled by your technicals and grenadiers.

I'd bet you didn't test Shredder/Shredstorm yet. They are probably the most OP items in the game (some changes to nerf them are in 1.3 but i'm not sure it will be enough).

If i was to design my own system for armors it would be something like this :

• No armor (civilian clothes). Bonus to speed and defense. Large bonus to infiltration and reduced detection range.
• Light Armor (spider, wraith). Bonus to speed and defense and special abilities. Very small HP bonus. Similar to what they are now.
• Medium Armor. Some of the HP bonus changed to ablative HP but otherwise works as they do now. Maybe add some bonus to basic kevlar in order to have it useful compared to no armor.
• Heavy Armor (new). Larger HP bonus (including ablative) and better Damage Reduction but reduced mobility. Possibly 1 less item slot.
• Powered. Allows you to equip either a heavy weapon or LW1 style Advanced Servos or some new "Jet Boots". Reduced HP gain compared to Medium but allows various special abilities.

Basically thought you might consider than Medium+Plating+Vest is my vision of Heavy Armor so not sure it would be useful to add one but i really think Powered could become much more than just a heavy weapon platform.

[sarge945]

I'd bet you didn't test Shredder/Shredstorm yet. They are probably the most OP items in the game (some changes to nerf them are in 1.3 but i'm not sure it will be enough).

Not yet. Good to know!

If i was to design my own system for armors it would be something like this :

• No armor (civilian clothes). Bonus to speed and defense. Large bonus to infiltration and reduced detection range.
• Light Armor (spider, wraith). Bonus to speed and defense and special abilities. Very small HP bonus. Similar to what they are now.
• Medium Armor. Some of the HP bonus changed to ablative HP but otherwise works as they do now. Maybe add some bonus to basic kevlar in order to have it useful compared to no armor.
• Heavy Armor (new). Larger HP bonus (including ablative) and better Damage Reduction but reduced mobility. Possibly 1 less item slot.
• Powered. Allows you to equip either a heavy weapon or LW1 style Advanced Servos or some new "Jet Boots". Reduced HP gain compared to Medium but allows various special abilities.

Basically thought you might consider than Medium+Plating+Vest is my vision of Heavy Armor so not sure it would be useful to add one but i really think Powered could become much more than just a heavy weapon platform.

That's an interesting idea.

I guess the main problem I really have with armor is that it just gives a straight HP boost, instead of using the (already inbuilt) armor mechanics more than a few points. Which means Armor Piercing is a really underutilised mechanic on Aliens.

Of course, just blanket replacing all the HP with Armor would be massively OP, since Armor is really good, but maybe if it either gave a smaller amount of Armor instead of HP, or gave Ablative HP instead, same as vests, and Aliens had some way to get through Ablative HP like it wasn't even there, it could make for some interesting Armor strategies.

Basically Armor Piercing doesn't really seem to be a major mechanic for Aliens. It's a bit of a shame because it could significantly increase the strategic depth based on heavy and light armor plays.

I dunno. Maybe I just have strange ideas.

[Psieye]

Vanilla had EXO be 'heavy armour'. LW2 happens to recycle the graphics, flavour text and name but it's no longer 'heavy armour'. I don't see anything wrong with re-classifying EXO to something else in LW2.

Separate to that is your thoughts on ablative HP bypassing. In a vacuum that's a reasonable idea. The dev cost of rebalancing the game to include that feature in LW2 is the barrier to acceptance. That's assuming there's zero dev cost to making ablative-ignoring attacks a thing: currently poison damage shaves off ablative HP which makes no flavour sense but possibly can't be changed in the moddable layer of code.

Regarding armour piercing, the aliens prefer armour shredding instead. No sense giving one goon the ability to ignore XCOM armour when you could instead give that goon a way to make everyone ignore XCOM armour.