Thoughts on a new idea: Powered Hardsuits

[katastic]

Hello, I'm new here.

Whenever I play engineering, or ATMO, a few things will happen often. A guy gets too fast, and dumps plasma in engineering, for example. But the one thing that happens almost every bloody round is that everyone takes the hardsuits and disappears for the rest of the round. Some may be traitors, but certainly not all of them.

My solution to this is, in my opinion, fairly elegant: Hardsuits are all powered. They have batteries (which can be upgraded), and they get recharged at suit storage units. Currently, only the ENG hardsuit is extended but the others could be upgraded as well pending balancing.

Now, suits will regularly be returned to their place of origin. Nobody can grab them and leave forever, unless they're clever and find alternative means to recharge them. But the typical chuckle-joe won't be able to just run off with them for the whole round anymore.

In exchange for having to return to a station periodically, the suits are no longer as slow as they were. Either no reduction in speed, or minor, except when they run out of power. When the battery fails, you're really struggling hard to move. (slowdown == 16, at the moment) Also, losing power to the suit storage units becomes a new issue.

I've already completed the code to test this functionality and it works fine. You're never waiting too long for the suit to charge, but you're certainly coming back. Like the engineering department equivalent of a coffee machine at work with everyone hanging out and discussing things.

As for implementation details. I changed human_movement (perhaps there's a better place) to fire off a step_action() to any suits. The suit draws power whenever there is movement. I also made a 5K charge "suit battery" so that the 10K "high capacity cells" double your distance instead of 10X'ing it from a standard cell which would be insanely unbalanced. (Either normal would be useless, or high-capacity would be essentially infinite.) The suit storage units detect chargable suits, and announce and ding when done charging.

Using a 5K battery, and taking 10 charge per step, I had just enough to walk from the captains office, to engineering, and do a complete setup of the engine.

The suits occasionally make a mech sound to highlight that they're powered.

I have also experimented with (but this is not ready for primetime) a fatigue system where the longer you have the suit unpowered, the more sluggish you get ("You struggle to overcome the weight of the suit."). But it's currently implemented inside the spacesuit code and it should really be more general. But "more general" also means lots of potential balancing.

Lastly, there is lots of room for "FUN." I have not implemented it yet, so the codebase changes could be easy or difficult. We could add things like attaching a remote signaler to the suit's oxygen storage space. Someone is out in space, and you cut off the air and they scramble to figure out why. Or, cut off the battery power right as they move past the singularity. Come to think of it, remote signaler + [any batteries] would be very useful for creative destruction. Disable an APC, borg, gun, anything. But I digress.

What are your thoughts?

[Xhuis]

I can see this being very controversial. When people take hardsuits and run off, they're usually either doing construction or fixing a hull breach - I hardly ever see people running around with hardsuits for no reason anymore, barring the CE or people who break into EVA. There is no proper way to prevent that particular behavior as it will continue to happen. If this does get implemented, I would like to see a way of having a toggle function for the suit's power, in addition to having some sort of charging relay machine that can be found in spots around the station, similar to how Atmospherics maintenance has firesuits and air tanks. Returning to Engineering every few minutes while you're repairing a hull breach doesn't make anyone happy, and it would make engineers who actually repair said breaches have to go through extra hassle. Being able to upgrade batteries at round start would alleviate this somewhat, however, and science would have incentive to make power cells outside of cyborgs. It's certainly a good concept, but it would stir up a lot of controversy and I have a feeling that most experienced engineers or atmos techs would prefer the old system.

Also, welcome to the forum.

[PKPenguin321]

inb4 this is paprika ban evading

cool idea, but in reality, random mandatory menial tasks that limit an otherwise fully functional item =/= fun

[katastic]

Yeah, I can see it as controversial. I haven't modified the hard suit code, but rather inherited from it so any server can choose the one they prefer. But to be clear, I'm not really demanding this be changed. I just wanted to see if I'd like it, so I coded it to test the idea.

Toggle power could certainly work. This was a test dive into the SS13 codebase so I haven't figured how to set things like that up yet. I had it originally in there but the state machine got much bigger and confusing. The suit button is used for deploying the helmet by default. Can you have more than one button?

As for "random mandatory menial tasks", nobody seriously complains that cyborgs (and mechs?) have to recharge, and batteries are easy to store in your backpack. And people have to recharge their O2 tanks (or replace them) often as well. This doesn't really make things harder, so much as it changes the flow of things so that suit storage units (and their subsystems) are now important.

It's also possible we could run both types by splitting hardsuits into unpowered versions, heavier powered versions. The powered versions having some advantages but requiring to be recharged and the unpowered ones being the normal bulky (or slightly more bulky than currently). A trade-off of speed and utility at a cost of longevity. But I'm just airing my train-of-thought.

Lastly, thanks for the welcome and the input. Have a great day.

[Gun Hog]

This idea is good for new hardsuits which provide a superior funcitonality with that drawback, but certainly not as an application to current suits.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I support this idea, because for three rounds straight I see people signing up as engi/atmo, grabbing a hardsuit, and "duck you CE I'm off to spess".
Power consumption should be based on time, not number if steps, since space assholes don't walk about. Time should be at least 8-10 minutes to allow serious actual EVA work.

[Malkevin]

Funnily enough I had almost the exact same idea.

But extended to the helmet.
Helmet requires you to wear the suit to power the helmet.
No suit power or no suit = you can't see out of the helmet

The helmets would also have visors so they weren't completely superior to welding masks.

[Allohsnackbar]

Bay hardsuits when
Seriously, if we're going to port full retard things from other servers, like impalment and GOONCHEM, we should also try and implement some straight additions.
Powered, modular hardsuits tailored to certain situations would be pretty swag.

[Malkevin]

Does vg have those, or is there a server running bay code that isn't bay?

[John_Oxford]

Well, long space explorations would be more of a hassle, how about they get their own power cells? Kinda like long tube things that you grab from the top, and have to swap out on the primary suit.

4 Basic Hardsuit Powercells start in engineering prep, all the hardsuits start with one of the basics in them, the CE gets 2 Advanced HPs, with 15k Charge.

Then there are 2 "Deep Space" Power Cells that spawn in EVA, which have 30k charge, and are capable of sapping energy from normal power cells if powercells are inserted to the item.

Research can make even bigger cells with 40, 50k Charge

Admins can spawn 500k, and infinte charge cells.

---------------------------------

Also, perhaps when your power reaches 75, 50, 25, 10, and 5%, a automated voice, similar to the AI's annoucement system states to you "Current Cell Charge: X"

Also, if hardsuits are powered now, perhaps research can make powered armored plates (By deconstructing Golath plates) , EMP emitters (Illegal Tech), and the list goes on.

[DemonFiren]

Automated voice, you say...

I am getting the unpleasant feeling that we'll need to find something that sounds like the HEV suit, but isn't exactly identical.

[John_Oxford]

Perhaps even make it to where it needs to initalize, like a ninja suit:

IE:
:// RUNNING SYSTEM CHECKS:
:// POWER SYSTEMS: -current power percentage, if 100%, it will say nominal-
:// AIR SYSTEMS: -current KPA of air in tank based on percentage, if full, will say nominal-
:// LIGHTING SYSTEMS: NOMINAL
:// ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL - WELCOME TO -insert brand name hardsuit here- -insert version number here-

Above could be for normal rig suits, sec hardsuits could have like :// ARMOR SYSTEMS: NOMINAL or :// DEFENSE SYSTEMS: NOMINAL - And then at the end have :// WELCOME TO SEC SUIT VERSION 1.0.4- Or something along the lines of that
Syndicate hardsuits (Nuke Ops) could have :// COMBAT SYSTEMS: NOMINAL or :// -weapon name- OPERATIONAL ie: :// EMP EMITTER: NOMINAL - And have :// WELCOME TO -insert syndicate faction name here- VERSION 2.6.4

[John_Oxford]

Perhaps if you dident have a power cell, it would have a message pop up in text: "The suit dosent seem to start, perhaps it is out of charge?'
And if you dident have a airtank it would say :// ERROR: NO AIR TANK DETECTED - SUBJECTING UNIT TO SPACE MAY BE LEATHAL

[John_Oxford]

Sorry for triple post, but if this does get added, i'll be making a new fourm post for equipment to add onto the hardsuits.

[imblyings]

This idea is good for new hardsuits which provide a superior funcitonality with that drawback, but certainly not as an application to current suits.

this

leave the current suits but 'prototype' suits being developed by RD or whatnot would be fine.

[Supermichael777]

But applying it to new suits misses the point of why he coded the change.
personally i agree that suits need this functionality but maybe give more than five hundred steps or teach people to just carry the suit in their hands when you don't need it. the only hard-suit i would be opposed to this going on it mining's hard-suit because it would fuck them over both ways. ether another thing you need to carry or a valuable snowflake cell that people want to steal. everyone else is just angry about their power-gaming. and really hard-suits provide notable protection from things other than space. if you really need to go space exploring bother the hop for Eva accesses.

[Malkevin]

It would technically be a buff to suits because we could make them as fast as they used to be, the only difference is you'd have to return to home occasionally to swap out your cells.

[RG4]

I love to use hard suits, they're always better than space-suits just for the armor and headlight additions that regular suits just don't have. Making all current HS require a powercell is really stupid idea IMO. Some of these suits are typically used all round for a variety of things and forcing them to be run off power cells shouldn't be one of them. Now R&D should be able to make powered hardsuits that have additional benefits to them.

[Jalleo]

This could be used as a way to make space suits upgradeable really because all space suits could use a little tinkering.

[imblyings]

I honestly prefer the current suit slowdown over no speed reduction when the suit is powered and a requirement for occasional recharging.

And I dislike the accusations of powergaming as they're fairly unwarranted. It's convenience, convenience which I highly value when I'm doing things in space. You could make parallels with borgs and say they deal with having to recharge but borgs have a bunch of other perks and unique conditions to balance it out anyway.

[Jalleo]

Edit: removed what I said first we are kinda bikeshedding with the movement adding any sort of progression that can give perks and downsides would be a good thing. Maybe suits can be made powered as a very simple add on then a lot of science stuff and maybe ghetto stuff can upgrade it. The speed changes in any way can be balanced out if it seems off. The main thing is making sure map changes use this to their advantage and this does not affect syndicate suits to unbalance that aspect too much to begin with.

[MisterPerson]

The idea I'll float is:

No slowdown as long as they're charged. Also reduces/eliminates space-slowdown. Big slowdown or unwearable if it's unpowered.
Has a 10 minute battery life at full charge. An upgraded battery extends this, other upgrades increase the drain. Ideally upgrading both would keep the life about the same, maybe a little longer than default. The life is that short so you can't use it to run around in space like a banshee without stopping every so often.
Recharges automatically from nearby APC's as long as you're in one's range and it's got power. This takes ~5 minutes and should not be upgradable to go faster. This happens even on space tiles so repairing after a bomb is fast. Auto-recharge is a convenience, but it's also slow so criminals who take this thing have a real chance to get caught be security.
The current hardsuits would be left but would lost all their armor values and just become space suits mostly.

[PKPenguin321]

As for "random mandatory menial tasks", nobody seriously complains that cyborgs (and mechs?) have to recharge, and batteries are easy to store in your backpack. And people have to recharge their O2 tanks (or replace them) often as well. This doesn't really make things harder, so much as it changes the flow of things so that suit storage units (and their subsystems) are now important.

I'm certain people would have more fun if they didn't have to charge mechs or cyborgs, but then balance comes in
Menial tasks are good when they're used for the sake of balance, extra menial tasks for poor reasons are just not good
And yes, people do have to recharge or replace their O2 tanks, so there already exists an incentive to come back to the station and recharge without giving the suit a battery

It's also possible we could run both types by splitting hardsuits into unpowered versions, heavier powered versions. The powered versions having some advantages but requiring to be recharged and the unpowered ones being the normal bulky (or slightly more bulky than currently). A trade-off of speed and utility at a cost of longevity. But I'm just airing my train-of-thought.

Do this instead of killing our currently fully-functional hardsuits and nobody would complain

[Incomptinence]

Mechs and cyborgs are space sealed with benefits and recharging is what they use in place of the health and food system for these articles. Exosuits really fill the role of powered armor, being literally that.

People in hardsuits are more mobile but they already need to take care of themselves as humans or suffer additional movement penalties (mech movement being mostly irrelevant of pilot's status). The Armour is is not incredible and since hardsuits and armour pieces use the same slot where else would they get it? Even against a normal space suit in environment of preference a dude in heavy non space worthy armour will just be killed by the environment so I don't see the point you will still end up with angry spaced officers.

[Steelpoint]

That's a good point, currently Hardsuits don't provide any massive benefits aside from being a slightly better armoured variant of Space Suits (and the armour given is negligible at best). The only Hardsuits/RIG's that are worthwhile are antagonist one's.

If anything at least the proposed idea would give some interesting edge to Hardsuits, even if its only for RnD/A Rare Hardsuit.

[RandomMarine]

Miners are kind of in an awkward spot due to this. Both because it's part of their job to be engaged in EVA far longer than any other, and goliath plates encourage miners to keep a hold of their own suits. Anybody grabbing your 4/4 upgraded mining suit out of the SSU while it's charging and saxxing off into space would be terrible.

[Steelpoint]

Miners are kind of in an awkward spot due to this. Both because it's part of their job to be engaged in EVA far longer than any other, and goliath plates encourage miners to keep a hold of their own suits. Anybody grabbing your 4/4 upgraded mining suit out of the SSU while it's charging and saxxing off into space would be terrible.

Then you would be wise to not leave your valuable equipment alone.

[DemonFiren]

ID-lockable suit storage units when?

[RandomMarine]

How does aloneness matter? Anybody with access to the room can walk up, grab it out of the SSU, slap it on themselves with a single tap of E, and walk out into space. Not everyone carries a stunprod 24/7 to deal with that.

Not to mention having to manage power while out in the asteroid.

I'd suggest keeping mining suits the way they are.