Suggestions for Tweaking the Suits

[watermelen671]

Now I know I might be the only one, but I feel like how the suits are now are kinda awkward and clunky to use. I personally would think it'd be much better if it worked like the clothing, except you'd still need to charge it up and everything. 

Like for example, you want your dupes to do some work for a bit and they won't be able to breath, well nbd, just assign them some suits, and they'll work away. And when/if they need to recharge their suit, they'll just return it to the dock and wait until there's an available suit to use.

Maybe you could add a door that'd prevent dupes from leaving and/or entering unless they were wearing a suit, oh that'd actually make things SO much better and less clunky! 

Think of it like the checkpoints, but a little more broad. If a dupe were to enter a room that requires a suit, they'd have to equip one first before being allowed entry, and they'd keep the suit on unless the player unequips it or it needs to be recharged, AND they'd be equip the suit at ANYTIME from ANYWHERE. (So they'd just grab a fully charged suit, and then when they reach the door, they'd put on the suit, and either automatically remove the suit when they leave, or just continue wearing the suit until either one of the two previously mentioned events happens)

Basically what I'm trying to say is I'd like a door that combines the exosuit dock and checkpoint. (It's late, and I'm slightly delirious. )

Now I understand if people think this is a bit micromanage-y, but honestly I love to see this sort of thing be implemented. (That way when I inevitably have to nuke the base in chlorine if a single germ gets in, my dupes will be safe to continue with what they're doing! )

Spoiler

And because I know you've seen this, what do you think @minespatch? :3

 

[minespatch]

Perhaps you could combine your idea with a decontamination scan? That way it scans dupe as well as does security checks?

[Michi01]

I like how it currently works, I don't think it should be any more micromanage-y. Being able to tell dupes to directly equip suits without a dock might be a nice additional option though.
I actually have some ideas for tweaks/changes too that I've been meaning to post, I guess I'll do that here.
So first of all, I think clothing should be buffed a bit. Before this update, clothing (expect for snazzy suits maybe) wasn't really used a lot because of all the micromanagement needed, even though the bonuses are relatively good. Now that exosuits were added and are only one research tier above clothing, there's even less of a reason to use it and there's pretty much no reason to not just skip it now. I think that there should be a wardrobe building that can store a bunch of clothing items and also makes dupes equip them when walking past it (basically multiple exosuit docks and a checkpoint in one, but for clothing). While that would make clothing a lot easier to use, there's still no reason for people to not skip it for suits.
I see two problems here, first of all, suits are really powerful for just being one step above clothing in the research tree and second, suits are actually cheaper in terms of power and reed fiber. A piece of clothing requires four reed fibers while a suit only requires two. And while the loom requires 240 W and the exosuit forge 480 W, it takes a lot less time to craft an exosuit, I'm pretty sure enough to make it require less power. I'm aware that the metal cost is pretty expensive, but players have a lot of metal in storage by that time while it requires some effort to get the reed fibers, so players are pretty much encouraged to not use their reed fibers on expensive clothing and instead save it for the cheaper suits (cheap in the sense of reed fiber cost).
So what I propose is for the power cost/crafting time of the loom to be lowered and either for the reed fiber requirement of clothing to be lowered or that of suits to be increased (or both).
Atmo suits should also be nerfed. Not to the ground, but to something that's still reasonably good enough to be used for accessing oil. In my opinion they're actually more powerful than they need to be for the stage of the game at which players can produce them. So I think they should only increase the scalding threshold enough to let dupes go through environments with a temperature of 200°C, the breath time should be reduced to a third or fourth of what it currently is and maybe they should also slow down dupes a bit more. I believe it wouldn't be much harder to access oil with this (expect in parts of the oil biome with really high temperatures, but in those, gold pumps don't survive so it doesn't really matter).
Now the reason why I keep saying that it should be good enough to access oil is because I think there should be a better type of suit (perhaps this one could actually be called "Exosuit") which is as strong or possibly stronger than the current atmo suits. On top of the current suit ingredients, it should also require plastic (also maybe refined metal instead of raw metal, once it is added).
I also think that clothing and suits should have durability and that it should be possible to disassemble them. Repairing them should not require metal of course, only reed fiber and plastic. The durability loss would make thimble reeds more useful because currently they become useless once the player has made all the clothing and suits that they need (I think reed fiber should also be required for comfy beds). The durability loss and the effort required to repair clothing and suits should not be too high though, it should only take a few seconds to repair a suit or piece of clothing with the required materials and only a small reed farm to keep up with the need of a decently large colony.
Allowing the disassembly of clothing and suits would 1) prevent useless clothing from lying around after the player has upgraded their equipment 2) prevent players from wanting to skip clothing and saving up their reed fiber for suits. For suits, it should return all the metal used, but otherwise it should not return 100% of the crafting ingredients and scale down with durability (the amount given back should always be low enough to make repairing it less expensive than disassembling and rebuilding it).
Also, I think that thimble reeds shouldn't drop reed fiber without being harvested, because by the time the player needs a lot of it, they can just dig into a swamp and collect all the reed fiber that's lying around, discouraging them from actually planting and growing any (same for balm lilies).
Actually having to plant thimble reed would also quickly give players a surplus of reed fiber, which would also encourage making clothing (as I said, it's more or less encouraged to collect all the reed fiber that's being generated in swamps instead of going through the trouble of planting it and this, in a way, makes it a scarce resource, encouraging players to save it all up for suits).

[brummbar7]

@Michi01  I agree with all those suggestions, except I'd say suit disassembly should return less material than was used.   I especially agree that there should be a 'starter' suit, which is the one we currently have, that is inferior in most ways, and is really mainly intended to get the oil situation up and running.   With a subsequent plastic suit being the more long-term solution.  I think a very low durability could be the main driver, and also discourage the player from over-relying on them early on to access all the other biomes constantly.   If the player is constantly having to repair them with copper (already the most limited metal) that would I think discourage them from spamming exosuits constantly.

It's just really unfortunate that exosuits are low tier, and needed to even function in the oil biome (and so get plastic) because as you say Michi it contributes to making the already buggy clothing we had even more useless (snazzys aside).  Yes, clothing doesn't take power or oxygen charging, but avoiding disease and breath holding makes them well, well, well worth those little extra steps.  Perhaps it could also be the case that there are a few small pockets of oil scattered around in slime biomes?   Nothing extensive mind you.  Just basically enough to allow the player to make a handful of exosuits, and so allow them to then access the much more plentiful oil in oil biomes.  Then, the suits could require plastic, because there would be a way to get it outside the oil biome.   Or, let us disassemble the ruins buidlings (chairs, computers, etc) for plastic.   But again, not too much.  Just enough to make a few exosuits.

[Michi01]

@brummbar7 Hmm, I'm not sure if I want metal to be required for suit repair and be lost in disassembly or not. On one hand, I dislike it because metal would get used up even though it's a non-renewable and valuable resource (in the case of machine repairs it's to punish players who are doing something wrong), on the other hand I like that it forces players to try to move on to oil quickly.
Overall I still think it would be better if only plastic and reed fiber were lost, but no metal. It just seems too punishing and for new players it's straight up unfair. They might not be aware that they should be using better suits or might not be capable of accessing oil without wasting huge amounts of metal. Especially for players who are not aware of the oil biome's location or even its existance, it'll just get really frustrating.

[brummbar7]

54 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

Especially for players who are not aware of the oil biome's location or even its existance, it'll just get really frustrating.

Yes, that's a good point.  I'm on board with that.

[watermelen671]

Also, who thinks they should add in underwater suits into the game? (From what I've found in the files, they totally look like Big Daddy suits.)

Spoiler

 

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I'd make all my dupes wear them, and then make my own Rapture. 

It'd be Rapture consisting entirely of Big Daddies, but it'll be Rapture nonetheless.

And it.

Will.

Be. 

GLORIOUS!! 

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[Botaxalim]

7 hours ago, watermelen671 said:

Also, who thinks they should add in underwater suits into the game? (From what I've found in the files, they totally look like Big Daddy suit

 

yeah water biome, with the swimming suit, because atmo suit cant handle deep water pressure. Add fish paco or something to fish, put steam geyser into biome it will be perfect.