Clothing rework - turn it into buffs

[Coolthulhu]

At the moment, clothing is bad:

• Pain to assign
• Only the snazzy suit is actually useful
• Made from resource that has no real sink, meaning you never need to farm it and will get enough just from wild plants

My idea, which would fix all of the above problems, is as follows:

• Clothing grants various buffs (examples below) for some time (10 cycles?) then falls apart
• It is assigned like priorities, with ability to select it for new dupes and mass-assign
• Dupes automatically grab assigned clothing
• Only one clothing buff at a time, old clothing is either destroyed, dropped at fraction of weight dependent on remaining usage time (representing dupes discarding damaged parts and replacing them with ones from other suits), or suppressed ("worn under" and not working, but will start working as soon as other clothing is removed)
• Uses renewable materials to craft - reeds, plastic, bleach stone etc.
• (Optional) Lockers - like combined docking station+checkpoint, but for clothing. Stores up to 10 articles of clothing (all of same selected type) and passing dupes equip this clothing (unless already wearing it) and remove it (unless permanently assigned this type).

Example buffs (negated when wearing atmo suit):

• Sport clothing: +1 athletics
• Filter mask: breathing slimelung puts slimelung onto the suit, not into the dupe
• Cleansuit: doesn't get germy, meaning the dupe never needs to wash hands while in it
• Wetsuit: no "wet" debuff, thick insulation (like sweater, at least in water)
• Snazzy suit: unchanged from current
• Sweater: like current, but much stronger (it is useless right now)
• Rebreather: breath goes up to 200%
• Portable pillow: no bad back debuff, better stamina regen when forced to sleep out of bed (this happens often for dupes on "stressful" schedules right now)

This way, clothing would be a small, low-level buff that would be useful in places where atmo suit would be an overkill, emergency situations inside main base (algae ran out and everyone is wheezing), and early game before atmo is researched. It would make reed farming (either as reed or as dreckos) actually worth the effort, even if only a small bit.

[DraconicSiege]

I think you might mean drysuit instead of wetsuit. Wetsuits typically allow the person to still get wet if slightly loose fitting and don't have as much insulation as a drysuit. Drysuits are designed for deep sea diving where the temperatures get extremely cold, and they keep you dry underneath. 

I like your idea! Maybe using the lockers as a requirement, there could be personal rooms for dupes where they "undress" before bed, allowing for a better morale bonus. They would still have their dupe suit on of course.

[ImpalerWrG]

Clothing would also need to wear out over time so that you have a reason to farm fiber.

[crypticorb]

Yes, please.

It'd be neat if you could use dupe checkpoints as a clothing dispenser/closet for exits. Dupe checkpoints are fairly useless currently, and an early game version of the checkpoint could be an unpowered version of the suit checkpoints, but a dispenser for clothing.

[lurkinglurker]

On 10/3/2018 at 7:50 AM, Coolthulhu said:

Wetsuit: no "wet" debuff, thick insulation (like sweater, at least in water)

So, raincoats, yellow latex gloves and big wellington boots?

And portable pillow are perfect for those dupes who fall asleep on the job. (Narcoleptic, I believe)

I guess, if it was up to me, that the balance for all your suits' buffs comes from their construction or additional attributes? Such as Sport clothing having less carry capacity, or Clean Suit/Filter Masks requiring bleach stone/liquid chlorine to construct. Wetsuits may require (mid-end game) plastics, Portable pillows require a LOT of fiber, and so on and so forth...

 

Also, here's some more ideas for your clothing:

• Diapers: Dupes no longer need to go to the toilet, but also releases pO2 from time to time. Suit breaks down into quite a bit of polluted dirt.
• (the ever popular) Backpacks: add dupe carry capacity.
• Spelunking/Climber's suit: able to climb 1 more tile up/down than usual.
• Skater's wheels: an impressive acceleration on any straight line path of more than 5 tiles.

And also, some task-based costumes to go with their hats:

• Janitor outfit: minor protection from wet debuff, shortens "Tidy" task's duration
• Engineering outfit: minor protection from decor and heat debuff, shortens "Operate" task's duration.
• Miner's outfit: a small illumination circle (adds to morale), shortens "Dig" task's duration.