continuation of my clothing, armor and shield suggestions. with examples of new effects.

examples:

merc grunt outfit: 11 DT, 8 DR, 2 CR, + 15% torso health, + 5% explosive resistance. weight: 6,00. the same old merc grunt outfit, but it now has a flak jacket included so as to provide some protection.

steel helm: 2 DT, 5 CR, + 10% head health. weight: 2.50. looks exactly the same as the "trooper helm" from new vegas, but it's the same color as the merc grunt outfit's cargo trousers and lacks the goggles.

smart suit: 0 DT, 0 DR, + 1 CHA, + 20 respectability. weight: 2.00, looks like the pre-war buisness gear, but cleaner. the bonus to your respectability simply means that people will respect you more, being less likely to outright ignore or withold information from you.

sterile mask: 0 DT, 0 DR, + 80% disease resistance, -4 CHA. weight: 0.20, decreases your chance of catching diseases but hides your face, decreasing your charisma, because you could catch diseases by conversing with somone this is a choice the player must make: "increased charisma or avoid deadly diseases?".

body guard's suit: 8 DT, 5 DR, 2 CR, + 10% torso health, non-threatning, weight: 4.50, the body guard's suit is basically a smart suit with a light balistic vest worn underneath it, because the armor is concealed it is condidered non-threatning to wear.

i would also like to see shields included in the next game, from crude balistic and anti-explosion shields made from scrap metal and wood by raiders and other low-tech outlaws to sophisticated balistic shields used by NCR.

how a shield would work is quite simple, equipping one replaces your ability to aim with a gun with that of blocking it also replaces the ability to "pistol whip" with a pushback attack. with melee weapons it only replaces the weapons block with it's own, not the special attack.

shields are the only thing which can "parry" projectiles apart from cover, this is absolutely vital to characters built around melee if guns become more realistic in terms of damage, the only alternative being stealth.

equipping a shield takes up your "two handed weapon" slot, shields are automatically equipped when you are using a one-handed weapon, it is not automatically equipped when you are "unarmed" but you can manually equip it in such a situation (see my inventory suggestions for details on the new quick inventory system).

example shield:

raider shield: (when equipped) AGI - 4, (these effects only occur when parrying and ONLY work against attacks that hit the shield) DT +24, prevents you from being critically hit. weight: 8.50, STR requirement: 7 (if not met you suffer a 20% penalty to your movement speed (on top of it's weight penalty) and lose 4 more points of agility).

but anyway, aside from power armour which covers the whole body, anything else put on the hands (eg brass knuckles) should stay as weapons, and not as part of clothing

edit: I just realised you don't have metal gauntlets as you said, you really just have gloves on, and kicking people in power armour doesn't seem like an effective option, so I would probably remove any extra hand to hand damage bonus too.

This presents part of why armorsuits (the one thing I can commed beth over skyrim eve when they didn't do it right - but the basics) offer better gameplay than the coveted armorslots for each bodypart. If you decide to use to use "this" armor instead of "that" armor, you will get advances and penalties beyond just the armorclass of "this" armor, and are defied of the bonuses - and penalties - of "that" armor. If they manage to do that right, they've overdone themselves.

[censored], I'm down too many beers to get anymore indepth about this...

also, something that really bothers me is how common power armor seems to be, it should be RARE, something which only one or two factions have a FEW suits of.

factions and armor:

the BoS should use armors who actually resemble medieval suits of plate armor, the NCR and the enclave should use helmets and flak jackets/ balistic vests inspired by those used in WWII, korea or vietnam, the crimson brotherhood (new faction fighting NCR, allies of ceasar's legion) should not use heavy armor at all, but instead should have very effective light armor (a uniform based on that worn by the german forces in WW1 but with a flak jacket for extra protection + a prikelhaube), the peoples liberation army (a new faction which seeks to impose communism on the wasteland, ennemies with most other factions, but are mainly trying to overthrow the crimson brotherhood and the NCR) should use no armors what so ever, raiders should wear only wastelander clothes and occasionally use light and medium armors (like merc grunt outfits, merc troublemaker outfits or leather armors), organised criminals such as powder gangers will have "uniforms" (such as the prisoner outfits in the case of powder gangers) unique to their gang and finally wastelanders who should only wear wastelander outfits, exept if their occupation demands otherwise (sherif, miner, doctor, ect...).

I would love to see some form of crafting in armors. I want the exoskeleton of a mirelurk as my armor. Or the exoskeleton of a radscorpion. Surely humans in survival mode can implement armors from being resourseful. We already do with junk-into-nifty weaponry.

Power Armor should be made even more prestigious and rare. Those in power armor as enemies should be extremely hard to defeat.

Cosmetic? No, there should be advantages and disadvantages. Powerarmor should give the best protection, but also be heavy and slow you down, leather being the opposite etc.

As for slots I have no real opinion. It was whole-body pieces in 1&2 and it was divided into body and head in 3 and NV. I won't mind having more slots, but if they do that Power Armor should still be solit body/head though.

+1

Hei Gui let's me roleplay the human "predator" and "ghost in the shell" perfectly.

I'm not the power armor type of guy, I see how being a walking tank appeals to people but I am the stealthy type.

Also would like to be able to put bulletproof vests on any light armor and clothing as well to increase its DT/DR.

The whole point of this thread was to ask if armor should be a mix of effectiveness and cosmetics, if anyone on the PC has used something similar to the Satchels mod in NV or Tailor Maid in NV or 3, then that's what I mean by aesthetics, such as bullet belts or gloves, maybe bags that increase carry weight by like, +15 pounds, how would you feel about something like that?

i havent used any mods, so i cant comment on how well they work in the game. That said, whats the point in these bullet belts and gloves? What is achieved by having them? Id need to be told a bit more about them in order to comment.

Edit:
That said, do i want armour to be a mix of effectiveness and cosmetics? Not really, effectiveness > cosmetics.

Pretty sure this has already been addressed.
Carry weight is based on strength, its how much you can physically carry, it is not based on how much you can physically fit in your pockets, and as such bags adding carry weight doesnt make much sense, you are still physically carrying the same amount of weight ~unless they are anti gravity bags

The whole reason I'd want a good mix between cosmetics and effectiveness (being more geared to effectiveness than cosmetics) is because what's the point of it being it an RPG if you can't make your character unique? Maybe I didn't give the best examples, but if you saw videos of the mention mods, you'd see what I mean.

Take Dark Age of Camelot as an example of what happens when you have 20 slots for armor and trinket customization. In 2001-2 or whenever it came out the reccomended RAM was 3 GB.... XP was not even out then I think so the OS was barely using any of that ram. that would mean Consoles would not be able to handle it. There would only be like 5-10 NPCs in any given area. I have 5GB of RAM (including vid card) and DAOC still has lots of loading issues when 20+ people are in the same area.

I would love as much customization as possible... but BGS is a console oriented developer so the less graphical customization the better. I want to encounter some fighting among 30+ NPCs.

So i can do the legwork to support your arguement? I love doing that.

I think the uniqueness in fallout is more about the character than the clothing, not that im opposed to pretty clothes. I googled the mods and they do look pretty, they're relatively similar to what i was considering before i suppose. What gameplay differences do they make, or is it purely aesthetic?

that's the reason i don't like carry weight, it should be changed to "carry capacity" and greatly reduced, an items "encumberance" would be the combines value of it's weight and approximative size (i.e "single shotgun", 24 encumberance because it weighs 8 pounds and is approximatively 1.4 metres long.) max carry capacity is equal to 20 + your strength X25 and can only be increased by equipment and ONE perk. equipment would have it's value re-balanced, to make it more realistic. the equipment in your quick inventory (now limited to 1 two-handed weapon or shield (up key), 2 one-handed weapons: 1 slot reserved for melee weapons (left key) + 1 slot for handguns (right key), a special slot for one-handed explosives, thrown weapons, utility items (i.e binoculars) and traps (down key) and 2 slots for meds and chems (lower-left and lower-right) would not take up any space in your inventory.

all the weapons can be seen on the character (two handed weapon on their back, melee weapon on their left hip, handgun on their right hip and "special item" on their lower back)
the meds/chems could just be put in a leather bag on the players lower back, beside their "special item" space.

that system would allow much needed "carry capacity" bonuses to be added to equipment.

Most of it is Aesthetic in Satchels besides the... uh.. satchels. But Tailor Maid added different parts of armor, take for instance, the armored platings and such on the Armored Vault Suit, it gave you minor abilities like +5 to Guns and Melee and you could wear the plates over stock clothes, like the wasteland wanderer clothes (which, btw, looks pretty cool).

I don't want an overload of body slots for armor, I'd rather have it limited to neck, gloves, mask, backpacks, accessories (like a choker), shoulders (includes coats), boots, and belts along with a slot for armor like we have it now.

If you want to look at the two mods, each has some screenshots on the page:
Tailor Maid NV: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/36660
Satchels: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/35904

Love the satchels idea, many times I would have wanted a piece of amrour to be on that armour. how extensive is it?

Only does it only do what is shown or is every item in the game is "sewable".

I can't wait to see what armor looks like in next-gen rendering

I would like to see backpacks of varying sizes added that increased your carry weight.

See for the originals the bonus to Str would cover that base just fine.

I want to be able to be completely nekkid.

I want a suit that regularly injected psycho and talks to me.

or

Something like the nanosuit, that gave strength and invisibility.

or

A full on robotic suit like gundam wing perhaps. hahaha I think I've gone too far.

a diffrent faction of enclave that were red armor and angenst the real enclave

If there is a hardcoe mode in the next Fallout, armor should effect the rate of dehydration. Power armor would have efficient cooling and ease workload so you would dehydrate slower while metal armor would bake you under the sun.

Encumbrance should be tied to strength and EVERYTHING should have an encumbrance value. I really like how STALKER approached this and that series felt very much like surviving in a hostile wasteland. Different armor types could increase encumbrance. They could have utility pouches, loops, pockets, etc. instead of a magic +Str modifier.

Magic +stat effects on gear should be changed to plausible explanations, like what I mentioned in my encumbrance section. Perhaps instead of adding +1 to perception, hats could reduce glare from light sources... same thing on paper, but one is a lazy way out while the other actually effects gameplay and makes for interesting choices about what to wear. Same could be done for sun glasses, except they only increase perception outdoors and during day time (could be done since effects were already tied to time and location). Since BGS is taking the series into FPP exploration they might as well change stat systems to enhance exploration experience. I know a lot of 'purists' only want stat tables and stuff, but with TES style exploration games I think using generic stat monikers that barely effect anything should be phased out in favor of descriptions of effects and directly altering the player's experience.

DT/DR like the originals would be ideal. I have often brought up the example of bank robbers in LA that were virtually immune to police light gun fire because they were in full combat armor. The police were able to split them up and wait for them to run out of ammo and/or requisitioned hunting rifles from nearby stores to penetrate the armor. There should be weapons and ammo that penetrates armor. Energy weapon damage should be on a separate DT/DR than physical weapons due to their nature. Armor that can catch bullets really well might not be effective at dissipating heat.

Those examples are good start. How do you all feel about them?

New Vegas already has armor piercing bullets, which is one of the many reasons it is better than its predecessor.

I just want a lot of cool looking armor, instead of clunky and weird looking armor all around.

Swat team like armor would be ideal as well, and I would love it if towns had banks for us to rob.

I have no idea what you asked, XD. But not every armor has stuff put into the Satchels bag, you can break down certain armors to get the pieces pertaining to it and enemies may wear stuff that comes in the Mod, unlike Tailor Maid, it's all explained on the mod's page.

A better, in-depth look at it is in this video, you'll see what it would look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcjgqovlHDk
And this one showcases Tailor Maid in New Vegas, it's the first one he talks about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0vVR8yRi3Q

I think that the point he is trying to make is not just AP bullets, but armour that some bullets can't penetrate. As he said in his example there could be Combat Armour that you couldn't penetrate with small calibre weapons, you would need a rifle to do so.