The Xenoarch Voidsuit

[Captain Gecko]

Back before the NBT (now CBT) dropped, I made this thread about making Xenoarcheology an actual job and not an alt-title. This also came with several other suggestions to improve the overall experience, making it more enjoyable on the Horizon. Among these suggestions, is the idea of giving the Xenoarchs/Anomalists a voidsuit specifically for them, one that would strike a balance between the fragile but light science one, and the heavier, more protective mining one, along with some upgrades such as a proper headlight -with a range of more than 3 tiles-. The current science voidsuit works for any other science job, but with the Xenoarch being so often exposed to dangers that seem to have been balanced to be faced by miners, this just won't do.

This thread is to discuss two things:

1) The actual specs of this suit, if we were to make it.

2) The looks of the suit.

 

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1) As far as the exact specs go, I myself cannot say much. I do not know much about coding, or development, and don't understand much what all of these numbers in the code represent in actual gameplay. What I will say is this: right now, a human in a science voidsuit will get shredded by an eel, even after the much welcome rebalancing of these beasts. Bloaters can easily kill off a human too (and pretty much anything that isn't a Diona, Bulwark, or Unathi (and since Xenoarchs do not have any ranged weapons or tools like a KA, their chances to evade them are slim to none). Thus, we need to get enough protection to give these workers at least a modest ammount of survivability, and at least give them a chance against most of the common fauna encountered for now.

And we REALLY need a better headlight. It wasn't really a problem back on the Aurora, because the rock was riddled with holes, you would still get some natural light, with pitch-black areas being limited to the construction level, and even then, fauna encounters were MUCH rarer. With the Horizon, asteroids are PITCH BLACK, making surviving or even avoiding hostile fauna even harder, especially with the ridiculously small THREE TILES range of the current science suit's headlamp.

 

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As far as the looks go, well... I can do some spriting work myself. Here's a prototype I made, there's only a sprite for a human version so far, but this is just to convey the basic idea for it, for now, we'll see about different species and details later.

 

 

The idea is to have the suit look exactly like what it's supposed to be, a middle-ground between Science's and Mining's voidsuit. It is a somewhat heavier-looking science voidsuit (made using parts of armor vest sprites), bearing the mining one's brown and grey tones, simply put.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Captain Gecko

[Boggle08]

Honestly, you could get away with renaming the science voidsuit to be the new xenarch suit, give it miner damage resistance values, then have the scientists use the department unspecific voidsuits instead. No one else on the science team except really brave telescience guys have much use for these in their line of work.

The voidsuit you have sprited looks great, though. If you're thinking about resistance values for it, I don't see why it can't have parallel resistances to the miner suit. You go to the same places and fight the same battles.

[Captain Gecko]

Now that the Xenoarcheologist is its own job, it's time to resurect this thread! And this project as a whole.

 

I've taken to tweaking these sprites, and making versions for Xeno species so that it can be refitted properly:

 

So, the idea now is that, since we have 3 scientist slots and two Xenoarch slots, it feels only natural to have then 3 scientist voidsuits instead of the four we have now, and then adding two of these Xenoarch suits... And as far as the stats and proprieties go... Well the general concept doesn't change, and the details will probably be discussed with people that can actual balance things (not me.)

This here is just to make sure that people here as still onboard with the idea.

[KingOfThePing]

I really like the sprites, the colour pallet really reminds me of the old-old mining suits. And that I dont like. Why have you chosen this rusty brown as a main colour?

[Carver]

Didn't xenoarch have a voidsuit back in the day, with intermediary anomaly protection between that of a non-spaceproof anomaly suit and a standard voidsuit?

[Captain Gecko]

On 19/10/2022 at 04:33, Carver said:

Didn't xenoarch have a voidsuit back in the day, with intermediary anomaly protection between that of a non-spaceproof anomaly suit and a standard voidsuit?

They did long ago. It was replaced with the anomaly suit, which protects against anomalous emissions AND radiations. However, it is no longer space-proof, that's where the science voidsuit is meant to be used. The point of the Xenoarch voidsuit is not to protect against anomalies, though, but to give a change to science EVA workers.

The science voidsuits is fragile, its weak lights have a range of 3 tiles, and it still slows you down. In the end it's not that bad if you're a telescientist wearing this suit just for the sake of protecting yourself. It is however an issue for Xenoarchs who can get exposed to the same hazard as miners. Thus if they are to work without the protection of miner (like, 90% of the time) they will need a more reliable suit. The point of the Xenoarcheology suit is not to protect against anomalies, but to be sort of a middle-ground between the overly fragile science voidsuit, and the much tougher mining one to give EVA scientists a better chance when going solo against Xenofauna and the likes

 

On 19/10/2022 at 01:56, KingOfThePing said:

I really like the sprites, the colour pallet really reminds me of the old-old mining suits. And that I dont like. Why have you chosen this rusty brown as a main colour?

Thank you! And as far as the colors go, it is indeed from the old mining suits. The original concept was just that these are science suits quickly reinforced with bits from mining and the likes, hence the same brown colors... Though that can be changed. What other color palette would you rather have? I was thinking about all-orange just like the anomaly suit, though I was a tad worried that it could then be mistaken for engineering ones.

[Carver]

I'm not quite sure scientists are intended to go against xenofauna solo. In most cases when no one is there to accompany you (don't be afraid to ask Security for an escort if there are no Miners), you should be able to trivially request a miner's suit (which can then be cycled to appear as a research suit!).

Having a dinky headlamp isn't really exclusive to the research suits either, most suits suffer from it - encouraging you to bring floodlights, or to request lanterns from operations.

[KingOfThePing]

I am not sure what colour would fit best, but I dont think either a reaserach station as the Aurora was nor the flagship exploration research vessel that the Horizon is would have retrofitted or quickly thrown together anomaly suits. They would have dedicated gear for exploration, excavation and study. 
To answer the colour question - the anomaly suit always reminded me about the SEVA suit from Stalker. I know this is about the EVA suits, not the anomaly ones, but it still applies. They come in a different variation of colour (the picture below was the best I could find with a few of them shown, ignore the black and Flecktarn one) and maybe you can replicate this. High visibility suits, together with the (dreadful) science purple. You can even give them different roles, so to say. White for expidition leader, green for security detail, and so on. 

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by KingOfThePing

[Captain Gecko]

On 20/10/2022 at 17:22, Carver said:

I'm not quite sure scientists are intended to go against xenofauna solo. In most cases when no one is there to accompany you (don't be afraid to ask Security for an escort if there are no Miners), you should be able to trivially request a miner's suit (which can then be cycled to appear as a research suit!).

Having a dinky headlamp isn't really exclusive to the research suits either, most suits suffer from it - encouraging you to bring floodlights, or to request lanterns from operations.

The idea is not to go alone and go out of your way to face the dangers, even as a miner, if alone, it's dangerous. The issue is being exposed to such danger in the first place. Having played Xenoarch mainly for the last two years, combat is quick, a carp, or even now, a reaver, can quickly slip through KA or even expedition shotgun fire and get one or two lucky bites that can end your work-day right away before you even started digging.

That, and I am not speaking of proper expedition here, but merely of the Xenoarch's base work, so getting security or medical to spare personel for such things is extremely rare. Keeping in mind also that this applies to low-pop players, who will most likely never get access to mining suits because there simply is no one to get them, or security or other miners to follow them for that miners.

One again, I absolutely suck in balancing, so details of how armored it is, or how powerful the light is and other things will probably be left to people who know what they are doing if we ever implement this, but still, the idea here is not so much to make the Xenoarchs powerful, but rather to give them an actual chance against most kinds of danger (putting aside Unathi and other tanky things like G2).

 

5 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

I am not sure what colour would fit best, but I dont think either a reaserach station as the Aurora was nor the flagship exploration research vessel that the Horizon is would have retrofitted or quickly thrown together anomaly suits. They would have dedicated gear for exploration, excavation and study. 
To answer the colour question - the anomaly suit always reminded me about the SEVA suit from Stalker. I know this is about the EVA suits, not the anomaly ones, but it still applies. They come in a different variation of colour (the picture below was the best I could find with a few of them shown, ignore the black and Flecktarn one) and maybe you can replicate this. High visibility suits, together with the (dreadful) science purple. You can even give them different roles, so to say. White for expidition leader, green for security detail, and so on. 

 

I can go with the high-visiblity-ish orange of the anomaly suit for these, with a dash of science purple then, yes, I'll work on it and send an updated version later on...

Though as far as the other roles go, I don't know. Security, engineering, mining, they would probably rather keep their own suits. As far as how I envisioned it, the Xenoarch suits would be just reinforced science suits for scientists going mainly in EVA, but would probably still be weaker than a miner's for instance.

[KingOfThePing]

Hey, sure I am just throwing ideas around. My main argument I wanted to make is that the Horizon wouldnt have retrofitted suits for this task. They would have sophisticated, expensive equipment, like the rest of xenorch and science.