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Reduce weight on jackal armor


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^ thread title

Seriously.

I shouldn't need a guy with 60 strength to carry an assault rifle, 2 magazines, and a couple of grenades without getting a TU penalty while wearing jackal.

In addition, a lot of people are complaining that jackal ultimately is not worth it and go straight to wolf. I personally DO use jackal but it is annoying, and I dump it instantly for wolf when I can.

If the weight on jackal is reduced by 3-5 kg it would be a more attractive armor in the early game as a bridge between no armor, and the somewhat heavy wolf armor. It would also make it have a niche use lategame as a scout armor, or armor for soldiers who have low strength.

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Exactly, this was on my mind as well. I also started going straight for wolf and in the meantime using shield rookies as bait seems more economic. If jackal were lighter, it retains its use even after you get wolf so its not then just trash. It would also be nice variation.

Speaking of variation, a similar thing could also happen with the different tiers of weapons: Laser to be more accurate, Plasma to be more damaging, Mag is more armor piercing so each may have their niche even later game. They may have various weights too. Currently its just 'upgrade and dump the old'.

Such variation will also have the added effect of having soldiers play with more sprite variation in GC, I've seen a post where this is given as a late game downside where all 16 men look the same and I think its valid.

Going even further, I also propose a similar approach for aircraft as well. Currently we're just decommissioning our old trusted condor with 30 kills on it when we get marauder.

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This gets requested a lot. I'm a bit ambivalent about it.

The idea is that all technology is a direct upgrade of what came before within its class; it's quite deliberate. Making advanced equipment different rather than better devalues the research tree and we won't be changing it at this point.

However, the Jackal exists in a slightly awkward space. Each armour "tier" has a heavy and light armour in it - originally the Jackal was starting equipment. However now it must be researched and built, unlike the corresponding light armour. So possibly we could make an exception here (although the Light Drone changes were made with a mind to increasing Jackal usage too).

@Amiga4ever - the stat lines of soldiers are not affected by their gender though.

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I won't comment on weight of the Jackal since I don't bother making it. Although I may comment about the process of getting it. I'm of strategy that you need a bigger gun than armour at first. Since Jackal may be enough against plasma pistols, plasma rifles that are more common are still even deadly to Wolf. I always go for laser weaponry and allenium explosives and by that time I am this away from Wolf Armour. I think that Jackal should be available to manufacture after first ground combat as an intuitive solution to encounter of plasma weaponry.

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The idea is that all technology is a direct upgrade of what came before within its class; it's quite deliberate. Making advanced equipment different rather than better devalues the research tree and we won't be changing it at this point.

If you conceptualise Jackal armour as light rather than heavy armour (and therefore replaced by Buzzard rather than Wolf armour) then there's not really an issue.

I think for me the problem with Jackal armour is that it's just not relevant for long enough. As soon as you have built a squad's worth of Jackal, you're building Wolf which is a simply a flat-out replacement. There's no point hanging on to Jackal once you have Wolf; indeed you're probably better off not bothering at all and saving the money for something else. In contrast, all the other armours have some longevity to them. Basic remains viable throughout the game as a low-weight option. Wolf armour is replaced only by Sentinal armour (Predator armour doesn't really replace it because of the heavy weapon restriction); the same also applies to Buzzard.

But if you conceptualise Jackal armour as 'light' armour (to be replaced by Buzzard), it retains some viability for the first half of the game, rather than being replaced within the first month of its use. In this situation, I'd still argue that Wolf would constitute an upgrade over Jackal, since it offers a much more meaningful level of protection. But Jackal would still have some use.

In other words, then, I could at the moment play a game quite happily without ever building a suit of Jackal armour, waiting instead for Wolf. By lowering the weight of Jackal, I'd still build Wolf armour when it came along and use it as the main armour type for my squad, but I'd not hesitate to build some Jackal as well because I know it'll get some use for a while on less strong/support troops who need the mobility more than the protection.

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I was not proposing making jackal viable at all tiers of play. Generally later armors should be much better for general purpose.

Jackal just needs something that makes it more attractive in the short time it is available in the span between basic and wolf armors. Nobody should be saying "nah, basic is good enough until I get wolf". To me that means jackal is underpowered. It's armor mitigation and cost is fine IMO... which means that something about it needs to be buffed in order to make it more attractive. The most obvious solution is weight, which has the added affect of making it a good "backup armor". I should not be falling back on basic armor when my troops cant handle the weight of the heavier armors, it should be jackal that I'm falling back on.

Edited by legit1337
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I can agree with Kabill and legit's view. In my current play through on V22E4 I have not actually built any armour until i have hit plasma tech, preferring the movement/firepower advantage of an unclad soldier with my amour coming from cover. So far in 34 missions I have lost 1 soldier. (ignoring partial WIA out for 33 days etc).

The weight penalty of the jackal armour is so high compared to its protection that the cost/benefit doesn't add up.

If it was lighter then it would be a good thing to have a few sets hanging about later in the game for use on rookies that are partially disposable, better giving the one person you expect to not make it the old/obsolete cheap armour than a shiny predator suit.

My take would to be make them cheap and quick to manufacture, lighter but weaker, with the view that they are like a modern bullet proof vest, better than nothing but not really a long term strategy.

This I feel would mean you could roll them out to the troops early in the game (as a lot of troops come with low strength when they are rookies) as sort of a general issue item with much better armour to come later.

Edited by Hairyscreech
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I was suprised by how heavy Jackal is and I expected Wolf to be heavier, but apparently it's not? It feels a bit counter-intuitive to be honest. Jackal could be a bit lighter. You'd probably want to switch out of it towards the end anyway (and that's perfectly OK) but it could still provide some protection for low-strenght rookies and soldiers not expected to get into close-range firefights with the enemy a bit further into the game.

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Is this implementable by simple file editing? If so I will give it a play test tonight.

Edit - answered my own question, all it takes is a quick edit to the armours.xml file.

It was implemented in the recent release (Experimental 5), so there's no need to change anything.

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