Because someone has to do it. MODsuits, summer 2023.

[Qwertytoforty]

Right. It's time we talk about modsuits.

People have discussed them in the past. The current development take seems to be yes, we would be fine with it.

Now comes the work to go with it.

I'm in the process of porting it, however it will take a lot of converting from systems TG has and we do not. This will take a while, and will be bug filled, review and testmerges will be needed once done. This is currently around 7000 lines of code, and I have not added it to rnd, or done TGUI, or even hooked up the sprites yet as TG does some funkyness with their sprite storage with modsuits.

However, there is a lot of work I will need help with, if we do want to go through with modsuits:

Balance.

This is going to impact balance heavily. We want the suits to be balanced for here. Nailing speed will be hard, we will want people to use them but things that slowdown are ass, generally. Hardsuits also have reliability in their simplicity, while modsuits are much more complex, time to put on, and also can have so many modules attached, as well as storage considerations. Will have to have a lot of it looked over with a fine toothed cone in order to get it balanced here.

TGUI

I suck at TGUI, it drives me insane, so I'll probably get some assistance in porting it over, as it will need tweaks from TG

Mapping.

This will be a 4 station wide map change, plus CC, plus mining level, if we want to give out modsuits over hardsuits. I suck at mapping, so this will need assisstance, and be stuck in the queue for a while.

Sprites

The big one. We'll need to make species sprites. For the syndicate sprites, we can port over the lovely syndicate hardsuits we currently have, and re-use those, they will just need to be segmented and have an undeployed sprite. Same for ERT hardsuits to modsuits. However for other hardsuits, the style of the hardsuits vs modsuits vary much more, and fully new sprites / helmets will have to be done.

We'll also need the suits to not be centcom green.

Control method.

TG seems to use right clicking / middle clicking in action buttons / deploying of the modsuit / activating some modules. I'll either have to make these all middle click, or alt click or perhaps just left click. Community feedback will be needed on prefered activation method.

Features that are not making it (in the initial port)

To save my sanity / not having to port over a shit load of additional stuff, a lot of modules will have to be dropped. I'll make a more complete list as I get closer to finishing the port, however: Pathfinder, most ninja modules, any antigravity modules, kinesis, most of the medical modules (either involve downloading surgeries, a built in health scanner which feels a bit too niche to copy paste code for or the organ cannon), the hardlight bodybags, ranged microwave beam, hat stacking, chronotrooper, ninja, that security projectile dampner, megaphone, sphere transform, anything involving the gags system, will not be included in the initial port.

Some modules are also not needed here (longfall, plasmaman adaption, ect)

AI control of modsuits are also disabled to begin with, that is a can of worms I am not working on in the initial port.