Chest rig, Armor, Helmet, and "storage" suggestions from a combat vet.

[jdkzombie]

Alrighty, so something I have come to feel needs suggestions for improvements are the wearables, meaning chest rigs, body armors, helmets, and the goofy Pelican cases we use as a "backpack".

First off.

BACKPACK

...or lack thereof. Nobody is going to run around with a dang pelican case as a backpack. Even if you guys added an animation for opening the case up so we didn't need to flip it over/around manually to use the holster or pouches on it I don't think it makes much sense to use a hard case. In my 2nd deployment to Iraq I really embraced using an assault pack, wasn't big, but it held the essentials. Obviously there are smaller, and larger applications available, but mine was enough to carry some gatorade drink mixes in, a few packs of waterless cleaning wipes, some snackage, and ngl my PSP which i played when I had downtime in random places provided I had the break to do so (meaning i wasn't on watch).

They offered a large assault pack, looked like a big ass backpack, 1 giant main pocket, 1 medium pocket, 2 smaller pockets back to back up front, a front flip cover that had 1 small zippered pouch, and 1 marginally bigger zippered pouch on it, plus MOLLE webbing for attaching pouches too, including magazine pouches. All in all its a big ass bag, but that would make way more sense than carrying a hard AF pelican case around on your back. Granted we would just leave the interior 1 big bag for ease of use, but the flip top and molle attachments could be modified at base to change up load carrying capabilities.

SUB-POINT for backpacks

Molle attachments would be an IDEAL addition to the game, allowing us to purchase, find, and gain as mission rewards to further compliment our arsenal and loadout for missions.


CHEST RIG(s)

To be frank here, having multiple chest rigs to choose from is garbage.

Let me explain my reasoning.

Its ludicrous when you could make ONE single rig, and simply give it highly modular capabilities to allow us to outfit the item to our likings, not simply make do with whats available off the mannequins. For example, in Iraq, by IBA didn't need a "rig" it was covered in molle webbing allowing from extremely varied loadout options. Back left was always a med pouch with stop bleed powder, a tourniquet, gauze, Israeli bandage, and pain killers. Obviously we wont really be mounting pouches to our backs in ITR, but a MED pouch would be ideal, to put say, left abdomen lower (belly button height) which would have increasing sizes for holding meds, small pouch holds 2, biggest pouch (which could be a rare find or rare mission reward) could hold 5 or 6 syringes. We could purchase varied size magazine pouches, as well as shotgun shell bandoleers. Purchase weapon holsters. Place said holsters anywhere and as many as we want until overencumbered. Meaning if someone wanted a chest holster for long gun, you could throw the Bison on your chest, and toss a AS VAL on your back, and carry a sidearm on your hip. Or do dual handgun holsters on chest. Or 3 long gun holsters. Sky is the limit here. If the back pack can hold 2 long guns, as well as smg and short barrel shotguns, why cant the chest rig?


BODY ARMOR

These should have varying levels of protecting and weight, thats it. They should not affect how much weight you can carry by directly increasing your carry weight threshold. In fact, they should encumber your carry weight. People won't like that suggestion I am sure, but there really isn't much point to body armor in the games current iteration. The SAPI plates wear out super fast, you can only put on in the chest, and there are no benefits besides raw damage resistance numbers for the 3 plate types. To combat this, I would suggest separating the plates more by the cailbers they are effective at mediating damage from. Level 1 can just be Kevlar. Good for reducing handgun damage for rounds up to 357 and 44 mag (not going to include exotic caliber real world options for sake of game discussion). Kevlar would help you fight against the normal police mimics and resist shotgun mimics to a point. Level 2 could be significantly more expensive, requiring body armor upgrades to a level II IBA, and put SAPI plates on front and back, with options for sides and shoulders. Way more effective at reducing handgun damage to torso and upper limbs. Weight penalties ensue. Level 3 could be where the endgame tanky stuff can come in, I'm talking Level III/IV ceramic plates trauma package. The kind of stuff that takes a 7.62x39mm to it and shrugs it off. Heavy ass plates too, I had 2 main plates and they were like 5 lbs each, combined with kevlar shoulders, and 3.5lb side plates it was a heavy rig to wear. Giving the armor and plates more incentive to use, because you know if you are trying to pack light to move fast, you probably don't need level 3 plates and a IBA rig, you need something smaller.


Helmets....

Boy howdy these helmets sure are helmets of their times aren't they. Wear out super fast, really heavy, not much protection when the enemies aimbot your face and not the top of your head. Besides not being able to mount a headlamp, they don't currently have much usage to me. I have a level 3 one, with 2 weapon flashlights attached to it, one on each side. And to be honest, those lights are hot garbage. Having dedicated helmet lights would be ideal that could be tuned to do classic yellow, bright white, red, or green light would be neat. The level 3 helmet looks like you could throw a set of PVS14's on, too bad we don't have nvg's. Having side rails on helmets could open up a new type of mission too, body cams. UNPSC wants combat footage of certain mimics reacting to certain types of firefights or weapons to gauge usefulness and combat effectiveness of the Radius's minions. Meaning you get a mountable head cam, you turn it on during the fight, record the action, turn in the camera at the mission thing for credits. It's like paparazzi from ITR1 without sucking so much. Could even add gillie style wraps for helmets that aid in reducing your visual profile to enemies.

[死神]

<3 it, all of it.

Body cam missions could add a throw-able or plan-table device to expose enemies to a stimulus or allow you to collect samples for testing development of weapons \ tools to use against the Radius. Afterwards you add the "Test new weapon \ ammo types against ...".
I mean it follows a natural structure for the story as well as breaking up the mission monotony for continued replay-ability.
It's a natural progression from the picture missions in ITR, now they have started more direct or offensive actions.
If this was added to ITR you could end up on a mission with a throw-able that kills the APC for an in-game example of implementation.