Should I skip flak for marine armour?

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Usually I go with devilstrand dusters and flak vest/helmet/legs and then upgrade to marine or cataphract if I have it unlocked. I feel like the flak is a bit of a resource sink though and it raises colony wealth, maybe I would be better just getting the devilstrand and maybe some plate helmets or flak helmets and then go straight for marine or cata, saving my resources so I can get there faster and delaying the bigger raids from starting? Seems like normal enemies just get annihilated by my killbox without even fighting back anyway, and the drop pod raids tend to go down easily too since they are fewer in number and my auto turrets do a lot to them. It's only really the sappers and catapillar mech drops that really cause me trouble and I shouldnt need to worry about that til my colony wealth is high anyway

[AldouzTek]

Yeah go for Marine skip Pekora... I mean Flak
Anyway for melee just equip them Plate Armor and Simple Helmet until you get Marine or Cataphract.

[Hones]

Flak is good because it is basically a small marine armor you strap to your pawns chest. It protects the vital organs from one-shots and the like. If you have wealth problems (and thus, high raid points) the flak vests are probably the least of your problems.

Also I usually only use the vests; the flak pants and jacket don't really seem to be worth it to me.

[dot]

I think flak armor is ok for your range pawns for all the game, given that it doesn`t slow as much and can be done just from steel(steel+component) and cloth.

But for melees, I avoid it, for me is plate or the power armors. Early plate armor + steel mask or preferably devilstrand broadwrap (better in stats, cover the whole head and I like to imagine it like some kind of mail coif which i guess it is xD), and then when you have money and trade going on i upgrade to the power armors. *Edit: in between the pressing matter is to get the shield belts asap.*

[✚ Mariel ✚]

tyty :)

[whatamidoing]

Definitely don't skip flak vests, yeah. They'll block about half of shots taken to the torso+neck+shoulders (which means the entirety of bionic/archotech arms, btw) and blunt most of the remainder at normal quality.

[Narrowmind]

The best you can get is flak helm, flak vest, devilstrand pants and duster, I believe. The marine armor is pretty good, too, but it's not as good, all things considered.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

so marine armour is weaker than flak with devilstrand? What about cata?

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

The best you can get is flak helm, flak vest, devilstrand pants and duster, I believe. The marine armor is pretty good, too, but it's not as good, all things considered.

The flak helmet is worse than any power armor helm (which also protect the face, unlike the flak helmet) and devilstrand pants are worse protection than flak pants, with both giving less protection than power armor to the legs and non-mechanical arms while protecting the neck and torso only marginally better. The duster will better insulate against heat and the power armor will better insulate against cold.
It's a very solid combo but I like switching to power armor once I have the materials to anyway, in part just so there's fewer items to keep track of.

[Triple G]

Flak vests are good. The pants are worse than hyperweave / thrumbo pants. The jacket worse than other jackets (parka/jacket/duster) made of those. The helmet is better than any other if You don´t have access to power armor. Devilstrand has only 130% armor, like most leathers. Some leathers have 150%. hyperweave 200%, thrumbo 200%+. Also hitpoints, which means less replacement of these.

Other than that flak armor is relatively cheap to make, and bears little movement penalty.

[Astasia]

Devilstrand dusters are only marginally better than flak jackets/pants where it counts, like 2% in sharp and blunt. They have better heat resist and heat insulation, worse cold insulation, slightly better speed, but almost twice the market value. Does the amount of market value on devilstrand or flak count though? No, it's too low to matter.

Devilstrand requires a fairly larger investment in time to get going, including a greenhouse on most maps. Flak is just a small amount of cloth and steel. Plate armor isn't really better either, unless you are talking about plasteel or uranium plate, I would not consider plasteel plate armor a wise investment, and getting that much uranium early on isn't usually realistic.

Flak jackets/pants and a vest can definitely make the early game significantly easier and is easily worthwhile to use. Is it necessary though? Not usually. If you don't use any defenses and are the type to just stick colonists behind some chunks or random walls, and struggle because of it, I would definitely suggest getting flak ASAP. If you have a solid defense, maybe some turrets and traps, and usually shred enemies without injuries, then armor obviously might not be as important. Vest and helm is useful to prevent lucky one-shots, otherwise even later in the game you can get away without using real armor on most of your colonists.

As far as marine and cataphract, they are definitely better than any of the above options. An argument might be made for legendary thrumbofur duster/pants and flak vest being better than legendary marine armor, if a colonist has bionic arms and the tough trait, understanding the massive weakness in the legs and that you still need the marine helm. At lower qualities or with devilstrand though, no, it's not even close. Keep in mind a normal quality charge lance entirely bypasses the resists of a normal quality devilstrand duster, and a legendary devilstrand duster is only providing a trivial amount of protection against that. Layered protect not great in RimWorld as AP will apply to every layer, the higher single layer protection of marine/cataphract is much better.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Devilstrand dusters are only marginally better than flak jackets/pants where it counts, like 2% in sharp and blunt. They have better heat resist and heat insulation, worse cold insulation, slightly better speed, but almost twice the market value.

So they're absolutely win-win combo: leveling your crafter with them, best one are for your soldiers and everything else is sold.

You can't do same with flak (components cost).

Originally posted by Astasia:

An argument might be made for legendary thrumbofur duster/pants

It's maybe just me but hyperweave is more accessible then thrumbofur. Orbital textile traiders are common and have tons of hyperweave.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Astasia:

Devilstrand dusters are only marginally better than flak jackets/pants where it counts, like 2% in sharp and blunt. They have better heat resist and heat insulation, worse cold insulation, slightly better speed, but almost twice the market value.

So they're absolutely win-win combo: leveling your crafter with them, best one are for your soldiers and everything else is sold.

You can't do same with flak (components cost).

Originally posted by Astasia:

An argument might be made for legendary thrumbofur duster/pants

It's maybe just me but hyperweave is more accessible then thrumbofur. Orbital textile traiders are common and have tons of hyperweave.

Flak jackets and pants only cost 1 component each and even at low quality will easily cover the cost of that component when sold.

Orbital textile traders are from EPOE IIRC, since there was at least a time where the synthetic organs had a hyperweave cost and so that was added specifically to make hyperweave realistically obtainable. Without mods you are unlikely to get enough hyperweave to make more than one or two pieces of gear over the course of a playthrough.

[Narrowmind]

I stand corrected.

[White Rider]

I'd say flak increasing colony wealth is offset enough by the protection it gives. Especially the chest armour. Statistically the most hits you receive land on the chest, and that's where most of your juicy weak organs are.
If you're worried about wasting components / steel on flak early, I wouldn't worry. You can always buy more components (and you should be buying them when you can) and if you have the ability to grow loads of corn, or cloth, or even farm animals for wool then you'll have plenty of stuff to trade for steel from bulk traders. Most have around 300 steel in their inventory. Or you could go trade at other faction bases.

Devilstrand is great, but it takes forever to grow. If you keep your footprint small and only building the absolute essentials to survive while you spend most of your time researching and growing, then having the devilstrand as a launching point to give your guys a big power-spike might be cool, but I don't know if I'd want to delay building for that long.

[VoiD]

Yeah, in a magical scenario where everything was available I'd obviously go for marine (or better) armor, but you can unlock flak much earlier, and it's worth it to have it.

Even in the late game, you don't really need everyone running around in marine armor all the time, some of your less dedicated combat pawns could be using the good old duster/vest combo and they will be often do just fine too, you can eventually replace everything with power armor but, again, it's not something that just instantly completes itself, and even after it's done it's not a bad idea to have a couple of spare armor pieces.

Also, having a very high quality thrumbofur instead of devilstrand makes quite a big difference, I always keep my eyes open for thrumbos for this reason, but they are rare, so this isn't reliable advice.

Edit: Of course it all depends on your current game, difficulty, setup, etc... Maybe you're a mechanitor with easy access to high level gear, and lots of mechs to do the fighting for you or something like that? Which means you wouldn't need to go out of your way to get flak, just get marine instead, maybe you're a bunch of tribals with a large wealthy colony, very hard battles, a bunch of poorly armored pawns and lots of wounds? Then you'd probably need to hurry up and develop some decent protection like flak vests ASAP, noone can tell you how to best aid your colony.