Thoughts on the new armor and utility items

[HunterSilver]

So I'm going to start off by saying that I love the variety that these new armor types bring. I appreciate being able to setup more specialized combat roles based on armor type and utility item. I've been experimenting with them both with heavy psychic power usage and without much psychic power usage.

Without many psychic powers:
A melee unit with Locust Armor and a Smokepop belt is perfect for jumping into mechanoid turrets and shutting them down. Given sufficient support they can even wipe out the turrets on their own before jumping to the next batch.

Phoenix armor never felt worth it. There was never a situation where the incendiary launcher or fire resistance felt worth the incredibly minor defenses lost compared to the Cataphract armor. Both in the mid and late game it just felt underwhelming. Even in the optimal scenario where you are fighting a ton of clustered enemies in a densely wooded area I was not impressed by its performance. I understand that its role is more suppression than dealing with enemies, but I feel like it needs to do more for me to ever bother with it again.

Surprisingly, I did not like Locust Armor on ranged combatants. I was much happier to strap them with jet packs and give them heavier armor. So much combat takes place outside of a killbox now and inside of a broad shield that being relatively lightly armored is too much of a risk. It was better to trigger an enemy's broad shield, jump a squad into it, and use that for the fight.

Heavy psychic power usage:
Unfortunately prestige power armor wins out over utility power armor in every situation. Being able to bullet shield, skip, smokepop, and otherwise cause mayhem on the battlefield more often was worth more than a jetpack, grenade, or incendiary shot.

Outside of the early game smokepop belts became useless. Being able to target the smokepop psycast instead of it being centered on you is too big of a difference. Smokepop belts can't even pretend to be a contender.

Broad shields also became substantially less powerful when using multiple well trained psychics. Being able to skip high value targets into a bullet shield for quick elimination, or prep a battlefield by hitting all enemies with vertigo pulse meant having a safe spot to shoot from for 30 seconds just wasn't as big of a deal. Yes, bullet shield has a shorter duration, high heat cost, and you can't fire out of it, but that was fine in every situation.

For non-psychic units, the early and mid game was dominated by carrying around psychic shock lances to drop high value targets. Into the late game everyone began carrying around broad shields all of the time. It's easy to recover at least 1-2 broad shields per raid, so even if you can't gather them from mechanoids or buy them from traders reliably, pirates stock you up with them. There were often fights where I did not use a broad shield at all, but just having them ready in the event of something going horribly wrong was handy.

I think that's the biggest strength of jetpacks and broadshields: If something goes wrong or even just not according to plan, you can essentially press a panic button to fix it.

[Retro]

I agree with everything you said, actually nice to see people talk in this light. Also enjoy and want actual quality vanilla updates. I like mods, I use some but mods rarely feel like what tynan and his crew add to the game. I almost feel like I am on a island wanting another DLC with new gameplay elements in the future. I enjoy of new stuff added and I can tell they took their time and done it right.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Retro_Relapse:

I agree with everything you said, actually nice to see people talk in this light. Also enjoy and want actual quality vanilla updates. I like mods, I use some but mods rarely feel like what tynan and his crew add to the game. I almost feel like I am on a island wanting another DLC with new gameplay elements in the future. I enjoy of new stuff added and I can tell they took their time and done it right.

Absolutely. Even for the items that I criticized, it's obvious a lot of time and thought went into them and I appreciate that they're in the game immensely. I would not have spent even 1/10th the time that I did playing with them if I hadn't enjoyed trying them all out so much. Every major update so far with this dlc has made it a joy to startup a new colony and try things out fresh.

[Morkonan]

I... don't.

I just don't want to use anything in this new iteration of Rimworld. It's my own choice, of course, but all this "new stuff" just doesn't mesh well with my vision of the game's gameplay flavor, setting, mechanics, etc...

The reason I posted this is because I find fewer and fewer threads that I can participate in. I am, as a Rimworld player, being "put out to pasture" by all these additions, revisions, and content updates to the game that takes it in a direction I don't really... like.

But, as Rimworld has basically always been a sort of "add what you want, do what you want, just don't expect the forum to always fix your decisions for you" then I'm all in favor of players enjoying the game however they wish.