How do you set your apparel rules?

[Mentat76]

I almost always set my rules to have my pawns wear armors and helmets. I dont let them to take them off because during an attack, there is simply not enough time for them to equip. But it does happen to be a problem in the colder biomes.

So how do you guys deal with this?

[coyo7e]

I start the game by setting everybody (or all but 1) to "worker", and then I turn off stuff like t-shirts, jackets, and the crummier types of hats on general principle. I *always* allow flak vests until I can start putting pawns into recon/marine/etc armor, because vests stack with most normal clothing.

After I get everybody in dusters or parkas and whatever apropos hat, I start to worry about quality, so I tweak the permissions to only allow "good" or better gear, eventually "excellent" or better. I also make sure they only wear gear that's like 60 or 70% or better, although I have to be careful that guys aren't walking around sans pantalons.

To deal with keeping gear on-hand, I set my tailor/machine table/etc bills to "make until you have X" and then I set it to like, normal or good quality, over 80-90%, and "1". This makes my tailor/smiths keep remaking items until there's at least one of the right quality laying around at all times.. Pawns will slowly wander in and upgrade gear, then the next guy with slightly worse stuff will wear the cast-offs etc, so over time everybody ends up wearing pretty nice stuff of high quality.

As for temperature, there might be a mod to help with that but I just turn dusters and parkas etc on or off depending on the season/temperature.

It sounds like a lot to do, but I generally only do this in small stages so it doesn't take much time or effort. I also eventually make a "melee" set of rules which allow shield packs, and then a "noble" one to make sure they are the only ones who wear prestige armor etc, otherwise some random cook will end up wearing an eltex shirt and prestige helmet.. I let everybody wear formal clothing - capes are identical to dusters anyway, and formal shirts etc are no worse than button-down shirts.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

My basic rule that is loaded at the start of every run is 51% threshold, normal or better only. My people wear anything they can find, which can range from locally produced stuff to mended and washed apparel. Granted, I'm on a custom low difficulty with threat limiter so direct drop pod raids and masses of enemies are not an issue.

It's only much later that I specialize with profession specific equipment (such as the Rabbie lab coat and shirt for my Rabbies) and designate fighters to get into marine and cataphract armor. A full set of legendary cataphract armor with marine gloves and boots (from Vanilla Expanded) iirc easily makes temperature a non issue, but then again I've never started in ice sheet, sea ice, or extreme desert regions before; most I've seen is around -50c for tundra and 60c in the rainforest/grasslands.

[MortVent]

I tend to set the default to my worker set (duster, flak vest, simple helmet, pants, button-down shirt) at 52%+ with crafting set on the tailor bench to start replacements at 60% (limit it to cloth early on, with plain leather the duster)

Then I have hunter/guards with flak gear (helmet, jacket, pants, vest, etc as options for maximizing defense with minor movement penalties...)

For dedicated combatants (aka they don't do anything really but shoot/brawl) I tend to go plate<flak<recon<marine as it becomes available [they mainly focus on clean and haul, or other tasks where the penalties don't matter much]


Main reason is outside of soldiers I want them to be suffering as little penalties to work as possible while still having the key areas covered (chest and head...). I will sometimes use cowboy hats or the like on workers, but still tend to worry about headshots

[ambi]

i like to play as a "civilian" colony, so everyone gets parkas / dusters and cowboy hats.

[glass zebra]

As soon as I can actually start crafting apparel:

I Forbid tainted.

I set almost everybody to "worker" with duster, button down shirt, pants, flak vest (, most utility), all noble clothes and some hat I like for that colony. If the weather does not allow dusters, I take what I need. Quality allowed: normal-excellent

I leave my melee on "soldier" with the same basic clothing + flak vest + all helmets and shield belts as only utility allowed. I let them equip the heavier body armour manually for heavier raids. Quality allowed: normal-anything

As soon as I get some more people who are actually good at shooting and unlock more gear realisticly, I let them equip "ranger" gear which is very similar to the worker gear, but has jump packs as the only utility and gun link on head slot. Quality allowed: normal-excellent

At that point my "workers" drop their utility stuff and get low shield packs. They are usually people without a ranged passion and too new to have leveled up enough anyway. They are only my backup and don't actually fight but idle drafted behind my city wall.

My nobles/psy casters wear "worker" gear and equip eltex stuff manually for heavier raids.

Ideology adds some extra clothing to take care off, but only to like 1-4 people. It's somewhat annoying that the specialist don't actually want their apparel.

If I get some thrumbo leather I sometimes switch around stuff like dusters, capes, jackets in allowance to make sure only my melees wear those. When I have enough cataphract armour for them, that only really matters drop in base drop pod raids and infestations though. I pretty much only buy armour outside of flak vests and only my melees get it, but I do play without cover and with heavy psy, melee and movement tactics. If you do not, giving your ranged people helmets is wise.

[Yaldabaoth]

Normal clothes only, when there is an attack, there are shelves with armor/special weapons spread out in the colony.

[Overeagerdragon]

VERY early game I just let my pawns wear whatever they can find...even if it's tainted
Once I can make my own clothes I set apparel to Normal or better (@51% or over, 50% being the threshold for when the tattered apparel label starts to show up) and exclude tainted but I'll still let them wear anything they wish.
Mid game I start making my specialist sets (I use apparello 2) to make a set for every job/task there is (though my cleaner usually is the same as my hauler) or hybrid sets if I'm short on pawns
Late game I will have a set for all of my jobs/task, 1 melee set and 1 ranged set and just force-wear my elites to wear what's best for them.

[Lord Maelstrom]

I turn off artifacts and then manually equip them because it's annoying that all my shock lances get grabbed by throw away pawns

[Ultimate Oddball]

I set no clothing under 52% damage, no tainted clothing, and then I let the pawns handle it themselves generally. I'm not sure if it's vanilla or mods but my pawns don't have much issue with temperature, but I'm on a temperate forest so outside of extreme weather there's not much issue anyways. As long as the clothing they need is available, they'll grab it and equip it.

The biggest deciders for apparel settings come down to what the temperatures of your biome are, what resources you have access to, how often your colonists are in combat, whether all or just some of your colonists are in combat, the skill level of your colonists, and what weather or non-weather events you're experiencing. Working apparel settings for one game may not apply so well to another.

Initially, one apparel setting should work, but as soon as you start putting people into ideology roles, and especially as your wealth builds, some people will expect nicer clothing, so eventually you should have presets for general colonists, colonists with royal titles, colonists with high expectations, and colonists in ideology roles. That way you can just click a couple times to set each colonist's apparel.

[Ele]

I don't use any of the defaults--I create categories for basic ranged/worker, basic melee/worker, melee/combat, and basic psycaster. During raids, the melee/worker puts on melee/combat gear if they have time. The ranged and psy don't need to change (except for mechanoids--but they are usually so fast there isn't time to prepare).

[Makeithappen]

I really wish there was an assembly room to put on recon/marine armor faster as I don't like the movement penalty for pawns early to mid game for everyday tasks. I like them to wear typically what you would wear on a day to day basis.

With limited numbers and skilled pawns early on I end up putting them in whatever clothes I have available with the best protection. Even recon and marine armor since it takes so long to switch into the heavier gear.

I set my Clothing assignments to 51% normal or better and crafting of gear to the same. I also make 1 extra pair of each piece of clothing so that pawns can replace clothing immediately to avoid the tattered clothing debuff.

I usually grab what I can off of raiders I down like flak vests, pants, button down shirts, and recon/marine until I can start making my own. Same goes for weapons.

[Hyderlic]

comfy power armor mod helps with that. I mean its power armor it should have temperature control

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by JohnWick:

I really wish there was an assembly room to put on recon/marine armor faster as I don't like the movement penalty for pawns early to mid game for everyday tasks.

Recon armour does not have any movement penalty.

Originally posted by hyderlic:

comfy power armor mod helps with that. I mean its power armor it should have temperature control

It does have quite a lot. More than the best jacket for both heat and cold protection.

[sono]

In Vanilla, it's the default duster(parka in cold biomes)/flak/button-up/pants/hat +51% combo for most pawns, with everything else forbidden. The melee fighters get the same except with shield belts.
Eventually, switch over to Marine armor when possible, prioritizing the front liners.

With vanilla expanded, you get to make actual decisions and make characters unique instead of all wearing the same thing. Tool belts, medic bags, different outfits for different primary jobs, depending on how much effort I feel like putting in I might have five different outfit sets.

The option of wearing scarves, gloves and boots means you don't suffer us much from the temperature meaning you've got wider options.

If I need everyone to fight because the raids are too large to handle with just dedicated warriors, it' pretty much back to the default set but as soon as I can spare a few pawns they get specialty outfits.

Overall, vanilla just doesn't incentivize you to use anything except the default since there's a strict hierarchy in how good equipment is. Using anything different is just punishing yourself.
Mods add options that are an actual trade-off between defense and utility, which the base game could do with more of.