Armorsmith Archive

I'm seeing a lot of frustration, and I feel it too, over the complete dominance of composite armor in the economy. Personally speaking, this was the reason I decided to drop the Armorsmith skill tree. So, I've been giving it some thought and figured it might be nice to propose some changes to the skill tree, and the nature of certain armors.

The new tree would have different branches:
Flexible Armors
Rigid Armors
Hybrid Armors
Shields

Novice
This stays largely the same, with the biggest change being made to the actual makeup of Armorweave. It is converted to “hybrid armor” with low resists, but very few vulnerabilities.

Flexible Armors Tree:
Flexible Armors would be good at stopping “non-solid” damage; heat, energy, cold. The tree would also include the Armor Layers compatible with these damage types. All flexible armor would be lower HAM than Rigid Armor, but with either; A: lower resists overall, or B: specific strengths at the sacrifice of other resists. The two current armors that would be included are Ubese (likely at Flexible 2?) and Padded (Flexible 4?). Other flexible armors would be added to the tree, perhaps a Combat Skinsuit (Flexible 1) for a bit of protection and ultra-low HAM that can be worn under regular clothing.

Rigid Armors Tree:
Rigid armors would be good at stopping “sold” damage like blast and kinetic. Layers for blast and kinetic would be included in this tree. All rigid armors would have higher HAM costs, but better overall resists, or truly superior resists for specific types of damage. Current armors for the Rigid tree would include; Chitin, Wookie Armors, and Tantel. New types of Rigid Armor would be added in this tree if needed.

Hybrid Armors Tree:
Hybrid Armors would be the halfway point between the others. Medium HAM, with decent average resists, but very few, if any vulnerabilities. This is the armor that most people will likely have for their daily use. Not specialized, but good overall. Layers in this tree would be the weirder ones, like acid. Hybrid armors would include Advanced Armorweave (hybrid 1), Composite (hybrid 4), and the ability for rebel/imp armorsmiths to craft factional armor from faction perk schematics. The rumored “Bounty Hunter Armor” (I'm not talking about Mandalorian) would also likely fit in this tree.

Shields:
Stays pretty much the same. Shield Alignment Devices are added to the tree to create shields specific to certain damage types, similar to layers.

Master Armorsmith:
Advanced Composite, and an Advanced form of a Flexible and a Rigid armor. Mostly, the rest stays the same.

Skill Mods:
Assembly and Experimentation skill would be spread through 2 or more of the tree branches.

Changes to Armor:
While the best Flexible, Rigid and Hybrid armors would still be the best, and likely dominate the market, most of the armors from level 3&4 on each tree would have the capacity to be specialized toward a specific type of damage. Laugh as you will at my 80% vs. Cold, but someday Hoth will be in an expansion. It may well be that “Wookie Hunting Armor” has the highest potential kinetic resist of all armor, with some other Advanced Rigid armor being second. Padded may become the thing to take against commandos because of it’s superior heat protection. The aim is to have different armor be better for different circumstances, with hybrids offering high average but unspecialized protection. People might well have more than one suit of armor, one for hunting kimos and one for fighting Darktroopers. I realize that this changes the character of certain armors (like Ubese being less good vs. kenetic), but which suits are changed in what ways seems less important to me than the overall idea of specialized armors.