Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Discussion of Armor and Bio tissues
Armorsmiths actuallly use quite a bit of synthetic cloth, both in Ubese and Composite, their top 2 sellers.
Whether more clothes could be worn with armor or not, people will still buy that one shirt or bandolieer for combat tissues. This market is not lost.
The people that might be lost are those that value the skill modifiers over protection. I want an honest answer from a Tailor about what percentage of their tissue business falls into this category. Are you sure those people would actually switch? I would still rather use a set of maskscent pants than a pair of maskscent bone armor pants due to the encumbrance. Some customers might be lost, but it is not likely to be a huge number of people.
For my business, active bio sensors account for about half the tissues I make, and shirts probably account for about 40% of the items of clothing that I make with bio tissues in them. Dusters and pants with mask scent are very big sellers, as are items containing stun defense and melee defense. Bandoliers sell very very poorly because people want to have that backpack to store things in, and now that you can loot backpacks with some very tasty bonuses on them and hold 50 items, bandoliers are a really bad joke. I almost never get a sale from one of those. Probably less than 1% of my business.
I'll also give you another example. On a server where I'm not a tailor/be, I have a combat medic/smuggler who generally doesn't wear armor unless he's soloing. He wears an outfit that has healing, masked scent, and melee/stun bonuses and has a pet and ranged support skillsto get things off of him. But if I could get those bonuses on some lightweigh armor (even with no resists, heck, I'd just take the 50% reduction in kinetic), it would be very difficult to pass that up, even as stupid as that would make him look.
Anyone that wears armor frequently is not in the market for BE clothes.
Huh? This is just not the case. You said so yourself not two sentences before this. The fact is that almost everyone that wears armor frequently is in the market for BE clothing. The problem is that we sellone shirt, then we're done, next customer. That needent be the case though, and would have no effect on a armorsmith (except perhaps in a positive way) if more articles of clothing could be worn under or over armor.
When suddenly they can wear armor with modifiers, tailors also gain a new group of people they can sell to, the Armosmiths. No it won't be as flashy or "rewarding" as selling clothes, but it is a new market, kind of like BEs and tissues versus pets. The potential gains are far more than any loses from the people above...
I suppose I'm failing to see why an idea that gives three professions a boost is worse than an idea that really doesn't change much to our profession.
You asked, so I'll answer. I have two very big problems with your suggestions. First you are suggesting a change that would undeniably result in less clothing being worn and more armor being worn right? Now you tell me how many tailors do you think would like such a change? Do we need to have a poll? Do you think that the armorsmith sentiment would be any different if we were to suggest that they start supplying tailors with armor plates that could be sewn into clothing?But that since they would now be in the component business that this would be a welcome change? Do you think we need to have a poll for that? C'mon, answer truthfully.
Second, you are suggesting a new role and a new emphasis for a class of which you do not play. No matter what the suggestion is, I have a problem with it just on that basis alone.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 08-06-2004 02:27 PM
My overall ideas for balance fall flat if you only pick and choose. Most of this must be done together, or you end up in a situation akin to balancing CH a year before the rest of the game...
1) Only low end armors can gain the benefit of tissues. Stuff that you never see used because everything else trumps it. No composite, no ubese. Others depending upon balance.
2) Only the "combat" tissues that go into fiber panels should be usable in these armors. Perhaps not all of them even then.
3) New resistance tissues are created. They could be Toughness or Kinetic, Energy, etc. Resistance. These only go in clothes, not armor.
4) To balance Tailor panels going into armor, these resistance components can be Armorsmith created reinforcements. This creates a nice interdependence between professions.
5) Pants at the very least are allowed to be worn under armor, even if the graphic is hidden while doing so.
6) Armor has to be rebalanced such that there is a trade-off for wearing it that cannot be completely negated by buffs.
Now is this list perfect? Probably not. I do think it is a start on a more balanced system that starts to blend armor and clothes while still leaving advantages to each one. It gives the customer a far greater range of choices, especially once armor is seriously nerfed (moreso if buffs are as well).
As a mental exercise for those that are going to stand fast against no tissues in armor, let's pretend we're junior developers and this change is going to happen. How do you modify my suggestions to make this system benefit everyone?
Actually I do deny that. I think the most likely result would be that people that wear the high-end armor would consider stepping down a notch to get armor with a modifier, especially after it is rebalanced.
Within my guild, I do know that the people I give tissues to either would not wear armor in the first place or are having them put into a shirt.
Do you think that the armorsmith sentiment would be any different if we were to suggest that they start supplying tailors with armor plates that could be sewn into clothing?
Actually I am suggesting that...
Second, you are suggesting a new role and a new emphasis for a class of which you do not play. No matter what the suggestion is, I have a problem with it just on that basis alone.
Fair enough.
Then on a pure BE standpoint, I do not want development time wasted on more tissues without a change to the system. It emphesizes the fact that we are nothing but component suppliers which the Tailors seem to be fuming over when suggested.
The original idea that spawned this debate benefits Tailors and Tailors alone.
It brings nothing to BE except for the need for me to gather more resources.
It's not a bad idea. I've read worse, lol. The sheer complexity of it, and trying to get the balance right is a bit staggering though as you're talking about so many different variables. The cynic in my tells me that this would be a "winner take all" proposition in the end (kinda like how I'm sure the devs thought they were balancing all the different weapons and armor types but in reality everyone uses the same ones), and that a couple weeks after being implemented, either 100% of the "gun bunnies" would be wearing armor, or 100% of them would be wearing clothing, and there would be no middle ground left because achieving such a balance would be realistically impossible, or at least improbable. I still think that allowing armor to be the "protection" and clothing to be the "cool modifier stuff" and to encourage the use of both simultaneously is a superior approach.
But ok, in the spirit of the excercise, here's how I'd change your proposal so that it would meet with my approval.
1) change clothing so that all clothing can accept one bio tissue (of any kind) sewn directly into the clothing, not through a component.
2) create a new component only available at the master tailor level box that accepts only a small subset of "combat" bonuses.
3) change these low level armor schematics, substituting that master tailor level component for the RFP component requirement.
4) get rid of the ability to trade or sell schematics in the game, or at the very least make it so that armorsmiths and tailors used different types of factories, thus severely hampering attempts to circumvent the cross-class dependencies.
Seiryuu wrote:
As a mental exercise for those that are going to stand fast against no tissues in armor, let's pretend we're junior developers and this change is going to happen. How do you modify my suggestions to make this system benefit everyone?
The BE tissues line has always been about supplying subcomponents that enhance other professions products.
Tailor is a different matter completely, they are a different kind of crafter and in many cases a different kind of player. Tailoring is all about clothes, not crates of cloth. That isnt true for BE and never has been.
IMO your suggestions involve too much stepping on each others toes and crossovers between clothes and armour.
A couple more things I'd like to add is that tailors like our tissues, they want more of them, armoursmiths have made no such request and it is not our place to tell them that they should be forced to have tissues in their armour to make a viable product...
chefs already hate us, lets not try to piss off the armoursmith and tailors too.
Armoursmiths have their own ideas on the armour revamp and making lower end armours more desirable.
Tailors have components scattered throughout their trees and prerequisite trees. These components, with the exception of wookiee pillows, are ALL used by tailors in their own clothing. The fact that they are also used by armorsmiths is a side thought to most tailors.
Reducing the tailor profession to only providing armor components is different from a BE only providing tissues, if for no other reason than the BE still needs to go up two complete trees to do so effectively, while a slightly-more-than-novice tailor can provide all of the components tailors can make. Ignoring pets means you ignore perhaps a little over half of a BE's schematics, while ignoring all but components for tailors means you ignore 90% of the tailor's. Hmm...
It's understandable that you don't want BE to be reduced to a component-provider, but quite simply a significant portion of a BE's skills are geared towards exactly that.
And speaking as both a tailor and a BE, I *would* like to see development time spent on tissues. And since it is a significant part of the BE profession, I feel that it is a perfectly reasonable request.
You said what I wanted to say, only with less acid.
Seiryuu wrote:
Then on a pure BE standpoint, I do not want development time wasted on more tissues without a change to the system. It emphesizes the fact that we are nothing but component suppliers which the Tailors seem to be fuming over when suggested.
The original idea that spawned this debate benefits Tailors and Tailors alone.
It brings nothing to BE except for the need for me to gather more resources.
I can respect that opinion. But don't kid yourself into thinking that this is a "by tailors, for tailors" issue, because quite frankly if it was, it wouldn't involveBE's at all. I can point you to dozens of pleas in this froum, from BE's who are not tailors, for more content added in the tailor tissue department. Just look in any sort of thread that talks about "top issues" and you'll see this mentioned very prominantly.
Let's face it. The process of making a chef tissue and a tailor tissue is exactly the same. But there is something just a little bit cooler about having a vendor full of "masked scent", "terrain negotiation" and "knockdown defense" then having crates of "broad spectrum +85" is there not?
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 08-06-2004 03:55 PM
For those that say Tailor fits a certain crafting mold, there are a lot of BEs that came to this profession because of pets. Due to the way things happened, tissues have taken over. Combat and all its subsystems are preparing to undergo a massive change. A paradigm shift is not out of the question. The desire for clothing will not suddenly dry up. Focus could certainly shift while people play with the new toys, but you could still make clothes, they aren't being removed from the game.
Actually, more tailor tissues brings a lot to bioengineers, in the form of business and cash flow, we have a good relationship with tailors and we should take advantage of that, not piss on it.
What does it bring me?
As is, I could set up a business making nothing more than a couple of the existing tissue types. New tissues won't suddenly increase my business which is more than I can supply, it just increases the amount my Tailors would get upset at me not being able to supply them.
As a player they would give me more options. You as a Tailor will see a benefit. To the non-Tailor/ BEs this doesn't bring anything.
Truthfully having more options isn't bad, but other than the fact that we would be the ones that make these, it has little bearing on us.