Remove the Effects of Armor Weight#642
With the sweeping changes coming with 0.8 now is the best time to remove the effects of armor weight. The design of the game has basically been headed in this direction already. It’s time to finally commit.
Weapon weight doesn’t do anything and accessories were never planned to have weight in the first place. Meaning 2 out 3 systems in the game don’t factor in weight. This to me is a clear sign the armor weight system doesn’t fit with the rest of the game. If only for the sake of consistency I would urge it to be removed. Of course, the reasons the other two systems don’t have weight affect anything should be examined as well.
Weapons at one point in time did have their weighting affect things. And this created pretty much unsolvable balance issues where players would pretty much always be punished for aesthetic choices. As the numbers were a nightmare and the issues would basically always remain. The system was just dropped outright. Accessories would have presented an even more complex challenge with regards to how weight works. And so, those were never going to have weight at all. This leaves armor as a kind of weird holdover from a system that by my view doesn’t really work. It’s been tested. It doesn’t work. It should be removed now.
Removing armor weight will make things simpler. I find it pretty unnecessary for armor weight to anything when this could all just be handled by the node system only. This would make things easier for both the players and developers. It wouldn’t be a concern trying to balance armor, acceleration, and fuel burn values that come from two places if it’s all just handled by one system. This makes the math easier for both players into min maxing as well as the devs themselves trying to balance the numbers. Also, from an end user standpoint you don’t have to switch between two different places you control your stats. It’s all just handled in the tuning screen.
The whole weight concept violates the aesthetics first philosophy that MASS Builder is touted to have. Heavy things have pretty much always been the worst of the two options. It’s been like that for over a year. Even if that’s even eventually balanced. And I’m going to be clear that is an if. It wouldn’t be a concern now, at least from an aesthetics stand point, if it was just removed. This can literally be dealt with in the next update if the effects of armor weight are removed. If it’s not, who the heck knows how long it could take to actually fix. Also, since armor weight makes things more complicated all around. Simply by existing it makes the problem harder to solve.
Accessories have pretty much thrown the whole reason the weight system was even being tried out the window. Now you can have giant bulky looking armor that weighs nothing. But if you equip Hammerfalls parts, you’re stuck with the weight slowing you down. This lack of control. Given up aesthetics for stats as well as how inconsistent this is shouldn’t be ignored when it’s not that hard to fix. Everything is changing and being shuffled around anyways.
I would suggest, as a middle ground, remove Armor and Weight from Armor Pieces, and add a Slider on the Tuning screen with Armor on one end and Acceleration on the other.
This allows the same mechanics without limiting aesthetics.
I opt to remove armor weight entirely because of the accessory system. This allows for what I call Scratchbuilt machines, mechs that aren’t made with any of the stock parts attached. No matter how many accessories you use and how huge you make them, all scratch builds are weighted at Zero. This makes them frail as a feather now matter how you tune them.
Scratchbuilding is very important to me because none of the default MASS frames appeals to me aesthetically, including the upcoming Axial set. So being able to say “nuts to that” and make something that does appeal to me is very important.
Why not an Tech ability that call “Anti Gravity Bubble” thast reduces the weight 50% in late game.
As of 0.8 the effects of weight have been removed completely.