muscle suit

[ghosta]

If you run out of ideas for new armors, here you get the scientific basis for a muscle suit or at least for building muscles on your own:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;323/5921/1575

To summarize it you just need a bundle of nanotubes and some high voltage. Then the tubes bloat due to electrostatic repulsion.
Compared to normal muscles they would be 32 times stronger with a contraction of 220% which you are able to repeat 37000 times per second.

If you are able to understand german here you can read this:
http://www.weltderphysik.de/de/4245.php?ni=1327

Just to let you know.

Greets ghosta

[Hertzila]

This could be a potential hi-tech armor upgrade instead of a new armor IMO. Research something and then you could negate the TU cost that is normally present in heavy armor (perhaps even increase the amount of TUs available) and increase melee damage. Cost would increase but that is normal in all the hi-tech stuff isn't it?
If this would be a stand-alone suit, I fear it could quickly become obsolete if armor ratings are bad or it comes too late in the game to become "standard-issue."

[scamp]

Well that's the interesting part : you lose armor but you gain TU's... I don't know, I might have 2-3 soldiers with this suit on to do some quick kills in the frontline. I love TU's

[Hertzila]

Thing is, if it comes in late game, it really needs enough armor to hold a few shots form alien late game weaponry (worse than particle beams?) or it would be a suicide to use this armor. And if heavy armor at any time becomes a necessity for literally everyone to survive in the field, this becomes useless. On the other hand, if it comes early in the game (makes sense since if we are already thinking of producing it, it might as well be starting gear) when lighter armor is a still viable option, it would become useless later in the game.
If you did it right however, it could turn out to be a rather good suit. One way could be that as the PHALANX gets better and better armor, in some point of the game you could research an upgraded suit, having the same benefits as the older one but also a newer hi-tech armor layer to match the alien weaponry becoming more and more lethal.

[BTAxis]

Balancing pending, even soldiers with (advanced) light armour *should* be able to take a couple of hits from all but the heaviest weaponry the aliens bring to bear. This is a goal I feel rather strongly about, because I feel the player shouldn't be forced into using heavy armour if he doesn't want to. Light armour will of course be good for TUs, and I imagine we could disallow proning for heavy armour, but if light armour meant suicide then nobody would use it.

[odie]

Balancing pending, even soldiers with (advanced) light armour *should* be able to take a couple of hits from all but the heaviest weaponry the aliens bring to bear. This is a goal I feel rather strongly about, because I feel the player shouldn't be forced into using heavy armour if he doesn't want to. Light armour will of course be good for TUs, and I imagine we could disallow proning for heavy armour, but if light armour meant suicide then nobody would use it.

BTAxis,

I thnk at this juncture, we can focus on getting the current bugs squashed.
Then implement main categories, and render models for couple of standard equipments (Heavy, light armors, etc).
Then last is bit of balancing before 2.3 release.
Then do feedback update, and then 2.4 stable.

Then consider new features.
Then add new features..... then release 3.0 alpha/beta.
Then balance, bug squash.
Then 3.0 stable.
Then work on more wpns / armors / story for 3.0?

Lol..... i thnk we should have this sorta workframe in wiki somewhere (updated tat is.... i know the old one is ard)....

Wat do u thnk?

[BTAxis]

What I think is that mattn makes the decisions on that kind of stuff, and he wants more normal maps and better sounds before the release of 2.3. Pathfinding also needs to be fixed, and that is proving to be a problem. As long as that issue is open development will continue as before, it would seem.

Anyway, that's not what we were talking about. I never said I wanted all of this done NOW.

[Surrealistik]

I would really love to be able to punch aliens, and other players to death in multiplayer with something like this.