as of recent i've been unironically gunning ballistics+3 (do not ask why i've been dead stoned to the end) so by the time i crawled to late game i found myself in quite not very pleasant position within said armor and propose lotsa change
so to characterize the problem:
The early game riot is in weird position of being totally useless and totally useful especially with ballistics, the riot shield is alright without feats and good as a spare armor between tac and shield. Also happened to find out the riot does not passes the depot as ya just get melted down into acid puddle, so till depot has a static spawn of biohazard boots the acid dog leather drip wins this one totally since i took less damage in it than in riot. It was useful only for burrower moments basically since it negated spawns and gave wee bit of extra hp and thats kinda it
The midgame is probably best part of riot since one can get very good laminated plates and enemies (especially lurkers n gangs) use melee mixed with smgs and other shit that with fitting boots annihilates any incoming damage till someone digs up a sniper rifle or psions pull up which made super good universal armor for awhile
The late game genuinely obsoletes riot in favor of tacvest with introduction of supersteel that dunks on anything sharp and fact that unarmed bozos already have difficulty with anything of high dt, simply wearing tacvest with any insertion and ss you are genuinely more ready for streets of britain than a riot gear user who will try to rely on shield or doubled melee dt that is less than of a tac vest user.
Tac vest made with regen, ss sheet and ceramic has fat 40 dt, 60 dt versus fist, knife and sword and 120 dt vs boolits losing only to sledge but even there you may just use uncanny dodge where the excess penalty aint much for the fact that sledge users attack only twice a turn, while the riot geat with same components has has only 40 dt vs boolits and 50 dt versus shanks, the shield comes obsolete either with introduction of proper spear and machete feats that both provide better block, usually have some sort of utility or ability that allows to pull out situations where you are cornered and after all just do everything better than shield does and could be used with tacvest where the only danger left could be enemy psions.
This also feeds another cause is that riot with ss sheet, regen and ss/tungsten shield has fat penalty and even fatter than of ceramic regen ss vest, trying to solve it with armor sloping also just brings up a question of not just using tin instead that is both more reliable than a shield and even gives less penalty at this point with wide scope armor featuring proper dr dt. Already having "just" ss sheet and regen vest gives whooping 40% for some satanic reasons comparing to 20% of tacvest
The finishing blow is that everything shield related requires a feat to work with with which adds additonal problem as builds that mix agility and con required to wear riot effectively are too niche to be stretched thin on feats. Use of spear with shield requires a feat, banally weaponizing said shield requires a feat, effective blocking while using knife or fist in order to catch up with machete and spear blocks requires a feat, and just to actually block with shield it wants a feat again which wouldnt be something to mind if shields were not terrible out the box as price to make them effective is to hog on lotsa feat space
Expedition introduces heartbreaker, leper and wyrm leathers that beat riot into pieces in every aspect while requiring less resources besides luck to meet a good piece to infuse. Heartbreaker gives initiative pass, leper makes extra tough in melee for just 5% penalty, wyrm as tested by schizophrenics in discord genuinely beats everything in melee defense. Thus just having a skinner feat obsoletes everything related to riot gear and especially shield minded feats while also having plain less penalty for significally better armor with additional perks that is superior both in melee, ranged and tactical
To propose towards riot:
Riot gear should theoretically take a more interesting niche between jeopardized gap of agility and constitution into favor of true medium armor and builds that have half and half instead of maxxing one of either, aswell giving ability to match mass fights like when assaulting balor's camp without need to refer to extreme cheesing.
The extremely obvious proposition towards shield would be making it able to take ranged fire, pk and mt attacks and shrapnel. The shield obviously blocks at last chest and vitals of character's body from incoming fire visually, it is animated that it is used to defend from incoming fire whenever shooting so it is pretty obvious that 8mm of whatever the metal used in is reasonable help in this situation.
Next is to make shield block work based on where the character is facing, starting with 60% to block frontal attacks, 35% by sides and be vulnerable from behind. AI on difficulty from hard should prioritize getting behind/encircle the shieldbearer so shield users would function as territorial/tactical fighters and be a defensive force for whatever group they are part of requiring some tinkering to overcome than being a discount tac vest user.
Shield bash should be a innate ability instead of feat in order for riot gear to be attractive to try with all its specs moved to shield arm that also should upgrade the shield bash to give more ooomph and stun the target instead, 25 ap to just shmack someone for 50 hp and lame effect is really not enough, even if its free after sacrificing much needed specs.
The regen and galvanic vests as well ss sheets have additional penalty for some weird reason while other components dont, this is irrational and should be fixed.
Allow installation of additional devices on shields to extend their tactical potential:
Stroboscope shield - uses helmet lamp as main component, enemies attacking up front of shield user proc activation of stroboscope which gets them dazed
Electrified shield - uses electroshock generator, attacks that hit the shield instead of a user make assaulter suffer electricity damage, twice the value of that applied in shield bash
Pneumatic shield - shows on sprite as shield with additional plate which hides the pneumatic hammer, shield bash deals more damage and sends target imbalanced
Spiked/bladed shield - first or knife attacks that hit the shield instead of the user inflicts certain damage on attacker, thrice the oomph when used in shield bash, adds penalty
Ballistic/Defusal shield - shield reinforced with kevlar or blast cloth to gain more anti boolit or anti shrapnel quality, adds appropriate penalty
The vest change n stuff:
The game features a trio of useless vests in face of biohazard, insulated and galvanic vests. They offer little to no use, rare to meet and even rarer to have one that is of high quality or even useful on background of more attractive options
Biohazard vest could greatly benefit from having doubled the bio protection and giving the same amount of acid protection, as well as being less of a rarity. CAU armor is cool but it lacks anti vandal quality when it takes to combat
Insulated vest is a funny one. Insulated padding gives chill immunity in leather armor and even more armor against cold, the vest of insulation does none of that and it should be subject of change
Galvanic vest is hot trash, it has no use whatsoever besides protecting player from exactly two (2) hazards in face of shock bolts and shock shanks that are not a problem at all with proper energy shield. Enemies dont use electropistols at all, only one enemy that really uses electricity as weapon are coil spiders and even there if you need specific protection against that one you are either horrifically stoned or are doing something equally horrifically wrong if shock bolts and manhunter pests are suddenly a problem. In order to unzone the galvanic vest it has to have energy protection as one of its main qualities as niche of energy protection is shallow and besides tin there is exactly nothing doing that at all
Sturdy vest is strong hmmmmmmmmm because it is trash in tacvest and has good run only in riot (which is trash armor and probably only one thing making riot reliable), it would be reasonable to make sturdy vest to give 75% health off its quality on tacvest and full 100% on riot in order for it to catch up with tin and poor survival ratio. Additional reasonable thing would be making enemy gunners (especially of ironheads) to start wearing sturdy vests since they feel quite squishy to kill
