Put the HoS cape from Manta as a job reward

[OMJ]

i think that it looking like a cape is cool and it should stay that way. its like an iron cape. the current sprite is cool. also okay with it being a point of damage stronger. it's a cool cape on a naval ship, so it should be more brolic.

[Trustworthy]

I'm not disputing the fact that armor is important. What I'm saying is that armor looking like armor is unimportant. I can't think of a single time my response has changed because I looked at my opponent and saw they were wearing armor. Especially in this case. Its the HoS, you expect them to be armored. Again, back to the subject of the captains alternate armor. It literally just looks like regular clothing, and yet its never been an issue. The only time the cape would be an issue is if it were added to other maps, along with its original stats.

[OMJ]

yeah who has ever in history saw a HoS wearing a cape and mistook it as not being armor and underestimated them as a result. i’ll take “shit that has never happened” for 500


edit: would be cool to have the cape as a job reward because it is sick

[saccharineChampion]

If memory serves, armor was only recently fixed to actually work properly, so that might alter some longer-time perceptions of armor effectiveness.

As for armor affecting decisions - it actually does affect mine when I have the luxury of discretion of who to attack. Without AP ammo, I definitely do more hit-and-run than trying to gun down a person who has armor, while against an unarmored opponent, I'll go for the gun down. Any armor that doesn't really communicate that it's armor would be a terrible "gotcha" to that type of consideration.

Flabor has an excellent post which unfortunately ended up as the last post of a page that got pushed away from being the only page two minutes after her post, so I'll briefly put it here.

Spoiler!

Armor is actually pretty important actually! I think this is poorly communicated (partially because it feels like what is and is not armor is arbitrary)

I did some light testing on my master branch, the cape is actually one point of armor better than a vest. Wearing it reduces damage from the .22 pistol from 22 brute damage to 8, reduces extinguisher hits from 10 brute damage to 3, and increases the amount of c-saber hits you can take until you are stunned from 2 to 3. It also reduces damage from screwdrivers from 5 to 0 (!) .

Again, I feel that part of why armor is very rarely thought about is because it's hard to intuit what has armor and how good it is. Someone wearing a vest and regular helmet might look way more protected than a dude wearing an HoS beret and cape, but both of those Actual Real Armor Items are worse than the aesthetically Not Armor items that... are armor? The mechanic doesn't really work if it's not very clear who is and who isn't protected, ideally players should be able to tell what is and isn't armor entirely based on look at the thing. The HoS cape isn't really the worst example of this though, (using medal rewards you have armor that looks nothing like armor and isn't always even armor), but I think that overall we should try to make Powerful Armor Items actually look like real armor for aesthetic consistency !!

---

yeah who has ever in history saw a HoS wearing a cape and mistook it as not being armor and underestimated them as a result. i’ll take “shit that has never happened” for 500

That's wholly something that can and, if it hasn't already happened, will happen. When armor has such a great effect on damage as Flaborized pointed out with her tests, it's far from the realm of possibility.

[Flaborized]

I also think part of the issue is that "Your're doing terrible damage because your opponent has armor" is very poorly communicated, even if the person is obviously well armored. It should be more clear when you're doing very little (or no) damage cuz of armor, it should have like a different sound or animation perhaps. Armor is a really important mechanic when it comes to "winning fights", and I think it's be *better* if people were making decisions based on it. The reason they don't isn't because it doesn't matter, but rather because it's both poorly communicated when it's hurting/helping you and what is and is not armor visually. The cap's alternative armor sorta has the same problem, but at least that's *called* armor on examine. The cape both isn't called armor and doesn't really look that protective. I'd rather have it have good cold resistance or something (kinda like the jacket does but maybe both of those could do with being a bit better in that way)

[Trustworthy]

The only difference between the captains armor and the cape is that its got armor in the name. So just like, add "Armored" to the name of the cape? Problem solved. Caps armor reduces the damage of an eguns kill setting from 45 to somewhere around 14, if my memory serves me correctly. All 8 lethal shots barely crit you. As for the jacket, that doesn't even give cold resistance, past the standard 5%. I really don't think the cape needs a nerf. It makes sense that the clothes of the Head of Security on a naval vessel would be armored. There were zero complaints about this until it was brought up out of concern that the job reward would be a direct upgrade to other HoS clothing, which is a legitimate concern, as opposed to "it doesn't look armored".

[saccharineChampion]

Regarding the lack of feedback - I think it would also help more if kinetic guns wouldn't cause the immediate blood pool when you shoot at somebody with good armor - some sort of damage cutoff. I also agree with different sounds, since sound is much more immediate than text. Maybe also make it so the "armor soften blows of hit" is visible to people within sightrange, not just whoever gets shot.

The cap's armor sorta has the same problem, so just adding armored to the cape won't make the problem solved.

What immediate correlation is there for naval vessel -> military vessel? Even though if you poke into the lore you'll find that Manta is a military vessel, just it being a naval vessel doesn't communicate that. And the clothes of a head of security is armored - by actual armor, not just something that looks like a nice aesthetic choice.

The very nature of the issue is that it isn't a very visible issue, so it's not surprising it hasn't been brought up before. "It doesn't look armored" is a legitimate concern that is a bad thing for connection of perception and mechanics.

[Frank_Stein]

What if the cape had an increased chance for hits to wiff instead? Sorta like how batman supposedly uses their cape as a form of misdirection.

Though really, you could probably solve all this if the cape could just clip onto armor

[Tarmunora]

I think that my remark on the cape being armored was read the wrong way maybe. My concern was moreso that if you gave the HoS the option to choose HoS jacket or Cape on every map, it's not great design to have one option (Cape) be that much stronger than the other, hence "restat one or both suits". A perfectly valid option would be to bump the stats of the HoS jacket equal to the cape, or to change both items to be about equivalent to an armor vest. I did not intend for this to turn into a 'nerf HoScape' thread :sheltersweat:

[OMJ]

ok my end take is don't change the sprite or stats too hard because its sick, a one time anecdotal situation doesnt nullify the 99.9999% of times people saw someone with a cape and realized correctly so it blocks damage

[saccharineChampion]

And how many times have people not assumed it blocks damage but didn't end up in a situation where it mattered? You can't claim the absurd "99.9999%" statistic to be how often people realised it blocks damage. Part of the issue is how difficult it is to even see the effects of damage reduction.

And I'm not trying to "nullify" those instances of an assumption, either, I'm just bringing up the existence of otherwise. Also, why tack on "anecdotal"? Are there any actual statistics gathered on how people have assumed it works, or reacted to the way it works? Everything as-is has been anecdote and assumption, and I don't appreciate you trying to ignore the issue by calling it a single anecdotal situation and as an inferentially "0.0001%" of instances.