Idea for new "vehicle" type: Mech Suit

[NaturesWitness]

I'm picturing something like the Loader from the Aliens movie. Scale wise, it would be somewhere in between powered armor and vehicles. Like a vehicle, you board it as opposed to wearing it like power armor, but unlike a vehicle, you steer with normal walking controls as opposed to a throttle.

Most personnel-scale weapons can't be used while in it, but the suit has integral weapons that can be used instead. It requires fuel to operate, and unlike power armor, if it runs out it's completely immobile.

Construction and part wise, it uses a different, yet similar, system as vehicles. But where a vehicle has parts spread out over multiple tiles in a grid fashion, a mech suit is built more vertically. The whole suit only takes up one map tile, but the various parts of the mech are installed in slots like legs, arms, torso, etc.

When attacked by hostiles, the mech takes damage similar to how a player does, with hit points for its arms, legs, head, etc.

Is this an idea worth looking into, or is it just too complex to be worthwhile?

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

Most personnel-scale weapons can't be used while in it, but the suit has integral weapons that can be used instead. It requires fuel to operate, and unlike power armor, if it runs out it's completely immobile.

Maybe this could be flexible. An enclosed thing would prevent it, but something like the powerloader from ALIENS could readily allow the pilot to stop for a moment and fire a handgun while still in the machine.

Construction and part wise, it uses a different, yet similar, system as vehicles. But where a vehicle has parts spread out over multiple tiles in a grid fashion, a mech suit is built more vertically. The whole suit only takes up one map tile, but the various parts of the mech are installed in slots like legs, arms, torso, etc.

This would likely necessitate moving the vehicle around like the player does on foot (no facing) and not like in a vehicle (has actual facing) since we'd never know which way we were facing otherwise.

When attacked by hostiles, the mech takes damage similar to how a player does, with hit points for its arms, legs, head, etc.

Why do this at all? Why not have it take damage to its individual components the same way a vehicle already does?

[NaturesWitness]

Good point on the handgun thing, I forgot how open the powerloader was. Although that should probably mean that there's a chance an enemy attack can still hit the driver inside the mech. Maybe we can have armor plate components like in vehicles, that protect all other parts in that square, including the driver.

I think you're right on the component damage too, not sure what I was thinking when I said that.

Any thoughts as to whether this whole concept is remotely feasible? I know it would be a ton of work, and some might claim it's a little too high-tech for Cata's setting, no matter how awesome it is :)

[kevingranade]

If it's going to occupy a single tile, there's no reason to not layer this
functionality onto the power armor code. We could have a power suit
distinct from power armor that is too large to move when unpowered, has its
own strength stats, slots for attachments, etc (in fact we want a slot
system for power armor, just haven't gotten around to it). There could be
open vs closed variants that have various tradeoffs. It's
counter-intuitive to think like this, but if you really want to you can
layer arbitrary amounts of complexity, like separate parts that take damage
independently and can be added and removed to a single item.
Technical issues aside, a large power suit if anything is closer to
feasible with current technology than power armor, so no issues on that
front. The limitation of requiring fuel does a lot for balance, and of
course we're assuming a lot of maintenance overhead etc for the thing so
it's not a win button.
I'm personally not interested in implementing it, but I wouldn't have a
problem with it being in the game.