---
# System prepended metadata

title: rigs

---

# rigs

heehee deadspace time

## the anti fun first

to avoid proliferation of highly abusable gear,

- offensive rig modules will almost never exist, instead just being storage / holstering attached externally or via suit storage / intrinsic storage, making things like guns still strippable from people + requiring being drawn out instead of fired from the wrist/shoulder without counterplay
- offensive rig modules that do not comply with the above will only exist for adminspawn / event / offmap rigs, in highly limited amounts, due to how powerful they are.
- current offensive rig modules like eguns/laser cannons **will** therefore be removed from R&D by the update.
- combat suits that can mount large amounts of combat-adjacent modules are similarly highly restricted. security's suits are comparatively lightweight and force the tradeoffs between defense and adaptivity as outlined later.

## voidsuits, rigs, mecha

- **voidsuits** are old fashioned, only take up suit slot at minimum, with possible attachments for helmet / gloves / boots (as opposed to just helmets). most voidsuits are still just suits and helmets. they don't take back slot and provide a suit storage slot that can hold almost anything with a clip other than backpacks. they are meant to just be a thing to protect you from the environment and to act as armor. they are not too clunky, but also not too modern - and can come in anywhere from lightweight, to heavily armored versions. they can be damaged by attacks, but only by breaching, there's not much to fix other than that, and repairs are simple.
- **rigsuits** are modular suits that take at minimum, either the back or belt slot (most of them take back), and contain arbitrary pieces (most of them containing helmet / gloves / boots / suit). they **replace** what you otherwise carry with a backpack most of the time - their suit storage slots do not allow backpacks. they require power to operate, can be damaged in a way that takes some effort to fix. in exchange, they can mount a variety of modules, optimally being able to provide everything needed for a job. they are specifically not meant to provide additional storage (other than leaving your belt + pockets + suit storage slots free) because their modules are meant to be everything you need. they *will* be capable of storing items, just not arbitrarily.
- **mecha** are bulky, armored suits. they're harder to operate, not sleek at all, slow, and unwieldly at times. in return, they're powerful and heavily armored, able to survive most environments easily without the armor vs environmental protection tradeoffs of rigsuits, or the comparatively lightly armored voidsuits. in return, they generally aren't as modular, using different systems to achieve modular configuration from players than rigsuits.

## themes

due to the complexities of rigsuits, we are not going to make them fully modular. themes serve as the most restrictive part of the system.

a rigsuit theme determines:

- balancing stats
    - volume: a value used to control the total amount of **storage**, **armor**, and **powerful, unique** modules like RCDs one can have.
    - slots: a value used to control the total amount of **diversity** in modules one can have on a specific part of the suit.
    - weight: a value used to balance things like heavy armor, making them slow the user down to use.
- these stats are on every individual piece on the rig, instead of altogether
- themes control the base 'look' of a suit
    - other than specific greyscale/rgb suits, which still have distinct looks, this makes sure you can identify a suit's archetype at a glance, instead of being surprised an engineering suit is actually a combat suit
- rigsuits cannot have their themes changed. they're ordered and constructed with their themes preset.
    - this is distinctly different from tg's implementation which lets you put themed cores in during construction.
    - this ensures the station cannot spam powerful suits.

## power

rigsuits have:

- a core; this serves as an internal capacitor used for some specific, extremely high-energy purposes like shielding or weapons.
    - this can provide power, but usually just acts as a capacitor that charges through a cell.
    - this provides enough power (around 500 units) to keep operating the suit during a cell swap
- a power distribution system; this is just an integral module that determines how well it can 

## suit

- the suit itself consists of an arbitrary number of pieces
    - usually this is just helmet / suit / gloves / boots
- the suit itself has 11 damage zones, much like a human
- the suit tracks damage to these zones
- modules take slots / whatever from these zones
    - there is a twelvth zone that's the control module itself.
- certain modules only fit in some zones
    - e.g. toolsets only fit on hand zones, sprinters may require groin + legs + feet, etc.
    - modules will say what zones they require on inspection.
    - many modules will be able to fit in different zones. you can then choose which zones you wish to put it in.
        - storage pouches / whatever can probably be put on any non-extremity/head zone.

### alternatively

if i deem it too cbt to implement 12 modular zones i'll just do one single zone 

damage zones can be reduced to 6 if needed, but will likely stay at 11.

## modules

rigsuit modules are slotted into individual parts of the suit

- things like armor plating are full suit to prevent minmaxing of specific bodyparts
- full suit modules take capacity from every part of the suit they fit in at once.
- there are a set of "integral" modules that you can only have one of, like what headlamp you have, the power distribution system, etc.
- modules have a wide, wide variety of functionality, and are meant to be able to replace *any* function an item can have in the game. 
- most modules require the suit zone they're in to be both functional, and deployed onto the user, to be used.

## storage

rigsuits generally do not have a lot of storage, to instead focus on forcing module usage

- storage should be limited to specific items, e.g. medical pouch modules, construction pouch modules
- things like tools don't need storage; just mount a toolset module.
- rigs *will*, by default, contain a little bit of storage in a "default" storage module that applies to the rigsuit control module itself
    - you can expect 2-3 normal sized items of storage, by defafult, on this. this is for crucial gear you can't fit in a suit.

## movement

- rigsuits take (albeit little amounts of) power to move
- a completely depowered rigsuit is hard to move
- a powered rigsuit can **stop its user from moving or acting; see 'control'.**

## protection

- (almost) all rigsuits have internal airtank capabilities
- rigsuits draw their armor values from their armoring modules, as well as any intrinsic armor added ontop
- environmental protection is also determined from protection modules
- some forms of protection are active and draw a large amount of power
- rigsuits should have a heavy tradeoff between defense and offense
    - e.g. most heavy armor on most rigsuits that aren't made to be combat suits will both slow them to significantly and make it impossible to mount significant weaponry on them
    - this balancing forces a tradeoff from non-antagonist users of rigsuits to either be vulnerable or be shielded but lack in offensive combat capability.
- environmental protection like complete radiation shielding, electrical shielding, atmospheric shielding, etc, will generally take the same unspoken "stat" as armor and offensives
    - this forces people to not necessarily always use rigs in every situation
- emps will be shielded from reaching their user, instead affecting the suits

## damage

- rigsuit sections have damage values (brute / burn / instability)
- rigsuit modules have damage values
- armor modules can wear down
- module damage can cause modules to malfunction or stop working entirely
- after armor is sufficiently damaged, module damage + structural starts to happen
- enough structural damage can breach a suit
- **any damage a rig's armor block is directed towards the suit itself.** there is a cost to taking damage with a rig.
    - this also allows protean suits to not result in more or less total damage than they otherwise would have.
- damage to a specific rig zone disrupts, damages, or even breaks modules in that zone and negatively impacts zones connected downstream of it
    - armor will let more damage through to the operator / modules if a zone is too heavily damaged
    - the chest / groin zones are the most heavily armored
    - rigsuits have a total hp which is divided by factor to the different zones
- losing a zone will negatively impact, or even stop your ability to do some things in addition to modules breaking.
    - if a leg is entirely broken, you are heavily slowed down.
    - if an arm is entirely broken, the **clickdelay** you suffer on that arm / hand will severely increase.
- all zones have a "threshold" at which below, damage will not cause serious issues.
- damage gets worse to fix the more it builds up to. losing 90% of your hp on one piece is far more annoying to fix than losing 10% of it 9 times.

## control

- rigsuits support a control permission flag system
- ais uploaded to a suit, ais using an aic control beacon module, and anyone controlling the suit via a remote control module & pod (to come later) can **act as the user**, including movement, and full hand control.
    - vision / hearing / emote / say are all routed through the suit when acting as the suit.
    - when speaking through the suit, the controller can either speak as their own voice, or use a TTS voice.
    - suit loudspeakers by default are audibly identifiable as the suit
        - upgraded suits can have "realistic" void passthrough that makes it indistinguishable
        - suits can have inbuilt voice changers usable by the controller
- it's possible for a rigsuit user to be locked out of their own suit and trapped in it
- **rigsuits will be controllable with no one in it.**
    - codewise the suit makes a virtual human, fits itself onto the virtual human, and goes from there
    - while being piloted without a human, **or when the person is incapacitated**, rigsuits suffer from additional incoming damage for balancing purposes.

## access

- rigsuits are able to be access locked, but these locks are able to be bypassed. this is intentional.
- event / antagonist suits can be hard-locked from operation, but generally can be salvaged.
- it's always an option to weld a rigsuit off of someone uncooperative.

## maintenance

- rigsuits will have their own tgui maintenance panel.
- rigsuits can have their maintenance panels accessed by anyone with the strip panel, if they're open
    - the rigsuit user can resist this if they're not incapacitated
- in general:
    - repairs cannot be physically done by the person wearing the suit, but anyone else can do it for them without them having to take it off
    - module insertion / removal cannot be physically done by the person wearing the suit for the same balancing reasons
    - cell swaps *can* be done physically by the person wearing the suit
    - the person wearing the suit **can** enter a maintenance mode allowing them to operate on their own suit, but this effectively powers off most of the suit's modules, rendering them vulnerable to attack, even if they don't physically have to take it off.
- suit structure is fixed with welders, metal, cable coil, and systems disruption goes away on its own
- modules depending on complexity may be fixed in the same way or require more exotic things like nanopaste or worse to fix

## bonus: proteans

- proteans keep their internal suits
- proteans can both deploy their suits onto themselves at will, as well as deploy their suits onto others without turning into an item first
- protean suits have the stats for high versatility, but **very** limited tradeoffs in offensives or defensives
    - they'll be designed in such a way where the suit can either be very adaptable, or very defensive, but *never* be capable of mounting much offensive-capable modules
- protean suits directly translate damage at a reduced rate to themselves
    - damage to rig zones directly corrospond to their human-form's damage zones
    - they can't be directly killed through rig damage but enough damage will more or less render their rig useless - if they're wearing themselves they can still be easily killed in this state
    - the million dollar question of "can you deploy yourself to shield yourself from EMPs" is answered with "sure, but you're sacrificing your inbuilt suit modules to stave off the damage until those break, as well as your backpack, suit, helmet, gloves, and boot slots in the process of keeping your modules deployed".
- proteans repair their own suits at the rate they repair their limbs, which is fast
    - they cannot repair internal modules, though they can work on them normally without having to go into maintenance mode.
    - try not to get hit.
- proteans will lose **all** of their species abilities other than blobform, environmental shielding, and their self-repair through the whole of the rigs update.
    - this includes **all** of their night vision, sonar vision, flight, etc
    - they will be able to select some modules to include at roundstart - these modules are considered intrinsic, take no slots, repair through their self repair, can be activated without pieces being deployed, and can never be removed or permanently destroyed.
    - they will always have apc connectors as an intrinsic module.
    - they will lose the ability to get any nif-soft other than commlinks and soulcatchers through the update, assuming nifs are not replaced with augments before this update's completion.
