Did anyone notice that some armor values (especially on the crew’s hardsuits) can be all over the place? I am not talking about how balanced they are, I mean just, it terms of how it ends up working mechanically - a lot of hardsuits that have built-in helmets have armor values that seems off.
For example: CE’s hardsuit - suit’s rad protection: 100%, which makes sense gameplay wise. The helmet? rad protection of… 75%
It is totally worthless, since the suit already makes you completely immune to radiation - but it does make some sense, the helmet is made of the same stuff, so it should also be pretty resistance to rads, even if, in reality, there’s no way to wear it without already having the suit.
But, this also means that, having the CE hardsuit on, without the helmet, still allows you to hug a singularity and receive no rad damage, despite your head being totally exposed.
The elite bloodred has 99% rad resistance, and unlike the CE’s, the helmet has 0%, which still allows you to stick your head near a radiated artifact and get only 1% rad damage from it.
But, ok, this is just “video game logic” stuff…
The cap’s suit, however, has 50% rad resistance, so not completely immune. The built-in helmet has… 75%
So, wearing the helmet while being butt naked will be better defense against radiation than wearing just the suit. But, of course, this is impossible in normal gameplay.
If anything this actually makes sense mechanically - its not that the helmet is better than the suit, its that wearing just the suit gives some protection (50%), and having the helmet on increases the protection further (50%+0.5*75%, so 87.5%), which is how a rad resistant suit would work.
Alright, then we have the CMO’s hardsuit - 0% rad resistance!
And the helmet has… 75%!
So wearing just the suit does nothing, but just putting on the helmet makes the suit better than the cap’s suit by itself.
In fact, the CMO’s hardsuit helmet has the exact same stats as the cap’s hardsuit helmet - it even protects from blunt and pierce, which the hardsuit itself does not.
And for the spationaut suit and the mining suit, their helmets are also identical! These suits also had their stats changed recently (which, rightfully so IMO), so I have to guess the helmet values were just not touched? This doesn’t seem intentional.
And copied values happen in multiple places - the security hardsuit (which btw, also has 0% rad resist) has a built-in helmet. This helmet has the exact stats of the normal security helmet. The warden hardsuit helmet? also same stats.
The HoS hardsuit helmet? also identical to the helmet!
So, wearing the HoS harduit with a swat helmet gives better defense than the built-in one.
With the exception of the elite, all the syndicate hardsuit helmets also have these values (=sec helmet) - which means that the raid helmet has better defense than a jug built-in helmet (10% for jug, 15% for raid)
Now, obviously, it’s not like the game is “unplayable” or even unbalanced because of this. I think the major point to note here is that, for some reason, built-in helmets just have placeholder values (or copied values), and they are not touched when the suits themselves are rebalanced, which, again, seems unintentional.