Light Packs: Completely Useless?

Given that light packs don't work in the vanity slots, are they' not essentially useless given that you keel-over dead on any planet that's tier 3 and above unless you've got your survival pack equipped? Is there something I'm missing, or are they a relic from a time before these annoying survival packs were required?

 

They are a relic, yes. The environment-survival upgrades used to be a dedicated tech slot or somesuch not tied to equippable gear.

"Useless"? Well... no, not technically? Pretty sure the Xenon Pack or whatever out-shines even the Light III EPP add-on. If you're in an area where you don't need an EPP but want a lot of light, the Xenon pack is your brightest option.

Mind I DO feel that Vanity slots SHOULD activate any light-generating abilities in armors. There's a lotta vanity armors that throw light, and their armor/attack stats are garbage. Sacrificing survivability for a light glow just... not good.

 

Tho, if you wanna shine before death...

 

Yeah, cosmetic armor abilities like lighting should really show up if the armor they're from is placed into a cosmetic slot.

 

They really shouldnt. Cosmetic is cosmetic for shouldn't. We have light augments to cover that area.

 

I completely disagree. That there's a glowing Vanity Armor, obtained from a glowing sub-biome, that DOES NOT GLOW WHEN USED FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE AS VANITY ARMOR, is patently ridiculous.

This would also make early-game less frustrating, since finding light augments to plug into an EPP is pure random damn luck, plus you LOSE augments when you upgrade an EPP, which is... yyyyyyeah. Light-throwing Vanity Armor shouldn't compete with the higher augments in illumination by any stretch, but they should, you know, do the thing they're supposed to.

 

The glow is more of a "heh, that would be cool" kind of effect anyway since its like 1 line of code to add. It was not meant to be used as a primary armor. And if you could have the glow effect while it was in the cosmetic slots, then why would you really ever need the light augment? Sure you could get MORE light from them, but it would be more worth while to use a different augment instead to get, like, additional damage or more health.

The armor does exactly what it is supposed to when in the cosmetic slot. Give you the cosmetic appearance of that armor without actually giving you the stats.

 

Given that your stupid packs (and they are stupid - they do nothing but become giant physical keys you have to lug around to unlock the next game tiers, there's no reason they can't be replaced with a MM upgrade or a suit augemnt or anything equally hand-wavy then 'giant backpack that lets you breath in space and survive extreme temperatures') only have one augment slot that you can't recover your augments from you're forced to choose visibility over other options.

And, again, you're left with a light pack that only functions on four kinds of planet, making it useless 90% of the time. Why do augments have to be one-use? Why can't there be multiple slots, or swappable, and why are they erased when you upgrade your pack?


AHHHHH PACKS ARE SUCH A BAD GAMEPLAY ELEMENT

 

Ugh, this.
The EPP Augments really bothered me, as well as the fact that the crafting materials for the higher end light packs require you to use the EPP (upgraded too I might add) to get the components for it. Making them / it COMPLETELY USELESS unless you're faffing about on planets orbiting a Gentle star.

 

The survival packs are a thing because people didn't like how the nanosuits (tech slot EPPs, basically) trivialized the "danger" of new planets.
Meanwhile the survival packs do EXACTLY THE SAME THING, while also preventing us from having our light packs or potential variety of back-slot items.

So I say return the Nanosuits, let both back items function (possibly with a third back slot for cosmetic), or go Frackin' Universe style where you have to adjust your loadout for specific planets.

 

yes they are kinda pointless, the only one having use is the llatern on a stick, since in this early stage you are still doing stuff on planets that cna work without any EEP. But past that you can choose between slow death OR light. great choice.

after you terraform a planet to something breathable non EEP requiring, then yes it may have some use. but at this point it's stll of questionable use.

 

I concur that the light packs are utterly useless. Me and my girlfriend thought they were working when we realized that it was just because we had the light augment in our EPP. We upgraded our EPP and no more light. WTF? We thought... well we had to get high-tier ore to get the xenon light pack... and you can't even use it on a majority of planets? Truly an oversight.

 

@mollygos
Can you guys meld the EPP with the Light Packs so that they actually serve a purpose again?
That way we can still have the EPP augments AND be able to use the light packs. That would honestly be such a bonus for many of us hey!

 

Yeah, at least we should be able to craft versions of the EPPs that combine them with the tier-appropriate lighting packs (for some extra cost, say 5 durasteel, 2 each of aegisalt, ferozium and violium and 5 solarium stars for the cooling/xenon one). The lighting augment could then be made to synchronize with the lighting/EP packs to increase their light output proportionately (which is to say, increase them with the same factor that equipping a light augment on a normal EPP increases a player's default light output), preserving balance while simultaneously making light packs useful.

 

Not to mention that they also force the player to wear an ugly backpack or other back vanity item in most planets. Want to look like you're carrying nothing on your back? NOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! But why? BECAUSE IT USED TO BE THAT WAY, BUT PEOPLE COMPLAINED!
Not to mention that now surviving in other planets is now a bit EASIER now, as, back then, survival was "Go to the SAIL UI, switch Nanoskins, beam down". Now, it's not even that, AND now they also have augments, so now the planet hazards are more blatantly just a way to restrict exploration, since the actual planets are now less threatening.
And that is before starting with how Augments can't be removed and they're erased when switching them or upgrading the EPPs (This is easily even more ridiculous because FU DOES let the player retrieve the augments). Then again, 1.0 was pretty bad in terms of how Techs and other similar features developed.

 

Personally I wouldn't mind the packs too mucj if.... say, there were other options for environment protection and perhaps environment conditions that weren't such a purely vertical linear difficulty progression thing.

Personally it is Zelda Breath of the Wild(of all things!) that I feel produce one of the nicer "streamlined" system while *still* figuring out a system with some variability to it, since environmental condition are themselves actually tiered.

For one you actually have a set of both hard and soft ways to deal with environment conditions. Second, even in the "hard counters" to environmemt conditions.... you actually have two completely separate categories: You get temporary resistance buffs elixirs... and you get armor that give you constant resistance buff as long as it is worn(but while the specialized sets are comparable to low tier armor, they suffer from not giving you armor as strong as dedicated combat gear).

So you could say most environments have almost two to three tiers of resistance.

Say you're in the starting area: There's a mountain region that has one tier of cold condition. By doing a sidequest you're given a warm doublet with exactly one tier of cold resistance but weak armor. While doing that sidequest, you also uncover a recipe which itself give cold resistance too.

Later however you can encounter regions with two tiers of cold condition. You can wear your warm doublet to negate one tier and take(iirc) less damages from the cold.... bur to full negate it you either need to find another armor part(helmet or pants) giving cold protection(which is always one tier by armor part) or to use an elixir or that recipe your learned to get temporary protection.

What I might like is possibly a similar system in starbound. Environments conditions would come in Tier 1-2-3 for all conditions(radiation, cold, desert. For example a snow planet would go from a "safe" climate to being "Tier 1 Cold" and some weather conditions could affect that tier too).

To tie into this, you would get "environment armor" where each armor parts give one tier of the appropriate condition protection, but would have slightly less armor

The enviro packs would remain, giving a three full tier of protection allowing one to wear better armor.... but new "exploration packs" of varying functionality would be added to make it more of a personal player preference between using the enviropacks and battles armor or enviro-armor and packs with other functionality. You could have shield packs working like a secondary regenerating healthbar, jump packs giving a boost to your original jumps, a gravity pack allowing you to act as if in low gravity... oerhaps even a medic pack giving you increased health regeneration AND a regeneration aura around yourself? And all of those would support pack augments as well.

Finally as a third options, "enviro-serums" giving temporary environment protection also could exists as stop gaps for when you wouldn't have the proper more permanent protections or when you would like to do stuff like wear full battle armor and a light pack or shield pack.

 

See, the problem is that your solution would require them to redo the whole EPP system, potentially wiping saves, and they have promised not to do that after 1.0, which makes a nice suggestion like this unlikely to be implemented. This does seem like something a mod could conceivably add, though.

On the other hand, EPPs being a simple yes/no restriction fits very well with the fact that Starbound is very much a building game; having to worry about what level of environmental resistance you have while building would be a complete and utter pain, especially if you're on a scorched planet and you already have to deal with meteors, which, unless you're wearing top-tier armor, will probably kill you instantaneously.

 

Dunno, but if you read what i wrote, the EPP remain there. Still even keeping fullgrade protection. Only the exact mechanic of it change but since an EPP item would remain, they wouodn't even need to neccessarily do such a full reset of people's player saves.

What I specifically is a system where existing EPP are modified(but still see an item with the same ID remaining in existance) and additional items which could thus work *alongside* the modified EPPs items(which, again, would make use of the same item id to prevent a wipe).

There wouodn't need to wipe stuff because a lot of what is modified wouod be aspect that could be applied even on planets as is without modofying their generatiom/etc and even then the game itself is developped such you could even do that and not require a wipe because your universe save would simply keep your old planet as-is and take into account the new generation rules only when exploring chunks of star map your savegame had not generated yet(which couod thus be generated with new procedural rules).

But changes like "snow planet now have a tier 1 cold condition" could be done without even depending on that since it's just the planetary debuff associated with the cold biome that would be changed(or in this case, added) and that is independent from terrain generation.

 

The issue is they would have to recode the way EPPs work, which I'm pretty sure would make the current EPPs nonfunctional, because of the way that items work: their properties are determined at the moment they exist. There'd be all sorts of complaints from people if their EPPs suddenly stopped functioning.

 

they could make a advanced EEP as crafting upgrade that requires the normal eep but has a light slot to put in the latern or the xenon pack. This way the old EEPs stay functional as they are and are cheaper basic versions without light.

basically, this could happen:

Forage Table:
Light Breathing EEP: Breathing EPP + Lantern Stick
Light Radioation EEP: Radiation EPP + Lantern Stick
Agricultural station:
Light Heating EEP: Heating EEP + Halogen pack
Light Cooling EEP: Cooling EEP + Xenon Pack


or chucklefish simply steps away form the stupid idea that augments are loot only and let us craft them, which would stll make light packs ireelevant as their function would be transformed into craftable Augments.