Thoughts on Devilstrand?

[milon]

That's been around for quite a while.  I joined in Alpha 4, and it was present then (though it's been tweaked since).

[hunter2012]

i find that devil stand is kind of pointless. if i start growing it immediately when i land i usually have scaved or traded enough to kit my fighters decently with at least those bullet proof vest things and dusters

[gekkobear]

By the by. If you wanna grow your own Devil, DON'T use Hydro basins. The odds of a Solar Flare or Eclipse/Battery Bomb destroying the Hydro plots usability is just toooo high.

This.  I set up my hydro, grew for a couple weeks, got a solar flare... and it's all gone.

Right now I sell off the cloth and make useless hats out of leather, because I can't sell leather to a merchant. Don't know if pants or shirts would be more lucrative.

Shirt/pants take 50 units to make, hat takes 40... they all sell for about the same; so hats are a better choice for using leather.

[Mathenaut]

I usually grow a massive bloc of it in some field, then leave it there until harvest.  I make clothing out of it and sell the rest, which usually nets me what I need for the endgame plasteel rush.

[Barley]

I love devilstrand for the color alone, but their status as best/second best armor makes it far superior to boomrat hides. I'm waiting for craftable dusters so I can dress all my colonists up like Carmen Sandiego. Most stylish colony in the outer rim!

[ShadowTani]

I'm gonna change price calculations in A8 to make more reasonable prices for apparel.

Giving this some thought while playing I realized this might be quite the nut to crack. I came to the conclusion that cotton was at a reasonable value, while clothing was almost too much considering the quantities left behind by raiders - at the same time they are not valuable enough when compared to the value of their raw materials...

As a result I think the best solution would be to introduce a cloth/armor degradation system. I dunno how expensive it would be to introduce that kinda system though, but no new AI or objects should be required. If wanting the ability to repair worn clothes the tailor's workbench could be used for both production and repair.

Also, if the degradation is pretty slow over time (minus the extra damage taken from weapons of course) it shouldn't frustrate the players with having to get new clothes all the time, while still establishing the opportunity to have the more worn out clothes that the raiders come with being much less valuable compared to newly produced clothes, essentially preventing the "silver spam" from selling worn clothes as it's borderline now while still having a high initial value for the clothes.

I dunno, I'm sure Tynan will figure out something, but I just felt an urge to think out loud about this, lol. Anyone else have something to add to this? Is cloth degradation a dumb idea? Other suggestions? Or it's less of an issue than I'm imagining it to be?