[Suggestion] Alternate upgrade paths beyond NanoSuit

I know the subject of armored suits are subject to heavy debate by this forum, but I like to add my own flavor of suggestion to help people find the thin line between genius and crazy.

Anywho, I propose an alternate upgrade path for armored suit wearers. A lot of progress has been made with the implementation of the Hazmat suit, which is an environmental rather than combat suit. The Nanosuit, a rechargeable combat suit, provides little environmental protection aside from fall damage protection (which it provides at a heavy cost). The only available upgrade for this suit is the Quantum Suit, a supposed end-all, be-all suit that provides both environmental and combat features as well as a HEFTY cost.

Why not add a suit that provides more FEATURES rather than COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS, and do it at a lower cost to the player? The reason the QSuit is expensive is because it provides effective invulnerability for fairly long periods of time. The Hazmat suit is almost dirt cheap because it provides little physical protection from enemies (it's made almost entirely of renewables).

So now we get to the crux of my post: the alternate path(s):
-The Energy Suit.
Remember Isaac's suit in Dead Space? How would you like that suit in Minecraft? A nice glowing tube on the back of what seems at first glance to be a Nanosuit. This suit taps into whatever 2nd-tier energy sources you have in your inventory, and allows you to use them to power your tools. Energy Crystals, BatPacks, Lappacks, they can all be used straight out of your inventory. This ability can even be toggled on and off in case you just want an armored suit. There is a drawback to this - that neat glowing tube on your back is a weakness! Explosions, projectiles, and physical attacks from behind will do additional damage to you.

-The Infiltration Suit.
This suit is pretty simple. It's a lightweight suit built up from a Hazmat suit, reinforced with carbon fiber plates a la nanosuit. In addition to providing compressed air underwater breathing, fire resistance, and fall damage resistance, the suit also has a toggleable invisibility functionality similar to the invisibility potion. The advantage is that the suit is also invisible while stealthed, whereas you must be naked to use the invisibility potion! Items held in your hand will still be visible, however. The Stealth functionality is fairly energy-expensive, but it can use Energy Crystals kept in your inventory. This suit could also be merged with Nightvision Goggles, whenever those get implemented.

-The Camouflage Suit, A.k.a. the "I'll-never-look-at-a-creeper-the-same-way-ever-again", or "The TF2 Spy".
Instead of this suit providing invisibility, it changes you appearance (along with hiding your name). You can choose from a variety of (reasonably-sized) mobs, or on SMP you can select the appearance (and name) of any player on the server (except OP's, unless they are OP as well). This suit would be much more stable than the infiltration suit, due to the entire suit power grid focusing on micro-projection. This could be incredibly fun for sneaking or goofing around, since many players are expecting certain behaviors from mobs.

-The Detection Suit, A.k.a. "The High Tech".
This is a suit with advanced electronics in the helmet to provide special functions such as object tracking, target identification (yes, it would work through the Camo suit and Infiltration suit, but regular mechanics would still apply), reticles encircling potential targets. This suit would also have additional modes for sight, including night-vision and thermal-vision. Unlike the other suits, the Detection suit only provides a minor armor improvement over plain Nano armor. The suit would also be visually striking and easy to identify in a battle. The main feature would be object tracking & lock-on. The lock-on system would function much like auto-aim, when you aim it would compensate for your & your enemies' movements, so if you for instance fired a mining laser at them, if they maintained current trajectory, it would nail em right in the chest.

(How could I not have thought of this one sooner??)
-The Rocket Suit.
This guy is much like the Qsuit, but instead of providing quantum jumping, it provides (Quantum?) jetpack-ing. The jetpack function would be significantly more expensive than the electric jetpack, since the jetpack had to be integrated into a form-fitting suit. Additionally, the suit does not provide 100% invulnerability like the Qsuit, but it does provide a very high quality protection.

P.S. - I would like to see this implemented because it would provide for some unique new experiences in Minecraft, especially in SMP.

Quote from FenixR

I kinda like the energy suit, but a few things i would change:

-Defense from this suit is worse than nano suit (Not much, like 0.75x the def of the nano)
-Only energy crystals in your hotbar are elegible to recharge your suit/tools, rationale being that when an item is in the hotbar its because you have it somewhere nearby like a pocket in your suit, and not in some weird infinite space limbo.

1. The nano suit currently offers 90% damage reduction when worn, if you nerf it too hard you might as well just switch between nano chestplate + lappack. 85% reduction perhaps?
2. I was thinking about that, but then I realized it wouldn't be as fun to have my hotbar filled with crystals. (Reminds me too much of the old days where you needed a charger for your electric tools).

Quote from RawCode

glowing tube at back of dead space suit have nothing with technology or energy manipulation, its console style HP indicator.

personally i hate console shit, especially when console shit come to PC and someone call it nice feature.

and your suggestion about energy consumption directly from inventory is rejected billion times.

1. Yeah, anyone who has played Dead Space knows this, but in this implementation it would be used purely for aesthetics (Unless Alblaka could make that happen!)
2. This is a little different from the "Want lappack + QSuit in 1 package" arguement. The idea is to add something new to the game that makes the game more enjoyable, without breaking the current game balance. Call it a Mining Suit if you want.

Quote from Sebra

If you want if made from Hazmat and add toggled invisibility (and Night Vision), then armor should not be increased at all.
May be Environment Protection should be turned off in invisible mode.
May be Single Use Battery will be "swallowed" to turn it to invisible for some time.

1. Well, it'd be more like a Nanosuit that was upgraded with Hazmat suit features, I guess my wording was funny.
2. Yeah, since the invisibility would take a lot of power, other forms of protection would be much weaker (perhaps it wouldn't offer armor while invisible, as well).
3. A HUD indicator with suit power remaining would be useful, so you can see how much longer you can use the suit before it runs out of power.

Quote from Eliav24

The infiltrator suit can have more things/different things:
faster running (not as fast as Q-suit, but faster than usual speed, also either energy expensive or only for a few seconds every time), will make leggings more worthwhile.
wall climbing (an ability like the spider has- would be useful for a quick escape, traversing terrain, and building tall building), wondering whether it's good for chest, leggings, boots, or item in inventory.
jump boost (again, not quit as good as the Q-suit). basically making the boots the lesser Q boots.

Actually, a true infiltrator suit would be more logically have these things rather than, say, fire protection, but that's just my personal opinion.

Fire protection probably doesn't make much sense, but I threw it in since that's an easy one to add. I don't know how you would balance the sprint, perhaps it should win on flat ground against a QSuit, but it wouldn't have the quantum jump (which would allow the QSuit to beat the ISuit any day in a race).

Instead of wall climbing, how about adding a new tool, like a Grapple? Functions like the fishing rod, but pulls you if you hit solid ground. Could do double duty in catching infiltrators, because you could Grapple them and pull them to you!

Quote from stm91

Another possibility would be to make the parts of the q-suit and nano suit open up a gui when right-clicked in the hotbar and then choose upgrades to palce in. Upgrades like a power storage pack to power items, nightvision for the helmet etc. ...all upgrades using up a certain amount of power from the suit to balance them.

This is a neat concept, but we run into the problem with the "QSuit upgraded with power storage" problem (It's too unbalanced).

Quote from FenixR

1. "Oh yeah, lets make a suit 1000000% times better than a nano to make nano completely useless and make the whole concept of BRANCHING totally useless! Yay"... *BITCHSLAP* And if you dare mention quatum suit in here i have the other bitchslap waiting for you.
2. Who currs, hotbar filling its my way of giving it some balance to make it not ridiculous. Imagine an inventory full of laps for only 2 or 3 tools, why would i ever need to refill those bitches?

1. Sorry, I thought the Quantum suit was better than a nanosuit, and I was trying to come up with alternatives that were just as or nearly as good. I didn't realize that when you upgrade something it should be just as good as the original. *sarcasm*
2. How are you supposed to go mining with an inventory full of lapotron crystals? (also perhaps the power function should only work for certain tools, namely the chainsaw and drill. It would be totally unbalanced if you could charge up 30 lapotrons and go laser everyone's base on the map).