I'd say let's just make chem/fire vulnerability back to -50 from -100... And for some reason damage overtime does 4hp/sec instead of 1hp now. o_O That needs looking into

What about the armor inventory suggestion I made up there? I think it could turn tables around.

If you can carry only one armor in spare, problem solved ?
(*running* hey look, guys, I carry a whole weapon shop with me, and now, I even have an armor collection !)
If it takes 10 seconds to wear it, while during this time you have no armor whatsoever, but can run, problem solved ?
(marine getting undressed/dressed while running naked )

All right. If you use self heal while being attacked, you get +50hp so you may have a chance of survival. When it comes to armors, a player will have to take cover or they'll die before they manage to switch armors. So, freezing is not needed. I like the idea. The forced armor switching worked fine before because you could stack armors, but now things are different. These armor crates are supposed to be good, so players should have a choice. I say a player should take three seconds to change their armor. During that time they shouldn't be able to use their weapons.

Honestly I don't see what's wrong with a fireproof-dependent team being exploited by chemical classes. As for Harvesters, eh maybe they shouldn't die that fast to flames but otherwise, why are they out there with no front lines protecting them anyway? That's the team's fault and we should not balance the game around bad players. That's been said plenty of times before.

This is assuming the Harvester simply gets the standard -50 vulnerability chem proof armour. That's basically what started everything, the whole "omg no fireproof harvesters i hate you" thing.

As for the crate armors, just make the armour take the same amount of time to put on as self-heal that uses inventory to activate, during which you have no gun held up, a suit zipping sound is heard and then having your resistance to a certain element raised substantially. Either that, or simply having your elemental armour switched to something else so people don't know what to expect.

Like, you've got a sick killstreak with a gauss gun. Cool, but now their team's deciding you need to gtfo and get explosive weapons to take you out. Suddenly, you get a fireproof suit and you put it on, meaning explosives only do normal damage instead of heightened damage. Their shit doesn't work and you kill them anyway.

Doesn't sound bad to me as a crate powerup.

So if you already have one armor in spare let's say, what happens if you run into another armor crate ?

1) Does the spare armor in your inventory get replaced ?
2) Or does the crate give you something else like this is already the case in your conditional structures ?

1-> interfere with strategy (replaces one thing you kept)

2-> still interfere a bit with strategy (but less) because how the hell would you dump something in your inventory anyway ?
(In order to keep it empty, hoping for a more appropriate armor)
I mean, let's say you currently wear a laser armor. If you pick a spare armor you find inappropriate/useless ... and you don't want to use it, you have no way to get your inventory rid of it, except by using it or dying.

Anyway, (2) doesn't seem like a real problem, since :

2a) it already solve the problem of wrecking your current armor

2b) and you can't really rely on crates to get something in particular.

2c) if you have a SURE way to get a new nice armor in your inventory (from a friendly utility guy for exemple), that probably means you are currently in your own base. (and can take the time to switch to the useless armor first, in order to get rid of it)

2d) if crates do have a conditional structure in order to prevent the replacement of the spare armor, that doesn't mean you couldn't pick something else than a crate to replace it. I mean, something more explicit, like for example, an armor a utility guy just made for you.

So in this last case (2d), having a spare armor prevents to get more from any crates, but does allow replacement of your spare armor if you pick an explicit armor item.

I wouldn't mind the case of being able to hold whatever sort of armour you end up picking up, however many you wished. Like, in the case of your tiberium patch being preyed on by flamer people, you get your Utility Guy to make a fireproof, and somehow pick up a Laser Armour crate on the way there. That Util'd fireproof would be helpful to get rid of the flamer guys and make it safe for Harvesters, but then you're vulnerable to chem. Then if you need it, you could switch for the Laser Armor you picked up earlier if the enemy began to rely on that, but then explosives hurt you. They'd both sit in your inventory and they're both one-time use after which they're gone. So it's not like you can swap back and forth between armours for whatever the enemy throws at you.

These crate-armours are not about making you a tank to everything, it's increasing your versatility by giving you a way to adapt on-the-fly. Fair trade-off imo. How does that sound?

Sounds just about right. Although IIRC, harvesters don't have full chem resistance, and I think it should stay that way.

Derp.