[#bugs] Balance issue: Carapace costs less than Quills during character creation. (3 poi...

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<Fallacy> Balance issue: Carapace costs less than Quills during character creation. (3 points vs. 4 points)

The primary utility Carapace provides (high armor value and elemental resistances) scales into the late game far better than what Quills provides - lesser armor value that can be reduced further by losing quills. The quill throw attack Quills provides can clear out early game enemies well enough, but its penetration value is insufficient to make much of a difference later on.

Quills isn’t useless, but it’s odd for it to cost more than Carapace when it can’t outdo zetachrome at high levels (but Carapace can). Since armor value is such a strong attribute, the minor additional utility Quills possesses doesn’t seem to measure up.

[Ashe]

Issue #9074 was marked as a duplicate of this issue.

[Ashe]

<everyzig314> Quills in its current state is not only worse than Carapace despite costing more, it is actively debilitating to the point if being worse for your character than most defects.

* The whole "number of quills" thing is overcomplicated in general

* The reflection is impractical as it requires taking significant amounts of damage while also being very situational to unarmed melee attackers

* The quill fling is impractical due to its PV scaling terribly

* The AV defense is unreliable and even when fully active it lags seriously behind wearable armor.

For comparison, see the 4 point defect Hooks for Feet, which much like Quills takes up an equipment slot while providing low (0 in its case) AV and a small offense utility. Hooks For Feet's 0 AV is 4 less than Zetachrome Pumps. A lvl 10 Quills provides 5 AV, which is 4 less than the 9 from a Reinforced Zetachrome Lune. That is the same late game AV loss between a -4 point defect and a positive 4 point (plus 9 more mutation points to upgrade) "positive" mutation. And what's more, the loss in defenses from Hooks For Feet can be cut in half with multiple legs (or rendered irrelevant with Slog Mode) while there is no such mitigation for the defense loss of Quills.
The other slot-replacing mutations, Carapace and Horns, share the tradeoff of losing an equipment slot, but in those cases a high amount of investment will give you a strong piece of natural equipment well worth the cost. Investment in Quills however only gets you a natural equipment that underperforms a bit less.

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