Gas Masks in Tier 5 is way too late

Question

Gas Masks should be a Tier 2 item, Tier 3 at the latest, not Tier 5. There's no good reason Ficsyt wouldn't provide their planet side employees with equipment to protect them from local hazards like poison gas. Gas masks should unlock as soon as coal unlocks, which can be used to make charcoal, which itself can be converted to activated charcoal and is a key material in real life gas masks that protect against toxins and poisons in the air, such as from chemical attacks.

Comments

I agree with this, i think the gas mask is a good stepping item to introduce the player to wearables, rather than give them both jet pack and gas mask at the same time and make them choose and kinda overwhelm em

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I would disagree here. The whole reason they come so late is so that you have a motivation to route around fields of poison gas when setting up coal. It's an important obstacle that makes the acquisition of coal a worthwhile achievement in some of the starting locations, particularly the desert. If you got gas masks as soon as you had a bit of coal on hand, the placement of poison on the map wouldn't have much of a point.

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For me, route around poison gas usually just means build a shortcut rather then take the long route around. It's definitely way too late because building a shortcut is something that you can do almost right from the start, and it's really easy to do. Poison gas very quickly becomes more of a nuisance and almost an irrelevant game mechanic then anything else. I've got some that are just in the way of building my factory and I really really wish I could just torch them.