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Below is a number of suggestions regarding badges, medals, and rankings:

General:

I think a nice change could be having 25 of each badge for a nice rounded number, instead of 26. This includes Angelic Badges.

Likewise, I think it'd be nicer if there were 50 medals instead of 25.

Rankings:

Apostle in-game ranking requires 50 JC kills, which is fairly tedious and the point tends to get made fairly early on. It could be left as is to encourage it as a long-term goal, but I think in terms of grinding for rankings, 25 would be fine. I'm open to this being rejected though.

More intermediate rankings could be made to shrink the gaps and add more fun, but I'm personally indifferent.

Badge Rankings:

For each badge type, you only need 15 and can disregard the rest. I think requiring more of the previous badge types for further rankings would be a good change to encourage getting more of them. For example, have 1st Lieutenant require 18 Bronze badges, 12 Silver badges, and 3 Gold badges, have Captain require 21 Bronze Badges, 15 Silver badges, and 6 Gold badges, have Lieutenant General require 21 Gold Badges, 9 Platinum Badges, and 3 Diamond Badges, and so on.

If additional Angelic Badges are created, more rankings should be created for different amounts of those.

No-Life King should require all badges of all types. Technically right now, you can skip 11 of each type except Angelic.

Medals:

Change the names of Explorer Badge, Conqueror Badge, Untouchable Badge, Grim Reaper's Badge, Angelic Badge, and Hell Armorer Badge so they don't sound like badges.

I think medals could be allowed to be earned using dual challenges and restrict dual challenges for a lot of badges instead. This can help keep them being different. I wouldn't be opposed to being more or being less strict on dual challenges for achievements though.

Many Medals are not earned if a higher version of them are earned, including Experience Medal, Hell Armorer Badge, Hell Champion Medal, and Grim Reaper's Badge. I think these should still be earned even if a harder medal type is earned.

Clarify that Malicious Knives Cross and Sunrise Fist require all kills to use the required restriction on weaponry, but don't require 100% kills.

Change Iron Skull to either 5,000 damage, or 2,000 damage but needing to win the game, as discussed previously.

Change Gambler's Shield to requiring 25 lever pulls, since 26 is a weird number.

Change Dervis' Medallion to getting 100% kills on Angel of 100 / Archangel of 100 so it's different than Centural Diamond Badge.

Thomas's Medal can be earned by being a "conqueror" on Angel of 100, which despite likely being harder, should be changed to restrict it.

New Medal Ideas:

Experience Token - Reach experience level 15 in a standard game.

Cyberdemon Cross - Enter and exit a Cyberdemon complex alive.

Aurora Star - Find 10 uniques or more (no game mode restrictions; mostly requires Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 anyway).

Scavenger Medal - Create 15 or more assemblies (maybe require them to all be different too?).

Purity Medal - Kill JC on Angel of Purity.

Shottyman Medal - Win Angel of Shotgunnery with 100% kills.

UAC Cross - Kill 10,000 or more enemies.

This would bring everything to an even 50, and we can swap ideas around until we're happy with everything.

Badges:

Heroic Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond Badges - Change these values to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, if we change the medal count to 50.

Bronze Badges:

Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Veteran Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Medal of Prejudice.

Speedrunner Bronze Badge - Change this to 40 minutes so that it's a little different than Compet-n Silver Cross.

Arena Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different than Hell Champion Medal.

If we want to go from 26 to 25, I'd say remove Scavenger Bronze Badge since it's extremely trivial.

Silver Badges:

Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Brick Silver Badge - This challenge is fairly annoying, but I personally like it and wanted to mention not changing it.

Lava Silver Badge - This challenge is also fairly annoying, and I personally don't like it. I'd say make this the Silver Badge to get scrapped to reduce the number to 25.

Gold Badges:

Berserker Gold Badge to Daredevil Gold Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

I would say for going from 26 to 25, remove Armorer Gold Badge (other associated changes below).

Platinum Badges:

Change Armorer Platinum Badge to requiring finding all exotics/uniques. Finding 1,000 either devolves into spamming Angel of Overconfidence games where you drop your starting gear, pick them up, then repeat, or alternatively with playing properly, finding duplicates of exotics and uniques within the same game still only counts as 1, so this is a massive grind of games to get to 1,000. Both methods are pretty unappealing. If for canonical reasons that having "Armorer X Badge" for each type except for Gold, we could change "Armorer Platinum/Diamond Badge" to something like Collector Platinum Badge and Collector Diamond Badge.

Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Berserker Platinum Badge - This badge is fairly similar to Gargulec Cross. Maybe change it to no kill count required, but on Nightmare difficulty?

Lightfoot Platinum Badge - Change the in-game description to saying it requires Ultra-Violence.

Everyman Platinum Badge - Change this to complete Angel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence so that it's different than Thomas's Medal.

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Platinum Badge since it's a bit silly and the optimal way to earn this is not so much by "luck", but by spamming Azrael's Scythe's Whisper of Death.

Diamond Badges:

Berserker Diamond Badge to Daredevil Diamond Badge - Disallow dual challenges.

Arena Diamond Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence as this badge is significantly harder than every other Diamond Badge. This is the only one Papilio never earned and he seemingly gave up on it, despite earning most if not all of the other purely.

For going from 26 to 25, I would say remove Scavenger Diamond Badge for the same reasons as mentioned above.

Angelic Badges:

UAC Angelic Badge - I'd say change this to Ultra-Violence, maybe even Hurt Me Plenty, but keep it as a standard game and requiring damageless.

Strongman Angelic Badge - Change this to like, 75% kills. Nobody is actually killing nearly everything with just their Fists and are instead getting to the end and farming an enemy for kills. When doing so, I think the point is made at 75% instead of 90%, and can also open up a somewhat more realistic possibility of doing it without cheesing.

Speedrun Angelic Badge - Change this to 10 minutes to keep it really hard, or 12 to be a bit more obtainable. An excellent but realistic run could get to around 8:30-8:00, and faster than that starts to require miracles.

Demonic Angelic Badge - This is basically an open slot for a new idea lol. Maybe Archangel of 666 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills?

Shottyman Angelic Badge - Change this to requiring 100% kills as it's by far the easiest Angelic Badge.

Eagerness Angelic Badge - Change this to 50% kills as there is no where close to enough time to getting 90% kills.

Inquisitor Angelic Badge - Change this to Ultra-Violence.

Pacifist Angelic Badge - Change this to Nightmare and remove the kill count requirement.

New Angelic Badge Ideas:

Destroyer Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 on Nightmare.

Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare (assuming this gets added).

Daredevil Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Darkness on Nightmare with 100% kills.

(I realize we need to invent new prefixes at this point)

Humanity Angelic Badge - Complete Archangel of Humanity on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills.

Purist Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Purity + Angel of Light Travel on Nightmare.

Carnage Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of Masochism on Nightmare with 100% kills.

Apostle Angelic Badge - Kill the Apostle in a standard game on Nightmare.

Sunrise Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills using only Fists.

This list would bring the total Angelic Badge count to 25, but we can still make lots of changes if there are other ideas.

I'll note the Bullet-Proof Vest already reduces all possible bullet damage from enemies in the game down to 1 (max damage Combat Pistol does 9, which 80% resistance brings down to 2 and then the point of protection reduces to 1). But maintaining higher resistances when damaged is something to buff it at least, for an armor whose inherent idea is just not going to have a real niche unless a much more damaging enemy bullet attack is introduced into the game. I will say it definitely need its generation weight significantly increased; it currently has a weight of 4, being less common than most of the exotic armors that are much better than it (is the rarity to prevent people from getting disappointed when they find it?). Its weight should be at least 6 to tie it with the most common non-item exotics, but you could make it even higher if it's ok to go higher than 6 for non-item exotics. Maybe you could give it a slight move speed bonus too if you really want to try making it viable beyond being a Green Armor alternative in Phobos, but a Bullet-Proof Vest making you faster wouldn't really make any sense.

I agree with the rest of your suggestions and have nothing more to add to them.

My responses:

Regarding the idea of Archangel of Darkness, I agree that 2.5x experience might be better since it is intended to be an ultra hard challenge. I think vision of 4 would be fitting.

I can agree with decreasing the volume on multi-hitting the same enemy.

Some more suggestions:

I think Bullet-Proof Vest should be buffed from 80% Bullet Resistance to 95%. This will make it a lot more truly "bullet-proof". It would help a bit for the highest rolls that you can get hit by and also give higher resistance when the armor gets damaged.

I think Environmental Boots should be changed from BPT to BBT. Because players will tend to gravitate to fluid immunity instead of fluid resistance, Environmental Boots harder ever get used. By making them BBB, they could be made separately from Cerberus Boots as an alternative, and create more use of Bulk Packs.

I think Combat Translocator being buffed from 10 Cells per shot to only 5 would help make it a lot more usable. It tends not to see a lot of use because if there are only a few enemies, they're probably avoidable and not very strong. If there are a lot of enemies, then you can't practically teleport them all away. I think allowing for more shots would help balance it on both ends.

Regarding different challenges affecting Hell's Arena and dual-challenges, a simple solution would be letting the "harder" challenge take priority, instead of planning out every combination of challenge possible.

I would figure that would be the case, as yes planning out for every Dual-Angel combination is impractical.

Regarding Angel of Death, alright I can lean into it, but definitely make it not possible to respawn, similar to Pain Elementals, Lava Elementals, and Cyberdemons.

I'm assuming the AoD wouldn't leave a respawnable corpse (I'm pretty sure he doesn't already, but I would need to verify it). If he does, then that would definitely need to be fixed to not be respawnable like most other bosses.

Regarding Juggler and ammo boxes in case you misinterpreted, I mean to say that should it be possible to juggle ammo boxes in and out from inventory to the prepared slot as well?

Ah I see, my mistake. In that case, it would be a neat addition, though I wouldn't be bothered if that wasn't implemented.

I like the idea of Tactical Set giving Dodgemaster since it would still not be overpowered, is easily outclassed by builds having Dodgemaster, and builds that have it blocked could then access Dodgemaster. The only concerns though is that it does heavily devolve the Cyberdemon fight to whether or not you have Dodgemaster, even if it already basically is.

The Cyberdemon being so easily trivialized by Dodgemaster is a bit lame, maybe that strat could be nerfed in some way? Perhaps the Cyberdemon's AI has a random chance to aim at a tile to the side of you (like a 25% or 30% chance), and if the player moves towards the direction of that tile, it makes that dodge attempt fail? Not sure if that's programmable though.

I'm not a fan of the toggle idea for Schematics as it seems slightly silly. Could it be possible to just simply let it be an additional item in the locked room that doesn't show up if you already have all the assemblies?

Having Schematics be a separate drop that doesn't take up the spot of a rare mod is also a good idea, as losing out on the rare mod are players' gripe with the Schematics mechanic.

Regarding an in-game rankings, the two main things I'm hesistant about it are that the implementation of it may require some sort of login system so that the leaderboard isn't accidentally filled with multiple entries of the same player, and also so you can update yourself. The other thing is that it only takes 1 cheater to spoil the whole thing and it would likely devolve into a lot of headaches and drama. I thought I would bring it up for some extra opinions, but I'd actually lean against it. I think a simple forum thread might be better.

I do agree with these points and am not enthused by the idea, while I imagine the community around DRL would want to avoid said drama (e.g. why no one ever called out 2dev or VANDAM about their impossibly grandiose claims when they were around). Would certainly like to hear what others think about it.

Regarding Technical Packs in armors, being limited to only one per armor is a good point that the values should be higher. 20% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel and 10% Plasma/Acid/Fire would be a lot, but I suppose in the lens of Power Packs reducing 2 damage from each type, it doesn't seem as insane. Looking through the possible armors it could be applied to, I think it wouldn't lead to anything broken. We would just need to be sure that as a part of an assembly, it doesn't apply its resistances on top of the assembly itself, like how the other Mod Packs currently work.

It would also be balanced by the fact applying both a Power and Technical mod would mean you have to give up a mod slot for a big speed boost from an Agility mod or boosted/infinite durability from a Bulk/Onyx mod (and there would be more interesting choices to make with what mods to apply as PAO would no longer be the only optimal mod loadout for all armors).

For the idea of Archangel of Darkness, perhaps 3x experience is too much. Comparing to a standard game to Angel of Darkness, you get less vision, have to deal with respawns, and get 2x experience, and comparing Angel of Darkness to the suggested Archangel of Darkness, you would have a bit less vision. Triple experience is 1.5x relative to double, as opposed to double experience being 2x relative to single. Maybe if triple is too much, go with 2.5x experience? I think it could be a fun and interesting challenge, but it would definitely be very hard. Perhaps it would devolve a bit too far into needing luck to survive though.

When Archangel of Masochism and Archangel of Humanity are a thing, Archangel of Darkness certainly sounds playable in comparison. Exact amount of exp to gain is something that would have have to be playtested for sure, but I would lean with starting out at 2.5x EXP; it is an Archangel challenge after all and so you don't want to give the player too much of a bonus that would counteract the challenge.

I personally disagree with the difficulty balancing. I think in terms of quality of life, having the hard part be early on is much better so that as you said, you don't lose a couple hours of player because of difficulty scaling. It also requires the player after succeeding through Phobos to not get nervous and choke, which can indirectly make Deimos and Hell a bit harder. That said though, it depends on the direction of where DoomRL should go. Being unrelentingly difficult can be appealing, and being harder towards the end is more progressive with difficulty. If the direction of the game were to go this way, I do agree that increasing the danger value would be the way to go.

I do agree about the consideration of time investment as part of the balancing, but there could be more thrills to have if the later Deimos and Hell levels posed a greater threat, which is why I'm personally torn on the idea. This is another thing I would really like to hear the input of others on.

I disagree with the idea of alternative reloads for rapid-fire weapons to preserve ammo. They are generally very strong weapons towards the end of the game, and ammo expenditure is a good balance for that. As mentioned, many also already have alternative reloads. Overcharging Plasma Rifles can be useful for situations on Nightmare where you can farm Former Commandos and burn through a collection of Plasma Rifles for tough enemies.

I'll take your word for it, rapid fire weapons are my area of least expertise as mentioned (which is why I didn't comment on the proposed Laser Rifle nerf).

__________

Related to rapid fire weapons, one more suggested change; when a weapon with several shots is fired and when an enemy is hit by several attacks simultaneously (such as from rapid fire weapons), can the sound not increase in volume with each fire/hit? It's part of why I don't use rapid fire builds much, an Archvile's screech after being hit with a Plasma Rifle is ear shattering.

My responses to your last 2 posts:

Regarding different challenges affecting Hell's Arena and dual-challenges, a simple solution would be letting the "harder" challenge take priority, instead of planning out every combination of challenge possible.

Regarding Angel of Death, alright I can lean into it, but definitely make it not possible to respawn, similar to Pain Elementals, Lava Elementals, and Cyberdemons.

Regarding Juggler and ammo boxes in case you misinterpreted, I mean to say that should it be possible to juggle ammo boxes in and out from inventory to the prepared slot as well?

Fair points regarding Ballistic Armor, and I'd be good with Duelist Armor only giving 60% Melee resistance.

The trap solution for City of Skulls would be a great change over having a lever. It would definitely balance it relative to Abyssal Plains by making it a fair bit harder.

I think I would be fine overall with Cyberdemons and Bruisers using items I suppose, but there definitely needs to be a healing cap with Med Packs for Cybedemons as you mentioned.

I like the idea of Tactical Set giving Dodgemaster since it would still not be overpowered, is easily outclassed by builds having Dodgemaster, and builds that have it blocked could then access Dodgemaster. The only concerns though is that it does heavily devolve the Cyberdemon fight to whether or not you have Dodgemaster, even if it already basically is.

Regarding the Gothic Set suggestion, I do think that Cerberus Gothic Armor and Cerberus Gothic Boots together could get to be a bit insanely powerful with +50% all resistances. Generally speaking once you're in position for a fight, you're not moving much anyway, and you become mostly invulnerable to everything. That said though, you wouldn't be able to stair dive with it, it does help add extra top tier items, and indirectly it would help some traits a lot, such as Entrenchment. Having to constantly cycle through inventory could ward off some excessive use of it, but might also just end up annoying players who want to play optimally. I'd lean towards yes with a bit of caution.

I'm not a fan of the toggle idea for Schematics as it seems slightly silly. Could it be possible to just simply let it be an additional item in the locked room that doesn't show up if you already have all the assemblies?

Regarding an in-game rankings, the two main things I'm hesistant about it are that the implementation of it may require some sort of login system so that the leaderboard isn't accidentally filled with multiple entries of the same player, and also so you can update yourself. The other thing is that it only takes 1 cheater to spoil the whole thing and it would likely devolve into a lot of headaches and drama. I thought I would bring it up for some extra opinions, but I'd actually lean against it. I think a simple forum thread might be better.

Regarding Technical Packs in armors, being limited to only one per armor is a good point that the values should be higher. 20% Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel and 10% Plasma/Acid/Fire would be a lot, but I suppose in the lens of Power Packs reducing 2 damage from each type, it doesn't seem as insane. Looking through the possible armors it could be applied to, I think it wouldn't lead to anything broken. We would just need to be sure that as a part of an assembly, it doesn't apply its resistances on top of the assembly itself, like how the other Mod Packs currently work.

For the idea of Archangel of Darkness, perhaps 3x experience is too much. Comparing to a standard game to Angel of Darkness, you get less vision, have to deal with respawns, and get 2x experience, and comparing Angel of Darkness to the suggested Archangel of Darkness, you would have a bit less vision. Triple experience is 1.5x relative to double, as opposed to double experience being 2x relative to single. Maybe if triple is too much, go with 2.5x experience? I think it could be a fun and interesting challenge, but it would definitely be very hard. Perhaps it would devolve a bit too far into needing luck to survive though.

For BFG9000, it naturally does 10d6, and Overcharge right now does 12d6 with double the radius. I think 10d12 with an average damage of 65 is not significant enough for killing Spider Mastermind or JC and shouldn't need a restriction. It also forces the player to bring it with them for about half the game. VBFG9000 would get to 10d16 with an average damage of 85, and Biggest Fucking Gun would get to 20d24 with an average damage of 250 (assuming that Overcharge doubles the damage dice). As you suggested in your previous post though, assembling Biggest Fucking Gun would be very rare, while VBFG9000 isn't too significantly stronger, so both should be fine for the final fights.

I personally disagree with the difficulty balancing. I think in terms of quality of life, having the hard part be early on is much better so that as you said, you don't lose a couple hours of player because of difficulty scaling. It also requires the player after succeeding through Phobos to not get nervous and choke, which can indirectly make Deimos and Hell a bit harder. That said though, it depends on the direction of where DoomRL should go. Being unrelentingly difficult can be appealing, and being harder towards the end is more progressive with difficulty. If the direction of the game were to go this way, I do agree that increasing the danger value would be the way to go.

I disagree with the idea of alternative reloads for rapid-fire weapons to preserve ammo. They are generally very strong weapons towards the end of the game, and ammo expenditure is a good balance for that. As mentioned, many also already have alternative reloads. Overcharging Plasma Rifles can be useful for situations on Nightmare where you can farm Former Commandos and burn through a collection of Plasma Rifles for tough enemies.

I agree with buffing the ammo count for Rocket Boxes.

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I'll update the first post with this response and your most recent one sometime later.

I've got a few more suggestions to possibly add, I've added them to my main post but will point them out here separately for convenience of reviewing:

*Modify danger level to increase more sharply after Phobos?

A common criticism of DRL is that the difficulty is largely front-loaded even when you're not playing challenges that exacerbate early game difficulty, where the vast majority of runs end in Phobos, and making it to Hell can often near-guarantee victory, with only the optional Mortuary/Limbo being any threat to kill you at that point. This is primarily caused by how powerful the player becomes in the lategame, and it would take a complete rebalancing of the game to fully address it, which isn't feasible, but you could maybe help the lategame keep up with the player if the danger level was substantially higher; indeed Hell levels can feel a bit empty even on harder difficulties. Conversely, you can argue the current difficulty balance is fine, as an easier lategame is countered by the fact you have much more to lose if you die at that point and so you have to be extra careful to not make mistakes; you die in Phobos, you just lose like 15-30 minutes, maybe an hour, but you die in Hell, that could be your entire evening going down the drain. I think the later game having harder Hell levels could be interesting, but I am also fine with the current level balance, and messing with the danger level climb could be too much of a balancing change. If this were to be done, you would also probably need to keep the danger level formula used in A100/666 as is, as a more sharply rising danger level could make lategame A100/666 have absurd enemy density.

*Add an alternative reload to rapid fire weapons that give them an "ammo conservation mode", which has them ignore Triggerhappy and Firestorm mods?

Currently investing in Triggerhappy and applying Firestorm mods to your rapid fire weapons is a double-edged sword unless you're running Ammochain or made your weapon Nanomachic; they provide a nice boost to your DPS for sure, but firing those extra shots can often be overkill and will invariably lead you to burn through much more ammo. As a result, players not using Ammochain may avoid investing in Triggerhappy beyond the one level required for other rapid fire masteries (and Bullet Dance) unless they find a Nano mod, and may similarly avoid using Firestorm mods. Allowing players to avoid firing extra shots from Triggerhappy and Firestorm mods when they don't need the extra shots would make them unquestionably beneficial, though you can argue the extra ammo burning is part of their balancing and that it would indirectly nerf Ammochain (while rapid fire weapons are the weapon type I'm least familiar with as I don't much like rapid fire builds, so people more versed in them will need to discuss the merit of this idea). I'll also note the Plasma Rifle has both its altfire and altreload slots already taken up, though you could just replace Overcharge with this idea; no one overcharges their Plasma Rifle anyway. The same is also true for the Nuclear Plasma Rifle, though its altreload, Nuclear Overcharge, is not so easily replaceable; you could instead just exempt the Nuclear Plasma Rifle from having this new firing mode, under the justification that a nuclear weapon can't control the amount of shots it fires (and you don't need to be much concerned about conserving ammo with a weapon that recharges its own ammo).

*Increase the amount of rockets in Rocket Boxes from 20 to 25

Rocket Boxes carrying only 20 rockets is too low; proportionally, a 10mm Ammo Chain and Power Battery hold over twice as much ammo as their respective inventory stacks, and while a Shell Box also holds exactly twice as much as a shell stack does, shotgun shells are much more efficient relative to the amount of them you get and it's a much larger quantity. Once you get the Backpack, Rocket Boxes carry only six more rockets than an inventory stack can, making them not much practical for holding extra rockets in your inventory (and ten more rockets without a Backpack isn't much better). You could also argue to increase the amount of rockets you can hold in your inventory and the amount of rockets you get from ammo pickups, though for what is intended to be a secondary weapon, I don't think that's really needed, just make Rocket Boxes more valuable.

Nice, more suggestions to go through.

Make Berserk truly permanent when wielding Dragonslayer. It currently is "permanent" by giving 10 million actions, but it could be possible to remove the effect by using enough Run->Wait. For the most part, you would need to intentionally do this to make it happen, but if you found it early in Archangel of 666 and play defensively, I could see it being possible. My suggestion is that in the code after the Berserk effect ends, check to see if the player is wielding Dragonslayer, and if so, add another 10 million actions. Granted, this is very nitpicky.

Seems nobrainer to me.

As a suggestion for overhauling Mega Buster, perhaps have it start in Bullet mode, allow alt fire to switch modes, and you have to collect and get to keep the other modes as you kill enemies. It would resemble Mega Man a lot more and could make it useful by being multi-purpose with damage types.

Agreed, any weapon you can't control what it actually does is already an inherently flawed one, even if you buffed it immensely.

Maybe do something with Schematics? To be nitpicky, runs are not truly independent unless you have all assemblies unlocked from a previous game because otherwise, a Mod Pack may be replaced by Schematics instead. It's not at all a large deal, but does impact the spirit of run independence.

I know people have often complained about Schematics before, and missing out on a rare mod because of them is a big blow to your run. But I also understand not wanting to require people to have to look up the assemblies on outside sources to make them, and Schematics are helpful for the Technician badges, as it lets you avoid having to build some of the crappier assemblies and those requiring rare mods (though you could counterargue that you should actually have to make the assemblies for the Technician badges instead of just finding their Schematics). I think this should be another thing that is toggable, so those that want to find out the assemblies through purely ingame means are still able to (or who otherwise want to keep the Schematics so they don't need to make a VBFG9000 or Cybernano Armor for the Technician badges), while returning veterans that already know all the assemblies, and those who will just look up the wiki, will have the option to disable them spawning without having to play a bunch of runs and assembling everything to force them to go away.

The Wall/Containment Area should open up after all enemies dead to prevent softlocking if you use a Phase Device.

Seeing how I mentioned this and made my anti-softlock stance clear, I'm obviously for this.

Have a text colour change just before running mode wears off like power-up effects.

Strongly agree, I'm always unsure of when running is about to wear out, and it'll help inform decisions on if I should stop and shoot this enemy or keep booking it to gain more ground on whatever I was running from.

Creating a rankings ladder for all the various achievements. This might just be better as a community Google Sheet though and not everyone might care to be competitive in a single-player game. It would also take a lot of work to implement I would imagine. I myself am not a huge fan of it, but maybe other players would like it.

This isn't necessary and I'm ambivalent to it, but if it would get more people to play the game, then I see no problem with it as long as it's kept adequately up-to-date (and maybe do something to vet fraudulent runs to prevent another 2dev situation, though that could be a drama minefield if you don't require video evidence of Diamond and Angelic badges, which would also make it less accessible to those who lack the means or technical knowledge to record gameplay).

Colour-coded trait screen as seen here by Mader Levap:

Agreed, nothing more to say about it.

Have Technical Mod Packs increase Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistance when used in armor (5%? 10%?) instead of knockback.

Strongly agree with changing this, I never use Technical mods on armor unless I'm prepping it for an assembly, when I find having more knockback to be better, and otherwise decreasing knockback is largely a sidegrade at best. Since you can only apply one Technical mod though, 5% would be worthless (especially for physical attacks), and you would have to apply the energy resistances too, because only having minor physical resistances is still just clearly outclassed by adding a Power mod. Maybe make it +20% physical resistances and +10% energy resistances? At that point, it can be equivalent to or better than a Power mod against very strong hits, but worse against more common weak hits, and it shouldn't make stacking a Power + Technical mod too good (e.g. a PT Red Armor with this setup would reduce an Archvile zap down to 7 damage, which is a lot but far from damage you can keep tanking, while it is still outdone by unmodded Fireproof Red Armor that reduces it to 5 damage).

Create Archangel of Darkness which has even smaller vision, but triple experience.

Doesn't sound particularly fun, but it is a sensible extension off the current challenges for a new Archangel challenge. Triple experience sounds a bit overkill though.

Change BFG Overcharge since it's currently pretty useless and wasteful (needs discussion).

Strongly agree, it should be dealing double damage at minimum, nothing should be left alive on the screen after destroying your BFG. If there's the concern that it could be too easily abused against the Mastermind and Carmack (because losing your BFG at that point doesn't matter), you could maybe make it so that it fails if used in Dis and Hell Fortress?

Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.

Strongly agree, the less hidden information there is the better.

Three more suggestions of mine:

Make Berserk truly permanent when wielding Dragonslayer. It currently is "permanent" by giving 10 million actions, but it could be possible to remove the effect by using enough Run->Wait. For the most part, you would need to intentionally do this to make it happen, but if you found it early in Archangel of 666 and play defensively, I could see it being possible. My suggestion is that in the code after the Berserk effect ends, check to see if the player is wielding Dragonslayer, and if so, add another 10 million actions. Granted, this is very nitpicky.

As a suggestion for overhauling Mega Buster, perhaps have it start in Bullet mode, allow alt fire to switch modes, and you have to collect and get to keep the other modes as you kill enemies. It would resemble Mega Man a lot more and could make it useful by being multi-purpose with damage types.

Maybe do something with Schematics? To be nitpicky, runs are not truly independent unless you have all assemblies unlocked from a previous game because otherwise, a Mod Pack may be replaced by Schematics instead. It's not at all a large deal, but does impact the spirit of run independence.

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I spent some time looking through this sub-forum for other ideas from the past and found some good ones to share and discuss:

The Wall/Containment Area should open up after all enemies dead to prevent softlocking if you use a Phase Device.

Have a text colour change just before running mode wears off like power-up effects.

Creating a rankings ladder for all the various achievements. This might just be better as a community Google Sheet though and not everyone might care to be competitive in a single-player game. It would also take a lot of work to implement I would imagine. I myself am not a huge fan of it, but maybe other players would like it.

Colour-coded trait screen as seen here by Mader Levap:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have Technical Mod Packs increase Melee/Bullet/Shrapnel resistance when used in armor (5%? 10%?) instead of knockback.

Create Archangel of Darkness which has even smaller vision, but triple experience.

Change BFG Overcharge since it's currently pretty useless and wasteful (needs discussion).

Add knockback and dodge modifiers to the stats screen.

I've updated the original post now to include all new ideas discussed and links to posts that are relevant to discussion for each of the suggestions.

Again thanks for the feedback!

While Hell's Arena does give different rewards, I do think it would be out of place if it appeared on different floors just based on the challenge. Perhaps a better alternative would just be having different rewards and different enemies based on challenge? Planning out how Dual-Angel games work would be important though.

Changing the enemy composition based on challenge is a unique idea, while aside from making it easier for challenges with especially hard early games like AoB and AoMr, you could also make it harder for challenges like AoMC and AoLT that otherwise trivialize it. I'm not sure if that would be possible, but if so, I do think that's a better idea than moving Hell Arena's spawn point around.

Regarding nuke floor counts, the number isn't really what impacts it, it's just simply the existence of the Trigun, whether the count is high or low. Nuking 15 in an Angel of 100 game could definitely be done without it, but it still definitely be easiest by waiting on finding a Trigun. However, the HP depletion would require finding many natural nukes, and then ideally spamming Angel Arm after to get the remaining count. I'm not opposed to the idea of making a medal regarding nuking a ton of floors on Angel of 100, just that the same strategy will be significantly more optimal than any other.

I see, in any case I'm not strongly for it, just an idea for A100 medals building off of existing medals.

While the Cyberdemon was the final enemy before, the Angel of Death is still stronger than he is, and the big issue is the 10 armor, which does funnel builds towards needing something that can handle high armor, which is mostly plasma damage or piercing damage. I'd say if it were to be a reasonable enemy for those game, it would need something like 95 depth, 1 weight, and 40 danger. I'm not 100% opposed to it, but it would have to be done carefully so that it doesn't become too overpowering or forcing certain playstyles.

I see the concern, but I think by lategame A100, players should always have the weapons to break through that armor regardless of build, and so the AoD wouldn't make any build unviable. Like shotgun builds will very likely have Nano-Shrapnel or some form of plasma shotgun, and in the very unlikely case they never find a Nano mod, Sniper mod, nor Plasma Shotgun, they will certainly at least have some rocket launcher on them (or if someone actually plays MAD in A100, then it's not a worry at all). Then Pistol builds will always have an Energy Pistol for Revenants and to utilize the plethora of plasma cells you'll find, or a Blaster for the same Revenant-killing ability and infinite ammo. It's also not like this isn't encouraged by other high armor enemies; the 4 armor of the Cyberdemon and Agony Elemental, as well as the 5 armor of the Lava Elemental, are hard to punch through with weak hits that aren't plasma or piercing. In the absolute worst case scenario where you somehow don't have any decent plasma or piercing weapon to use nor any other means of high damage-per-hit, you could just run away, aided by the inability for the AoD to open doors (if someone is too slow to run away from the AoD and they can't kill him, then how did they even make it that far in A100?). I also wouldn't say he is necessarily more generally threatening than a Cyberdemon, whose rockets can do way more damage per hit than any other enemy before armor aside from the Elite Former Commando (fire resistance is very easy to get but melee resistance isn't much harder), you'll likely be encountering him in much more cramped levels than Tower of Babel (so Dodgemaster can't reliably save you), he hits you just as hard in melee as the AoD does, and the fact he'll blow through walls to reach you also allows him to destroy your cover and expose you to other enemies.

I agree Juggler would lose a lot of power if it only worked with the prepared slot. I think easily allowing it to work with any weapon in your inventory would be nice for quality of life. What is your opinion on it functioning for ammo boxes?

If Juggler couldn't work with ammo boxes, it would be a senseless limitation and I would probably never invest in it if it's not a mandatory prerequisite. The only reason to not have a relevant ammo box prepared at all times is to preserve its ammo for more dangerous fights.

Regarding your suggestion for Duelist Armor with making it have lots of melee resistance and no bullet or shrapnel resistance, I don't think it would be broken in Cerberus Armor (P), but I'd strongly argue that the trade-off for more melee resistance is far more valuable than bullet and shrapnel. Bullets generally don't do a whole lot of damage, even in the end-game, and with 2 protection and possibly some points in Tough as Nails, a lot of the damage can be reduced to 1 without any resistances. Shrapnel can be dangerous up close though, but it gets heavily reduced from decent range. With the melee resistance though, you can happily camp out enemies and not worry if they get adjacent to you. Overall, I'd be for the change to Duelist Armor and hope that nothing is being overlooked. It could also be pretty insane in just Ballistic Armor for a very low cost, but it could be argued that it'd be a waste.

I do think needing a P-mod and all that investment in TaN to cover that lack of bullet and shrapnel resistances is a cost in itself (not to mention that over half the masteries block TaN). Related, maybe the bullet enemies can be made more dangerous, like Elite Former Humans can carry the suggested Magnum and maybe Elite Former Captains could use some nerfed Railgun? Or add some new bullet enemy entirely that can do more damage-per-hit. Something to help make bullet resistance more valuable and so maybe the Bullet Proof Vest could have some worthwhile niche beyond being a Green Armor alternative in the early game.

Also yeah Ballistic Armor would be wasted on this suggested Duelist Armor; it would already reduce melee hits from Barons and Mancubi down to 1 (so all common enemies can't hit you for more than 1 damage), and a Power mod would let it reduce any Nightmare Demon bite down to 1. The only practical usage would be to get you armor that reduces the AoD's damage down to 1 for non-melee builds trying to beat Unholy Cathedral, but doing that would sacrifice the armor's general usage as VMR would now destroy you in it. Actually, seeing how it reduces Baron and Mancubi down to 1 damage before even a Power Mod is added, maybe do 60% melee resistance instead.

Regarding your suggested buffs to Ballistic Armor, the main thing is it's super cheap and accessible to make, and while the fire resistance penalty is the trade-off for it, fire damage isn't as common in Phobos and even somewhat uncommon in Deimos except on the harder difficulties. I think raising all of melee, bullet, shrapnel, and fire resistances on it by 10% is too much without some other kind of cost to it.

But like I said before, currently it doesn't increase your defense against physical attacks all that meaningfully. With the current +30% resistance, a melee hit needs to do more than 8 damage for this assembly to reduce it by more than 2 damage (which a Power mod would do without making the armor worse against the most dangerous enemies), and even against Barons and Mancubi it's only reducing their melee hits by 3 damage. Then only a max damage roll from a Elite Former Human's Combat Pistol can reach 9 damage for a bullet hit, and considering shrapnel is double affected by shrapnel, it would take a Sergeant's shotgun blast doing 16 damage for the assembly to do better than a Power mod, which is very uncommon. So overall, the assembly in its current state barely helps in its primary use, while that tradeoff is very harsh. The only real reason to build it is to help with Phobos Lab on UV/N! (where it can reduce Nightmare Demons' bites by 4) and for non-melee builds with Unholy Cathedral, but sacrificing an Agility mod, Technical mod, and an armor's general usage to help with a couple special levels is a pretty heavy cost.

I do like the concepts of your suggested assembly outputs, but I'd want to avoid it becoming a slippery slope where all mod packs work on all items.

I will say I don't have much interest in doing that. You could maybe make some weapon assembly that uses an Onyx mod, or a melee weapon assembly that uses a Nano mod, but what could you do with them that both makes sense and would offer a unique gameplay role? The main idea with the suggested Sniper and Firestorm armor assemblies was to help make those mods be a waste less often and cover some gameplay roles currently offered by no other armors.

For difficulty between City of Skulls and Abyssal Plains, the big thing is that you can enter and exit City of Skulls with no worry of anything if you want to. Abyssal Plains also starts you off surrounded by strong enemies that you can't really hide from. City of Skulls is dangerous as you flip the switch, but you can often use various weapons to kill groups of Lost Souls and then chip away at whatever remains in your vision.

I see, I agree City of Skulls shouldn't be free to stair dive through. I think a simple solution here is instead of unleashing enemies with the lever, you simply have the pillars come down once you pass the hallfway point of the level (while also expanding the middle pillars so that you can't run through the top or bottom of them), much like how the Phobos Anomaly's trap works.

Regarding hunting enemies picking up items, there are a few situations that can become silly to deal with, such as Cyberdemons picking up Shielded Armor, Phaseshift Armor, and others that we're currently theorycrafting making. It could also be abused with giftdropping Necroarmor, Fireproof Armor, or Gothic Armor for the Tower of Babel fight. I'm still personally leaning on no overall, but not 100% against it.

If the player could take advantage of it to weaken the Cyber, I think that's ingenuity that should be rewarded, and it would probably be tricky to pull off, as he should still prioritize attacking you as long as you're in his massive vision radius. All that said, I'm not terribly for letting Cyberdemons and Bruisers use items, and so would be fine with them just losing the ability if hunting AI ignoring items could be fixed (while Cybers would absolutely have to if no healing cap can be programmed to medkits).

Regarding trees, the only other thing that's important to consider is they can't be randomly generated or they might block important pathways. They would have to be preset in some way.

That is certainly an important consideration I overlooked, and I imagine it would be a pain to program in a way to prevent them from blocking off stuff. You could give them the fragile flag so they're destructible by any weapon like barrels and ammo/armor crates (these decrepit-looking trees shouldn't be that sturdy anyway). Or they're just kept to specific level types where they can be easily programmed to not spawn in ways that would block off areas.

For an idea for Double Chainsaw, what if the doubling of Chainsaw's 4d6 instead of 8d6 was 4d12? This would give it a very different damage output, and a Bulk Pack to finish the assembly would give it a pretty nice boost in power with 5d12?

This would make it more unique, it still wouldn't do much for the problem of it being outclassed but any functional uniqueness is good.

I agree Lava Elemental is quite weak and increasing melee damage is a good way to counter it by avoiding the lava splashes. Perhaps just give it a higher teleportation chance? Or what if its splash radius was bumped up to 3 or even 4 instead?

I would like the higher teleportation chance, if only because sometimes it gets annoying waiting for it to teleport to me. As for the splash radius, I wouldn't mind keeping it as is nor oppose it becoming 3. Could get nasty dealing with an increased splash radius without any radsuits though, if my suggestion of removing them from The Lava Pits/Mt. Erebus on higher difficulties is done (and otherwise as long as the radsuits are kept as is, the increased splash radius won't make it that much more dangerous).
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I've also got two more suggestions I added to my post, I'll point them out here for convenience to review:

*Add the "Tactical Set" - Wearing Tactical Armor with Tactical Boots completes this set, which grants the player with the effect of Dodgemaster

I think the game could use a couple more sets, with an obvious equipment set being the Tactical Armor and Tactical Boots. Aside from being thematically fitting, Tactical Armor is also an underused assembly, as the risk of running around essentially naked is too high, and the cost of two Agility Mods is a bit high for players, especially when they've likely already spent two Agility Mods on Tactical Boots. The Tactical Armor probably still wouldn't be used much, but having this set could get some players to assemble it in more scenarios, such as an out to the Cyberdemon for low-DPS builds with no Dodgemaster. There's also already precedent of equipment granting players the abilities from traits, with the Butcher's Cleaver having inherent Blademaster.

*Change the Gothic Set from giving +4 protection to +50% resistances against everything

There are two glaring problems with the Gothic Set; one, +4 protection on an armor with no energy resistances is not enough of a tradeoff for becoming completely immobilized, and two, the Angelic Set exists, which also grants +4 protection but without any sacrifices to mobility. So not only is the Gothic Set incredibly niche in practicality, it's also completely outclassed by another set that does the same thing without any drawbacks. This change could make it become actually viable in situations where out-DPSing a bunch of baddies is imperative; currently the Archvile does 10 damage to you in the Gothic Set, 8 if the Gothic Armor was P-modded, and high damage rolls from Mancubi and Revenants could do even more, while plasma enemies are of course hardly fazed. With you still taking decent damage, the Gothic Set is just making you a sitting duck that would get promptly slaughtered. With this change, the aforementioned Archvile zap now does only 4 damage, 2 if P-modded, and you'll be often be reducing hits from common plasma enemies down to 1, while Hell Knights and Cacodemons do no more than 3 or 2 (whereas before their max damage rolls would do 7 or 6). There's farther synergy with the Gothic Cerberus Armor, where this set would give you 95% resistance against everything, and so reduce practically any hit down to 1 damage; this might sound too strong, but given you're completely immobile for the Gothic Set (while rapid-fire enemies can still rack up damage quickly in big hordes), and that the Gothic Boots themselves aren't much useful (so carrying them around is often a waste of inventory space), I think this is still reasonably balanced.