on the subject of midgets, i had the idea recently of customizable pilot-stats. you have a given amount of points that can be assigned to different stats, and get more points by progressing; but never enough to upgrade everything. the reasoning behind the examples i thought of is to have stats that don't provide a benefit when fighting in vehicles, but between combat or to survive when your vehicle is destroyed. actual origin was balancing size-customization, though. and i know this won't work with what grummz said earlier in this thread. ideas, though. start with just enough points to be able to max thin frame, short and strong if you want. max points is just enough that you can max everything except for the ones that affect aesthetics without leaving points unspent.
some of those would be
thin frame - blend towards a hitbox and model with less muscle/fat, thinner waist and limbs. reduced weight? 0 is overweight or hulking, maxed is ascetic.
short - blend towards a hitbox and model that is shorter, slightly smaller head. reduced weight? 0 is about 2.5 meters, max is about 1.5.
strong - greater carrying-capacity and can use heavier weapons on-foot. if you have no thin frame and no strong, you're fat.
if you have no thin frame and a lot of strong, you're muscular with the same hitbox-volume. with a thin frame they look about the same.
of course there's other stats to invest in.
mechanic - time to vehicle shield max, health max, reload and cooldown-times out of combat are reduced, flavoured as micromanaging your vehicle while there's no fight to distract you.
scout/aware - increases range/effectiveness of sensors out of combat, same flavour as mechanic or possibly also works outside vehicles and is just a quality of the pilot.
armored - reduces damage to pilot from any single instance by a small numerical(not percentage)amount, and a multiple of that for aoe, flavored as either wearing armor or having it implanted. aoe and lots of weak bullets is the counter to being tiny, and it makes sense for sub-mech-tier armor to work against.
hate of failure/will to live - when a single instance of damage to the pilot would be fatal, hate of failure absorbs an amount of damage from it based on its own value. if hate of failure can absorb more damage than was dealt, the damage is negated and what remains of hate of failure is wasted. if the attack deals more damage thn hate of failure can absorb, it absorbs as much damage as it can and the rest goes through to deal damage, but not necessarily kill the player. hate of failure has one charge that regenerates whenever the player reaches full health. flavored as "even if we have the technology to bring me back, i'm still don't want to die". means pilots can be generally squishy without being easy to one-hit kill, but can still be ohk-d if you deal a lot of damage.
sprinter/runner - faster pilot sprint-speed or run-speed if there is no sprint-system.
jumper - jump higher and take less fall-damage.
skulker - crouch-walk faster and be harder to detect while crouching.
weapon stuff?
