Hi,
I thought it would be nice to have a topic on armor and effects related to it.
And thanks to Yokes for his great worksheet explaining the various effects that apply on armor and correcting my initial misinterpretations or mistakes.
How armor works
The way I understood it and experimented it, it subtracts damage for each bullet you throw at it.
Example:
sniper shot: 1 bullet for 130 damage vs 20 armor = 110 damage done
assault: burst of 6 bullets for 30 damage each vs 20 armor = 10 damage per bullet = 60 damage done
Sniper perk (level 6):
The sniper tree has a perk (level 6) that removes armor on a disabled part. A Bug however limits that to the first shot you take in a mission (choose carefully).
Berserker perk (level 2):
Havenât tried it yet âŚ
Acid:
Thanks to Yokes for clearing that out.
Behind the scenes, acid counts the number of turns that it lasts (so the â5â you see on a pistol you can use means that it will apply acid during 5 turns). Acid does 10 damage per turn to armor on each part of the body that is affected. Once the armor is gone it removes 10 damage from your HP (per body part).
So beware of acid worms that will apply it to 5/6 of your body parts !!!
Armor shredding:
Some weapons have a âshredâ effect enabling them to remove armor. PP Hellcannon, NJ Deceptor, grenades, âŚ
This means that you can first shoot with the armor shredding weapon to remove armor from the body and then have your technician be useful for once.
Armor piercing:
Some weapons have a âpiercingâ effect that enables them to go through armor like butter. NJ Raven, Syn Athena, Syn Hera.
The piercing number is the amount of armor that is ignored. The only use I found for them is the Synedrion ones that can apply paralysis on the target while staying at range.
Piercing shouldnât shred armour, at least the Hera and Neurazer didnât the last I used them⌠They do as said on the tin: they pierce. Heraâs 10 damage, 20 piercing vs 32 armour should do 0 damage and 0 paralysis (unless it has changed with the patch; paralysis only applies if the armour is pierced and actual damage done).
The Sniper Perk Weak Spot is currently bugged. It works only for the very first shot taken by the character in question in a mission. If they disable a body part with that shot all of its armour is shredded as said and anyone can make use of that as a follow up. If their first shot doesnât disable a body part the skill is wasted.
Iâll have to take a look again to piercing then, because if thatâs the case those weapons are useless. You have cheaper versions that do more damage. I think I remember seeing a white text showing that armor had been removed (for the hit part specifically). Maybe youâre simply mistaking for the total armor that the guy has.
It seems like a bug if it doesnât work this way. Who would pay twice the material for Athena (30 damage 60 piercing), when you can build a Pythagoras (110 damage). For the paralysis ?
Probably. Paralysis is actually exceptionally powerful (and the only way to reasonably acquire genetic material). General rule of thumb seems to be: divide the unitâs (max) HP by 10 (to represent their strength). If youâve done 25% of that value in paralysis they lose 1 AP. Any paralysis applied after that while they suffer from paralysis saps further AP on its own. If you reach 50% they lose 2 AP on their turn. 75% - 3 AP, 100% - 4 AP: theyâre Paralysed.
A direct example would be a 280 HP Triton. At 7 Paralysis theyâll lose that 1 AP. At 14 theyâll have 2 AP. At 21 they lose 3 AP. At 28 theyâre paralysed and have 0 AP. They lose 1 point of Paralysis a turn so you want to generally get that kind of target into the low 30s of paralysis if you plan on taking a turn or two to clean up.
12 Paralysis would really help to lock down most any critter you want to take home and 60 pierce would mean you donât even need to shred them first.
The Hera definitely needs to pack more of a punch though, in terms of paralysis. Even just a one point increase would make it almost worth using.
We should separate two effects:
Armour Shredding and Armour Piercing.
The first one should be permanent and âattachedâ to the (enemy) unit. So if you have a direct hit with your Fury-2, you can expect that enemy armour is gone for next rifle round from assault.
The latter, is a weapon specific, so if you have 10 Armour Piercing ammunition in your sniper rifle, you ignore 10 Armour for this particular shot. if you decide to take a pistol shot with the same unit, the 10 Armour is back! as it was only âignoredâ not âremovedâ.
For Neurazer it makes perfect sense, as blades can penetrate (some) bulletproof materials, as they are working on a different impact mechanism.
I really would like to see some NJ advanced AMR class weapon with armour shredding.
Also⌠I would really like to see the return of different types of ammo (like in the first UFO, AFAIR). so you could load up your rifle with AP, HE or HP ammo
I saw no weapon with âshreddingâ so assumed âpiercingâ was that.
Yesterday I was using a NJ sniper rifle with piercing and thought that it had removed armor from my targetâs arm (Iâll have to check this evening if I just imagined seeing the white text â-32 armorâ). If it is just an armor penetration, then itâs better to stick to Cyclops which ditches much more damage even with armor mitigation.
This is not 5 damage. It means that acid will work 5 times, doing 10 damage each time, first to armor then to health, depends which and how many body parts was affected.
Really, because I had a acid worm explode next to one of my soldiers and it seemed to me like it was working the same way as poison. A slowly decreasing number.
I havenât seen all weapons yet, was doing all combat until I decided that ⌠âwinâ command was acceptable. Hadnât even looked at my own weapons, damned.
Acid is most complicated form of damage, but quite effective against armor for armored enemies. And for those non armored it can be really deadly.
Acid worm explosion has 10 blast damage (mostly not seen because armor always stop it) + 5 acid. This means that each body part which was in blast radius will take damage 5 times for 10 damage.
Status on soldier will show number_of_affected_body_parts * this value. Soldiers have 6 body parts. So status on soldier can be between 5 and 30. Status just after attack is bugged and will always(?) show 30. But in next turn it shows proper value.
Let say that acidworm explosion has hit 5 body parts (all except one arm), and that our soldier has 19 armor on head and legs and 21 on torso and arms. So status just after explosion should show value of 25 (because of bug it will be 30). Then on start of next your turn it will affect soldier.
Turn 1
50 armor damage.
20 acid status
All affected body parts will receive 10 damage to armor. Head and legs will now have 9, torso and arm will have 11.
Turn 2
47 armor damage.
15 acid status
Head and legs have armor reduced to 0, torso and arm to 1.
Turn 3
30 HP damage
2 armor damage
10 acid status
Head and legs receive 10 damage each and it sums up for main HP damage. Torso and arm have armor reduced to 0.
Turn 4
50 HP damage
5 acid status
All affected body parts receive 10 damage summing up to 50 damage to main HP.
Turn 5
50 HP damage
0 acid status
All affected body parts receive 10 damage summing up to 50 damage to main HP.
Let also assume that our soldier still had starting 200 HP and all his body parts were not damaged so head and arms had 80 HP, legs 100 HP and torso 120 HP. So he will now have only 70 main HP and 50 on head, 60 on arm, 70 on legs and 100 on torso.
I have updated table with info regarding paralyzis. I didnât knew that you have to deal at least 1 point of damage for paralyze effect to work. My attacks always did some damage thus I didnât noticed that restriction. Also added column if specific attack type affects equipment.
Holy fâck, thatâs probably the best explanation I have seen for armour and HP damage. And I say probably because Iâm reading this during dinner break at work and canât really study it. But arriving home Iâll give it a much better look
I was going to say that your Stun info is wrong but itâs not, is it? Impact (stun) is different than the stun from Bash, it seems. You need to do twice the targetâs Strength in Impact (after armor, no less) to stun but a Bash doesnât need to come close to that to stun.
Iâm not sure if it is correct. It is based on observations, not on the code. I might misjudge something.
I think that Bash is bugged. It stuns everything regardless of damage or strength or hit points of the target (except queen which I suppose is immune to stun effect).
I havenât seen all weapons yet, was doing all combat until I decided that ⌠âwinâ command was acceptable. Hadnât even looked at my own weapons, damned.