I’m a bit confused as to how armor works in the game. It seems to be indicated using the shield icon and enemies can have an overall number of shields and when zooming in it appears that specific body parts can also have varying number of shields.
But what do they actually mean? When I have a non armor piercing weapon and fire at an enemy with 1 shield, does it do no damage? Or is the damage reduced in some random/predetermined way?
Do regular shots take away the armor as well? Or is it only anything with armor shredding stats?
Firstly, each body part has its own armour value which you can see in free-aim mode. The number of shields next to the health bar above the enemy is an indication of its average armour count.
When a shot hits a body part, each point of armour reduces the damage by 1. So, firing the assault rifle which is 3 damage per shot into a body part with 2 armour would only do 1 damage per shot. 3 or more armour and you would do no damage.
Weapons with armour piercing have ranks. The Sniper has armour piercing rank 1, which means his shots ignore 1 armour.
That is actually surprisingly straightforward. Is there any indication of how this works in the game? Not that I mind asking around on the forums every now and then.
Amour works pretty much the same way in XCOM 2 (only it’s a single armour value for the entire enemy, not individual body part).
This is why the ability to free-aim and body part targeting are so important. You really want to aim for the less armoured parts if you don’t have a way to remove/negate the armour.
From memory (so I might be wrong), the first XCOM just adding armour to your health pool (and friendly troops losing those additional hitpoints to damage were not considered wounded).
XCOM 2 introduced the damage reduction armour system, though the armour system from XCOM 1 may still have been present. ( I haven’t played it in a while).
Also, first XCOM has Damage Reduction but only for one unit - Sectopod had 50% Damage Reduction(if I remember it right). A mechanic that was underused in vanilla but lately used in Long War as one of the basic mechanics.
If memory serves, orignal X-com game used a Casino damage roller, which meant each shot did anywhere from 0-200% listed damage. That damage was subtracted from your armor, and any remaining damage into your HP pool. You hit 0 HP, and you get the infamous “Auhgh” we all grew to loathe.
TFTD tweaked the damage scale to 50-150%, so armor was more consistent.
No clue how the game calculated armor degradation and whether or not the wound was determined to be a wound.
OpenXcom plug here, but they give the possibility of using TFTD damage scale for the original game, fix lots of bugs and engine limitations, and a whole plethora of additions and toggable tweaks. Best part? The games run on native platforms without any kind of Dos-box or other emulation. Just remember though you need the native X-com files, so shell out a few bucks
The OGs used the same style as PP in regards to damage dealt but the OGs didn’t have actual armor shredding or piercing mechanics. The armor value was subtracted from damage dealt and anything equal to or less than zero meant the shot did no damage. If the target took damage then the armor would also be damaged (iirc something like 10% of damage dealt was subtracted from the armor, should be listed on the UFOpaedia site if you want to confirm exact values).
This is why in the OG UFO a 60hp soldier had an ~43% chance to take zero damage from a Heavy Plasma and an ~46% chance to straight up die. Don’t forget that in UFO damage was 0-200% of the listed value while explosives were 50-150%. TFTD changed all damage to 50-150% and then rebalanced the weapons (generally resulting in a higher listed damage but lower max damage). I forget how Apocalypse did its damage calculation compared to the listed damage but I’m pretty sure armor itself worked in the same manner (damage-armor=damage dealt).
Yes, OpenXcom is great. The only thing I don’t like is the AI recreation. I like the original AI more. Why? The original AI was to some degree random and not very offensive. Therefore the alien behavior felt really strange and “alien”. In subsequent X-Com type games the alien behavior was (for my taste) too tactical and “human”. This is one of the many reasons and details why I adore the original X-Com and especially TFTD, while literally hating the new XCOMs (for a lot of reasons)…
