Armour Mechanics Explained

[Shidan]

As this is a pretty common question, I'm making this post to explain it. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them in the comments below.

Some people have found this thread to be much easier to understand regarding efficiency and resistance. If you have troubles understanding parts of this post, it may be helpful to give it a read too. :)

Coverage

Coverage is simply the chance that armour will protect against a hit to that limb. So a 100% chest coverage will apply its resistances on every hit to the chest. While a 50% coverage will only do it half the time.

In the case of pieces with overlapping coverage, it will hit them each separately in order of: Head, Armour, Pants, Shirt, and then Boots. (E.G. You have a 90% coverage pants, and a 40% coverage boots. It will roll for protection on the pants first to see if it protects, then pass any remaining damage onto the boots and roll for if they protect. This means that unless you have a piece with 100% coverage all on its own, there is always at least a slight chance for a hit to get through unmitigated.)

Cut and Blunt Resistance

The number shown is the percentage of damage negated by the armour. So an armour with 75% cut resistance will negate 75% of the cut damage received, assuming it was a body part the armour protects and its coverage allowed it to apply its resistances.

Harpoon Resistance

This is simply the amount of damage points negated when hit by a harpoon or crossbow on a body part this armour covers. Normal coverage rules still apply.

Cut Resistance Efficiency

This is where things get a little more complicated. You may notice some armours have a (60% Efficiency) or similar value on them, under the cut resistance. This the percentage of resisted cut damage that is actually nullified, rather than being converted into blunt damage and instantly applied (ignoring armour damage resistance). If the armour does not display this value, that means it has 100% efficiency.

Let's say you get hit for 100 cut damage and have an armour with 75% resistance and 40% efficiency, the armour negates 75 damage, sending on the remaining 25 to be applied to any other armour you have. But due to the efficiency, 45 points of the resisted 75 will be converted to blunt and instantly applied (ignoring any other armour) to your body part. This means that if you had no other armour you took a total of 70 damage, 25 cut and 45 blunt.

As you can see, that makes efficiency a very important value to consider, at least on the important body parts like the chest and head.

Order of Calculations

As mentioned before, this is the order it goes through the damage calculations in the case of overlapping coverage areas. It determines this based on the slot the items use. It will run through them in order of: Head, Armour, Pants, Shirt, and then Boots.

As the converted damage from efficiency ignores further layers of armour, it is very important to remember this. Having a low efficiency armour on one of the parts hit earlier can drastically increase the amount of damage you take. While having high efficiency can nearly entirely nullify damage depending on the specific armours and qualities you're wearing.

At the very least, one should probably aim for high efficiency on the Chest and Head slots. As they cover the critical areas.

Penalties and Bonuses

Most armours have penalties to certain skills. These are shown a 0.67x or something similar. This means that skill will only function at that percentage of your skill level. So a 50 skill would only function at 67% (33.5) using the previous number as an example.

While a couple of the penalties do not stack, and only use the worst penalty of that type across your armour, moost do in fact stack. Further reducing said skill by the amount shown on the next piece. This can lead to very high penalties if you pick your armours carelessly.

Armour Penetration

Armour Penetration is a stat found on certain kinds of weapons. It reduces or increases the effectiveness of armour when that weapon is used.

Positive Armour Penetration is fairly straightforward, it decreases the effectiveness of armour. It subtracts the penetration value from the resistance value of the armour before doing the damage calculations above.
(E.G. A weapon with +20% penetration hits an armour with 50% resistance, the resistance value will be reduced to 40%, and then normal damage calculations will apply)

Negative Armour penetration as seen on weapons like Katanas actually INCREASES the effectiveness of armour. Instead of subtracting the Armour Penetration percentage, it adds it to the resistance value.
(E.G. A weapon with -25% penetration hits an armour with 60% resistance, it will increase the resistance to 75%, before continuing normal damage calculations)

[Mr. Bear]

Very interesting, so a piece of armor with low % STUN is desirable, I was thinking it was the opposite.

Thanks for making this thread regarding this.

[Mystic Referee]

The thing about order of calculations made me want to punch the wall so hard that my brothers PC comes out of sleep mode.

[Stormbrooke]

Shidan - honorable scribe of Kenshi

I actually thought why isn't there a sticky on this yesterday - likewise something like this should be added to the tutorial or tool tip in game. So confusing for new players.

[wordwaster]

wow. stun % REALLY needs to be explained in game. i always thought that it meant protection from being staggered and that therefore higher was better.

there is difference in damage you take by the order that you get dressed? um. okay? really? that's...weird. wouldn't it make more sense to apply it in a certain order? why should an undershirt take damage before the armor i am wearing on top of it?

[Fazzan]

Originally posted by wordwaster:

wow. stun % REALLY needs to be explained in game. i always thought that it meant protection from being staggered and that therefore higher was better.

there is difference in damage you take by the order that you get dressed? um. okay? really? that's...weird. wouldn't it make more sense to apply it in a certain order? why should an undershirt take damage before the armor i am wearing on top of it?

I agree, it makes no sense. This needs to change. A fixed order is needed.

[Shidan]

I completely agree, a fixed order would be ideal. The current system makes no sense.

I assume it is a relic from way back before they added the Stun%. Probably assigns a number to each armour when you put it on or something, then when you get hit it just runs through in order. Wouldn't have mattered before the Stun%.

[Tarsis]

Thank you oh scribe. Now I shall go unequip all of my warriors and leave them naked because equip orders make me punch kittens.

[Endarire]

It would greatly help if the order of checked items was most beneficial to the player, NOT the equip order.

And Stun % seems like bad wording. What's a better term for it?

[Grimzokk]

"Okran approves this thread"

Thank you very much for this calrification ! I was always wondering why some guys getting much more dmg than others while having the same armor.

This will be fun re-equipping all my dudes and dudettes ... good that i play the more or less vanilla version of this game without a 200+ squadsize mod :D

Oh and the Difference between Blunt and Cut Damage is that:

Cut = bandages can be applied for quicker recovering
Blunt = no bandages

correct ?

[yippeekiay]

Dammit, only just saw this thread due to recent comments. Going to have to re-equip everyone.

Hope the way armour works is better described in future for new players. I'm not new but have seemingly fallen foul of it.

[Shidan]

Originally posted by Grimzokk:

Oh and the Difference between Blunt and Cut Damage is that:

Cut = bandages can be applied for quicker recovering
Blunt = no bandages

correct ?

Close.

Cut = Requires bandaging to heal, but will heal fairly quickly (especially if in bed).
Blunt = Cannot be bandaged, but will heal automatically at a slow rate.

This actually means there is some advantage to taking more blunt damage. As if you get taken down, the blunt damage will heal automatically, making it much more likely you will survive the encounter if nobody can medic you.

[yippeekiay]

ooh...never thought of that. Ok, much happier now, just got to check any penalties as I can now basically equip other stuff if penalties aren't accumulated as I previously thought ;o)

[amaoto]

I have a question regarding the order of calculations (or Layering multiple armor I guess?).

Originally posted by Shidan:

This means that if you put on your pants, and then your boots, the resistance of the pants will be applied before the resistance of the boots. And putting on the boots first would result in the opposite scenario.

Since the boots' coverage doesn't go any higher than 50% does this mean that if I proc that 50% chance, does the damage go [damage > boots > resisted damage > pants > final damage] or just the boots only?

[Shidan]

Yes, it would calculate through ALL the layers, not just one. :)

It would send the damage through boots first (assuming you equipped them first), subtracting damage based on the resistance of them. Then pass the remaining damage on to the next armour piece, subtract damage based on its resistance, and then pass on what is left to the next piece, and so on.

After it has gone through all applicable pieces, it would then apply the damage to the body part.

[someone]

The order thing was fixed a while ago. Seems it wasn't added to the changelog.