Armour values and what changes with what armour

[HeathenSW]

So I skimmed through values in the game files and it may be interesting. I'll not shower you with the values for each and extra part of the vehicle, but the base values can help you get the picture. For the values not here just remember that tracks/tires are the least armoured part of the vehicle, with engine/turret spot being second in vulnurability.

"13" means unarmoured basically and can be freely damaged by anything, not offering any protection.

A couple of interesting things before we start:
- Heavy weapons platform transfers to tank armour in calculations when you equip it with Steel or Steel Cage armour. Base one and junk one are just a normal vehicle. Now Tank armour type is quite a lot more durable, the last table in this post shows that, so it'll make heavy platforms much more survivable.

- Armoured carrier trailer and Dozer gain "thick" armour when equiped with Cage armour. That means that their armour gets thinner twice slower from HE damage. Shame that it does not change a thing agaist plasma.

- Dozer is about the same armour that Bradley has overall (upgraded of course), so if you tow Heavy platform with it it'll fit a role somewhere in-between Bradley and Abrams in terms of firepower/durability, which is cool.

- Dozer also has a huge blade in front of it that is heavily armoured right of the bat (tank armour resistances) and it covers about 75% of the front direction, so most of the frontal hits will hit it and not the cabin. That makes it pretty good in baiting shots.

- Tecnical and Van have quite some different armour for different modules that's difficult to generalize, but they are overall less armoured than humvees.

- Every Legion vehicle is just steel, nothing more armoured exists. Just the armour values are through the roof with the tanks - they have 410 front armour on the guns and body, and 180 armour from the sides. Their tracks have quite a bit less armour (180 front and 120 sides) and their back is same 87 armour as Abrams here. So DO NOT shoot at their front if you want to kill them fast.

- If the armour has 111 value or more it's not going to be penetrated by standard spider/bradley/light platform gun (25mm AP). It will still be thinned with successful shots, so after the first hit by them it can still pass damage through. This might be good to know.

These are for our main battleforce - Bradley and Abrams (plus Sherman, Founder artillery piece, and Cartel Tank because why not). Abrams is very special with quite the different values for some parts, so it has more than one line here:

Name	Health	Sides armor	Forward armor	Back armor
Bradley	600	90	180	82
Bradley Junk	660	111	223	82
Bradley Carbon	600	130	260	82
Bradley Ceramic	630	100	200	82
Bradley ERA	600	90	180	82
Abrams	800	120	410	87
Abrams Junk	900	132	450	87
Abrams Junk Turret (the tower for the main cannon)	1100	180	499	87
Abrams Carbon	800	155	530	87
Abrams Carbon Turret (the tower for the main cannon)	800	211	620	87
Abrams Ceramic	850	126	430	87
Abrams Ceramic Turret (the tower for the main cannon)	900	180	490	90
Sherman	600	90	200	85
Paladin	450	40	50	40
Panhard (Cartel Tank)	450	40	85	40

And this is for M113 APC and Stryker since they are quite similar and it's hard to see what's better:

Name	Health	Sides armor	Forward armor	Back armor
M113	450	40	50	40
Stryker	450	50	82	40
M113 Junk	500	40	59	40
Stryker Junk	500	59	100	40
M113 Carbon	450	59	82	40
Stryker Carbon	450	82	120	50
M113 Ceramic	480	40	59	40
Stryker Ceramic	475	55	94	50

"Battlewagon" - dozer and passenger carrier. While dozer is the only "tank" class vehicle that Movement has, the carrier is a vehicle. I just usually use them in this combo, so it fits to see how it is armoured in one place.

For dozer it's also important to remember that it has unchanging blade in front of it that will not update it's armour with whatever you install on the cabin, so most of these numbers are for cabin. Plus that blade has tank base armour, not vehicle one, so it's pretty resistant to everything. Honestly dozer can be written as always having 210 forward tank armour due to that, but still - we are upgrading the everything else and not the blade with armour upgrades.

Name	Health	Sides armor	Forward armor	Back armor
Dozer Tracks/Blade	300	30	210	20
Dozer	450	25	20	25
Dozer Junk	500	40	40	40
Dozer Steel	660	111	223	85
Dozer Steel Cage	660	111	223	85
Armored carrier trailer	450	82	82	82
Armored carrier trailer Junk	500	100	100	100
Armored carrier trailer Steel	660	223	223	223
Armored carrier trailer Steel Cage	660	223	223	223

Light vehicles, support and platforms:

Name	Health	Sides armor	Forward armor	Back armor
Humvee	350	25	50	25
Humvee (engine)	350	25	40	25
Humvee Junk	400	25	50	25
Humvee Steel	430	40	50	25
Humvee Cartel	450	40	50	40
Humvee Cartel (engine)	450	40	50	25
Technical	200	13	13	13
Technical Junk	250/350 (engine/back half)	13/25	40	25
Technical Steel	350	40	40	13
Van	200	13	13	13
Van Junk	250/350 (engine/back half)	13/25	40	25
Van Steel	350	40	40	40
Truck	200	13	13	13
Truck Cartel	400	40	50	25
Main Tractor	200	13	13	13
Main Tractor Junk	250	25	25	25
Main Tractor Steel	430	50	82	40
Main Tractor Steel Cage	430	50	82	40
Light weapon platform	350	40	50	30
Light weapon platform Junk	400	40	50	30
Heavy weapon platform	600	90	180	82
Heavy weapon platform Junk	660	111	223	82
Heavy weapon platform Steel	720	170	235	87
Heavy weapon platform Steel Cage	720	170	235	87

Very important to understand that different armours have different resists. So for vehicles (everything we can use except Abrams at all points, Dozer and Heavy platform when equipped with steel and steel cage) it's like this:

Name	Ap resist	Cumulative resist	Plasma resist
Base/cartel/junk	0.69	1.5	0.69
Carbon	0.69	1.5	0.47
Ceramic	0.69	3.99	4.1
Steel Cage	0.69	3.39	2.9
ERA	0.69	6.24	2.9

Of note is that there exists "thick" ceramic and ERA armour that are only applied to Bradleys forward armour. But it seems bugged, since Thick ceramic has not 3.99 cumulative resist but 3.39, while thick ERA has cumulative resist (like TOWs and such) of 3.99, while not thick armour has it of 6.24.
Devs corrected this assumption of mine and this is intended, to work better with added thickness.

For tanks it's a bit different. Seems like ERA in equations exists for Integrator tanks only:

Name	Ap resist	Cumulative resist	Plasma resist
Base/junk	1	1.5	1
Carbon	1	1.5	0.77
Ceramic	1	3.39	4.1
Steel Cage	1	3.39	2.9
ERA	1	1.9	1.9

SO in total (partialy a copy-paste from my own post in different thread):

Carbon is TERRIBLE against plasma, it's around the same levels as not having any armour upgrade at all against it. Take that base Styker has front armour of 82 - if we add Carbon armor there it'll become 120, but if we shoot at it with plasma it'll register as being only 56 (120 front armour value*0.47 plasma resist modifier), due to it being weak to plasma. So instead of mitigation 120 damage form a plasma shot it will only mitigate puny 56 (56.4 to be precise). While if Stryker had base armour it'd mitigate 56.58.

That also mean that any vehicle that has Carbon armour will be lit up in an instant by Legion basically, since their health can't withstand the damage of Legion tank - it hits for 750 plasma damage plus 110 explosive damage in a splash around the point of impact. 56 armour means that it'll hit for 694 damage instead and said Stryker with carbon armour has only 450 HP, thus getting one-shotted.

In comparison if that Stryker had Ceramic armour it'd mitigate up to 385 damage (94 front armour value*4.1 plasma resist modifier), letting only 365 damage to actualy hurt Stryker HP. And since Ceramic health is 475 it'll leave Stryker barely alive, but alive.

Mind that it applies for "vehicles" that have carbon. Abrams is not a "vehicle" - it's a "tank" in terms of armour, so carbon can still be counted as upgrade over junk and base armour for it.

Carbon would not be that bad if we have fought more HE equiped enemies (Cartel, cough-cough), but we'll mostly be fighting against plasma, so it's not that great.

Junk armour is actually not bad, it's better than the default one for every vehicle except fast moving ones, since it tanks the movement speed pretty hard.

And Ceramics/ERA are the best in slot.

Thanks for corrections:
Ook - Dispenser of Liber-Tea
dieman

More structured, with info about how speed changes, the data on legion/integrators and damage thresholds:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3192067219

[HeathenSW]

Publicado originalmente por Falcon_BR:

Publicado originalmente por HeathenSW:

Translated all of this to guide format, plus added legion/integrator for the sake of it and how armour changes speed/fuel consumption.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3192067219

Your guide just ignored my considerations on this topic.

It is a lie that carbon decrease protection vs plasma, I also thought it did, but the devs corrected me, the math is on this topic.
You also forgot the damage tressholds, placing cardon on bradley looks a small increment, but it is enough to make it imune to 25mm cannons the main weapon of spiders and a huge boost for the early missions and vs cartel and vega vs light vehicles and plataforms.

In the opening post of this topic I didn't correct my assumptions, but in the guide I state "Carbon is realy not good against plasma, it's around the same levels as not having any armour upgrade at all against it." and then explained how the calculations are going on. I do not think that it is that bad of a protection anymore, yes.

Regarding thresholds yeah, I guess it's important information. It rarely came into my playthroughs, mostly with 20mm that didn't target tanks and small caliber assault rifles doing the same. Spiders are rarely alone and it's even more rare to find yourself in a situation
with a single carbon stryker facing against a single spider with only 25mm cannons.

Will add the thresholds as well then.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Publicado originalmente por HeathenSW:

Regarding thresholds yeah, I guess it's important information. It rarely came into my playthroughs, mostly with 20mm that didn't target tanks and small caliber assault rifles doing the same. Spiders are rarely alone and it's even more rare to find yourself in a situation
with a single carbon stryker facing against a single spider with only 25mm cannons.

Will add the thresholds as well then.

This is my thoughts as well, even if a unit is 'technically' immune to another unit, it's rare they'll face each other with no support.
A bradley immune to 25mm is honestly as useful as a bradley vulnerable to 25mm as the idea is to not be hit in the first place, let the Abrams deal with that. And while you're safe and confident you're immune to 25mm, that ATGM spider or RPG terminator nails your bradley in the side.

[REhorror]

All interesting read, so basically the gist is that you should carbon for all THEN ceramic as you can.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Publicado originalmente por REhorror:

All interesting read, so basically the gist is that you should carbon for all THEN ceramic as you can.

I mean you won't ever really get the chance to carbon-armour much at all, there's usually just one in store for a particular vehicle type.
Armor up everything if possible, carbon doesn't 'reduce' plasma armor but it doesn't add any either. But try to get ceramic kits as much as possible.

[REhorror]

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

Publicado originalmente por REhorror:

All interesting read, so basically the gist is that you should carbon for all THEN ceramic as you can.

I mean you won't ever really get the chance to carbon-armour much at all, there's usually just one in store for a particular vehicle type.
Armor up everything if possible, carbon doesn't 'reduce' plasma armor but it doesn't add any either. But try to get ceramic kits as much as possible.

OK, so everything on junk armor then.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Publicado originalmente por REhorror:

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

I mean you won't ever really get the chance to carbon-armour much at all, there's usually just one in store for a particular vehicle type.
Armor up everything if possible, carbon doesn't 'reduce' plasma armor but it doesn't add any either. But try to get ceramic kits as much as possible.

OK, so everything on junk armor then.

Junk armor is surprisingly good, it's cheap, provides protection, and the downsides don't matter much at all.

[REhorror]

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

Publicado originalmente por REhorror:

OK, so everything on junk armor then.

Junk armor is surprisingly good, it's cheap, provides protection, and the downsides don't matter much at all.

It's slow, and speed is how you literally go Sonic and dodge shot in this game.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Publicado originalmente por REhorror:

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

Junk armor is surprisingly good, it's cheap, provides protection, and the downsides don't matter much at all.

It's slow, and speed is how you literally go Sonic and dodge shot in this game.

Right, but at that point ANY armor is going to slow them down enough to make 'dodging' more difficult.

And some stuff like platforms, tanks, etc are never going to be particularly mobile.

[HeathenSW]

Honestly the main problem to me during gameplay was always the possibility of being one-shotted. Even with default armour you will not be oneshotted by anything other then plasma (well, besides ATGM, but it can be countered with smoke at least, since it's so slow) since Cartel does not have that heavy guns. Thus Heavy plasma became my nemesis - if it hits, you will be oneshotted most of the times (on hard/realistic difficulty at least), or so heavily damaged that you will not finish repairs in time before next shot. Sure you can smoke and repair, but ATGM seem to deviate from smoke much more reliably than plasma. And this is why I still am more fond of Ceramics than I am of Carbon.

Abrams with Carbon is a pretty viable choice. It will not be oneshotted even with default armour and Carbon for it has not 0.47 modifier against plasma as it would have for vehicles, but 0.77, so it's about Junk armour levels of protection against plasma, while buffing other types hugely. Still, Ceramics Abrams eats plasma shots for breakfast and since the main enemy of Abrams is Legion tank - it seems quite useful. In the end I always have 1-2 Carbon Abrams and 1 Ceramics and it feels nice.

I do not have any Carbon Bradley in the end tho. Explosive damage is plentiful and dangerous so ERA works best and plasma is still a dangerous thing, so Ceramics. 4 ERA Bradleys and 2 Ceramics ones felt real nice to have. Sure with Carbon it can't be penetrated by some shots, but it will be thinned by them to a point where it can be penetrated. I'd rather have more resistance to more dangerous types of weapons.

[Falcon_BR]

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

Publicado originalmente por HeathenSW:

Regarding thresholds yeah, I guess it's important information. It rarely came into my playthroughs, mostly with 20mm that didn't target tanks and small caliber assault rifles doing the same. Spiders are rarely alone and it's even more rare to find yourself in a situation
with a single carbon stryker facing against a single spider with only 25mm cannons.

Will add the thresholds as well then.

This is my thoughts as well, even if a unit is 'technically' immune to another unit, it's rare they'll face each other with no support.
A bradley immune to 25mm is honestly as useful as a bradley vulnerable to 25mm as the idea is to not be hit in the first place, let the Abrams deal with that. And while you're safe and confident you're immune to 25mm, that ATGM spider or RPG terminator nails your bradley in the side.

On normal and medium you will face only 2 legion tanks until you reach oklahoma.
Your main legion enemies are spiders and transports, both with 25 mm.
There are around 3 ATGM spiders until oklahoma.
So, against 90% of the enemies you are going to face in 50% of the game are using 25mm a few use atgm and there are a small force of cartel tanks that can damage your carbon bradley.
You can also ravage enemy light vehicles with a carbon striker with light plasma and ignore .50 attacks.
You are saying that the problem with carbon is that it doesn't increase armor vs plasma, well, I can say that the problem with ceramics is that it doesn't increase armor vs everything that is not plasma!
If you want something that is good vs everything you just go junk, each armor has his its use against the enemy you are facing.
I am in the end game still using my carbon striker/ with plasma because I got it upgrade at taos, before santa fe, and it is my infantry support light vehicle killer since them, no point of using a striker or a 20mm bradley vs legion tanks, for that my carbon bradley has an ATGM and stay out of reach of legion tanks, For legion tanks my abrams has ceramic armor, heavy plasma and recoiless plasma, we are playing a mix army game, every unit have his role, and trying to make it good vs everything is not optimal for higher dificulties.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Publicado originalmente por Falcon_BR:

On normal and medium you will face only 2 legion tanks until you reach oklahoma.
Your main legion enemies are spiders and transports, both with 25 mm.
There are around 3 ATGM spiders until oklahoma.
So, against 90% of the enemies you are going to face in 50% of the game are using 25mm a few use atgm and there are a small force of cartel tanks that can damage your carbon bradley.
You can also ravage enemy light vehicles with a carbon striker with light plasma and ignore .50 attacks.
You are saying that the problem with carbon is that it doesn't increase armor vs plasma, well, I can say that the problem with ceramics is that it doesn't increase armor vs everything that is not plasma!
If you want something that is good vs everything you just go junk, each armor has his its use against the enemy you are facing.
I am in the end game still using my carbon striker/ with plasma because I got it upgrade at taos, before santa fe, and it is my infantry support light vehicle killer since them, no point of using a striker or a 20mm bradley vs legion tanks, for that my carbon bradley has an ATGM and stay out of reach of legion tanks, For legion tanks my abrams has ceramic armor, heavy plasma and recoiless plasma, we are playing a mix army game, every unit have his role, and trying to make it good vs everything is not optimal for higher dificulties.

The issue is that spiders are never really too big of a threat, they're so easy to 1 hit KO with ATGM or plasma recoilless.

But when even a single tank shows up, it's showtime, it's going to cause some havok.

Also, there's like at least 4 or so tanks in Santa Fe alone, with a few more in Fort Worth, and a few sprinkled between.

Ceramic increases armor against basically everything, especially plasma.

[Falcon_BR]

Publicado originalmente por ThatZenoGuy:

Publicado originalmente por Falcon_BR:

On normal and medium you will face only 2 legion tanks until you reach oklahoma.
Your main legion enemies are spiders and transports, both with 25 mm.
There are around 3 ATGM spiders until oklahoma.
So, against 90% of the enemies you are going to face in 50% of the game are using 25mm a few use atgm and there are a small force of cartel tanks that can damage your carbon bradley.
You can also ravage enemy light vehicles with a carbon striker with light plasma and ignore .50 attacks.
You are saying that the problem with carbon is that it doesn't increase armor vs plasma, well, I can say that the problem with ceramics is that it doesn't increase armor vs everything that is not plasma!
If you want something that is good vs everything you just go junk, each armor has his its use against the enemy you are facing.
I am in the end game still using my carbon striker/ with plasma because I got it upgrade at taos, before santa fe, and it is my infantry support light vehicle killer since them, no point of using a striker or a 20mm bradley vs legion tanks, for that my carbon bradley has an ATGM and stay out of reach of legion tanks, For legion tanks my abrams has ceramic armor, heavy plasma and recoiless plasma, we are playing a mix army game, every unit have his role, and trying to make it good vs everything is not optimal for higher dificulties.

The issue is that spiders are never really too big of a threat, they're so easy to 1 hit KO with ATGM or plasma recoilless.

But when even a single tank shows up, it's showtime, it's going to cause some havok.

Also, there's like at least 4 or so tanks in Santa Fe alone, with a few more in Fort Worth, and a few sprinkled between.

Ceramic increases armor against basically everything, especially plasma.

The ceramic armor increase is marginal, it doesn't reach any threshold to make bradleys imune to his own weapon, like carbon does, for damage models, ceramic only increase survivalist against plasma.

And you can say you can ATGM everything into oblivion in this game, But it is not cost effective, I normally use RPG and founders infantry squads in ambush stance to kill advancing spiders. But I will not deny that I use ATGM all the time.

The most interesting party I discovered is that cartel tanks AP has 500 armor penetration, this means they can't damage abrams with carbon, but can damage abrams with everything else.

The most important feature of carbon is making you imune to several weapons you are going to face 50% of the game, them you can just sell your carbon vehicles and get new ones with ceramic armor.

[ThatZenoGuy]

It doesn't really have to be a threshold, ceramic adds 'enough', and that's all it needs to do.

By all means slap carbon onto everything you can because it has no serious downsides (no armor does really...It's armor), but ceramic is going to save your ass from Tanks.

[dieman]

Publicado originalmente por HeathenSW:

"Battlewagon" - dozer and passenger carrier:

Name	Health	Sides armor	Forward armor	Back armor
Dozer	450	25	13	25
Dozer Junk	500	40	25	40
Dozer Steel	660	111	223	85
Dozer Steel Cage	660	111	223	85
Armored carrier trailer	450	82	82	82
Armored carrier trailer Junk	500	100	100	100
Armored carrier trailer Steel	660	223	223	223
Armored carrier trailer Steel Cage	660	223	223	223

For the Dozer, it would be more correct to show front armor values for the blade and engine, rather than the cabin, because the cabin is only 25% of the surface at the front.

[dieman]

Publicado originalmente por HeathenSW:

Of note is that there exists "thick" ceramic and ERA armour that are only applied to Bradleys forward armour. But it seems bugged, since thick ceramic has not 3.99 cumulative resist but 3.39, while thick ERA has cumulative resist (like TOWs and such) of 3.99, while not thick armour has it of 6.24.

There is no bug here. The coefficients were selected taking into account the increased thickness.