What does "Armor" do?

[Arts Of The Ging]

[breadman]

nothing, it might as well not be there

[Arts Of The Ging]

Originally posted by breadman:

nothing, it might as well not be there

Is it a bug?

[NightmareGats]

In this game, nearly nothing.

[_GoldSrc_]

Practically nothing, you can die and still have 90+ armor lol.

[set+Black_Cat1]

It's not a bug, just a bad choice by the developers; armor damage absorption should be at least 50% to be useful, they set it at 20%

[Vathek1]

Armour ostensibly only reduces damage by around 30% in singleplayer--in the DoomConfig.cfg file inside the base folder, there's a variable seta g_armorProtection which is set to 0.3. Presumably, the seta g_armorProtectionMP variable which has a value of 0.6 applies to multiplayer, and indicates that armour absorbs 60% of damage.

I've tried tweaking that value to 0.75, and even 1.0, but I've noticed no difference whatsoever in the amount of damage which armour absorbs. It may be that I'd need to start a new game for the changes in that config file to take effect, but at this this point, I just shrug my shoulders and accept that Doomguy's armour is intended to serve as a compact envirosuit first (as it contains its own air supply), with ballistic protection being a distant second.

Lorewise, that sort of makes sense. Only the Marines at the UAC base are walking around strapped, and their job is mostly to handle unruly civilian employees and maybe help contain escaped specimens from Delta. Getting into gunfights with armed opposition wasn't part of their mission, and the UAC, like most corporations, likes to squeeze out every last bit of profit, so the poor Marines ended up with armour that will allow them to operate outside of pressurized habitats for short periods of time, but which won't stop more than the occasional pistol round or two.

In terms of gameplay, armour pickups are ludicrously common in Doom 3 compared to every other Doom game. If you wanted to make armour actually worthwhile for damage reduction, you'd need to increase enemy damage to compensate for how common armour pickups are, and perhaps even decrease the value of armour pickups, with shards giving 1 point of armour and actual suits giving, say, 25.

[set+Black_Cat1]

Originally posted by Vathek1:

Armour ostensibly only reduces damage by around 30% in singleplayer--in the DoomConfig.cfg file inside the base folder, there's a variable seta g_armorProtection which is set to 0.3. Presumably, the seta g_armorProtectionMP variable which has a value of 0.6 applies to multiplayer, and indicates that armour absorbs 60% of damage.

I've tried tweaking that value to 0.75, and even 1.0, but I've noticed no difference whatsoever in the amount of damage which armour absorbs. It may be that I'd need to start a new game for the changes in that config file to take effect, but at this this point, I just shrug my shoulders and accept that Doomguy's armour is intended to serve as a compact envirosuit first (as it contains its own air supply), with ballistic protection being a distant second.

Lorewise, that sort of makes sense. Only the Marines at the UAC base are walking around strapped, and their job is mostly to handle unruly civilian employees and maybe help contain escaped specimens from Delta. Getting into gunfights with armed opposition wasn't part of their mission, and the UAC, like most corporations, likes to squeeze out every last bit of profit, so the poor Marines ended up with armour that will allow them to operate outside of pressurized habitats for short periods of time, but which won't stop more than the occasional pistol round or two.

In terms of gameplay, armour pickups are ludicrously common in Doom 3 compared to every other Doom game. If you wanted to make armour actually worthwhile for damage reduction, you'd need to increase enemy damage to compensate for how common armour pickups are, and perhaps even decrease the value of armour pickups, with shards giving 1 point of armour and actual suits giving, say, 25.

Your tweak does not work because the damage absorption of the armor is hard-coded and should be 30% but it is actually 20%. You have to create a script to change it

[AmethystViper]

I think the Enhanced Edition mod for the original Doom 3 actually makes the armor in Single Player useful and takes more damage instead of your health if you have armor points collected from body armors and armor shards.

[Vathek1]

Originally posted by set+Black_Cat1:

Your tweak does not work because the damage absorption of the armor is hard-coded and should be 30% but it is actually 20%. You have to create a script to change it

I appreciate the explanation, thank you! That makes a lot of sense, actually... I had noticed that even if I edited the value in DoomConfig.cfg to something else, it made absolutely no difference in the damage absorption of armour or the rate at which it was degraded by enemy attacks.

Indeed, on Veteran, at least, it's not uncommon for you to reach critical health levels but with only a few points of armour lost. I honestly have no idea of why id hardcoded armour to work that way in Doom 3, given that in every other Doom game before or since, armour actually can mean the difference between surviving a fight or being sent back to the "load save" screen.

But speaking of damage in Doom 3, I'm curious as to whether anyone has managed to beat the Vagary (the first one, at least) without taking any damage? For me, at least, the very small arena combined with her telekinesis make her attacks almost impossible to avoid, and the Vagary boss battle always seems to play out as a race against time to kill her with the Chaingun before she can take off too much of my health.

I have heard, though, that you could, in theory, dance in and out of the Vagary's melee range so she won't hurl those spiked ovoids at you. I guess one other solution could be to pull off the glitch/exploit that allows you to kill Campbell in Alpha Labs 4 to pick up his BFG, then to hit the Vagary with a fully charged shot.

Ironically, I imagine that she'll be somewhat easier on Nightmare, since the Soul Cube will leave her with only 300 health, and 15 shots with the Chaingun will put her down for good.