Heavy and Light Armor

[Lawh]

It seems that there is no reason to wear heavy armor, or am I just missing something?

I have leather armor that is actually better than the heavy armor, though the heavy armor covers more of the body. But that said, it slows you down so much (not encumberence but the stat penalties) compared to light armor, that you will do nothing more than hinder yourself from fighting properly.

What am I missing?

[Xero]

Heavy armor absorbs more damage, and since it has more coverage, there's a higher chance of it absorbing damage.

[Lawh]

But my leather armor absorbs pretty much the same as my samurai armor of the same quality. The coverage is different, but seeing as the penalties for the samurai helmet alone are pretty drastic, I would rather count on the leather armor in a fight.

[Xero]

Originally posted by Aurane:

But my leather armor absorbs pretty much the same as my samurai armor of the same quality.

Are you running any mods? Cause Samurai Armor has hands down the best defense in the game. Also, what quality are you comparing?

[Lawh]

The quality is the same, and I'm running no mods that affect armor. I tried testing the overall quality of the armors where two of my almost equal fighters were fighting, and my samurai armor guy, who is a little better at fighting (equal with stat penalties) took hits, but was still standing after a big fight. The other fighter hadn't taken any damage. Only when I tested them against odds that they would not be able to beat, they went down pretty much at the same time.

It would seem that being agile and having a little less defense is much better than having the best defence and less agility plus stat penalties.

I think previously, you might be able to knock an armored guy down after a lot of effort, but he would not be down or long, and could resume fighting much better, but now it seems that having armor is only a disadvantage on the long run, since you will get damaged less per hit but more in total, and the leather armor I was wearing would almost equally stop damage in total.

Not sure if I'm still missing some effects, but this is the way it seems to be. In a dust storm, the samurai helmet gives you 100% help, but with a Mask Type III on the otherone, I got the same effect, minus all the other effects.

It might need a little tweaking, perhaps that making large pieces of heavy armor would be more difficult to make, rather than give the heavy armor so much penalties.

They were also using the exact same weapons in these fights.

_____

My best fighter in the heavy samurai gear (excluding the helmet) has 63 and 63, attack and defense.

My second best fighter in the drifters leather armor has 56 and 52, attack and defense.

The second best seems to be able to avoid more damage in total easy, against all kinds of enemies, than the armored dude, due to her light armor, and the lack of stat penalties.


Maybe if you have the opportunity, try out some fights like this. I'll head back to home base, and find a fight, and reload it and fight it using different armors, taking into consideration also the damage type of the enemy, to make better tests.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

when a character with high strength and some decent melle attack makes your leather char take a hit (due to cover issues) and gets the full blast of damage, then you pretty much will notice why not heavy is bad. its a bit too much gambling against strong opponents to get instantly knocked out by such a strike. so run to te ashlands or south hive terrain and see how well they do there.

[Xero]

Even if you get hit more in heavy armor, you more likely to survive fights even if you get KOd due to minimal cut damage and overall less damage taken per hit.

The stronger your opponent, the more valuable heavy armor is. Unless you don't mind having your person take a 200+ damage attack to the head because you went with a rattan hat.

[Lawh]

Right. Well I just came from the southern hives, and this is where I tested it out. Against the King, no one fared well. Against the basic south hivers, it seemed that the light armor was better. But I guess you're right about the special encounters etc, robot spiders and such. For now my damage is set to default, since I started a game wanting to test out the default settings, but usually my damage and chance of death settings are much higher. I guess when I start tweaking with them again I should definitely wear heavier armor for everyone.

Right now my "uniform" for the basic villagers is a mercenary plate, and armored rags, with drifter boots and chainmail, with the mask type 3 for dust and gas protection. I guess it's a relatively good average for your basic guy. It's the two main guys that I keep using to try out new things.

[KiuKiu]

the heavy amor is late game item, if u use heavy weapon then it is ur training item for ur char cause it raise their str point, equip 1 hand weapon to raise dex. My main char use Axe 38-41 kg with katana speed =))

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by Geisha:

the heavy amor is late game item, if u use heavy weapon then it is ur training item for ur char cause it raise their str point, equip 1 hand weapon to raise dex. My main char use Axe 38-41 kg with katana speed =))

or make falling suns, they train both :P

[Erei]

Originally posted by Aurane:

But my leather armor absorbs pretty much the same as my samurai armor of the same quality. The coverage is different, but seeing as the penalties for the samurai helmet alone are pretty drastic, I would rather count on the leather armor in a fight.

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion.
The best leather armor in stats seems to be the mercenary leather. With 32/49 resist and 70% efficiency. And only 70% stomach. The best armor in the game, samurai armor, which is heavy, have 52/70, and 90 efficiency. 85% stomach coverage. At specialts, both.

The penalty of heavy armor are for perception (ranged only stat), martial artist stuff, and crossbow to begin with. If you are neither a MA nor a ranged character, you can ignore those penalty entirely.
Then the samurai armor have no dex penalty, which lmake it even better than other heavy, and even medium armor.
The melee malus (like -4 for the helmet) is negligible at some point (when you have 30+, 4 is nothing)
Finally, the last malus, which are only on the torso, is the attack speed and damage. The attack speed is of 8% (not a big deal), and the damage is 15% (not much either). Considering that damage received will decrease your damage output and attack speed in a more drastic manner, then heavy armor win again because you take less damage, and as such, have less penalties as the fight progress.

Light armor have early game or specialized armor for martial artists and ranged characters. And that's it. For everything else, light<medium<samurai armor. The other heavy armor are bad tho.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by Erei:

Originally posted by Aurane:

But my leather armor absorbs pretty much the same as my samurai armor of the same quality. The coverage is different, but seeing as the penalties for the samurai helmet alone are pretty drastic, I would rather count on the leather armor in a fight.

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion.
The best leather armor in stats seems to be the mercenary leather. With 32/49 resist and 70% efficiency. And only 70% stomach. The best armor in the game, samurai armor, which is heavy, have 52/70, and 90 efficiency. 85% stomach coverage. At specialts, both.

The penalty of heavy armor are for perception (ranged only stat), martial artist stuff, and crossbow to begin with. If you are neither a MA nor a ranged character, you can ignore those penalty entirely.
Then the samurai armor have no dex penalty, which lmake it even better than other heavy, and even medium armor.
The melee malus (like -4 for the helmet) is negligible at some point (when you have 30+, 4 is nothing)
Finally, the last malus, which are only on the torso, is the attack speed and damage. The attack speed is of 8% (not a big deal), and the damage is 15% (not much either). Considering that damage received will decrease your damage output and attack speed in a more drastic manner, then heavy armor win again because you take less damage, and as such, have less penalties as the fight progress.

Light armor have early game or specialized armor for martial artists and ranged characters. And that's it. For everything else, light<medium<samurai armor. The other heavy armor are bad tho.

the most drastic penalty is maybe the dodge multiplier. as this factors into the dfensive capabilities as well.

[Erei]

For non MA, dodge is only for avoiding attack while stumbling. Stumbling being countered by toughness, which is way easier to rise for non MA.
The dodge penalty is so unimportant for non MA that I wouldn't even consider it a penalty, IMO. Yeah sure it's not a bonus, but to be honest, I don't see it.

Also, every med-heavy have a dodge penalty. And going light armor offer so many maluses that the dodge penalty pale in comparison.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by Erei:

For non MA, dodge is only for avoiding attack while stumbling. Stumbling being countered by toughness, which is way easier to rise for non MA.
The dodge penalty is so unimportant for non MA that I wouldn't even consider it a penalty, IMO. Yeah sure it's not a bonus, but to be honest, I don't see it.

Also, every med-heavy have a dodge penalty. And going light armor offer so many maluses that the dodge penalty pale in comparison.

thats the issue, as it is the only bigger malus the armor has defense wise.

[Lawh]

It was through experiments that I ended up with this conclusion, but like said, heavy is good against heavy hitters, light is good against anything else, since the ability to move and hit fast compensates for the lack in hit protection, or so it would seem after doing a lot of tests.

A worse fighter in light armor always did better than a better fighter in heavy armor, except when it comes to robots and such. Don't know exactly why, but this is what kept happening over and over again.

[Erei]

I did experiment to. Samurai armor will let you get hit for 0-4dmg depending (ranging from bandit to gutters, who hit fairly hard). Light armor ? Yeah, no.
Hitting fast quickly lose it's potential. Usually you have low penetration, since the faster you hit, the lighter the weapon is, and the lightest are cut. On the other hand, heavy weapons have large penetration value, aoe, and massive damage.

It's worth noting that even a large difference in stats will still result in the occasional hit getting through. So having more stats doesn't help in this case.

I did testing with the assassin's rag, which is pretty much the best offensive armor, vs samurai armor. The guy in rags was murdered fairly easily, while the guy in samurai armor was not even hurt.
Thing is, a single hit on a light armor will give you a large malus on your stats, making defence even harder. While on the heavy armor, you'll get nothing.

So yeah, I'm curious about your testing, because it's the opposite of everyone's else. Unless you cheese the game and hit-run-hit-run manually.