Insulated Vest vs. Pig Leather Armor? - Early Game - Need Opinions Please

[Maverik770]

Hi all,

So I'm level 4, almost level 5 using the Oddities XP system and I'm about to head to the GMS Compound area for my quests. I've been doing pretty good thus far but am feeling a bit weak defensively. I've been getting by with health hypos and bandages thus far but have to use them very often in fights and am looking to up my defensive game a bit to hopefully stop taking so much damage per hit.

I'm mainly a melee/psionics build with a decent amount of pts into Firearms as well for when I'm at range and low on PSI. With that said, Stealth/Dodge/Evasion isn't much of a concern for my build and I have the Feat that reduces armor penalty by 15% so I'm looking for pretty beefy armor as my main defense.

I'm looking at the Weapons trader (Lucas) in the SGS station and he has both an Insulated Vest and a Pig Leather Armor and I cannot decide which to go with. The Insulated Vest sounds like it would be a little bit better but is way more expensive than the Pig Leather Armor and I'm not sure it's worth the extra 6k at this stage of the game or if I should just roll with the Pig Leather Armor for now and save the credits for something better later on?

I'm hoping someone here with a better understanding of the game's mechanics or how the game will progress from where I'm at can give me an opinion which armor to go with and why?

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Insulated Vest:

Resistances
Mechanical: 16% / 4
Cold: 12% / 3

Armor Penalty: 10%

Mechanical Damage Threshold Increased by 200% Against Bullets

Durability: 300/300 Fabric
Cost: 7413
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Pig Leather Armor:

Resistances
Mechanical: 23% / 4

Armor Penalty: 15%

Equip: Increases Constitution by 1

Durability: 510/510 Fabric
Cost: 1572
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- From what I understand the insulated vest will generally be better, especially against bullets due to the 200% increase to Damage Threshold which works great against small arms fire which I encounter a lot of. Also cold reduction seems nice but I have yet to encounter anything using cold attacks either.

- But the Pig Leather Armor has better Damage Reduction % for bigger hits and equal Damage Threshold for anything that's not bullet damage. Plus it will bump my Constitution from 6 to 7 which appears to give me an extra 11 HP (122 HP total) and 2 Fortitude (30 Fortitude Total) whilst costing roughly 6k less.

I'm really stuck on which to go with. I looked into getting the blueprint to make my own, better Tactical Vest but I could not find enough of the parts on traders and also lack the crafting skills needed so far. I appreciate anyone's opinion, thanks for reading and helping. I'm loving this game.

[BAXTER]

Go with tactical vests. Enemies with guns are much bigger threats, and you'll be able to kite or delay melee enemies with traps. Leather armor is going to leave you very vulnerable to... well, basically everything.

Damage threshold is really important and useful, and also for tactical vests the 200% bonus isn't a multiplier to your damage threshould/resistance, it's added to it, so that vest will ignore 12 points of damage from every shot fired, and then reduce the remaining damage by 48%.

[bati]

Cold resistance is worthless early on, go with whatever has the highest mechanical resistance. Bonus points if it's a ballistic vest with 200% threshold for bullets.

[Maverik770]

Originally posted by BAXTER:

Go with tactical vests. Enemies with guns are much bigger threats, and you'll be able to kite or delay melee enemies with traps. Leather armor is going to leave you very vulnerable to... well, basically everything.

Damage threshold is really important and useful, and also for tactical vests the 200% bonus isn't a multiplier to your damage threshould/resistance, it's added to it, so that vest will ignore 12 points of damage from every shot fired, and then reduce the remaining damage by 48%.

Thanks for your reply!

You're definitely right about the 12 DT against bullets. I don't know why i was thinking it would only be 8 DT total as that would only be a 100% increase not 200%. So yeah 12 reduction against bullet damage would be pretty huge.

But I'm not understanding where you get the remaining damage will then be reduced by 48% from? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand where that reduction and number is coming from. Could you please explain why remaining damage would be reduced by 48% with the Insulated Vest?

I thought DT was just a flat reduction to damage and then that's it. From what I read about armor on the wiki you either have damage reduced by the DR% or the flat DT amount, which ever is greater. So I don't understand how the damage gets reduced twice like you're describing?

Thanks again!!

[feliscon]

Originally posted by BAXTER:

so that vest will ignore 12 points of damage from every shot fired, and then reduce the remaining damage by 48%.

Doesn't work that way. Armour saves you from the higher of its resistance or threshold in damage.

ie. 25%/5 vs. 100 damage you take 75 (100 - 25%) vs. 10 you take 5 (10 - 5) vs. 5 you take 0.

[Maverik770]

Originally posted by feliscon:

Originally posted by BAXTER:

so that vest will ignore 12 points of damage from every shot fired, and then reduce the remaining damage by 48%.

Doesn't work that way. Armour saves you from the higher of its resistance or threshold in damage.

ie. 25%/5 vs. 100 damage you take 75 (100 - 25%) vs. 10 you take 5 (10 - 5) vs. 5 you take 0.

Right that's how I understood it to work. Plus the 200% Damage Threshold to bullet damage bonus for Tactical Vests only applies to the Damage Threshold and not Damage Resistance %, correct?

So my Tactical Vest example above - 16%/4 - would be 16%/12 against bullet damage right?

[feliscon]

Originally posted by Maverik770:

Right that's how I understood it to work. Plus the 200% Damage Threshold to bullet damage bonus for Tactical Vests only applies to the Damage Threshold and not Damage Resistance %, correct?

So my Tactical Vest example above - 16%/4 - would be 16%/12 against bullet damage right?

Yes.

[Maverik770]

Originally posted by feliscon:

Originally posted by Maverik770:

Right that's how I understood it to work. Plus the 200% Damage Threshold to bullet damage bonus for Tactical Vests only applies to the Damage Threshold and not Damage Resistance %, correct?

So my Tactical Vest example above - 16%/4 - would be 16%/12 against bullet damage right?

Yes.

Which means that for any damage not caused by bullets or cold, the Pig Leather Armor would actually be just as good as the Tactical Vest plus it provides a minor Constitution bump. Granted it seems bullet damage is probably the biggest thing to watch out for at this stage of the game but does that warrant spending the extra 6k for the Insulated Vest now?

[Greep]

Well not quite, in the beginning of the game enemies only really do >12 bullet damage on criticals, making the vest far superior as you're basically immune the hardest parts.

[Maverik770]

Originally posted by Greep:

Well not quite, in the beginning of the game enemies only really do >12 bullet damage on criticals, making the vest far superior as you're basically immune the hardest parts.

Yep, I agree with that logic. Well thank you to everyone for your advice and input. I decided to pony up a bunch of my items to barter for the Insulated Vest and it has made a significant boost to my defense and how much damage I take per turn. I definitely think you were all right that the Insulated Vest was the way to go. Happy hunting all! Love this game so much!