recon armor worse than flak ?

[rav]

Is recon armor worse than flak jacket + flak vest?

the vest alone has more sharp protection and also my colonists prefer to wear flak over recon.

[gachi is manly]

Vest has a bit higher sharp protection but lower blunt/fire protection than Recon. Recon is also much more durable, so it lasts a lot longer before you need to make another one.

Recon also covers the limbs while the vest doesn't and it provides much better protection to the limbs than the jacket. And the flak jacket + vest combo slows your movement speed while recon doesn't. Even a devilstrand duster provides better protection than flak jackets. Personally I don't bother with flak jackets I just use the vests.

[rav]

thanks that makes sense.

Do you know a way i can change priorities so they will wear recon over flak, without disabling flak completely?

[gachi is manly]

Considering the rather steep cost of recon armor I usually go around with devilstrand duster + flak vest combo instead. That way I save my advanced components for marine armor instead of recon.

Originally posted by rav:

thanks that makes sense.

Do you know a way i can change priorities so they will wear recon over flak, without disabling flak completely?

Sadly no. I'd also love to know since I just manually mess with what my pawns wear and deny them access to stuff I don't want them picking up on their own.

[Hawk Eye]

Originally posted by rav:

thanks that makes sense.

Do you know a way i can change priorities so they will wear recon over flak, without disabling flak completely?

What I did in my game was set up 'Recon' and 'Marine' outfits in the Assign menu. Once I had a set of Recon or Marine armor made I would assign that outfit to a colonist. Recon armor for my snipers Marine armor for my riflemen.

The Recon armor is very good and a much better choice than flak if you want to keep your colonists alive and in the fight.

[Cormac]

i hope this are the vanilla numbers for normal versions of those armor:
Armor is Sharp/Blunt/Heat

Plasteel-flakhelmet+Flak vest+Flak jacket+Flak Pants
Head&ear:
79,9% / 38,5% / 45,5%
eyes, nose, jaw:
0% / 0% / 0%
Torso, Neck, shoulder:
140% / 44% / 37% edit: look below for clarification, this number is wrong
arms, legs:
40% / 8% / 10%


against it stands recon armor+helmet:
Head, Ears eyes, nose, jaw:
92% / 40% / 46%
Torso, neck, shoulder, arms, legs:
92% / 40% / 46%


basicly, you are loosing 48% sharp and 4% blunt on Torso, neck and shoulder, which might be a risk, but you gain 52% sharp, 32% blunt and 36% heat armor on legs&arms instead.

another thing is: flak vest pants and jacket have -0,12 movement speed (together -0,36 movement) while the recon does not have it

edit: and there is no way aroud, the recon headgear is even better than plasteel flack helmet, even ignoring the fact that it covers eyes, nose and jaw, what the flak does not

edit 2: i use recon armor for my 'civies' once i am far enough (getting a supply of advanced components while crafting them), gives them some more staying power without reducing their movement speed

edit 3: getting the stats of a normal devil strain duster seems somewhat harder >.>

[Hawk Eye]

Think I'd mention this just in case.

The Recon armor is great for your Hunters and Snipers not your front line troops. Theres a better chance your colonists won't get their arms and legs blown off when fighting mechanoids too.

Think of Recon armor as insurance. You got it but you don't want to have to use it.
Recon is for full coverage against low to medium threats like animals and less well armed raiders.

I say this because I've had front line guys die in full Marine armor usually to mechanoids. Torso protection is important too, gotta protect those vital organs

[Hykal]

Ive yet to find myself cataphract gear outside of one helmet. Are they worth the weight?

[Beefnator]

Originally posted by rav:

thanks that makes sense.

Do you know a way i can change priorities so they will wear recon over flak, without disabling flak completely?

yea you can under the option assign .

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Cormac:

Torso, Neck, shoulder:
140% / 44% / 37%

Armor layers are not added together. A 100% layer and a 40% layer is very different from a single 140% layer as far as game mechanics go. Armor uses chance based deflection/blunting, when there are multiple layers of armor where a bodypart is hit a chance check is made individually for both layers.

Effectively normal recon armor has about 46% sharp damage reduction, while flak vest+jacket has about 60% (assuming damage can be mitigated twice, which I'm not sure is the case).

[Cormac]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Cormac:

Torso, Neck, shoulder:
140% / 44% / 37%

Armor layers are not added together. A 100% layer and a 40% layer is very different from a single 140% layer as far as game mechanics go. Armor uses chance based deflection/blunting, when there are multiple layers of armor where a bodypart is hit a chance check is made individually for both layers.

Effectively normal recon armor has about 46% sharp damage reduction, while flak vest+jacket has about 60% (assuming damage can be mitigated twice, which I'm not sure is the case).

i'll look further into it, but as far as i understand..... *some time passes*
i believe that armor pen works against each layer of armor, but let us ignore that for the moment:

Torso, Neck, shoulder:
flak vest+flak jacket (if my calculation is right)
130% / 41,8% / 35%
flak vest+devilstrand duster: (as above)
131,5% / 43,8% / 98,8%
Recon Armor:
92% / 40% / 46%


there is still a lose of 38% against the pure flak armor (for the body parts in question), but that's asuming there is no armor pen.
against a heavy SMG (18% pen), the difference in pierce armor would be around 16,47%
against a charge rifle ( 45% pen), the difference is only 8% (even devilstrand duster looses all it's effectiveness)
a base sniper rifle (38% pen) would leave a difference of only 9,07%


again, asuming that a armor pen of 45% would reduce the armor of all layers, not only the outer (and let the remaining value bleed through?)
edit: havn't found any clear answer for that, but i'm happy to be proven wrong here.
also edited my other post for clarifications, thanks for pointing me to that error

[Astasia]

So I'm about 80% sure the wiki is wrong about the damage reduction formula, it may have changed recently and I missed it, but how it worked before is that 1-100% armor is a chance to blunt damage reducing it by 50%, so 40% armor is a 40% chance to take 50% damage (essentially 20% damage reduction). Every point above 100% adds an additional chance to instead completely deflect damage, so 130% armor would be 30% to avoid all damage and the remaining 70% chance to take 50% damage (essentially 65% damage reduction). This is why though there's a very important distinction between armor layers and you can't just combine the numbers, a 100% layer and a 40% layer is just that, it's not 140% or 130% as those mean something fundamentally different with the way damage is applied. And yes AP applies to each layer individually, so if a colonist has three layers of protection that each provide 38% armor, and they get hit by a sniper rifle shot, they effectively have 0 armor for that hit as all three layers are reduced to nothing.

[Cormac]

i think i understand what you are saying, but i believe we are taling about raw values against statistics.

my excell hates me now.

my assumption: i shoot at a pawn 1 trillion times and always hit him in the torso without him dying.
this way, we can assum that:
a) each number on the dice will be rolled around the same amount as every other number
b) the pawn realy realy hates me now.....
c) each shot that gets mitigated deals either alway or on avarage 50% less damage

i calculate the overall damage remain from my attack:
Armorrating/2*0,5+1-Armorrating /*for armor rating of 100% and less*/
1-Armorrating/2*0,5 /* for armor rating above 100%*/

(for 50% armor, 25% chance to get 0 damage, 25% chanche to get 50% damage and 50% chance to get 100% damage)

short version, below 100% each percentage of armor would reduce the overall damage taken by 0,75% damage, as stated on the wiki:
25% armor rating would take on avarage 81,25% damage
50% armor rating would take on avarage 62,5% damage

+25% armor rating would reduce the damage by 18,75%, which means each single point reduces the damage by 0,75% (the same happens for 75% and 100% reduction)

when moving from 100% to 125% to 150%, the other formula would result in 0,25% damage reduction for every point




on my previous calculation, i calculated that the flaks 100% armor rating would mean 75% damage reduction leave 25% damage remaining, the devildrand with armor rating 40% would mean 30% damage reduction leave 70% remaining
25%*70%=17,5% remaining damage
damage reduction would be 82,5%
75% is 100%
the remaining 7,5% devided by 0,25 would give me the 'armor rating above 100%, which is 30%
100%+30%=130 effective armor rating

similar, after factoring in the armor pen, i would need to use 82% armor rating for flak and 22% for the devilstrand, resulting in a effetive armor rating of 90,47%

i am not saying that 100%+40% armor rating are the same as 130 armor rating, but overall, 100% and 40% armor rating should reduce the damage on avarage on a lot of shots by the same damage as a single piece of armor rating 130%


edit: sorry for this heavy math, it's 1:34 AM here and i cannot sleep =_=


edit2: TL;DR:
1% armor rating means: 0,5%*100%+0,5%*50%=0,75% damage reduction..... why do i always have to walk the long road....

[Astasia]

I see what I did wrong. So 100% armor (after AP) is the safe threshold, and that is what has stuck in my head. At that point it's impossible for the armor roll to land unmitigated damage against you and each extra point just increases the chance to avoid damage fully, I forgot it was still possible to totally avoid damage before 100%, just at a lower chance.

Anyway, for 1-100% armor it's 0.75% average mitigation per point, from 101-200% it's 0.25% per point, the wiki is correct about that. Further, above 100 (again after AP) is that safe point I mentioned where you can no longer take full damage, which means your colonists become mostly safe from random 1 shots, it's a critical point to reach, which is why having multiple pieces of armor under 100% really isn't as meaningful. It's better to have one piece of armor at 150% than two layered pieces of armor at 95%, not in average damage taken, but in safety, ignoring AP.

[Cormac]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I see what I did wrong. So 100% armor (after AP) is the safe threshold, and that is what has stuck in my head. At that point it's impossible for the armor roll to land unmitigated damage against you and each extra point just increases the chance to avoid damage fully, I forgot it was still possible to totally avoid damage before 100%, just at a lower chance.

Anyway, for 1-100% armor it's 0.75% average mitigation per point, from 101-200% it's 0.25% per point, the wiki is correct about that. Further, above 100 (again after AP) is that safe point I mentioned where you can no longer take full damage, which means your colonists become mostly safe from random 1 shots, it's a critical point to reach, which is why having multiple pieces of armor under 100% really isn't as meaningful. It's better to have one piece of armor at 150% than two layered pieces of armor at 95%, not in average damage taken, but in safety, ignoring AP.

you are right in that, but there are still 2 difference which might give 2 layers a small 'bonus'.
if you have a single armor piece that gives you a 0% chance to get unmitigated damage, the same 'effective' armor value with 2 or 3 pieces might leave you with a small chance of getting unmittigated damage, but at the same time you get a higher chance of getting a 100% reduction, making the 50% less likly.
instead of, let's say, 50% chance for half damage and 50% of no damage, you get 10% of full damage, 30% of half damage and 60% of no damage.
thats said, i do agree that i would rather wear a single armor piece than to risk it.

but thats said, because armor penetration would reduce all layers of armor, a single armor piece with high armor is more usefull than multiple of lower value, even if they have a higher effective armor rating than the one piece (fighting against high armor piercing rounds make the single piece more usefull anyway)




edit: the final conclusion:

flak Recon armor is in multple ways inferrior to the flak armor, not only is it a single piece that has lower base armor than the flak vest, combined with a devil strain duster, it's armor value is way less unless fighting against charge lance or other high armor penetrating weapons.
the ony advantage the armor has is a higher armor for arms&legs, as well as higher movement speed

[Swirler]

o.o