Is cataphract armor worth it?

[Tiamat]

So compared to marine armour, cataphract armor is roughly one quality phase better than marine armor(i.e excellent marine amor = good cataphract armor) at the cost of movement speed reduction.
But it takes so much effort and resources just to get the techprints, not to mention you need 2 of it.
And it requires even more resources to fabricate it.
To me i feel like cataphract needs slight buff otherwise it's a bit tacky to actually use.

[ministrog]

it's faster to farm 4k silver. or whatever they cost

[Cormac]

i've done some math right now, i won't post a very very very long post here now.

TL;DR
against low armor pen weapons (assault rifle, chain shotgun and so on), the cataphract takes around 20-25% less damage than a marine armor of the same level, yes, up to 25% (marine armor reduces it by 80%, cataphract by 85%)

against mid armor piercing weapons like charge rifle or the sniper there is a small window where the cataphract keeps his immunity of getting unmitigated damage, but it's not as big as you might like it. (around this point, the advantage of the cataphract gets to his highest around 30% based on the quality you compare)

against high armor penetrating weapons like the charge lance (or any other modded weapon around the 45% armor pen or higher), the advatage of the cataphract gets lower, around 28% and gets lower and lower, against a monoblade it gets as low as 20% again


on the other hand, against weapon without any armor penetration, the difference get's smaller and smaller to, but at this point, both armors are not trying to reduce the damage by as much as possible, but prevent the damage completly, so who cares?

[Abel_Mayfair]

I'd say it is. But it really depends on how big your colony is and how you structure your defenses. At the very least I like to give my few melee colonists the best possible armor. If you're running a relatively small colony despite great wealth, I'd make the investment. Otherwise marine armor is fine.

[Astasia]

Old thread, but since somebody else bumped it: The math above is a bit off (possibly because the armor values were changed since the thread was made), armor below 100% is 0.75% effective DR while above 100% it's 0.25%. A legendary marine armor at 190% sharp armor hit by an assault rifle with 16 penetration, is 174% which is 93.5% DR, while a legendary cataphract armor base 200% would be 184% or 96% DR.

6.5% damage taken is 60% higher than 4% damage taken. The number differences on the armor seem small at first glance, but because of the way armor works in this game even a few extra points of armor on the high end make a pretty big difference. The above math is also ignoring skin layers, which can bump the DR up even higher and further widen the gap between marine and cataphract.