Is plate armor good against bullets?

[SeattlePoliceman]

I know it has high heat and blunt resistance but I'm not sure how that translates into stopping bullets.

[Razor 2.3]

Bullets do sharp damage, so that's the statistic you have to go by. Assuming normal quality, wood plate has an armor rating of about 39. Steel has about 65. Plasteel's the best at about 83. They're better than nothing (assuming you don't care about movement speed), but pale in comparison to flak vest's 100. The vest also occupies only the middle layer, so you can get some more protection from a duster or jacket. The wiki has done the math on these, if you want to read more.

[LightnBurn]

I think bullets in this game are considered sharp damage. So look up the sharp armor value instead of blunt or heat.

[Kittenpox]

There's some info about damage calculation on https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Armor , but I remember seeing a better example - though I can't find it just now.

Honestly, I find Devilstrand Dusters + Flak Vests to be a better combination; but in the absence of better gear there's no harm in making wooden Plate Armour. The main drawback with plate is the reduction in movement speed, which is why I don't tend to use it.

[Chaoslink]

The best protection is simply not to get shot to begin with. Keeping a few releasable pets around that can get shot for you works. Otherwise plate can work, it just comes with drawbacks.

[gussmed]

Cover, high cover like walls, specifically, followed by trees, and finally low cover like sandbags and barricades are your best protection. But you still need armor because otherwise a lucky shot will seriously injure or kill your colonists.

Bullets are, oddly, "sharp" damage, like arrows. If armor stops a bullet, it frequently converts it to blunt damage and a bruise, rather than deflecting it entirely. A nasty bruise is still better than a bleeding gunshot wound, though.

Power armor > flak vest + high quality duster duster > flak vest + flak jacket > metal plate > leather duster.

Remember that damage is highly dependent on location. No armor protects the hands or feet, those'll get shot no matter what your colonist has. If your colonist has plate armor but no helmet, or a hat, a gunshot to the head will often be fatal.

Location damage is one reason why a high-quality duster can be better than a flak jacket. Dusters protect the legs, torso, and arms, but flak jackets only protect the torso and arms. It depends a lot on the material, though, a cloth duster isn't worth much, but devilstrand or rhino leather can be very effective.

[gussmed]

I looked up how armor works.

Armor value - weapon's armor penetration = net armor value.

Roll a percentile die, 1-100%.

Net armor / 2 >= die roll : no damage.
Net armor >= die roll > net armor / 2: half damage, blunt (no bleeding).
Die roll > net armor: full damage, still sharp (inflicts bleeding).

Steel plate armor has a sharp protection of 65%.

An autopistol (think 9mm semi-auto) has no armor penetration, so plate has a 32% chance of stopping pistol bullets outright, 33% chance of cutting the damage in half, and 35% chance of not helping.

A revolver (think .357) has 18% armor penetration, so the net armor is 47%. It has a 23% chance of no damage, 24% chance of half damage, and 53% chance of full damage.

A sniper rifle has 38% armor penetration, net armor is 27%. 13% chance of no damage, 14% chance of half damage, 73% chance of full damage.

----

Note that armor layers don't add directly, but they do each get their own roll. Which means a devilstrand duster (42% sharp protection) plus a flak vest (100% sharp protection) doesn't give you 142% armor. If your work the math it's more the outcomes against an autopistol are 54% no damage, 42% half damage, 4% 1/4 damage, so it's close to being like a single layer of 108% protection.

A good duster helps mainly by covering the arms and legs. The vest only covers the torso, neck, and shoulders. Since flak pants aren't all that great (40% sharp protection), a duster helps flak pants more. Devilstrand duster + flak pants is 34% no damage, 31% half damage, 1% quarter damage, 34% full damage, so it's like 66% sharp protection against an autopistol. Pretty much on par with steel plate armor.

The reason layers don't stack that well is that flak armor doesn't protect well against blunt, and if the outer layer converts the damage to blunt, the flak layer doesn't offer much additional reduction.

The more armor penetration the weapon has, the less benefit you get from layers. A sniper rifle completely ignores a rhino leather duster, for example, and a devilstrand duster offers only 4% protection.

[Cormac]

as gussmed said, basicly, for ever 1% of armor you have, you have 0,5% chance to take 0 damage and 0,5% to take half damage as blunt, until you reach 100% armor, from there, you get +1% chance for 0 damage and -1% chance to take half damage as blunt (after armor penetration)

Steel Plate Armor has 65,7% armor
plasteel plate armor has 83,2% armor
flak vest has 100% armor
recon armor has 92% armor.

on paper, steel armor is worse than all the other armor, while the advantage compared to flak vest is that it covers arms (i ignore legs, you can craft flak pants for that), compared to recon armor, it is clearly worse.
plate armor reduces your speed by 0,8, a flak vest+pants reduces your speed by 0,24 and the recon doesn't reduce it, so the plate armor is again, the worsed.
to make it worse, the plate armor counts as both, outer and middle armor layer, removing you to wear a duster/parker over your gear (and as already stated, a flak vest+devilstrain duster is even better).
if you have no options, take the plate armor, but if you have the option to use flak gear, switch asap, you are faster, have better armor (except for arms) and the flak is cheaper than plasteel (unless you are starved for components) (160 plasteel for a decent plate armor compared to just 120 steel (plus 2 compontents and some cloth) for flak vest+pants)


TLDR: it's the worsed option unless staved for components or not having access to flak for very long time.

[Nishe]

Escrito originalmente por gussmed:

Cover, high cover like walls, specifically, followed by trees, and finally low cover like sandbags and barricades are your best protection. But you still need armor because otherwise a lucky shot will seriously injure or kill your colonists.

Location damage is one reason why a high-quality duster can be better than a flak jacket. Dusters protect the legs, torso, and arms, but flak jackets only protect the torso and arms. It depends a lot on the material, though, a cloth duster isn't worth much, but devilstrand or rhino leather can be very effective.

"high cover like walls, specifically, followed by trees, and finally low cover like sandbags and barricades"
This is incorrect. Trees have absolutely terrible cover value. Don't use them unless you've got nothing else. Rock chunks are a lot better. Sandbags and barricades have the second highest cover value after walls. What you generally want is one tile of wall with sandbags or barricades on both sides, and on the sides of where the colonist will be standing, like this:
[s][w][s]
[s][c][s]
w = wall
s = sandbags/barricades
c = colonist

As for the duster vs flak jacket thing, dusters are only out and out better if you're using devilstrand or better material (hyperweave, thrumbofur, etc). A devilstrand duster is actually better than a flak jacket in all respects. It has higher sharp armour value (42% at normal quality as opposed to a flak jacket's 40% at normal quality), has massive anti-heat armour which flak jacket has almost none of, and also protects the legs. But for other leathers (everything except thrumbofur, maybe elephant and rhino leather too if you get a high quality level item) extra protection of the legs is not really worth anything if you don't have a relevant armour value. Remember most weapons have at least 10-20% armour penetration, so if the armour rating isn't in the realm of 40% or above, it's really not going to have much or any effect.

[gussmed]

I hate being wrong, but I was wrong.

I was going based on the tool tips in game, but it turns out I was inverting what they meant. Trees routinely say “75% cover” but what that means is that they multiply the chance to hit by 75%. In other words, they’re 25% cover. Sandbags and barricades have 57% cover, much better.

The in-game tool tips really are quite helpful for determining chance to hit. They even work on the defense, you can select an enemy, and hover over a friendly colonist, and the game will tell you how likely the hostile is to hit your colonist.

I recently attacked a pirate outpost that had 12 hostiles, 4 with sniper rifles. That was scary until I checked how unlikely it was the snipers were to hit my guys behind cover. Basically, poor skill levels on most of them. My solitary sniper had about an 20x accuracy advantage over the enemy sniper standing out in the open.

[Nishe]

Do you mean the tooltip that pops up when you select a pawn and then mouse over a potential target? Yeah, you're right, it does display 75% cover in that tooltip. What that refers to is, as you said, the multiplier that's placed on the chance to hit. So that multiplier is (100% - the cover value% of the cover item). If you want to know the actual cover that an item gives you can select the item and go into its info tab, then look at "cover effectiveness", which for trees says 25%. It's an easy mistake to make though as I think trees actually used to give a lot more cover than they do now. Can't remember how much exactly, but it was a lot. This is quite a few patches back though , I think it was when the game was still in alpha, or at least before 1.0.