Armor glands

[Beanslinger]

Still really confused about this. I was considering shoving all three into one of my colonists but I saw people talking about how they only stop damage separately so they are not very useful against anything due to small armor bonuses for each one. Do their effects all stack or should I just not bother with the implants. Realistically a colonist would literally have armor plates under and over their skin as well as tougher skin in general if they used them. But ingame I don't know if they actually work together to stop a colonist from being harmed.

[Tidal Resonance]

Only one can be installed at time. Stoneskin has the largest benefits and drawbacks. Toughskin has limited effects. They function as a last line of defense against an attack, if the attack penetrated the other layers of armor.

Since each armor layer has a separate roll for attack penetration, it is in fact possible for skin glands to stop attacks or weaken them even if the attack fully penetrated armor that gives more protection than the gland. If the first attack roll was "lucky" and very high, but then it rolls lower against the gland's armor you could halve or stop the damage. The glands may not provide as much protection as many forms of armor, but they can still help some even if the armor is more protective.

Stoneskin seems reasonably useful for pawns that are major fighters for your base although it is expensive to acquire or build. It is definitely the best for pawns in heavy combat. Toughskin might be useful for body modders or if you have transhumanism as a meme to get a mood boost while receiving a bit of protection. Not sure about armorskin, but maybe for shooters that are at risk of getting hit some, but not a lot.

One good thing about the glands is that they do not deteriorate over time like armor. They may not supply extremely high protection, but they last as long as the pawn lives.

Also, Stoneskin seems relatively better on beautiful pawns. The reason is this: Beauty seems to max out at +2, which beautiful ones already have. So if you give them stoneskin -2 beauty you are at net zero, but then add an aesthetic nose and aesthetic shaper and you are back to +2, the cap. I noticed that if you add an aesthetic nose or shaper on a beautiful pawn it does not normally help because going to +3 or +4 seems to yield no benefit from beyond +2.

What I mean is that you basically only lose speed on a beautiful pawn with stoneskin if you have the two aesthetic implants to go with it. You can't miss out on potential beauty buffs with this set up, you just stay at the apparent beauty cap. Now, whether the beautiful pawn is good for combat is another matter. If another major fighter needs stoneskin more, give it to them instead.

[gimmethegepgun]

Part of the problem is that when combined with good armor they won't typically do anything. Strong armor will turn most, if not all, sharp attacks into half-strength blunt attacks, which probably won't care about the minimal blunt armor provided by the glands.

One useful thing to note, however, is that they protect all body parts, including the ones that aren't protected by armor. Notably, hands and fingers. Then again, if they have bionic arms then they don't have hands or fingers, and the entire arm will be protected by the shoulder armor that flak vests give.

[Tidal Resonance]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Part of the problem is that when combined with good armor they won't typically do anything. Strong armor will turn most, if not all, sharp attacks into half-strength blunt attacks, which probably won't care about the minimal blunt armor provided by the glands.

From what I have seen, it appears that even though damage type may be converted to blunt when halved by outer armor layers, it still rolls against sharp all the way through rather than switching to rolling against blunt armor. If a flak vest halved damage from a bullet and converted it to blunt, then subsequent armor penetration rolls on lower armor layers are still against sharp.

[RCMidas]

Still getting less and less damage all the way down, so once you start equipping your pawns with better armours and shirts below that, you're really reducing the chances of anything happening. Put on some marine armour, then a hyperweave shirt, then have a stoneskin gland...so little damage can get through. Then do this on a Tough pawn.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Still getting less and less damage all the way down, so once you start equipping your pawns with better armours and shirts below that, you're really reducing the chances of anything happening. Put on some marine armour, then a hyperweave shirt, then have a stoneskin gland...so little damage can get through. Then do this on a Tough pawn.

And that's how you beat giant raids out in the open/using cover

[Gamefever]

Francis John literally did an extreme test video over on yt.

In it he took about 100 Lancers and 100 Pawns.
The pawns were dressed the same, of course armor was changed out for each test.

He found that Stoneskin Gland in combination with the new heavy power armor was the best protection in the game.
Off the top of my head though the Stoneskin only had a 3% increase in survival rate over non-skin heavy power armor.

So that sort of destroyed the whole arguement about Stone Skin providing no protection at all. The arguement being that against a Lancer the Stone Skin gland was worthless.

When the outer layer itself cannot be power armor, Skin Glands particularly Stone would alter chances of survival more than 3% but I dont recall how much.

Overall the best protection while still being useful for non-combat was just the basics.
Flak Vest, Devil Strand Duster, shirt +pants and helmet....Also a skin gland if you have one.

The greatest survival rate increase though for something that you could put on your pawn that would give the greatest benefit to survival was in fact....A helmet.
Helmets prevented loads of instant death hits in the test.

IF the only thing you did was put helmets on the pawns heads the survival from that alone was the greatest increase. At least against Lancers which tend to score the most amount of head shots.

IF the glands are available, use them. They provide a benefit, its not something to break yourself over though. If you play low tech games and dont mind having cyber gear for your pawns they help a lot cause the weapons used against you are not as impressive as the lance.

[Blazikasu]

Originally posted by Tidal Resonance:

Also, Stoneskin seems relatively better on beautiful pawns. The reason is this: Beauty seems to max out at +2, which beautiful ones already have. So if you give them stoneskin -2 beauty you are at net zero, but then add an aesthetic nose and aesthetic shaper and you are back to +2, the cap. I noticed that if you add an aesthetic nose or shaper on a beautiful pawn it does not normally help because going to +3 or +4 seems to yield no benefit from beyond +2.

Also works for staggeringly ugly pawns, they can't go lower than -2 so that minus is irrelevant. I slapped it on a slave for a bit of extra protection because the body strap only allows flak as armor (granted I could give him something better but I'm not giving power armor to a slave) and he's still alive and kicking.

[Richard Mc Nutbuster]

combat extended tends to actually make armors make sense, but this is like recommending a nuclear bomb for a roach in your house

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Francis John literally did an extreme test video over on yt.

In it he took about 100 Lancers and 100 Pawns.
The pawns were dressed the same, of course armor was changed out for each test.

He found that Stoneskin Gland in combination with the new heavy power armor was the best protection in the game.
Off the top of my head though the Stoneskin only had a 3% increase in survival rate over non-skin heavy power armor.

So that sort of destroyed the whole arguement about Stone Skin providing no protection at all. The arguement being that against a Lancer the Stone Skin gland was worthless.

When the outer layer itself cannot be power armor, Skin Glands particularly Stone would alter chances of survival more than 3% but I dont recall how much.

Overall the best protection while still being useful for non-combat was just the basics.
Flak Vest, Devil Strand Duster, shirt +pants and helmet....Also a skin gland if you have one.

The greatest survival rate increase though for something that you could put on your pawn that would give the greatest benefit to survival was in fact....A helmet.
Helmets prevented loads of instant death hits in the test.

IF the only thing you did was put helmets on the pawns heads the survival from that alone was the greatest increase. At least against Lancers which tend to score the most amount of head shots.

IF the glands are available, use them. They provide a benefit, its not something to break yourself over though. If you play low tech games and dont mind having cyber gear for your pawns they help a lot cause the weapons used against you are not as impressive as the lance.

Yep, that last layer of defense makes a big difference.

Also a tough pawn is very unlikelly to get suddenly killed by a very rare bad hit

PS: That last line of protection also makes it very, very unlikelly you'll take bleeding damage unless a finger gets blown off or something, since tough pawns almost never die from raw damage, as it's far more likelly they will be peppered with hits all over their body and eventually collapse from the pain before any vital parts get destroyed, making bleeding a lot harder makes it so they are almost impossible to actually kill, unless you let them bleed out for a very long time, or let them stay in a fire.

[RCMidas]

Throw on a coagulator and healing enhancer to your stoneskin Tough pawns for good measure. Very little can bring them down then except for pain, and they'll be back on their feet much faster than anyone else.

[FourGreenFields]

I'd just like to add that toughskin glands are... of questionable worth. 35% sharp protection, while multiplying the "Moving" stat (not movement speed) by 0.95 - which in turn reduces both movement speed, and dodge-chance.

For reference, a normal steel longsword has 34% armour penetration for its two high-damage attacks. Leaving the toughskin gland with a 1% chance to do anything at all, while increasing the chance to be hit yourself.

Bolt-action rifles 27% -> 7% armour left.
Needle gun 35% -> no benefit.
Steel mace or club above 10% blunt for all attacks -> no benefit.
Spear 50% on high-damage attack -> no benefit (not sure about low-damage attacks, depends whether "poke" is blunt or piercing).

It does do things against low-end ranged weapons, so not entirely useless, but the lower movement speed will just generally hurt the pawn's worth (both in combat, and for working).

[Hykal]

The armor glands are the last resort, when your flak/power armor fails. You're not supposed to depend on it alone. As Tidal Resonance said, they also don't deteriorate ever. Sure it slows you down, but if you haven't given your Terminator squad bionic legs and get them on Go-Juice, are you really playing RimWorld right? I'm planning to give my melee squad Locust armor plus shields, over the usual slow Cataphract build.

Besides, they would still be of good use for pawns who don't move much like psycasters.

[Gamefever]

The argument used to be they dont work.

Well the glands all of them do work and do provide benefit however its not really really powerful benefit.

So now the argument is, well its marginal so is it worth the time an effort to get the gland on every pawn.

Answer becomes, use them if you have them...But its not worth going out of your way to put them on every pawn.

Toughness was mentioned above.
Toughness divides the damage that will be applied to the pawn by 50%, so its still damage that the pawn will take its just that he will take 50% of it.

Armor and glands both by themselves or together can outright deny damage or mitigate it before the damage goes down to next step.

Stoneskin gland was found to outright deny Lancer damage when used with best armor in the game, its just that it does not happen often only 3% (3 out of 100 kill shots) of the time. So in worst case scenario it is a matter of min maxing.

Players should use them if they have them but its not something to go out of your way for. IE, dont bother mass producing glands. Just use them as you gain them from quest rewards.

Benefit for lesser glands will be around the 0.5% and 1.5% range. It all depends greatly on the weapon used...What armor was worn. Maybe cases where its greater than 3% benefit.

Out of 100 kill shots, 3 times the pawn will survive it cause they had a stoneskin gland while wearing best in slot armor against best weapon in game.

When you are min/maxing the answer can be safely said to be YES get the gland because you are already putting together a team of super soldiers.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

The argument used to be they dont work.

Well the glands all of them do work and do provide benefit however its not really really powerful benefit.

So now the argument is, well its marginal so is it worth the time an effort to get the gland on every pawn.

Answer becomes, use them if you have them...But its not worth going out of your way to put them on every pawn.

Toughness was mentioned above.
Toughness divides the damage that will be applied to the pawn by 50%, so its still damage that the pawn will take its just that he will take 50% of it.

Armor and glands both by themselves or together can outright deny damage or mitigate it before the damage goes down to next step.

Stoneskin gland was found to outright deny Lancer damage when used with best armor in the game, its just that it does not happen often only 3% (3 out of 100 kill shots) of the time. So in worst case scenario it is a matter of min maxing.

Players should use them if they have them but its not something to go out of your way for. IE, dont bother mass producing glands. Just use them as you gain them from quest rewards.

Benefit for lesser glands will be around the 0.5% and 1.5% range. It all depends greatly on the weapon used...What armor was worn. Maybe cases where its greater than 3% benefit.

Out of 100 kill shots, 3 times the pawn will survive it cause they had a stoneskin gland while wearing best in slot armor against best weapon in game.

When you are min/maxing the answer can be safely said to be YES get the gland because you are already putting together a team of super soldiers.

True, but that 3% isn't rolling against the full 100% chances.

Say if you have 6% chance of getting killed, a 3% reduction is actually making your pawn 2x harder to kill

And that's against the worst weapons they could be fighting, weapons with less penetration get reduced far more often

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by VoiD:

True, but that 3% isn't rolling against the full 100% chances.

Say if you have 6% chance of getting killed, a 3% reduction is actually making your pawn 2x harder to kill

And that's against the worst weapons they could be fighting, weapons with less penetration get reduced far more often

It's multiplicative, not additive. If you have a 6% chance of getting instakilled after other armor is considered, then another 3% chance of doing something will reduce it to 6% * 0.97 = 5.82% chance of dying.