Best Armor?

[Valykry]

Okay, all this time I've been going on the assumption that power armor is definitely what you want to give your combatants. In my case, that's everyone. Nobody is excluded from battle. With that in mind, I've been pumping out the Marine armor, but have noticed a bit of an annoyance going on. Pawns always seemed to equip stuff on their own if it was allowed, but they don't want to equip marine armor (except for that one that snagged up a Prestige set lying around). I've even made sure that nothing else is allowed on the layers it covers, but I still have to force them to wear it.

This prompted me to consult the almighty Google. Here, I stumbled across a conversation, indicating there was a better option. It essentially goes "devilstrand duster on top of flak vests on top of a devilstrand shirt" and this is supposedly better than power armor.
Can anyone confirm, or have an even better suggestion?

[di eshor ribly]

As with everything Rimworld related, your mileage will vary with mods. Vanilla wise, devilstrand layers + flak is fairly powerful. Each layer has a chance to stop a wound. With the Marine Armor that would be two layers (armor plus shirt), the duster set up has three layers. The main benefit would be the faster movement speed over the marine armor set up.

If you're using Vanilla Armor/Apparel Expanded the next step(s) directly up from the shirt/vest/duster combo would be a devilstrand Gambeson (replaces shirt, higher armor rating), and a Trooper Armor (marine armor version of a flak vest), the duster will remain as is.

[Valykry]

Well I haven't been going too crazy with the mods. The only mods I have that add items are mostly cosmetic (ceiling/wall lights) storage containers, and one that allows me to move dirt from one area to another so I can use former hills as farms. Beyond that, it's just things to help with micromanagement.

Looking around, I found some stats on my power armor, and a description. Armor system works strange compared to what I was imagining.
Going to have to do a bit of digging to find all the numbers I need, but I think I can hack it from here.

Just to save me form another pair of searches, does the armor/clothes hp have a direct impact on how effective it is, or is it good until it breaks? And is there an exact number in what difference quality makes (eg, poor=-50%, Normal=well, normal, and masterwork=+50%)?

[di eshor ribly]

The HP is just equipment durability, below 50% HP you get the "tattered clothes" mood debuff.

The quality will effect things like temperature thresholds, blunt/sharp resistance, etc.

[Valykry]

Thanks. Glad to know an armor with 50% hp isn't only half as effective as new. My pawns can deal with a mood debuff if need be. But if hp affected how well it worked, I'd be constantly churning out expensive stuff to keep them all around 90%. Not a thing I'd like to do.

[Astasia]

Flak Vest plus Thrumbofur/Hyperweave Duster is decent, perhaps comparable to Marine armor, but not really "better." It has more mobility, but virtually no protection for the legs. The duster itself does little and a devilstrand shirt does basically nothing, the reason is every layer is fully affected by armor penetration.

A legendary devilstrand shirt is 50 sharp, a charge lance commonly carried by lancers is 45 AP which reduces that shirt to 5. A devilstrand duster is equally countered, at legendary it's 75 sharp minus the 45 AP of a lance is 30, that's "something" but it's not very good. Thrumbofur fares a bit better at 112 sharp protection at legendary, and on top of a high quality flak vest with bionic arms it's decent coverage for the torso, neck and shoulders (bionic arms are just shoulders), but very little leg protection. I think in most cases in most games you are going to want the marine armor on your colonists. If you can get the thrumbofur though then the duster (or cape) with flak vest is a viable alternative if you want that extra .28 movements speed.

Cataphract armor is just better though.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Valykry:

This prompted me to consult the almighty Google. Here, I stumbled across a conversation, indicating there was a better option. It essentially goes "devilstrand duster on top of flak vests on top of a devilstrand shirt" and this is supposedly better than power armor.
Can anyone confirm, or have an even better suggestion?

In the past, devilstrand gave a flat +armour value before it applied its % bonus on top of it, making clothing like shirts that are usually useless as armour still pretty decent. That was removed and on top of that an armour pen system was introduced. Having several layers will still give you multiple rolls, but low armour values are easily reduced to w/e with any high armour pen weapon.
You might have found either outdated information or how it seems to work a lot for this game: new information based on old perceptions/undying meta.

Flak vests protect the torso about as much as a marine armour does (against sharp), which I think is why they are going for it. It also does not slow down your pawns as much and dusters are good for hot weather. Flak vests for dusters are nice to not outright die and work in it. Marine armour protects better and more as Astasia said. It's far more noticeable on melees though, that either take a lot of blunt damage or sharp damage that can slice over multiple limps. Flak vests + dusters don't really help you much with that.

I basically let my colonists run around in duster + flak vest and let the melees put on my cataphract armour when a relevant raid comes up. It's just too expensive for me to use 24/7. What's best armour is bound to use cases, but beating cataphract in for any use case is hard and beating marine armour already questionable.

[di eshor ribly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCTEKucH-Fo

Short, sweet, and to the point, at least as to how armor currently works.

[Valykry]

So the power armor has the edge if mobility isn't a primary concern. And since I have already managed to pump out 20+ sets, I think I'll stick with them instead of re-tooling. Be a good idea for my next run though. So Thrumbofur is stronger than devilstrand?
I think I know what I'll be ranching next.

[di eshor ribly]

Thrumbofur is stronger in terms of blunt/sharp resistance, but devilstrand has the edge in heat resistance/temperature thresholds and is a *lot* easier to get in bulk.

Feeding (and taming) Thrumbos (while doable) is a hassle in and of itself.

If you're interested in ranching some devilstrand though (instead of growing it), check out the Devilstrand Animals mod that adds the devilgoat. They shed devilstrand, give "devil leather" when butchered, etc. Just another option for a slightly faster strand production.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCTEKucH-Fo

Short, sweet, and to the point, at least as to how armor currently works.

Ingame there is also a description stating these things, if you hover over any of the 3 armour stats.

Originally posted by Valykry:

So the power armor has the edge if mobility isn't a primary concern. And since I have already managed to pump out 20+ sets, I think I'll stick with them instead of re-tooling. Be a good idea for my next run though. So Thrumbofur is stronger than devilstrand?
I think I know what I'll be ranching next.

Hyperweave and thrumbofur both. There is usually enough wild thrumbo events to kit out your melees if you don't have 20 of them. Look for the armour stats on the material. In general "rare => good" is something to go by in Rimworld and if you see something you didn't see before, looking at it's stats will usually tell you what it's good for. Devilstrand has the benefit that you can just grow tons and the heat resistance, if you would be interested in that for some reason.

The flavour text can also be useful to hint what something is good for for many things. They tend to get updated when things get changed.

Edit: Rhino leather and heavy fur already come close to devilstrand.

[di eshor ribly]

Ooh yeah, I forgot about hyperweave. I don't usually see a whole bunch of that during my games so it slipped my mind. Good luck finding enough of that to kit out your crew with without mods though (Hyperweave Plantation - a very late game research that lets you plant it, requires a really good farmer too).

[Valykry]

I assume the hyper weave plantation is a mod? I'm going to hold off on mods that add things like that for a while. Maybe my next colony? I'm not exactly vanilla right now, but I'm trying to keep to the mods that only add what *I* think the base game *should* have.

For now, that's a slightly larger array of furniture, better micromanagement tools, and the ability to shape the terrain to suit my needs (at least as much as picks and shovels allow).

[di eshor ribly]

Yeah the Plantation is a mod. I remember using it during my Android Tiers playthrough as I needed it for... some android upgrade or other and couldn't trade for it (I was basically Skynet killing all the meatbags). I totally get playing as vanilla as possible, most of the time when I reference a mod is just to display the fact that it exists. I'd say 95% of my mod lists are QoL stuff like what you're using.