What does armor pen actually do

[D a R i U z Z]

I've read conflicting information on forums, some claiming that its a flat mitigation that the hull has and that its a fixed value only changing between ships, and some claiming that its ignoring hull to go straight into modules.

So which one is it?

[funkynutz]

Not sure what you're getting at? Weapons have a piercing stat. Hulls have a hardness stat.

Do you mean "Super Penetrator", the mod for rail guns?

[D a R i U z Z]

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Not sure what you're getting at? Weapons have a piercing stat. Hulls have a hardness stat.

Do you mean "Super Penetrator", the mod for rail guns?

I mean reinforced mount engineering, on my multicannons i can get to 86 armor pen, compared to 52 baseline. I don't know if that is better than just doing overcharged.

[aY227]

armor pen / armor value * dmg = real dmg

86 is too much - Anaconda have like 65 armor hardness.

Go for damage but try to put 1 weapon with corrosive effect.

Also you gave me stupid idea... will take a while to take it down [coriolis.io]

[Holeypaladin]

Essentially, every ship has an Armor Hardness factor, and if a weapon has lower penetration than the hardness of the ship it is hitting, it deals reduced damage.

There's no advantage to any penetration that exceeds the armor hardness of the target vessel, however. Absolute damage weapons, for example have infinite penetration, and therefore deal the same damage to any ship they hit, regardless of the ship's armor hardness.... while frags have low penetration and aren't very useful against ships like the FDL with its 70 armor hardness.

[Konril]

I don't know where the term "armor pen" is coming from, but the trouble is there are two mechanics it can be referring to.

Armor Penetration refers to a mechanic where as the target's hull hp drops, there is an increasing chance that modules near the area hit will take damage. This has nothing to do with armor hardness or weapon piercing ratings, just straight HP. However the module damage can be reduced by Module Reinforcement Packages.

Armor Piercing is a stat on weapons that compared to the armor hardness of the ship hit. If piercing is greater than hardness the weapon does full damage, otherwise it is reduced as already described above. An example is a size 2 fixed pulse laser with 35 armor piercing would only do half of its damage the the hull of a Fur-De-Lance, which has a 70 armor hardness. A size 3 fixed pulse laser would do better, since it has a 52 piercing rating compared to the Fur-De-Lance's 70 hardness. 74% of the damage would take. But that would be further adjusted by any engineered or alternate hull resistances.

Given the meanings of the words "penetration" and "piercing" I can completely understand where the confusion is coming from. Just be aware that both mechanics are in the game.

As a side note, Armor hardness for human ships varies between 20 and 70. So any penetration rating over 70 might as well be 70. Thargoids are a different matter, with a Cyclops starting at 100 hardness, and going up to 225 for a Hydra. This is the big reason why the guardian gauss outperforms most other AX weaponry even though the on-paper DPS outputs are so similar.

Regarding the "sturdy" mod (aka "reinforced mount"), yes the piercing rating goes up by up to 60%. However shields ignore armor piercing and hardness (effectively shields have a 1 on the hardness scale), and there aren't a lot of human targets with an armor rating high enough for that to matter much. So a 70%-75% upgrade to raw damage from overcharged or short ranged mods is just more useful in most cases, as long as your distributor and heat management can handle it.

[D a R i U z Z]

Originally posted by Konril:

I don't know where the term "armor pen" is coming from, but the trouble is there are two mechanics it can be referring to.

Armor Penetration refers to a mechanic where as the target's hull hp drops, there is an increasing chance that modules near the area hit will take damage. This has nothing to do with armor hardness or weapon piercing ratings, just straight HP. However the module damage can be reduced by Module Reinforcement Packages.

Armor Piercing is a stat on weapons that compared to the armor hardness of the ship hit. If piercing is greater than hardness the weapon does full damage, otherwise it is reduced as already described above. An example is a size 2 fixed pulse laser with 35 armor piercing would only do half of its damage the the hull of a Fur-De-Lance, which has a 70 armor hardness. A size 3 fixed pulse laser would do better, since it has a 52 piercing rating compared to the Fur-De-Lance's 70 hardness. 74% of the damage would take. But that would be further adjusted by any engineered or alternate hull resistances.

Given the meanings of the words "penetration" and "piercing" I can completely understand where the confusion is coming from. Just be aware that both mechanics are in the game.

As a side note, Armor hardness for human ships varies between 20 and 70. So any penetration rating over 70 might as well be 70. Thargoids are a different matter, with a Cyclops starting at 100 hardness, and going up to 225 for a Hydra. This is the big reason why the guardian gauss outperforms most other AX weaponry even though the on-paper DPS outputs are so similar.

Regarding the "sturdy" mod (aka "reinforced mount"), yes the piercing rating goes up by up to 60%. However shields ignore armor piercing and hardness (effectively shields have a 1 on the hardness scale), and there aren't a lot of human targets with an armor rating high enough for that to matter much. So a 70%-75% upgrade to raw damage from overcharged or short ranged mods is just more useful in most cases, as long as your distributor and heat management can handle it.

I see, that is exactly the info i needed. Thanks. I'll keep the overcharged guns on my type 10 then.