Anyone ever found any worth for fur cloaks?

[Estieukua]

They look pretty cool on most armours.

Crafting them costs an extra 50 crowns versus the much more widely usable additional fur padding (AFP).

They reduce ranged damage to the body by 20%, and that reduction continues once the armour is destroyed (unlike that from AFP ... this being the one area in which fur cloaks have the advantage).

Goblins are the most range-heavy enemy. Their little bows don't do much damage but have a broad range (25-40) and poor armour effectiveness (60% for the not-so-small ones).

20% of 25 is 5, and 20% of 40 is 8, making a raw damage range of 20-32 versus fur cloaks (the upper limit of 32 still significantly higher than the lower limit of 25 without the attachment).

60% of 25-40 is 15-24 armour damage (no attachment), and 60% of 20-32 is 12-19 or 12-20 armour damage (with a fur cloak). The difference between 15-24 and 12-19/20 is so minimal as to barely be noticeable.

If the wearer has Nimble (assume 40% of HP damage taken), 25-40 raw damage applied to HPs once armour is gone translates into 10-16 HP damage. With a fur cloak attached to the otherwise destroyed armour, 20-32 raw damage applied to HPs would translate into 8-13 HP damage - only slightly lower than 10-16, and (crucially in the context of goblin fights) still high enough to be poisoned.

Against the heaviest crossbows, 50-70 raw damage would be reduced to 40-56, and 37-53 armour damage would be reduced to ~ 30-42. This reduction is more significant, but there's still a little overlap of max/min values. 70% ignore-armour damage of 50-70 is 35-49, and 70% ignore-armour damage of 40-56 is 28-39 (not hugely lower than 35-49). Characters with max Nimbleness are already highly injury-resistant against repeated heavy x-bow bolts. Characters in heavy armour (BF or not) are already resistant to heavy x-bow bolts to the body, but are highly vulnerable to x-bow bolts to the head (which is not protected by fur cloaks). Characters in medium-heavy body armour without Nimble (say a 210 reinforced hauberk) would be quite likely to avoid an injury from the first bolt thanks to having a fur cloak, but they would still benefit more from AFP, which is easier and cheaper to obtain.

So, has anyone found any use for fur cloaks?

And, if they have no use, how could they be altered so as to have one?

Reducing ranged damage to the body by 33-34% would make goblin bows do ~ 16-26 raw damage (~ 10-16 vs armour), with max-Nimble characters taking ~ 6-11 HP damage once armour was gone (still enough to be poisoned).

Reducing ranged damage to the body by a massive 50% would make goblin bows do ~ 12-20 raw damage (~ 7-12 vs armour), with max-Nimble characters taking ~5-8 HP damage once armour was gone (still almost guaranteed poisoning). At least, I suppose, the armour would last quite a lot longer (but probably it would only give you 1 extra hit before poisoning compared to AFP), and characters in medium-heavy body armour without Nimble could take many more hits from heavy x-bows (perhaps too many) before the threat of injury.

Ranged damage to the body would need to be reduced by at least 66-67% to give a good chance of resisting poisoning once the armour was gone ... in that case, maybe ranged armour damage could be reduced by just a third, with only ranged HP damage reduced by as much as two-thirds?

Alternatively, maybe fur cloaks could offer an additional resistance to poisoning and bleeding effects from hits to the body (say, a 50% chance to resist when the threshold is met, or just a doubling of the normal threshold damage needed to induce those effects)?

Or maybe fur cloaks (even as they are) will find some use against some of the new fire weapons?

[turtle225]

EDIT: Updated 8/13/2020 as per Blazing Deserts buff to Boondock Bows and nerf to Ambusher Ignore racial bonus.

EDIT: Updated 1/13/2021 as per recent attachment changes. Fur Cloak gained +10 durability which is now factored into the tests. Tests still show base armor values in the charts, but the +10 durability is applied in the calculations.

I think you are focusing too much on wanting it to block poison when naked rather than just appreciating what it is doing.

Fur Cloak works like Indom, albeit weaker and only on the body, but it does mean that it benefits from the same damage formula nuance that Indom and Nimble benefit from.

Here's some test examples. Light armors have Nimble. Heavy has Forge.

Ambusher - Reinforced Boondock Bow - Quick Shot - Ambusher Ignore modifier.

Armor line	Mean hits to die	Mean hits to poison
100hp, 120/95/40%	12.8	5.4
100hp, 120/95/40% FC	16.3	8
100hp, 120/115/42%	13.3	6.1
100hp, 120/115/42% FC	16.8	8.8
100hp, 120/160/47%	15.5	7.5
100hp, 120/160/47% FC	18.1	10
80hp, 300/300/Forge	21.7	13.8
80hp, 300/300/Forge FC	28.5	20.8

Forge benefits a lot from FC here but they should never get shot enough for that to really matter. Nimble benefit a lot from FC, and it pushes back poisoning by a few hits.

Overseer - Spiked Impaler - Xbow Mastery - Overseer Ignore modifier.

Armor line.	Mean hits to die.	Mean hits to injury.
100hp, 120/95/40%	5.8	4.9
100hp, 120/95/40% FC	7	5.9
100hp, 120/115/42%	5.8	5.1
100hp, 120/115/42% FC	7	5.8
100hp, 120/160/47%	5.9	5.3
100hp, 120/160/47% FC	7.3	6.1
80hp, 300/300/Forge	3.9	1.7
80hp, 300/300/Forge FC	5.4	3.6
80hp, 300/300/Forge AFP	6	3.9

As expected, Forge likes AFP better here against Overseers. Nimble gains a hit here, making FC easily better than Bones for Goblin battles.


All that being said, I never use FC either because I'm always using my furs to make AFP, but I certainly don't think it needs a buff. It's pretty good.

[suejak]

While doing close to no analysis on my choices, I try to put FC on medium-heavy armour and put it on some of my Nimble guys for big goblin fights, especially ones who will be aggressively pushing up on goblins. Nimble percent isn't too terribly important for these fights IMO - it's more just withstanding the sheer quantity of trash damage and keeping poison at bay.

Unless they're a specific anti-goblin build like fencer or warscythe, I also tend to equip them with kite shields and the one-handed variant of their specialization (or just give them 1h swords), because I just accept that they're not going to be MVPs in these fights.

I'm not crazy about FC but that's how I've been using it against what is perhaps Nimble's biggest counter (mass goblins). It makes sense to me, so it's nice if some running of the numbers suggests it's a decent solution...

I am a bit of a hoarder and tend to have tons of niche sets of armour/weapons to swap out for specific fights. This is one such instance where I swap out.

[andrekroon27]

Yeah there is no reason to not put it on midline armors like noble mail or famed alternatives like heraldic hauberk unless you know specifically that you are doing something else with it. Afterall those armors will never be useful on nimble vs Chosen anyways and they don't benefit from AFP due to nimble. It's either that or bone plating, it just so happens that white fur is incredibly rare and bones are incredibly common. However if you have spare white furs you might aswell unless you care more about the crowns.

[the dark wizard]

I mean they look kewl as ♥♥♥♥.

[Kill'em ALL]

I'm a little surprised that people seem to find unhold furs rare, I always have more than enough. Might have something to do with both my fondness for roaming the northern ranges and also preference for Bone Plating over AFP most of the time. Also I rarely "top-tier" attachements (BP, AFP, FC) on anything that I don't consider an "endgame" gear (i.e. stuff that can only be raplaced by a superior named item) and use easier-to-acquire alternatives for the armors that I know I;m going to end up selling, which probably limits my need for those attachements in general.

I am also somewhat against making choices based solely on min-maxing everything with the Power of Math. If that's your thing - fine, it's your game, but for me having one optimal path to follow actually lowers the enjoyment.

So while the cloaks might not be the optimal choice they do work well enough for people who are not expected to fight in melee and have an additional - and very important - advantage of looking absolutely BADASS, especially when your entire backline is clad in them. They are my absolute favourite attachement aesthetic-wise. That alone would be a good enough reason for me to use them heavily.

[McGrits]

Fur Cloaks are great in the goblin city for back line guys that can get separated from the main line of bros. The goblin city has so much height and the extra amount of goblins coming from the north end of the battlefield that normal human shielding breaks down. My 2H axe bro barely survived after becoming a pin cushion but the fur cloak helped him survive the damage.

I use the additional fur padding on the guys who go go chase the little goblin gits since they always pull daggers and stuff.

[andrekroon27]

AFP does nothing for punctures.

[Estieukua]

Originally posted by turtle225:

I think you are focusing too much on wanting it to block poison when naked rather than just appreciating what it is doing.

I wondered that as well. I hadn't really ever tried them out much, despite usually keeping several of them on spare sets of armour for hypothetical future use. But recently I decided to try them (and pay attention to the impact) against goblins, and (thanks to the broad damage range of the ambushers' bows, and the fairly modest damage reduction per hit) it seemed impossible to tell whether the attachments were even taking effect. The results from your table indicate a significant cumulative difference in survivability if remaining in place to be shot repeatedly, but of course I got worried and ran away from range (or had other mercs chase the ambushers away with an Adrenaline charge) before it came to that.

That's the trouble: from one individual hit to the next, it's mostly not possible to discern and appreciate what the attachment is doing.

As expected, Forge likes AFP better here against Overseers. Nimble gains a hit here, making FC easily better than Bones for Goblin battles.

Did the Nimble lines from your table fare better with FCs than with AFP? And did the BF ones fare better (versus ambushers) with FCs than with AFP?

Certainly there's a niche for FCs if having them is better (versus any other attachment) against a particular enemy. But, even then, bones and AFP have an obviously greater all-round utility for fighting any given enemy, and that's why most people don't really use FCs, even though they look cool ( ... but direwolf mantles look even cooler and are available in abundance in the early game before you gain access to more optimal attachments).

BTW, I've tried using your damage calculator several times, without success. But I suspect that the problem is just that my olde pc is ♥♥♥♥ and needs to be replaced.

[turtle225]

Originally posted by Estieukua:

Did the Nimble lines from your table fare better with FCs than with AFP? And did the BF ones fare better (versus ambushers) with FCs than with AFP?

Nimble is much better with FC here than AFP, surviving around 3 hits more and more resistant to poison.

Forge is also much better with FC (about 5 hits) against Ambushers (and Bola spam), but Forge already shrugs that stuff so using AFP for the Overseers makes more sense.

I agree that Bones and AFP are overall better, but for Goblin battles Fur Cloak seems to be a clear winner for Nimble anyway.

Originally posted by Estieukua:

BTW, I've tried using your damage calculator several times, without success. But I suspect that the problem is just that my olde pc is ♥♥♥♥ and needs to be replaced.

What exactly happens when you try to run it? Does it throw an error or does it just look like it is hanging?

A test like Ambusher vs. Forge takes a long time to compute because of how many hits it takes. You can reduce the number of trials with the trials variable at the top to speed up calculations. The default for the main calculator is 100,000 trials which can take some time especially on weak weapons.

Alternatively, you can try running the code on repl.it

https://repl.it/

You don't have to create an account, just click "new repl" at the top right. Choose "Import from GitHub" and put my link url

https://github.com/turtle225/Battle-Brothers-Damage-Calculator

Once it loads in, on the top right you can configure the "run" button if you wish to use it. Select Python from the drop down and in the box type "python BBCalc.py" without the quotes. This will make it so that the green run button runs the main calculator, but this won't work for the other calculators.

Alternatively, don't worry about the run button, you can run any of the calculator versions by typing "python calcname.py" without the quotes where calcname is the name of the calculator you wish to use.

Editing the files to do the scenario you want is the same as before. Make sure the edits are done saving before you run the calculator though. You can see a greyed out "saved" status next to the open file tab.

[andrekroon27]

Use Fur Cloak on noble mail or other medium nimble armors and put it on nimble frontline in goblin fights or other ranged heavy fights where the nimble percent isn't important, excess of these goes to lower rdef backline nimblers. Then for times where nimble percent is valuable, such as chosen, give these heavier armors to backliners and swap in 95s with bone plating to the frontline.

Bone plating generally isn't very useful vs ranged, if you're taking one hit you'll take another, and there isn't anything you can do to avoid that second shot from being fired unlike you can with melee.

I would definitely craft AFP for battleforged before Fur Cloak for nimble though since it is much more impactful and nimble is fine with Bone Plates still.

[Estieukua]

Originally posted by turtle225:

...

What exactly happens when you try to run it? Does it throw an error or does it just look like it is hanging?

...

I don't remember exactly what went wrong before (I tried using it at the end of last year and then again last week after a long gap), but I tried installing it all again from scratch today, and ended up getting it going and even managed to customize the configs without messing anything up.

[Storm]

It's the best looking attachment in the game. What else do you want?

[Abel]

I've only found it useful in the Goblin City on a Nimble character. The fact it needs two Thick White Furs and that AFP requires one, makes it very awkward to craft. If I get lucky and find enough furs, I consider crafting it, otherwise not. It doesn't make that much of a difference, honestly and AFP is just better overall if you mainly build BF bros.

[the dark wizard]

Originally posted by Storm:

It's the best looking attachment in the game. What else do you want?

hell yeah brother!

[Estieukua]

Nope. The official coolest armour in the game is a green mail hauberk with a direwolf mantle, combined with a closed flat-top helm. It's sub-optimal for everything, except looking cool.