Is Armor Penetration bugged?

[SilverLight]

Per the title, I'm seeing weird inconsistency on what is or isn't going to get through armor. It's mildly annoying that the support weapons in stratagems don't tell you if they can pierce armor or not, but when the few weapons that do have penetration ratings lie about what they can hit, it's particularly annoying.

This question/rant is brought to you by the comparison of the P4 Senator and the JAR-5 Dominator. P4 says it's light penetrating, yet the only armor I've seen that it doesn't go through are Charger body armor and the heavy automaton riot shields. Meanwhile, just took the JAR-5 for a test run, and it couldn't get through the armor on a smaller bug (I don't know its exact name, but it's the one that intentionally stands so its face plate and claw armor blocks bullets).

I'm completely fine with the P4 being strong enough to get through a heavily armored target, that would be the only valid reason to carry a slow-reload revolver into this war. But I would like it to be rated accurately, and I would like my few other options to work properly.

[Wutever]

Wait, so are you saying that the Senator goes through Strider plates? Pretty sure those are thinner than Devastator shields.

[SilverLight]

I have obliterated Striders and gotten through Devastator plates (not shields though) with the Senator. It was my go-to for when anything lighter than a Charger got too close to me.

[Zeddy]

This has to be some kind of framerate thing or otherwise wacky physics. I can detach strider legs for sure (after empying most of the gun), and on a few occasions I've managed to punch a hole in chargers legs with the revolver. Doing a charger leg with Lib Pen can be anywhere between 2-20 magazines.

I think it's pretty bugged tbh. Damage needs a little less framerate-dependent simulation and a little more game design.

[Artimise Flare]

Originally posted by Wutever:

Wait, so are you saying that the Senator goes through Strider plates? Pretty sure those are thinner than Devastator shields.

Senator if I recall has medium armor pen capabilities, but the damage it pushes out appears to be rather significantly reduced.

[SilverLight]

I think we also just need Penetration to be a gauge/numerical value instead of text on the side that's unclear about what it will do.

Why would it be a framerate thing? Not saying it couldn't be, but that's an odd thing to specifically consider for the issue. I do get 144 average fps when playing, oddly it's one of the few games that actually hits my monitor's refresh rate.

[Wutever]

Tested it, and naah. There's no way Senator goes through a Strider plate. It kept bouncing forever. It can take out a leg in 6 shots though, which is... underwhelming for how few rounds you have, how slow it reloads and how inaccurate it is when not crouched.

I'd rather have 30 rounds to one-tap regular bots in the head or flank the Striders and two-tap the pilots.

In general I don't get why the damn thing is so inaccurate. It would be a decent gun if it didn't take ages to steady after moving.

It does one-tap a Devastator in the head though.

[SilverLight]

Ah, I was not thinking of the same enemy. Right, Strider plates still deflect the Senator. Takes out the pilot in a single shot at least, but I was spouting bs while thinking of something completely different.

[KZ]

P4 is medium, charger is heavy armor. NOTHING "pierces" strider/dev shields besides explosive damage. Inconsistency is because of angle, it matters.

[FireMage]

What you see in stats is only an information about armor pen (light or medium pen) but weapons have armor pen from 1 to 10 (acording to devs). If you have less armor pen then the enemy rating the bullet bounces off. If its equal than you do 50%dmg. If you have more thats full dmg. Senator has armor pen 2 (i think) and can shoot through the bugs thah stand still and guard their faces. Jar-5 also can shoot them because it has more than 2 AP.

[SilverLight]

Originally posted by FireMage:

What you see in stats is only an information about armor pen (light or medium pen) but weapons have armor pen from 1 to 10 (acording to devs).

And why do we, the players, not get to see this information in-game?
Limiting it to text that says "light," "medium," and (presumably at some point we'll see) "heavy" rather heavily implies that there are three grades, not a 1-10 scale. That's my first problem with the whole situation.

Originally posted by FireMage:

Jar-5 also can shoot them because it has more than 2 AP.

Not in my experience, I *tried* it on the same bugs and it gave me ricochet pings

[FireMage]

Maybe an angle shot? We got balistics in game. Even autocannon shots can bounc off chargers at an angle and explode while shooting front on.

As for not getting all info on weapons - on twitter the CEO said that weapons have about 50 stats. We dont get that info beceuse it "might be overwelming" to players. I think that was a mistake on their part and maybe someday we will get more stats in game

[asura]

Pilestedt of Arrowhead posted to twitter:

Armor pen is a value between 0 and 10 - if the AP is equal to the enemies armor value the damage is 50% if the AP beats the armor you do 100% if AP is less than the AV the bullet ricochets

Which really answers nothing. I'm pretty sure The Senator goes through more than the LIberator Penetrator. wrt to explosive damage, that only applies to weak spots.

The enemies that cover their face/turtle up are called Hive Guards and the trick there is to shoot them in the "arm pit" while they're in their boxer pose. I've seen so many people run at them with a breaker and claim the breaker goes through their armor when they're hitting the weak spot right in front them. The same applies to striders - their heads peep over the top of the strider. Hit that either accidentally with shotgun spam or ADS and donk them.

Armor in this game makes no sense and honestly I struggle telling the difference between the performance of the Lib Pen, Lib Explosive, and Lib Standard even on enemies people don't considered armored/not armored. The bile spewers, for example, have armor on their faces. Shoot it with a lib pen and you'll see a red hit marker, shoot it with the standard liberator and you'll get a white marker. Shoot their face with a lib explosive and it will take twice the magazines as if you shoot the huge butt because you're missing out on weak spot+explosive. I think half the problem with the lib pen is just hit registration. I guess the white/red markers is what Pilestedt was talking about with the 50%/100% values above.

For any of the obviously armored enemies, I rarely see the ricochet icon with the senator but I don't see a red hit marker, either, so I guess that thing just does half damage to everything or the hit registration on that makes no sense, too.

Originally posted by FireMage:

As for not getting all info on weapons - on twitter the CEO said that weapons have about 50 stats. We dont get that info beceuse it "might be overwelming" to players. I think that was a mistake on their part and maybe someday we will get more stats in game

Yeah this makes no sense on their part. Now we're just waiting on a data miner to make us a bestiary or something I guess.

[SilverLight]

Easy way to handle that is just having a setting in the gameplay options to display simplified or complex gear stats. The people who don't want to dive into the stats don't need to, and the people who want to know why X does Y can get all the information.

Originally posted by FireMage:

Maybe an angle shot? We got balistics in game. Even autocannon shots can bounce off chargers at an angle and explode while shooting front on.

I know there's a ridiculous level of detail in how things work, including ballistics, but I was going at the bug head-on, exactly how I do with the Senator, and it didn't get through. But I'll try again, double check to make sure I didn't just hallucinate or get it horribly wrong.

[SilverLight]

Alright, upon further testing

I think what's happening is that I'm getting occasional false ricochet pings. I'm not shooting at weird angles or hitting off-center, I'm head-on with the hive guard, shooting it in the face plate, while not moving so I don't get aim sway. But I'm not seeing the actual ricochet, and subsequent shots deal damage and don't get the ping. It's just, sometimes the first shot gives the ricochet symbol without an actual ricochet.