Default armor protection value

[triple_agent]

Just to be sure, what is the default "g_armorProtection" value in the game, is it "0.2" as the config says or is it "0.3" as the engine claims to be standard?

[Code1920]

like you said it says 0.3 but it's default is 0.2
I did a little testing and the value gets reset back to 0.2 at the start of each level.
Changing this value had no effect on the armour protection even when playing each skill level including nightmare mode.

[triple_agent]

Originally posted by Code1920:

like you said it says 0.3 but it's default is 0.2
I did a little testing and the value gets reset back to 0.2 at the start of each level.
Changing this value had no effect on the armour protection even when playing each skill level including nightmare mode.

I always felt the armor balance in 'Doom 3' is at least somewhat out of whack. It seemed underused to my perception when I played the campaign. Either the armor pickups are too plenty, offering too much of a bonus or the armor protection is just too low.

If the value gets reset to "0.2" such as you say, then forcing alternative value through autoexec will not make permanent difference? One would probably be better off binding the alternative value to a key, but then, it is a very makeshift solution.

[Code1920]

Originally posted by triple_agent:

I always felt the armor balance in 'Doom 3' is at least somewhat out of whack. It seemed underused to my perception when I played the campaign. Either the armor pickups are too plenty, offering too much of a bonus or the armor protection is just too low.

If the value gets reset to "0.2" such as you say, then forcing alternative value through autoexec will not make permanent difference? One would probably be better off binding the alternative value to a key, but then, it is a very makeshift solution.

yesterday it was resetting the value that i set... how ever today i gave it another try and now it's still set to what i had it as yesterday. and no longer resetting at the start of each level. but it still doesn't have any effect in-game that I can see. even when set to 100 percent (1.0).

[triple_agent]

First of all I should probably state that I use 'dhewm3'. Then, changing the parameter in-game does work, but apparently it always leaves some margin for health damage. Whether I go for "1" or above the value of "1", it seems to take a little off health from rocket blast radius impact, but indeed mostly it is armor loss as expected there. Therefore, values above "1" seem not to make any difference. In the end, the value does reset after each campaign level load.

I do wonder why definitive most of combat related parameters are set within "def" files - inside the "pak" archives - but only the armor and the nightmare mode health setup are put in the config, particularly with armor stat behaving the way it does. It seems like a twist.

[triple_agent]

Y'know what I thought, that armor protection should be relative instead of absolute. I mean, normally you have armor protection value of 20% or 30% and that is it, regardless how much armor you wear. Although, if to use imagination, you can picture that the more armor you wear, the more of protagonist body is effectively being covered.

That is why, armor protection value could be counted as: actual armor value divided by maximum armor and multiplied by certain arbitrary protection factor. The maximum armor in 'Doom 3' is "125" and the default protection factor is 30%.

According to this new mechanics, if I carried "51" of armor, the effective protection should be: "51 / 125 * 30 / 100", which gives us 12% against any next damage. That is not much.

Depending on the worth and the spread of armor pickups, I believe the default protection factor should be something like 70%, which means if having roughly "62" of actual armor, should give us about 35% effective protection against any next damage. Understandably, each hit received diminishes the actual amount of armor we have, therefore the case is dynamic.

The rule of a thumb to it, is that the more armor you have, the more armor use and the less armor you have, the less armor use.