Understanding armor

Protects 'off the top', or as a percentage of incoming damage?

from Sins Forums

Can't find this in the wiki or the entity files. How does armor actually work?

 

After you reduce the damage by shield mitigation and armor type modifiers (e.g. a TEC light firing its anti-heavy weapon at a light frigate only scores 50% damage), is it:

 

Case 1: The armor reduces the amount of damage that gets through by a percentage, or

 

Case 2: The armor reduces the amount of scored damage by a direct subtraction.

 

Example: A capship with 50% shield mitigation and 5 armor gets hit with a 60 point weapon that does 100% damage against heavy armor types. So 100% of (50% of 60 points), or 30 points, get through to the armor.

 

Case 1: 5 armor = 25% reduction in damage (I'm guessing), so the shot hits for 30 x 75% = 22.5 points.

 

Case 2: 5 armor = 5 hit points of protection, so the shot hits for 30 - 5 = 25 points.

 

Anyone know?

 

-- Retro

51,363 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Each point of armor adds 5% effective hp. So a ship with 100 hp and 1 armor can soak up 105 points worth of damage, for example.

Easiest way to think of it :)
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Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Its a percentage, the formula is floating around the forums somewhere, but I don't know where right now. :)
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
It's more like case 1, according to this post. Damage is reduced by 1 / (1 + 0.05 * Armor), so each extra point is worth less than the next. The rough amount of damage reduction for each point should then be:

1: 4.8%
2: 9.1%
3: 13.0%
4: 16.7%
5: 20.0%
6: 23.1%
7: 25.9%
8: 28.6%
9: 31.0%
10: 33.3%
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Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks, Mongoose. I found this statement interesting as well.
However, armor is more effective than a straight hull strength increase because it increases the effective hull regeneration rate (again by a factor of 5% per point of armor)
Don't think I agree with that one. When you research hull increases, your heal rate also goes up, at least according to the research info tag.

BTW, the reason I asked was because I wanted to understand a little better if upgrading weapons was actually more valuable than it appeared. If armor worked like Case 2 above in the original post, upgrading a weapon by 5% would do *more* of a percentage damage increase than just the 5%. (Say it WAS Case 2, and you hit for 20 at weapon increase 0% and the target has 10 armor. Then you'd do 20-10=10 damage. Upgrade your weapon by 5% and you'd hit for 21-10=11 damage, which is really a 10% increase in your weapon strength.)

The armor sliding scale means your weapon upgrades are just a tiny bit more effective than a pure 5% per level, and this small bonus gets bigger against higher-armor targets.

-- Retro
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
It's more like case 1, according to this post. Damage is reduced by 1 / (1 + 0.05 * Armor), so each extra point is worth less than the next. The rough amount of damage reduction for each point should then be:1: 4.8%2: 9.1%3: 13.0%4: 16.7%5: 20.0%6: 23.1%7: 25.9%8: 28.6%9: 31.0%10: 33.3%


wow thanks for this info :)
this was very useful!
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
It's more like case 1, according to this post. Damage is reduced by 1 / (1 + 0.05 * Armor), so each extra point is worth less than the next. The rough amount of damage reduction for each point should then be:1: 4.8%2: 9.1%3: 13.0%4: 16.7%5: 20.0%6: 23.1%7: 25.9%8: 28.6%9: 31.0%10: 33.3%


this was very useful.. thanks :)
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks, Mongoose. I found this statement interesting as well.

However, armor is more effective than a straight hull strength increase because it increases the effective hull regeneration rate (again by a factor of 5% per point of armor)

Don't think I agree with that one. When you research hull increases, your heal rate also goes up, at least according to the research info tag.


What the statement means is that while getting more armor is analogous to giving your ships more hull points, it's actually more effective than just hull points because it reduces damage instead. That gives the hull point regen less to restore, so it's as if you increased your regen rate by the same amount as well (5% per point armor).

The statement is talking only about a hull point increase as an analogy, though; as you noted, the actual hull point research upgrades always include a straight hull regen boost, too.