PC Armor questions

Khyron

Khyron

Refugee
I've got a few questions regarding armor.

First, when armor degrades, does it stop protecting? I never get any notices that my armor's durability is low or anything, it doesn't auto-unequip, just occasionally I look at my character sheet with 'B' and notice the durability is 0. But I didn't see it lowering in my stats; I'm just not sure if it was completely 0 or had a little bit of durability I didn't see? Perhaps there should be a HUD paper doll warning for low durability armor (very common in many other games).

Second, light armor and heavy armor seem to have different stats and I'm curious why that is. Does having 15 points of 'light' armor protect less than 15 points of 'heavy' armor? If so why are the two stats separate? Or is it just there to help players identify whether or not a piece of armor is governed by the Light/Heavy armor perks?

And last, how does armor stack with Pain Tolerance? I know the maximum armor you can get is 90 (90% damage reduction) if the Wiki is accurate, and that you can get that by having a perfect set of Steel armor (16 armor per piece) with banded armor mods boosting each piece's armor by 2. But then what happens if I add pain tolerance into the mix? Is the extra Damage Resistance wasted? Do they apply additively or multiply?

 
Khyron said:
I've got a few questions regarding armor.

First, when armor degrades, does it stop protecting? I never get any notices that my armor's durability is low or anything, it doesn't auto-unequip, just occasionally I look at my character sheet with 'B' and notice the durability is 0. But I didn't see it lowering in my stats; I'm just not sure if it was completely 0 or had a little bit of durability I didn't see? Perhaps there should be a HUD paper doll warning for low durability armor (very common in many other games).

Second, light armor and heavy armor seem to have different stats and I'm curious why that is. Does having 15 points of 'light' armor protect less than 15 points of 'heavy' armor? If so why are the two stats separate? Or is it just there to help players identify whether or not a piece of armor is governed by the Light/Heavy armor perks?

And last, how does armor stack with Pain Tolerance? I know the maximum armor you can get is 90 (90% damage reduction) if the Wiki is accurate, and that you can get that by having a perfect set of Steel armor (16 armor per piece) with banded armor mods boosting each piece's armor by 2. But then what happens if I add pain tolerance into the mix? Is the extra Damage Resistance wasted? Do they apply additively or multiply?
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I will let others answer the armor specific questions as I don't have a perfect understanding of the system today - I tend to go for light armor for the mobility / noise / stamina improvements over heavy, or heavy if I am going for a more tank build.  I never paid much attention to the numbers themselves.

As for Pain tolerance - I believe the way that the system is setup is that the armor protection is applied first.  So if a zombie attacks you and you got a perfect set of Steel armor with all the mods, the zombie's incoming damage is reduced by 90% so only 10% is applied to the survivor.  At that time, Pain tolerance would be applied to that damage to the survivor.  So from a math standpoint (and these numbers are just ones I chose - not reflective of actual numbers)

Zombie attacks and deals 100 damage to the survivor

  • Perfect set of armor (steel) - absorbs 90% or 90 points of damage
  • 10 points of damage applied to the survivor
  • Level 2 Pain Tolerance reduces HP loss by 10% or 1 point
  • Survivor takes 9 points of damage
Scenario 2 - No armor

  • Zombie attacks and deals 100 damage to the survivor
  • 100 points of damage applied to the survivor
  • Level 2 Pain Tolerance reduces HP loss by 10% or 10 points
  • Survivor takes 90 points of damage
So if I am correct (and I have no issues if I am not), pain tolerance HP reduction has a bigger impact on light armor players and early heavy armor players.  At the stage you have a perfect set of armor, you are looking at between 0.5 to 2.5 reduced damage after armor.

But don't forget that pain tolerance also significantly reduces the chance of stuns.

 
So that'd indicate a multiplicative application. 100 damage, with 50 armor and 25% pain tolerance. If it's additive then that'd give me 100 * ( (50 + 25)/100) or 25 damage taken.

If it's multiplicative then that's 100 damage * 50% * 25% or 37.5 damage taken.

Anyway, it's not a huge deal but it's super helpful in deciding which perks to prioritize. I just got my hands on a Steel Armor Bonus box which gave me 3 6-quality steel armor pieces and 2 5-quality pieces, and I'm playing a melee-heavy build so I'm trying to max out my survivability.

 
BFT2020 said:
So if I am correct (and I have no issues if I am not), pain tolerance HP reduction has a bigger impact on light armor players and early heavy armor players.
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You're mostly correct; but the conclusion is a bit of a matter of perspective. PT reduces damage taken by a percentage, basically multiplying your health bar. The heavier armor guy benefits less (in numbers per hit), but those small benefits easily add up to a full hit - and thus grants actual survivability; while the no armor guy doesn't really care if he gets overkilled by 10 or 50 points on the same hit.

There's also couple quirks about it you didn't highlight; rounding and the heal-after-the-fact nature of it.

Rounding; if you have 1 point for 5%, you need to take at least 20 damage in a single swing for PT to do anything. It rounds pretty harshly, only reducing full points (last I tested properly, admittedly that was a while ago), so anything less than 20 wont get reduced at 1/5. 20 in a single hit is a pretty heavy hitter, the normie zeds do around 10 iirc. (I never invest a solitary point in PT, sometimes 3 at once when farming has been settled..)

Heal-after-the-fact; If you have current HP of 100, and you take a hit for 100 HP, you die first, and PT doesn't get to heal you. It takes a tiny bit of time to react to the damage taken, and there's a dead-check in between. While it will never save you from a killing blow, there's not that many situations in the game where that would be an issue, and none where it's the only issue.

Light vs Heavy, there are no hidden differences, only the perks as you suspect. The armor value is a straight up reduction percentage, additive between pieces (10 armor = 10% reduction).

The degradation, I did test it once in ages past, and at that point it started reducing in effect at 50%; but I haven't tested it recently. I still assume 50% as a "repairs wanted" point, but in practice I mostly just repair new pieces when putting them on or during horde night prep in longer games.

 
If it starts reducing armor #'s at 50% then it seems like there should be a HUD paper doll element showing yellow at that point with red being full breakage. IMO that's standard for games and works fine even for survival - after all if you're wearing armor you're gonna notice when it starts to degrade or breaks entirely. Indicating to the player what their in-game avatar would notice seems important to me...

 
meganoth said:
I remember people here in the forum saying that armor is not reduced at all. Work in progress ...
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Ok, you made me look:

A20.5 (b2)

Full set of steel Q1, against a Rad biker. Nomad
Taking 17 damage at full durability, and
27 at around 25% dura
40 at 0 dura

Took the broken armor off, 40 damage

The transition looks linear (taking increased damage point by point) - from about 50% onwards, used a couple sidekicks to wear down the armor faster, so the early hits weren't easy to see.

The UI doesn't change the armor value to match, but the reduction does go to zero; maybe people have been complaining about the UI?

 
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