PC Does penetrator's ignore x% of armor work on zombies?

[GoldenToad]

In A19.1, I use god mode to see zombie health bars and try regular 9mm on a soldier zombie and see how much it drops with both a head and bodyshot. Then I try AP 9mm. No change. I get lv1 Penetrator. No change with either type. Lv4 Penetrator. No change with damage still. I try rad zombies, demolishers, ect. Doesn't seem to change anything. Same story with 7.62 guns.

The penetration to additional targets works fine but is that the sole benefit of the perk in single player or am I missing something?

 

[Fox]

I don't know how the game is coded, but in real life, AP means the bullet won't mushroom or break apart upon impact which allows it to travel further... in the case of humans, straight through. A bullet that passes through the target using AP would typically do less damage than if it was fully absorbed with hollow points (standard bullets) as the hole would be smaller and there wouldn't be shrapnel spread damage either.

So if that is how AP is behaving in the game, count yourself lucky.

Explosive rounds however, now that would cause a bit more damage.

 

[Sjustus548]

I have noticed that AP ammo and weapons like the spear that ignore armor don't seem to work.  I had heard that it was supposed to be fixed in 19.1 but I haven't been able to see much of a difference.  I'm hoping they get it working soon because those armored zombies like the Demolishers are a pain to deal with without AP ammo.

 

[Jugginator]

The target armor function is a known issue being worked on, no worries. Sorry for the confusion about the recent AP patch, that one was to cover rounds going through targets to hit others. For now, HP rounds do the most damage since the target armor tag doesn't work at all (although you lose the penetration part).

 

[stample]

Weirdly, the bonus from Pistol Pete Complete DOES seem to work.  It does a couple extra points of damage when at point blank, which can only be explained by the -20% armor line (the perk says ignores armor, but its -20% in the xml).  It also adds a bleed, so you have to look at the Z' HP quickly.  Unless adding a bleed does several points of immediate damage, but I don't think so.

Took a lvl 2 9mm pistol, no agility or other bonuses, but complete Pistol Pete.  At 5m range, it did 31 dmg to chest.  At point blank it does 38 dmg and a bleed starts.

The only significant difference in the function line is that PistolPete uses the new ItemHasTags="9mmGun" as a requirement, whereas Penetrator and AP ammo both use tags="perkGunslinger", etc etc

 

[GoldenToad]

The target armor function is a known issue being worked on, no worries. Sorry for the confusion about the recent AP patch, that one was to cover rounds going through targets to hit others. For now, HP rounds do the most damage since the target armor tag doesn't work at all (although you lose the penetration part).

Ah good to know. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something.

I don't know how the game is coded, but in real life, AP means the bullet won't mushroom or break apart upon impact which allows it to travel further... in the case of humans, straight through. A bullet that passes through the target using AP would typically do less damage than if it was fully absorbed with hollow points (standard bullets) as the hole would be smaller and there wouldn't be shrapnel spread damage either.

So if that is how AP is behaving in the game, count yourself lucky.

Explosive rounds however, now that would cause a bit more damage.

Yeah, I gotcha. I used to love using HP ammo in New Vegas. I remember because it was a % bonus to damage, if the weapon was powerful enough it would actually outdamage AP rounds against high DT enemies.

 

[JCrook1028]

The target armor function is a known issue being worked on, no worries. Sorry for the confusion about the recent AP patch, that one was to cover rounds going through targets to hit others. For now, HP rounds do the most damage since the target armor tag doesn't work at all (although you lose the penetration part).

So does that mean that the spike mod which also acts against armor values also does not work now?

 

[GoldenToad]

So does that mean that the spike mod which also acts against armor values also does not work now?

I tried it and it works too well. It seems for whatever % of damage that an "armored" zombie type resists, 20% of that value is added on for every swing after the first with no cap.

Say a Q6 baseball bat with one mod does 40 to an "unarmored" zom. A soldier will blanket resist 50% of incoming damage and so takes instead takes 20.

Switching out that mod with the metal spikes will do 20 for the first hit like normal. The second hit will have 20% of the resisted 20 damage added on and will do 24 damage. By the sixth hit you'll do the normal 40 but it won't stop there. If you're wailing on a rad soldier, by the 11th hit you'll be doing 60.

"Unarmored" zombies will have nothing added on per swing and will be pretty much unaffected beyond the occupied mod slot's slight initial boost.