Armorsmith Archive

This was on the rifleman board, and I haven't seen any comment on it here. I realize it's a sematics issue maybe, but it does affect us since we may have been explaining to our customers how armor works in the wrong way. I don't see any talk about it here so I thought I should bring it up...

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=rifleman&message.id=17606

Any comments?

Like most things in this game we go by interpretation and observation with out ever being able to truly test accuratly and get imperial numbers. Hense the big debats inculding those that insist that a broken thing isn't broken when it very well might be broken. But it is the best we can do since the people who are able to truly test it don't seem to or don't respond with their strange logic. Or worse yet explain that "that is the way it was supposed to work" and never really say what the big plan is.

Examining History we can see that when going by strict observation and personal interpretation in a non controlled environment with several unknowns it is hard to determine the true cause and effect. Statistics can be skewed in many different ways either intentionally or unintentionally. All we can hope to do is raise enough of a doubt that it attracts the person responcible for the system to see there is a problem that needs correction. Of course it would be nice to have someone who really knows explain how it trully works as well as testing to make sure that it does.

I don't think this is a matter of numbers being skewed, I think this is more a matter that we were told one thing when something else was true. As in, OOPS, we screwed up, this is what the code is and we need to tell you the right thing.

Read the full thread ... Essentially, whatever dev posted that explanation of AR has NO CLUE what he's talking about, is really confused, or is just messing with everyone.

It's working largely as intended and described in the armor guide. The only problem right now is that AP does not add damage against an opponent with vulnerability to that damage type.

I have not tested weapons against creatures but I have done extensive testing of weapons against PCs with different levels of armor. Here is a thread where I ran a test to see if PSG's added another layer of armor as it relates to Armor Piercing resistance.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=armorsmith&message.id=10887&highlight=#M10887

I didn't really make much more than a mention of this in the post but there was no noticable increase in damage over the 100% in cases where there should have been. For example a T21 vs. no armor situation provided a set of damage results that averaged 92.9 while the same T21 against Bone armor with a PSG gave a set of resulting damge that averaged 90.7. This is not a great enough difference to clear the standard deviation let alone any predictable percentage of difference. The same held true for the AP2 vs. AR0 averaging 60.4 while the Bone armor plus PSG averaged 56.8 against the same weapon. All of these numbers are before any mitigation by the armor or PSG the end total predictably lower but the initial damage did not decrease.

However, the AP0 attack provided some interesting results. The average damage against AR0 was 38.2 while the inital damage against AR1 was 39.0 so there was also no decrease in inital damage. But the damage mitigation was modified. The 41% bone armor absorbed an average of 27.6 points of damage which would be much higher than the 41% but subtracting 50% from the 39 points of damage we would get 19.5 of which 41% is 7.995 for a total of 27.495. This suggests to me that the AP vs. AR damage modification is applied only to the armor's mitigation calculation so since a no armor situation would not have an armormitigation there would be no increase in damage for higher AP ratings.

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Brutus_Krylop wrote:

It's working largely as intended and described in the armor guide. The only problem right now is that AP does not add damage against an opponent with vulnerability to that damage type.

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But that's what the Dev is saying... that it's not supposed to do that! He saying that what we were first told about that was wrong... I think maybe we're the ones confused because maybe the numbers that come out are close enough to what the armor guide says that folks are skeptical. I mean I'm not entirely convinced myself, but it is a big deal if we were told one thing when something else is true.

To be honest, I'm skeptical about the original post, which claimed to be quoting a dev but had no attribution of any sort. Armor seems to me to be performing exactly as described in the guide (aside from some reporting issues with high AP, and the non-obvious vulnerability-overrides-layers stuff.)

A developer mentioned Squad Leader was that at typo? lol

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=457

That was a while ago though.

If it's the guy right by the rebel base on the hill you're referring to the guy who you do stuff for to get the RIS armor schematics I believe.

oh ok thanx man, I was just windering about that before I saw your post. Dang, I had hoped.

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ipp350 wrote:
If it's the guy right by the rebel base on the hill you're referring to the guy who you do stuff for to get the RIS armor schematics I believe.

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8you sir are correct