Armorsmith Archive

Okey whats the difference?
Special Protection vs Effectiveness

I heard that special protection is one higher AR. Is that true? are there any difference?

I bet this has severel post but i didnt want to search my ass of

Whoever told you that experimenting Special Protection would give a Higher Armor Rating, either was pulling your leg or had a bad source for their information...

On All armor, there is a resistance which is in the special protection category and then there is the Base resistance... When Experimenting on the Special Protection you will be raising that resistance which is listed on the Special Protection category... Whereas when experimenting on the Effectiveness Line, you will be raising the Base Percentage...

All Player wearable armor is a Light Armor rating... Currently there is no way to change that to anything higher... (perhaps Mando would be Medium?)

Simple to test really, and I'm amazed at how many armorsmiths think they are the same.

Find a helmet with energy in base effectiveness, and one with energy in special protection. Have a rifleman shoot you a few times in the head with a T21 vs. each helmet.

From this simple test it's very clear that energy being in special protection blocks more damage than energy in base effectiveness (against high AP weapons like T21 anyway).

Ox- when did you run this test? I've run it several times (using other weapons and full suits of armor) and I have never seen any results that indicate that special protection is in any way different than effectiveness. It may be time for me to break out the testing equipment again.

About 3 weeks ago.

If don't recall the exact numbers now, but we had a helm with 51% energy in base which blocked somewhere around 34%, and a helm with 69% in special that blocked 50% of the damage. Regardless of what the exact numbers were, the blocked ratio was definitely higher when energy was in special. This was with a master rifleman using T21 and headshot.

Just tested this. I didn't see any difference between a protection being in special protections or effectiveness. Damage and AP bonuses both applied what they were supposed to.

Message Edited by ChryssSR on 05-01-2004 09:13 PM

I didn't bother to keep my notes, but I tested with kinetic and energy layered composite sets. Myself, a test partner, and my trusty calculator used a Republic blaster (AP1), T21 (AP3), and a scythe (AP2).

As far as the actual testing, the Republic vs. 80% energy layered composite was pretty straight-forward. AR1 vs. AP1 there should be no bonuses, justa damage reduction based upon the resist of the armor. TheRepublic when used against this armor reacted as expected, damage was reduced by80% and was verified against the combat log and the floating number.

WhentheRepublic was used against armor that had energy listed as a base resist, the results were similar tothe energy layered armor. No bonuses(or penalties) were granted to the damage dealt; just a straight reduction of the damage equal to the armor's energy resist.

The same tests were used with the T21. In both cases, the AP vs AR value was calculated the same for the energy layered and non-energy layered armor. AP3 vs. AR1 bonuses were applied properly and damage reduction was appropriate foreach armors' resists.

The same tests were done with the scythe against kinetic layered and unlayered composite. Damage scaling was the same for both suits of armor.

-Ox, I didn't called you stupid. I said it was a "stupid post" because you didn't do an in depth comparison and you didn't document anything. You made conclusion on a half-a** test.

Thanks, ChrysssR for giving us a true in depth comparisson.

Jettli, my tests may not have been valid, but you are calling me stupid without reading what I wrote or even checking the numbers I posted. Obviously the resists are different, and obviously the % blocked are different as one would expect.

But if you look at the numbers, clearly 50% is a higher blocked ratio starting from 69 than 34% is starting from 51. That's what I meant when I wrote "the blocked ratio was definitely higher when energy was in special".

I'll try and redo the tests tomorrow so I can post exact numbers.

Chr'yss,

Can you post the numbers seen by the shooter and the numbers posted in the targets combat log?