Armorsmith Archive

I spent some time talking with a pure combat person today and a few things popped into my head in explaining to him the way the new armor system works. First, I'll say that the new system in one way provides a greater challenge to the armorsmith than any we've had to date.

In the current system, we had to manage armor along a straight line. We all learned it the same way, reach 80% kinetic and then experiment from there to lower HAM or add additional protections, the cream of the crop learns how to make quad protection high base armor or low enough HAM that it could be nearly worn without a buff.

In the new system, the challenge of what is good armor is bigger. We are now managing along a curve instead of a line, and in addition to that, the hinderances is a direct reflection of the protection. So with our new diminishing returns system, the highest protection armor isn't necessarily the best, it's a combination of protection enhancement versus hinderance trade off and finding that optimal point on the curve whereincremental protection(+/-) is not worth theincremental hinderance(+/-). That by itself could actually be exciting for all the numbers crunchers out there.

One HUGE problem in this though is the point system itself. I understand why the devs did it. Most people think linear, so to introduce a curve with diminishing returnsis such acomplicated concept for those that haven't studied it, the team decided to translate that protection into points and make the points lineareven thoughthe protection isn't. (borrowing this from another thread since I haven't been on TC to test it)

6000 kinetic protection means 48% effective protection.
5000 base protection means 42.5% effective protection.
4000 energy protection means 36% effective protection.

Throw in layer management and I can see a bit of potential in the new math.

To use an analogy, it's like covering a stain on the carpet with a rug, the stain is still there, you just can't see it. Because the system now has a linear translation, doesn't mean that it behaves linear. So a person sees 6000 protection and immediately assumes that it is far superior to 5000 protection. Eventually a few combat people will figure it out, but to expect people to understand the concept on a wide scale is ambitious to say the least. It was difficult enough to explain5% stun protection to remove the vulnerability You'd almost have to teach a class to every individual until they understood that what they see isn't really what they see. This is in no way a support of the new changes. The means to reach the end is where most of the problems lie. You could have implemented this system on top of what we currently have.