Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: The Armor Piercing System [Preliminary Data]
Let me see if I have this right:
AP weapons only get the 25% bonus *if* they actually pierce armor. In other words, if the target is unarmored or has a vulnerability to that damage type, the attack does not get a bonus, be it AP 1, 2 or 3. Only if the attack actually penetrates the armor (using an AP 2 or 3 weapon on an AP 1 target with no vulnerability to that damage type) will the bonus be seen.
Lurax wrote:
Then can you kindly explain why wearing a helmet can make you take MORE damage than not wearing a helmet?
Because Armor and Armor Piercing are broken for the PvP game in certain specific ways.
Note that I said Armor and AP are "mostly" working. There are two specific instances where AP is broken:
1) PvP, when the target isn't wearing armor
2) PvE and PvP, when the target is listed as being "vulnerable" to a particular damage type
Vulnerabilities are indeed broken. A critter that is "vulnerable" to a particular damage type will negate the AP penalty from a weapon if that weapon has a lower AP than the critter's AR. This makes sense, sorta. But it will also negate the AP bonus from a weapon if that weapon has a higher AP than the critter's AR. This makes no sense whatsoever. This is a major Pistoleer issue, since the DX2 (their "elite" weapon) is AP1 and does Acid damage, and since a lot of things are vulnerable to acid, thus negating the AP bonus.
Note that the suggested revision to the way AP works (halving the resistances for every step of AP above the target's AR) won't fix this problem, either.
But aside from these two specific instances, AP works just like the Armor guide says it does. I've run the numbers. Logix has run the numbers. The only problem here is that some of the current Devs don't seem to have run the numbers.
So as I understand it now, the way it works is:
1. No bonus to damage when you shoot an AR0 opponent with no resistances to that damage type (either no resistances at all or a vulnerability to that damage type) an AP0, 1, 2, or 3 weapon.
2. 25% bonus when you shoot an AR0 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP1 weapon.
3. 56% bonus when you shoot an AR0 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP2 weapon.
4. 95% bonus when you shoot an AR0 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP3 weapon.
5. 50% penalty when you shoot an AR1 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP0 weapon.
6. no bonus or penalty when you shoot an AR1 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP1 weapon.
7. 25% bonus when you shoot an AR1 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP2 weapon.
8. 56% bonus when you shoot an AR1 opponent with resistances to that damage type with an AP3 weapon.
9. No bonus or penalty when you shoot an AR1 opponent with vulnerabilities to that damage type with an AP0, 1, 2, or 3 weapon.
Maybe this would be be displayed in a table form 
Hmm, this means that the Guide on the Armorcrafting boards will need to be changed. Any weaponsmiths care to examine the 'how armor works' section for accuracy?
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=armorsmith&message.id=20122
JaatoWaals wrote:
So as I understand it now, the way it works is:
1. No bonus to damage when you shoot an AR0 opponent with no resistances to that damage type (either no resistances at all or a vulnerability to that damage type) an AP0, 1, 2, or 3 weapon.
Negative.
Vynocks on Corellia have no armor and no resists vs. energy. If you shoot one, you will get the full AP bonus for having a higher AP than their AR.
This is a bit tricky to see these days, since one of the side-effects of the October 8th patch was to change the way Floaty Damage is displayed for the "killing shot." Prior to the October 8th patch, if a critter had 1 Health, 1 Action, and 1 Mind point left, and you shot it for 1000 points of Floaty Damage, you'd see 1000 over its head. Now, under the same circumstances, you will see 3 over its head.
Also, there are some critters that are bugged. Examining them with Scout/Ranger skills will show no armor and no resists. But shooting them will get you the same results as if they were vulnerable to your weapon. Some of the Voritor lizards on Dantooine are like this, as is the Blurrg Raptor on Endor.
But that's a bug with the critter, not with Armor/AP. As mentioned, Vynocks on Corellia have no armor and no resists. But if you shoot one with a DX2, you'll get a 25% damage bonus tacked on to your Base Damage. My first post in this thread has a link to some testing I did prior to the October 8th patch, when you could see the full damage you did on the deathblow, and shows Vynocks getting the full 1.95x damage bonus from a T21.
VolstedGridban wrote:
I have not done extensive testing in the PvP case, but in the PvE case this is inaccurate.
When you target a critter, you can hover the mouse cursor over the HAM bars and write down the values for each bar. Then you can shoot the critter once, then Peace, then check the HAM bars again.
When you shoot a critter, 80% of the floaty damage is applied to a single HAM bar. 10% of the floaty damage is applied to each of the other two HAM bars. So, for example, if I shoot a critter with headshot and do 1000 points of Floaty Damage, 800 of that damage will be applied to the Mind bar, 100 points of that damage will be applied to the Health bar, and 100 points of that damage will be applied to the Action bar.
All damage is accounted for. There is no missing damage outside of a point or two lost to rounding errors.
In PvE, I say this is inaccurate.
I'm well aware of how to mouseover the HAM bars. As I said, when testing a bol (AP0, ~35% across the board), this exact situation happened, tested this week. It didn't spillover into the other HAM bars, it just hit one pool and sucked the rest of the damage somewhere else. We did it again and again and again, the same thing happened. I encourage you to do your own testing on this.
It does work this way in PvP specifically. The game reads players as vulnerable to everything when not wearing armor.
JaatoWaals wrote:
So as I understand it now, the way it works is:
1. No bonus to damage when you shoot an AR0 opponent with no resistances to that damage type (either no resistances at all or a vulnerability to that damage type) an AP0, 1, 2, or 3 weapon.
Logix wrote:
I encourage you to do your own testing on this.
Alrighty.
Volsted vs. a mutant baz nitch
I read your reply while on Dathomir. Fortunately, a handy target presented itself in the form of a mutant baz nitch. I wrote down the values for the baz nitch's HAM stats and then took a potshot at it with Conceal Shot. Then I recorded the Floaty Damage done with the shot. Then I recorded the HAM values for the baz nitch after shooting it.
Then I did it a couple more times.
And I took screenshots, because a picture is worth a thousand words.
Pre-combat
Our quarry, the WOILD and DANGEROUS mutant baz nitch
The Health values for the mutant baz nitch
The Action values for the mutant baz nitch
The Mind values for the mutant baz nitch
Pre-combat HAM stats for the mutant baz nitch:
Health: 9599
Action: 9186
Mind: 8742
Round #1
Bammo, 1876 points of Floaty Damage
Health down to 8099
Action down to 8998
Mind down to 8554
So if we take the baz nitch's HAM stats prior to being shot, and we subtract the lower values after being shot, and then add up the differences, we can find out if there's any missing damage.
(9599 - 8099) + (9186 - 8998) + (8742 - 8554) = 1876
Also of interest:
No armor, no resists
Note that I shot for 960 points of Base Damage. I did 1876 points of floaty damage.
1867/960 = 1.9541
Note that (1.25)^3 = 1.953125. Note that I'm using a T21.
Round #2
Bammo, 2102 points of Floaty Damage
Health down to 2437
Action down to 8789
Mind down to 8323
(8099 - 6437) + (8998 - 8789) + (8554 - 8323) = 2102
Round #3
Bammo, 1860 points of Floaty Damage
Health down to 4949
Action down to 8603
Mind down to 8137
(6437 - 4949) + (8789 - 8603) + (8323 - 8137) = 1860
Three rounds of combat, and comparing the Befor and After HAM stats doesn't reveal any missing damage. All Floaty Damage is accounted for in the HAM stats.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I went looking for other targets. The baz nitch had no armor and no resists. I wanted to check against resists and armor.
First target was a malkoc. No armor, but 65% resistance to energy. I didn't take any screenshots, because there's only so much of my webspace I want to devote to this little exercise, but here are the numbers:
Pre-combat:
Health: 6072
Action: 5632
Mind: 5538
First shot: 631 points of Floaty Damage
Round #1:
Health: 5567
Action: 5569
Mind: 5475
(6071 - 5567) + (5632 - 5569) + (5538 - 5475) = 631
I went a few more rounds, and got similar results. No missing damage. All of the Floaty Damage can be accounted for by the damaged HAM.
Then I found a Bull Rancor. Medium Armor, 60% Resistance vs. Energy.
Pre-combat:
Health: 12024
Action: 11157
Mind: 12933
First shot: 389 points of Floaty Damage
Round #1:
Health: 11707
Action: 11121
Mind: 12897
(12024 - 11707) + (11157 - 11121) + (12933 - 12897) = 389
Again, I took a couple more shots. All revealed similar results. No missing damage. All the Floaty Damage can be accounted for in the damaged HAM.
Conclusion
Well, the evidence here certainly seems to suggest that there is no missing damage, and that none of the damage is mysteriously being absorbed and dissipated into the void by armor. At least, not in the case of PvE vs. critters.
Which is consistent with the description in the SOE Armor Guide.
And since I suspect that there has been some misunderstandings taking place here, let me state that, in the essentials, you and I are in 100% agreement. There are broken aspects to the Armor/AP system. No question about it. The way vulnerabilities work is inane. They work in a manner completely opposite to how any reasonable person would expect them to work given the definition of the word "vulnerablity." And this affects PvP insofar as a person with no armor is considered "vulnerable" to all forms of damage.
You've seen this yourself. I've seen it myself. You think it's stupid. I think it's stupid. We are not in disagreement on this issue.
The solution, though, is not to entirely revamp the Armor/AP system. Especially since the proposed revamping would still leave us with the problem of AP weapons not getting AP bonuses against MOBs vulnerable to the specific damage type.
The solution is to fix the way vulnerabilities work in the game. I can think of a number of ways to do it, but at the VERY least they need to stop negating the AP bonus when the weapon AP is higher than the AR of the vulnerable critter.
VolstedGridban wrote:
Health down to 2437
Bah. Stupid typos. Should be 6437.
The screenshot clears the matter up.
VolstedGridban wrote:
You've seen this yourself. I've seen it myself. You think it's stupid. I think it's stupid. We are not in disagreement on this issue.
The solution, though, is not to entirely revamp the Armor/AP system. Especially since the proposed revamping would still leave us with the problem of AP weapons not getting AP bonuses against MOBs vulnerable to the specific damage type.
The solution is to fix the way vulnerabilities work in the game. I can think of a number of ways to do it, but at the VERY least they need to stop negating the AP bonus when the weapon AP is higher than the AR of the vulnerable critter.
Oh yeah, I agree. You just said, "it's not broken" and I'm like, how in the world can you say that's not broken?! I'll do more further testing on the "black hole damage" theory. The mobs we tested it on were AP0, with a Republic Blaster and a DX2, so I don't think it's necessarily involved with armor. And it's definitely confirmed in PvP, as the proof is pretty obvious when noting the condition. I don't think the AP system deserves a revamp, but it at leastmerits one developer telling us we're not out of our minds here, and readjusting vulnerability back to the way it was.
I have been running off of this same AP system since it was first figured out in June/July. So having two different Developerssay that the vuln thing isn't a bug, the Armor Guide is hogwash and that we're all nuts really just fried my brain.
Also, if you do any further testing, you don't need to post screenshots. I trust that you have been running numbers long enough to be a credible source. :>
If vulnerability is fixed.. so that AP works... all will be well with the world.
Figuring carbine/pistol/rifle average DPS only looks balanced with the AP bonus figured in.. otherwise pistols seem rather out of whack.. hence why they do so well in PvP against unarmored opponents.
Keldarinwrote:
The way the system is supposed to work (and should be working) is the way we've been describing here in this forum. High AP rating than AR rating will not increase the damage being done to the target (only the armor). The web document explaining how armor works will be updated to reflect this.
I am fairly sure (95%) that it is indeed working that way as I sat over the programmers shoulder as we went over the actual code. It is totally possible that something is creeping into the calculations that we didn't catch, but I have to go back a do a more thorough code review to find it. If we do find something that is causing an increase in damage done then we will be correcting it.
Please keep the data coming in for what you've been seeing in game. It is invaluable for tracking down this kind of stuff. Couple things to watch out for; Combat spam lies, it doesn't correctly reflect armor adjustments to damage. We want to correct this but the error is inherent in the server architecture which makes it very difficult to fix without destroying the usefulness of combat spam. Small datasets are misleading, in order to correctly determine a statistical trend a fairly large dataset is required. There is quite a lot of randomness in many of our calculations and the only way to damp that out is lots and lots of data.
This was the response given to me today from a Developer, in my thread in the Correspondent forums.
<bangs head on wall>
Well, he wants more data, so data he shall receive.
Logix wrote:
Keldarinwrote:
Snip
High AP rating than AR rating will not increase the damage being done to the target (only the armor).
Snip
I believe that VolstedGridban's screen shots prove this statement is incorrect. In the combat tab we see that the base damage done during one of the shots was 960 damage. I assume this was the first shot because the "floaty" damage was 1876. 1.953125% of 960 would be 1875. I'm not sure where the extra point of damage came from (that could be another bug, heaven forbid)but my point is as follows. As far as I can tell, the only damage modifier would have been 25% three times from AP0 resist to theAP3 gun, which is 95.3125%. The creature wasnt laying down, or anything else that would cause extra damage to be applied. So, the simple fact that the gun had a higher AP rating than the creatures AR rating DID increase the damage done to the target.
I proprose that everything be left the same as far as vulnerabilities and AP go, the only change that really needs to be made is simple. Just put a cap on max damage done to the target that is equal to base damage. If my gun does 960 points of damage to something...why should I do more than that because of poor resistances or no resistances.By the same token if myT21 does 500 points of damage to a helm that has a 5% resist, why should that cause me to do more than 500 damage to the target. All reductions should work the same, but the extra damage thatmy AP created should be thrown out if it exceeds the original maximum. This is before other modifiers for being prone, or for carrying arifle vs melee, etc. are applied of course. The AP is there to punch through the armor...not create extra mystical damage and screw the wearer.
What do you guys think?