# [For bigtino] Thread about heavy armor



## bigtino

This is stuff that I've encountered, too. I have no idea why a person would choose to wear heavy armor. For 2,000 credits, you can get 8 soak at the cost of 4 defense in a suit that has a vulnerability to Electric damage. Which means a couple of things.

1. With a 48 credit electro-pistol, I can ignore your 2,000 credit purchase. But that pistol is weak compared to standard pistols, so fair enough. But that still means...

2. For half a credit per bullet, I can use AP rounds that ignore 60% of that 2,000 credit purchase at zero penalty. There's no trade-off for AP rounds, and at 10 credits for 20, there's no reason not to use them. Not to mention the defense penalty of heavy armor means it's easier to hurt them than it would be to hurt someone in lighter armor.

3. The biggest issue in my eyes, for RP if not for balance, is HP rounds. Bullets that are meant to shatter more easily so they do more damage against soft targets but do little against armor. But they do +1d6 damage at a cost of -1d6 to hit. That means that, the heavier the target's armor, the _more effective_ hollowpoint rounds become, because that penalty to hit is mitigated by their own defense penalty.

4. And then there's Weak Point. A one grade dip in a career that's pretty easy to get into gives you an exploit that lets you totally ignore soak once per target. Now the tradeoff, at least in how I read it, is that if you miss that Weak Point shot, you can't try it again - you've used that exploit against that target. But the heavier the armor they're wearing, the easier they are to hit, making it easier to ignore their soak entirely.

So with those issues comes the question that I still haven't figured out the answer to. Kind of a multi-parter, I guess. If quality is available, even capped at exceptional, there becomes no reason to wear heavy armor, because you can get better light armor for less money using quality. If rarity is to be more strictly enforced on quality, how do we enforce it? What's the metric there? What do "uncommon" and "rare" mean? How do they factor into loot or purchases or what-have-you? And if players should not be able to purchase any item of quality (which seems silly to me, since a market, especially a futuristic one, is going to have higher quality options readily available for a higher price), then what do they do with their money? Vehicles are ungodly expensive, as are cybernetics, to the point where it makes me question when a player, by the standard loot rules, could ever make enough money to afford them. And there seems to be nothing to purchase between the "couple thousand" and "couple tens of thousands" price ranges.

And then there's the issue of dangling quality in front of a player. There's little more frustrating to a player, at least for me, as an arbitrary ruling, and saying "You have a space ship and a galactic market, but you can't find an _uncommon_ item despite having the money to pay for it," seems pretty arbitrary - at least without some sort of metric or roll or something to determine what those rarity terms actually mean.


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## Morrus

bigtino said:


> 4. And then there's Weak Point. A one grade dip in a career that's pretty easy to get into gives you an exploit that lets you totally ignore soak once per target. Now the tradeoff, at least in how I read it, is that if you miss that Weak Point shot, you can't try it again - you've used that exploit against that target. But the heavier the armor they're wearing, the easier they are to hit, making it easier to ignore their soak entirely.




Getting +5 or +8 damage (which is what ignoring its SOAK amounts to) *once* to an enemy isn't really that helpful. It's like an extra dice or two of damage once. For the price of an entire career grade. I actually think it's quite a weak ability.


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## bigtino

Morrus said:


> Getting +5 or +8 damage (which is what ignoring its SOAK amounts to) *once* to an enemy isn't really that helpful. It's like an extra dice or two of damage once. For the price of an entire career grade. I actually think it's quite a weak ability.




My point is that it just further shows how heavy armor is useless. There are tons of ways to get around soak, all of which are readily available and become better the more soak a character has, while there are very few things to help you just hit somebody with light armor and a high defense (Aim and Analytics are the only ones that come to mind, and both of them require an action. Tracers can help, but losing your cover is rough.) You lose over a full grade of defense by wearing heavy armor, it's extremely expensive when compared to other armors (Riot Armor has 7 soak and -2 defense for 1000 credits, while a Battlesuit is 8 soak and -4 defense for 2000 credits, not to mention the former has no ineffective damage types and the latter has a pretty easy one to get around if you carry a 48 credit backup pistol with you), and there's no reason to trade 4 defense points and 1900 credits for the 3 soak you would get by upgrading from a kevlar vest to a battlesuit. Even if we add in the gear from the Specialist Armor list, there's no heavy armor worth the price and defense penalty when compared to light (and some medium) armor.

With the Specialist Armor page, there's a light armor called Nemourlon Vest Mk I, which is 6 soak, has no ineffective damage types, is light armor, and costs 250 credits. The cheapest Heavy armor on there is 45,000 credits and has 15 soak, while there is a suit of light armor with 13 soak for 19,000 credits. So on the one hand, if we include this list, light armor is crazy favored over heavy armor. On the other hand, if we don't, there's no heavy armor that has enough soak to be even slightly worth the cost, ineffective damage type, and defense trade.

Weak point is only a weak ability because heavy armor isn't really a thing in this system as it stands. A suit of power armor that costs 10,000 credits only has a soak of 10, which means a 70 credit slugger pistol loaded with AP rounds that cost half a credit each can hurt a power armored person on an average damage roll without boosting their damage at all. And if they wanted to boost their damage roll, it would be easier for them to do, because that guy in power armor has a defense penalty for wearing it.


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## Morrus

It’s supposed to be easy to damage people though. Combat’s a dangerous thing - nobody should be walking into gunfire, whatever their armour.

I find nevertheless that my group soaks up a lot of the damage I throw at them. 

One thing I do agree with is that I’m not happy with the way AP ammo works. I agree that needs a tweak.


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## bigtino

Morrus said:


> It’s supposed to be easy to damage people though. Combat’s a dangerous thing - nobody should be walking into gunfire, whatever their armour.
> 
> I find nevertheless that my group soaks up a lot of the damage I throw at them.
> 
> One thing I do agree with is that I’m not happy with the way AP ammo works. I agree that needs a tweak.




So consider a sniper. He's got a 500 credit sniper rifle and 3 points in rifles, so he's shooting at his dice cap (let's say 6d6). That's 3d6+4 base damage. Let's add in the High Damage upgrade for 1,000 credits because he's Grade 6 or 7 and can afford it. Now we're at 4d6+4 damage. He's got Deadly Strike because there's no reason for him not to, so now we're at 5d6+4 damage. He's using HP rounds because he plans on using Aim to offset the penalty, so we're up to 6d6+4 damage. So he's rolling a 6d6 to hit, given no other modifiers, with an average damage roll of 25. If he's firing at a target in light armor, he's probably not going to trade for damage. He's got Weak Point, because all snipers should have weak point, so all of that is going straight to health.

Now, for the lightly armored target, the sniper might have a 50/50 chance of hitting him, and let's call it a 50/50 chance of the target dying in one shot. But if we have a heavily-armored character with a full helmet, someone who's rocking 12 soak because he has Tough-as-Nails and some good heavy armor that he paid a whole lot of money for, our sniper is now much happier. He can now trade two of his to-hit dice for one die of damage and keep his 50/50 hit chance, and now he's got 7d6+4 damage and a much better chance of taking down his target in one hit.

And even for someone who isn't a sniper - anyone from a stealthy SMG commando to a raging 10 strength two-handed sword berserker - Weak Point is amazing if you can get it. It takes a potentially drawn-out fight to one that can be ended with one Weak Point/Deadly Strike first hit followed by one finisher hit, and then you're on to the next guy. You don't need to use it against a target more than once because they're probably going to be dead or close to it after you do use it - and the more heavily armored they are, the more likely that is to happen.

But everyone in my game so far has found soak really easy to get past. For light armor, and even medium, that makes sense. If the team's assault gunner (using a sniper rifle like the sniper, because there are no automatic rifles for a reasonable price and he has no reason to choose an automatic rifle anyway because the damage of a sniper rifle is better than the auto bonus if you're a damage-dealer) has deadly strike, he hits for 4d6+4 damage, 18 on average. Even before AP rounds, his average damage roll without trading for damage way bypasses any existing armor in the core rulebook, and that's an amount of damage that is super easy to attain for even a Grade 5 starting character. The difference between light and heavy armor here is simply that heavy armor makes it easier for that rifleman to hit you.

I understand that bullets should be scary and no armor should ever protect you from everything always, but I do feel like armor should follow two basic rules:

1. It should, on a general level, be at least moderately useful.
2. The heavier your armor, the harder you are to damage (not necessarily harder to *hit*, just harder to damage).

Right now, I feel like light armor is useful because sometimes enemies use lasers that don't have AP rounds and it doesn't make you any easier to hit. Heavy armor, however, is almost equally-easy to bypass as light armor, and because it makes you considerably easier to hit, it's actually a hindrance more than a boon.


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## Morrus

*Armor skills?*

So stop using monsters able to bypass armour? Not many are designed like that. Unless you actually want to nerf your players or are doing PvP for some reason, it’s under your control what abilities the bad guys have. Designing encounters to be challenging but fun  needs taking your players into account.


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## bigtino

raspberryfh said:


> As a side note: I'm experimenting now with straight-up doubling all heavy armor SOAK values as provided in the manual. It does present situations where characters can have SOAK in the high teens or low 20s, but I think that's a reasonable tradeoff.




This seems like a pretty good solution to the heavy armor dilemma. No reason to cap gear quality (below a certain point, like exceptional) when the results are still cheaper than most heavy armor (the best one being an Exceptional Nemourlon Vest that has 10 soak, is light armor, and costs 1,500 credits), and doubling heavy armor soak means that you're paying for an equivalent scale of protection (like a basic battlesuit that costs 2,000 credits and gives a -4 defense penalty providing 16 soak instead of 8). That seems to balance decently with medium armor, since a regular suit of riot armor is 7 soak and costs 1,000 credits, although there's not really enough viable medium armor out there to make a good comparison.



> So stop using monsters able to bypass armour? Not many are designed like that. Unless you actually want to nerf your players or are doing PvP for some reason, it’s under your control what abilities the bad guys have. Designing encounters to be challenging but fun needs taking your players into account.




I do realize that, but I think you've missed my point, which is that heavy armor is useless. Without a significant change, like the one proposed above, there is absolutely no reason to use it unless you have literally hundreds of thousands of credits lying around to get one of the few suits that's actually better than a suit of light armor. Probably the solution I'll use is the proposal above of doubling heavy armor SOAK, and then writing up a long list of weapons, armor, and other gear that fill the gaps of what's available (like assault rifles or medium armor that isn't a variation on a hazmat suit).


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## Morrus

High quality heavy armour is better than high quality light armour. Higher quality armour (of most any type) is better than lower quality armour (of most any type). The key is the quality, not the heaviness. There's no inbuilt assumption into the game that PCs should be seeking heavier armour, rather that they should be seeing higher quality armour. I think there's just a fundamental difference in expectation there.


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## bigtino

Morrus said:


> High quality heavy armour is better than high quality light armour. Higher quality armour (of most any type) is better than lower quality armour (of most any type). The key is the quality, not the heaviness. There's no inbuilt assumption into the game that PCs should be seeking heavier armour, rather that they should be seeing higher quality armour. I think there's just a fundamental difference in expectation there.




Yes, but while the quality bonus is a flat +2 soak per level, the cost is multiplicative based on base cost. A Mastercraft suit of Leather Armor has 10 soak and costs 850 credits, which is the same soak as a suit of power armor and costs less than 1/10 of the price. A Mastercraft suit of Power Armor has a soak of 16 and costs 100,500 credits. Yes, the mastercraft power armor is better than the mastercraft leather armor, but that's not exactly a good comparison to make when one costs 120 times as much as the other.

My expectation is not that all players are always seeking heavier armor - my expectation is that heavier armor should be a viable option, and because of the way everything scales, it simply isn't.


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## Morrus

bigtino said:


> Yes, but while the quality bonus is a flat +2 soak per level, the cost is multiplicative based on base cost. A Mastercraft suit of Leather Armor has 10 soak and costs 850 credits, which is the same soak as a suit of power armor and costs less than 1/10 of the price. A Mastercraft suit of Power Armor has a soak of 16 and costs 100,500 credits. Yes, the mastercraft power armor is better than the mastercraft leather armor, but that's not exactly a good comparison to make when one costs 120 times as much as the other.
> 
> My expectation is not that all players are always seeking heavier armor - my expectation is that heavier armor should be a viable option, and because of the way everything scales, it simply isn't.




So your issue is that you feel power armor is too expensive?

(We have rather gone off-topic here, which might be affecting discussion on the topic at hand, which was skill requirements for quality equipment; I might split this posts off to another thread).


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## bigtino

That's just an example, and the same could be made of any heavy armor. A Mastercraft Battlesuit costs 20,500 and has a soak of 14, compared to the DE91 Shogunite Molecule Mail, which is light armor that has a soak of 13 and costs 19,000 credits. They're closer, but that -4 defense penalty still means the light armor is better. So I think my issue can be broken down into a few parts.

1. Outside of the very, very expensive heavy armor in the Specialist Armor splat, I can't find any heavy armor that is worth getting over a suit of light armor of a higher quality. (Mastercraft Leather for 850 vs regular Power Armor for 10,000, for example).
2. I'm not sure what to make of the rarity classifications for item quality. If equipment power was balanced by credit cost (a suit of light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor at roughly the same cost were all viable for different builds), it wouldn't be an issue - player wealth would balance itself out. But if I can buy a suit of leather armor that's as good as power armor for a fraction of the cost, it becomes important to define pretty clearly what "very rare" specifically means.
3. The price of a quality item depends on a multiplication of that item's base cost, but the scaling of benefits is flat. So it's cheaper to make a cheap suit of armor really good than it is to buy a good base-line item.

Thinking about it, I can think of a few ways to go about balancing it. One might be to make the soak bonus scale differently for different types of armor. So light armor would get +1 soak per quality, medium would get +2, and heavy +3. But even then, that mastercraft suit of leather armor would have a soak of 7 for 850 credits, which makes it better than base riot armor, which costs 1000 credits. But that might be the best light armor can go before you get into the very expensive Artisanal quality, while medium armor can progress beyond that soak point more cheaply. Another might be to add caps to quality bonuses. Or rarity could have a defined in-game effect - maybe the player has to make a roll of some kind to locate an item of that quality, and there is an additional cost based on the rarity to pay if the player can't succeed at that roll.

But I think the big fix for me will be to just homebrew a bunch of equipment to give more options. Rarity should be a choke point for players trying to take cheap armor and make it really good, but if that becomes the case, another option should be available, whether that be more base-line pieces of equipment, more upgrade options for armor, or a mix of the two.


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## Morrus

bigtino, with all due respect, I'm honestly not parsing what you're saying. It might just be that it's late here. What, exactly, is the issue? I mean, I thought it was that you felt the heavy armor was too expensive. Is that not the case?

I'm going to split these posts off, like I said, as I do need input on the original issue. So this will be a separate thread (depending when you see it!)

[Edit - there we go! That should be easier!]


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## bigtino

It's not just that it's too expensive (it is, though that's an easy fix), it's also that it's just not very good when compared to other armors. And I think that could be remedied with a further explanation of rarity in relation to item quality, rather than just lowering the price of heavy armor - in other words, I can get Mastercraft Leather Armor that is both better and cheaper than any heavy armor, so what is stopping me? What does it mean that Mastercraft is "very rare", in game terms? The loot rules in the game mastering section outline loot purely in terms of credits, not rarity, so how do I determine when the players are "ready" to access higher rarity equipment? And, when they do get access to "very rare" items, what balance is there to stop everyone from getting a Mastercraft suit of Leather Armor when it's very clearly better than any other armor on the list?

To illustrate more of what I'm talking about, here's an armor value breakdown, from my perspective.

Mastercraft Leather Armor - SOAK 10, Defense -0, Cost 850, Ineffective: None
Basic Battlesuit -                 SOAK 8, Defense -4, Cost 2000, Ineffective: Electricity
Navy Battlesuit -                 SOAK 9, Defense -4, Cost 3000, Ineffective: Electricity
Powered Combat Armor -     SOAK 10, Defense -2, Cost 10000, Ineffective: Electricity, Ion


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## Morrus

The rarity is pretty much an advisory to the GM, but it's up to you. As I said above, I don't let my players just whack cash down on exceptional quality stuff; they find it or they make an effort to find where to get it. There's a sidebar which describes rarity in terms of 20th century cars for context.

My current campaign has been running for about 8 months. They're all grade 9-10 now. I don't think any of them have bought anything better than high quality, and they only just got some exceptional stuff (some antique Eastern melee weapons they liberated from a gangster's private collection) this week.

I mean, yeah, mastercraft leather armor is better than standard power armor. That's not in dispute. Which is why I thought your issue was with the cost of the latter.


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## bigtino

I did read the sidebar, and my confusion there is that the rarity is directly represented by its price. If I had $200,000 I was looking to spend on a Mastercraft sports car, I would find plenty of cars to choose from. I'd shop around to choose the one I want, sure, but there wouldn't be much hassle in actually finding one to buy. At that price, the seller would probably do everything they could to make my buying experience as convenient as possible. But in that example, the barrier to a person's buying that car is its price, not its rarity. The example of an Artisanal car as a Bughatti Veyron makes sense, because there are only so many of those out there, and things of Artisanal quality should be considered unique. Even then, though, the rarity is seen in the price tag.

But the same doesn't apply to that Mastercraft Leather Armor. If it's exceptionally hard to find, and there exists a leather that makes an armor as tough as power armor, shouldn't the price represent that? It seems like either every military in the world would outfit their soldiers in that armor or the price would reflect the rarity and effectiveness. I suppose I'm just having a hard time understanding what rarity means when the price is so cheap.

As for your players now, I'm still wondering what they spend their money on if not gear quality. Even by Grade 7, a player who saved pretty much all of their money would only have around 10,000 credits, right? So on the one hand, they can buy whatever weapon and armor they want to on the list (unless it's Power Armor). On the other hand, outside of quality, what else do they buy? Vehicles and cybernetics are both prohibitively expensive. Quality seems like how a player is supposed to spend money to improve and customize their equipment, so without homebrewing a big new list of equipment, I'm not sure what a player's money is actually for.


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## Morrus

I dunno. I’m just not seeing the issues in my campaign that you are in yours. Most of the PCs have a couple of thousand in cash and have spent the rest. They like buying upgrades for their weapons and armour. One refuses to spend unless he can’t avoid it and has about 30K saved. They have a ship. It all works out pretty well.


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## Morrus

(Incidentally, I really do appreciate the discussion -- don't feel I'm trying to contradict you; I'm just trying to get my head around what you're saying).


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## Fortuitous

To add another voice to the confusion, I think his problem is that mechanically, heavy armor isn't very good as an option to players. 

What we want as GMs is to allow players to make choices based  on concept and character and not feel punished for doing so.

The concern is that heavy armor isn't very good when compared to other options. The fact it is substantially and sometimes many many times more expensive only adds to the issue of course, but that isn't the core of the issue. 

Heavy armor may have high soak, but there are quite a few ways to decrease soak that are easily accessible. The decrease to defense means that those methods to decrease soak are more effective than they otherwise would be. Plus many heavy armors come with additional drawbacks.

So as a player, do I pick the option that gives me flat bonuses with no drawbacks for a cheap price, or the one that gives me flat bonuses, notable penalties and further drawbacks, but at a substantially increased cost? Even removing the factor of cost and making all armor cost an even amount, he feels the benefits don't outweigh the drawbacks of heavy armor. This can mean that a player who decides to play a heavy armor, tank character may end up feeling punished when he's walking away beaten and bloody, but the guy who is spending nothing on his light armor is effectively tankier.


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## Morrus

Fortuitous said:


> The concern is that heavy armor isn't very good when compared to other options.




Well, yeah - I gathered the proposition. It was the reasoning I was struggling to understand, but a lot of that was just parsing some of the text. 

One of the early playtest versions had skill in armor types directly reducing the DEFENSE penalty for it.


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## raspberryfh

Fortuitous said:


> To add another voice to the confusion, I think his problem is that mechanically, heavy armor isn't very good as an option to players.




This is my understanding of bigtino's point and my issue with heavy armor as well. From a purely mathematical point, heavy armor is bad. It doesn't increase survivability, and in many cases will actually make the wearer easier to kill. (This is a tangential point to what I was talking about here, regarding AP ammo.)

Because the math doesn't work out, the flavor/atmosphere/story also begins to fail. Picture the opening scene of Star Wars: A New Hope. Now picture it with NEW's current armor rules. The heavily armored stormtroopers would probably lose. 

Charging through the breach, they won't have cover, and their heavy armor is the equivalent of the Rebels having a better-than-average extra attack die. Meanwhile, their armor (a battlesuit) only blocks an extra 3 points of damage (a worse-than-average damage die) compared to the light armor of the Rebels (a kevlar jacket). Given equal probabilities in attack rolls, the Rebels will be landing hits more consistently with limited reduction in their damage. They could also trade attack dice for damage dice and still hit their targets more reliably.


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## Dalamar

Time for some math!

Comparing the kevlar vest (SOAK 5) with the basic battlesuit (SOAK 8) against a skilled attacker (2d6 from skill for the damage), with both target and attacker being Grade 5... the battlesuit wins in pure damage numbers. Providing that the only relevant exploits the attacker has are Deadly Strike and Aim, no configuration of attack/aim/exchange for damage provides a higher expected damage value against the battlesuit than a different configuration against the kevlar vest for a single attack. Though for standing still and attacking twice (and having Deadly Strike), the kevlar vest does expect to receive a little less damage (combined 8,75 points versus 9,752 points). 

My calculations do not take into account any special ammunition, but if the basics yield expected results, I would suggest it is the ammunition that needs to be looked at, not the basic armor rules. 

Also, whether it is worth paying several times as much for heavy armor is a different question. It does leave the character more vulnerable to being tripped, disarmed, etc., but in exchange it offers several more upgrade slots. Perhaps, then, the way to equalize the armors is to create more cheap upgrades to highlight this capability of heavier armor. This would also combat the disparity between higher quality light armor and lower quality heavy armor, as each upgrade gets its price adjusted.


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## Morrus

I love me some stats!


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## Dalamar

Looking at the numbers again, I noticed that there is single shot scenario where heavy armor is worse: a normal attack when the attacker does not have the option to Aim for some reason and does have Deadly Strike. 

I'm going to see about crunching the numbers for some other scenarios later. 

Sent from my PLK-L01 using EN World mobile app


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## raspberryfh

Dalamar said:


> Time for some math!
> 
> Comparing the kevlar vest (SOAK 5) with the basic battlesuit (SOAK 8) against a skilled attacker (2d6 from skill for the damage), with both target and attacker being Grade 5... the battlesuit wins in pure damage numbers. Providing that the only relevant exploits the attacker has are Deadly Strike and Aim, no configuration of attack/aim/exchange for damage provides a higher expected damage value against the battlesuit than a different configuration against the kevlar vest for a single attack. Though for standing still and attacking twice (and having Deadly Strike), the kevlar vest does expect to receive a little less damage (combined 8,75 points versus 9,752 points).




Am I reading your PDF wrong then? It looks like any time you have a 50% (or less) chance of hitting the light-armored target, the heavy-armored target has higher expected damage. The example of Aim+Exchange+Deadly strike does an expected damage of 6.12 vs. heavy armor and only 2.23 vs. kevlar. More importantly, using just a regular attack + deadly strike, the person in heavy armor takes an expected 6.36 damage compared to only 5.25 in regular armor. This is a very important point of evidence that heavy armor isn't good enough.


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## bigtino

raspberryfh said:


> Am I reading your PDF wrong then? It looks like any time you have a 50% (or less) chance of hitting the light-armored target, the heavy-armored target has higher expected damage. The example of Aim+Exchange+Deadly strike does an expected damage of 6.12 vs. heavy armor and only 2.23 vs. kevlar. More importantly, using just a regular attack + deadly strike, the person in heavy armor takes an expected 6.36 damage compared to only 5.25 in regular armor. This is a very important point of evidence that heavy armor isn't good enough.




Yeah, I have to agree here. I would hardly say these numbers support heavy armor. In the Aim and Aim/Deadly Strike category, the Battlesuit has a little over 1 less expected damage than the kevlar vest. That's the only time the Battlesuit actually outperforms the kevlar vest, and it isn't by much. 

The other scenario where the battlesuit does better (aim and high ground) is just an attacker misreading the situation - they can simply choose to trade for damage and then have the same expected damage against the battlesuit as they would have against the kevlar vest without trading for damage.

I think what stands out to me, though, is the "Aim" category vs. the "Aim and Exchange" category. The only difference between these two categories is whether the attacker chooses to exchange to-hit dice for damage, which is an easy call to make depending one whether your target is wearing light or heavy armor.

Aim
-Without Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 1.7 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 1.1 more damage.

Aim and Exchange
-Without Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 2.5 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 3.9 more damage.

In fact, this can be done for any of these scenarios. The problem with that chart is that it considers all of the possibilities as equal, when in fact, most of them are just decisions that are pretty easy to make. "Is the target in heavy armor? I choose to exchange for damage." And the choice to pick when targeting a heavily armored foe almost always outperforms the choice to pick when targeting a lightly-armored foe. I've listed out the rest of the chart in the same way.

Normal Attack
-Without Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 0.11 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 1.11 more damage.

Normal Attack and Exchange
-Without Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 1.17 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 1.72 more damage.

Aim and High Ground
-Without Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 2.60 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 2.40 more damage.

Aim, High Ground, and Exchange
-Without Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 1.11 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 2.34 more damage.

Aim, High Ground, and Exchange Twice
-Without Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 2.03 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 2.74 more damage.

The only time heavy armor seems to actually outperform light armor is when the attacker has several situational advantages. But the kicker here is that, against a heavily armored target, the attacker could choose to attack twice instead of aim and attack, and then light armor once again comes out on top.

My conclusion here is that, given that the attacker chooses to exchange (or attack twice) against heavily armored targets and not exchange against lightly armored targets, all of the listed scenarios in that chart show the Kevlar Vest taking less damage, often in significant amounts.


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## Dalamar

raspberryfh said:


> Am I reading your PDF wrong then? It looks like any time you have a 50% (or less) chance of hitting the light-armored target, the heavy-armored target has higher expected damage. The example of Aim+Exchange+Deadly strike does an expected damage of 6.12 vs. heavy armor and only 2.23 vs. kevlar. More importantly, using just a regular attack + deadly strike, the person in heavy armor takes an expected 6.36 damage compared to only 5.25 in regular armor. This is a very important point of evidence that heavy armor isn't good enough.



 While Aim+Exchange+Deadly Strike does more damage to the battlesuit, I don't think any attacker would do the exchange against the target in kevlar jacket. That means that when the attacker Aims (or has higher ground, since the odds are the same), the defender in kevlar expects to take 8,33 damage (for Aim+Deadly Strike) compared to the battlesuit's 6,12 (Aim+Exchange+Deadly Strike) or 7,23 (Aim+Deadly Strike) since those are the best results the attacker can expect against a given target in that situation. If the attacker can Aim or has higher ground, he will deal more damage against the target in kevlar vest. If he has high ground, he should definitely be firing twice instead of Aiming and firing once against either target. 

I do admit missing the plain old attack with Deadly Strike on my comparisons, even though I noted that two regular attacks with one being Deadly Strike does lead to higher damage against the battlesuit. Not sure how I missed that.



bigtino said:


> My conclusion here is that, given that the attacker chooses to exchange (or attack twice) against heavily armored targets and not exchange against lightly armored targets, all of the listed scenarios in that chart show the Kevlar Vest taking less damage, often in significant amounts.



 I agree with your premise, but not the conclusion you draw from it. If we take it for granted that the attacker knows the most optimal strategy for them to take in a given situation, then we should not be comparing the kevlar and battlesuit under the exact same modifiers. If the attacker has high ground, the different options available are: attack twice <-> Aim and attack once, and exchange <-> don't exchange. 
The most optimal results against the target in kevlar comes from just shooting twice, resulting in a total of 11,12 damage, or 13,90 if they have Deadly Strike (which only applies on one attack per round). 
The most optimal results against the target in battlesuit comes from shooting twice and exchanging, resulting in a total of 8,34 damage, or if they have Deadly Strike, shooting once without exchanging (to guarantee Deadly Strike) and shooting with exchanging, for a total of 11,40 damage. 
If he chooses to Aim anyway, he should not exchange against the target in kevlar, so he expects to deal 6,57 damage, but should exchange against the battlesuit-wearer for an expected 6,36 damage. 

So in that situation, the target wearing a kevlar jacket is expected to take more damage, provided the attacker does not do the stupid thing of exchanging attack for damage against someone in light armor.


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## Dalamar

As a side note, seeing as the kevlar jacket and battlesuit are within a couple of points of each other when the attacker does not exchange against the former but does exchange against the latter, it means that the defender wearing the battlesuit is less likely to suffer critical hits as the chance of triple-sixes also decreases.


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## raspberryfh

Let's take out the situational modifiers then.

Comparing the damage of an attacker with deadly strike vs the two defenders you've used in your example...

If the attacker shoots twice at the light armored person, he will only connect once on average. His expected damage overall is 10.5.

If the attacker shoots twice at the heavily armored person, he is very likely to hit with both shots. His expected damage overall is 13.4.

In order to achieve about the same probability of actually hitting the target, the attacker tries aiming at the light-armored person. His expected damage then becomes 8.3.

Comparing the attack against a heavily armored person with either tactical decision that could be made against the person in kevlar, you still do more damage to the person in heavy armor. Heavy armor should provide better protection in almost all scenarios, not just the ones where your opponents have enough modifiers to profitably attack a light-armored person.


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## bigtino

If you have a situational advantage, like high ground or crossfire, firing twice instead of aiming and firing is going to give mostly the same results as the "Aim" and "Aim and Exchange" - the only difference being you can only use Deadly Strike on one attack. Here are the results:

High Ground and Fire Twice
-Without Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 3.41 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 2.81 more damage.

High Ground, Fire Twice, and Exchange
-Without Deadly Strike, the Battlesuit takes 5.01 more damage.
-With Deadly Strike, the Kevlar Vest takes 6.40 more damage.

So again, if I see a target has heavy armor, I'm going to choose to exchange for damage, and the result is going to be considerably more expected damage than if I had fired at a lightly armored target and chosen not to exchange. The choice isn't tactical mastery, either - it should be, in-character, pretty easy to visually determine whether a target is wearing light or heavy armor, and the choice is obvious after that is determined.

But I agree with raspberryfh on the crux of the matter - heavy armor should protect its wearer better than light armor, and it simply doesn't. That the cheapest heavy armor costs twenty times as much as the most expensive (core) light armor just exacerbates that.


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## Dalamar

raspberryfh said:


> Let's take out the situational modifiers then.
> 
> Comparing the damage of an attacker with deadly strike vs the two defenders you've used in your example...
> [...]
> Comparing the attack against a heavily armored person with either tactical decision that could be made against the person in kevlar, you still do more damage to the person in heavy armor. Heavy armor should provide better protection in almost all scenarios, not just the ones where your opponents have enough modifiers to profitably attack a light-armored person.



Using these numbers, you've posited that in almost all scenarios, attackers will have Deadly Strike. I find that an odd supposition, seeing as there are numerous other exploits a character could have. 
Likewise, this presumes that the attackers are skilled (2d6), equal Grade to the defender, and wielding one of the best rifles in the book.


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## Dalamar

bigtino said:


> So again, if I see a target has heavy armor, I'm going to choose to exchange for damage, and the result is going to be considerably more expected damage than if I had fired at a lightly armored target and chosen not to exchange. The choice isn't tactical mastery, either - it should be, in-character, pretty easy to visually determine whether a target is wearing light or heavy armor, and the choice is obvious after that is determined.



Let's see, this is going outside of my comfort zone when it comes to mathematics, but I'm pretty sure that the chance to hit exactly one attack out of two equals 100% - (chance to miss both) - (chance to hit both), in which case the following should hold true. 

If I have high ground against my target, and I see that they are wearing a kevlar vest, I will shoot at them twice. If I don't have Deadly Strike, my expected total damage for the two attacks is 11,12. If I do have Deadly Strike, the expected total is 14,47. 

If I have high ground against my target, and I see that they are wearing a battlesuit, I will shoot twice and exchange two of my attack dice for one damage die. If I don't have Deadly Strike, my expected total damage for the two attacks is 8,35. If I do have Deadly Strike, my expected damage is 11,16, which is actually slightly less than if I had not exchanged and just attacked twice, for a total of 11,21. 

So, if I have high ground, I can expect to do 11,12 points of damage against the target in light armor, or 8,35 points of damage against the target in heavy armor. If I have Deadly Strike, the numbers are 14,47 opposed to 11,16 or 11,21. Whether I have Deadly Strike or not, I can expect to do about 3 more damage to the target in light armor, since there is no reason for me to exchange attack for damage against them. It doesn't matter how much more damage without exchanging I do against light armor than I do heavy armor, or how much more I deal to heavy armor than I deal to light armor when I do exchange.


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## raspberryfh

Dalamar said:


> Using these numbers, you've posited that in almost all scenarios, attackers will have Deadly Strike. I find that an odd supposition, seeing as there are numerous other exploits a character could have.
> Likewise, this presumes that the attackers are skilled (2d6), equal Grade to the defender, and wielding one of the best rifles in the book.





Well, I was just using your numbers/examples, which you had initially posited showed a clear advantage for heavy armor *shrug*

I did apply the math slightly wrong, in my example, counting the deadly strike damage twice. The expected damage should actually be 8.75 vs. kevlar and 9.75 vs. battle armor. Closer, but still doing more damage to the heavy armor.

Conceptually, heavy armor should offer *more* protection against an unskilled combatant right? But if you take someone who keeps all the same stats in your example minus deadly strike and attacks twice without modifiers, they expect to deal 7 damage to the person in kevlar compared to 6.78 damage to the person in heavy armor. That's a pretty negligible difference for paying several thousand credits more.

If you make your sample attacker less experienced with rifles, the loss of damage will be applied equally to both defenders. The likelihood to hit will skew further toward hitting the heavily-armored one because of their -4 defense. I haven't mathed it out, but I'd expect that to make the situation worse.

All of this is just to say that heavy armor probably needs more SOAK attached to it so that the defense penalty is negated.


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## Dalamar

I adjusted my spreadsheet so that I can actually change numbers around. No ability to directly adjust attack and defense dice pools just yet, but I can at least tweak the SOAK provided by armor and the average damage of the attacker's weapon. So here are some variants of the basic calculations, and the base sheet with a couple more situations added (Cover, Aim+Cover, and defender wearing a Forcefield). 

As raspberryfh suspected, losing the skill bonus to damage did not help the battlesuit too much, though the numbers are much closer now for the standard attack. Once I get around to updating the two attacks sheet, I'll see what the total is for those. 

Upping the battlesuit's SOAK by 2 or lowering the kevlar vest's SOAK by 1 gives clearer results in the battlesuit's favour. 

I also just noticed that the battlesuit includes and integrated military scanner. I presume that factors somewhat in its cost, which is actually twice as much as the equivalent OLD armor (platemail, SOAK 8, 1000gc).


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## Morrus

I have very much enjoyed this thread and the one about AP ammo. There is just time to squeeze some small changes into v1.2 based on both threads. Thanks so much for the input!


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## daniiren

I want to contribute to this conversation (and the one on AP ammo, but that's another thread), and I think I have a few things to point out that haven't yet been mentioned. Full disclosure, I deal with statistics questions similar to this relatively frequently. I'm not a statistician and anyone who is will shudder in horror at my methods, but I ran a simple simulation and found some interesting results I think others may find worth thinking about. Until I get python to export my results in a convenient graphical format, all I can do is try to describe them (anyone know why matplotlib keeps saving blank figures?). When my code works I'll gladly share it for others to critique and modify.

A few people have done some detailed spreadsheets and calculated average damage outputs in various scenarios. I really don't want to rain on anyone's parade and please don't think I'm trying to denigrate or belittle you or your results, but we're doing a statistical analysis here, and the damage roll forms a distribution that has some average value but also a shape. The average doesn't tell the whole story. There is a lot to be learned by looking at the shape the distribution of damage rolls, and one of the principle things is also the range of likely damage values. The average in a given scenario (say you're using Deadly Strike and Aim, but they're in cover) is a value that depends on if they're using kevlar or a battlesuit (I forget the exact results off-hand), but there are a few things to note. I compared all results across sixteen different scenarios (combinations of Aim/High Ground, Deadly Strike, trade for damage, and Cover), and found that statistically we can't actually say much because the range of possible damage results is quite wide. There's often a difference in the average damage, but that difference often doesn't mean a lot. I'm still unsure about a few aspects to the analysis (I need to talk to a few people who know more statistics), but this is what I'm feeling.

A few other thoughts:

First, there is very often a significant chance that the attack deals no damage. This can be either because the attack misses or because the damage gets SOAKed. Which armour type gives the better chance of taking zero damage depends on the situation. This is obvious and has been mentioned. I bring it up for completeness.

Second, for attacks that do deal actual damage, without exception a target wearing kevlar will take more HEALTH damage on average than one in a battlesuit. Again, obvious and nothing new.

The parameter we're interested in is, how often and under what circumstances does wearing a battlesuit mean the wearer takes less damage than wearing kevlar, and should the costs/performances of these armours be modified to improve this?


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## raspberryfh

From a test combat tonight, I think that doubling the SOAK value of heavy armor probably increases its power too much. Increasing by 1.5x may yield better results, which I'll have to experiment on further.


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## dekrass

The math here is out of my depth, but in the hope of a simple solution I'll throw in an idea.
What kind of difference would it make if the Defense penalties were halved, like the shield bonuses were in the errata? With a -1 for medium armor and a -2 for heavy would things improve?


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## Morrus

dekrass said:


> The math here is out of my depth, but in the hope of a simple solution I'll throw in an idea.
> What kind of difference would it make if the Defense penalties were halved, like the shield bonuses were in the errata? With a -1 for medium armor and a -2 for heavy would things improve?




I think that particular thing is a perfect opportunity to bing back the armor skilll reducing defence penalties. The defence penalty is reduced by -1 for each die in the armor skill (that means you don't really need a light armor skill, but I think that works thematically -- wearing a synthetic weave shouldn't require skill; wearing powered combat armor should).


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## daniiren

I finally got my code to do things correctly. I assumed attacks from someone with a 5d6 attack pool using an assault rifle (2d6+2 damage). The target has 14 range defense and either kevlar or a battlesuit. I simulated 10.000 attacks in every combination of Aim, Cover, Deadly Strike, and trade for damage. If anyone wonders about other base values, it's really easy to change.

I think the easiest way to present this is via damage quantiles, that is, how likely are you to do at least _ amount of damage? Over all the scenarios I simulated, I found that you're more likely to take at least 1 damage in a battlesuit than in kevlar, but you're more likely to take at least 5 damage in kevlar than in a battlesuit.

If you're more interested in the individual results from the sixteen different situations rather than the overall results, I offer those as well. The two blank spots are where the attacker trades for damage against a target in cover, which obviously is guaranteed to fail.



For those unfamiliar with how to read these types of graphs, the horizontal axis represents a minimum damage amount, and the vertical axis is how often an attack will do at least that amount of damage.


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## raspberryfh

I'd be curious to see what the numbers look like with a base defense of 18, since a defense of 14 is pretty easy to hit with 5 attack dice. We've already established that if you're very likely to be hit, heavy armor should SOAK more damage. The real question is where the tradeoff lies for soaking damage versus completely avoiding damage.

That said, it's interesting to me that when you combine all those different circumstances, heavy armor is more likely to take a small amount of damage 60% of the time. For the remaining 40% of all attacks, it looks like the difference in damage is 1-2 points (less than the actual soak difference of the armors).


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## dekrass

Morrus said:


> I think that particular thing is a perfect opportunity to bing back the armor skilll reducing defence penalties. The defence penalty is reduced by -1 for each die in the armor skill (that means you don't really need a light armor skill, but I think that works thematically -- wearing a synthetic weave shouldn't require skill; wearing powered combat armor should).




That makes sense.
It means that there's no reason to have more than 3 ranks in medium armor, though. I think consolidating medium and heavy into just one armor skill would work. It remains relevant for 10 ranks that way, and you get better at wearing heavier armor as you gain ranks. Plus you can work up to the heavier armors in skill much as you do in money.


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## daniiren

raspberryfh said:


> I'd be curious to see what the numbers look like with a base defense of 18



Ask and you shall receive.


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## raspberryfh

daniiren said:


> Ask and you shall receive.




The curves seem a little off somehow. Did you include the heavy armor defense penalty in that (to compare kevlar+def18 vs. battlesuit+def14)?


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## daniiren

raspberryfh said:


> The curves seem a little off somehow. Did you include the heavy armor defense penalty in that (to compare kevlar+def18 vs. battlesuit+def14)?




Yep, the code does that automatically. I think the takeaway point from this is that the kevlar survives on being harder to hit. The lines for kevlar don't decrease as quickly as for the battlesuit, but they tend to start at a lower quantile.


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## Dalamar

I know my simplistic math didn't take it into account, but does your simulator account for 6s rolled on damage always doing at least 1 damage each? I'm not sure it matters here since the minimum damage with at least one 6 is 9, but still. 

Sent from my PLK-L01 using EN World mobile app


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## raspberryfh

For Kevlar (SOAK 5), that wouldn't make a difference, as any 6 would automatically break through SOAK. Without running the specifics of the math, that would increase the damage a bit more vs. the battlesuit, as any successful hit has a 1/6 chance of dealing at least 1 damage per damage die being rolled.


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## daniiren

Dalamar said:


> I know my simplistic math didn't take it into account, but does your simulator account for 6s rolled on damage always doing at least 1 damage each?




Yes it does. I'll try to clean up the code and post it for others to review and use soon. It's currently a bit unwieldy and obtuse.


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## Dalamar

I was thinking, how hard would it be to turn your code around so that it also crunches the numbers to see how long each target survives against a given threat? Also, if adding medium armor to the number crunching would be possible. Seeing as the heavy and light armors are so close in numbers, medium armor might be the true bad option.


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## Morrus

For reference, final errata in v1.2 includes this:

- just one skill, "armor"
- dice reduce DEF penalties for heavier armor
- basically means don't need skill for light armor, but, hey, anybody can wear a leather jacket
- heavy armor getting a slight SOAK boost, and the electricity vulnerability reduced to half rather than full


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